Ep 450: Unreasonable Hospitality with Will Guidara
RV (00:01):
Well, I’m honored to introduce you to someone who I love to hate because I am so jealous of this man and so inspired by him. Will Guera is the author of a book called Unreasonable Hospitality, which is an incredible book, and it’s doing something that we all aspire to do, which is to sell thousands and thousands of units every single week without knowing how
RV (01:02):
But before he was an author, will was the co-owner of 11 Madison Park. And if you are a foodie, you know exactly what I’m talking about. So this is a restaurant one of was actually named in 2017, number one on the list of the world’s 50 best restaurants. It earned three Michelin stars while it was under, his leadership had four stars from the New York Times. And that was why Will was, you know, handling and managing the hospitality there. The co-owner of that restaurant. So not an easy place to get a reservation at, from what I understand. I had to research it. I’m not even hoity-toity enough to have been invited to this restaurant
RV (01:57):
It’s so much legit, like so many legit people I know talk about this conference. So it’s an, it’s an annual hospitality symposium. It brings together, you know, just amazing people from all different kind of walks of life who are interested in hospitality to sort of share ideas and, and, and best practices. But will also is a graduate of the Hospitality School at Cornell University. He has co-authored four cookbooks, was named one of Crane’s Business 40 under 40. He’s the recipient of the Wall Street Journal magazine’s Innovator Award. And turns out, even though I don’t like him, it turns out he’s hard to not, like he’s an amazing guy. We’ve gotten to know each other a little bit. And my team, here’s the other thing, true story. My team was talking about this book before I ever met Will, and that’s how I know an author is really making dent a dent in the world. So, bro, welcome to the show, man. It’s so great to have you
WG (02:55):
Well, I, I just wanna say that while you may love to hate me, I just love to love you, my friend
RV (04:28):
Well, thanks brother. And I, and I feel that’s like, I mean, that’s kind of the, in many ways the message of your book, you know, unreasonable Hospitality is like you create these bonds so quickly with people. So just explain, start at the beginning. Explain what’s the premise of Unreasonable Hospitality? What is it? How did you come up with it? And like, before we get to how to apply it, just define it for me.
WG (04:56):
Yeah. So how it kind of came to pass was I was at that restaurant 11 medicine park, and in 2006 I got there and the restaurant was, was fine. It was a mediocre restaurant served delicious food, but it was not all that significant in its technique or its ingredients and all that. The service was very friendly, but not all that precise. But the dining room, man, anyone listening to this who has never seen a picture of the dining room at the Madison Park, you should look it up. It’s truly one of the most beautiful in the world. And so I was brought in as a part of a team that was charged with elevating the restaurant experience to live up to the room itself. And we initially did that, at least we started out doing that by focusing on excellence, right? I think anyone who’s ever sold anything, whether it’s a product or an experience, when you want to make it better, you focus relentlessly on the product itself, on how to make it as good as it can possibly be focused on training and sourcing and techniques and education and discipline and all that stuff.
WG (06:06):
Got fancier plates and silverware and glassware and, you know and it started working pretty quickly. I mean, listen, like anytime you’re trying to do anything of consequence, you need to be pretty audacious and your ambition, but patient in your pursuit. And we were, we were pushing hard over a number of years, but in the grand scheme of life, it wasn’t that long before we went from two stars in the New York Times to three Stars and then to four stars and zero Michelin stars to three Michelin stars. And both of those rating systems, those represent the most stars you can get. But there was this one list that we really wanted to be on, and just my nature, I’m a competitive person. I wanted to be at the top of which was the 50 best we set out to create one of the best restaurants in New York and then in America.
WG (06:55):
And once we had done that, I wanted to create one of the best restaurants, not only one of the best restaurant in the world. The thing about that list though, and even as you hear me say it, perhaps it sounds as ridiculous as it is, I mean, how can one restaurant be the best restaurant in the world, right? It’s too subjective, there’s too many restaurants. But that list acknowledges when you, when you reach that top spot, is you’ve become the restaurant that’s having the greatest impact on the re on the world of restaurants at any given time. And so in order to do that, I needed to figure out what our impact was gonna be. You know, I looked at the people that had topped the list before me. They were chefs, chefs who were unreasonable in pursuit of the food that were serving, relentless in pursuit of innovating the kind of techniques that would evolve the craft of cooking forward into the next generation.
WG (07:54):
But I’m not a chef. I’m a dining room guy. I’m the guy that likes to be out there throwing the party, welcoming people, making them feel at home. And I decided that if we were gonna become their number one, number one, it was not going to come by being unreasonable in pursuit of the product we were serving. It was going to come by making the choice to be unreasonable in pursuit of people and relentless in pursuit of the one thing that will never change, which is well, our human desire to feel seen, to feel cared for, to feel a sense of belonging, to feel welcome. And so that first year when we were put on that list, we came in last place, we were number 50. And that night on a cocktail napkin, I wrote, we will be number one one of the world.
WG (08:39):
And then I also wrote those two words, unreasonable hospitality. And that became my mission statement going forward. I mean, simply put, what does it mean? Listen, I believe if you’re trying to be extraordinary in your field, excellence is required. But at the end of the day, excellence is table stakes When you get to the top tier unreasonable hospitality means that you are making the choice to be just as focused, just as creative, just as relentless, just as intentional in pursuit of how you make people feel, as you very likely already are in pursuit of the thing you’re selling. That you don’t reserve your best efforts only for the thing, but for all the feelings and emotions that surround that thing.
RV (09:30):
So is it, and so at its essence, is it that, is it, if somebody feels special and somebody feels seen, then mission accomplished?
WG (09:46):
I mean,
RV (11:13):
Yes, it’s ironic. I mean, you, you even see like the explosion of social media over the years, and it’s like, what is that? More than people just wanting to be seen, recognized, valued, appreciated for who they are, what they know, what they could do in the world. So yeah, I wanted, I wanna know how to apply it, right? And so I, I told you a lot, most of the people listening are small business owners, but in this one we’re gonna be, I’m gonna be super selfish and I want you to consult Brand Builders group because
RV (12:00):
I mean, really we’ve been on the survival journey. Like startup is like mm-hmm. You move from survival, and then we try to streamline and then we, you know, excellent. But like, where we really want to get to is making people feel special, right? Every person, the, the, the podcast listener, the person who reads a book, the person who subscribes to the blog, all the way down to the people who become customers and affiliates, and then ultimately team members. But if you’re a small business, and my guess is most of the people listening to this are even smaller than us, and you don’t have unlimited budgets and things like that. How do you do this tactically? And, and what I’m really curious about is how to operationalize it, right? Like the founder of the company can make people feel special a lot of times through their words, or they just have this passion, but like, how do you create a culture of it? How do you, how do you systematize it to where every person who walks in the dining room has this amazing experience that they all, they all feel that way? How do we create that in our small businesses?
WG (13:09):
So the first thing I did when I got home from those first awards and I had that cocktail nap napkin with the big ambitious goal and the strategy through which we were gonna achieve it, I sat down with my team at our daily premium meeting. If anyone out there has worked in a restaurant, you may know what premium is. That’s the 30 minute meeting. Most restaurants have together in a circle right before we unlock the doors and welcome people in for dinner. Most restaurants do that meeting, although many of them waste it by talking about something that’s so like, clearly could have been accomplished via an email, a new menu item, or a new glass of wine or whatever. I think that 30 minute meeting, a daily huddle within any organization is one of the most transformational things any company can do. And it’s an opportunity not to talk about the what, but about the why and the how.
WG (14:02):
It’s an opportunity for a leader to share moments of inspiration, invite the team to do so in return. It’s an opportunity not just to talk to your team about what they need to learn to be better at their jobs, but about all the things they can think about or learn from or be inspired by to be better human beings. I think that meeting is when the people you work with cease being a collection of individuals and come together as a trusting team. And only when everyone on the team like, you know, falls into that beautiful pocket, can you unleash their most fully realized collective creativity and capacity. And so I go deep into that because any single business out there that serves other people, if you don’t have some version of a daily huddle, I think you’re leaving so much opportunity on the table. Think of it like a daily locker room speech, like Al Pacino and any given Sunday, there’s a beautiful opportunity to fire pet, make sure.
RV (15:04):
Fight for that. You gotta fight for that in
WG (15:07):
WG (16:01):
And so what we did is we closed the restaurant for lunch one day, brought every single person on the team in. By the way, I think brainstorming as a group is always a beautiful opportunity to balance the gap between information and authority if you engage every single person on the team. And we did an exercise that I now call interrogating the guest experience, where for four hours this team broken up into a bunch of groups, tried to identify every little touch point everything from picking up the phone to call and make the reservation, to walking through the door to going to the bar to have a drink. If your table wasn’t ready to getting up and using the restroom in the middle of the dinner, you get the gist, every little touch point. And then once we’d isolated every single one of ’em, then we got to do the fun part.
WG (16:53):
We got to figure out how to make every single one of them, or at least as many of them as humanly possible, a little more awesome. What I came to realize is the smallest enhancements, the least likely touch points in the guest journey can have the greatest possible impact. Because if you focus on creativity into a part of the experience that no one else has ever paused for long enough to consider the impact can be significant. I’ll give you an example, A story I tell in the book. The check was close to the end of the list, right? That is a touchpoint when you’re serving someone the moment you drop the bill on their table. And yet it’s one that very few people have ever invested any creativity into, right? A because it’s transactional, and we generally tend to believe that if something feels transactional, it can’t feel hospitable.
WG (17:45):
But b, because it’s just a hard moment to get right at a restaurant when you ask for the check. If it takes us too long to get it to you, people get really impatient when they’re ready to leave. We can undo all the goodwill that we’ve built. We can’t drop the check on your table before you’ve asked for it, otherwise you feel like we’re trying to rush you out. That’s also the moment at a fine dining restaurant where you realize how much that meal cost, which makes it a lot harder to appreciate how much you loved it moments earlier. Uhhuh
RV (18:12):
You open it and you go, okay, brace for impact. Oh God, brace for impact.
WG (18:17):
I mean to the point where no one’s really ever done anything creative with the check. I mean, you know, I actually read in John Lin’s book, another one of our buddies from that, from that day Giftology. Yeah. He talked about Cornell University did a study where they studied a bunch of restaurants that gave a mint with the check versus a bunch of restaurants that didn’t. Yeah. And the restaurants that gave out mints got on average 18% more in tips than those that didn’t. This beautiful display, that generosity begets generosity in an asymmetrical way. But anyway, we identified that touchpoint. So then as a group, we figured out how to make it more awesome. And this is what we came up with when I knew you were done. You didn’t ask for the check yet, but you were done. I went over to your table with a bottle of cognac and a glass for each purse, and I poured a splash of cognac into each glass.
WG (19:08):
Then I put the bottle on the table and said, Hey, this is what their compliments help yourself to as much as you’d like. And then I put the check down and said, and your check is right here. Whenever you’re ready for it, what do we do? Well, no one ever had to ask for the check again. No one could ever feel like we were trying to rush them out. We’d just given them an entire bottle of free booze. At the moment when they realized how much the meal cost, we’d matched that moment with a gesture of crazy generosity, which maintained the value proposition we were trying to offer. And at the end of a very long meal where we had been serving people immaculately, we gave them the gift of being able to serve one another, which is the very essence of hospitality. I’ve met so many people over the years who, in spite of the fact that we were serving some of the best food in the world, don’t remember a single thing they ate that night, but they remember the cognac and the way it made them feel. So the first answer to that question, and I have a few different answers, is look at the entire experience, interrogate it and find a couple of those really unlikely touchpoints and make them profoundly best in class. Because if you focus on something that no one else has, it gives you an unfair competitive advantage. By definition, you win because you’re doing something somewhere where no one else has done anything before.
WG (20:36):
Does that make sense? Uhhuh
RV (20:37):
WG (21:12):
Well, yeah. And what you’re gonna find is you probably do a bunch of stuff really badly. You probably don’t do anything in a bunch of areas. Yeah. And you’re probably really proud of the way you do some things. I did this exercise with an automotive with an auto sales group. It’s like a group out in California that has a ton of dealerships. And when you’re interrogating all the touch points after about an hour, you think you’re done, I urge you to keep going for another two hours because it’s when you finish picking the low hanging fruit and you have to climb a little bit higher up in the tree, that’s when you find the real stuff that gives you the real opportunities with them. It was like a bunch of like big, you know, manly car dealers. About 45 minutes in, they were bored with the exercise and I kept on pushing ’em and they were annoyed with me.
WG (21:57):
But by the end, well, we realized that the first time you get a flat tire three months after you buy the car, maybe that’s a step, that’s a touch point in the journey. The first time you opened your glove compartment, maybe a week after you buy the car. That’s a touch point in the customer journey. Once you isolate those things, now you can elevate them. Like everyone talks about extending and experiences as far into the future as they possibly can. And so, and if a week later you reach into the gove compartment for the first time and you see a beautiful little note and just a nice, thoughtful, not overly expensive gift waiting there for you, the way that you’ll feel about the people that sold you, that car jumps so dramatically because their thoughtfulness and their care becomes so much more evident.
WG (22:50):
So, okay, that’s one. I think another practical which this came, I’m going to go chronologically way out of order, but for the cadence of the conversation is a similar exercise, but instead of interrogating the touch points in the customer journey, I call this one pattern recognition of recurring moments. So, okay if you and your team sit down and you say, okay, I don’t wanna think about the touchpoints, the things that happen as a part of the guest journey for everyone we serve, instead, I want to spend the next couple weeks identifying the five things that just happen often. So in a restaurant that could mean that oftentimes people are on their way to the airport right after their meal. It could mean that man, you know, like twice a week a party of four shows up as a party of three because one of the people’s spouses got sick and is at home in bed with, with the flu.
WG (24:01):
Or it could mean man, like once every week, someone is getting engaged here. Okay, now you’ve identified recurring moments. These are things that just happen often. Every single business has recurring moments. If you identify them in advance, then along with your team, you can determine how you’re gonna react to those moments and even develop the stuff you might need to make those reactions more awesome. In my world we had a graphic designer design and we had these beautiful boxes, made 11 Madison Park airplane food for every single person that was gonna the airport after their meal. We had this amazing thing packaged, prepared and ready to deploy easily for our team. So every time someone mentioned that, we hit them with this beautiful gesture of hospitality. We had an amazing chicken soup recipe ready on the dessert screen of our micross terminal. So when a server was entering desserts for a table that showed up one person short, ’cause they were homesick in bed, chicken soup ready to go.
WG (25:07):
So that person, even though they missed the meal, could still quote, eat at 11 Madison Park, or, man, my favorite one, I tell this story all the time because I just think it embodies the idea so well, is that a lot of people get engaged at a restaurant. Yeah. And if you go to a decent restaurant, you propose to your person and they say, yes, there, they better pour you a free glass to champagne like we did. But that’s just reasonable. Once he’d identified that as a recurring moment, we could figure out how to make it unreasonable. Tiffany and co had their offices across the park. I started knocking on doors until I found the chief marketing officer convinced her to give me 1000 of those baby blue boxes each with the two champagne flutes in them, put ’em in a closet in the back that we emptied out and called the Hospitality Toolkit closet, which is where we put all the stuff we needed for these gestures.
WG (26:02):
Next time someone got engaged, we poured in free champagne just like we always would have. But what they wouldn’t notice was that their champagne glasses looked a little different from everyone else’s. And when they were done with their champagne, we brought the glasses back, washed them, dry them, put them back in the box, and gave them to them on their way out the door. Again, I’ve met so many people who got engaged at our restaurant and years later don’t remember a single thing they ate, but they’ll never forget how we made them feel with those glasses. Maya Angelou has a quote. She says, people will forget what you say, they’ll forget what you do, but they’ll never forget how you made them feel. That is the essence of hospitality. And so the second piece of advice is to get together with your team people all the way at the bottom of the hierarchy, very much on the frontline, as well as all the way at the top of the hierarchy, not quite as close to the frontline. And come up with five, just five recurring moments and with creativity and intention and a little bit of investment. Figure out how to make your reactions to those moments fricking bonkers. Awesome. And watch what happens.
RV (27:13):
I mean, that’s so good. You used this term earlier, and I wanna come back to this. You said we’d match that moment with crazy generosity, which is like what you just described, right? I mean, leaving a bottle of cognac on the table for every single person, that’s a lot of dough. You added up now and you know, certainly Tiffany’s champagne glasses. Now if they donate ’em that sure, that sure helps. But like how crazy is the crazy generosity and how do you, how do you justify it and not be scared that like, I’m gonna go bankrupt, just like doing all this stuff.
WG (28:01):
Well, so it’s a good question. I mean, listen, the chicken soup, the impact of that was just as significant as anything else. And that cost us maybe a buck 50. I
RV (28:12):
Know that’s brilliant. Mm-Hmm,
WG (28:14):
The bottle of cognac actually didn’t cost us that much because at that point in the meal, people had had so much wine, they weren’t having more than the sip or two of cognac.
RV (28:21):
Yeah, that’s what I was thinking. They’re not gonna sit and chuck a whole bottle. They’re probably drunk already by the time he gets there.
WG (28:27):
I mean, like with most of these things, and yes, the Tiffany glasses were free, but I’d say a couple things. I mean, the story that I’m most known for because it was such a turning point, is the hotdog story, which I, I’ll, I’ll tell in a moment ’cause I think it helps answer the third way to deal with this all. And that’s one of the most impactful gestures and it cost two bucks. We’ve done a bunch of gestures of unreasonable hospitality for people that have been totally free. It’s not the cost of the gesture that counts, but the thoughtfulness. And obviously you need to look at your average check whatever your average bill size is, and tailor the moments of systemized hospitality accordingly. We are a very expensive restaurant. We could afford to put down a bottle of cognac. You look at five guys what do you think of when I, when I say five guys? Well
RV (29:22):
The burger, but I’ve never been there, but just the
WG (29:25):
You’ve never been to a five guys. I’ve
RV (29:26):
Never been to a five guys, but should
WG (29:28):
I go? Okay. So anyone listening who’s ever been to a five guys? I would say half of you just probably thought peanuts because five guys. Okay. You think about the customer journey interrogation is the only fast food place I’ve ever imagined that has the wherewithal to recognize that the time wait spent waiting for your burger to be cooked is a touchpoint in the guest journey. They’re the only ones that have ever done anything for you during that wait. And what do they do? They put out a big, big box of peanuts and it’s still in the shells. And you just help yourself to some and eat them while you wait. That doesn’t cost them anything. At the end of the day, it’s so inexpensive that because they gave you something during a part of the experience where no one else has ever given you anything, it gives them an unfair competitive advantage.
WG (30:15):
I’ll give you another example. I went to speak at the Sundance Film Festival this year, and like many travelers over the past year, I’ve been consistently plagued with flight delays. I ended up getting to my hotel the night before my talk at like two in the morning after delay, after delay and got outta the car in front of the hotel ready to go through the whole normal rigmarole, which feels like it’s gotten even more insane recently. Driver’s license, credit card, phone number, email. And this guy named Oscar was in there overnight manager. He said, Mr. Guera, welcome. You must be exhausted. Here’s your room key. Go get some sleep. We’ll check you in in the morning. Found the hotel GM the next day, said, Oscar deserves a raise. That was amazing. He goes, yes, Oscar is amazing. That had nothing to do with him.
WG (31:08):
We had a meeting a couple months ago. There had been so many delays. We just decided to try to figure out how to systemize a bit of hospitality. And anytime anyone checks in after 1230, we would just give ’em their room key to tell ’em they could check in in the morning cost zero. It just required a bit of thoughtfulness. They did some simple pattern recognition and decided to try to figure out how to be more warm, hospitable, gracious, and welcoming to people who are checking in really late at night. That’s a recurring moment. They identified it and then they figured out how to treat it more responsibly and more hospitably.
RV (31:46):
Yeah, I think, I think so much of this, it’s like the, the enemy of hospitality is almost just like speed and rhythm and convenience of just being in the motions and not, not stopping long enough to go, how can I, what could I, what could I do for this person in this, in this moment to make them feel special? ’cause We’re so busy just like cranking the machine, running the process, getting the people, getting the people through. So I love that. I love it so much. So yeah. So tell us, tell us the hotdog story. ’cause I wanna make sure that we, I wanna make sure that we hear the hotdog story before we let you go. So
WG (32:29):
My big breakthrough in all of this, and again, we’re, we’re chronologically all outta whack here ’cause I discovered some of these exercises later. But I was in the dining room helping out the servers on a busier than normal lunch service. So they were getting just crushed. And I went out there and was just busing tables. I think sometimes the best thing a leader can do to support their team is the most menial task. And so I love busing tables and I was clearing ta appetizers from a table of four foodies people who were on vacation to New York just to eat at great restaurants. And while I was at their table, I ever heard them talking about the restaurants that’d eaten at all the fanciest restaurants in New York. They had a blast and this was their last meal. They were gonna the airport to head home right after their lunch.
WG (33:19):
But in the midst of their conversation, a woman at the table jumped in and said, yeah, but you know what? We never had, we never had a hot dog from one of those street carts. And man, it was like one of those light bulb moments in a cartoon where, you know, the character has had a good idea how we ding like light bulb. Yeah, exactly. So, ran back into the kitchen, dropped off the plates, ran outside, got a hot dog, ran back inside, somehow convinced my fancy chef to serve it. And we cut the hot dog up into four perfect pieces, added a little s swish of ketchup, a little s swish of mustard and a canal of sauerkraut and relished to each plate. And before their final savory course, which at the time was a honey lavender glazed muscovy duck that had been dry age for two weeks, utilizing a technique that had taken us years to perfect.
WG (34:03):
I brought out what we in New York called a dirty water dog
WG (34:47):
What it, what like, what happened so that that could happen? Well, the first, it just required me being present, not being so focused on what I needed to do next that I couldn’t fully focus on the thing and the people I was with. Then if I wasn’t present, I wouldn’t have heard the line about the hotdog. Two, listen, if you wanna be the best, you better take what you do seriously. And also we need to all stop taking ourselves so seriously. Way too often in customer service, we try to build these like beautifully articulated brands and then we let those brands stand in the way of us giving the people around us the things that will bring them the most joy when a hotdog in a four star restaurant is sacrilegious until you look at how it made them feel. And third, hospitality is about making people feel seen.
WG (35:38):
And if that’s the case, the best way to do it is not to treat them like a commodity, but a unique individual. I could have given them a fancy bottle of champagne. It would not have had the same impact as the hotdog because it would not have been specific to them. And unreasonable hospitality, one size fits one. Okay, the hotdog was the true north in those three things. We now had a roadmap. This is where it gets good. Now I turn to my team and gave them the permission and the resources to start doing this stuff themselves. We gave ’em a little budget, brought a person onto the team called the Dreamweaver, who is just there to help them bring their ideas to life and encouraged them to go out into the dining room and be present with their guests, not to take themselves too seriously and find one size fits, one gestures to deliver to their customers.
WG (36:30):
And with that, we were on fire. I mean, we did the craziest stuff. We sent people who were there with kids who were seeing snow for the first time to Central Park with sleds in the back of an Uber to go sledding. We turned our private dining room into a beach complete with 500 pounds of sand for a couple who was in our restaurant because their beach honeymoon got canceled. We bought people teddy bears for their kids ’cause they forgot to do it. We set up train sets on tables, all this stuff. All of which made the guests happy, all of which was amazing for our bottom line because yes, we did spend money on this stuff, although not all the gestures cost that much money. In fact, the one that started at all cost 50 cents a person. But every dollar we spent on Unreasonable hospitality had the point of John Bruin’s mint reference on that check and asymmetrical return.
WG (37:26):
Because the moment you give the people you’re serving stories like that, they want to go out and tell them over and over and over again. And suddenly you look up one day and you have the legions of ambassadors out there preaching your dharma. And it also made us happy. ’cause For the first time, the people in our team were no longer just serving plates of food that someone else had created. We were imbuing the experience with our own creativity. We felt agency, we felt empowerment. We are no longer salespeople. We were product designers. And I have yet to meet an individual who won’t give more of themselves to help something succeed than once they feel they have a genuine hand in determining what that thing is. So that is the third way to systemize this into your culture is one, tie space. Give your team, well, yeah, no, but give your team the permission and the resources to color outside of the lines. Empower them to do the things that are right. Allocate whatever budget you can afford. It doesn’t need to be that dramatic. In fact, sometimes smaller budgets lead
WG (38:34):
To, to more creativity. But you can systemize this stuff through touchpoints. You can systemize it through determining in advance how you’re gonna react to recurring moments. But the most powerful and profound and transformative way is to look at your team, choose to trust them that become more trustworthy, give them more responsibility, they’ll become more responsible, and make it zone defense. Get everyone in the game and let everyone have fun starting to play.
RV (39:07):
Man. So good. I know why your book sells a lot and it’s the, it’s the answer that I hate. It’s a really good book.
WG (40:12):
Hey, lemme say one more thing. And by the way, I feel the same way about you. The amount of time you spend, I mean, you’re, I think it’s super important to identify the importance of your work and the nobility of it. The capacity you and your team have to impact others. You guys are literally working your butts off to help other people’s dreams come true. And if I’m on your team and there’s ever a day that just feeling grumpy or I woke up on the wrong side of the bed and I’m having a hard time bringing my most fully realized self to the table, that is what I’m tapping back into. There are a few things more powerful you can do with your time than unreasonably supporting other people’s dreams coming true. And I think that’s pretty powerful. But the one thing I wanna say, we talked about budgets and just for people who are still not convinced listening to this, who are like, yeah, I can’t afford to do this.
WG (41:13):
I wanna see two things. Well, if you can’t afford to do it, you’re probably the person that actually needs to start doing it because this does drive revenue and business and will put you in a position where you can afford to do more of it. So if that’s your first reaction, just check yourself a little bit because that’s not the attitude that’s gonna get you to the top. A like, there’s that old adage, it takes money to make money, I hate it, but you know what, there’s some truth in it. But the other thing is that most people already spend money on this stuff. And so as a starting point, just take the money you were already spending and spend it better. If you send out some nonsense Christmas gift to everyone in your list, and it includes some dumb water bottle with your company’s logo on it, or a hat or a shirt, take the same budget and just be more thoughtful, be more connective, be more human.
WG (42:08):
Be more unreasonable. Instead of spending three hours picking the right water bottle, spend an entire week picking a different gift, using the same budget for every single person on that list. Or if you don’t wanna go that far, pick out three gifts and then just categorize the people you’re sending the gifts to into three groups and give the proper gift to each group. You don’t need to jump into the deep end on this stuff, but I guarantee you, if you’re a little creative, you can find a way to wade into the shallow end and then see for yourself whether or not it works.
RV (42:45):
Yeah, I love it. Well, the book is called Unreasonable Hospitality. Clearly that’s what it’s about. It’s a, it’s a game changer. We’re, we’re in on this and this is something that we see as a, as a way to take ourselves up to the next level. Where do you want people to go? Will, if they want to connect up more with you and stay, stay tied into what you’re doing?
WG (43:10):
I’m on Instagram at w Guera. Most of our stuff [email protected], including our newsletter that you can sign up for there which is called Premium based on that meeting that I hold so near and dear. And then yeah, hopefully I’ll, I’ll see you at, at Rory’s place one day in the not too distant future.
RV (43:32):
I love it, bro. We wish you all the best.
WG (43:34):
Thanks brother.
Ep 448: Retain Your Customers With the Beginning In Mind with Shana Lynn
Hey everybody, and welcome to the Influential Personal Brand podcast. This is AJ here, and I am so excited to introduce you guys to a new friend that I have. And, but before I introduce her, I want to remind everyone who this episode was curated for and why you should stick around. I think it’s always important for you to know as you’re listening what you’re getting into and who this was really designed for. So today we’re gonna be talking about community and retention. So in other words, this is for you. It doesn’t matter who you are. It does not matter if you have a coaching program or a speaking business or a membership, or you are a professional services provider that has, you know, a, a book of business. Doesn’t matter if you are a product company, you have clients, you have customers, and I bet you would like to keep ’em.
I bet you would like them to stick around and buy more and not leave and go to your competitors. So when you think about community, uh, yeah, there’s online communities, there’s offline communities, but we all have a community. It’s just are we treating them like a community? So today is one of those rare episodes that it does not matter what you do, what industry you’re in. I really believe this is for you, although we may talk about it more specifically in some areas over the course of the interview, but it’s for you. So stick around. Now, let’s introduce you to our awesome guest today. Uh, Shannon Lynn, I am so excited to have you on the show today. Uh, and just for those of you, uh, who don’t know, uh, you’ve got somebody who has over 10 years of retention and community expertise. She’s a podcast host, she is a speaker, she’s a consultant.
Uh, and I would also say she is someone who has built amazing communities with retention, not only for her and her own business, but for a lot of really well-known personal brands. And I’ll let her share those with you if she feels comfortable, um, or keep it secret. But this is someone who is not speaking from, oh, this is what you should do. No. It’s like, no, this is what we are doing and this is what is working. So, Shanna, welcome to the show. Hey, thanks for having me, friend. I’m excited to be here. I am so excited to be here and to help our audience get to know you. I would just love for them to say like, get a, get a quick high level overview of like what have the last 10 years looked like for you as you’ve been in this business, and then this industry of figuring out keys to building a community that stays in retaining and retention. Like, I would just love to know one, how did you get into it and then what, what has it looked like over the last 10 years to get you to, to where you are today?
That’s such a great question. You know, it started actually when I was in college. I was a part of this honors program and you had to do a senior thesis for undergrad. And I had this amazing professor and she handed me this advertising age magazine that was talking about social media and online marketing back in 2007. I was like, oh, this is really fascinating. And so I actually did my thesis and wrote a paper on online marketing in virtual reality communities back in the day. It was second life. There was no metaverse or anything like that. And that ended up in the paper, which got me on stages around the country to speak about it. And then I ended up with a job at Vanderbilt Medical Center in Nashville. And we took that medical center to be the very first medical center that has social media policy.
We launched online communities for their cancer center, life flight, all sorts of communities for them. And then it wasn’t long after that that I was supported by my wonderful chief marketing officer and um, you know, really just had peace from God himself to go out and adventure and start my own consultancy. And that was in 2012 when I became a full-time consultant and I started working with businesses, really traditional businesses to take what they were doing offline with their brand and bring it online and merge those two communities and create consistency. And so that led into managing a lot of online communities as we built them and then ultimately starting my own online community. And then this, uh, guy in the industry, a lot of people know Stu McLaren, who is a, um, membership expert, kind of tapped me on the shoulder and he said, Hey, we’d really like to have a strategic mind to come help us be our director of community and take our community to the next level.
So I worked with him for a few years and started teaching in-person workshops and got to train community teams and leaders for some of the best memberships in the space. And going back, you know, I look at all that and I’m like, wow, it’s this combination of, um, online marketing, which I believe a lot of what we do after the sale is actually just marketing as well and community building, but my own internal desire because as a kid I went through a lot of tragedy and I didn’t have a community. My mom didn’t have a community around us. We really didn’t have community when we needed it. And so I truly believe that when people have a place, a community where they are fully known, that they show up more fully in the world and it’s just, it’s something that we all have a core need for. And so it’s developed into really teaching business owners to create those spaces for people so that we get the best of people and people have that place where they can show up fully as themselves.
Oh, I love that so much, uh, so much. And I think that’s even grown in its, its need since, uh, the pandemic of people just naturally being isolated. And I don’t think people have really acclimated back to real relationships, real community. And I think that’s why one of it’s, it’s not the only reason, it’s one of the big reasons I really wanted to have you on the show. It’s let’s stop treating people like customers and start treating them like people and Exactly. Uh, like does and and realizing like you have community all around you. Do you see it? Right? Are you treating it like it?
Yeah, and I think the thing that I love about merging retention and community is that when we build really strong retention systems, because I know people hear community and they think really fluffy and they think Facebook group, which is not what we’re talking about by any means. But then I usually come in with systems and data and they’re like, whoa, wait a second. Like, I thought you were a community person, but having strong retention systems in your business, which are those systems that um, are everything after the sale, how do we help people actually get a result? How do we help people actually make progress and how do we keep them on that customer journey with us beyond the initial sale? All of those systems, they shouldn’t be automating things to alienate people. They should actually be creating space for human to human connection. And so when we’re all afraid of AI and everything that’s gonna happen, I actually embrace it. I think it’s wonderful because there’s lots of things that it can do to create space for us to do the unscalable activities that really make a difference.
Yeah. So let’s talk about those. Uh, I wanna talk about like what are the unscalable activities that sometimes don’t get the necessary time, love and attention that are needed that actually build community and retention? So what would you say are some of those things?
Yeah, so back in the day it was always handwritten notes. That’s what I wanted to do. I loved it. I wrote handwritten notes to everybody and I still do, you know, um, send a lot of them. If you’ve been in my world, you probably have received one of those
I can’t wait to support you in that. It can be that simple. But even when we can’t personalize everyone, we can still send a video message at a mass scale that feels more personal and more connected and opens up dialogue with those that are willing to enter into it. So that’s like a simple example of how to do that. Another example is, we’ve talked about your program before. So inside of your brand builders group, you have these mentors, these coaches that are supporting people at a much smaller scale. Now people love group programs and creating, creating them because they think, oh, I’m just gonna continue to scale it and my profit margins are just gonna continue to increase. But what they don’t realize is that as the program grows, it gets harder and harder to get people results. Mm-Hmm,
And so when you take, um, that scale and then you can leverage team members like coaches or mentors that can come in and create an intimate environment within a larger scale environment can create more customized really di guidance and direction, it’s not customizing the content, it’s just guiding them to the next best action step for them. That’s one way that you can really scale that kind of connection, scale, that kind of intimacy. And then one other way that I recommend a lot is with Zoom calls. Everybody’s familiar with doing Zoom calls now. And if you aren’t doing, you know, onboarding or welcome calls for new customers or um, new cohorts of people coming into your program, it’s something that I highly recommend. But Zoom actually has a feature called breakouts where we get to break them out into smaller groups so that they get to connect more with each other. ’cause it’s not always just about connecting more with us.
Hmm, that’s good. Especially when you have tons of people coming on of there is a limit to how much you can just do when it comes to one-on-one welcome and one-on-one onboarding without needing more human capital to constantly do that. Which again, it’s hard because like you need constantly, every new member actually does create, or every new customer creates the need for another, you know, employee. But doing them in, uh, breakouts, I have never thought about that. So like that’s really important because then it’s not so reliant on you and the company, but it’s now it’s building community within the community.
Yeah. And that’s what makes community really sticky, right? It’s the, there’s the connection to you, which is often what builds the trust that gets them in. Then there’s the connection to your team which expands. It’s you passing that torch of influence to your team members and then there’s the, the connection to each other. And that’s actually what keeps people around because as your community grows, their connection with you is gonna feel, it’s gonna feel not as powerful, but hold on. Okay, we can edit that out, that as your community grows, it’s gonna feel not as powerful, not as close that connection with you. And so it’s really important that they’re expanding their connection to others within the communities that they remain sticky.
I love that so much. And that should be a relief to everyone who is listening of going, it doesn’t have to be all you, right? It’s like you, you’re building a community that should build community and then it’s, it takes the pressure off, right? It’s like, ’cause I, I, I believe, at least for all of the businesses that I know, it’s like no one wants it to be just about them. It’s like they want it to go beyond just my face, my name. But the only way you can do that is if you have systems and processes and people, right? You have to have a community that can do that without you. Um, and I love that so much, that whole group onboarding concept. I literally just wrote it down, I was like, note for team note for BPG
Yeah, it, I think a lot of people immediately think about things like losing a customer cancellation process. Uhhuh, that’s where we wanna try and get ’em on a call and save ’em. And at that point you’ve already lost them. You know, if you’ve ever tried to do those cancellation calls, which you know, I’m not against offering them, but if you’ve ever tried to do them, your recovery rate probably isn’t that great
What that identifies for us are our drop off points. And for 90% of communities, it’s in that first month, that’s where you lose people. Yeah. So crazy, isn’t it? And it’s the easiest thing to really systemize is the onboarding. And so, um, we do recommend to have things like action plan calls, which are those group calls where you walk them through maybe three key steps that then they go into breakout groups to work on. We also recommend, you know, having those personalized video messages. There’s um, a community leader that I work with that has 14,000 members. She has scaled her team in order to do small groups of four, four members and one coach on an onboarding call. And they get, I think four offerings of those in their first 90 days of, of membership. So that those first 45 days are really important because people have bought into whatever you have sold them.
And then immediately they have buyer’s remorse. They’re distracted by whatever the latest Netflix series is. And so our job of selling actually doesn’t stop. It only increases because now we’re actually hitting their pocketbook. So all of the things that we had them buy into before, we need to be res solidifying for them. And now they also need to feel acclimated to this culture. Hopefully we have a strong culture in our community. So we have to really get into, there’s four pillars of community that I teach to build on. And the first one is cause. So we really have to solidify why are you here? And not just why is this community exists, but why is this important for you? And then building the culture, which are the beliefs, the behaviors and boundaries that help you fit within this community. And when people have those, they feel like I know how to show up and they’re more likely to engage.
So if we can really make sure that we’re focused on those first 45 days, that is the most important thing to focus on. And then our next goal is how do we identify people who are no longer engaging with us? How do we identify people who maybe bought our book and never took the next step to do our mini course or whatever that next step is? How do we identify people who maybe participated in the first couple calls but we haven’t seen ’em in 30 days? And then that is the other place where human connection can really be valuable because um, anything automated is just easy for them to ignore at that point.
I mean, my mind is reeling already with ideas of programs that I pay to be a part of our program of going, oh, I see how that was really helpful, or, I see how that was really annoying, even though I know what they’re trying to do. And I think one of those things that you said is if somebody is requesting a cancellation, trying to get them on a call, it’s like you’ve already lost them and the save ratio is gonna be relatively low. So I have two questions. One around onboarding and one around this cancellation process. So I’m gonna start with the cancellation first. ’cause I feel like people struggle with that and they’re like, Nope, I’m gonna make ’em good on calling me and I’m gonna turn ’em around. Um, so in the, I guess like instead of me asking, I’m just like, what would you see is successful when it comes to once someone to cancel, what is the best opportunity to go? How can we turn this around without forcing or mandating a call and any insights for anyone listening? Like, hey, well what do I do when someone says, Hey, I wanna cancel ’cause I don’t want ’em to cancel. What do I, yeah.
So a lot of this comes down to your cancellation process and um, for some of my clients, they use my recommended cancellation process, which can make it hard to track saves. And here’s why. Because we treat the cancellation page like a sales page and we have a cancel video. So when they request to cancel or when they are, you know, looking into canceling, they’re gonna be taken to a page that has a video on it. And that page is going to be really getting them to think introspectively about why they’re leaving. And we say a few things. One is like, hey, if you’ve made the progress that you’ve came to make and, and you’re leaving, you’re graduating, that’s amazing. We wanna celebrate you graduating and we can’t wait for you to share your story with us. Your testimony with us when you, you know, submit the form below, but hey, if you’re leaving because you have stopped participating, you’ve given up on yourself, I just wanna give you permission to come back.
Now you can click the button on this page and you can schedule a quick start call and we will get right back in it with you and find the best place for you to get started. You know, or if you’re leaving, ’cause this isn’t a fit for you, maybe you’re not interested in doing X, Y, Z anymore. So we kind of walk through like the different reasons that we know people typically leave, starting with the celebratory one, right? And then the, oh, I’ve given up on myself one, and then the, no, this just really isn’t a fit for me anymore. So we resell them essentially on the value by relating to where they might be in the journey. And then when they go to cancel now legally, because of all the way all the states and things like that are done, I’m not a lawyer.
This is not legal advice. However, I’ve done a lot of research on this
And so when they click that form that all they have to do is enter their email address, but we ask them some other questions as well to get some insight. And we also offer them a call, Hey, if you would like to share more about your experience or if you’d just like to get some additional support to see if maybe this could be a fit for you, then you can schedule a call with a team member. Very few people actually schedule them. And those that get on those calls are usually people who are they, they’re leaving because of self-doubt and they kind of come on the call with that kind of mindset and you are able to recover them. Yeah,
I think that’s really good because I think for anyone who would request a call, they’re going, man, it’s not that I really wanna cancel, it’s, I’m not using it. I feel like I’m not getting my money’s worth. I’m not sure what to do. I’m not confident that I can do.
Ep 446: Wealth Building Strategies for Entrepreneurs with Rob Luna
RV (00:02):
One of the things that we love to do from time to time is grab clients from our community who have an expertise relative and relevant for our entire community. And that’s what I’m doing today with Rob Luna. So he is a B B G member. We’re, we’re very proud of him. He has his first book that just came out that we’ve been working with him on, it’s called Close Your Wealth Gap. The book is out now, it’s from Wiley, but Rob has two different MBAs, one from UTS D L a, and one from Singapore, which I love Singapore. He also has an advanced management program degree from the Wharton School, so the Wharton Advanced Management Program. And he sold his wealth management practice a few years ago. So he worked with lots of celebrities, sports stars and sold that and now runs the Rob Luna Wealth Academy. He’s the c e o of Real Talk Holdings. And he’s been on national tv, I think like every week for over a decade. So he’s usually on Fox. If you’ve ever seen making money with Charles Payne or Cavuto Coast to Coast or mornings with Maria, he is often there. And anyways, I said, Rob, we gotta have you on the show to talk about some tax strategies and some financial stuff for personal brands. So buddy, welcome to the podcast. Hey,
RL (01:24):
Thanks for having me, Rory. I appreciate it.
RV (01:26):
So I would love to start with tax strategy because we just helped our ninth B b G client grow their revenue more than a million dollars a year since becoming a client. Wow. That’s happened nine, nine times. And it all sounds great. And then what happens is they go, oh, whoa, like They, they get this rude awakening of like, taxes are a real thing. Yeah.
RV (01:54):
And they’ve never been pro, you know, like formally trained on it and have no idea. And then it’s like these huge, these these huge bills. And so, and a lot of, like, the cool thing about personal brands is you can draw pretty high income. It’s very scalable stuff. You’re speaking fees, consulting, you know, courses, memberships, you can, you can have these really big years, but you don’t have many expenses if you don’t have a lot of people and stuff. So I know that you’ve done a lot of tax planning for folks. What are some of the things that you think that personal brands specifically that don’t have huge staffs but might have large incomes, what are some of the things that they sh that we should be thinking about that maybe we’re not thinking about?
RL (02:34):
Yeah, well, I mean, I think the first thing, Rory, that you talked about that you need to be thinking about is tax planning and making sure that you’re understanding all that money is coming in, that tax consequence is gonna build up really quick. And working primarily with professional athletes over my career. A lot of them come to me a little bit too late, and the realization that there’s hundreds of thousands of dollars and sometimes millions of dollars in taxes that are due is really quite alarming. So I think the first thing is trying to sit down with somebody and doing projections at the beginning of the year. Hey, what do I think’s gonna come in? What do the quarterly projections look like? And make sure that you have an account that you’re setting that money aside so that it’s not a surprise at the end of the day.
RL (03:15):
The great thing about today where everyone’s complaining about interest rates going up, so the economy’s slowing down. The good thing about that though is that account you could put that money into and money market accounts earning like five, five and a half percent right now. So it’s not a horrible thing. So number one thing I would say is just make sure that you have your arms around what does revenue look like? What do your general expenses look like? And when you take revenue minus expenses, that’s usually your tax liability. Second thing, what I would say though is what people should start looking at is how do I put together a retirement plan?
RV (03:51):
Okay, so hold on, hold on the retirement thing, because I want to go there, I want to go there, but I wanna come back. I wanna come back to the, the money they’re, they’re setting aside. It’s interesting you mentioned the money market accounts. That’s what, that’s what we did, right? Yeah. So first thing is like all the cash in the money market accounts, that’s a really positive side of the, of the, of the interest rates going up. If you’re loaning money, it’s a good time. Like it’s a good time to be, you know, exactly.
RL (04:39):
Yeah, like, like it’s a progressive tax code. So the lower first part of your earnings is gonna be taxed at a lower rate. The last part of that’s gonna be at a higher rate. And that’s why I said what you should try to do is get an estimate of what do you think revenue’s gonna be, review that quarterly to get an idea of what is gonna be left. And so if it’s a hundred grand, obviously that’s gonna be a small liability. If it’s a million or $2 million, it’s gonna be larger. So that’s kind of the more factual thing. If I needed to give a number, I usually tell people back of the napkin, put about 25% away, most high net worth people are gonna kind of fall into that effective rate of what you’re actually paying of about 25%. You’re usually pretty safe there.
RV (05:18):
Mm-Hmm.
RL (05:32):
It’s, it’s crazy. You know, I, I did pre-ex exit planning for clients for 20 years, but because I had an unsolicited offer, I didn’t do it for myself. I wound up selling my business in California then after the fact move to Tennessee. So that’s another major thing. If you’re ever gonna sell that business or bring in o other owners into the business, be in a no state income tax state.
RV (05:53):
Yeah. Are you are you familiar with, I think it’s, it’s Act 22, the Puerto Rico? Like we, we
RL (05:59):
Always
RV (06:00):
We always know when one of our friends is about to sell their business in like four years ’cause they moved to Puerto Rico. And the are you familiar with it? Do you wanna explain to everybody what it is? Yeah, I,
RL (06:11):
I don’t know the exact of it, but essentially there’s almost zero tax if you move to Puerto Rico. It’s something ridiculous. Like 3%. Yeah.
RV (06:19):
Three or 4%.
RL (06:19):
I never had any clients or I personally wasn’t interested in spending that long in Puerto Rico, so I haven’t dove into it, but it is, if you’re somebody who wants to do that, extremely attractive alterna alternative.
RV (06:28):
Yeah. It’s a, it’s a real thing. Like we actually looked at it like, like we, we had young kids and we’re like, gosh, if we were gonna do this now, it’d be the time to go. But you have to live there for a few years and establish Nexus and like, you can’t fake it, but it’s, if you move there, I think it’s like 4% flat tax no matter what you make. And so people will do that then sell the company, pay the taxes, and then, you know, move back or whatever, which you’re not really supposed to do. That’s not the nature of it. But so, okay, so revenue minus expenses 25%. So I like that. Just a rough number. Yeah.
RL (07:01):
You, you
RV (07:01):
Wanna have something you don’t wanna get caught with, with nothing. So then I think retirement planning is a big bucket for entrepreneurs. And I think, you know, most entrepreneurs, especially if you came from the corporate world, you know, you kinda like have money set aside into a 4 0 1 K or something. You don’t really understand how it works and then you start your own business and they’re not really aware of what are the things they can set up for themselves. And a lot of those I think are under retirement planning, like the really aggressive tax saving strategy. So, so yeah. Dive into that.
RL (07:38):
Yeah, so look, I mean, I think you could still do a 4 0 1 k and I know you have a lot of clients who are, you know, have their individual brand, they might have 10 99 people that they’re using. So you could actually even set up a solo 4 0 1 K by yourself. You could do a profit sharing component to that. And so look, you know, a lot of people are surprised. They’re thinking, oh, there’s like a $22,000 limit on the 4 0 1 k I wanna put away more. Well, that’s where the profit sharing comes in. And so if you actually sit down with an administrator based off of how much revenue you’re putting in, you could add a lot more money to that. And so that’s something like you wanna, again, plan out at the beginning of the year, what does my year look like? Because if you start doing profit sharing, there’s some administrative costs.
RL (08:20):
If you think you’re gonna only be putting 15, 20 grand a so of 4 0 1 k, you can open up at Schwab, you can open up just about anywhere for virtually nothing. The great thing about having control of your own 4 0 1 k is you can invest in things like index funds that are super cheap. You don’t have to have this specific plan list that your group give, that your company gives to you. So you can invest just in about anything you want. And you’re gonna get a dollar for dollar deduction on anything that you put into that every year.
RV (08:50):
Yeah. We, we talked we don’t have a lot of financial people on, but we, we had someone that talked about like self-directed IRAs and things, and that was one of the cool, the cool benefits was like, you have a lot more control over what you’re investing in. Right. And then, and then this profit sharing plan that you’re talking about, like we, we had a defined benefits plan, like a cash balance plan. Is that an example of one of those? Is that what you’re talking about? Yeah,
RL (09:15):
You absolutely could have a defined benefit plan. The, the challenge with it is, you know, and the benefit of being a solopreneur, or maybe you have one or two key employees is you can’t discriminate with those. So when you’re just the only person, you could put a ton of money into them, but when you start building 5, 6, 7, 8, 10 employees, you have to incrementally share the wealth with them and it gets not as attractive. Right. That’s when people start to look at things like insurance policies and things like that for savings.
RV (09:40):
Mm-Hmm.
RL (09:55):
Or or a, for a Roth 4 0 1 K, there’s no income limits. So that’s one of the nice things where traditional, and you could put I think it’s 22,000 traditional I r A, you can only put 6,500 and you have to be under 228,000 as a couple where there’s no limits on a Roth 4 0 1 K. So that’s something, again, sit down, talk with your planner, whoever you work with, you could actually do a Roth 4 0 1 K, which is kind of nice if you don’t need that deduction because anything that grows in there, you put 22 K that grows to 300, 400 K in 20 years or more, that’s gonna be tax free, not just tax deferred.
RV (10:29):
Yeah. And that’s interesting. So if you’re doing, there’s limits to the Roth I r a, but you’re saying there’s not income limits to a Roth 4 0 1 K?
RL (10:37):
Exactly, exactly. That’s something you could do as an individual also,
RV (10:40):
But you gotta pay the taxes now, but then it grows forever. And that’s like,
RL (10:44):
Yeah, I, I mean think about it this way, okay, it’s after tax dollars, you’ve already paid taxes on this, but 25 K grows to, you know, 400,000, the taxes coming out of that would typically be a hundred grand. So if you think about $25,000 deduction, what do you get for that? You know, something about like five grand, six grand, so you’re foregoing a five grand deduction for a hundred thousand dollars deduction later on. You know, that’s the challenge with financial planning in general. It’s just like eating well,
RV (11:23):
Mm-Hmm.
RL (11:52):
Right.
RV (11:54):
Money. And then at some point it’s the conversation seems to switch to over to investing.
RL (11:59):
Yep.
RV (11:59):
To go, okay, I have my business. And this happens a lot with personal brands like speakers are a good example of this. We have a lot of speakers who they can make a really high income, you know, they’re knocking down 15, 20 grand of speech. They’re getting that, you know, 30, 50, a hundred times a year or 30 grand of speech, 30 times. I mean, they’re making seven figures in speeches, but well, covid happens, you know, they’re in trouble. It all goes straight to zero and you go, you’re probably can’t sell a speaking business. It’s not, it’s really a job. It’s, it’s a very, it’s a great job and a high paying job, but it’s not a business you could sell. And so we’ve talked to folks to say, well, if you have a high income source that really isn’t a business that you can sell, then what you wanna do is just draw the income off of that and put it into something that is a sellable asset. Which is really, I think where in investing kind of comes into the conversation.
RL (12:57):
Yeah. It’s, it’s, it’s super important. And if we have time at the end, I’ll give you three more tax tips we can come back to that are really quick that no one talks about. But yeah, that’s the thing, Rory, I think what you just said is what people fail to realize. When you build a business, an entrepreneur, you’re looking to do one of two things, either number one, build a business that’s an asset that you can later on liquidate and reap the rewards of that asset that you build. As you mentioned though, even brands like Tony Robbins take, I mean, at the end of the day, will it be worth something because he is been able to scale that? Absolutely. Will it be the value that you can get ha if has his name not being attached to it? Absolutely not. And so for smaller influencers and things that people are still making a million, two, $3 million a year, they need to create their own backup contingency plan and exit strategy from day one.
RL (13:47):
So if they’re making a million bucks, they can’t be living off a million bucks because a lot of, you know, look, there’s a lot of influencers, especially today, people that are hot right now today that are very similar. I equated to the world I worked in to athletes. Yeah. You know, they’re making this very big money for a short period of time. They make the mistake to think that it’ll go on in perpetuity and they’re not taking some of that off the table every year, putting it into a portfolio that eventually grows to a size where the distributions are large enough to support their lifestyle. I call that work optional. That’s what they need to start thinking about from day one is how do I invest in assets that aren’t necessarily gonna knock the cover off the ball, but are gonna be able to pay me a consistent, steady rate of income that I can live off of in a short period of time?
RV (14:33):
Yeah. That, that is exa it is really a good parallel. It’s like, it’s the more realistic version of a, of an athlete is exactly,
RL (14:39):
You
RV (14:40):
Know, personal brands and you get these huge brand deals are speaking. So so what is that? I mean, is it basically real estate and stock market? I mean, is that pretty much what it comes down to? Are there other investments that you’re seeing like, hey, these are things that people can, should do?
RL (14:59):
Yeah, so it is, it’s a, it’s a great thing. Look, if you’re 5, 10, 15 years away, obviously you wanna have some things in growth types of assets. And so when I talk about just stocks are simple for people to understand, Amazon, it’s a great long-term stock, it’s done really well, but the only way you can make money on Amazon is to buy low and sell high. It’s not paying a dividend or any income stream. And so what I would say is, because especially for some of your audience that’s out there, they have enough cash flow to support their lifestyle now. And so what I would say is focus on those assets that are gonna pay a good income. The great thing today, one of the safest out assets out there, fixed income bonds, you could buy good high quality long duration bonds for 15, 20 years and lock in a six, six and a half, 7% return.
RL (15:47):
A lot of people say, well that’s not great. Tell you rule of thumb, most financial advisors will tell you the magic number you could pull off of your portfolio is about four to 5%. So if you can lock in six to 7%, those same rates, Rory two years ago, were one in 2%. So we’re talking about opportunity. Today’s the day you just said it, you wanna be a lender, not a borrower. So I would be b I would be a buyer of credit, meaning you’re lending out versus borrowing today. Buy some of those good high quality bonds, treasury bonds, good high quality corporate bonds. That’s one way to do it. That’s one asset. And then you also said stocks, you know, I talk about high quality dividend paying stocks. The nice thing about stocks is they pay dividend stocks, they pay you an income, but if you buy the right ones, I talk a lot about this in my Wealth academy, like Proctor and Gamble for example.
RL (16:38):
They’ve given you about a, it’s about a 4% dividend now. They give you that dividend every year, plus you get the growth of the stock. And for Proctor and Gamble, even though stock prices go up and down, their dividend for 65 years has increased year after year after year. So you’ve gotten a raise every single year by owning that. So by fixed income, by dividend paying stocks, I like real estate also, but you wanna make sure it’s high quality, not very leveraged real estate you know, a lot of people are buying very highly leveraged real estate and you have to refinance those in a market like today doesn’t work out. So if you could buy things without leverage that are cashflow. Makes sense. What I really like that a lot of financial advisors don’t talk about are boring businesses that you can buy that could be run by other people.
RL (17:26):
I have a couple clients that do do that to supplement their income landscaping businesses, pest control businesses. If you can buy a business today with a good team in place that a lot of entrepreneurs don’t retire and play golf, but you can run from the sidelines, that’ll be your highest R o i sometimes 18 to 22% after paying that staff to run. And it keeps you mentally engaged. So start thinking about what are those assets I can build up diversification’s the key. I say buy all of ’em, real estate stocks, fixed income, private businesses, things that are gonna have a steady, predictable stream of income when you stop earning the kind of money, you know, that you might be earning today.
RV (18:03):
Yeah, the I love that I’m buying boring businesses is is is a great, you know, thing and there’s a lot of ’em can be super consistent and just, you know, you’re not gonna, you’re not gonna make yacht money probably. But you, you, I I, I like the way that you’re talking about, the part that jumps out at me of everything you said that I’m surprised I’ve never really heard is you said the magic number you can pull off your portfolio is 4%. So that, you know, I want to, I want to come back to that and kind of like where you said the work optional idea. Yeah.
RV (18:35):
You know, the way that I’ve always thought about it was like if you could have, you know, figure out what you wanna live off of every year and then figure out how much you need to have invested and then what percentage you’re drawing off. So if you had, if, if you had, you know, $10 million invested, you’re saying that 4% is the number that you would go, that’s what you could pull off to where the 10 million never disappears. It’s just throwing off 4% in perpetuity. That’s how you think about it.
RL (19:04):
Yeah, that’s exactly it. I mean it’s kind in a lot of financial journals, it, the number used to be 5% and then when interest rates went lower, everyone said no, that’s more to four. I still think there’s a lot of things you could do to where five, especially today, like I said, you can get t-bills at five and a half. I think five’s the realistic number, but that’s the number that, it’s a reality check to a lot of people. For example, you sell a business for 4 million or 5 million bucks. Okay, the people that sell a business for 5 million, or let’s use a an easy number for everyone, 10 million, the people that sell a business for 10 million bucks. And that could be a business that was doing 2 million net profits a year. You sell it five times earnings, that’s 10 million bucks that you bring in. Well, I just said you’re doing 2 million in profits a year.
RL (19:44):
So this is a business owner that was used to making 2 million. They now sell the business for 10 million. Let’s say they pay 20% in taxes because that’s a long-term capital gain. They bring in 8 million. Rob, I got 8 million bucks. A lot of them never had 8 million bucks in their hand because they were paying taxes. All these things, what does this mean? Well, if we use 5% times 8 million, that’s 400,000. They’re like, wait, like I have a million dollar lifestyle, 400,000 isn’t gonna cut it from me. I just sold this business that was cash flowing, $2 million and now you’re telling me all I can bring in is 400,000. That’s why you need to do this planning before, like I always tell people as entrepreneurs and startups have the exit in mind from day one, you want to be working right to left, understand where you’re trying to go so that it’s not a surprise and you can plan for that. But yeah, 5% on every million is only 50 grand pre-tax. So you gotta figure whatever you save, whatever you sell your business at, you got about 5% number that, because remember, you want to keep up with inflation as we’ve seen over the last two to three years. You gotta be able to raise that about three to 3.5% every year. So that’s all equated into that 5% number.
RV (20:53):
So then what would you do to prepare there? So if you’re saying like, okay, if you have 8 billion bucks invested, 5% off, that’s 400,000. You would either, you would either keep working, right? So then you’d, you’d either have a, you’d either have a, a job there or else you would, is there something you would do on the front end to sort of to prepare for that? Yeah.
RL (21:15):
Yeah. So that’s why someone comes to me, you the young entrepreneur, we, and it’s like a 15, 20 year strategy. Well we’re, we’re putting into that 4 0 1 k that defined benefit plan from day one. So we’re building our portfolio with some of the income that’s coming in. And so traditional financial planning is that go to work save, and then you have this lump sum, but where you’re an entrepreneur solopreneur, you’re doing some of that. But the big point is when we look at 12, 15 years, you don’t have to save quite as much because you’re gonna get this lump sum injection into the portfolio that we’re gonna account for. So you do some saving along the way, but the number that really hits you there is that exit. But if you’re not saving for 15, 20 years, ah, only planning on that exit to come, that doesn’t work.
RL (21:59):
But there’s a combination where you’re like, a lot of times I tell people in, you don’t have to sell the business. Like I, I sold to a publicly traded company. You can do internal succession to where you have a great business, like I said, that’s making 2 million in that example, sell off to some junior partners. You can get outside funding for that, take some of that money off the table, but stay involved five, 10 hours a week and make the other million dollars. So it’s not an all or none strategy, it’s just understanding what are the options, what do they look like, and having extreme clarity and focus on what that is. So there’s no surprises at the end of the day.
RV (22:32):
Yeah. When you say, you know, sell off to junior partners and you can take outside money from that, you’re saying that basically they can take a bank loan to pay you out? Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. Um-Huh So yeah,
RL (22:44):
There’s a lot of, a lot of ways to exit, which you should be thinking about from the beginning of your business. And so sometimes it’s internal succession, sometimes it’s just strategic. You’re just selling to a business. If you’re a landscaping business, you’re selling to another landscaping business, you might creating this huge company where you’re gonna go public, whatever it is, just understand that because the way you prepare your balance sheet, the way you put your staff, your technology in place, it’s all gonna be different. I have entrepreneurs where that know from day one exactly the one, two, or three technology companies that they want to sell with. So what they try to do is emulate a model that’s very similar to theirs in a different category. So when they consume that company, it’s the same c r m, it’s the same point of sale system, it’s very easy. And so they get a higher multiple because of that.
RV (23:29):
Mm-Hmm.
RL (23:59):
Yeah, that I, and that’s the thing I talk a little bit about in my book. So annuities, insurance, these are one of these like really hot topic issues and, and I’ll, I’ll tell you why. I think they’re one of the most oversold
RL (24:46):
It makes sense because what do annuity companies do? What do banks do? They give you, just like we talked about, money market, a certain rate of return. They have to then take that money and get a higher rate of return. That’s just profit pro being a profitable business. So if a new, if interest and they wanna invest in safe things like bonds. So if insurance companies three years ago were giving you something, they had to get more, well the 10 year bond was like 1%. Today it’s almost six. So the benefits that are available with the annuities today are much more attractive. So annuity is an insurance contract where you hand the insurance company a hundred thousand, a million dollars and they give you a guarantee of a growth, a guarantee of a immediate rate of return for the rest of your life. That guarantee is always gonna be higher and more attractive when interest rates are higher.
RL (25:36):
So I would say I’ve been telling people to steer clear of ’em for over a decade. Now, today though, I’m not these one of these guys where it’s, it’s always this or it’s always that. Today though, there are some that are a lot more attractive. So it makes sense if you’re someone who wants some guarantees, you don’t want a lot of fluctuation, you don’t have a pension fund and you wanna replace that with something, a high quality insurance company might be able to provide you something that’s attractive versus taking in the risk of doing it yourself.
RV (26:03):
Yeah. Yeah. That’s, it’s, it’s, it’s, it is interesting. So on that note in terms of good times, bad times to do things, I want to hear something about, I wanna hear about debt. Yeah. You know, is there, there’s this, you know, when you’re building a personal brand, it’s like, it’s, it can be expensive. It’s like, I gotta build websites, I need graphics design, I need, you know, video editors, I need copywriters, you know, I need strategists, right? They’re hiring brand builders group that costs something. What’s your, that’s
RL (26:31):
Always a great investment, Rory brand builders group. So,
RV (26:34):
Hey, come on, come on. What, what is your you know, what, is there there good debt? Is there bad debt? Is it no debt? Is it sometimes debt? This kind of debt, that kind of debt? Like, just curious, I’m just curious to your debt philosophy.
RL (26:50):
Yeah, my debt philosophy is there’s good debt and there’s bad debt. I talk a little bit about those in my book. I think number one, I took debt, student loan debt, investing in myself with a plan of how am I gonna monetize that. My M B A, for example, I left within three months. I had one client that paid double
RL (27:34):
And if that’s just you and you’re spending money randomly, you’re never gonna get that back. So I believe investing in yourself, your brand, your business, and this isn’t traditional financial advice. I would, especially people under 40. I would say immediately start now, try building your business. Defer the 4 0 1 k, defer the real estate investments, the Airbnbs and everything everyone’s trying to sell you and invest in trying to make and build a business for yourself. That’ll be the best asset you do. So I would take debt there hands down. However, I wouldn’t take any credit card debt, you know, 25, 20 6% and that keeps going up. I always tell people when they’re ready to invest, if you first of all invest in yourself, have an emergency fund in case things go bad, but then start investing in credit card debt because we talk about eight, 10% rate of returns when you pay off 10,000 in credit card debt, that’s 25% rate of return that you’re giving yourself immediately.
RL (28:30):
So credit card debt is something that I wouldn’t have. Real estate debt. Makes sense. If it makes sense today at these rates on investment properties, it’s very tough. You’re paying eight, 9% on properties that are cash flowing, four or 5%. Not something that I would do. The idea is just understanding how interest rates work. ’cause A lot of, you know, the one thing I’m always talking to my academy members about a one thing in finance, if you can just focus on the correlation of interest rates, how they tie to investments, how they could tie to the economy. You’re gonna understand why I was telling people a year and a half ago, things are gonna get tough. Get your balance sheet right. Pay down debt. If you got lines of credit, pull that out right now, get everything fixed. Make sure you’re not taking floating rate mortgages because things are gonna slow down.
RL (29:16):
The Federal Reserve engineers recessions, booms by, you know, raising interest rates, lowering interest rates, and when you could see that well ahead of time because there’s a lag effect. They started raising rates year and a half, two years ago. We’re just now kind of seeing things slow down. Same thing. People are like, why is the stock market going up? Well, because they’re looking out a year and a half, two years when you feel the worst is the time to buy stocks when you feel the best is the time to sell stocks. But it’s not just stocks, it’s small businesses, it’s real estate in most assets.
RV (29:48):
Uhhuh. Interesting. That is fascinating stuff. So I want to ask you more about that, but before we do I just want, I just want to tell everyone so close, your wealth gap is out now, Rob Luna. You can get the book wherever, wherever books are sold, of course we’ll link up to Rob and his socials and website on, on the show notes and all that sort of stuff. The interest rate correlation thing is something I don’t, I don’t think I have fully understand. Yeah,
RL (30:17):
Right.
RV (30:17):
So can you just briefly walk us through super quick, like what the Yeah, because the levers, how the levers move.
RL (30:25):
Yeah, I’ll make it super simple, right? So let’s just think about student loans or credit cards. Let’s say a credit card for example. Well, so the Federal Reserve, you know, Jerome Powell is the chairman. This group basically dictates how high interest rates are so they can raise those or lower those. That’s the only tool they have. They have a dual mandate is full employment and inflation. So just think about that. The government, the Federal Reserve is basically trying to make sure that people are employed and that inflation doesn’t get out of control for obvious reasons, but they only have one tool and that is monetary policy, lowering and raising interest rates. And so when things get too hot, remember Covid, everybody was locked up, they couldn’t spend on anything. The supply chain was closed. Savings rates skyrocketed the highest we saw in 20 years, you couldn’t spend money on anything.
RL (31:19):
We had p p P loans go directly to consumers. So when the economy opened back up, limited supply, a lot of cash, that’s what’s created this inflation. And so what the Federal Reserve is saying, we can’t have inflation, that’ll kill the dollar, that’ll kill the economy. So let us raise interest rates is what they’ve been doing. They’re trying to engineer, not trying to engineer a recession, but nine out of 10 times when they do that, the history shows we go into recession eventually when they raise rates. Now think about that. When rates rise, what happens? It’s harder to buy homes because you had 3% 30 year mortgages before that same home. Now at seven and a half, 8% is 50 to 60% higher payment than you had before your credit card debt. We have a trillion dollars now in credit card debt in the us the highest ever.
RL (32:10):
Wow. So a lot of people have credit card debt. We’re a consumer driven economy, meaning people have to go out there and buy stuff for us to be successful, they have to buy your products, my products, services. And so what happens is people don’t have a lot of expendable income. If you had a thousand dollars in a spendable income and the price to pay, just the minimum interest on your credit card was $400 two years ago, maybe $400 on your student loan, you had 200 bucks left. Well now what’s happening is those interest payments for everybody who has credit card debt, student loan debt revolving mortgages, home equity lines of credit has gone higher. So the amount of cash they have to actually spend on things is lower. So their credit card payments have doubled without any increase in balances and everything else. So what they’ve done, the fed has taken that liquidity out of the system.
RL (32:59):
People can’t go out to eat, they can’t do all these things. The reverse happens when they lower interest rates. Now your balance is even staying the same. The payment you have to make is a lot less. You can now buy a lot more home. And so what they’re then doing is incentivizing people because there’s extra flow that they have. It’s just a perf you know, basically a cash flow analysis when rates go higher. Companies and people, same thing with companies. Most companies have floating rate debt. So their debt payments as a company were six, 7%. Now they’re 12, 13%. What does that mean? They can’t hire more people because they have an extra $200,000 in debt service. So when rates go up, the economy slows down. When rates go down, the economy speeds up. The stock market is a leading indicator, which means it’ll usually move a year in advance. So the stock market started going down the year before last. Now it’s basically starting to try to move back up to say, Hey, in about a year from now, we think things will be okay.
RV (33:53):
So rates go higher. That means cash that people have goes down. So their spending goes down. Yep. Rates go lower. They have more cash on hand, so they buy more stuff. So spending goes up.
RL (34:04):
Exactly.
RV (34:05):
Simple as that. Well there’s a lot here as you could tell, and we are out of time for Rob. We have gotten as much free financial advice as we could possibly fit into one podcast episode. Brother, thank you for being here. We’re, we’re so excited about you and the book Close Your Wealth Gap. Everyone check it out. And Rob, we wish you the best brother. Thanks
RL (34:26):
Man. I appreciate it, Rory.
Ep 444: What You Should Know About Working with Speaker Bureaus with Shawn Hanks
AJV (00:00):
Hey everybody, and welcome to the influential personal brand, AJ Vaden here. Have a long time friend who is on the show today, Shawn Hanks. I’m going to formally introduce him in just a sec, but I want you to know who this episode is for and why you should stick around and listen to it. Number one, this is for anyone who is on the path to desiring to become a highly paid professional speaker. That’s who this episode is really built for. If you want to speak occasionally, probably not the episode for you. This is built for the person who goes, I have a message to share, and I have a passion for sharing it on stages all over the world. I want this to be the primary part of my business, and I wanna be a highly paid professional speaker.
AJV (00:53):
If that’s you, this is an episode you cannot absolutely do not want to miss. Now, what are we gonna talk about? We’re gonna talk about what it takes to become a highly paid professional speaker, and most importantly, how do you get on all those stages that you so desire to be on? ’cause There’s lots of different ways to do it. And working with a bureau is one of those, which we’re gonna talk a lot about today. It’s not the only one, but it is one that definitely helps pave the path. But in order to do that, there’s some things you gotta do before you get on those stages. So, without further ado, let me introduce you to the CEO of Premier Speakers Bureau. Shawn has been in the Speakers Bureau world for almost 20 years, if not over 20 years. He was also the most recent past president of the International Association of Speakers Bureaus, which is just a real fancy word of saying he knows a lot about this industry.
SH (02:02):
Dallas Cowboys. Oh, Dallas, Tyler and I went to a game last week. We watched them beat the Rams. Hey, it’s, it’s fun. Cowboys are great until they’re not, and it just breaks my heart every year.
AJV (02:13):
Oh, I love that
SH (02:36):
That’s fun.
AJV (02:37):
We don’t have a deep passion for it. But my four year old got himself a pair of football gloves, like, you know, like I love
SH (02:47):
It.
AJV (02:48):
But
SH (02:48):
Yeah, probably receiver G gloves. Yeah,
AJV (02:50):
Receiver G gloves. There you go. That’s what they called. I don’t even know. But he sleeps in them.
SH (02:55):
Love it.
AJV (02:56):
He wears them to basketball practice. He wears them to school. He wears them everywhere his goes. I’m like, you’re gonna have the softest, most moisturized hand
SH (03:20):
Yeah, they’re two great teams. Eki.
AJV (03:29):
So funny. Alright, well now we gotta talk business. We gotta talk business. So Shawn, help everyone get to know just a little bit about you and premier speakers. Like for those who are listening, who are going what, what’s a bureau? What do those people do? What is a bureau? What is Premier? And how did you get into this industry and how have you stayed in it for so long? Yeah.
SH (03:53):
Well, thank you aj. It’s great. Always fun to see you and your energy comes through the screen. I love that. Bureau is, if you don’t know what a speaker’s bureau is, join the crowd. I didn’t know what a speaker’s bureau was in October of 2000, 23 years ago. Let’s not do the math. I didn’t know what a speaker’s bureau was. That’s an old dusty term. That essentially means we do speaker representation, right? We are the organizations that especially larger conferences, corporate groups come to a speakers bureau to say, Hey, I need to have four slots and these are the types of content I want to fill. This is what I do want. This is what I don’t want. Premier in particular, and you mentioned IASB, which is a great organization, international Association of Speakers Bureaus. I am plugged into that group.
SH (04:39):
So I, I probably know more about speakers bureaus than I should except for doing market competitor research. But we, it’s a small industry. There’s about 120 speakers bureaus. Most of those are very small. You know, one, two person shops that really started doing event management and then event production and then slid into the speakers bureau world. ’cause They really enjoyed being the liaison with the speakers. But, and they’re probably four to five that are significant in size and, you know, would, would own a significant part of the industry. PSB in particular, we, last year we worked with about 2000 events. We have nine agents on our team. They are siloed. So we have one agent who only handles healthcare, right? So when a healthcare client calls or a hospital he can speak with, you know, he, he understands their pain points, he understands their jargon.
SH (05:34):
So we, we have been intentional at Premier. We’ll celebrate 30 years next year. Congrat of building congrat. Thank you. Thank you. Building what we call sectors. So we have one agent that only handles education. We do a lot of work in the K through 12 arena. And if you call from a school district or any kind of education group, you’re always end up talking to Carl because he understands what your pain points are. He understands that in particular, you always pay net 30. Most groups don’t do that. All those little intricacies that, that you can really glean from working with the same types of clients over and over again. Expertise, ultimately. But our job most people assume our job is to just book speakers. And that is the end product. I always say our, we are in consultancy more than anything else.
SH (06:18):
And really risk mitigation. When, when a large corporation calls us or a large association and says, Hey, this is the type of speaker we’re looking for, or often it’s, here are the three types of speakers who want, we need a headliner. Who’s going to capture attention? We’re willing to spend X number of dollars, then we think this is going to be a hot topic. Let’s call it ai. I mean, that’s a hot topic for today. We need someone on the stage who can cover that content. And then we want someone who can do this and, and check these certain boxes. They, and they most often call us with very specific criteria of these are the things they don’t, most often don’t have a name. They’re not calling to say, we want AJ on this date. Right? they’re calling us and the consultancy is really what we’re selling.
SH (07:01):
We’re risk mitigation. They may book four speakers this year. We worked with, we booked 2000 events last year. So they understand we aren’t going to book a speaker for them and with them. Who isn’t going to be literally world class. I mean, just show up, crush it, be amazing, you on stage. So there’s no risk in, I’ll say that ideally there’s no risk in working with a bureau because we’re bringing them the cream of the crop. And we’ve done all of the hard work of selecting from the, the thousand speaker submissions that we’ve seen in the last year. We have found, gleaned the, the 10 or 20 or 30 or 40 that we know are going to be amazing. And that ultimately that’s what a speaker’s bureau is. We’re we are here to service our end clients when we say clients. And that’s the term of art in our industry.
SH (07:50):
We are talking specifically premier speakers bureau. We are talking about an event planner. Mm-Hmm.
SH (08:40):
They select from that list and probably come back to us. So we massage that ultimately, but at the end of the day, it turns into, is the speaker available on this date? Yes. We go to contract with the end client, go to contract with the speaker. We have nine of those agents. We have five people on our event logistics team. They grab the event, they do all of the event logistics in turn, I’m sorry, they do all the speakers event logistics, airfare, car service, all of the details to get the speaker from home to the event and back. And then we have a full accounting team. We collect all the funds, guarantee all the payment to the speaker. So the, there’s very little risk for the speaker. We do work on a commission structure, so they’re paying for those services. But, but ultimately solving the problem of what content do you need on the stage Event planner, that’s where it starts.
AJV (09:29):
Yeah. So I, I love that you said that ’cause I haven’t heard that. So clearly stated, it’s like we’re risk mitigation for our clients. Mm-Hmm.
SH (10:14):
Assuming the speaker is with the, the right bureau. And when I say right, every, every company ha ends up with a clientele that looks like them as a company, right? And whether that’s intentional or unintentional premier has been blessed with a lot of organic growth over the years. But much of that is the, the, the speakers that we select to represent, attract a certain type of clientele, right? So then we go find speakers who are attractive to that type of clientele that that grows. So our client base somewhat intentional, somewhat just by the nature of how business works, we over time end up with a certain type of clientele. And then we are looking for speakers to service the, those groups of, of clients. So it, there is a step there of, I have seen many times, and we’ve been guilty of it, we say, Hey, we, this, this speaker is very interesting.
SH (11:03):
We think it could be a good fit, but we end up misaligned ’cause we don’t have the right clientele to select them. But when there’s a great marriage there a speaker working with a bureau the opportunity there is Speaker X. If you get in front of 10 event planners, and I say in front of, if you’re email, if, if you have contact with 10 event planners and two or three of them book you, right? Let’s say you have 30% close rate, well, we can put you in front of a hundred event planners or a thousand, 10,000 is a big number. But so it at that, it’s just the, the scale of opportunity. Even if that close rate goes down, you still have massive opportunity. There are assumptions with alignment there, obviously, but when it works well, it really, it it’s a scale that most speakers are not able to build on their own or choose not to.
SH (11:56):
I mean, ultimately, I mentioned all of our staff with 24 people on our team, it, for a speaker to go hire someone, okay, I want you on the phone all day, every day talking about me to clients. I need someone to run a business. I need, you know, maybe ACOO so like manage all of this and I need someone, an account like it’s staffing up becomes a significant amount of overhead bureaus. We do sell services and provide services to speakers. But that it eliminates for most speakers the requirement of having a full back office.
AJV (12:27):
Yeah. That, you know, what I’ve always said is just being honest, we’ve always had a love hate relationship with bureaus. Yep. ’cause We are salespeople. It’s like we’ve always found ourselves. It’s like we’re great at pitching ourselves and getting ourselves on stages until you run into a slew of clients that are like, oh, we love you would love to book you. Let me contact my bureau.
SH (12:50):
AJV (12:51):
You need to contact the bureau. I’m talking to you right now. Yeah. And it’s like, but I think that’s one of the benefits for speakers is just understanding there is a whole world of clients who will not book you without going through their bureau because of that risk mitigation process.
SH (13:06):
Right?
AJV (13:07):
Right. It’s that they wanna know that you’ve gone through the ringer with the bureau too before they put you on their stage. And I would say that’s, I think that’s, it’s a huge benefit of just going, if you have a great relationship with the bureau, one access is a big deal. Like, you’re gonna get access to people who would never book you direct. They’re just not gonna do it. It’s not what they do. Right. But then two, it’s like if you don’t have relationships with bureaus, even if you’re not exclusive you’re gonna be competing with ’em. Right. Right. That’s true. And those have, that’s that established relationships where even if they like you, they know these other people really well. And so there’s pros and cons to all the things, but I think a lot of people who want to be highly paid professional speakers, they want to do it now
AJV (13:57):
And there’s a process of how do you raise your fees and how do you get to become that person who is booked on stages where people are calling you, or bureaus are calling you versus you calling them. So I’d love to hear from your perspective of, you know, booking 2000 events last year is insanity. Right? That’s so many. That’s so, I mean, that’s what, four a day for three and a half a day. It’s a time. But also being in the industry for so long, like what are people looking for? And so I wanna talk about this in three different ways. Sure. What are they looking for in terms of the content? Like what’s trending, what’s hot, what’s, and I think there’s just evergreen. Like people are always gonna want leadership. They’re always gonna want culture. There’s always, there’s always some of those things, right? But then there’s new topics like ai, right? Yeah. So I’d love to talk about content. The second is, what are the assets that a speaker needs in order to get booked, right? So we need demo video, but any footage isn’t good footage, right? So like, what type of
SH (15:01):
Footage?
AJV (15:02):
And then also like a speaker press kit or a website. Like what, what’s the formula of this is the set of assets you need if you’re really going after this. And then the last thing is, what does it take to work with a bureau? Sure. Because I think that’s important. So let’s start with content. Like, just thinking of, you know, some people have great ideas, but are people gonna pay 10, 20, 30, $40,000 for an hour? Right?
SH (15:29):
Yeah. And that’s a great question. You, you, you described it perfectly, aj. There are certain elements of content that will never grow old. Leadership is one of them. Teamwork your right culture and how we see that play out in the market is often a client will call and say, Hey, we need a speaker who I mentioned AI earlier, as we sit here in November of 2023, that’s a hot topic. It, it may not be two years from now, but it is today. And I’ll come back to that in a second. But often they’ll say, Hey, even if you’re an AI speaker, we want you to, to hit on ai. We want you to be the expert. Ideally, you’ve written a book on it. You, you’ve been on tv and they’ve put your name aj a expert in ai, right? But the reality is they also want you to hit on some of those evergreen topics.
SH (16:19):
So event planners will say like, oh, we want that AI speaker to be great. Can they also hit on leadership? And, and so there is kind of this combination of your content. But that isn’t, say you do want to be known for something. Now what that thing is, social media eight, 10 years ago was the thing. And I remember so many speakers saying, I have to overnight reinvent myself as a social media speaker. The problem with that is, the next day, you know, you have, let’s make up a number a thousand speakers who overnight became experts on social media. So there immediately becomes a glut in the market. But there was opportunity there. The problem is, if you’re chasing content in that way, it is really hard to read what’s in the future, right? Like to guess. Okay, where’s it gonna be in a year?
SH (17:08):
I’ve always encouraged speakers, yes, be smart, leadership, teamwork, culture. There’s some content that will never grow old. The thing that you’re gonna care about in three to five years. ’cause We’re talking about what you guys do at brand builders. Like, figure out what you were great at and like, you own it, but you gotta live it, right? So if you’re picking something because you want, you hope, it’ll just capture the market. My my argument is you’re going to hate that content in six months. ’cause You’re, you’re trying to fall in love with something that you don’t love, right?
SH (17:58):
And make that your own. Now be smart, obviously. It, it, DEI was a very hot conversation topic and keynote topic two years ago last year. But we’ve seen a number of DEI speakers, DEI speakers start to see their business slow. Because a a lot of companies will say, we had that content last year and they haven’t devalued it, but they can’t do that content every single year. So they, the, the rally the market, there’s less opportunity for that specific content. So you mentioned culture that is an, an evergreen topic, very clever gifted DEI speakers will, will pivot. And they don’t change their content significantly, but you rebrand it instead of DEI, it’s culture. And those are the same things, but how you brand it matters matters in the market over time. So that’s a long answer to what is the hot content out there.
SH (18:53):
You define three that will never go away. And you as a speaker have to lean into those and be able to answer the question, Hey, is there some leadership content in everything you do? Yes. You have to be able to honestly answer that with a yes. And then frame your content. You know, again, if it was DEI last year, you read the room and say, Hey, the opportunities are lessening for that content. Okay, I’m gonna reframe it as culture. The same with social media. You know, like I said, 10 years ago, overnight we had a thousand experts, but today we haven’t been asked about a social media speaker in probably five years. So you have to know that content has faded. And I will say there are, and you guys probably unpack this a bit with brand builders, there’s certain content that is viewed, no one sits down and defines this, I don’t think in a spreadsheet.
SH (19:45):
Leadership content, you can be a $40,000 leadership speaker. You will never find, well take that back. It would be very difficult to find a $40,000 social media speaker. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (20:57):
I think that’s so, so important. As you were talking, I was thinking about speakers like Eric Wall, right?
SH (21:05):
Amazing. Yeah.
AJV (21:06):
Yeah. He’s an artist and does his artistry, but it’s woven into a more articulate message with content. Mm-Hmm.
SH (21:25):
Yes, he’s amazing. He’s terrific gymnast
AJV (21:27):
Balance and productivity and making it all come together. But yeah, he does acrobats and it’s like, that’s entertainment, but the content is just as good,
SH (21:37):
Right? Yes. Versus if you ask the person when they walked out of that, you know, there’s a thousand people in a conference room in Vegas, Hey, what did Dan Thurman do? They would probably, they would tell you some cool stuff. He can do things that I could never do physically on a stage. But that’s only to capture your attention. It’s kind of the concede or the trick and the thing to teach you something. If you’re leaning on the thing to be the thing, then, then you’re a gymnast. That’s right. If you’re just using that to communicate an idea, Uhhuh
AJV (22:22):
That’s so that’s such the key part of it in that entertainment aspect. It’s like you’re only using it to catch their attention, to deliver the great message. Now, we talked about a co ’cause I thought that’s really fascinating. Something that you said, it’s like categorically speaking, there is a, you know, perceived price value on certain categories of confidence. Mm-Hmm.
SH (22:56):
You go.
AJV (22:56):
That’s true. That’s very true. And so I, I would love to talk about, did I miss any, ’cause we said leadership, we said kind of culture we said teamwork, I threw in sales, but I don’t know, I believe that’s evergreen. Like, everyone’s looking at how do we keep revenues top line high, bottom line high. Are there any other categories that you’re like, yeah, these are evergreen. People are always gonna be asking for these types of speakers?
SH (23:22):
Yeah, I, that’s a great question. I, those, those you just described, and sales is definitely one. And I, I, I would pause for a second to describe the, the types of the buyers that are coming to speakers bureaus most often. Are you, you touched on this earlier, are larger corporations associations. Yeah. There’s a, I think the last number was like 26,000 associations out there. Not, no, not all of them can afford a $40,000 speaker, but they are all required by charter to do a conference. So, right. They’re all doing a conference on some level. So those are the types of clients who are most often working with, with speakers bureaus. So we, we do our, our data points are within a certain type of buyer. There are certainly other buyers out there who, that we don’t, we don’t bump into. But th those that you hit on are, are, are those described really well?
SH (24:14):
And, and sales is corporations will do a sales training or they’ll, you know, they’ll bring in their sales leaders. Associations don’t lean heavily into sales because unless there are a specific type of association, big picture sales would be probably a, a, AB option for them. And there are a lot of options beneath that. But leadership, teamwork, culture, those things that especially in the association world, the only thing these people have in common, the 5,000 people in the Vegas Orlando Ballroom, is that they’re all in one industry together. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (25:11):
What about customer experience?
SH (25:15):
Yes. That is content that we, that we would book from time to time. That is not I wouldn’t say that would be a content where this is a home run every single time. And customer experience, customer service, those would almost be interchangeable. I do, I like customer experience is a better, it’s better terminology today. Customer service was definitely at five to 10 years ago or some amount of time ago, I would say. That does, if that is your only content, you are bumping up against a, a ceiling on some level. Now what that number is, is a guess, right? But you, you, you won’t find many customer experience $50,000 speakers, but you can find quite a few at 15, right? Or 12 five.
AJV (26:00):
So, fascinating. I love this conversation. Last question because I’m like, whatcha gonna think of, what about like marketing or branding? Mm-Hmm.
SH (26:08):
AJV (27:17):
No, I think it’s really good because it’s, again, back is like, I’m just kind of like listing these out, like these, these higher level evergreen topic categories, leadership, culture, teamwork and you can differentiate and position within those high level categories that really at the end of the day, it’s like you’re wanna your fees to grow. It’s like, it’s gonna have to reach things on that more general widespread nature of leadership. Sure. But then, yeah, you can have an amazing career in the sales, branding, marketing, customer experience space, but there’s, there’s gonna be a ceiling at some point. Unless you can figure out how do we weave that into one of these more overarching categories, something
SH (27:56):
Larger
AJV (27:57):
Or culture leadership. But I think that’s really important because sometimes just knowing that helps a lot of like how you position and if you don’t know those nuances of the industry, you’re stuck before you even get started. Because that’s right, it’s nuanced. And I think that’s really important. So I love that in terms of like content, just categorically speaking. And I think that’s really, really important. Now, let’s talk about assets, right? Mm-Hmm.
SH (29:02):
Yeah. Great. Great question. And the s starkest thing you’ll hear me say today, AJ, hopefully is when, when speakers say to me, man, every time I walk off stage, you know, like they tell me I’m the best speaker ever, or I crushed it. I always, hopefully I don’t always say it, but I do think, yeah, congratulations. Like that’s what a professional speaker should do. Like, if you’re a professional speaker, you should never say, yeah, I laid an egg today. I mean, it’s gonna happen, but killing it on stage is the barrier to entry to be a professional speaker. You said that, well, I’m being redundant, but that is, that is the expectation. If you’re being paid $15,000, that that’s a significant amount of money. But also if a company is putting their 500 employees in a room for sitting idle, idle by product productivity standards for an hour, the cost to the company is literally probably another 15.
SH (29:55):
And depending on the size, could be hundreds of thousands of dollars for that hour. So be amazing that we said that be amazing. Assets are the thing that the, I I, I try to frame it this way, instead of just thinking them as marketing, you get to answer questions that you will never get asked because they’re gonna make a decision about you without asking you certain questions. Mm-Hmm.
SH (30:45):
We’ve had three middle aged white guys in a row the last three years. Ah, we don’t wanna do a fourth thing. Like they really do have to nuance and start to compare and contrast. Well, this speaker is 10% funnier. I mean, that they make up, they have to measure things. And the first part of the job is to eliminate options, right? So they’re looking for things to go, okay, well this speaker says they’re the most amazing branding speaker ever, but their video looks like it was shot 10 years ago. Like that, of course. I mean, you wouldn’t, you wouldn’t buy a, you know, if, if your person you’re buying a car from drives a, a horrible car and knows nothing about cars, and you go, I probably don’t know what they’re talking about. So if, if you, if you have an expertise, obviously you gotta crush it in that expertise.
SH (31:27):
But headshot I’ll come back to video. ’cause I video’s the, the silver bullet in, in the speaking world. I’m convinced of that a professional headshot. And, and I always suggest to speakers or lean into, it’s easy if you come out of the corporate world or you’ve had success, you built a company and sold it, you’ve always been branded as a certain thing in that space, in the speaking space, what you’re selling is, I can get on your stage and communicate an idea maybe better than anyone else for 60 minutes or 50 minutes, whatever it is. So you have to change your mindset from I built this company, that’s who I am. It being very biographically focused. Think about the event planner who’s sitting in their cubicle considering four other speakers. They’re, they’re looking for something a little bit different in that biography.
SH (32:20):
It’s not just essentially a, your Wikipedia page, right? It, it really is like, how are you bringing your expertise to my room of 500 people who may or may not want to be there and moving the needle for our company? Still not sure about this. Oh, sorry, Siri just heard me. But the, the, so keynote description, so headshot, no brainer, 300 DPI, great high resolution, spend money on that. If you, if it’s a friend with an iPhone that’s not gonna cut it. I mean, you spend money on it. Selfies, brand build southeast, yeah. Selfie aj, you and call aj. She can help you out. I’m sure they can. Brand builders can assist with that. Oh, it’s so funny. The keynote descriptions are something to, to, to harken back to. We were talking about it earlier, own a certain piece of content. But a keynote description is ultimately your describing what your brand is, and one or two words, colon, you know, here, here’s a short description of how I’m gonna move the needle for your team.
SH (33:22):
And then a, a description of what they are buying. I mean, all they’re buying a product. We’re buying, we’re paying you money to, for 60 minutes to come communicate an idea. This keynote description describes how you are going to, what that thing is and how you’re going to do it. The title describes what it is. The keynote description describes how you’re going to do it. Don’t be afraid to have two or three versions of, it’s almost disingenuous to say, okay, sales colon, whatever that thing is, and this is for, you know, it companies and then the same thing. But for healthcare companies, that doesn’t scare off buyers. They want, if they’re a healthcare company and you, you have a keynote description describing your content in their space, that’s a good thing. They, that tells them, you know, enough about the healthcare industry that you have content, that you’ve taken your content and specifically built it for their audience.
SH (34:23):
Right? That’s a, so don’t be afraid to have two or three keynotes that look similar, but are targeted towards different types of organizations. So keynote descriptions are important. Reviews are are crucial because, and I I jokingly say this, often it, you know, if you, if you have a, I’m gonna use Magic Johnson. If you know Magic Johnson and he says, I AJ’s my buddy, she’s the best speaker I’ve ever met, you’re gonna love her. That’s awesome. At a dinner party. And that would impress me. I’m a huge basketball fan. Event planners in the moment that they are buying are not impressed by big names. Remember, risk mitigation, the most valuable thing from a review point of view in that buying moment is someone like me in my chair took, used you as a speaker and you crushed it and they wrote a review saying, Hey, I brought speaker X in.
SH (35:22):
They crushed it on stage. Yeah, they move an needle. These metrics, whatever that is, so big names are great. I would drop one or two on my website. Way more importantly are is event planner. Stacy from Prudential is very valuable when Steve at Allstate is considering you, right? Because these are lateral competitors and they’re saying, we tried it, it worked. So they’re gonna try it. Also video, we touched on it a little bit. I can’t tell you how often I’ll get a video because I’ve got so many friends and buddies that are in the speaking world. They’ll text me a video, Hey, here’s 60. You know, here’s a a clip. Man, this, this joke I told, or this story I told crushed, right? I watched the video. No, it doesn’t because they are remembering. And I, it breaks my heart. I I hate to say no, it doesn’t.
SH (36:13):
But they are remembering the audience reaction. You know, aj, you’ve been on a ton of stages. You, you have a joke or you have a story that you know always works, right? You remember it. But if, if you don’t have video of the audience reaction, so I, as a viewer sitting at my desk watching a video, if I can’t see the audience react, then you just get whatever you get from me and I’m probably distracted. So audience reaction is one element that speakers very well paid professional speakers forget to include that in their preview videos. Mm-Hmm.
SH (37:05):
What’s the best length of a video? Yeah, probably five to seven minutes. If you’ve got a couple of really killer clips that push it to 10, just know that most event planners are considering, you won’t watch 10 minutes, but they’ll skip through a video. But it needs to punch and it needs to, if you’ve got two or three stories that are your fastballs, include those in there. And I would say one little hack that I always suggest to speakers is, your video is never a finished product. If you know you’re gonna tell that story often on stages Mm-Hmm.
AJV (38:06):
Yeah. So I’ve got a question for you specific to this video thing, which is how much of the video should be you on stages? Because a lot of the videos I see today are more like sizzle commercials and they have mm-Hmm,
SH (38:38):
Right? That, that is a great question because it’s a moment in time question. A few years ago, a couple of speakers realized like, everyone’s videos look the same. And this is generalities, but pretty close. A few years ago it was pre covid, so we’ll call it five years ago, some speakers said everyone’s videos look the same. And they started to do some videos and I can mention names and we’ll talk about ’em offline. I loved it. They kind of reinvented the, the sizzle reel or the preview video world. And it became the videos that we’ve all seen now and been a part of probably helping make, which is you follow them to the stage and they’re standing and they look at the camera and say like, this is gonna be great. And you watch them walk on stage and crush it. That total overnight it elevated the, the, the expectation from the viewer side of the videos because it used to be, okay, I’m probably gonna do some talking head to introduce myself.
SH (39:32):
Here’s three clips of me on CNN and Fox News, like, you know, quick Clips. And then here’s three clips of me speaking. Now we kind of have almost movie production quality videos, right? I I think the market has adjusted to that, where a large number of speakers have that more kind of movie production. So it, it’s like the rubber band thing. I think it will stretch and pull back and event planners, they do, they’re a cynical bunch because we make them a cynical bunch because I always say hyperbole is the, the natural language of our industry. Like everything is the best ever. Every speaker’s the best ever. Like, so they, they could,
AJV (40:10):
Everyone’s an expert. Everyone,
SH (40:12):
Everyone’s an expert.
SH (41:04):
No. but I, I would say if I had $10,000 to invest in my video tomorrow and I was a speaker, I would lean heavily into production. And then do put you, you want to answer the question, why are you an expert? Why should I give you 60 minutes of my people’s time? You wanna answer that in the first few seconds. So if you’re on CNN and they have, they’re holding your book up and it says you’re an expert, definitely include that. But you wanna answer that question in 10, 15 seconds and then get to you on stage speaking and not to dig in to be boring with it. But a couple of basic items are you want more than one camera. You want one more than one scene. So if it’s you wearing the same dress or the same suit in all three clips, the question, you’re, they will, the event planner will never say, have you done this a lot?
SH (41:59):
Right? But you’re, you’re implying to them, I’ve only done it once ’cause all three clips look the same. So that’s why if you’re watching a great speaker’s reel, you’ll notice that they jump around and show themselves sometimes even during the same story. Here’s me on stage at this conference and here’s me on stage. Part of that is just communicating. I do this all the time and I’m amazing at this and here’s a couple of different versions of me doing it. It helps the flow of the video video. So you, you want multiple locations. You want multiple, you know, attire, changes to communicate. This is something I do regularly and I’m great at it.
AJV (42:39):
Hmm. Those are so good. And, you know, to, it’s easy to make long videos. It’s hard to make short ones. And so making sure that’s just a, a key part of that. And I love like just all the s assets that you talk about, like, I think people forget of like how important it is. Like I say this all the time, it’s like, I love your headshot. Who is that
SH (43:05):
It’s you in college,
AJV (43:07):
Well, I be able to recognize you when I go find you online. And I’m like, wait, is this the same person? I don’t know. Did I, did I type the name in wrong?
SH (43:50):
Yep. Great quality, professional speakers. The stuff that we, we’ve touched on multiple times. The two most frequent ways. I get that question a lot. I have a lot of friends who are speakers. Honestly, I have a lot of friends who are speakers that we don’t represent because we aren’t the best home for them. But the two best ways to connect with Premier Speakers Bureau or any speakers bureau at this point is referral from one of their key speakers. We have out of those 2000 events last year, we probably booked about 600, 650 speakers. So a lot of those speakers we booked a couple of times. Mm-Hmm,
SH (44:43):
That moves the needle for me because I know what their litmus test for great is. And so that’s a great way to open a door. The last two speakers that we have, premier has signed exclusively, and we could unpack that another time. Which means all of their business comes to Premier, have been started as referrals from other people that are trusted speakers of ours. So that, that’s a, it’s proven to be the case. The other way is to take business away from a speaker’s bureau. So we, we have that core client base that I told you that, that most often we know like they’re gonna come back to us ’cause we serve them really well. We take great care of them, we answer the phone the first time it rings. We are good at best when we talk to them and they say, Hey, actually, you know, thanks, I’ll talk to you in a month and we’ll do business together, but my CEO saw this person speak and told me to go book them, and I did that that, that happens once.
SH (45:39):
Okay? That’s how life works. And CEOs say, go book a speaker and then they know it’s risky, but the CEO told ’em to do it. When that happens three or four times, that alerts us to that speaker is a, is attractive to the types of clients that we work with, right? So that quite often we will start a conversation with them. And many times over the last 23 years, that has ended up in a very strategic long-term, mutually beneficial relationship. But it started with them proving themselves by the way they proved it was they took business away from us, meaning clients that we value said, yeah, that’s somebody that we’re interested in. Most often, those two things connect up. Yeah. And the speaker we trust says, this person’s great. And we go, yeah, we’ve, we’ve heard that from clients too. At that point, it’s, it’s almost a no-brainer, but that, I wish that the easy answer was press this button and this thing will happen.
SH (46:35):
All of those things are nuanced and they all come down to relationships. Being great on stage is a starting point. Event planners will, being in love with how you do your business, if you’re a great speaker and are pain to work with, you won’t, you won’t make it, you won’t make it. You have to approach your business as Aer with a servant heart. Like I am coming to, to offer something to the people in this room, starting with that poor event planner, Stacy, who’s probably a mom of two kids and has three other jobs and is rolling the dice on this event. And if something goes wrong, she takes all the blame. She’s your first customer, right? Make her life amazing. Take great care of her. You’re gonna be amazing on stage. But if you do that a hundred times, the universe will love you. The market will love you. There’s no easy answers, there’s no easy fixes. It is just hard work, aj you know this, you and Rory did this. It’s hard work. You build a thing over time, and if you do it the right way, you look back in 10, 20 years and say, I’m proud of the things that I built.
AJV (47:41):
Amen. Preach it. I love that. And like, the underlying message that I hope everyone heard is like a part of the path of working with bureaus is that you actually already have to be on stages, right? Yes. Their job is to get you on the first stage or the 10th stage. Their job is to discover you after you’ve already been doing this long enough and good enough that other people are willing to tell other people about you. Which means that it starts with you, it starts with you
SH (48:13):
Perfectly said,
AJV (48:14):
Perfectly said, and you’ve gotta be the one to get on stages. And I, and it’s like back to everything in life. It’s a trusted source, referring someone is how business is still done. Regardless of how many things have gone online and how business has evolved, that has never changed, which is the power of a trusted referral. Mm-Hmm. And this is no different here, Shawn. Perfect. Thank you so much. You’re the best. This is so you and this is gonna be just so rich for everyone who takes the time to listen to it. And for those of you who are listening, if you guys wanna connect with Shawn, it’s Shawn Hanks. You can find him on LinkedIn. But if you wanna learn more about Shawn and his role and everyone else at Premier Speakers, just go to premier speakers.com and again, premier speakers.com. I’ll put all that in the show notes and if you wanna catch the recap episode of this then stay tuned. And if not, we’ll catch you next time on the influential Personal brand. We’ll see you later.
SH (49:17):
Thank you.
Ep 442: The Time to Win with Jay Baer
RV (00:02):
Well, I am excited and honored to introduce you once again to one of my very best friends, one of my favorite mentors someone who I legitimately think is one of the smartest people on the planet. We’ve had him on the podcast before. His name is Jay Baer, Utruly one of my best friends in real life. And I’m so grateful for this man. And he has a new book out. And every time Jay writes a new book, it completely like changes the way I think about whatever the topic is. And we’re gonna talk about speed as a competitive advantage today. Uif you’re just meeting Jay, he is a New York Times bestselling author of seven books. He is a hall of fame speaker. He has worked with over 700 different brands. He speaks on some of the biggest stages in the world.
RV (00:48):
He’s worked for companies like Nike and Oracle and I b m and United Nations. And another thing we’ll probably talk about, which we’ve never talked about on this show before with Jay, but something fun happening is he has blown up on TikTok and Instagram, this personal brand. He is now the second, the world’s second largest influencer on tequila, which is something he does in his personal life. And it has become a huge explosive personal brand. So that’s kind of like a, a side project we’re gonna, we’re gonna talk about, but mostly we’re gonna be talking about his new book. It’s called The Time to Win. Without further ado, my brother, welcome back.
JB (01:33):
Thank you very much. Great to be with you, my friend. I gotta tell you, I’ve been a business strategist and author and speaker for like 30 years, and there’s been some degree of, of notoriety as a result of my behaviors and activities in that category. But now that I have a tequila education channel, I get recognized in hotels and airports, literally every week,
RV (02:22):
Yeah. So hold on a second there, buddy. So you cut out, I think I cut out. So just you were saying, I get recognized in airports every week.
JB (02:32):
Yeah. Every week for, for, and it’s always like, oh, you’re Tequila J Bear. I watch all of your videos. Like, nobody caress that I’ve written books. Nobody cares that I’ve ever given a presentation, but they are locked and loaded on the personal brand of tequila educators. So I think there’s a lesson there for, for you and your audience,
RV (02:51):
Man. Well, I do, I do. I I do want to hear about that because I, I, I, I’m curious, and it’s part of that is I have a side project, I’ve got like a personal side project going on right now. Yeah. That’s very similar.
JB (03:01):
I know. It’s exciting.
RV (03:02):
It has nothing to do with like our business, but it’s like, I have to do this. Yeah. But let’s talk about the time to win.
JB (03:10):
Yeah.
RV (03:11):
‘Cause this was something that I was like, it’s another one of those things where when you started talking about it, I was like, oh my gosh, how have I missed this? And you just blew it up. Like, oh, this is such a big idea, such a simple idea. So, so tell us, what’s the premise here? What’s going on? Yeah. And then the research that started it,
JB (03:28):
My, my observation coming outta the pandemic Rory, was that it changed the way we think about time and, and reshuffled how important it is in our lives. Time’s always been important, of course, but the pandemic made us remember a simple truth, an important truth, an often overlooked truth, which is that all of us only have and will ever only have 1,440 minutes a day. Doesn’t matter who you are, where you are, what you are, you get 1,440. You can’t make more. You can’t buy more. I’ll tell you this, I think now that I’ve been studying this for a while, I, I think time is the only resource that we actually share equally on this planet. The only one.
JB (04:13):
And a lot of the trends that we talk about now, things like the great resignation or people wanting to work from home don’t wanna come back from the office because they don’t wanna commute, or people spending more time with their kids or, or bleisure travel, which is the combination of business and leisure travel. That’s when you bring your kids to the conference and double dip the trip. Even baseball games are 25 minutes a night shorter now, right? Because they got a pitch clock. Like, all of these trends are the same trend, which is that we care about our time and how we spend it more than ever. So that was the, the premise. But as always, as you mentioned, when I, when I write a book, I first validate it with really deep research. ’cause I’m not gonna go on stages and pages and tell people to change their business unless I’ve got it proven other than just Jay says to do this. So it turns out that in the research we found that two thirds of people say that speed is now as important as price.
RV (05:09):
Wow. But
JB (05:10):
There’s not very many businesses that behave as if that were the case. And you should.
RV (05:16):
Yeah. I mean, that makes, I mean, you know, when you shared that with me, it was like, oh, yeah, that makes sense. As a consumer, I go, I, I just want it fast. Like, I don’t, you know, I think about the hotel thing. It’s like, I don’t wanna tell you my life story. I just want my key and get to the room. And like, I just wanna be like, it’s a long day of travel. It’s not that I wanna be rude, but it’s just like, I just want as fast as possible to get from the car into my hotel room to just chill out. Right? And then I go, but as a, as a business, how much are we really thinking about doing things shorter? We’re trying to go, maybe we make it better, better. Maybe we can charge more money, but not going, how do we do this faster?
JB (06:02):
That’s the mystery. That’s why this book, the Time to Win exists. What I tell people is you’ve gotta elevate speed and responsiveness on the priority list in your business because your customers already have.
RV (06:19):
Hmm. Like
JB (06:19):
Most businesses think they’re fast enough, but then when they look at the world through their own eyes as a consumer, they realize that they’re not fast enough. Partially because speed expectations never go backwards. Right? What was, what was fast five years ago is very slow today. And that will always continue. And I’ve been doing this a long time, as you know, I’ve never, in my whole life, under any circumstances whatsoever, heard a customer say, Hey, you know what? Next time it’d be cool if you guys just did that more slowly.
RV (07:03):
Yeah. And
JB (07:03):
I got, and the key, the key thing to this real quick, is that the reason why this book is so important now is that everything contained in this book is going to happen three years from now. We’re gonna have to delete this episode because it will be pointless. Everything we talk about will have been done by every business because your customers will simply require it of you. But this is your opportunity. This is why the book is called The Time to Win. This is your time to use responsiveness as a competitive advantage before other people in your category start to do it. You’ve got, in my estimation, a 24 to 30 month headstart where if you lean into speed, now you can eat your competitor’s lunch until they realize what’s going on and are forced to catch up.
RV (07:53):
Yeah. And I just on this, on this note of not priorit, prioritizing speed as a competitive, like not thinking of speed as a, as like a value to the customer. We had Amy Porterfield on, on this show a while back. You, she’s one of our clients and she’s sort of like the queen of courses, right? I know. You know, Amy and I, I asked her, I said, I said, you know, what’s the right price to charge for a course? And I said, I said, basically like, if, you know, if I have six modules or 10 modules, like how many modules do I have to have in there in order to charge $2,000? And she said, the price has nothing to do with how many modules are in there. She said, everyone thinks that having more modules makes it more expensive. She said, it’s the opposite. If you can deliver the result to the customer with less time and less modules, it’s more valuable to be able to get your customer from point A to point B. And I was just like, I literally have been thinking about this backwards in the pricing, you know, game. And then, and then you’re going, oh, you need to do this for every part of the business.
JB (09:08):
It, you go back to the 16 hundreds blaze, Pascal, a famous writer from, you know, those days said, I, I would’ve
JB (10:04):
And here’s when I can come give you an estimate. And here’s when I can come do the job. Second painter got back to me in two days. Third painter got back to me in 11 days. At which point I’d already painted the house
RV (10:50):
Dude, whoa. That this, not just in your business life. This is one of the central marriage issues between me and aj. Responsiveness is her love language. And her, one of her frustrations is she’s like, you take forever to respond to my work emails ’cause we work together. But she’s like, you are so slow to respond to like, project deadlines and that stuff. And it’s like, she, she treats it as like, I’m disrespecting her. And I’m like, I’m busy. And she’s like, I don’t care. It’s, it is disrespecting. Like that is absolutely true. Responsiveness is, is a form of respect. Well, so, so you have this, you, so the time to win, which is, that’s the, the url, right? The time to win.com is where you’ll go to get the book. And y’all, just fyi, this book, Amazon, this book is a small book. You can read the entire book in an hour, like the entire book in an hour. It’s also, which
JB (11:53):
Is obviously intentional because I sat down to write a book and I’ve written six full length books in the past. And I started to work on this. And I’m like, wait, I, I cannot ask people to spend five or six hours reading a book about speed and just like, just like did. I’m like, wait a second. This is the exact opposite of the advice in the book. So it’s like, alright. And look, the reality is, and I, I’m not ashamed to admit it, the reality is most people don’t read business books. They skimm them,
RV (12:22):
Right? Because
JB (12:23):
Most business books say a thing, then they say that thing six different ways. And I’m like, you know what? I’m just gonna cut out the middleman here. No, no fat only meet all the key pieces that you need to implement. It’s a six piece framework for, for winning with responsiveness. And that’s all that’s in the book. There’s, you know, and boom, in and out. And people love it.
RV (12:43):
Yeah. And so, and so speed, like, okay, so, so now when you go, let’s apply, apply speed to business
JB (12:50):
Mm-Hmm.
RV (12:50):
You know, like the example that I used that construct is deliver the result for the client in less time. And we, we are super focused about on this right now. Yeah. Of now, now we’re going, we’re embracing this, right? And going, how do we get our client the result faster? How do we teach them the information in less time? How do we give them tools to help them implement, you know, like cheaper, faster. So there’s that construct of like con condensing the time for them to have the experience. But then it’s almost like there’s another half of this, which is responsiveness. So yeah. Which side is it? Is it both of those things? Or is it more one side than the other? Like
JB (13:35):
It’s both. We actually tested that in the research. So we asked people, and I, and I will say, this is very comprehensive research. This isn’t, Jay did a SurveyMonkey. This is many, many, many, many, many tens of thousands of dollars university level research. And we found when we asked people, okay, where is responsiveness most important to you? Early stages when you’re just trying to get information. Late stages. If you need help in the middle where somebody’s actually delivering whatever it is they’re delivering out, always
RV (14:47):
Well,
JB (14:47):
How can that be? Well, remember if we interpret responsiveness as respect, at some point, every customer has to revalidate the buy. It could be a week later, it could be a month later, it could be a year later, it could be a decade later. But at some point in every customer and client relationship, they’ve gotta say, do I wanna sign on again? And so, yes, it’s important to be quick at the beginning of the relationship, but it’s also important to be quick throughout the totality of the relationship, because that’s going to ultimately impact whether or not they rebuy, which has of course, huge implications for your conversion rate, your churn rate, your lifetime customer value probably,
RV (15:28):
And
JB (15:28):
Everything else
RV (15:29):
That builds great
JB (15:30):
Business. All of it. Yeah.
RV (15:31):
All the things. So I wanna ask you about ai, ’cause I haven’t asked you about, about, about, mm-hmm. This, right? So the part that’s scary about this to me is to go absent ai, this is ha I think this is happening anyway, right? Absent, we’re just going like, I need an answer. I need it yesterday. I need it immediately. I want my food immediately. I want, you know, my show immediately. I want to be on the airplane immediately. I wanna be in my hotel room immediately. Like it’s, everything is speeding up. The part that freaks me out is you go, you add AI into this conversation. And now it’s like, dude, it’s just gotta be an exponential multiplier of this. Yep. Entitled, I need it immediately thing. Yeah,
JB (16:20):
Yeah, yeah. Probably. Yeah. And look, I, I’m not suggesting that this is a net societal positive that that’s not my job in the world. My job is to tell you how to beat your competition. And that’s contained in the book. Now, whether
RV (17:01):
Right? So
JB (17:02):
I think you were there one time when our, our mutual friend, Jason Dorsey was talking about Lemonade, which I use as an example. Now in the stage presentation of this material, lemonade is an insurance company. They primarily work in rental insurance, but others as well. They’re the number one rated rental insurance company in the country. Highest average revenue per employee as well. I mean, every success metric there at the top of the table. Here’s how it works. They were built for speed from the beginning. This guy, Paul has like a $979 Canada Goose, like Parka, super nice jacket, lives in Manhattan, goes to a bar in Manhattan. Someone steals the jacket. Oh man, my jacket got stolen. I gotta get a insurance claim. So he goes on the Lemonade app on his phone, presses, opens the app, presses file a claim, makes a 25 second video into his phone.
JB (17:56):
Hey, it’s Paul, I’ve had this Canada Goose jacket. It was $979 that got stolen at the bar. Submit after he hits, submit Lemonade, runs a bunch of fraud algorithms. Not only on the, on the video itself, but on Paul, his case history, the location, his age, a bunch of other stuff. They already have access to his bank account ’cause he did it. When he set it up, they decide to approve the claim. They wire $929 into his account because he is a $250 deductible. All of that happens, right? Assess the claim, approve the claim, wire him the cash. All of that happens in three seconds.
RV (18:36):
Holy smack.
JB (18:38):
Three seconds. So if you’re Allstate,
RV (18:42):
Yeah. Now
JB (18:43):
What? Now what?
RV (18:46):
I mean you don’t even, you’re trying to set an appointment to talk to the person and then the paperwork, and then you file the thing and take all the pictures and you fill out a police report. I mean
JB (18:57):
Yep. So now obviously, does Lemonade have a higher ratio of fraud than the alternative where like, you know, sitting down with somebody Of course. But one of the lessons in this book that I think is really applicable, it’s okay to be a little bit wrong if you’re a lot, a bit fast.
RV (19:17):
Ooh, that’s good. Yeah, it reminds me of like John De Julius says, you know, don’t punish 98% of your customers for what the 2% take advantage of.
JB (19:31):
Yeah. It’s an edge case.
RV (19:33):
Yeah. That’s so good about being a lot of, bit a, a lot, a bit fast. Well, so
JB (19:42):
Do you think, here’s something I wanna mention if I can. It’s a really important technique, especially for this audience that I wanna make sure we get to, is one of the key recommendations in this book. And it’s to offer a fast pass. So the idea of offering a fast pass is that in the research we found that one in four customers will pay as much as 50% more to not wait. You should give them that opportunity. Now, there are increasingly FastPasses all around us ’cause people are figuring out how powerful this technique is. TSA pre is a fast pass. You pay more. Wait list clear is a fast pass. Disney has one now, I think it’s called Genie Plus, we pay more. You don’t have to wait in line to go on Space Mountain or whatever,
RV (20:27):
Right?
JB (20:29):
You should do that in your business. Everybody should do it in their business. So when people come to me and say, will you review my new tequila? And I say, well sure, but we’ve got a 10 week waiting list. Or you can pay us this amount and you can be the next tequila we rate. All you’re doing is offering them a fast pass. Every sort of, every business in the world has a sequence, has an onboarding, has a customer list. You just charge them more to jump the line. Now, I was at an event and a guy came up to me and said, well Jay, what do I do about the person who was the next customer I was gonna help? And now they get bumped back one, aren’t they gonna be mad? Here’s how you do it. You say to the customer, who doesn’t wanna wait? Who wants to be the next, okay, it’s gonna cost you 20% more to be next. Then you talk to the person who was next and you say, I’m really sorry, something came up. We gotta bump you back. It’s gonna be an extra week. Now you’re second, but we’re gonna give you a 5% discount. ’cause We feel bad about it. You just kept 15% for doing nothing other than shuffling your customer sequence.
RV (21:31):
Mm-Hmm.
JB (21:33):
It’s free money.
RV (21:35):
Yeah. I mean, I’m that guy. I mean, I’m that guy. Like, it’s like I, I will pay. I do not wanna wait in long. You’re
JB (21:41):
Literally that guy. I
RV (21:42):
Will not, I will pay so much more to not wait in line. It’s the most frustrating thing that I experience is waiting. Like if my computer is loading, my internet is down, loading a webpage, you know, waiting in line at the grocery store, like waiting in line is probably the most frustrating thing in my life where I get angry. Like I am losing time. So, and I think probably that’s true. Like people who, the people who have, it’s
JB (22:11):
Not true for everybody. It’s not
RV (22:13):
True for everybody. It’s not true for everybody.
JB (22:14):
But for those who it is true for it’s manifestly true for like you,
RV (22:18):
And they will pay more money for it.
JB (22:20):
Absolutely.
RV (22:21):
They’ll pay more money. Won’t
JB (22:22):
Even bat an eye
RV (22:23):
Won’t even bad an eye. Yeah. No way. And it’s like, I don’t care if
JB (22:26):
You give ’em the choice,
RV (22:27):
The same experience as someone else, but I can just not have to, to have the weight. That’s so good, Jay. Like, that’s so simple. You know,
JB (22:34):
You’ll make so much money for, for free. Like, and it doesn’t matter if you’re a consultant, an author, a chiropractor, you’d run a preschool, you’ve got a landscape business, you’re doing plastic surgery, it does not matter.
RV (22:47):
Oh yeah, the country club,
JB (22:48):
What business you’re in club or getting into, it doesn’t matter.
RV (22:50):
Private, the private school, oh my gosh, like this is I’m trying to think about how we would apply this to brand builders group. We need to have a conversation about what, what can do, what we would, what we would do. So what else should I be asking you about this that I haven’t asked you about as it relates to speed as a competitive advantage?
JB (23:10):
The, I’ll tell you what the first piece that you’ve gotta do on this. Okay. lemme two, two quick things. One, I don’t want people to think that the takeaway here is Jay says, be as fast as possible all the time. That’s not true. And it’s also too simple. Yes, you should probably be faster than you are much of the time because your customers will reward you for it. If you give your customers time, they will give you money. If you cost your customers time, it will cost you money. So yes, you should probably be faster than you are much of the time. But there are scenarios when you can be too fast. When you are too fast, it decays trust. So if somebody came to you, Rory, and said, Hey I’ve got a book I’m writing, can you help me with a bestseller campaign? And you said, sure. Can you start in an hour? That would probably feel less trustworthy because if you’re that available,
RV (24:12):
Right?
JB (24:13):
Like, how could, could you be? Right? So what you want in your business is not necessarily to just be as fast as you can. What you want in every customer interaction is to adhere to the right now, the right now, the right now is the perfect amount of elapsed time. It’s not too fast and it’s not too slow. It’s the Goldilocks zone for speed. And you’ve gotta figure out what that is in your own business, right? There’s no standard for that. But for every business there is a, right now it’s the perfect amount of time. So the first assignment that you’ve gotta do as a business leader is to figure out what the right now is in your business.
RV (24:57):
Well, and the subtitle of your book, okay, so the book’s called The Time to Win. The subtitle is How to Exceed Customer’s Need for Speed. And the way that I go is part of what we know about the right now is it is at least a little bit faster than whatever their expectation is. That’s right. If, if we are, if we’re faster than their expectation than we’re winning, and then probably you know, the, then, then, then, then we’re ahead. So we probably need to look at what’s their expectation. But, but similar to how I remember like one the things
JB (25:32):
And how to set that expectation too. Like how to, how to actually manage that expectation. It’s one of the thing that, that a lot of businesses are terrible at this, they’re really bad at, at giving customers any sort of cue or clue as to what to expect. And one thing I’ve learned since I started down this, this research path is absent of any guidance, customers will expect everything to happen instantly.
RV (25:59):
Yeah. So
JB (25:59):
You’ve gotta tell them the thing that you want or need is going to take this long. And crucially, especially for younger consumers, here’s why it takes that long.
RV (26:14):
Uhhuh
JB (26:15):
You’ve gotta connect the dots for them. Because if you don’t, they will always think it should be faster. We learned this in the first day in business that you should always under promise and
RV (26:31):
Overdeliver,
JB (26:32):
Overdeliver. But you can’t do that if people don’t know what the promise is. So if you know it’s gonna take 10, 10 days, you always tell them it’s 12 days always. Because then you are slightly faster than they expect. And that’s the, right now
RV (26:53):
Uhhuh
JB (28:02):
Yeah. I mean, you think about the world we live in, technology and big enterprise companies have changed everybody’s perspective on what is quote unquote fast. Like if Uber and Lyft didn’t exist, we would have a totally different perspective on transportation. But it does exist. And that experience of being able to press a button and a car shows up naturally leaches into your expectations for other things that you need in your life. And, and that’s just the way it is, right? So yeah. Does the fact that Amazon can bring something next day put a lot of pressure on a mom and pop business who doesn’t have that kind of warehouse? Heck yeah, it does. Freaking does. But but then, but them’s the breaks, like what, you know, sorry, that genie’s not going back in the bottle, right? Mm-Hmm. You know, well
RV (28:53):
That’s why I think about the AI thing, right? You know, it’s like in and bb in brand builders group. We don’t have like a queue, right? People can come, but where our, where our delay is, is helping our customers implement faster, right? Getting their funnels built, getting their website built, getting, and, and, and that’s where it’s like AI is going to compress that even more. Like you’re saying is just AI applied to every, you know, rising customer expec expectation, growing, you know, speeding up technology, adding in ai like you’re saying three years from now, five years from now, this is, this game is over. Like it all, we’re all gonna have to be instant. Yeah. And
JB (29:29):
That’s why you’ve got this chance now, right? If you lean into it sooner. If you don’t wait for your customers to pull you kicking and screaming and you lead them, you’ve got two, three years where you can dominate your category. You’ve just gotta get started.
RV (29:44):
I think this is so brilliant. This is like, you, you, you were, you were so ahead of the curve on content marketing, right? And it’s like, if I would’ve done then what you were saying about that, I would’ve caught that wave. We’d miss that wave. But like nobody else is talking about this. I mean, it’s like we talk about speed, but no one is going speed as a competitive advantage until you said that. And the moment you said it, I was like, that is so freaking brilliant. So the time to win.com is where to go to get the book
JB (30:13):
Yeah. Or Amazon or anywhere else that you get books at the time to win.com. There’s also the full research paper that powers the book. It’s like 30 pages and you can have, don’t we don’t even ask for email address, you can just have it. I just want you to have it. Cool.
RV (30:26):
That’s awesome. So that we can go download the research there. So we’ll put a link to the time to wind.com. Okay. I don’t wanna let you go without talking about Tequila J ’cause this is such a phenomenon. You spent 30 years of your life becoming one of the most respected consultants. You know, you after that you’ve amassed, I don’t know, a whopping 10,000 or followers or something on Instagram or something. And then you start Tequila Jay, this side project, give us a sense of the magnitude that this total, like my personal passion, hobby, give, give me a sense of the magnitude of how long you spent on it and what, what your reach has come with your, it’s truly like your personal, personal brand.
JB (31:10):
Well, first I, I’ll acknowledge that none of this would’ve happened without you, you know, your premise that, that your ideal audience is the person that you used to be
RV (31:19):
Is
JB (31:20):
The north star for my work in the tequila space. Because when I started this project which is just 18 months ago, there were a number of people creating content for advanced tequila fans, right? So there’s nerds talking to nerds, and I like that content. ’cause I’ve been a tequila fan for a long time. I like the kind of deep dive nerdy content, but I realized that there’s just not that many people in that category. There’s a lot more people who are just getting into tequila or have a margarita here and now, or have a Paloma here, and now that’s the much larger addressable audience. And so I always try and keep in mind what it was like to be a person who didn’t know much at all about tequila. And I was that person. It was a while ago, but, but I was that person. And so the content that we create is very intentionally pegged to the novice and intermediate tequila
JB (32:13):
Fan. And that’s been the lift underneath the whole project, right? That’s why it’s so popular because we’re not talking over people’s heads. Mm-Hmm. And it’s been a really interesting journey. We did it on Instagram reels and TikTok mostly because I don’t have a lot of experience historically with short form content. I’ve always done long form content. And I was like, well, let’s just see what this is. Like, let’s learn how this algorithm works, et cetera. And, and it’s been great. You know, five videos a week is a big lift. It’s a heavy lift you know, to do it every single week. But, but we love it. And now we’re really monetizing it across a bunch of different dimensions, right? We’ve got brand sponsors and tequila sponsors and a, a merch store and our own tequilas and a a and events business and private tastings. So there’s a bunch of different revenue streams that all kind of funnel into are in the business. And I’m not ready to quit my day job as a speaker and consultant yet, but, but it’s it’s definitely a real business, right? And considering my only goal was to be able to buy tequila on a business card instead of a personal card. I have, I have very much past, past the goals.
RV (33:19):
Well, the other thing is what’s gnarly is like you have pretty major celebrities reaching out to you.
JB (33:24):
Yeah, yeah.
RV (33:25):
Like, I mean Yeah. And you just built this huge audience. What, so it’s a couple hundred thousand followers, right? On TikTok? Yeah.
JB (33:31):
Between, yeah, between Instagram and TikTok. It’s a couple hundred thousand. Last month I think we reached 400,000 accounts. Wow.
RV (33:39):
So it’s,
JB (33:39):
It’s pretty, it’s pretty good group. Yeah.
RV (33:41):
And then you’re getting, you’re getting all these celebrities who are launching their tequila lines going, will you please review my
JB (33:47):
Absolutely. Yeah. And my house is just full of tequila. Allison is so mad
RV (34:05):
Oh man. Yeah.
JB (34:06):
I mean, if I move this camera like six inches, you would be flabbergasted how much tequila I have in this office.
RV (34:12):
That’s awesome. So is there, is there any other lessons that you think for personal brands, like specifically? I mean, that’s super powerful. I didn’t, I didn’t, I never even realized to put that together that, you know, ’cause we you that that you, that’s what you were doing was specif specifically creating content for the person that you once were, you know?
JB (34:30):
Yeah. And I talk about that in a lot of podcasts and people ask me about tequila and I always give you credit as I should. And how powerful that that premise is. And it’s really, really effective. You know, look, we all have the curse of knowledge and the curse of expertise. And if you don’t constantly disvalue yourself of that notion, you are truncating your addressable audience. The other thing that we do in the tequila space that I think you’ll appreciate and your audience will appreciate is we are the only tequila educator that de anonymizes the audience. So there are a number of other people, four or five that do Instagram, TikTok stuff like me. There’s a handful of kind of YouTube tequila educators. There’s a couple of podcasts, et cetera. But we are the only ones who have a list. So I produce a list every quarter of my recommended tequila brands.
JB (35:19):
Mm-Hmm.
RV (36:25):
Mm-Hmm.
JB (36:33):
It’s,
RV (36:33):
It’s a game changer. It’s al it’s also amazing to me how it’s like, you have social media and you have lives and all this stuff, but like building the email list, it’s just like, it always just re still the, it’s still the holy grail. Like Yeah,
JB (36:46):
I mean, I I, I mean, it’s great to do lives and social media and everything else, but, but you know, if all of a sudden you know, meta decides that they’re not gonna do any alcohol content on the platform.
RV (36:59):
Yeah. You’re hosted
JB (37:01):
Business is over close up shop. Right. and that could ha I mean, that’s not a, that’s not that far fetched. Like that could definitely happen, right? So you know, you gotta un you know, you’ve gotta build reliable reach, not, not unreliable reach.
RV (37:17):
I love it. I love it. Well so j tequila.com is where people can go get that list if they’re, if they’re
JB (37:24):
Yeah. J tequila dot com is for the list. The merch store is tequila j bearer.com and yeah, we got, we got a lot of web properties. Now all of a sudden,
RV (37:33):
I mean, if you’re, and if you’re a tequila person, which I’m not, I don’t drink, but like, you just, like, you’ve gotta go see this, right? You gotta, and and even if you’re not a tequila person, I would go, go check this out because you’ll see, I’m
JB (37:45):
Still gonna send you a hat though ’cause the hats are pretty great.
RV (37:48):
Well, I’m a hat person, so I could do, I could just, I know you’re, I can wear hats to soccer practice for the kids. So it’s really awesome, dude. But, but anyways, this speed as a competitive advantage blows my mind and scares the crap. It scares the crap outta me. And go, and I go, you know, this idea of going, how do we build brand builders group from the ground up from here for speed is like really has, has rocked my world and it’s, it’s affected us, right? So you know, I’ve been talking to you about instant automation toolkit, like this has been in development luckily for the last couple years, and we’re, we’re, we’re finally hitting, we’re finally about ready to release because it’s just like, that is the whole thing. Instant automation. It’s like we have to help people get this stuff deployed faster. So powerful stuff. Y’all. The time, the time to win is the book like it, this thing is, it’s so, it it fits in the palm of your hand. You read it an hour, get the, get the good stuff. So check it out. And it’s
JB (38:49):
Like nine bucks too. The book’s like $9. So if you don’t like it, let know. I’ll send you $9 back.
RV (38:54):
JB (38:59):
More than $9. Yeah. Private.
RV (39:01):
We’ll figure private stash at the house. Like when you start emptying those out. Well,
JB (39:04):
Because, because I, because as you know you know, we live right by campus in Indiana University, so all of our neighbors are university students. And so I get sent a lot of tequila that I don’t want to keep because it’s not very good. So I’m just like, I’m, I’m like, I’m like
RV (39:16):
Dishing it out, walking
JB (39:17):
Through the neighborhood, like who wants a bottle of tequila and all. Yeah. The college students love me. That movie neighbors. Like I’m the Seth Rogan character in that movie. Yeah. It’s fantastic. Yeah.
RV (39:27):
I love it. Well brother, thanks for sharing your wisdom. We wish you the best and it’s a pleasure. You, you, you are, you are stud, my man. I’m so grateful for you and my life and for having you share your wisdom here.
JB (39:38):
You too. Say hi to AJ.
Ep 440: Be An Author Entrepreneur with Allison Trowbridge
AJV (00:03):
Hey everybody, and welcome to the Influential Personal Brand podcast. This is AJ Vaden here, and I’m so excited to introduce everyone to a new friend of mine, Allison Trowbridge, who also goes by Allie. Ubut if you’re gonna look her up online, you’re probably gonna find her by Allison. Now, before I do a formal introduction of Allison, I wanna make sure you guys know who this episode is for and why you wanna stick around. First and foremost, if you have a dream, a passion, a goal, or you’re even on the road to being an author, this is an episode that is curated for that person who wants to write a book and get it out into the world. So that’s who this is for. It is for the established, the aspiring, or the one day, maybe that might be a thing I wanna do. This is who this is for
AJV (01:07):
You’re an author of any sort. This is an episode for you. Second, it’s for everyone who considers themselves an entrepreneur or a solopreneur, and they’re going, well, how does this personal brand thing and content and writing, like, how does this fit into my entrepreneurial journey? That is also something that we’re gonna talk about. And then third and definitely not last, we’re gonna talk about how authors are entrepreneurs. And I think that’s really important. Being an author is like starting a business, and so it needs to be treated like one. And we’re gonna talk about everything that it means to be an author and an entrepreneur in this world of marketing and personal branding. Now, let me introduce you to the one and the only Allison Trowbridge,
AT (01:59):
Aj, I’m so thrilled to be here with you. Oh my gosh. I just have to say, I have to say, AJ and Rory are officially hands down my new favorite people, favorite people in Nashville, probably favorite people in the world. I adore the two of you, and I’m obsessed with your content. I, I met AJ and Rory recently, and I started just going down the rabbit hole on everything you guys do online. And I have learned and gained so much from everything that you, you share so generously. So thank you for being you and everything you do for authors.
AJV (02:35):
You know what I love connections like this because Allie and I were connected by a mutual friend. And you know, it’s kind of one of those things too, when you get a random email, even though it’s from someone that
AT (03:02):
This one
AJV (03:02):
AT (03:32):
The biggest the biggest thing is I, I just learned before we started recording that their son, Liam actually asked after me at church on Sunday. And so that for me, I’m like, I’m in
AJV (03:45):
AT (04:52):
It was just Harry Potter mode,
AJV (04:55):
So there’s all these different things that really kind of led to like, why are you such a well positioned person to talk about this author entrepreneur concept? So let’s hear it from you. Like, tell us a little bit about your journey.
AT (05:10):
Oh my goodness. Well, aj I got started actually in the nonprofit world. So I spent my, I mean, I grew up with a deep love of books and I always had this dream of writing a book someday, but I got my start in my twenties working in nonprofits, working in anti-trafficking, anti-human trafficking. And when I was 22, I was graduating from college and I pulled in all-nighter with one of my best friends. And I said, there has never been a book, like there needs to be a book called 22 that speaks to all of these existential questions that we’re wrestling with right now. There needs to be, we need a mentor and it needs to exist, and I don’t see it anywhere. And so whatever I do career-wise, I’m going to write that book someday. And it was, gosh, it was seven or eight years later before I actually got a book deal on that idea, and it started to come to fruition.
AT (06:02):
But it’s so interesting because I’ve, I’ve heard you and Rory say a lot that you are, you are most equipped to serve the person that you once were. And so it was so interesting to be going through that season of life saying, I need guidance, I need direction. Someday I’m gonna come back and I’m gonna do that for someone else. So just one thing I wanna say. If you’re, whatever you’re in the midst of right now, maybe you’re like, I have no idea if I will ever write a book, but I’m like, I’m just in it and I’m wrestling with certain things right now. Pay attention to what that is. ’cause That may be directing you to where you’ll go back and help someone else someday. But that was really, that was really my origin story. So spent my twenties in human rights also as a partner in an impact investment fund.
AT (06:49):
So I was in the business world, and then I always knew in the back of my head that I was gonna write this book. It wasn’t a career move, it was just, it was almost a, a soul calling it that I felt like I had to, I had to follow through on this. And so went down the, the route of, I, I mean, first I built a, a really meaningful network of other authors and people doing similar things. And I just wanna call that out too because I think a, a lot of a lot of aspiring authors have the dream of publishing a book and they just get kind of stuck with it, and they kind of sit in a silo thinking about it. And I think becoming an author starts with becoming a good literary citizen and actually supporting other authors supporting the community of, of that was so strange.
AJV (08:36):
That was so weird. But I know the last thing you said was being a good author, so, okay, we’ll just pick up there. Okay. So it’s still recording. Okay, perfect.
AT (08:48):
Becoming an author really begins with becoming a good literary citizen. And so I, I really got my start in the book space by befriending and supporting other authors and championing them, making connections for them, supporting their book launches. And so I just wanted to call that out just to be thinking, if you have this dream of, of writing a book, how can you begin by supporting others who are further along in that dream knowing that someday down the road, that community will also rally around and support you. So fast forward am able to find an agent, put together a book proposal. I didn’t have any social platform. I wasn’t a well-known figure, but it was really based off of this, this concept that I knew there was a huge audience for and really identifying and communicating that effectively. Now, I made the ill advised ti life timing decision to publish that book while I was doing my MBA at the same time.
AT (09:58):
Which I, I would not advise. That was a very, very intense year of
AJV (10:39):
Well, I love, well, I love too that all of this is kind of organic and following your calling, and I love what you said that it’s like more than a career move, writing a book is a calling. Yes. And I often feel like being an entrepreneur, entrepreneur should be like that too.
AT (10:58):
A hundred percent. It’s not worth it otherwise. It’s too hard.
AJV (11:02):
It’s not. But often I think people use this as, Hey, I’m gonna do this thing so one day I can get this thing, which is freedom of time, freedom of money, it’s whatever. But then you realize, oh, snap. Like this is all consuming. And if there’s not like that deep calling, it’s when we feel burned out, exhausted, spent tired, whatever is the word you wanna use. But you know, those are, those are the same. Those are synonymous. It doesn’t matter. It’s like whatever you do in life, it should be a calling, not just a career move. So I love that you called that out.
AT (11:42):
Yeah. And something else that AJ did my wifi.
AJV (11:49):
Yeah, you’re breaking up. All right. You’re back.
AT (12:10):
I have, I have no idea what’s going on. I think I, I, it says I have full bars on my wifi and it’s Google fiber, so maybe I’ll switch to my iPhone wifi just to,
AJV (12:23):
I mean, we can, whatever you think. I mean, we can just keep rolling with it if it
AT (12:26):
Okay. I’m sorry about that. That’s okay.
AJV (12:30):
Okay.
AT (12:30):
It’s like a little trap door keeps dropping me out.
AJV (12:33):
AT (12:34):
Well, I heard the last thing you said. I, I can run with it.
AJV (12:37):
Okay.
AT (12:38):
You know, aj what that, what that makes me think of, I actually, so right now at Copper, and we’ll fast forward to this, but, but we’re hosting an accelerator for aspiring authors, and we had my friend Donald Miller on earlier this week talking about his writing practice and, and the process of writing. And he said something that, that really, that really kind of shook me, which was about, he, he carves out certain, a certain set of time every single day to focus on writing whatever book he’s writing. I was asking him how he produces so much, and he said, you know, he is like, you’ve gotta love the process. And it’s funny because if I were to tell you, if you were to ask what is 22, about 22, the book, my book about, I would say the, the moral of the story is that the journey is the destination.
AT (13:30):
It’s about learning how to lean into and love the journey of our lives instead of thinking we’re gonna arrive at some point. And I think that that is such an important piece of wisdom to apply to authors, also to apply to entrepreneurs. I think the, the big temptation is to think that we’re doing these things for some end result. I wanna be an entrepreneur because I want the big payout when I sell my company someday, or I wanna be an author because I want the credibility of hitting some bestseller list. And you are really going to, to hate the entire process if you don’t fall in love with the journey. Fall in love with the actual creation and the writing. Fall in love with learning how to reach your reader, your, your audience, and identifying what their pain points are if you’re an entrepreneur, learning how to enjoy the building. So it was something that was a, a really important callback for me this week of, of just this reminder to, to love the process of these things that we feel called to create.
AJV (14:34):
Yeah. You know, it’s so funny, as soon as you were talking, it made me think about this quote, how, and I think I saw it on Instagram, but you know, you look around at everything you have today and you realize that many times you have today what you once dreamed of and what you have today is what drives you nuts. And it’s kind of like, man, the thing that we wanna dream of is now the thing that is crazy. And it’s like so true. I think we all need to be taken back sometimes to falling in love with the process and not this desire for an end destination. Because if it’s all about that one day, you’re gonna look around and be like, wait, what was this all for again?
AT (15:14):
Totally. Totally.
AJV (15:15):
It’s Hannah Montana. It’s all about
AT (15:18):
Time. Totally.
AJV (15:18):
It’s all about time.
AT (15:20):
Yes. And, and the thing that’s that’s funny is that if you want to continue on that journey, you’re gonna begin again and go through the process all over again. I know authors who not only have hit the New York Times bestseller list, they’ve been selected by Oprah as part of her, the Oprah’s book club, and they still are like, it feels like the first time every time. And I don’t know what I’m doing and I’m still learning. And so I, I think it’s the falling in love with that process because those mountaintop experiences are gonna be short-lived, and few and far between. But if you love the journey of getting there, if you love the hiking up the mountain, then you’re gonna, you’re gonna really enjoy your life a lot more, I think. Oh
AJV (16:02):
Yeah. So tell us about ’cause I know we’ve had conversations about this, but I, what I love is your take on being an author is being an entrepreneur. Yes. Yes. And it needs to be treated like that. This is a business, it requires a business plan, it requires that, and most people who are writing books, unless you’re a full-time author, likely don’t know that going in
AT (16:26):
Yes. Well, I, I think a lot of the frustration around becoming an author starts starts with this point. So a lot of people will say to me, how do you write a book? How do you get published? Tell me how you get published. And they get frustrated because they think that there’s a silver bullet. Like, why isn’t everybody telling me how this actually works? And that’s like someone, an aspiring entrepreneur saying, how do you start a company? It’s, the answer is, there’s a lot to it. And it’s, it’s, you have to be able to give that full life commitment into the pro.
AJV (17:41):
Okay.
AT (17:42):
I’m, I’m gonna switch to my phone wifi. This is ridiculous. And I’m gonna call Google Fiber after this. I’m sorry. I dunno. Okay. It says it’s paired. Can you hear me Okay?
AJV (18:12):
Can. All right. So the last thing you said is it’s a commitment.
AT (18:18):
Let’s see. I, I think I’ll go back to the beginning of the author, entrepreneur thing. Okay. how did you tee up the question, the idea of just
AJV (18:29):
The fact that most people don’t know that being an author is like starting a business
AT (18:35):
AT (19:33):
The author really needs to be the entrepreneur. So if you think about the book writing as being the product development, after you develop the product, then you need all the other parts of the business. So you’re gonna need marketing, you’re gonna need sales, you’re gonna need partnerships, business development, operations, finance to make this all happen. And I also think about when it, when it comes to choosing your publishing path, should you self-publish? Should you go with a traditional publisher? Should you go the hybrid route? I really think about that just like taking an equity partner. So if you work with a traditional publisher for your book, that’s like being a startup that’s taking venture capital. It’s not for everyone. It’s for a small percentage. And that, that finance partner is gonna give you money upfront, which is fabulous, and they’re gonna take a lot of ownership, and they’re going to expect a huge result.
AT (20:30):
And they’re, they’re investing and making these risky betts hoping that one outta 10 books that they invest in are gonna pay for all of the ones that they lose money on. So it’s understanding those economics. And if a traditional publisher isn’t jumping at your book, it doesn’t mean it’s not a great book or a great idea, or that you’re an amazing author, just means they’re looking for that like venture return, then it means that they’re not seeing that based on the market, based on your reach. And that’s okay. So, so traditional publisher is like having a venture investor. Self-Publishing is like bootstrapping where you’re, you have a startup and you’re like, I am going to learn to do all of the pieces of the puzzle, and I’m gonna do it myself. I’m gonna own the whole thing myself. I’m gonna figure it out. Or I’m going to hire for the pieces where I don’t have natural strengths.
AT (21:20):
I’m gonna hire brand builders group to help me with the book launch part and to understand the, the branding and marketing piece. So I’m, I’m gonna, I’m gonna get support in different areas. And then you have the, the hybrid publishing down the middle, which I kind of think of like having an equity partner. You get to own your intellectual property, you get a lot more control over the process. You still get the high-end professional results, but it’s a higher cost of capital. You’re putting more in on the front end. So I think shifting our thinking as, as authors and creatives realizing that if you just wanna write, there’s plenty of spaces to just write. There’s ck there’s, there’s blogging, there’s newsletters, there’s LinkedIn, there’s you can journal, there’s a lot of spaces to write, but if you wanna be an author and publish a book, you’re actually selling a product to a customer. And because you’re selling a product, the book, you’re gonna have to think about it in the same way that ACEO thinks around selling the product in a business.
AJV (22:31):
Oh my gosh. Every single person in the world needs to hear that
AT (23:12):
Yes. No, it is.
AJV (23:14):
You know, it’s like,
AT (23:16):
Yes. And, and I spent as much time, so I was able to get that traditional publisher, Harper Collins chose to work with me, but my book proposal took about as long as it took to actually write the book, which is crazy. But it’s because I had to show them that this is a worthy investment. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (24:03):
I mean, that’s so important for everyone who is listening to realize of as you’re, you know, thinking and dreaming of one day, you know, I’m, I have all these books in my office, but it’s like holding up this book, and it’s like, that’s a product.
AT (24:18):
Yes.
AJV (24:18):
And businesses produce products, and in order to make the product get into the hands of other human beings, there needs to be a sales pitch, a marketing plan, a distribution plan. And those things take human resource, human capital, capital and dollars. They take dollars. Yes. Yes. And it’s treating it like a business. So I would love to know from you, in this world today, as you think about this author, entrepreneur, what do you see? Because I think this is a great opportunity for you to also share like, what is Copper books and what does Copper Books do? Because you have so much access to authors aspiring and current, but what are they doing well, and what do you know they should be doing
AT (25:11):
Yes. Well, my, my heart in this journey has always been for the author. I, I believe for one, that a book can change your life. Like, quite literally, can, can change your life. It can change the world. I, and, and it sounds like a cliche, but I really mean it. I I mentioned earlier that I began my career in anti-trafficking and human rights, that entire social movement, the reason why you as a listener know about that issue right now is because of books. There were a series of books published in the early mid two thousands on, on this issue, and it laid the groundwork for an entire social movement. So I get so passionate about the way that, that a book can move the needle, but then even more so, I think there is no more transformative or meaningful process for a human than to write their story and to write a book.
AT (26:05):
So, wherever you are, however many people you think may wanna read your book, I could not encourage you more to do it, because going through the process, it will transform you. It will be a before and after. It’s a meaning making journey. So I, I love the transformative process. I also think that this should be the golden age of publishing. It used to be that that publishing was an industry of gatekeepers, because it takes time and energy to determine what content can potentially sell. It takes a lot of time to read a book, right? And so the industry has operated off of gatekeepers and a small group of people being able to publish their work that has gotten blown open, blown, wide open over the last decade. It has never been easier to self-publish a book. It has never been easier to reach readers yourself to build an audience yourself.
AT (27:04):
20 years ago that wasn’t possible. Authors weren’t able to build their own audience. And so a lot of people get frustrated by the fact that they need to build a relationship with their reader. I think it’s the most liberating thing possible. You need to be more intentional. You need to, to really strategize it, you need to develop your personal brand and think about how you’re gonna outsource that trust so that people are coming to you to solve these problems that they have. And there’s consistency in all of that. But I think it is the most exciting time. If you have a dream of writing a book, now is the time to do it. Okay. So fast forward to, to Copper. So we built actually a tech platform. So, so you’re in the, in the iOS store, you can download the Copper Books app. We, we made it a place where authors and readers can connect and build community around books in a way that was centered around the author.
AT (28:00):
So with, we always say the author is the star of the show. If you are a, an author with a book, however you published it, self-publish, hybrid, traditional, you get verified. We link your book. There’s a all of this book data on the back end of it. And then readers can connect directly with the author of the books that they’re reading. We have a live events feature. If you’re a reader and you just love books, it’s a really great place for recommendations. You can track what you’re reading, create bookshelves, all of these things. So that’s the, the platform we created. And I actually did that with venture capital backing, which was the hardest thing I’ve ever done in my entire life to, I think the number is about 2% of, of all venture funding goes to, to female founders. So, I mean, you wanna talk about a steep mountain to climb that was, was not the most enjoyable the entire way.
AT (28:50):
I’ve gotten a lot of rejections, pitching, pitching this company, but was, was able to build raise the capital, hire engineers, build the platform. Here’s what we learned, seeing all of our community and our users. I realized that the people who were leaning in the most, who needed the support, who needed, who needed the tools and the resources and education, was actually the aspiring author. And so I built this platform thinking it was a two-sided marketplace for authors and readers. What I discovered is that the aspiring author is the most underserved group. And so I say all that in that we have shifted the entire focus of the company into how do we serve the aspiring author? How do we serve the person who is getting woken up in the middle of the night because they have this dream, this calling in them, this idea that they wanna put on into the world and they don’t know where or how to begin with it.
AJV (29:53):
Mm. I love that. I love that you said that too. They get woken up in the night with this at least once a week. I will wake up around four or 5:00 AM like looking for Rory, looking for my husband on the other side of the bed, and he’s missing. And then I’ll usually like go back to sleep. ’cause I know where he is,
AT (30:40):
My gosh. Yes. Yes. I would say I, all of the best parts of, of my last book 22 were like one-liners that I voice noted into Evernote in the middle of the night. Like, so much of my writing process is sitting up in bed being like, oh my gosh, I have to get that down and, and I’ll, I’ll voice note it into voice to text. So then I get up in the morning and it’s half gibberish, but I’m like, that’s a really great idea. Buried in there. I gotta put that in the book.
AJV (31:10):
But a lot of that comes back to enjoying the process. Yes. The process. And it’s a calling. Yes. It’s not a career move. It’s a calling that needs to be one of your signature lines, ally. It’s a calling, not a career move. Oh,
AT (31:25):
That’s good, aj. That’s good.
AJV (31:28):
It’s gotta be one of your signature lines. But I think all of this is so important because for the author, right, it doesn’t matter if it’s your first book or your 10th book, the same business planning is required for every single book. So tell us about this new awesome course that you are launching the author entrepreneur.
AT (31:49):
Yes, thank you. Well, so one of the things that, that we’ve experimented with this, one of the things we experimented with this year was helping to solve this pain point for aspiring authors. And we launched an accelerator this fall for aspiring authors nonfiction specifically who are working on their book ideas. And AJ it was one of the best, most fun, most life-giving things I have ever done. Everyone who went through it said that it’s, I mean, it’s totally rocked their world. It’s been the fav their favorite thing in their life right now. It’s, it’s been an incredible, incredible ride. And that was kind of my test ground to see is this a real felt need and can we, can we solve it? Is this you know, are these the questions that aspiring authors are really asking? And so, coming off of the success of the Accelerator, we’re, we’re, we’re wrapping it this week.
AT (32:47):
We’re gonna transition that content into an evergreen course where someone can go through it on their own time. So, so the accelerator was a live accelerator twice a week, every week. It’s a, a much bigger commitment. And a lot of what I heard from these aspiring authors was, oh my gosh, I want to do this, but it’s, you know, I don’t have capacity right now, or I, I’m gonna focus on the book next year, or Is there any way, are you gonna do it again? And and so instead of trying to do the accelerator all over again, I, I said, well, what if I can make this easier for that aspiring author and cheaper, honestly, to do it on their own time? So that is this course that we’re launching, we’re announcing it and opening up registration on December 12th. And because we love Brand Builders Group, we wanna give a discount to anyone who comes through Brand Builders Group. So just use the code bb g Yeah. For $200 off the course. We would love, love to have you in it. Oh,
AJV (33:49):
That’s awesome. And if you guys are listening and you wanna check this out, you go to copper books.com/course. I’ll put that in the show notes, and then use BBG as a discount codes copper books.com/course. Use BBG for the discount code. Now, what I, I know we’re almost out of time, but what I wanna talk to you about is kind of what you just said. It’s like, are these the questions that these aspiring authors are really answering, and what are the answers they need to know? So if you were to highlight one or two things that an aspiring author needs to know, what would they be?
AT (34:27):
One of them would be get to know your reader, who identify who your reader is. So thinking about your audience is one of the most important parts. If you wanna write just for you, that is beautiful, and I could not encourage you to do it more, but if you want to sell a book and actually create meaningful transformation in the lives of the person who decides to read your book, then you need to, you need to write with them in mind. Mm-Hmm,
AT (35:23):
What are they struggling with? Because that is going to be the big umbrella idea that’s gonna be the consistent line through the book that you write. It’s gonna be the, the shareable the way that, that people talk about your book and share it with others is to, to solve that pain point. And then it’s gonna help you start to, to speak on that content and attract that kind of reader, that kind of audience now long before your offering something to sell to them. So, so that would be one. And the second, which is related to that is I would really get clear on what your big idea is. So if you could distill your book down to one sentence, I think that the books that go the farthest in the market are ones that can be easily distilled down to one big idea.
AT (36:16):
Because I know when I buy a book, I’m usually buying into the big idea that I know that the book stands for and saying, I want more of that. So I agree. Let me give an example. 4,000 Weeks by Oliver Berkman. I’ve given that book to so many people, and it’s, it’s about how, it’s about the shortness of life, and yet how you can expand your days. I, I call it the anti anti productivity productive productivity book. And so it’s easy for me to share the concept of the book with other people and encourage them to buy it. And many times I’ll buy a book because I love the idea. Maybe I read part of it, but I’m buying into the concept. So I would encourage you to really get clear on who your reader is and start to build a relationship with them now and then. And then really, once you’ve identified their problem, identify the big idea of your book that’s gonna solve that problem for them. And that is gonna help you make decisions around the content that goes into your writing.
AJV (37:19):
Hmm. I love that. And I think I love that. It’s just clarity. All right. You gotta know what yes. What it is and who is for
AT (37:25):
Yes. And, and it’s an act of service. It’s an act of service.
AJV (37:30):
I love that. All right, one last question. Yes. what is your favorite book?
AT (37:36):
Oh my goodness. Oh, I have so many. I would say my favorite book is Vitor Frankl. Man’s Search for Meaning. Okay.
AJV (37:45):
I’m
AT (37:45):
Obsessed. I’m obsessed with this. I with meaning, with meaning making. Mm-Hmm. And, and I think it is, is the most beautiful. I think it’s one of the greatest books of the 20th century and the most beautiful journey in how you create and build a meaningful life. And everything I do in my work is around trying to help people build meaningful lives, whether it’s through reading incredible books or creating them.
AJV (38:12):
Oh, I love that. Well, I always love a good book recommendation. Ooh, A man search for Meeting. I just wrote it down. Put it on the list.
AT (38:19):
Amazing. And 4,000 Weeks, too. You’ll love that one. All right.
AJV (38:23):
I’ll put that down too for you.
AT (38:24):
AJV (38:25):
AT (38:56):
Yeah. And
AJV (38:57):
Those are not exclusive. Those are, those are, you know, together. And we have to treat it that way. And that was such a good reminder to all of us. It’s one thing to write a book, it’s another thing for someone else to read it. And so thank you so much. Ally. If people wanna connect with you online, where should they go?
AT (39:16):
You can find me on Instagram at Allie Bridge also at Copper dot books, on Instagram and LinkedIn. All the places, all the normal places. Would love to chat with you all. Would love to hear what your book idea is. And lastly, I just wanna say, if, if that dream won’t let you alone, it’s, it’s there for a reason and follow it.
AJV (39:40):
Hmm. Love it. So good. Everyone please check out Allie go to copper books.com. Visit her online, chat with her on Instagram. Do whatever you gotta do. But get connected and stay connected. And also catch the recap episode, which will be coming up next. We’ll see you next time on the Influential Personal Brand. See you later, y’all.
Ep 438: How to Get Affiliates to Promote Your Product with Matt McWilliams
RV (00:02):
Hey, at Brand Builders Group, you know that we say the more specific, the more terrific. And you hear people say The riches are in the niches. We say you’re most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were. And one of the things that I love about Matt is I have now known Matt, I don’t know, probably for 10, maybe 15 years, but Matt McWilliams is, if you ask me, who’s the expert on affiliate marketing, he’s the name that I think of. He owns that space. He has worked with several of my friends as their affiliate launch manager. Some of our clients, you know, this is people like Tony and Dean Tony Bins and Dean Graziosi, shark Tanks, Kevin Harrington, who’s a client of ours, Ryan Leveque Lewis Howes, obviously Brian Tracy Michael Hyatt’s a close friend, Jeff Walker’s a friend. And Matt has r has run launches for all of those folks.
RV (00:55):
Stu McLaren, on and on and on. And so a lot of the people I know and respect, they have hired Matt to help him run affiliate launches. And we’ve never done an affiliate launch per se at B B G, but our whole business model is more of an evergreen affiliate model where we pay people a lifetime referral fee when they refer people to us. But we’ve never done an affiliate launch where we have lots of affiliates all at once. But I know the power of it, and I just don’t know that much about how to do it. So I thought, let’s get our friend Matt in here to like drop some value bombs and teach us the affiliate game. So brother, welcome to the podcast. All
MM (01:33):
Right. Thanks for having me, Rory. And I, I love that. What was it you said that the, that your biggest something is in the, your previous pain point. I can’t, how did you word that?
RV (01:40):
Yeah, that’s one of our, that’s like our flagship thing, is that you’re most powerfully positioned Yeah. To serve the person you once were. Mm-Hmm.
MM (01:47):
RV (02:19):
Yeah. Did you
MM (02:19):
Trademark it yet?
RV (02:20):
MM (02:23):
The, alright. Trademark Roy Vaden. How about that? There
RV (02:25):
You go.
MM (02:26):
Yeah.
RV (02:26):
So the people you work with are obviously well known, right? And when you hear that, you go, well, yeah, of course everyone’s gonna promote for Tony Robbins and Dean Azizi, but like, talk to us about why do you need affiliates like e even if you’re small, even if you’re new, and can you really get them? And, and, you know, I wanna kind of hear a little bit about the why and the when. Like
MM (02:51):
Yeah.
RV (02:51):
Why do you need them and then when is the right time to go get ’em?
MM (02:55):
Well, I mean, first of all that yeah, people do promote for Tony and, and we, you know, promote for Jeff and promote for Stu and, and we help them, you know, two x their, their affiliate program and you know, Michael Hyatt, we helped him almost four x year over year when we took over. And, and while those are certainly easier, I mean, 90% of our clients nobody’s ever heard of, you know, because they’re in the parenting niche. And there, you know, it’s funny, when we’re in like a certain niche, I I always tell people this, when you’re in like a certain niche and you have that celebrity in your niche, so like Jeff Walker in internet marketing product launches, Stu McLaren in Membership world. I say go to Target. I call this the target test. You wanna know how non-famous Stu McLaren is outside of his little niche, go to Target, ask a hundred people. If they’ve ever heard of Stu McLaren, you’ll be lucky if one of them ever has.
RV (03:44):
Hmm.
MM (03:45):
You know, I mean, in in your niche, you know, you are famous in building brands and you’re famous in, you know, productivity kind of in your past life, right? And you’re famous as a speaker, but again, you’d be the first human may go to Target and ask a hundred people out, you know, go to a target in, you know, Columbus, Ohio, and you’d be lucky if one person’s ever heard of Rory Vaden.
RV (04:03):
Well, even Tony Robbins, like at Target. Yeah.
MM (04:05):
You know,
RV (04:05):
Might
MM (04:06):
Be five. Might be
RV (04:06):
Five. Yeah. Maybe five or 10.
MM (04:08):
Yeah. And, and, and he’s, you know, this larger than life person or Dean Grazi who’s sort of, and so yeah, most of the people outside of their little niche in the world, and even sometimes in their little niche, you know, we’re working with the, you know, people that are, you know, they’re not a lot of times seven and eight figure businesses. They’re people you never heard of. And this is working for them. And in fact, it’s one of the best ways to get known because the reality is you know, I I I say this a lot of times, like it’s never been harder to get noticed and therefore it’s never been harder to stand out. You know, there’s a, a, a correlation between the two. If you go back a hundred years ago, you know, no, most people outside of presidents and, you know, like a few politicians weren’t known out of their, before the advent of radio weren’t known out of, outside of a 10, 15 mile radius.
MM (04:55):
You know, it was almost impossible. The the problem with that is because now it’s easy for everybody to get their 15 minutes. It’s easy for everybody to go viral. It’s easy for everybody to get 10 million views or even, you know, a hundred thousand views that it becomes almost impossible to stand out. You know, there’s more content uploaded since you and I have been talking on YouTube than either one of us can consume in our lifetimes. So think about that, how hard it is to stand out. And so affiliates are one of those ways when you’re breaking into a niche, this is how I did, I mentioned back in 2005, we tried everything else. Now, this is before the advent of social media and, you know, targeting and all those things. But we tried all the stuff you do back in 2005 to break into our niche, which, which was the insurance world.
MM (05:37):
And it wasn’t until we started an affiliate program that we began to get some traction because, you know, couple things. Number one, you pay after the sale is made. So you, you pay only per for performance. You know, you pay later
MM (06:28):
And we’re still trying to figure things out. We don’t have to worry about targeting, which can take months or even years to figure out your affiliates do it for you. And what happens with affiliates is sometimes they will market to their list and you will discover niches or pockets of niches that you wouldn’t have thought you could profitably target. But you realize, oh my gosh, we had 12 people buy this week that are moms of, you know, such and such, right? We moms of special needs children. We never thought our course would be good for moms of special needs children, but you know what, maybe we could target them. And so you start to learn things. Obviously, you know, one of the biggest benefits is just the fact that the, the leads are warm. You know, the prospects are warm. The reality is, very few people woke up today thinking, you know what I need to do?
MM (07:17):
I need to buy so-and-so’s product. Or they’re scrolling through Facebook because they wanna see their niece’s new. I wanna see my new, you know, baby I didn’t think nephew. Now why? I had to think of, was it a nephew or niece
RV (08:16):
Wanna, so just some of the reasons why it’s great. I talk about, I wanna talk about that part right there about landing on the page. So, so, you know, let’s assume that you get affiliates is most of what’s happening in the affiliate world, like your world is, is that still today, like you’re recruiting people to basically promote some type of free training, either a free lead magnet or a free webinar, or a free, you know, like if it’s a Jeff Walker, it’s like a free video, like a little video, mini video course. Is that pretty much what’s happening is you’re still just promoting, everyone’s promoting to something for free, someone’s adding value, and then they’re selling something at the end,
MM (08:55):
Not necessarily in your world, you know, kind of in the, you know, if I think of your clients, yes, that’s the norm. Probably 97% of the time. It’s going to be a free report, a free webinar, a free, you know, launch sequence type thing. You know, like you said, the three video series, something like that. Other options, you know, if it’s a software could be a free trial, you know, that’s obviously a good entry point. One of the things we’re seeing that’s working really well with some of our clients is a free training, you know, free webinar with a backend. Make sure you claim this free trial of this software. ’cause We’re gonna show you how to use it on the webinar. You know, and that works really well because it, you know, now gets them into like using the software and if we can get ’em to use the software they’re gonna stick around, you know, seven times outta 10. And so there’s all types of things there. But yeah, I mean, there’s direct to sale, there’s direct to call, there’s all types of things. But yeah, in brand building world, typically it’s gonna be to a, some sort of a free resource or Okay. Video series or webinar.
RV (09:58):
And then is most of what you’re doing, like, you know, like when I think of affiliates, I tend to think of more information products, like mm-hmm.
MM (10:28):
Yeah, I mean, again, it’s all over the place. Retail products, obviously the commissions are lower, but they’re, they’re more commoditized. And you’ve got a lot of, you know you know, brands that spend the majority of their time promoting things that are retail products. And yeah, you might only make 10% of a $57 purchase, you know, five 70, but multiply that by a thousand people. You know, you’re making close to $6,000 for Facebook post. You know, that’s not a bad way to make some money, right? It’s really all over the place. But again, in, in your world, typically it is gonna be to a, a higher priced, you know, course or, you know, coaching. And we have some clients that are killing it with, you know, $24,000 a year coaching offers where we pay the affiliate of flat $3,000. And, you know, well that’s not a very high percentage, but at the same time it’s $3,000. You know, typically the higher the touch, which is we consider touch, meaning my time. So when I coach somebody for an hour, it costs an hour of my time. That goes into the cost of goods. So obviously the higher the cost of goods, the lower the affiliate commission’s gonna be. So the higher the touch, the lower the commission is gonna be. And that’s accessible.
RV (11:43):
That’s how brand Builders group works, right? I mean, this is how we built brand builders group so fast. We pay a 10% lifetime referral fee to any of our clients who refer someone because we’re, we do one-on-one coaching and live events. I mean, it’s, it’s so people intensive. It’s non-scalable. It’s not digital. Exactly. It’s completely the, the, the low margin human experience trying to pay people well and recruit ’em because we, we try to, we try to know people one-on-one and it’s less about like the courses and stuff. And and so it’s a lower percentage, but we just pay it forever and it just goes on mm-hmm.
MM (12:25):
Yeah, exactly. And that’s just normal and that’s expected. So when I promote something as an affiliate, ’cause it’s, you know, there’s a lesson by the way. If you’re gonna start an affiliate program, spend a little bit of time promoting something as an affiliate first just so you have the understanding of how it works. And, and a lot of times, like for me, the reason I’m a much better affiliate manager than I was my first five years. And, you know, to be clear, my first five years I built a program from scratch to more than a million dollars a month and had won affiliate managers of the year twice. But I’m still, I was 10 times better by 2014 than I was in 2000, you know, 10 because I became an affiliate and I started seeing things and I started going, I don’t like the way, you know, that works.
MM (13:08):
Like, I hated it as an affiliate not getting a leaderboard every day. You know, it drove me nuts. Like, did, did the thing I did, did yesterday, did I move up the leaderboard? Did I move down? I wanna know. ’cause I’m competing against my friends and I wanna beat them and I wanna win a better prize. And so we invented the live leaderboard back in 2013. Now it’s, most programs have one, you know, it’s just become ubiquitous because, you know, somebody got tired of the way that the norm was and changed something. And so we see things as an affiliate that drive us crazy. And so we address those, or we quite frankly can copy things from other people. I mean, I give all credit in the world to Danny Ney because in 2014, I was promoting him and he said, Hey, I’d like to get on a call with you.
MM (13:50):
And he, we got on a one hour zoom call and mapped out my entire promotion of his launch on a spreadsheet. And then he sent me the spreadsheet and I went, oh, I get what he’s doing. That’s the principle of commitment and consistency, right? Outta Robert Seal D’S playbook. Right? He’s holding me accountable to what I said I was gonna do versus me just saying, yeah, yeah, yeah, I’ll do that, that, that. And then there’s no documentation. And so we stole that idea from Danny. We started doing the exact same thing. If you look at the way we do it, if you look at one of my calls and one of his calls, you could overlap them and they’d be exactly the same. And so be an affiliate first. And when you do that, you’ll start to, to see those things that,
RV (14:27):
Well, how do you do that? Like, how do you, how do you find affiliates or how do you find affiliate opportunities? I mean, obviously your friends, right? Like they go, Hey, I have a book coming out, or I have a course launch. I mean, I guess that would be one way, but like, how do you find affiliates?
MM (14:43):
Let’s talk about the first one. How do we find like things to promote ourselves opportunities?
RV (14:47):
Sure.
MM (14:47):
I say, look around at your desk, you know, your virtual desk might be your computer. What sites do you log into? What software are you using? What tools are you using in your business? You know, you said it best, like your biggest area of, you know, strength is where you used to be weak. The, the be the best place for you to serve your audience is from the place where you struggled 5, 7, 10 years ago. You know, for me it’s now 18
RV (15:33):
Basically just promote the tools you love. Like find like the tools,
MM (15:35):
Promote love. Mm-Hmm.
RV (15:37):
Yeah. Promote the thesis,
MM (15:37):
Promote the brands that you love. Promote the, again, and it can be as simple as, okay, if I have a friend who says, who comes to me and, you know, they’re relatively well-known and they’re launching a book in a year, and they say, who do I need to talk to about, you know, yeah. Obviously us for selling books through affiliates, but who else do I need to talk to? Who, who on earth am I gonna recommend other Roy Vayan? I mean, literally it’s not, I, there’s, I mean if’s no reason.
RV (16:01):
You’re smart, you’re not gonna for sure Uhhuh
MM (16:03):
And so the fact that you have a referral program, all that does honestly, in my opinion, is kind of make it more top of mind. Mm-Hmm.
RV (16:10):
MM (16:11):
And to your stand, you know, from your standpoint. Let’s flip to the other side. When you send me that PayPal deposit for, you know, a good chunk of money, I go, huh. You know, I wonder if there’s anybody else I could proactively think of, right? Instead of just waiting for people. Come, you know what, I’m gonna reach out to a few people. I’m gonna reach out to my friend Brian, who I know has a launch coming up in eight months. And just say, Hey, do you need anybody? If so, I’d love to introduce you to Rory, and it takes me 20 minutes and two of them say yes, and I make a bunch of money for 20 minutes of my time. Like, what else could I do with 20 minutes of my time to make that kind of money? Probably nothing. So that’s the finding, you know, like finding affiliate programs to promote side. Many of those can turn into two-way relationships. I was just talking with one of our coaching clients the other day, and I
RV (16:59):
Go,
MM (17:00):
There we are. Yeah. I was talking to my friend the other day and one of our clients and introducing her to some other clients and I said, you know, here’s why these clients would be good partners, because they have your audience and you have their audience. So the question we ask and we wanna find affiliates is who, who already has my audience? So if you get a software that’s for course creators and coaches and somebody over here that teaches how to create content for course, you know, course creators and coaches to match made in heaven, let, let’s get those two people working together. So the simple formula, let’s, let’s say take a book. Let’s just take a book for example. I call it the Amazon Rabbit Trail because Amazon makes this super easy for us. We pick one book that we think is similar to ours.
MM (17:48):
That’s exactly what we did, did for our book. It’s, you can do this for products or anything. I’m just using a book as an example. And you look that book up on Amazon and you see, when did it launch? I wanna find a book with a launch date of, in the past three years. So I look and it says it launched in January of 2018. I’m not gonna use that one. Let me think of another one. All right? I look at the other book up, it launched in February of 2022. I’m gonna go to Google and I’m gonna look up all the search results from about one month before and one month after that launch date. ’cause I want to find specifically people who promoted, who interviewed, who did whatever for that launch period. Not that wrote about the book nine months later and said how good it was.
MM (18:29):
That that’s not who I want. I want people who promoted this book launch. And I’m gonna look those people up and I’m gonna reach out to them and I’m gonna say, Hey, this, I’m gonna give you the gist of the email here. Hey, I saw that you promoted such and such book a year ago. I’ve got a similar book coming out in nine months, and you wanna do this plenty of time in advance. ’cause People’s promo calendars fill up. I’ve got an, I’ve got a similar book coming out in a few months. It’s different in that it covers this, this and this. You know, whatever the specifics are. Can I send you a copy? Would you be, or would you be interested in having me on your podcast? Or would you be interested in promoting it as an affiliate? And it’s a very brief email.
MM (19:09):
We don’t write a 10 sentence, 12 sentence email. ’cause What do you do, Rory? When you get a long email from somebody you don’t know asking you to do something? You delete it before you even read it. So it’s a very short email with a specific call to action. And that’s how we find affiliates. The same is true for products. You have a product, what are some similar products? You have a coaching service. What are some similar, you know, things like what would other people, what would they have bought that is similar to yours? And it doesn’t have to be if you offer a coaching service, you don’t even have to reach out to affiliates of coaching services because people who bought courses or books or whatever joined a mastermind about this topic might have also, or might also be interested in your coaching service. So you reach out to those people who are affiliates for those products and ask ’em if they would like to promote you mm-hmm.
RV (19:56):
MM (20:02):
That’s what we do. Yeah.
RV (20:03):
If I don’t wanna do that, I go, I get an affiliate manager and I say, Hey, go recruit me some affiliates. Yeah. And then we share in the, we share in the pay together, right? Yeah.
MM (20:11):
I mean, like right now, I mean, you and I have been on, you know, for 20 minutes or so. I mean our team’s, you know, we have multiple people on our team right now finding affiliates for our clients. You know, obviously we have a huge database of people that have been affiliates in the past, but we’re breaking into new niches all the time. Like I, we’ve got a client in the parenting niche right now. We’ve never done anything in the parenting niche. Now there’s a little bit of overlap with the entrepreneurial side. So we reached out to our entrepreneurial affiliates about this parenting offer and we got a few and done had success with it. But now we’re kind of in that phase where we need to go out and find people who’ve promoted other parenting courses. We got another one that’s in the health and fitness niche. Her summit is, she’s doing a virtual summit. It’s all about getting off sugar. I don’t have a list of people for that. So we’re doing what I just said. And yeah, it’s extremely time consuming. And yeah, to your point, you know, there’s two types of people in this world. People have more money than time, and people have more time than money. And people who have more time than money go do it yourself. Like it’s, you can execute on this. It just takes a lot of time.
RV (21:11):
Mm-Hmm.
MM (21:55):
Well, again, the easy way you just said it, you know, hire us,
MM (22:44):
You know, any of the myriad of CRM slash shopping carts slash funnel builders, et cetera, et cetera. You have a built-in affiliate tracking system in there. It’s pretty, it gets a few clicks and it can take you as little as 15 to 20 minutes to set this up. Like it’s really easy, thankfully, if you are not on a system that has a built-in affiliate program. And I would venture to say I’ll put it this way, we’ve worked with 70 clients over the last eight years. And I’ve only had one who didn’t have a built-in affiliate tracking system in their software. I had two that they had a built-in, one that I didn’t like. So we used a different one. So three out of roughly 65 to 70 clients did we have to use an external thing. So again, it’s very rare.
MM (23:32):
There’s 50 good ones out there. Typ, you know, I don’t even wanna name ’em ’cause it depends on what platform you’re on, but depending upon what, whether you’re on WordPress or this or that, there’s plugins, there’s softwares, and I’ve never had one Rory that, and I’m not super techie. People are like, oh, you gotta be super techie. Like, dude, I don’t know how to edit my own WordPress posts. I have to message a teammate to do the thing that I want him to do because I don’t know how to do it. I barely can function on Google, you know, sheets and, and you know, stuff like that. And I literally just learned the other day how plugins work on WordPress. All right, so it’s 2023 and I can make these things work. They’re super easy, thankfully. So
RV (24:15):
What I hear you saying there is that a lot of the built-in functionality that come with the off the shelf tools, so whether it’s like for, for us, we’re, we’re heavy Infusionsoft Keap users, right? So we’re, we’re big fans of Keap. But a lot of our clients use ActiveCampaign. They’ll use ClickFunnels. Yep. They’ll use Kajabi, they’ll use HubSpot.
MM (24:38):
Everyone you just named has that built in.
RV (24:40):
Okay. And, and then I’m not as familiar with SamCart, but you’re saying that SamCart has, has it built SamCart I think of more as like a e-commerce, like a store? Is that not the way kind
MM (24:51):
Of is? Yeah,
RV (24:52):
Kind of is. It’s more like shop like I think of it as more like a Shopify
MM (24:55):
Not exactly. It’s it’s shopping cart. It’s
RV (24:58):
A shopping cart.
MM (24:59):
Now keep in mind I haven’t been, I haven’t logged into SamCart in seven years, so it might have changed, but I know it has affiliate tracking. ’cause We, we have an affiliate program that we promote that uses the SamCart link. You know, so, so,
RV (25:10):
So you guys are kind of tech agnostic in that way. Like you can grab, you can, you can work within, you’re just, you’re used to seeing all the different systems. And I,
MM (25:18):
I say all the time I’m platform agnostic. Yep. Uhhuh, I don’t, I mean outside of, and I’m not gonna say who it is publicly. There’s one and it doesn’t matter. There’s one that we can’t stand because the tracking doesn’t work properly.
MM (25:57):
I mean, it’s a eight minute process. 20 if there’s some nuance to it, like, oh, we told this person we’d do something different or what I don’t, you know, I can’t even think of it. Occasionally if you get some, you know, like big, big payments, we will pay those in a different manner. But usually it’s a download upload, right? I mean it’s download to a CS v, upload the CS v, it pays them. Now this is one little thing, and I’m getting a little bit advanced this why you hire people like us. ’cause Then we do this, we then send emails to all of those affiliates. You go, but PayPal sends them an automated email to Pauly sends ’em an automated email that says, you know, you made, nobody reads the automated emails. Right? At least I don’t, and I don’t very many people do.
MM (26:38):
We send ’em a personalized email that says something like, Hey Tom, thank you so much for supporting Amy this month. Just wanted to let you know we’ve got a PayPal deposit on the way for $8,226. You know, that’s pretty awesome. You know, that that’s, you know, you made 14 sales and people loved the webinar and we’ve, here’s three people who responded already saying they love the, the course, you know, that you referred, and by the way Amy’s big summit’s coming up in four months. Would you like to support it? ’cause What’s a better time to ask somebody to support something that you’re doing than when you just told ’em you’re sending ’em a boatload of money. And so that little extra step that I have never seen anybody outside of us. And I’m not saying nobody’s doing it. I just have never seen it. I have never seen anybody else take that one little extra step on those payment things. And, and it works every time. I mean, I would say one third of those emails get a response like, absolutely sign me up. I’m in for whatever you got going on.
RV (27:41):
Yeah. And man, I just, you know, I just have to say like, one of my favorite things of, of like, of my whole life is sending out our check the checks every month to our affiliates. I mean, we give them massive passive mailbox money. Yeah.
MM (27:54):
I mean,
RV (27:55):
We have several affiliates that have earned six, like six figures from a podcast interview with me. Like it
MM (28:02):
That’s crazy. You
RV (28:03):
Know, tens of thousands of dollars from one podcast interview and they’re still getting paid. And it’s, it’s such a fun thing to do. There’s like a part of it. That’s the
MM (28:13):
Right attitude. That’s the right attitude to have, by the way. ’cause Some people are like, oh my gosh, you’re gonna keep paying the affiliates. No, I mean, you’re, you’re re not only are you rewarding them, not only is it the right thing to do, but they’re gonna return in kind because every time you send one of those checks, they’re thinking, like I said earlier, Hmm. I wonder what else I could do to refer business to Rory. That’s
RV (28:32):
Right. That’s what I want. I mean, I, I have found that one of the best ways to make friends is to send them checks every month.
MM (28:48):
Buy me love
RV (28:50):
Well man, this has been awesome. I in, in the spirit of affiliate links, I want to give out an affiliate link for you all to meet Matt and to learn more about what he’s up to. So I’m gonna give you the link here. So the, the, the link is brand builders group.com/affiliate guy. So that’s what Matt McWilliams, he goes by affiliate guy. So brand, so brand builders group.com/affiliate guy. If you do that, Matt is gonna give you this download. I’ll let him explain it a little bit. Yeah. But it is called How to Get Your First a hundred Affiliates Free Report. And that is exactly what, if you’re getting exposed to this for the first time and you’ve never done it, you need, and affiliates has changed Brand builders. I mean this has, we’re an eight figure business in five years. And like the secret is affiliates, like this is the thing that we do. We send out money every month now we do it in perpetuity. So it never goes away. And that helps, that helps. Part of it helps people continue to refer people to us. Yep. But anyways, anything you want to tell ’em about that. So brand builders group.com/affiliate guy, how to get your first a hundred affiliates free report?
MM (30:01):
Yeah, it’s just, it’s got 15 places, you know, defined affiliates. A few, one of which I covered today. A few of which you probably never even thought of. I mean, again, it depends on your niche. We’ll show you how to work with like nonprofits and how to, you know, how to work with your friends, how to work with even competitors. That’s probably my favorite one. Like, you just have to read it because the working with competitors one when I was in the, the music business, you know, music construction business, that completely changed our business. I took one affiliate program for about one and a quarter million, over 6 million. And about half of that growth was working with competitors in some pretty cool ways. So we covered that in the report. You got some templates in there for emails you can use to reach out and all kinds of goodies. So yeah, go grab it.
RV (30:42):
That’s really cool, man. Well Matt, so great to see you. Thank you for making time and so great to talk to you. Really appreciate this. We haven’t talked enough about this. This is a key, key part of growing the business. So all the best my friend. Thanks Rory.
Ep 436: Become A Better Copywriter Using AI with Kyle Stout
AJV (00:02):
Hi everybody. Welcome to the influential Personal Brand podcast, AJ Vaden here. Super excited to have a conversation around something that everyone is talking about and continues to talk about. And so we’re gonna continue that conversation here today on the topic of AI and your personal brand. And so, before I introduce my awesome guest, Kyle Stout, I wanna tell you guys just a couple of reasons why you wanna stick around for today’s interview. So here are some things to ask yourself. And if you have the answer is yes to any of these questions, then this is an interview custom designed for you. Number one, do you want to use AI better? If you answer yes to that, stick around for this interview. Do you want to figure out better questions, better prompts to be putting into AI to get what you actually want? The answer is yes.
AJV (00:57):
Then you wanna stick around. And if you wanna talk about how AI can improve your email marketing, content marketing, or anything else that you’re doing online, then this is probably the conversation that you wanna stick around and listen to. So without further ado let me introduce you to our guest who’s going to make us better not only at using ai, but also becoming better email marketers for everything that we’re doing in our business. So Kyle Kyle Stout is the founder of Elevate and Scale, which is a marketing agency that helps with direct to consumer brands improve their revenue and put their sales on autopilot. Who does not want that
KS (01:52):
Thank you for having me.
AJV (01:54):
Yeah, this is gonna be a great conversation. I know everyone’s been talking about it. Everyone Conti continues to talk about it, and I feel like the same questions continually get asked from everyone in our community, everyone in our audience, which is, how do I become better at using ai? And so I would love to hear a little bit of your backstory about how you got to where you are and how have you learned so much about using AI in the most efficient and effective way?
KS (02:25):
Okay. So my background is in copywriting, and there have been a lot of these AI copywriting tools that have been out prior to what everyone now knows as like chat, G P T and that level of, of ai. And honestly, they weren’t really very good. I had, you know, but I was always kind of keeping an eye on it just because I thought, well, it would be really useful if it was really good someday. And then chat G p t, of course has changed everything and all of the new you know, technology that’s come about since then has changed everything to where now you can actually get really good copy. But what I have found to be the most important thing for getting, not just copy, but the best outputs in general from the AI tools that you’re using, is the detail in the prompts that you give it. And being specific with what you’re looking for in an answer as opposed to just asking a very broad question. Because you have to think that, okay, while this AI is very smart, it’s considering so many different possibilities of answers like way beyond the what we would ever consider in our mind. And it’s trying to come up with this, you know, generalized response that will cater to all those things instead of honing in on the specific, you know, variables that you really care about.
AJV (03:39):
Yeah, I love that. And I think that’s, well, one, I love that you have such a, a strong background in copywriting because I feel like you still have to be a copy editor to use ai. Well, and I still, I just know from our community at Brand Builders Group, we’ve got, you know, 750 monthly members and one of the biggest struggles that people still have is copywriting. And most of the use cases that we’re encountering from our community and even just increase from this podcast is, man, where do you find good copy? How do you write good copy? Who can, who can do it affordable and make it quality? And so I’d love to hear your take on just the AI generated copy as a copywriter, because I think what a lot of people think is, oh, this is going to solve this problem I have, or it’s gonna replace, you know, all of these people. And it’s like, I don’t agree with that. So I would love to hear your take on being a copywriter and using ai.
KS (04:39):
Yeah, so it’s definitely not as good as a, as a trained copywriter. And you know, I still have copywriters on my team who are writing the copy for our clients, but it is, I mean, it’s honestly pretty good to where in a lot of cases you can get copy that’s good enough to where you just need to go in, make some tweaks, of course, add in the personal language that fits your brand, that that’s the biggest piece is you want to mm-hmm.
KS (05:31):
So yeah, I think that you, it, again, it’s not as good as the copywriter, but you don’t have to have a copywriting background to use it. One thing about great copy is that it is very conversational. Mm-Hmm.
KS (06:17):
So things like that. So you’ll learn just by practicing little tricks of like your go-to things that you always include in the prompts, but really it’s gonna get you the, the base level of information you’re trying to convey. It’s pretty good at getting that. Then you just need to kind of massage it and humanize it to your brand. And that’s where you can really save a lot of time and money and you know, be able to produce really good copy without having to go hire a full-time copywriter if you’re, you know, not in a position to do so.
AJV (06:47):
Yeah. No, I love that. And I think you kind of nailed it on the head and a part of our conversation today is you have to know what you want in order to put in the right prompts so you get the right outputs. So let’s talk about that for a minute. Like, how do you get the best outputs? Like what’s the key to putting in successful prompts and like, how do you get better at telling it what you want so you actually get something that’s more usable?
KS (07:16):
So there’s a couple of pieces here. So before jumping to like, having this really detailed prompt, I think it helps to actually train the AI a little bit for, so let’s say for example, you’re using chat G P T and you open a new chat thread if I, for any business, any whatever it is, if it’s your personal brand, whatever, you keep all the conversation in that one chat thread. And I initially like to start off by having it do some research on creating an ideal customer profile for that business. Mm-Hmm.
KS (08:01):
So you know, a business that sells t-shirts online or, you know, whatever your business is. And then I put including information on demographics, psychographics, behavioral patterns, and customer needs and pain points. And that will give you a really detailed output of all of these demographics. And like, especially the really important stuff are like the big pain points, the, the wants, needs, desires, all of that of your ideal customers. So now the AI is familiar with, okay, the prompts you give, it’s going forward, it’s going to take into consideration this profile that you’re targeting. And then not only that, but you can take that output you just got from it, and then you can copy and paste that back into a prompt and say, now give me, you know, 10 topic ideas for videos or for emails or for whatever it is. And then that will usually give you 10 kind of broad ideas for your category where whatever, you know, industry you’re in, and then those broad ideas, you can actually go back and have it give you 10 more or even more than that.
KS (09:00):
But I like 10, you know, 10 more specific pieces of content. So now you have 10 different kind of angles to take to talk about that broader topic. And that’s how you can scale up the, or or solve the problem of, okay, what do I, what do I say in my content? So at, at this point now, there’s unlimited ideas for topics. And when you drill down to those specific subtopics and then you have the AI write the email or write the video script or whatever about that, now it’s gonna be a lot more refined. And so you can copy and paste in your ideal customer profile, in your prompt, you can copy and paste in the specific smaller, more refined topic that you wanted to write about. And then below that I would give it some details of like what, what type of content this specifically is.
KS (09:46):
So if it’s a, if it’s a sales email, if it’s a nurturing email, if it’s a, a video that’s, you know, and I tell it what objective I have for the video, and then I’ll, that’s at the end of that I’ll put in my little personal notes. So for example, I always tell it to use active voice because I find that a lot of times it uses passive voice, which is just not good copywriting. I might tell it to use a specific copywriting formula, and you can Google these if you don’t know any copywriting formulas that you might like. Little details like that. So other, other things would be like, don’t mention this, you know, ’cause you find that it kind of gets into patterns where it does certain things you like and does certain things you don’t like. So I always tell it not to do the things I don’t like. And with that kind of prompt, that’s how you’re able to get a really good rough draft of copy that now it only requires a little bit of editing and you don’t, you, it is not just completely off the mark to where you feel like you’re having to start from scratch each time.
AJV (10:39):
How long are your prompts
KS (10:43):
So here’s the thing, if you do this upfront as you go, because it remembers all your, your chat history, you don’t have to do that every single time. So for a while I was doing that every single time because I, because I was getting such good outputs, I started to think, oh, I guess I have to do these really long, detailed prompts every single time. What I have found is that if you take it through that journey of doing some customer research, then doing some topic research and then having it write specific types of content for you from that point on, I can say, Hey, write an email about this, this particular product or whatever. And it’s, it’s already on point. It remembers all the stuff I told it before, so I don’t have to be that detailed every time. So yeah.
KS (11:22):
But it does help to at, at some point be that detailed and to give it feedback of, I don’t like, you know, use less humor, use more humor, you know, be more concise, like whatever. And it, it just kind of picks up on on your preferences. And then from that point on, that’s where, that’s honestly, I think is the biggest difference where some people have a really bad experience with AI and some people have a really great experience and the people who are having a great experience, they maybe didn’t know this is why it happened, or they aren’t sharing that because they just spent so much time practicing and doing all these iterations that they’re, the, the AI is just working more effectively for them than for someone who just starts and they try to jump right into write a script for this video right from the very first prompt without a lot of detail of, you know, considerations of your brand and your target customers and all that.
AJV (12:13):
Oh, that’s so good. But it’s, you know, it’s like the more specific and the more detailed you are in the beginning, it’s gonna remember that and it’s, you’re gonna have to be less and less of that over the course of time.
KS (12:24):
Exactly. So I always, on my in chat, G P t I have like all my saved chats. So for whatever it is, whether I’m planning my YouTube videos, I have a chat that I only use for that. Or if I you know, for certain clients, you know, stuff I’m, if I’m researching ideas for emails, I have a certain chat for each one of them. So, and then that way I don’t have to go through that whole learning curve again. I just save it and go back and just pick up where we left off. And it’s, it’s super easy.
AJV (12:49):
Oh, love that. Super, super insightful. And although I’ve heard tons of people talk about you gotta just ask better prompts, you gotta have this, you gotta have that. No one has made some of the comments that you just did, which I think is really helpful because you have a copywriting background such as use more humor, be more concise, use an active voice, like those are all the things that I’m like, yes, that right there would even help. Like, you know, it’s like we do a ton of copy and we’ve been using custom G P T to kind of like train our own copywriting, like bot mm-hmm.
AJV (13:52):
You know, it’s like, but it’s because people aren’t using these type of nuanced just little tips. That’s awesome. So, so, so, so, so super helpful. So that kind of like leads me to my next questions, which would be, what do you think are some of the, the strengths and weaknesses of using AI to generate, you know, content and, you know, and I would say just content in general, but then super specific to email marketing content.
KS (14:22):
Yeah. So the biggest strengths and the things that I really love about it the most are doing the initial ideal customer profile type of research. Because when I first am am working with a client, that’s a, that’s a big time consuming task that we do. Before we write any copy, we need to nail down the messaging strategy. And a lot of that is just really dialing in on what are the big wants and needs and pain points, because that’s what’s gonna drive all of the topics we write about. ’cause Even if we’re, you know, if we’re selling supplements or, or t-shirts or whatever, it doesn’t matter what it is. If it’s a an online course, whatever, we’ve got to write the message in a way where the person who’s receiving the email feels like you care about them. They wanna know what’s in it for me.
KS (15:02):
And so you always wanna frame it around those things that, those desires and those problems that never go away for them. So that’s the first part, just saves a ton of time and helps us be, you know, really thoughtful and strategic with that. Then coming up with, you know, sometimes you just, especially if you’ve done a lot of emails for, you know, for your business or for a particular business, you get to where you’re like, okay, now you know, how do we find another way to talk about the same things? And that’s where chat PT is really mm-hmm.
KS (15:48):
So adding in those little, ’cause at first, if you just ask it for topics, it’ll give you a bunch of topics, but then you’ll run through those. So that’s where you start. You have to start throwing in extra things like, you know, I need topic ideas with this extra little detail to, you know, narrow down the list of topics. So that’s a, those are the two best things. I really like it to, to get alternative headlines, subject lines, things like that. So copy we’ve written, but we’re like it’s good, but we don’t love it. Let’s get some ideas. And it doesn’t always mean that we’re gonna use what chat p t gives us verbatim, but it will give us ideas. I’m like, oh, I like that thing. I didn’t even think of taking that angle and I’ll write my own version of it based on what I got from chat p t, but I would’ve never got the idea in the first place if it wasn’t for chat p t.
KS (16:35):
So those are the things I, I use, if those are the things I would say are the biggest strengths that I have found personally. And also just saving time and, and all the processes, actually, I guess that’s the biggest strength. The weakness would be that the copy is still not to the level that you can just copy and paste it in and, and send it off and, and be good to go. Like you, you’ve, you do need to, like you said, not everyone can, but every, all marketers can, you know, they can tell whenever it’s AI copy and it is a little bit more generic. And so it’s not like, it’s not a matter of will your customers know it’s AI or not, it’s just not going to resonate with them in the same way as if you personalize it more and you add in your personal touch and your own signature phrases and how you say things, that’s what’s going to take it from just okay copy that explains what you’re trying to communicate to copy that really connects with the person and forms that emotional connection where now they wanna do business with you over the other coaches who offer the exact same service you do, but they just like you better.
KS (17:38):
Right? So that’s what we wanna do with our copy. So that has been I would say that’s not a huge weakness. It’s, but that’s something to keep in mind. A weakness, another weakness just for me personally is there are some tools that are great for creating original art, but for creating the kind of graphic design I need. So designing really nice emails and I just haven’t seen one yet. There are some that are kind of, you know, testing the waters right now, but I have not seen any that come close. I mean, just, it’s just nowhere close to what a good graphic designer would do on our team. And so that would be a huge
KS (18:20):
Time and money saver
AJV (18:31):
Yeah.
KS (18:31):
But again, it’s like there’s a learning curve of how do you even put the prompts in to get the output the same way that I know copywriting and I know the little nuances to ask it. If you’re not a photographer and you don’t really know the nuances of a lens and different colors and aperture and all that kind of stuff, which I don’t know anything about, then you won’t be able to get as good of a prompt as someone who does have that background.
AJV (18:54):
Yeah. Like one of the things, and I’m so glad that you brought that up too our team plays around with Mid Journey a lot with just like, like we’re, we’ve been making, like taking all of our clients’ photos and turning them into like superheroes mm-hmm.
KS (19:11):
No.
AJV (19:12):
But one of the things that you kind of said, it’s like, and this is what I heard anyway, so tell me if I’m wrong, but it’s like, almost like you already have to be an expert in your field and then AI can just help save you time. But if you don’t know some of these nuanced things, it’s not gonna give you what you want. So instead of, you know, you don’t have to be a copywriter, but you still have to be able to copy edit, right? It’s like,
KS (19:36):
Yeah. You
AJV (19:37):
Know,
KS (19:38):
That, that’s exactly how I feel about it. So a lot of people, they, they feel threatened by ai and I’m not saying it won’t completely eliminate marketers, right? So it’s, it’s possible. But for the time being and, and in the near future, what it looks like is it’s just gonna make us way more efficient and effective at what we do. And like you said, so a a good copywriter with AI is gonna be way better than someone who is has no copywriting background using ai and they’re gonna be way faster than a great copywriter who is not using AI ’cause they’re just not saving as much time, right. So mm-hmm.
AJV (20:32):
We
KS (20:32):
Have an idea of how we would like our company to communicate to us and how we would like to be communicated to versus you know, photography and graphic design is a lot more technical in nature. And if you just have, if you’ve never had any experience with it, you would just never even even learn the terminology. So I definitely think it’s easier for the average person to pick up the copy side of ai.
AJV (20:53):
Yeah. And I love that too, where it’s well I have a question. Do you think that using like chat G P T and other AI sources is going to allow copywriters to lower their prices because now they can do more volume?
KS (21:10):
I def Well, so yeah, I think it’s gonna affect different parts of the market. So you definitely will have a lot of those people, you’ll have a lot of those services where it’s gonna be high volume, low cost. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (21:46):
They
KS (21:46):
Don’t, they’re not really, I, I thought people would not like the idea of us using ai. I found that they kind of, their attitude is, well, if you’re not using ai, you’re like, are you really even keeping up? Are you gonna be able to, you know, keep, are you, are you gonna be innovative and be able to help us keep up with everyone else? And they don’t seem to be like bothered by it at all as long as the final output, which is the emails we’re creating for them. As long as they like those mm-hmm. They like how it represents their brand, they’re performing well. They never really ask questions about about that.
AJV (22:19):
Yeah. No, that’s interesting. I think our response has been right nor wrong is yeah, I’m still happy to pay your full prices, but can you get it done faster?
AJV (23:11):
And they’re on a limited budget, which most of us have budgets. So super helpful. So I wanna kind of expand beyond AI before we went outta time. ’cause I could talk about this for a really long time ’cause I find it fascinating. But I would love to just talk about email marketing in general of, I think this is one of those things that over the last few years, at least in our circle in our community, that people have kind of stopped talking about. I think there has been such a unbelievably heavy focus and emphasis on social media that people have stopped talking about the value and the importance of your email list and email marketing. And at least for us, we find that we would much rather have a bigger email list than a big than a big social following. I care much more about our email marketing than a do just having a new, you know, social media campaign. I’m not saying it’s not important, I’m just saying I think there is, I there has been a devaluing on the importance of your email list and email marketing in the digital landscape. And I would love to kind of just be like, let’s, let’s talk about the importance of your email list and the importance of email marketing and let’s bring it back to, hey, don’t forget all this other stuff is not yours, but your list that’s yours.
KS (24:28):
Exactly. That, that’s really what it comes down to or comes back to for me, is that your email list is really the only channel that you own and control where you can directly communicate with your leads and customers versus social media. And so to your point, the, the two things I see the most often as far as, you know, why do people neglect email marketing is one, they’re just, you know, there’s so many new and sexy things out there with social media and AI and all this stuff that they know like, email’s always been there, it’s always gonna be there. I’ll get to it at some point. And so they think that, and they haven’t actually personally seen firsthand how valuable it can be. So it’s, it’s a lower priority for them. And then for other people, I think that it’s, it’s just kind of taken for granted. Like they maybe they have been doing it, but they didn’t realize that they haven’t been strategic about it. So maybe they do a monthly newsletter and so they’re like, yeah, we have a list and you know, we don’t really generate very many sales from it. So they’ve kind of written it off, but they, they never really did the deep dive into, okay, what can I actually do with email mm-hmm.
AJV (25:34):
KS (25:35):
They did that with everything they did on social media. They were just a sponge and they wanted to learn everything and they didn’t take that same attitude with email. So they haven’t gotten the same results out of it. And you know, I mean, truthfully, social media is awesome and a lot of businesses have have built their businesses off of social media and they get almost all of their sales from there, if not all of their sales. And so they might be thinking, why do I need email? But I can tell you on the other side, so like with the types of businesses we work with, email typically generates 30 to 60% of their total revenue.
AJV (26:09):
Hmm. And
KS (26:09):
It’s a lot easier to do than social media. It’s a, it’s a lot cheaper to do than social media and it’s a lot more reliable month to month. And you don’t have to worry about, you know, all of a sudden they make a change in the algorithm and now your people aren’t, aren’t getting your content as much, or you have to pay more for them to see your content. You don’t have those issues that you have on social media. Yeah,
AJV (26:31):
No, I love that. And you said something that I wanna dive into is people don’t know what they can do with their email marketing. So what can people do with their email marketing? I would, would, I would love to kind of bring this back to the focus of, you know, what we talk about at Brain Builders Group because it’s a huge part of our business. Like, I think less than 1% of all of our clients come from social. It’s like we track all of that so super diligently, not most of ours come from podcasts, but it’s, it’s so interesting of how we’re tracking it, but if we were to go to our email engagement and our email, it’s like, so monumentally more significant to us. So what can people be doing in their email list with email marketing? Like, what are some of the things that are really working?
KS (27:18):
So the first place every business should start is, I call it optimizing your sales process, which is really just creating all of the automated email sequences that make sense for your business to get someone to go from being a stranger to being a customer. Mm-Hmm.
KS (27:59):
Whatever your sales process is, map it out step by step. And in your analytics, look at how many people make it to each step. And then there’s gonna be typically at least one area where there’s a major drop off where lots of people make it to the webinar, but very few sign up for the call on the webinar. That’s gonna be the first place where if you put in an automated sequence to do follow up right there, where you’re gonna get the, the most immediate return on your effort because there’s just a lot of low hanging fruit. But ideally you won’t wanna have that follow up in place in between every single step in your sales process. And what it does is, is just more follow, you’re giving them relevant information for where they’re at in the sales journey. So depending on the software you’re using, for example, if you, if you have a webinar or a free training, typically there’s, you’re gonna have a pitch at the end.
KS (28:47):
You might have some value content for most of it, and you have a pitch at the end. And if the, so if you’re using the right software, you can see if people make it to the end or not. So if people don’t make it to the end, you can send them follow up information to send ’em the information that would’ve been in the pitch that they didn’t see. So a lot of times we assume, oh, when no one signed up, we assume they weren’t interested. Well maybe they didn’t even see the offer in the first place. So yeah, that’s, that’s the first place and that’s really where, I mean, to me that’s the, not only the highest priority, but you’re gonna get the most return for your effort. ’cause Once you set it all up, it’s just running 24 7. Beyond that, you wanna look at, okay, now how are we gonna start doing email campaigns on a regular basis to the different people on your list?
AJV (29:31):
Yeah. No, I love starting with the sales process because at the end of the day, most of this is for some sort of conversion. It’s nurturing, conversion, nurturing, conversion. So I love, love starting there. What would you say for the people who are going, okay, I have something in place, but it’s not really working, what would be some of the best things to put in the emails as you’re thinking of like, okay, maybe you have a webinar and they didn’t show up. Or maybe you have an application that people have to fill out and maybe they have to schedule a call and like all the things. And if they didn’t buy, what’s the follow up? What, what would you say for the people who are going, yeah, I have that, but it’s not really doing it, it’s not working. What would you say to go back and look at in terms of like, the actual words and content in the emails?
KS (30:19):
Okay, so let’s say if you had the webinar people sign up, but no one’s really responding afterwards. First thing is, ’cause you might need to, there’s multiple tests you might have to do here. But first let’s just assume that they like the webinar. And we, and we’re just gonna try to change the outcome with the emails, is I would look at, okay, at this stage, what information do they really need? Mm-Hmm.
KS (31:01):
Let them know about all of the, you know, unique value props of your business. But really you also want to make sure you are addressing questions and objections. So all of the big questions people have, all of the sales objections address those early and often in those emails because a lot of times you won’t get the opportunity, they won’t give you the opportunity to a, to answer those questions, right? So you’re not gonna hear them ask, but they still have those questions. So all of that stuff needs to be given to them early. So it’s very easy for them to make a decision to move forward. And then the, the overarching thing here is that all of the emails should be framed around them. Mm-Hmm. So even though I said you wanna introduce your brand, tell your brand story all that, I don’t mean you just go on and on about yourself and how great you are.
KS (31:43):
It’s all about what you bring to the table and what that means for them. What, what they are going to get out of it, what they are going to experience. So talk about the, you know, before and after of this, of their scenario. So if you offer some sort of you know, service, whether it’s coaching or professional service or whatever, know people are paying for outcomes. They’re not just paying for the service. So you wanna tell stories and you know, and involve the emotions of what someone is experiencing in this before state, before they have the results they want and what they’re going to feel and experience after they have those results. And so that’s gonna make, that’s just gonna resonate a lot more with people and it’s gonna make your, your marketing a lot more powerful. And then if that, if all of that doesn’t work, maybe it’s the offer, maybe you just need to try a different offer on the front end and the people who already signed up and didn’t engage with the first one, they’re not lost.
KS (32:35):
You can always just try to, you can pitch them on a new free offer and then get them involved in a new sequence. And you can bring of course, other new, new leads into that as well. But that’s a great way. Sometimes it might take two or three offers before you find the one that really resonates. And so if you keep testing these emails and nothing’s working, it’s not always the emails. Sometimes it’s just the, the way you started the relationship with them in the first place was either targeting the wrong people or it just positioned you with the wrong offer for what they’re looking for.
AJV (33:06):
Yeah. Super insightful. And I subscribe to all kinds of weird offers just so I can watch the email sequences
AJV (33:49):
Yeah, tell me more. It’s like, I’m not a prospect, but yet I’m interested and it’s really easy. And I would just say like, for anyone listening, if you don’t do that, do that. Right. Be a study of this process. There are plenty of people who do this well and plenty of people who don’t do it well. So just start kind of like testing things out out there and just, you know, kind of like put yourself in a bunch of funnels. ’cause You’ll see really quickly like how many are they sending? How long are they? Which I have a question for you about that. But also just reading like the meat of the emails is so insightful. And I love what you said. It’s like you can’t make it about you, you gotta make it about them. And that’s where looking at the analytics makes a big, big difference.
KS (34:32):
Yeah, definitely.
AJV (34:34):
Okay, so here’s the this is an ongoing debate in our company about email link. And there’s two schools of thought on this and I’m probably much more into tell ’em exactly what they need to know, what they need to hear and nothing else. And my husband, my business partner loves to tell them all the things. And so I’m gonna use you as our tiebreaker here. What would you say that you’re seeing in terms of trends when it’s like, how long should the email be?
KS (35:04):
So I would, I would say is the rule of thumb is to be concise. Like more often than not, lean towards keeping the emails short and to the point. But I will say the emails we do tend to be longer. On average, they tend to be a little longer. And, but it’s more challenging to have a really effective longer email ’cause you have to hold their attention. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (35:27):
Longer.
KS (35:28):
So it depends on what you’re selling. So for people, for a personal brand, I actually prefer just text only shorter emails, keep ’em brief, keep ’em specific around a specific topic. One call to action and, and keep it pretty simple. And, you know, if you, if you don’t get to cover everything you wanted to just send another email later to, to take that other angle. Just because again, people have short attention spans in the personal branding space. Whether you’re a coach, consultant, whatever it is they really, really wanna know about you and like they want to, it’s not just about your service because you probably have, you know, insane competition, whatever you’re offering. There’s just, there’s a ton of coaches and consultants. So it’s not always just about your unique mechanism. They have to relate to you. And, and so if you can keep these emails, you know, if they’re, if they’re not reading the emails, they’re not gonna relate to you.
KS (36:20):
So you want, if you keep ’em shorter, keep ’em specific, keep ’em friendly, conversational, that’s a great way. But just, just to throw it out there. And maybe this will give your husband some fuels. I will say a lot of our emails are longer and, but a lot of times it’s because for example, if we’re, ’cause we work with a lot of product-based businesses, so a lot of times we’re doing a combination of having educational content in the email with an offer, with a relevant offer at the end. So for example, if we’re selling supplements, there’s a million, you know, angles we can take for topics around, you know, you could, it could be as general as, you know, fat loss or building muscle, but we like to get specific into things like, you know, how to shop for healthy groceries on a budget, you know, those kind of things.
KS (37:03):
Mm-Hmm.
AJV (38:12):
No, those are super great. I think one of the things that I’ve noticed I don’t know if this is accurate or not, but the higher the price point, the more the coffee.
KS (38:22):
So that’s definitely, that’s all, that’s been a, a long time thing with copywriting. So like the, the really, you know, if you go to a long sales page for a big offer especially if it’s like, you know, multiple thousands or 10,000 plus. Yes. So you’re expecting this super long sales page with a, maybe a really long video sales letter on the sales page. But what’s interesting is that that doesn’t have to always be the case with the emails. In fact, I actually learned this from Frank Kern. I I did this program with Frank Kern and it was a huge investment and his, his emails were all very brief, but of course it was Frank Kern. He is, he is a legend in the marketing space and the copywriting space. So, so I was already pre-sold based on that, but he kind of taught us this format of, you have the, the offer section of the email stays pretty consistent from email to email when you’re selling these high ticket services.
KS (39:17):
Meaning that you’ll say like, you know, in this program you’ll, you’ll get, and then you list off like four or five bullets of the, the benefits, but it’s the copy that goes before that where you’re having a different conversation each time. So you’re trying to target a specific pain point specific benefit each time, then you lead to the offer. But really the email itself is pretty short, but he is having you do a high frequency of emails. So as opposed to it being one long email or maybe five long emails, it’s like 10 shorter emails Yeah.
AJV (39:46):
You know,
KS (39:46):
Within a certain timeframe. So yeah, I definitely feel like that, while that is the rule of thumb, you don’t have to go, you don’t have to feel the pressure of doing really long copy if you’re selling something high ticket.
AJV (39:59):
No, I love that. And I think in general, I, I find myself anyway preferring, I’d rather get a higher frequency and keep it short if I can. We follow the, the window pane policy, right? It’s like if I have to scroll, I’m probably gonna come back to it later, but if I can get the gist of it and just like what you see as you’re pulling up your outlook it’s like that’s gonna give me the gist of, oh, I do wanna read that. Versus my goodness if I see some of these emails where I’m like, I’m scrolling, I’m scrolling, I’m like, I’ll get to it later and then eventually I just end up deleting it. But that’s just me. That’s just, no,
KS (40:34):
No. I mean, that’s,
AJV (40:35):
You find
KS (40:36):
That that’s pretty normal. And I, I think really it’s like you have to have a, usually there’s a sales call involved with a high ticket offer mm-hmm.
AJV (40:42):
KS (40:43):
I think that that’s where you need to have a really good sales script and, and sales call, you know, experience dialed in for people and those short emails. It’s just, it’s not so much selling the full high ticket program. It’s like, we’re just trying to sell the call right now in those shorter emails and then let the sales call do its thing. Right. So, ’cause people will try to do too much in email and like you said, if you don’t read it, then the whole purpose was defeated.
AJV (41:09):
Mm-Hmm.
KS (41:25):
The, probably the most common mistake is relying too much on discounts and emails. A lot of people have this idea that if I’m, like, they think that they’re going to be annoying their list by sending an email. So they think if I’m going to email them, I have to make it really good, I have to make it special for them, or they’re not gonna buy, which is not true at all. But, you know, if you have that preconceived notion, you’re gonna, you can see that play out because that’s will, that will frame how you write your copy. But a lot of times, you know, people get addicted to the spikes in sales that come with offering a big discounted promotion, and then you end up training your list to only buy when there’s a discount when you do that. And so I see this, I mean, I see this all the time over and over where it’s, it is difficult to wean people off of those discounts. So you’re better off not getting to that place in the first place if you haven’t already done that yet. So that’s that’s probably the most common one. Another one, which is maybe a little bit lesser known would be that not sending every email to everyone on your list. Hmm.
AJV (42:25):
So
KS (42:25):
I, it is another assumption people, people make, which, you know, I can’t fault them because if, if you don’t, if this isn’t your world and you’re not nerding out on email marketing stuff, then you would just assume, well, I have this really valuable asset, which is my email list, and so I’m gonna get the most value I can out of this. So every time I send an email, I want it to go to everyone that can possibly reach it, because that’s how I’m gonna get the most amount of sales.
AJV (42:47):
Yeah.
KS (42:47):
And again, that’s, that’s actually not true. What would be better is to segment your list and create different segments of groups of buyers so you can segment them based on how recently they’ve engaged with you, based on their past purchase history, based on where they live, their gender, all kinds of things. And then you craft the content of the email more specifically to that group. And now you can actually send out more frequent emails, but not everyone is getting every email and the emails they are getting are a lot more personalized to them. So that’s a way to not only get more sales per email send, but have a way to scale up the volume of emails you send without annoying your list. Because not everyone in your list is going to be getting all of those emails.
AJV (43:30):
Love that. I love, just don’t try to make it so general that applies to everyone, but cater to the different segments of your list so you can make it more personable. Love that. Such a good tip. And all right, here’s my last question. So I love those, those are really good. What would you say that you would tell someone who’s asking, okay, but what kind of emails do I send to my list now that I have all these people on the list? Let’s say they’re not in like a sales funnel, but I just have a large list. Like, or even if I have a small list, what do people want? Like what do people want when it comes to emails today?
KS (44:08):
Okay, so you first have to have the attitude of, i I call it always be testing. Kinda like salespeople say, always be closing, where you have to be willing to have some emails just not perform well. Mm-Hmm. And know that you’re, you’re testing new topics. So if you’ve done the initial research of, you know, defining your ideal customer profile, you have some idea of the big wants and needs and pain points they care about, then first just start with the big ones and start crafting some content around a specific pain point or a specific benefit that ties to what you’re selling. And just first start with those. So keep it more like evergreen. These are, these are emails that would be relevant today and a year from today, and they would always be true. So first just start testing those to get an idea of, okay, of the big topics, what does my list care about the most?
KS (44:59):
And you’ll know, because you can’t judge the first email because if you haven’t sent an email in a long time, or if it’s the first one you’re sending, you have nothing to compare it to. So send one email a week for a month at the end of the month, look at, out of those four emails, okay, which one performed the best? What, what was said in that email? What was the offer if it was different? And then the next month, keep that same type of topic in rotation, but try talking about it from a different angle and then maybe mix in a couple of other, you know, slightly related topics. And then try something completely, you know, brand new left field as another one to test. And as you go on, you’re gonna start narrowing it down to certain benefits or certain things about your service that they care about most.
KS (45:41):
And there are a lot of times it’s surprising a lot of times the things that you think are most important are not really what they care about. And so that’s where a lot of times we have to give them what they want mm-hmm.
KS (46:20):
So I’ll, again, I’ll go with, you know, I always use supplements as a, as examples. So well, let’s just say jewelry for, for example. If say you’re selling jewelry, a specific pain point might be that people have a hard time defining their style. Mm-Hmm. So you just write an email, just give them a little few tips about how they could define their personal style. And then at the end of the email, you share some jewelry options that are great for matching with different outfits or different styles or whatever. They’re very versatile. And so now you have a very, it’s a non-salesy, very relevant offer for them. And if they’re not in the market to buy today, they at least got those tips and hopefully they learn something interesting. So they’ll keep coming back to open future emails. And if you, if you just take that, that framework and that attitude and just test different topics each time, after two or three months, you’ll have a pretty good idea of what works for your list and what doesn’t
AJV (47:14):
Love that. I just, even like, as you were talking, thinking about fun and creative ways that just thinking about our list, even at Brand Builders group of, you know, we cater so super specifically to people who are trying to build their personal brand to increase brand awareness for lead generation or speaking or writing a book of even doing something that would be super heavy incentivized for just people who are in the book stages of wanna know how to sell this many books. Here are the 10 things you can do right now. And that would be a super easy thing just as you were just even talking about that, about how to reengage people that we’re not doing. And so again, it’s just those little reminders of like, oh yeah, like we should do that.
KS (48:00):
Yeah. That’s and that’s exactly what I’m talking about, where the, the tendency is to, oh, we need to tell them every single time about the book part and about the public speaking part and about everything else. And what I always tell people is, well, you can do that sometimes, but hone in on one specific thing at a time. And when you see the reaction to it, you start to learn which aspects of your offer they really care about most. And you, then you can just lean into that more.
AJV (48:23):
Love that. So awesome. What an amazing conversation. Thank you so much. This has been so helpful and so insightful. And for everyone listening I will put all of this in the show notes, but also there is an awesome free resource that Kyle has provided if you go to when before you send.com. So when before you send.com, you can download a really awesome checklist that you can go through before you launch your next email marketing campaign. So go grab that resource. It’s going to be what we covered today and so much more, but win before you send.com. Grab that resource. And also if you wanna learn more about Kyle and his business, go to elevate and scale.com. And Kyle, if people just wanna follow you on social media, where should they go?
KS (49:18):
Yeah, the best place would be my YouTube channel, which is Elevate and Scale.
AJV (49:22):
Elevate and Scale. You got it. Kyle, thank you so much. This was so awesome. So many awesome tips. And for everybody else, stick around for the recap episode and we will see you next time on the influential personal brand.
Ep 434: How to get Publicity for Your Book Launch with Paige Dungan
RV (00:00):
Well, if you’ve listened to this show for any amount of time, you’ve probably heard us talk a lot about book launches. Book launches is one of the things that we do really, really well. As of this recording, we have helped 17 different clients become New York Times or Wall Street Journal bestselling authors. We had two clients last year that pre-sold over a hundred thousand copies before their launch date following our system. But what we do is we help people come up with the sales strategy for how to sell the books, and then we help make sure those, those books sales happen in a way that get optimized and reported in the most optimized way for the bestseller list. What we don’t do is PR and we get asked this question all the time, who do you recommend for pr? Do you have someone for PR that we could talk to that can just like, just focus on getting you booked on shows and, and all that kind of thing?
RV (00:53):
So we’ve, we’ve worked with lots of people. We’ve talked with them, but today I want to introduce you to Paige Duncan, who’s a longtime friend of mine, and she is, her team is who we recommend for this service. And so we’re gonna talk about doing book launches, PR specifically for book launches, because this is a part of Paige’s expertise. So she was the head of PR and Talent at Success Magazine, which is where her and I met. So one of our brand builders, group clients bought the company. He asked me to be an interim editor for like a year. Paige was there. I met her immediately, was like, oh my gosh, this woman is awesome and good and smart and sharp and all the things. And she’s been in this industry for 15 years. She’s, she has sort of developed a very specific niche around PR for book launches. She’s been credited also with landing multiple authors on many of the bestseller lists, and she’s just super innovative and, you know, knows how to get an author attention in a crowded marketplace. So, Paige, welcome to the show friend. Woo.
PD (02:02):
Great. Thank you so much. It’s like we’re just grabbing a coffee today.
RV (02:06):
Totally, totally. So let’s talk PR for book launches. Yes. what do you think authors who are moving into this world, whether, whether they’re doing it themselves or they’re working with you, or they’re hiring somebody else, what do they need to know, like about getting media attention today for their book? Yeah. Like what are some of the big things where you go, man, I have to tell every author this over and over and over and over, and so we’re gonna tell ’em all right here one time, get it recorded.
PD (02:40):
Yes. Yes.
RV (02:41):
And
RV (02:41):
They’re gonna, they’ll come to you knowing, knowing this.
PD (02:44):
Yes. The number one thing where I tell all of the authors I work with is, the media actually doesn’t care about your book
RV (02:53):
That statement, what a great way. Can we cut? We need to cut that for social media. That’s the clip right there. The media doesn’t care about your book.
PD (03:03):
They don’t, and it sounds harsh, but here’s the thing that I, then I follow that up with. The media doesn’t care about your book yet, because what they have to understand is who you are, why you are the authority or expert in this space, and you have to build that trust with them first as an individual or as a company. Then they will care about your book. Mm-Hmm.
RV (04:22):
Mm-Hmm.
PD (04:51):
Exactly.
RV (04:52):
So what do you, how, how do you go about building that, you know, relationship and trust with the reporters?
PD (04:59):
Yeah. There’s two approaches that I teach. So number one is a approach that works really well, and that is you pitching yourself as a source to one of their stories. So if they, if you see them writing stories, let’s say about TikTok and all things happening at TikTok and your book is about the effects of social media of today or something like that, you simply find their email address and you reach out letting them know you really enjoyed their TikTok story on X you share a little bit of background about yourself and just leave it at, I would be happy to be a source for any other future articles you’re working on. You’re simply offering them, because journalists and media need sources every time they put out a piece of content, it’s part of the credibility of journalism. And they’re always desperate to find an expert to share a quote, share another perspective. And it’s a baby step in getting your name, like in quote, roundups, or like I said, if they just need you to come and give like an alternating view on that topic. And so what you do is literally Google search news stories about your book and your industry and what’s trending right now, and reach out to those reporters.
RV (06:15):
Got it. Uhhuh,
PD (06:16):
The second part of the so
RV (06:17):
Hold on, hold on. That I wanna hear, I do wanna hear, hear the second one, but, so, so when you say you find their email address, okay. So I love what you’re saying. So you go mm-hmm.
PD (06:54):
Easy. Yeah. Yeah.
RV (06:56):
How do you find the contact information? Like
PD (06:58):
What’s
RV (06:59):
The, how do you go about
PD (07:00):
That? That, this is my favorite part, Rory. ’cause You get to be a little bit of a spy in the best way. And so there’s a couple ways you can do this. Let me start with the free to like the page. Yeah. So the free way to do this is actually like Wall Street Journal and some of the outlets will list an email button for their journalists. So some outlets, but that’s probably a 20% Right. We’ll share the email upfront. The second thing you can do is you can find them on social media. Right. If you know their name like Rory Vaden, I’m gonna put ’em on Instagram. You can also start a relationship on social. Like if you cannot find their email free and you still wanna do free, find ’em on social. Yeah. And again, just serve them, interact with their content and message them there.
PD (07:46):
The third way you can do is you can pay for like a rocket reach or email lookup platform. Right. That can find their email. And so that’s a wonderful way, if any of you are in sales, you know about these different, and, you know, platforms that will help do a reverse email lookup. But then the last option is you can actually get a PR C R m. And so this d r m literally lists the database for all journalists and media unit talent bookers. And it allows you to be able to put in like an, a company like Forbes, like the media brand, Forbes, and it pulls up all the writers and what beats they cover. And the recent agencies, we almost all PR agencies have one, they do have cost effective solutions, though also if you’re just a one-on-one looking to have this access. But if you know you’re gonna go out and you’re like, at PR is my focus right now, this is, I’m going all in. I would suggest looking at the PR C R M because it will take, save you a lot of time compared to the free version to be able to find exactly who you need.
RV (08:52):
Is that, and is that like is that like Cision or something else that you’re talking about?
PD (08:57):
Yep. It’s like Cision. There’s one called MuckRack. There’s a cost effective one called Prowly. You’re exactly right. It’s any of the
RV (09:05):
Prowly,
PD (09:06):
Uhhuh
RV (09:10):
. I haven’t heard of that one. Uhhuh.
PD (09:54):
Too,
RV (09:55):
Way. ’cause Not only do you have to, you have to figure out who you gotta figure out what topics are they writing on, who is writing on it. Mm-Hmm.
PD (10:17):
It doesn’t work. And it’s too long. And I love what you’re saying before, and I wanna hop back a minute, to your point, Rory, of serving them, I always tell people, what problem are you trying to solve for the reporter? That’s what they wanna know.
RV (10:29):
Yes.
PD (10:29):
Like, what is the problem? How are you solving it? That’s news. And so, to your point on the communication, I always, always preach no longer than 250 words in your first email. It sounds super short, but all of my editor friends have told they get over a hundred to 150 emails a day of pitches that literally on top of every other news thing that come into the inbox,
RV (10:53):
Wow. They
PD (10:54):
Are not gonna read no longer do you just send that a press release. You’ve got to really build that relationship. And then the art of crafting a pitch is more critical than ever now. For sure.
RV (11:06):
Yeah. And it isn’t, it’s an art and it’s like anything, I mean, it’s, it’s like, are you likely to open your mailbox and mm-hmm.
PD (11:45):
RV (11:46):
PD (11:47):
Number two is tapping into what you just said as well, is serving them content. So becoming a contributor to their outlet and serving them with their expertise. So this works really well. Like, let’s take Fast company for example, right? And you are an expert in kind of business and innovation and even like team structure and management, reach out to the editors and share your story idea, right? Don’t ask them if you can be a contributor ’cause mm-hmm.
PD (12:37):
And nine times Outta 10, because they are desperate for content. Because teams are leaner than ever at all of these media brands, and there’s just not enough of them to create content. And so if you can really provide value as a contributor, also known as a bylined article, right? You get your name listed on Fast Company’s website, and if it’s picked up in print, the magazine, and you start to build that relationship of credibility with that brand serving them. So when you do go in for an ask for your book, you’ve already provided them immense value mm-hmm.
RV (13:20):
Yeah. Yeah. I, I mean I, there’s a couple things there going on. One, I love like treat it like a date, right? Don’t show up and ask to get married. Like, Hey, I wanna be a monthly contributor, right? Like, let’s go on a, let’s go on a date. Let me pick, you know, here’s an idea for a story. Mm-Hmm.
PD (13:42):
Yes, yes. Easy. Yes. Rory. And so many outlets are literally calling and needing it and quality content because like I said, they just don’t have the manpower to produce it anymore. Yeah. Unfortunately.
RV (13:55):
And just to pause, like a little side note here for you listening, if you’re a speaker or an aspiring speaker, you know, with speaking business is another thing that we know a lot about and have a lot of success with, and teaching people how to get speaking gigs. And we say, Hey, the number one reason you get booked to speak, which will never change, is because someone has seen you speak. That’s the, if you wanna be a speaker mm-hmm. You gotta go out and speak, but the number two way to get booked to speak is because someone has read something you have written. And you know, like a lot of speakers become speakers because they start writing. One is a book, which is much harder in longer process than you just start cranking these articles, you know, a couple times a week. And you know, I I, I think of, you know, I’ve got a couple friends, Dory Clark, Matthew Mayberry, like they have really built a great speaking career at a lot of it started from writing these articles and it’s almost better, like not almost better. Mm-Hmm.
PD (15:11):
Yes, it’s
RV (15:12):
Way more valuable.
PD (15:14):
It is. Ryan, I’m so glad you brought that up, because it leads to a much longer lifecycle right. Of promotion and opportunities for you doing this strategy. And like you said, it requires some upfront work, but nothing like, if you’ve already written a book, this is a walk in the park, right? This is nothing of your time. And the beautiful thing is you can pull elements from your book can serve as that content generator for years for you to pull from, so you don’t have to reinvent the wheel with what you’re writing about. Mm-Hmm. And you can
RV (15:43):
Find
PD (15:44):
Ways to thread the content together for soft promotion. But that is one strategy we help do immediately out of the gate, especially during pre-sale, right. In setting up those relationships and starting to build that awareness. It’s a great strategy to start, honestly now, like even if you haven’t thought of your book idea, just incorporate this into your media outreach plan.
RV (16:07):
Yeah. The the other thing that it does is it becomes a huge networking opportunity for you because you become a member of the media. Mm-Hmm. You go from trying to be mm-hmm. In the media
PD (16:15):
To
RV (16:16):
Being I am a, I am the media. Yes. And now you can network with pretty much anybody you wanna know because they, you, you’re in control of who gets mentioned in in that. The, the other thing I wanna mention here is on, on the, on the topic of like getting booked to speak from this mm-hmm.
PD (16:32):
RV (16:33):
And, and for beginners, you also don’t need to, it doesn’t have to be Forbes or entrepreneur No. Or fast company. Like those are the huge ones. But when you were saying they’re spread thin, the ones that are spread the most thin are the, like, trade industry journals. They gotta produce a magazine every month or every quarter.
PD (16:54):
Yes.
RV (16:54):
They’re begging their members to write an article. Nobody wants to do it. And yet, if you are in an industry or a vertical and you go, it’s easy to get those writing jobs and it’s literally, it may not have 500 million readers, but it’s gonna have a thousand of your perfect readers. And that’s, you know, that’s a really big key. You, you think
PD (17:18):
It is key, Rory, that is the other element of this. Make sure you’re contributing to where your target audience is, right? Mm-Hmm.
RV (17:51):
Create
PD (17:52):
A greater opportunity through those smaller publications.
RV (17:56):
Yeah. That, that’s the other thing is like, you’re never gonna get Forbes to send an email. Like even e even if you’re James Patterson, they’re not gonna send an email out about your book. No. But, but if you, if you have some relationships with some of these smaller ones, and that’s part of the deal mm-hmm.
PD (18:41):
I think that first mistake is that people do not plan PR the same way that they plan on writing a book. PR is always like an afterthought. Like, they’re like, oh crap, my book comes out in 60 days. I don’t have the sales I wanted. I need to do, you know, like, now is the time to start. No minimum, I beg you authors to start at least six months out because in media news cycles, it can take that long to place impactful stories. So the ones of the bigger outlets, the bigger podcasts, right, the bigger articles you need that longer lead time. And that’s probably the number one pain point that I see when authors come to us, is they’re scrambling. Right? And it doesn’t have to be that way. The second thing is, I always recommend you plan for a year strategy also, not counting pre-sale, but from when your book launches following that year. Because so many authors, and you’ve seen this already,
RV (19:37):
You’re saying post public, you’re saying post-publication,
PD (19:40):
Post pub, all the way through your year anniversary, have a robust media plan. ’cause Too many authors I’ve seen, they do amazing presale and amazing that first month of pub and then their media just like drops off and they’re, you know, it’s just sprinkled throughout, but it’s a sprint, right? And you need to continue that sprint. And so when you’re looking at planning, of course you wanna bank many of those large episodes as you know, in pre-sale. But it’s just as important to continue that momentum, especially through that first year. And keep your eye on the media and focus on the pr part of the book as well, because that’s where you’re gonna continue to reach new audiences and garner new attention and continue to bring that sales momentum going instead of letting your sales dip and then trying to inflate it back up with media like three months later.
RV (20:33):
Yeah. Yeah. Totally. I mean, you gotta, you gotta keep building the brand, building the platform being out there. So are there certain, are there certain mediums that you think mm-hmm.
PD (20:59):
Right?
RV (20:59):
And it can, it can help, but typically you have to be more focused. If you’re trying to make a sale like a conversion, you’ve gotta be doing other stuff far above and beyond pr. But, but when you,
PD (21:11):
Yes.
RV (21:12):
When you just go, what, what are the mediums or the outlets in PR that you think actually do move the needle on book sales? Like somebody going to buy, not just hearing about it, but actually going to make a conversion.
PD (21:27):
Do you know what we’ve seen the number one medium that sells through PR right now, books specifically is podcasting. Yeah.
PD (21:34):
So podcasts, podcast, podcast, which I know all of your listeners have probably heard before, but it’s still the leading way that converts to a sale, specifically when we’re talking about books. So what I already say is, don’t poo poo any podcast that might not seem like up to your elevation of where you think you should be. Right? Like, let’s not be too big for a britches if they have a target engage audience, those are customers and they’re waiting to buy your book. So it’s like you have to level set what you’re doing with podcasting during a book launch. Like, yes, your end goal might be on your podcast, Rory, it may be on Lewis’s podcast, but let’s also look at the, just like trade media. Let’s look at the ones that still have similar target audiences and do as many podcasts as you can. ’cause That is a huge driver. The other one, Rory, and I know this can seem like a little bit of a stretch, but it still rings true TV converts to sales.
RV (22:34):
Hmm. And
PD (22:34):
So when I’m talking, but I’m talking about like nation national, right? So if you have a book, I mean, for example, anytime we have a client on today’s show or Good Morning America, it moves a thousand to 2000 books, right? Like it moves a significant number of books depending on kind of where you are known wise to the audience. So I know, and national can be kind of far out of reach for some people. And so what I say with that is like, don’t throw away the local TV station. Don’t throw away that opportunity thinking it’s too small for you because they feed up into the national station. So if you have interesting content and you book yourself on your local N B C, it is much more likely for you to get picked up nationally by taking that clip and sending it to the Today Show how you’ve already been on the affiliate and the reaction that you’ve had there. And it is a great proof point to then take to the national media as you pitch them for that opportunity.
RV (23:37):
Yeah. That’s also huge for your, for your speaker demo video and to put, you know, screenshots of it in your book proposal and in your PR to get yourself booked on other podcasts to show those clips of you on tv. Yeah. All of those, all of those things. Your, your media sizzle reel, the, the, yeah. Let’s talk, oh, one thing on the podcast is, you know, just to echo what you’re saying, you know, to, to become a Wall Street Journal, hardcover, business bestselling author, which is like one of the ma it’s the easiest major list to hit. Mm-Hmm.
Speaker 3 (24:11):
RV (24:11):
I say easy, it’s not really easy
Speaker 3 (24:13):
RV (24:13):
Like, you know, to hit the New York Times, you need to, to sell well north of 10,000 units in a week. But to hit the Wall Street Journal business list, it’s typically like a few thousand units, two or 3000 units. So you don’t need millions of people to buy your book in order to become a legit bestselling author, you know? Mm-Hmm.
Speaker 3 (24:33):
RV (24:33):
From a major, you know, reputable list. So if there’s a podcast and they have a thousand of your perfect person and you can get a thousand people to move and buy something like, that’s, that’s huge. Plus, you know, that’s, if you’re lucky enough to get on the Today Show, you might move a thousand copies that way. So, but that’s a thousand out of a bazillion people versus Yes.
Speaker 3 (24:54):
You
RV (24:54):
Know, a thousand out of 5,000 because it’s your perfect audience. So I think that’s really good. You know, one I got one last question for you. Before we do that, I wanna let y’all know, so I mentioned at the start of the show, as you could see, right, Paige knows this space,
RV (25:43):
But in the subject line, I just want you to put book pr, that’s it. Just email us, put book PR in the subject line, send an email to [email protected]. And then we’ll have someone on our team connect you with Paige and walk you through, you know, the whole thing. So you can talk to her directly and her team and see how it works. And you know, I would say, you know, I can say this because I’m not in pr, we’ve seen a lot of people waste a lot of money on PR firms that don’t, they’re not accountable, they don’t have a good plan, they don’t do it, right. They do a total shotgun blanket approach. You know, they’re just sending out a giant press release and they’re not doing the kind of one-on-one follow-up work and building long-term relationships like Paige and her team. So, you know, it can be risky, risky business spending lots of money on pr. Yeah.
Speaker 3 (26:32):
So, you
RV (26:32):
Know, make sure you’re, you’re working with somebody who knows what they’re doing. In this case we’re, we’re totally sure about that with Paige. So email us [email protected]. Yeah, of course, Paige. So one last quick question is on the tv, ’cause this is the, this is the dream, right? Good Morning America Today course show. You know, of
PD (26:51):
Course
RV (26:52):
What you know, I know you’ve, I know you’ve had that happen for clients when it happens, when you get the big national dream television hit
PD (27:02):
Mm-Hmm.
RV (27:04):
How do you get it? What, what are the series of events that led up to that producer saying, yes, I’ll do this. Like, I know it’s always a long shot, but what, what can we do to tip the odds in our favor for a big national TV hit?
PD (27:21):
The first is make sure you’re communicating with the right people. So both at today, good Morning America, c b s, they have specific book producers. So you need to make sure you’re a first talking to the right people. ’cause Too many times people just go to the general producer. That’s not their beat. You need to find the book producer and then to be able to, I mean, it takes a six month plus lead time. They book their spots for books six months out at minimum. So you need to give yourself runway. However, if you miss that window, what you wanna do is tie it to a breaking news or element that’s taking a conversation that’s taking place in society right now, whatever that might be. And you need to be able, again, they don’t care about the book. So you’ve gotta go in first starting with you as a tool and how you’re gonna solve this problem.
PD (28:17):
And it takes months of communication. Like to even, I have relationships with all the book producers and it takes us months of communication and understanding. ’cause There’s only so much airtime that the gift to books. And so you’ve got to be very strategic in how you communicate. And that’s by not spamming them with follow up. Right? What do you think? Do you like my book? How is this doing? What do you think? Right? Am I gonna get a spot like respect their inbox? So only communicate when they respond. You respond back and then give it a couple weeks. Don’t stay on top of it like it is your best friend because you will get blocked very quickly from the show. Mm-Hmm.
PD (29:07):
And again, just serve and interact with them on social. They get to see your name continue to pop up. They get to see your content, kind of psychological play, right? And just the power of how many times you’re introduced to them. And then if you’re realizing your pitch is not working, redo it. That’s what I think so many people are afraid of. They forget. It’s just like email testing, AB testing. Obviously they’re not biting over here. So do, is there a new research study out that you can tie that research into how it relates to your book that’s newsworthy to them? Is there a social trend that is happening that somehow ties into your book? Right? So have some type of element that it’s research-based or fact-based to go with your book and something that’s new and approach it that way if your first pitch isn’t working.
PD (29:59):
And then number three, it’s honestly not give up. So if you realize your book is just not hitting and coming through again, go back to this drawing board and reach out just as a source and an expert. I know it kind of sounds like being in a deb horse, but it’s relationship building. You’re retooling. You are not going in with thinking you’re gonna pitch and your book’s gonna end up tomorrow. You’ve gotta give yourself that runway to be able to do it. So the more you can connect with them on email serving and social, the more you can tailor your pitch to that six month timeframe and have it be something newsworthy and exciting. Or if it has a celebrity angle that you can tie to it mm-hmm.
RV (30:40):
PD (30:41):
More likely you’re gonna end up on national news. ’cause You have to think this is National Morning news is lifestyle, right? It’s lifestyle and news. So it’s talking about some politics, cultural elements, right? All of those. But also the second and third hour of those shows are heavily like health, fitness, books, wellness. And so that’s where you’ve gotta pitch your news. And the book editor sit is typically in that second hour or third hour of the morning show.
RV (31:10):
I love it. I love it. So many helpful tips, Paige. So I know practical, I’m so passionate.
PD (31:36):
Thank you.
Ep 432: Charge More by Doing Less with David Baker
AJV (00:02):
Hey, everybody, welcome to the Influential Personal Brand podcast. This is AJ Vaden here today, and super excited get to interview a, a fellow Nashvillian today. And also David is a, a brand new acquaintance of mine. I actually got cold pitch pitched him, which I, one out of a hundred times will say yes to those. But I thought this conversation looked super interesting. So I thought this would be worth coming onto our show because he is teaching the business of expertise. And as you guys all know, we talk a lot about the importance of being an expert in your field on this show. So what a better way to kick off today’s show with some conversation around what it means to be an expert and the pros and cons and everything in between. So, before I formally introduce David, I just want to give you a little preview of why you stick, need to stick around to the very end.
AJV (00:59):
I would say these are some of the highlights that I kind of pulled out of this, but I’m like, yeah, I wanna, I wanna know the answers to these things. So if you have a question around why long-term relationships could be dangerous for your advisory practice, then you’re gonna wanna stick around if you wanna talk about productizing your service offerings. ’cause I know so many of us are constantly going, man, like, how do I get out of the business of exchanging time for money, constantly time for money? Then this is an interview for you, and if you wanna just in general talk about how to position yourself as an expert, then this is a show that you don’t wanna miss. So, stick around. Don’t fast forward, don’t hang up early. Listen to the entire show. And then you can also catch the recap episode shortly after this.
AJV (01:49):
So now let me formally introduce you to David Baker. Here’s something that’s fascinating. He grew up with a tribe of Mayan and Inmans Indians in Guatemala. And we were just talking. He said, why is your zoom in Spanish? And I’m like, oh my gosh. I was just in Mexico and I couldn’t get it out. And he was like, oh, well, you know, I speak Spanish. I grew up in Guatemala, but not just grew up in Guatemala. Grew up with Mayan Indians. He’s also a airplane pilot, a photographer. He rides motorcycles. He lives here in Nashville, which is a super plus for me. But his work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, fast Company, U Ss a Today, Inc. Magazine, Forbes. I could go on and on and on, but instead of me telling you about him, why don’t I just introduce him? So, David, welcome to the show.
DB (02:37):
Thank you. Thank you. You got me all excited about sticking around for this. It’s like, wow, that’s sounds interesting. And how did I not pick up that? You’re in Nashville too. I, I when you told me that just a minute ago, I thought, well, how have we not met? I know. Yeah. That’s, that’s great. Thank you for having me.
AJV (02:53):
Love getting to meet other people who live in Nashville. ’cause I feel like so many of my friends today don’t live here. So when I meet somebody else who’s local, it’s a, it’s an extra treat. So as we get into this conversation just to help our audience a and b get to know you a little bit better, can you just kind of give us like a high level overview of how did you go from growing up in Guatemala to moving to Nashville, to writing books, to speaking and podcasting? Like how did this all come about?
DB (03:23):
Well, I’m a total fraud, and this is the, I’ve chosen to say that on your podcast the first time. No, I, my parents were medical missionaries. That’s how I grew up in Guatemala. So, lived in Costa Rica for a year while they learned Spanish, very poorly, learned it
DB (04:11):
And then one day, just with a lot of hubris, honestly, I was talking with my wife. I was sitting on the couch and I said, you know what? The ads in this local newspaper really suck. They’re just like, I could do better than this. I don’t know anything about it, but I think I could do better. So I started an ad agency, didn’t know, had never worked at one, didn’t know anybody else in the field, did it for six years. And it was a pretty ordinary, average firm, you know, it, it was successful, but not wildly successful. But as a part of that process, I subscribed to a newsletter. And part of what came with that subscription is that you could ask the newsletter editor questions for free. I think it was, that was his way of just staying in touch with the market. And one day I said to him, why don’t, why don’t you advise your clients rather than just doing a newsletter?
DB (05:02):
Why don’t you do consulting for them? And he gave me his reasons for why he wasn’t interested, but he said, why don’t you do it? And before I could even think about that, the answer to it, I, he said, and I’ll just put an ad in the newsletter, and you just gimme 10% of whatever you make. And I didn’t think much would come of it, but it seemed like kind of an interesting idea. And people started calling, and very quickly, within six months, it just completely took my life over. I think people were hungry for just business advice. And so that it was somewhat accidental, but I embraced it very quickly with sort of a combination of some expertise and a lot of curiosity and willingness to kind of be out in front of my skis a lot. And since then, obviously it’s been, that just really started the process of learning. And so I just, I feel like I’m just learning a lot all the time and helping people in the process process. So that was 30 years ago, next March when I started this firm and worked all across the world with thousands of firms, and just really love what I do. So I, I’m completely irrelevant to most of the world, but I want to be deeply relevant to a small part of it. And that’s small consulting, branding sort of firms.
AJV (06:16):
Well, I love that. ’cause I think that’s all of our challenges, right? If we try to be everything to everyone, then we are nothing to no one
DB (06:35):
Six, but only four of them were any good, but, so let’s just say four. Yeah.
AJV (06:41):
So a, a huge part of the audience that listens to this show. It’s also, you know, an aspiring author, aspiring speaker. Mm-Hmm. And so what would you say is like, how have you written so many books? Like what would you say is your inspiration? What’s your process and how do you find time to do that in also the midst of all the other stuff you have going on?
DB (07:02):
Hmm. Gosh, I love that question. Not many people ask it. I, I really, really love that question. You know, I think it starts in my mind with having a business that makes enough money that I don’t have to work all the time. So, a business that delivers enough extra time for me to, without any guilt, spend time working on it. That’s part of the answer. I think the other is that I feel like at my core, I’m an author who happens to be a speaker, and who happens to be a consultant. I’m, I’m really feel like I ha I have to say things, even if nobody’s listening, I have to say things. And so, what really makes me think I love this question is, so I, I’m getting ready to do a talk next week, and it’s a new one. I never give the same talk again.
DB (07:53):
I just can’t do it. I, I’m not saying you shouldn’t, I’m just saying I can’t do it. So I’m thinking about what am I gonna talk about? And the topic is, surely there’s more. And then realize, oh my gosh, do I really have anything new to say? And I, I just, just for fun, I added up all the stuff I’ve written, and it ended up being 2 million, 400,000 words over the last published words. So, and a 10th of those are across all of the books, right? So 90% were in other things, articles or podcast episodes or whatever. And so many things hit me after I realized that it’s like, okay, with a narrow focus focus, you, you never run out of things to say, now you think you’re going to, but the narrow your focus, the more you never run out of things to say, I have more unwritten articles now where I have the idea that I’ve ever had in my life, even after written two, 2.4 million words.
DB (08:50):
That’s one thing. The other is that I, like, not that many people read the articles I write, but the articles create an audience who then are going to buy the books and the articles are how I work out what I think. And those things get shaped into a book, right? So if I’d written a book without all of that, all those years of work writing articles, then I wouldn’t have an audience and I wouldn’t have thought through all of these things. So I feel like there’s sort of this mix, this weird mix. You’ve got to have a blog or something that forces you on a regular basis, maybe it’s a podcast, whatever it is that forces you to keep figuring out what you think mm-hmm.
AJV (10:03):
Hmm.
DB (10:03):
I’ll never figure that out until I start writing. So it’s not, oh, clarity. Now, let me write that down. No, it’s like, until I, I wrestle with articulating what I’m thinking, then the clarity comes. So to me, writing is how I figure out what I think.
AJV (10:19):
Hmm. That’s so good. And I loved your comment too about, you know, blogging or even podcasting or just creating content, whatever it is, it’s like, that is the arc of figuring out what you have to say. It’s, it, it takes practice, right? It’s like with anything, in order to be good at anything, you have to do it a lot. And the same thing goes with our thoughts and what we have to say. I love that. Yeah.
DB (10:43):
Yeah. I mean, you’re, so you’re doing this podcast and you’re doing it, I think it’s twice a week, right? Or, you know, it’s regularly. And there are probably times when you think, oh, today I am so excited about another time. It’s like, I don’t know really what I’m gonna say. I don’t know, do I have anything new to add? But this forces you to be on stage and people like you and me and your listeners, we don’t wanna look stupid. Yeah.
AJV (11:07):
We
DB (11:07):
Don’t wanna look stupid. And we’re trying to, we’re like, I wanna stand in front of a group, and then I want to open it up for questions, and I want to not fear a single question that would come my way. And unless you keep putting yourself on the stage in a light, you’re you, you don’t refine what you think. Right. Because, and what forces you to refine it is you don’t wanna look stupid. That’s just, it’s a natural instinct. Right?
AJV (11:33):
Oh, I love that. It’s the whole concept. It’s like, I love that just that idea of like, you can only refine what you think if you talk about it all the time. Right?
DB (11:41):
Right. Yeah.
AJV (11:42):
And I think that, you know, for most people, you know, myself included, sometimes it’s like we struggle with wanting to be a generalist. Like we struggle with, oh, you know, I just think about the amount of speaker press, Kitts that I review for our community at Brand Builders Group. And it’s like, I can speak on nutrition, health, fitness, mindset, goal setting. And I’m like, no, you can’t
DB (12:06):
Yeah. Yeah. I
AJV (12:06):
Can’t. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. And I love that too. It’s like your entire thing is that like, like narrow it down, right? That’s the, that’s the goal of expertise, right? Mm-Hmm.
DB (12:47):
AJV (13:36):
Mm-Hmm.
DB (13:36):
That then allows you to have excess opportunity that you can waste some of. So if, if you’ve got two options, two potential clients that wanna hire you, then you just choose the one that’s the better client. That doesn’t take any courage at all. But what takes a lot of courage is to say no to one opportunity that isn’t a great fit. So don’t put yourself in those positions. Put yourself in a position where you don’t have to muster all that courage. It’s not a question of knowing the right thing, it’s a question of having the right courage. Hmm. So I I just added a second person recently, but up for all these years, it was just me. Okay. And Billings were somewhere between 900001.7 million, and that’s taking about 10 weeks off a year. I’m not proud of that. We don’t use all that money. We don’t need all that money. That’s not, I’m not saying that I’m better than anybody that way, I’m just saying mm-hmm.
AJV (14:33):
DB (14:33):
Can, you can make a lot of money. You don’t have to be a big firm to make a lot of money. And what that, what that income allows me to do, what it gives me is the freedom to go out and figure things out and then write books, and then that just layers better marketing on top and more opportunity. I can be choos or, and choos or, and it’s just this cycle that repeats and helps make you better and better. Right. The world is just way too complex anymore to pretend that you can know everything about everything you, I’m feeding back to the comment you just made about the generalist, right? Like, people don’t pay a lot of money for generalists. They just don’t, they want, like, if you’re in a messy divorce or some kind of bankruptcy or whatever it is that’s, or a medical issue in your life, all you care about is hiring somebody that knows exactly how to help you in this situation. And, and the money doesn’t matter. Right. But when it’s like you need something done around your house and you just find a handyman that can do most anything and maybe not great at anything, that’s good enough. Right? Like, this is how we think and that’s how our clients think too.
AJV (15:41):
Yeah. I think, you know, one of the things that people struggle with so much is being afraid to be narrow. Mm-Hmm.
DB (15:50):
AJV (15:50):
Right. They’ve got FOMO
DB (16:02):
Right, right.
AJV (16:03):
I know that in my previous consulting life, I said yes to all kinds of stuff that I should not have said yes to. ’cause I’m like, ah, if they can do it, I can do it. I’ll figure it out. Mm-Hmm. But then it took 10 times the amount of time and effort and energy and resources to go and do that for the same price. Mm-Hmm.
DB (16:19):
I
AJV (16:19):
Guess it wasn’t that thing that I could do in my sleep. Right,
DB (16:22):
Right.
AJV (16:23):
Yeah, go ahead.
DB (16:24):
Well, I was just gonna say that sort of ties in with the whole idea of packaging productizing your services too, right? Because you want the efficiency that comes from doing, like, you, you should be leading that relationship. You’re not simply listening to what a client needs, and then you’re taking orders like a waiter would and says, oh, you need that, that, that, okay, now I’ll put, I’ll put together the perfect solution for you. No, it’s like, you’ve done this enough that you know generally what they need, so much so that you can put together a package and either they buy the package or they don’t, and if they buy the package, this allows you to be very efficient in how you work with clients. It also allows you to notice the patterns from one client to the next because you’re doing similar things for each of them. So it just, it, it really builds your practice better.
AJV (17:15):
Yeah. And I love that. So let’s talk about that for a second because that was one of the other things that you had said earlier, is this idea of productizing, right? Mm-Hmm. Your service offerings. So what do you mean by that? How do you do that? Like, what advice would you give people out there going Yes, yes. Like, how do you do that? Help me. Help me. Yeah.
DB (17:33):
Yeah. So here, here’s an illustration. So let’s say I’m going under the knife for surgery, and I’m a little bit nervous, and I talk to the, you know, the, the anesthesiologist will come in first, and, and then the surgeon will come in and they’ll ask you some questions. And usually it’s very perfunctory. But what if you just slowed that down a little bit and you said, Hey, I’m nervous. Can you tell me how you do this? Like, what, what are the steps that you follow? Here’s what you don’t want to hear to the dancer. It’s like, well, listen, I’ve done this a lot. You really need to trust me. I’m just gonna cut you open first. That’s the first thing I always do. Then I’m just gonna kind of look around and figure out what seems like it’s in the right place and what isn’t.
DB (18:15):
And depending on, you know, and like, no, you want, you want 17 steps in order. You want to know that they have done this many times before, that they’re an expert, and you’re, you’re putting yourself in the hands of somebody else. Now, a consulting relationship is not quite as important or critical as that, but your clients have a right to know how you think in advance, what, how you think about certain things and how you go about things. Because what they want to know is that you have applied a process in the past, and if you apply the same process for them, it’s likely to result in something good for them. Right? There’s a good result at the end of it. Productizing your service means that you you approach things in a pretty normal way and this in a regular way. And that regular way should be informed by your, your positioning, right?
DB (19:17):
So, my productized service should be very different than yours. And I also use a productized service to protect myself. So if a client comes to me and they’re sort of a hot mess, they just need lots and lots of help, and I wanna help them, right? But they want a fixed price. And I’m thinking, man, I don’t have any idea. I I don’t wanna learn all this on my own dime and figure this out for you. Like with an unpaid proposal that’s 80 pages long or something, I, I want to protect myself. So if I’m gonna give you a fixed price, I’m gonna have to shoot really high to protect myself. That’s not in your best interest either. So let’s start with a diagnostic or a road roadmapping exercise. Maybe it lasts for two weeks. Mm-Hmm.
Speaker 3 (19:58):
DB (19:59):
It’s $10,000 or 20 or five or whatever it is. And if you’re gonna start going down the productized path, that’s what you would always start with, is how a relationship begins. Picture that you’re on a plane with somebody, you’re both in first class, you’re just chatting. It turns out that they’re possibly a client of yours, they’re a candidate client, they’re not happy with whoever they’re using now. And they’re so intrigued that they say, you know what? This is really interesting. I can’t believe we just kind of ran into each other here. How would you start with somebody like me? You ought to be able to pull up a webpage and say, this is exactly how we start. We call it this. It costs this, it takes this long. This is what it involves. That’s productizing your service offerings. And that’s how you do it to start with at the beginning. And then you can productize everything else as well down the line.
AJV (20:49):
Yeah. No, I love that. It’s like the first product that you sell is a diagnostic.
DB (20:54):
Yeah. Right. Right.
AJV (20:54):
I said, I can’t tell you what you need until I get in there and know what you need.
DB (20:59):
Yeah. Right. Right. Exactly. And, and this ought to be at least as profitable as anything else you do for the client. This should not be a loss leader, right? This is not, you shouldn’t have on your website. Click here for a free 60 minute consultation. It’s like, no, you’re giving away your very best thoughts at that point. Instead, those early conversations should be about whether it’s a good fit. Like, tell me what you’re, what you’re facing, and let me tell you how I approach things and, and how I think about these kinds of things now. Okay. It seems like it’s a good fit. Now let’s do this diagnostic and really figure out what’s wrong, and then we’ll spend the rest of the money way more effectively, rather than just sort of bouncing around at the beginning without knowing where we’re headed.
AJV (21:47):
Now, would you also suggest when people come back from a, you know, diagnostic research type of engagement, that they also have a, a set suite of offerings? Yes. Or, yeah. So can we talk
DB (21:59):
Absolutely about that
AJV (22:00):
A little bit? Like how do people determine like, what are my suite of offerings?
DB (22:04):
Yeah. In
AJV (22:05):
Consultative arrangement.
DB (22:07):
That’s, it’s really good to think about that one. And so not too far from where you’re, where you live. I think it’s at the what’s the mall? The really big, the Green Hills Mall near where you live, right? Mm-Hmm.
AJV (22:30):
45 pages long. Yes.
DB (22:33):
DB (23:31):
‘Cause This is the best client relationships mean that we do these things for you. Otherwise, and this is particularly true, if you have a large firm with a lot of people doing different things, if they don’t wanna use this one third of your services, then you’re gonna lose a lot, lot of money because these people are just sitting around, right? So the best advisors lead the relationship and they’re gonna listen to what the client thinks they need, but then they’re going to say, nah this is what you really need. You need this list of services. And so it should be very specific. It should be in order, and there should be less and less variety around them. And if more and more clients aren’t using a particular thing, then just drop it off. It’s hard to be more specific than that. But generally, you always want a first one, like that road roadmapping thing you were talking about.
DB (24:18):
And then you probably want four or five or six other things on there. If people wanna get a sense of how to productize their services, we just released a completely new website. And I like I’m not sure your listeners or clients of mine, I’m not saying it for that reason, but they might want to look at the service offering. So they’re all very specific. They’re packaged in different ways. They’re all priced. That’s how you want to think about it. You want to get away from Cheesecake Factory menu towards the fixed price sort of menu.
AJV (24:45):
Yeah. What’s what, what website should you go to? If you picked,
DB (24:49):
Oh, sorry. Yeah, I didn’t even say right. Punctuation.Com. Yeah, it just released yesterday. So
AJV (24:54):
Punctuation.Com, if you wanna go, just check out what a suite of offerings mm-hmm.
DB (25:09):
Right? Right,
AJV (25:10):
Right. A huge part of this, it’s like when you offer less, then you can become better at it, which means you can charge more for it. Right. You can charge at a, a premium. But it’s like when you have 20, 30 things that you’re trying to do, it’s like, then you’re never doing the same thing enough to go, man, I can literally do this in my sleep. Yeah. It doesn’t mean near enough time to complete the same task. And
DB (25:34):
Don’t you think there’s sort of a dirty secret in our industry that many of us in our hearts don’t really believe we’re worth the money?
AJV (25:42):
Oh, yeah,
DB (25:43):
Definitely. And, and so we overdeliver, we, we keep checking in more than we need to. We write reports that are totally unnecessary, and let it, let’s just like, if you wanna report, take notes, I mean, that’s how we ought to think about this stuff, right? But we’re still, we’re so oversensitive about delivering value that we’re undercutting ourselves constantly. And if you are, I wrote a more recent book called Secret Trade Craft, and one of the things I said in there is that as you mature in your particular field, you should deliver less for more. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (26:27):
Delivered
DB (26:28):
To clients to justify your views because you were you were not very confident, right? Yeah. And, and, and you strip all that stuff out and you get to the core of what they need to hear. And this is really, really valuable because experts know how to cut to the chase. Right. And they’re not embarrassed by how simple their advice is that, anyway, I just wanna, I I, I wish I could preach that from the mountaintops,
AJV (26:54):
DB (27:23):
Yeah.
AJV (27:24):
I now know why this book is constantly selling thousands of copies every single week. Mm-Hmm.
DB (27:42):
Mm-Hmm.
AJV (27:46):
Right name. Clear
DB (27:58):
Mm-Hmm.
AJV (27:59):
And there’s power in that. So I love that. I love that idea of productizing it by starting with a diagnostic and then, then you can go, okay, all the things I offer, you need one, four, and five.
DB (28:10):
Right, exactly. Right. Yeah. And I know how to charge for it. We don’t have to waste a lot of time figuring that out. Right. No scoping questions.
AJV (28:18):
I love that. That’s so, it’s, it’s good sage advice for all of us where we feel like we have to offer everything to remember. No, you don’t.
DB (28:27):
Yeah. No, you don’t. It’s motivated, it’s motivated by our own insecurities more than it is. And when you have a client who’s pushing you to deliver everything, they’re not a qualified client. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (28:36):
DB (28:37):
Like a qualified client trusts you to do just what they need and not, and not waste their time with anything extra.
AJV (28:43):
And that’s where that courage to say, no, you’re not of me. No, I don’t do that. That really comes in. I love that. So, so good. That’s such wanted advice. Okay, next question. ’cause I know I’m watching the clock and I promised, you know, 45 minutes. But I would love to know like, what are some of these like, positioning mistakes that people make? So we’ve been kind of talking about, you know, this idea of like, position yourself in a way that you are this expert mm-hmm.
AJV (29:27):
And now they’re like, how do I get out of this? Mm-Hmm.
DB (30:04):
Mm-Hmm.
DB (31:01):
And if you want, I leave this out, but if you want, did you enjoy the work? So those three things, and you’re gonna end up with this map of maybe five to 20 different options, right? Then the next thing you do is try to draw a circle around the things that you’re going to include in your new positioning. And this is where the tension comes, because your tendency is to want to draw the biggest circle possible so that you don’t waste any of the opportunity that you’ve had, right? Mm-Hmm.
DB (31:56):
It’s like, nah, you can’t really do that
AJV (33:24):
DB (33:48):
That right? That’s a more human approach, right? It’s a more human approach. It acknowledges how difficult it is. Like the, the way you said that just a second ago is like that logically, literally that’s what you should say. But it’s not what we humans do. Yeah. It’s just too hard, right? So, yeah, that’s exactly right. And I think we just need to recognize that this is a hard thing, right? What I don’t wanna do is, I don’t wanna wake up one day and realize it’s like hit myself on the head. It’s like, shoot, my business is, has been shaped entirely by what other people want me to do.
AJV (34:20):
Hmm.
DB (34:21):
Now, in a way, you kind of have to do some of that, right? You can’t just create a business that nobody
AJV (34:34):
DB (34:35):
Maybe it is, maybe it isn’t, right? Your clients want you to do this ’cause they love you. Well, that would make that client happy, but then what’s gonna happen to your life? I mean, you have, your business has got to serve you the business. It, you, you’ve gotta be in charge of this thing, right? Don’t let the, don’t wake up one day and realize, okay, I started this business years ago because I wanted more time, I wanted more money, and I wanted more control. And now I look at my business six years later and I realize I’m spending too much time working. I’m working harder than I was. I’m making less money and I don’t have as much control that is messed up, right? Mm-Hmm.
AJV (35:19):
DB (35:34):
And
AJV (35:34):
It’s like, well, it’s so full because I jam packed it full. That’s why. Yeah. No one else to blame just me. But it’s that, you know, it’s back to, it’s hard to say no.
DB (35:45):
It is, it is.
AJV (35:46):
It’s a lot of clarity, a lot of courage to go, that’s not good for me. Even though it might feel good when I say yes. Yeah. It’s not good for me, not good for business to be like that.
DB (35:59):
And you’ve gotta make some brutal decisions that are going to disappoint some people, right? I, I’m not a particularly a religious person, but there, there’s this story of Jesus walking through this town, and he had the power to heal everybody. And I’ve, by just touching them, and I’m wondered, you know what, why didn’t he just touch everybody? Hmm. Like, and that’s sort of like you and you, you’re not, we’re not Jesus, but we, we have the power to help a lot of people, and it’s really hard to walk away from that. But, you know, you’ve gotta put your own oxygen mask on first. And some of the things that look really selfish, if you didn’t, if you’d never heard that repeated at the beginning of flights all the time, and you saw parents putting their own masks on first before they help their kids, you’d think, well, geez, that is selfish. No, no. It’s, it’s, it’s how more of us are gonna survive than not. And we have to keep there’s just, there’s so much. When you are good at something and you’re a genuinely good person, you wanna help everybody. But that is sometimes done at the expense of who you are and the other people in your life, and it’s just gotta stop.
AJV (37:14):
Hmm. That is so good. You can say that 1000 more times because we all need to hear it. We all need to hear it. And the, the truth is, and I love that story about Jesus and it as it relation to how we run our businesses, it’s like we aren’t meant to help everyone,
DB (37:31):
Right?
AJV (37:31):
Like we are uniquely positioned to help the people that we were meant to help.
DB (37:36):
Yeah. And
AJV (37:37):
If we stay focused on that, we will help more. Yeah. In the right ways that we are, you know, only we can do. And I love that. That’s so good. All right, I’ve got one last question for you.
DB (37:47):
Okay.
AJV (37:48):
How do you make your, you, your expertise or what I would say your uniqueness, how do you make that more narrow mm-hmm.
DB (38:10):
Mm-Hmm.
DB (39:11):
And if you find a lot more than that, then you’ve got to narrow it further, right? If you find less than that, then you’re probably gonna run out of opportunity and you need sufficient opportunity. You don’t want to go into any specialist sort of advisory role, assuming that you can lock up more than about 1% of the opportunity. And so the math is pretty deep, it’s talked about in the book, but that’s how you decide exactly how narrow to go. And so, so you’re broad and you picture yourself walking towards the right solution. And there are two things that will stop you on this path. As you walk from generalist to specialist. The first thing that might stop you is courage. And you just gotta get over that, right? The second thing, the legitimate thing that would force you to stop on that path is running out of opportunity. So you want to be in that special place where there’s not too many competitors, but still enough opportunity. And that math is 10 to 200 competitors.
AJV (40:10):
Hmm. That’s good. I love that. And I think too, it’s like many of us, I think we forget to look around and go, what is everyone else doing? Not that we should do what we do based on what others are doing, but it’s still good to have that comparative analysis of what is out there, what are people doing? Mm-Hmm. What are people charging, right?
DB (40:30):
Is
AJV (40:30):
There enough demand? Is there not enough demand? Not that it would change who we are and what we do, but mm-hmm.
DB (40:36):
AJV (40:36):
To have that comparative analysis of is there enough demand in the marketplace? Is there too much supply? You know, just basic laws of economics. Super.
DB (40:45):
Yeah. I mean, if we, we could apply that to your, your business. So the people who know branding, there are tens and thousands of those people, right? You apply branding in a very narrow way in your business, and that’s personal branding. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (41:10):
And it’s so funny because we left the world of, you know, corporate consulting and sales specifically in sales when we started Brain Builders Group. And it was a, a very decided decision of we don’t work with companies.
DB (41:26):
Mm-Hmm.
AJV (41:26):
We work with people, right?
DB (41:28):
And
AJV (41:29):
The hardest temptation in the last five years has been to say no to all the people that we work with. They’re like, oh, we love what you’re doing for us. Can you come do this for our company?
DB (41:39):
Right. Because
AJV (41:40):
It would’ve been so easy to go. Sure,
DB (41:42):
Yeah. I’m not,
AJV (41:44):
It applies and it’s been the hardest thing in the, it’s where we’ve been most disciplined of going, we don’t work with companies. We, in fact, we had to put it in all of our branding to hold ourselves accountable.
DB (41:55):
Right, right, right.
AJV (41:56):
It’s everywhere. So that we remind ourselves, oh yeah, we said we weren’t gonna do that.
DB (42:00):
Well, the best, the the best way to understand positioning is that there are a lot more things you don’t do than there are things that you do. Right? So it’s choosing a positioning is, is an exercise in irrelevance. Yeah. You’re becoming irrelevant to more and more people. And in the process you’re becoming more relevant to a smaller group.
AJV (42:19):
Love that. And I’ll say my drop on that comment, that was awesome. Such a great interview. I love also the narrow focus of the interview, which is apropos for the conversation. Y’all, if y’all wanna check out David and learn more about all the things that he does, go to david c baker.com. I also wanna give him a shout out for his I don’t think it’s your latest book, but it’s
DB (42:46):
The next to last book, right?
AJV (42:47):
Next to last book. It’s expertise is. So go to expertise is, I’ll put both of those in the show notes. David, if people wanna catch up with you on social media, is there one place that you would send them?
DB (43:02):
Probably LinkedIn David C. Baker, my middle initial, sometimes help you get to the right place. Or just the whatever, the slash dc b on LinkedIn. Happy to connect with people there.
AJV (43:13):
That’d be awesome. And we’ll put that in the show notes. Again, so check him out on his website. David C. Baker, connect with him on LinkedIn, and then go check out his book expertise Is is the website. Pick up a copy. Read it. David, pleasure to meet you. Thank you so much for being on the show. Thank
DB (43:31):
You, AJ.
AJV (43:32):
And everyone else. Stay tuned for the recap episode and we will see you next time on the influential Personal brand.