Category: Podcast

Ep 192: How to Be an Amazing Show Host with Ken Coleman

RV (00:02):
Well, long before Ken Coleman was a Dave Ramsey personality. He and I were friends. He hosted a talk show in Atlanta and my appearing on his show as a regular guest was one of my first ever gigs like a regular recurring guest. And it’s amazing to see how Ken’s career has grown. He truly is like one of America’s number one, you know, like the number one career coach or one of the top career coaches, he is the bestselling author of a book called the proximity principle. And he hosts a nationally syndicated radio show now called the Ken Coleman show. And so he has been hosting. He also has, you know, he hosted the, the Rams, a YouTube channel. Now he has his own YouTube show. He hosts a lot of the events for entree leadership, the summit master series and all of these different events that they do. And he’s just an amazing guy and it’s been awesome to see how his career has evolved. His personal brand, at least, you know, as, as I perceive, it is really around helping people find purpose at work. And, and, you know, he’s got a new book coming out later this fall or around seven seven stages for how, how to really do that. And so anyways, I’m excited to bring Ken to the show. You haven’t talked to him in a while, buddy. It’s good to see you.
KC (01:30):
Good to see you. I feel like you couldn’t be any more of a beautiful serene setting behind you. There is. That is that real people need to know
RV (01:39):
It is that’s our, that is our back. That’s our backyard.
KC (01:42):
You have to finish the interview by running out and jumping in the pool so that we can see that that would be great.
RV (01:47):
So here’s the thing. So that’s the backyard, but I am in the basement. So it is a picture. It is, it is actually, it is a picture of the backyard. And then we just put it on a green screen. So it’s a little bit
Speaker 3 (02:03):
Magic of show business. I love it. Let me feel like I’m outside because I’m seeing it behind me, but I love it. So,
RV (02:11):
Buddy, can you just kind of catch us up on I mean, I thought it would be fun to talk to you specifically one, cause we’ve just been friends for years, but about hosting specifically. And I know you know, I was with Dave a couple of weeks ago. He told me that you had the interview with George W. Bush coming up. I know that you’ve done thousands of interviews on some of the biggest stages in the world. And and, and tell me about like the, tell me about the Ken Coleman show. Like what’s going on with what’s going on with that, where where’s it at now?
KC (02:45):
Yeah, so it’s very exciting. We’re now approaching 80 stations in national syndication. That’s just traditional talk radio. We’re also on Sirius XM live each day, Monday through Friday, I lead into the Dave Ramsey show. Of course we podcast that each day. So we have a daily podcast and because it is a, in my mind, it’ll always be, I’m an old school radio guy. So to me, it’s a radio show first, you know, now podcasts has become a part of our nomenclature, you know, in the United States for sure, and around the world. And so we take that live radio show and we, we put it out as a podcast because it is a color driven show. I do teach each day and give out great, you know, personal growth content and relevant data and stuff. That’s in the news that affects people that are trying to work on purpose and do what they were created to do, to make the contribution that they were created to make.
KC (03:42):
But we, you know, we do it on YouTube as well. So we have a different format on YouTube for that YouTube Bonnie’s cause it’s very different viewer and engagement habits there. So we’re all the platforms. But simply put, we are helping people discover what they were created to do, and then come up with a plan to make that purpose in your work or reality is based on this premise. We believe that everybody, every man and woman was created to fill a unique role in their work, that means that they are needed and it means they need to do it because somebody out there is relying on them, needs them to show up and be their best. There is a view of work. Roy, you know, this, there’s a view of work. That is, that is this cultural view that says that I work to live.
KC (04:31):
In other words, I work to get a paycheck. And then that paycheck allows me to take care of my basic needs. If there’s a little bit left over, we can make some memories with it. And so that’s pretty much the dominant view of work in the world. And I’m trying to put on a different set of glasses for people and say that you live to work. Now when some people hear that they’re like, Ooh, gross, right? That’s workoholism, it’s your identity. They’re all in place. Now what that means is, is that you were in fact created. I just believe that. So whether you’re a person of faith or not, I wouldn’t argue with anybody for two seconds over that, but I would say that you were created to work. If I substitute the word workout and put contribute, then it go, the yuckiness goes away and somebody goes, oh, that’s right.
KC (05:22):
Created to contribute. See, because the most confused person I’ve ever talked to on the phone or in person would say, can, I don’t know what I want to do. I just want to help people. Right? Most confused person will say that Y Aurora, you know, this, you’re a student of personal growth. You understand this. We all long to make a difference. We can just say it simply as that. So when we say created a contribute, created a work, I don’t think you can separate who you are personally from who you’re supposed to be professionally, meaning your worth is not in how you make your worth is not in your accolades, but, but you, but you get tremendous significance out of the contribution you make in work. So that’s the overriding philosophy of the Ken Coleman show. And so that’s what we’re doing.
KC (06:10):
We’ve got people that are calling in who don’t know what they want to do with their life. We’ve got people that are calling in that know what they want to do, but they don’t know how to get there. We’ve got people who call it, know what they want to do. They know how to get there and Roy, but they won’t do it because they’re scared to death. I get that too. Or they’re held back by financial or relationship issues. And then we have people who are on the path and they’re just trying to get promoted. They want to move up the ladder. They want that next wrong. And so I’m, I’m their coach. Well it starts out every phone call and the counselor first. Then I put on the coach hat and then I put on the cheerleader hat.
RV (06:43):
So I want to talk about that for a second because working with callers you know, when, when I think of hosting, there’s kind of two things I want to, hopefully we can get into one is working with callers. The other is preparing for like expert interviews, so to speak. But on the, on the working with callers which also could be, you know, in a live audience, you know, you’re engaging from stage with somebody, somebody out in the seats. It’s a, it’s a real skill set. And what’s amazing about terrestrial radio. Like I remember when I used to host a terrestrial radio show way back in the day, it’s such a short time, like you only have, how long is it? How long is an entire segment with with a guest? You don’t ask that a few minutes, right?
KC (07:26):
Yeah. Well, you you’re traditionally in an hour, you’re most radio clocks. You’re going to have at most an eight to 10 minute segment. So you might have a couple of eight minutes segments and you might have one 10 minute segment, but but yeah. And, and then you got at most, you know, six minutes with somebody you’re right. I mean, you have to, you have to,
RV (07:48):
That’s so hard. I mean, coaching calls usually are like an hour. I mean, and you’re having to do it in six minutes. So like, what are some of the, what are what’s some of your thought process? Because well, in, in, in, in, in here’s the, here’s the other thing that I’m, that I’m thinking about with you, right? Like, like I’m going, when you’re on a radio show, you’re trying to listen to the caller, you’re trying to get to the point, you’re trying to help them. And you’re also trying to make it quasi entertaining for the people who are listening in on the conversation. Like, how do you, what’s going on in your head when you’re working with a color like that? Yeah. That’s a really
KC (08:31):
Good question. And the reason that question is so good is because you can’t focus on those last two things. Oh, those last two things happen organically, which was well, so, so you got, so you got to coach them quickly, but you also got to be caused by entertaining. So it starts with though you got to listen to the caller. So you said, listen to the caller, give them the advice, coach them, but also make it quasi entertaining. Right? Right. That’s the way you worded it. So it starts with, you’ve got to really, really listen. And I’ve got the benefit of a call screener. So, you know, you get some of your clients who are thinking, Hey, maybe I want to do a call and podcast because what makes our show unique in the space that we’re in is that I’m one of the few, if, if only that are dominated by real live calls and by the way, not knocking anybody who does it this way.
KC (09:20):
Cause for some of your clients, it probably would be good to have somebody call them ahead of time, get some type of a worksheet and figure out what the issue is. Then they schedule a call to me. I think that’s cheating. If you really want to grow, you really want to grow as a thought leader. And as a content provider, put yourself on the high wire of taking calls live with no previous knowledge. So all I have when I’m taking a live call is I’ll see will from Kalamazoo, Michigan. And I’ll have one line that my associate producer will kind of say general direction of the call got two job opportunities deciding that’s all I know. And so what happens is, is I must listen. And now I’ve got a call screener who coaches that caller who’s nervous because it’s live right. And it’s a national show.
KC (10:08):
So coaches indigo get to your question pretty quickly. Be super specific. Ken will take over from there. So when they call in you, you have to listen. Not so much as to what they’re saying, but how they’re saying, like, so you, you can’t just listen to the question. Hey, Ken I got two job opportunities, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I need your help. You listen for their emotion. You listen for little clues and this happens over time. You don’t get this right away, but over time you realize that basically you’re getting the same five to seven questions every day. Just details. Details are different. And so what happens is you must listen. What is the real question? They may ask me this question, but they’re really asking me this question. Okay. So an example would be, instead of them, they’re not asking me they’re really not asking me which job they should take.
KC (11:09):
What they’re really asking me is, am I an idiot for wanting to take this other job because it’s less money. But it’s gonna eventually get where I want to go. The other one is on paper. It’s just a much better job. But this one over here, the heart’s telling me it’s right, is get the best payoff, little bit of risk. You see what I’m saying? So the question behind the question. So when I’m listening to the question, I’m trying to figure out what are they really asking? And many times I’ll just come right at him and go, well, what’s going on here? And so my job is to respond quickly with a scalpel. And the scalpel is the question. And from years and years and years of doing expert interviews with big name people and all this kind of stuff, and trying to develop conversation for an audience to get something from I’ve learned how to ask a question that goes about three levels deeper.
KC (12:00):
So the magic is listening for the real question, the emotion, the challenge, the desire, that’s what you’re listening for. And then you ask questions to get deeper to that and uncover it, not just for the caller to now answer your question full circle, but to uncover it for the listening audience and when the listening audience sees and hears that happening, it’s the theater of the mind because it’s radio or podcasts. So they’re picturing what I look like, the picture and what that person looks like. You can’t help it. And so that becomes entertaining when you uncover somebody and turn somebody’s light bulb on that’s entertaining as hell,
RV (12:37):
Man. So you’re just so basically it’s just, you’re focused on serving that one person and by virtue of doing that, it’ll be entertaining and engaging for the, for the listener. I like that. So that’s, that’s let me
KC (12:50):
Add one thing to that. You must serve the caller, but in serving the caller, you’re talking to the general audience too. You see what I’m saying? You’re taking, so I’m answering Will’s question, but as I’m teaching, I’m going and folks, Will’s not the only one, some of you out there right now are feeling the same way you drop in little moments like that. So it goes from Will’s application to their situation. They apply it, however they would, but they’re voyeuristically engaging, and that is entertaining to people.
RV (13:21):
Huh. And so you actually will step you’ll use language that kind of steps out of the conversation with you and will to kind of connect to the listener
KC (13:29):
And say yeah, sometimes I’ll apply it to everybody, but other times I’m just going to go deep with will and I’m going to go, will you feeling doubt? Why, what are you doubting? And by going really deep with him, everybody else in the audience, that’s listening to us, dealing with some doubt, they totally apply it to them.
RV (13:46):
So, so how do you go deep in six minutes? Like, so you
KC (13:51):
Have to listen to it. And I mean, I know you’re a busy guy, but you’d have to listen to it to really break that down the way I do it is again, I’m approaching 5,000 calls now in four years, live on the air. And so the repetitions, I know what I’m hearing. I, I mean, within 30 seconds, I usually know what’s really going on. And so your diamond did it dig, dig with questions and it seems
RV (14:16):
Like you’re really driving towards the emotion. Almost like it’s, it’s going, they’re asking whatever they’re asking. But the real issue is how are they feeling underneath the surface? And if you can, if you can get, if you can get them to open up about the emotions that they’re feeling, then we’re having a meaningful conversation. I must uncover their heart.
KC (14:40):
I’m all about uncovering their heart. I mean, I joke around with my wife about this, you know, but I don’t say this often publicly because it could sound cheesy, but I I’m in the business. I had a lady call today and she had two options. One was stay where she currently is where she’s crying once or twice a week. At the end of the day, she’s killing it. She’s making 180 grand. She’s really good at it. Loves the people there, but the job is stressing her out. She’s on the verge of burnout. And then she’s got this other opportunity where she’ll make 150 it’ll keep her on the same career path, keep her on the ladder. But it’s gonna be way less stressful. She may make 30 grand less and she’s called me. And instead of me telling her what I think, I just walk her through a series of questions and I get her to tell me, I said, I know what you should do cause I can hear it.
KC (15:29):
But I want you to tell us what are you leaning towards? Because I think your head’s telling you one thing and your heart’s telling you another is that right? And she goes, she starts giggling. And I’ve, I’ve had that call a hundred times where it’s a wrestling match between the head and the heart. So, but I got to get the color to tell me the voice of the head and then the voice of the heart. And then I go, before you called me, which way were you leaning? And she said, kid, I was 75%, one way, 75%. The other way I said, that’s impossible. She starts laughing again. I said, what’s your heart telling you to do? She goes, take the other job. And I go, what did you think I was going to say, she goes, you were going to tell me to follow my heart. She’s going to listen to my show long enough to know what I’m going to tell her, see the heart and the head should be in alignment, but it should always be the heart driving and the head joining.
RV (16:21):
And did I hear you say that you want them, there’s this wrestling match of the head and the heart and you want them to speak out both. What’s your head telling you and what’s your heart telling you? You try to get them to say them both out loud.
KC (16:37):
Absolutely do. And that’s for the audience. They think it’s for them, but it’s really audience because I want the audience to catch up and, and, and not just to follow along, but to see the exercise itself because that’s what we need to do. You and I have both been in a situations where we’ve been torn and we’ll speak to somebody that we know and we trust. And they’ll just however they do it. Maybe not as intentional as that, but they get us to that point where we go, I got to trust my heart here. My heart’s telling me this. I’m overthinking it up here. This is what the heart says is right. I’m going to go do it. And so then my head gets in alignment, but the problem is our brains are these logic machines. And that’s a wonderful thing from our creator, the greatest logic processor in the world, the greatest supercomputer of all times the brain.
KC (17:22):
But the problem is, is that I’ve been relearning this you and I’ve grown up in a world that kind of says our thoughts drive our feelings. I’m now totally reversing that and rethinking that and relearning that it’s our emotions that drive our thoughts. So when I have the emotion of fear, then my thoughts are going to all be about fear. And that drives my actions. So I’ve got to get my heart settled. And when I get my emotions in heart settled, then I can think better. And that’s, that’s that alignment. So when we’re talking about doing something that you love, these people call, they know ahead of time, they just want me to give them permission, right? Yep. Anyway, I just did with lots of questions. You’d be surprised how quick you can get to the hardest something with about the first of all, a really good question.
KC (18:12):
And then when somebody starts talking around it, see it’s my show and I’m in charge. So we’re all polite, real life. I’ll just stop and go stop, stop, stop, stop, stop. You didn’t answer my question. Let me ask it again. I’ve had people say kid. I say, what, what would you do? If, if, if money wasn’t an object and you couldn’t fail and you didn’t have to commit to the rest of your life, what would you do? I don’t know. I don’t remember the first time I did this almost threw up on my desk. It was in a moment. Okay. It was very Tony Robbins. I’ve watched Tony. I’ve studied Tony. And I remember the first time somebody said that to me and I let them right to the edge and they went, I don’t know. And in that moment I was like, okay, I can redirect, give them some advice and put them on hold and move on.
KC (18:54):
And in the moment were, I just went. That’s not true. You know, because while I was setting you up, but I’m going to do it again so that you can hear yourself one more time. I want you to see the thoughts. I asked you. If you could do something tomorrow where you knew you couldn’t fail, you absolutely loved it. And you have to commit to the rest of your life. What would you do? And I know that while I said that the second time, the same thought that you came up with the first time rolled through your head, you couldn’t help it. It popped up. And you’re not telling me because you’re scared or you’re doubtful now. No more excuses say it. And dude, I was totally terrified. I was like, if, if this person locks up on me, I don’t have a place to return to.
KC (19:36):
And would you believe it? That they said it blurted it out? Just like that. Now I’ve done that many, many times because here’s what I’ve learned. I’ve learned that when I create that vision for people, those word pictures, right? I say, what would you do if you knew you couldn’t fail? What would you do if you knew you’d love it? What would you do if you didn’t, you have to commit to it. It’s just as fun work adventure, like no risk. It’s impossible for a human. Not to have some thoughts. All I’m doing is taking them on a little journey. And so you got to trust that the thoughts are there and then you gotta make them say it.
RV (20:11):
Yeah. I remember when I was getting radio Koshin they used to call that the slap where you kind of confront, you kind of can respond to the call or directly and kind of go, no, you’re not being honest. You’re like, there’s a, there’s something very powerful about that kind of moment of conflict where you, you force them to reconcile the truth that they’re like you said, they’re so afraid. They can’t even say it. That’s powerful. So let’s shift the conversation. That’s awesome, man. I love this. So I want to shift the conversation to the expert. I mean, you got to interview George Bush. Like it’s gotta be a little bit intimidating. I mean, I, I know, I mean, at this point, I know you’ve interviewed so many people, the different podcasts that you’ve hosted, the different radio shows and stuff. How do you prepare for an interview with,
KC (21:09):
You know? Yeah. All right. So I want to address the first thing. And, and when I, when I give you, I’m going to give you all my secret sauce, all right? I’m not, I can charge a lot of money for this, but I’m not intimidated. And there’s two reasons why I’m not intimidated. One is preparation and two is experience. Preparation is everything. And I’m about ready to give you the secret sauce of how I prepare an interview like this, to do it in front of thousands of people. Plus, you know, a former head of state, but I’ve said this many times, relentless preparation leads to reflexive performance. I’m going to say it again. Don’t you? Any of you steal that because I see it on social. I’m going to bust you. Relentless preparation leads to reflexive performance. The reason the great quarterbacks like Tom Brady or Bret farmer, John Elway Joe Montana, you could plug in the names, Dan Marino, we Marvel at how they can lead a team from the one yard line down to a touchdown with less than a minute, less than two minutes to go.
KC (22:08):
No time outs. We Marvel at that. Except what we fail to think about is they’ve practiced that two minute drill hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of times. Number one, number two, they’ve watched film. They know what the other team’s two-minute defense looks like. They know their place. They know wherever it’s supposed to go. So when they’re out there, they’re moving on instinct. Brett Farve is not this chess player out there. All of a sudden where he’s out thinking everybody know he’s instinctively reacting. He knows where his primary, secondary, third check downs. He knows he’s done it. And he knows how to get out of bounds. You know the thing. So these guys they’re relentlessly prepared so that they can reflexively perform. There’s no brain going on out there. It’s just all instinct. All right. So that’s the first thing. Secondly the experience that I’ve had, I’ve done so many interviews that at this point, while I’m honored to sit across from George W. Bush or Condoleezza rice, or Mark Burnett, or you name it. Okay. Jim Collins, Malcolm Gladwell, whatever those
RV (23:12):
It’s true. You got to interview Rory Vaden one time for like, that’s it, man,
KC (23:17):
That’s it? So the issue is, is that they’re experts in their bigger deal than me, for sure. But they’re still a human being. And in that moment, for whatever reason, they’ve submitted to a conversation with me. So I’m in charge. So I might as well act like I’m in charge because I’m in charge. Now how much charge I take is up to me. So I’ve learned that they’re just a human and they’re sitting there and most of them have never been interviewed really, really well. So if you really prepare, use the process, I’m about ready to unveil. Then you’re going to find that they’re going, this is enjoyable. This dude, this gal, they came prepared. They’re teasing me up. This is enjoyable. All right. So here’s the process. First thing I do, there are questions that I ask before I write the interview and writing the interview is the most important part of the interview.
KC (24:07):
One of the mistakes that a lot of people make is they get up there and have a general idea where they want to go, but they haven’t really thought through the process. They haven’t thought through the journey. They’re taking the audience on, because remember this isn’t about you as the interviewer, okay? Some of your clients are big brands and they become known as interviewers, big freaking deal. Okay? It’s not about you. It’s about the audience. And if you want to get praised for being an interviewer, well, you’re only going to do that when you generate and produce a great conversation. So most people get into this stuff and they’re kind of prepared and then they get nervous or they get caught up in the moment. Oh gosh, I’m talking to Georgia, a Bush and they get tongue tied. They don’t know where to go.
KC (24:48):
Or he takes them one direction. And they’re too busy looking at their next question, cause they’re not prepared. And they miss a nugget. That should be a rabbit trail that you go down. Hmm. The best part of of interviews are the parts you don’t plan. But the only way you can discover that, realize it in the moment Roy is because you’re so prepared that you can listen to the full answer. And when George Abbey gets George, w Bush gets done, you go, oh, here’s my next question. It’s right there. I’m already prepared. I glance at it. And I go, so here’s the process. First thing you do before you write the interview, you ask yourself, what does the audience want to know? That’s the first question. What does the audience want you to think about your audience? If you have a podcast or you’re at a leadership event, like I was at a leadership event, there’s 3000 leaders out there.
KC (25:38):
So what does the audience want to know? They have come to this event and what they want to know is something that will help them lead better. Right? You can just general as you want to make it. What do they want to know? Second question is, what do they need to know? Now? This is where we get more specific. So what does the audience want to know? Well, they want to know how to be a better leader, right? How to grow their company, whatever. What do they need to know? Well, now this is where you, as the interview, get a chance to shape the conversation to go. They want to be a better leader. They want to grow their company. So what do they need to be able to do that? Right? So if somebody comes in and they want to lose weight and they meet with a nutritionist and Tricia goes, okay, they want to lose weight or they want to get a, they want to lower their blood, blood cholesterol, whatever.
KC (26:24):
Well, okay. Now what do they need to know to be able to achieve the one? Okay. So that’s the, so you start writing these things down. Well, they need to know about leading in crisis. They need to know how to lead in collaboration. They need to know how to lead in conflict. Okay. Those are three separate buckets right there that I just went, oh, that’s what they need to know. Well, I’ve got a president of United States who can speak to those things. And that leads to your third question. What can my guest, through their experience and expertise? How can they meet those two needs? What they want to know and what they need to know. So what does the audience want to know? What do they need to know? And then, well, how can my guest meet those two needs? That’s where you start. And so what that starts to do is give you themes, conflict, collaboration, crisis, whatever.
KC (27:13):
So you start to get these themes and go, okay. Again, some themes. I’m just writing this stuff down on the paper. This is what I do core Rory, I’m sorry. I don’t know why I keep calling you. Corey. I just got with a marketing guy named Corey in our billing. It’s a Freudian slip. So, so I’m writing all this down, all these topics. So once I get my bank of topics, then I say, what’s the last question I want to ask. So I write the very last question first, right? First, first question I write is the last question. Why do you know why I do that? What do you think it is? What’s the reason. Hm.
RV (27:50):
I don’t know. Maybe that’s just what they’re going to remember.
KC (27:52):
Well, that’s where we’re ending. So, you know, it’s how you close a talk. So I want to know, where am I taking the audience? So this is what most interviews never do. That’s why you weren’t able to answer. I put you on the spot because I don’t know anybody that thinks this way, but it works for me because I want to know, where am I taking the audience at the end of an hour conversation with George W. Bush, where am I taking them? Where are we going to finish? So once I know where I’m going to finish, that’s the story arc. So now I go, where do I want to start? And then what’s the rest of the journey looked like that takes me here. Or else you’re just going to have this Papa shot style interview where it’s not connected. I like for the interview to start here and make sense organically as it gets to the end point where I’m leaving the audience.
KC (28:45):
This is the final word they’re going to hear from this guest. And I think that’s the way you write a good interview. So I write the last question first. Then I write the first question. Second, I’ll give you some more tips on this. I always try to ask a icebreaker, very personal question. That could be fun or a very significant to them personally, early on. The reason I like to do that is because if you really do your homework and you dig deep and you ask them a question from their past, that’s very significant to them. Number one, you unlock their heart in the first question. They’re like, oh yeah. So the first question I asked Condoleezza rice, okay. This is the most decorated woman, arguably in us history. Okay. besides vice president Harris, who’s now the first female president. So, you know, Condoleeza, rice, big time, big time.
KC (29:37):
And most people don’t realize that she was competitive ice skater when she was in her early teens. So the first question I asked her was about ice skating. Most people in the audience were like, what where’s he going with this? She lit up big smile on her face, started talking about all the hours, why she loved it. And so I introduced a different Condi rice to the audience, number one, but more importantly, I established rapport with her. Cause she’s looking at me going, all right, man, you did your homework. You showed up, you, you know something about me. You’re not asking me the general question. And so she w she leaned in, she warmed up to me. We had rapport and Mrs. Thing, I think thing I did with George W. Bush, I started the interview, will my publicist sitting here. I started off by going, Hey, before we start talking leadership tell us what you’re up to now.
KC (30:26):
I knew he was going to talk about painting. Cause he just released his third pamphlet. I knew it was going to ask him about painting his wife, Laura. Cause he’s got a hilarious story on it. And so our first five minutes was hilarious. I’m talking about learning how to paint and paint and his wife and she hated it and making sure he threw it away. And the audience was roaring with laughter and he and I are having a blast. And I haven’t even asked him a leadership question yet, but I had established rapport. So that’s, you know, that’s my process. That’s a little bit of how I get into it so that people feel like they’re eavesdropping in on a real conversation. Then it’s no longer, I can’t believe Ken Coleman’s up there talking to George W. Bush. People are largely ignoring me because I’m not hemming and hawing over my question. I’m this guy who’s having the time of his life having a conversation and you’re getting a watch me do it. You’re not even focused on me. You’re focused on the present, which is what should be a great interviewer makes the interview about the guests because they’re so smooth, so prepared and leading somebody, not just the audience, but the guests you’re leading the audience and the guests at the same time.
RV (31:40):
Love it. That is, those are that’s so great. Can like that is I really love that idea of asking, writing the last question first and just realizing no matter how this goes, that we need to end up here. And and that is so true when people share an intimate detail about their life. It, it opens, it’s just, it’s disarming, it knocks down walls and it creates the rapport. So powerful. Well, man, I, I, I knew that you would have secrets on how to do these interviews and you’ve been so generous and this is so helpful. Where do people, where do you want people to go to learn about you? And I mean, obviously you’ve got the Ken Coleman show, we’ll put links to the proximity principle book on on our blog post about this. Where else would you, would you direct people?
KC (32:30):
I’d love your audience to connect with me on Instagram at Ken Coleman. If I can ever add any value to your audience, I love what you’re doing. I love connecting with other influencers and best practices and encouraging each other. Ken coleman.com is the website where you can learn anything and get connected with anything I’m doing. And of course the Ken Coleman show, you know, if you want to learn how to dig into people’s hearts in six or seven minutes, give it a listen. It’s a daily podcast. And once you get tired of it, you don’t have to listen to it anymore, but you can steal some trade secrets and, and listen, it’s just cuts at the plate, man. You know, it’s just, it’s just being willing to suck and put yourself out there and learn how to do that. And it, over time you, you get really good at it. If you just keep showing up.
RV (33:21):
Yeah. Well for sure, I mean, you you’ve been, you’ve been doing this for a long time. It’s great to see you growing what’s what’s your favorite interview question someone has ever asked you?
KC (33:38):
Favorite interview question someone has asked me man, that’s a tough one a lot. And so I’m trying to think.
RV (33:48):
Or do you have a favorite question that you’ve asked somebody?
KC (33:57):
I, I think the favorite interview question I ever asked of somebody was with coach cave, legendary hall of fame coach for duke. Who’s one of my favorite coaches. So it was it was an unbelievable honor and I prepared that interview and I asked him my favorite question I’ve ever asked, cause it was so personal, but also I thought what he did with it was really fun. And I felt like he was going to crush it. I asked him how he, how he led different point guards. You know? So, you know, in basketball, the point guard, at least back in the day, you know, the Tommy Amaker is the, the Johnny doc is the Bobby Hurley’s and coach K was done for these great point guards. And in the question I said, you know, Tommy, Amaker very different than Bobby Hurley both led your team.
KC (34:49):
And one graduates and the other comes in, how did you lead them differently? And you get this big, old smile on his face. Like that was a freaking awesome question. And he was like, I love that. And he said, he said that that’s that’s really, really good. And, and so he told me, and so he, he began to go into how he led Tommy was much more intentional and much more structured because Tommy wanted to know which play to run in the timeout, draw it out. And Tommy was going to run it perfectly. He said, I’d draw plays, but I’d make suggestions to Bobby Hurley. Cause Bobby Hurley was an instinctive leader. He goes, and I knew that I draw play up, but if Bobby didn’t see it, he just run his own plane, make it up. And he goes, I was okay with that.
KC (35:31):
And I had to learn more control, more intentionality with one leader, less allow him freedom. That’s a fantastic, fantastic answer. So I’ll tell you that was probably my favorite question. I think people have asked me before. What’s the, I think probably most favorite question is what’s the challenge. What’s the greatest challenge of, of being a thought leader and somebody who’s been given a really large platform like Dave Ramsey placed me here. This is the real question that God and Dave Ramsey they’re the hands along with others that poured into me, but they’re the hands that have put me in this position. And I got asked that question recently. How do you handle that? And what’s the greatest challenge, cause this is fun. What you and I get to do is fun to pour into people and see their light bulbs go on every day. It’s really, that’s a juice. That’s hard to get tired of it. So that was a good question. That was a really interesting, because most people don’t associate challenge, you know, personal challenges with what we get to do. And I thought that was a really thoughtful question.
RV (36:39):
Yeah. Well I love that. And that, that, that question that you asked coach K is such a great example where, you know, it was not only led to a great insight, but you tapped into an intimate place for him in his life that he was like,
KC (36:57):
That’s the key, that’s the key. You know, when you’re interviewing somebody like Malcolm Gladwell, like don’t ask him about 10,000 hours or something he’s been interviewed on 50,000 times, you know asking him, you know, what he admires most about distance runners. Does he see himself in them? Like that’s gonna like mocking level. The guy loves runners. He runs for, for his health, but he’s also a geek out super fan of these long distance runners. Ask him about something that he’s juiced about and then it’s game on, man.
RV (37:38):
I love it. I love it. Well, Ken Coleman, one of the greatest hosts of our time sharing secrets right here, stop and in full transparent disclosure. Buddy, I’m so grateful for you. You’ve been such an encouragement to me, keep going. And we wish you all the best
KC (37:57):
I will, man. Appreciate you. You’ve always been so kind and I got to get over there to that pool. You and I need to be in big, giant rubber ducky floats.
RV (38:05):
Do it, man. See you brother.

Ep 190: How To Accelerate Your Personal Brand Through Strong Visual Identity with Stephen Scoggins

RV (00:00:10):
Hey, brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview as always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would lovph to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders, group.com/pod call. We hope to talk to you soon.
RV (00:00:54):
We love Stephen Scoggins. We love him for a number of reasons. Mostly just out of a pure respect and genuine admiration for his heart and his desire to serve, but we also very much admire what he has done. He is a serial entrepreneur, not just a personal brand, but he has several other businesses in homes and siting and all sorts of real estate and different things that he does. And he’s a, he’s a true entrepreneur and there’s not really another term other than serial entrepreneur that describes him, but w our lives intersected with his a handful of years ago. And since that time he’s become a best-selling author, he’s the podcast host his, his thought leadership has been featured in major media outlets. I mean, several of the big ones, Forbes, entrepreneur thrive, global NBC ABC. Several others he’s been on our pal, John Lee Dumas podcast to entrepreneur on fire.
RV (00:01:56):
And so basically Stephen has helped fortune 500 leaders, professional athletes, entertainers, pretty much anyone with a dream with with a plan and a set of principles to help them exceed their wildest expectations for all that life has to offer. And so he offers education and inspiration and encouragement for anyone looking to make their dreams a reality. And we also have a very unique relationship with Stephen from a professional standpoint that he was a client, is a client is still an active client who became one of our strategists at brand builders group. So he is also certified in teaching stuff at brand builders. And then he is a
New Speaker (00:02:40):
lso one of our brand implementation partners where he does execution for some of our clients, which we don’t do internally. And so we refer that out to him. And so I think he’s like one of the only people ever that we’ve had that relationship. And anyways, that’s, that’s a lot, but there’s, there’s a lot to you brother. So welcome to the show.
SS (00:02:59):
It’s my pleasure. No, I was gonna, I was fixing to say, did I get kicked out of the group? You’re gonna get fired as a client. No, man, I love you guys. You guys, has it been a, a major influence and a major impact or in my own personal brand and we’re changing lives because of it. So I’m grateful to you guys big time.
RV (00:03:13):
Yeah. Well thank you for that. And our team loves you and, and, you know, AIG loves you and AJ doesn’t love everybody, but once she finds someone that is like truly authentic and all about integrity and doing the right thing, like she latches on and, and, you know, I want to talk about how you’ve built your personal brand as an entrepreneur, like in addition to being an entrepreneur. Because I think, you know, a lot of our clients kind of set on the path to go, I’m going to be a coach, a consultant, you know, whatever thought leader expert, and they do that, or they’re in professional services and they’re like, okay, I’m going to X, I’m going to accelerate myself as an accountant, or they’re an executive, you know, kind of, you know, on the path of trying to get promoted or you maybe just create more visibility for their company, but you’re an entrepreneur who has quote unquote real businesses like businesses, separate of not personal and team members and employees. And, and actually let’s start with that. How many employees do you have and give us, like, give us a bit of a sense of the scope of your non-personal brand businesses.
SS (00:04:24):
Yeah, I think the easiest way to do that is to basically say that I’ve been at this game for almost 22 years. I started my first business CHG, where it’s known as custom home exterior siding business, not super sexy, unless you need siding on your house, then it’s super sexy.
RV (00:04:39):
Awesome. I mean, you guys like your house that you just, you did, it was just awesome. Like you guys do some awesome stuff.
SS (00:04:45):
Thanks, man. No, you know, it’s you know, I started that company sleeping car roughly 22 years ago. I grew up but grew up in a very difficult situation growing up was very fortunate to have a mentor that believed in me when I didn’t believe in myself, what kind of got me going began to kind of change my mindset a little bit, and then quickly grew that business wise, it quickly 20 years, it took me 20 plus years to get that company to be self-sufficient where, you know, I could spend time with you today and kind of share and whatnot and focus on some other business endeavors. But that company is now in three states, I employ about 400 people. Company-Wide on that, on that side of things. And we do with that one business do really high eight figures in revenue in that one business, which then led me to real estate, which then led me to other things.
SS (00:05:26):
And then, you know, I discovered that when I would get up and share my heart at, you know, HBA functions, which is, you know, homeowners association, it’s not, again, not super sexy to the, to the average listener, but it was, you know, it was my industry, right. They would be really drawn in by the simple fact that I had this, the story of overcoming. And then as that resonated, they would come up to me and say, Hey, you know, my, my son is really having a difficult time. If I got him on speaker phone, would you call it? What’d you talk to him? I said, yeah, sure, absolutely. And then over the course of 20 or 30 minutes, you, you would hear tears. She would hear laughter and then that person would then exhibit change. And then, you know, that, that word began to get out a little bit more.
SS (00:06:04):
And I was joking around with you before we hopped on air, but you know, our friend, John ACOF, I just told him recently that it’s all his fault that I even got on this journey because I w my friends and family would say, Hey, you should write a book. You should write a book. You should write a book. Now my ADHD dyslexic kid, right. Writing a book was not something I was concerned about. Right. And you know, and I remember him sitting down, we were, we were at an event together and we were going through some things and he was, and I was like, man, I didn’t pick the telling me to write a book. He like, I dunno, man, it’s really hard. You’ve got editing, you’ve got pillar. You know what we, we call it brand builders group. What you taught us is pillar point points, which I knew nothing about at that time.
SS (00:06:44):
And, you know, and all these different things. And he’s I tell you what, just tell me what one of the stories and, you know, I, and I proceeded to tell him the story of me you know, attempted to become a Navy seal and, and how that almost led to my suicide attempt and some other, just, just some very difficult things to kind of the transitions. And lo and behold, he runs out the door cause he was 30 minutes late for another meeting, slaps the wall and says, you should totally write a book and do it seven a month. I met you for the first time when you guys were training us on infusion soft and that’s how our friendship began.
RV (00:07:12):
Yeah. I mean, what a story, I mean, just to you, you breeze through a lot of those things, but you were sleeping in a car like living in a car, started a business that now has 400 employees, high eight figures. You know, you’ve turned that into generational wealth through real estate. And this is after being ADHD and dyslexic and, you know, for a moment being suicidal in your life, also your wife your FA your personal life, you’ve, you, you, you’ve had a number of health issues that you guys have had to, to navigate. And so I guess, why did you decide to start a personal brand? I mean, you kind of started to touch on it there, it sounds like it was really about the impacts because you clearly, you, you, you, you, you have the money. The other thing that you didn’t say is that you, you recently bought a building or you, what you have, you have several buildings, but you just bought a conference, a live event center is, is part of, as part of what we’ll talk about later. But, but also there’s a church that operates out of there on the weekends, right? And like, you got all this stuff going on and then you decide I needed, I need you to build a personal brand. Why
SS (00:08:31):
Can, can I be honest with you? I was one of the last
RV (00:08:33):
Ones I actually prefer when people lie and tell us the fake dishonest in authentic story. But if that, if you’d rather just tell us the real story, that’s cool, too.
SS (00:08:49):
Awesome. Awesome. Well, the real story is I didn’t want to build a personal brand. I didn’t, I have fought against that for the last five. You know, Casey, who was, who was with the team, you’re one of your senior strategist flew here to work with me specifically. She probably spent the first entire day of phase one die, dude, you’ve got to be the personal brand. You can’t just folk. You can’t just let the, like, it’s all connected together. And it took me a long time. And then a buddy of mine asked me a very interesting question. He said, Stephen, I don’t think it’s about whether or not you want to be a personal brand or whether or not it should be a business entity or whatever he goes. I think the question you’re really trying to solve is am I worthy of having a voice? Whoa.
SS (00:09:28):
And I started to cry, man. He goes, Stephen you’ve, you’ve overcome, you know, suicide, depression, anxiety dyslexia, ADHD, homelessness, you’ve built a major organization. You have all these different team members that you, that you pour into consistently on a weekly basis. He goes, dude, you’re worthy of having a voice and people gravitate to you because people hope and want more. And it dawned on me to answer your question, Rory, that my first mentor, Steve mark, that gave me the second chance. He’s my father’s employer. You know, I want to be Steve mark to somebody else. I want, I want to be able to give hope and inspiration and a framework and a process and a learning method. And if you look at all the businesses that I own, all of them, you know, from the real estate side to the construction side, to the thought leadership side, to the now the live event side, all of them have one thing in common. All of them, they’re all trying to make people better than they were yesterday, all of them. So I think at the end of the day, the reason I do what I do is not because of money, not because of wealth, not because of things. It’s because I want to be someone who creates a legacy that outlives myself. And the only way you can do that is by making an impact.
RV (00:10:44):
Yeah. That’s power. Am I am I worthy enough to have a voice? What an astute observation from your friend, cause that’s really the issue and you know, what’s so cool about that is going. It’s not about whether or not you’re worthy. It’s about whether or not other people out there can benefit from what you know. And when you shift to that conversation, the legacy conversation, and I know journey principles was part, part of your, your first book and partly of what your courses and stuff are about is when you make that shift off of yourself onto other people, then it’s all about making people better than they were yesterday. It’s not about making Stephen famous or liked or popular lots of followers. It’s about making people better than they were yesterday. I, I love that. So that makes sense to me. And also let that be a lesson for all of us that it’s like, there’s not really amount of money that will ever satisfy you.
RV (00:11:47):
It’s if we ultimately are all drawn to that impact, which is something you can do now with, with little to no, but you have built a personal brand very quickly. Your Instagram, like you, you went, you, you basically grew to a hundred thousand followers on Instagram and like the last 12 months, I know that you guys just crossed 2 million views or you’ve just crossed 2 million views on YouTube. You know, you’re I had a conversation with a very famous seminar promoter Peter Lowe, which he used to promote Zig Ziglar, Zig Ziglar’s to speak at his events. And then it was like, oh, Stephen Scoggins is speaking at my event. And I was like, what? Like, this is amazing. Like you’re growing so fast. So how have you built a personal brand quickly? I mean, you, you, this has happened fast or maybe it hasn’t
SS (00:12:43):
Well, I think it is, you know, for me it doesn’t feel very fast, right. Cause you know, it’s, it’s like that whole bamboo thing where you’re underground, you’re underground, you’re underground, you’re underground. All of a sudden you start to bust to the ground. And I was like, Hey, let’s get Scott to come out of nowhere. You know, I think I actually owe a lot of credit to brand builders group, just being straight up honest. And here’s why when I first went out to go create my first personal brand you know, I tried to mimic all the people that I know and respect that, you know, I had a an acquaintance style relationship with Dave Ramsey and knew Lou Maxwell a little bit and, and all these different people early on, I was like, well, I’m just going to do what they do. Right. I’m going to copy what they copy. And then I, and then I realized there’s this this veil, if you will, of stuff that you can see. And there’s also this, this hard work that goes in behind the scenes, you know, and as a result, I started focusing on getting, well, how do I get through here to here so I can get the information I need to, you know, to then level up. And what I ran into was my lack of clarity was causing a lack of connection.
SS (00:13:42):
So my striving to try to mimic everything that I saw was pushing me away from my authentic self and what brand builder is. One of the things that our brand builders did for me is they helped me get crystal clear, crystal, clear on what it is that I am here to serve who I am, who I’m called to serve what I’m supposed to be doing. And once I did that, I began to say things differently. I began to write things differently. I began to do things differently on camera. And as a result, I think that’s a direct reflection of your authentic self is ultimately your connected self, meaning that’s the self that people are going to connect to. You know, I, for the life, you know, when my team has been on my heinie for the last year about doing more Instagram stories and live, I’m like, dude, you’re really people care that I get up at 5:00 AM.
SS (00:14:28):
I pour myself some pre-workout and I head to the gym and they’re like, yes, I’m like, there’s no way like try it. I’m like fine. So I’ve been getting up and screenshot on my phone and whatever, and doing my stories and heading off to the gym. And lo and behold people identify with it and it blew my mind. And what I realized was people are looking for a beacon of inspiration so they can take a chance on themselves. And I think that’s at the core of what’s caused the rapid growth, but I could not have done it without the clarity that was forged through brand builders, groups, processes,
RV (00:15:01):
Not sure say that, say that again, people are looking for a beacon of inspiration
SS (00:15:07):
To prove to them that they can do it themselves.
RV (00:15:12):
That is so powerful. The other thing you said a little bit ago was you said my lack of clarity was causing a lack of connection. And then you follow that up with, you said my striving, something about my striving to be like other people was preventing me from
SS (00:15:30):
Yeah. So my S my striving to be like other people, right? So the mimicking of other people I’m mimicking Ramsey’s organization. So my first live event that I’ve tried to put on was like not, it wasn’t entree leadership, but it had elements of like, what I learned from entree leaders. Not, not the content, because I know I don’t steal content from anybody, but like the, the flow, the feeling kind of thing. Right. Well, I wasn’t being authentic to myself. So when we went to go do it the first time, and this was a few years back, you know, I, I didn’t intentionally do some key things that are in our live events now that are uniquely us. Right. I try to say things how Ramsey would say, well, that Dave’s Dave, like I’m bold, but I’m not, I’m not Dave’s Dave. Right? The more I tried to be like Dave, or the more I tried to be like, John, and the more I tried to be like or ACOF or gosh, any of the people that are in this industry, the more I diluted myself and the more I diluted myself, the more I broke connection with the audience that I was ultimately called to serve.
SS (00:16:27):
And that dilution process, that disconnection, that that unintentional focus on being connected was a major shift with me when I began studying all the content at brand builders, which is another reasons why I was like, AAJ, Rory, let me help, man. I’ve got, you know, I’ve got a window of time, let me, let me help. I gotta help other mission-driven messengers, make it to make it to the market. Like all of these things I learned from you guys, you know? So when you say, how does your brand grow so rapidly? Well, brand builders was the first step for me. Otherwise I was like shooting a shotgun when I should be shooting a sniper rifle. You guys helped me ane the scope.
RV (00:17:05):
Yeah. I love that. And, and, you know, I like to think that we pay our strategists very well, you know, like they, they, they make about a hundred bucks an hour, like which is annualized is, I don’t know if some, some six-figure number. And and yet when I look at how much you make on an hour, I’m like, this makes no financial sense for you whatsoever to be to be a brand builders strategists. And I think that, again, as part of why we were drawn to you is this, like, it wasn’t a financial calculation for you. It was a give back. It was a give back of going, you know, I’ve never actually heard you say this about that, that, that the, the clarity that you got from our process, cause I didn’t work with you directly. You worked with Casey, you worked with our team.
RV (00:17:56):
I worked with the AGA you and I haven’t had all that many touch points as a client. You and I have been more friends and stuff. And that’s, that is so, so powerful. So I want to, so those are some of the things that’s so huge. I mean, that, that part about the more I strive to be like other people, the more I diluted myself and the more disconnection I created with my audience, I mean, that is really profound. And totally true. And so that speaks to what we believe in and teach and promote. And Europe, you’re a great living example of the success that comes when someone becomes more of who they are. But there’s been a lot of frustrating parts of building your personal brand as well. And I’d, I’d, I’d love to hear about that, you know, all sides included and, and that was originally how we met you as we were specifically helping you with building your, your Infusionsoft application, which is now called keep cause that’s, that’s one of the things that we do really, really well.
RV (00:19:02):
It’s an extraordinary internal competency of ours. So what are some of the, the, the most frustrating parts, because you’ve built a lot of these businesses, you’re used to handling problems and challenges, but there’s been some unique ones. I feel like in the, in the journey of personal branding, that even if you’ve built other companies before I mean, obviously clarity is one of them, but, but I, I’m talking more about the mechanics of building a personal brand. What about that has been frustrating or difficult compared to maybe like other stuff that you’ve done?
SS (00:19:36):
Oh gosh there’s a bunch you know, the first one that comes to mind is this problem of creating enough content with the limited time that I have. And that was long before I understood the content diamond. That’s made things so much easier, so much easier, but so that’s, that’s a huge one. The second one content content
RV (00:19:54):
Diamond y’all is where we’re using a little bit of our internal speak that our customers and stuff understand. But the content diamond is is the, the process that we teach clients for taking basically one video and disassembling it into repurposing that all across the web. And it fills one five minute video fills your entire content calendar on every, on every online platform throughout the week. And your team does all of it. And it’s like, basically you do it for five minutes and you’re done and you’re everywhere online. So anyway, sorry to interrupt, but I, we don’t have too, too much internal jargon, but so that’s cool. So content diamond, what else? Yeah.
SS (00:20:34):
Well, I think the other thing too is, you know, when you, when you step out to begin to build your personal brand, I think there’s absolutely nothing wrong with doing, doing what you can with what you have. Like I’m a, I’m a big bootstrap guy clearly, right? Every, every business I’ve, it’s a bootstrap that kind of scenario. And as a result, I learned the hard way that there comes a point in time where you can’t do things by yourself, meaning you can’t necessarily go out and hire all these various subcontractors all over the place and expect them to know your brand, to the essence that you know at yourself and expect them to have consistency across your brand with them. So for example, I had three different website providers, all of them, none of them worked out. I had four different media companies that I tried to partner with to do personal branding for myself, to try to create visual assets and things that I had.
SS (00:21:27):
The, the one biggest problem I had, especially, and in trying to cut through the clutter as becoming a speaker specifically, was I had this essence of not being able to get the speaker footage. I need to create the demo reel that I needed to then sell me more speaker footage. Right. So it was like this, okay, well, I’m a speaker. I know I can speak like I’ve, I’ve been working on this craft and working on it and I’ll continue to work on the rest of my life, but you know, I’ve been doing it, but I can’t really showcase it. And I can’t showcase it because I don’t have an audience. And when I do have an audience, you know, it might be a couple of hundred people and there’s no cameras around there or the there’s cameras around, but the lighting sucks. Or if the lighting sucks, the bike sucks, you know, and it’s just like this combination of problematic behaviors are problematic consistency that comes from a strong visual identity, you know? So when you asked earlier, you know, what do you attribute some of the success of recent success of some of your growth to, you know, on top of the clarity, it’s going to be coming down to consistency. Right? We started doing some things in house. I started, I got so frightened. I don’t recommend this for everybody. I got so frustrated. Right. I just started investing in, building out, building out an organization myself to make it work.
RV (00:22:36):
It’s fine. You couldn’t find reliable vendors to do this stuff. So you’re like, it. I’m just going to buy them. I’m just going to hide it. I’m just going to build my own. I’m going to build a company. I’m going to hire them. And, and, and I’m going to have their full-time attention basically, and make sure that they care about my brand. And you’re, you’re in a very rare and unique position to be able to do that. Like, Hey, let’s buy a building. Let’s buy. I mean, you bought some led screens that were what? A quarter million dollars. Oh
SS (00:23:07):
Yeah. I mean, I’ve got, I’ve got a half a million bucks in the stage alone.
RV (00:23:11):
Yeah. So you bought it, you bought it, you actually bought an auditorium. Like you bought a venue, built out an auditorium. I mean we, we were there recently and it was like, I want to say it was, it was like a six camera shoot. So that means you buy six cameras, all the switchers, all the lighting these beautiful, I mean, those LEDs, these led screens are just huge and you know, all the chairs and yada yada yada. So you got, you bought a half million dollar venue. You dumped a half million dollars just into the venue piece alone. Yes. yeah. And it’s interesting. This is an interesting point to me. And, and one of the things that we realized that brand builders group, because about a year, maybe 18 months ago, we started dipping our toe into the idea of helping with the execution for our clients of actually doing the stuff for them.
RV (00:24:05):
And what we’ve found is there’s so much, we couldn’t, we can’t keep up with it. And that our real, our real uniquenesses is personal brand strategy. It is sitting, we’re like the CMO for a personal brand. We guide the overall big picture and we know the right things that need to happen in the right sequence, you know, in the right way. But we don’t have the, we don’t have, I mean, we don’t have a building, we don’t have a hundreds of employees. We don’t have a lot of these things. And so, but we noticed both for ourselves, we’ve had this same story, our entire career can’t get a reliable web designer. Can’t get a consistent graphic designer. They ghost you. They’re, they’re outrageously expensive. They build something within, in some stupid code language that nobody else on the planet earth understands. You, and you know, like you’re saying with the event production, either the lighting is bad or the, they don’t know the video angles that you need, or the microphone sucks, or this, the, the slides look weird in the background.
RV (00:25:17):
And there’s so many X factors. And so we started for those of you that don’t know what we did was we deliberately got out of the execution business at brand builders group. And we said, no, our real magic is, is specialty. And specialty is strategy. It’s helping people get clear on who they are, what they can do that no one else can do. And, and the high level orchestration of all of the vast amount of moving parts. And then we created a vendor network. And I mentioned this earlier in your bio. I said that Stephen has become, which was never part of the vision for either of us, one of our vendor partners, because we have, we realized we have to build a network. So even the, we can’t do the execution. We’re not staffed at the level. We need to support our hundreds and hundreds of clients. We have to find partners to help them do certain things. And so that’s how we solve the problem for our clients. Even though we can’t do it ourselves, we created, okay, here’s a, basically our trusted vendor partner network. And one of the biggest challenges is the speaking footage. Like you, you talk
SS (00:26:28):
To this, it is impossible to get on a stage unless you have proven footage, even TEDx now wants you to have a, some kind of footage of you speaking, just to get, it’s such a, it’s
RV (00:26:37):
Such a chicken and the egg thing. It’s like, yeah, I need, I need to have a video. I need to have a, a demo video of me speaking in order for someone to book me to speak, but I have to get booked to speak, to get enough footage that I need to put together a demo video. It is, it’s like the ultimate frustrating, most painful. This is how do you get around this until you solve this one thing? Your speaking career is zero. Like you, yeah, you can’t. Yeah,
SS (00:27:08):
You can’t do it. I mean, I mean, until I started getting some demo reels and some sizzle reels and speaking footage, I mean, I think I took as many free speaking events as I could get my hands on earlier. Went from that to getting one demo reel was able to go from zero to almost 2,500 bucks in one shot, got an updated version to some other speaking footage. Cause I, you know, obviously I host my own live events here that we do for my brand. And as a result, you know, very quickly
RV (00:27:35):
Again, I just want to say is really unfair. It is really unfair that you just bought a building and like built all this out, but you’re doing something really special with it, which we’re going to talk about here in just a second. But yeah, so, so anyway, so you, you, you reinvested and you upgraded. Cause that’s how I did it too. Was I went and spoke 304 times for free, but here’s something I noticed, even events that you speak at that you have to speak out for free. They usually don’t have a lot of high production value. It’s not as it’s camera shoot. It’s not led screens. It’s not uplighting and, and multiple angles. And it’s usually, I mean, it’s like the back of a Perkins restaurant. I mean, that was my career.
SS (00:28:20):
Yeah. You haven’t even seen the new relation lighting we just put in,
RV (00:28:23):
I don’t even know elation lighting is, but it sounds really cool and awesome. And it isn’t all, all those points. So, so this is a big problem. Getting this, this demo video footage, it is one of the number one problems I faced in my career. When AIJ you know, in our former life, AJ built a speakers bureau, not everybody knows this. One of the, one of the businesses that we sold as part of you know, our roll up of the last company that we sold. There was a speakers bureau inside of that, that AIG built from scratch. One of the biggest problems she always had was getting her, her younger speakers, new video footage, and hard to get the new, the newest, the newest speakers are the hardest to get booked just because nobody knows who they are. And you can’t prove that you’re good because no one can see you because of this whole chicken and the egg thing. And so there used to be a company that did this, that they T tell us about this company. Cause you actually hired them. There was a company that, that did this thing where they, they put on an event and speakers could come and you, they, they had people from the public or how, how did it, how did it work? I never was a customer, but we many of our brand builders customers, including you were a customer. So like what was the, what was the concept of this, of this company? Yeah,
SS (00:29:47):
So, you know, it was a, the original plan for the event was for, to solve the chicken and the egg problem we’ve been talking about for the last couple of minutes. And that was to get aspiring speakers, the video, the video keynote footage they need, you know, so you would do it and do a very short keynote, five to seven minutes, something like that. And as a result, you would get the speaker footage you need. They had people in the audience that were alive event attendees. Some of them were speakers like myself because you’re, you’re watching the other speakers as well. And then you would sit down and you would also have other folks on the audits. And that was folks would go, as soon as you’re done, go do your testimonials. So you had an arc of, you have basket of testimonials from your speaking that you could use. And then that company
RV (00:30:24):
Would then right into your demo video. So people say how awesome you are and it was so inspiring or funny or whatever. Exactly.
SS (00:30:32):
And then, you know, and then, so you had, you know, basically you dealt with three products, so a testimonial, a speaker demo reel, and a keynote footage. However, it was
RV (00:30:40):
Now, now hold on. It was also in front of a real life audience. It wasn’t a fake that, that was the thing that always got me was, and I’ve I’ve, I have done this several times in my career where I will record early versions of my demo video in a room where no one is actually in the room except me. Like, that’s the, that’s the only thing I could think to do to create a video, a demo, to get video footage, if I couldn’t get it in front of a live audience. And so, you know, I either would like you know, borrow a room or whatever, and go speak somewhere and you just record it. But this was an, this is a real life audience. So they invited, I mean, obviously all the speakers were there at this, but then they open it up to the public and people come, yeah, they
SS (00:31:21):
Have like a, they have like an outreach that they kind of do like an outreach and you know, so in doing so I’ll a friend of the owner, the original creator of that program really, really well. And it just so happens. He decided to come to my venue and shoot a video in the studio. I’m actually in right now doing we have the class whiteboard thing that we can do, like neon markers. And, you know, I said, man, you know, ha ha you know how things go on? When’s the, when’s the next event? And he’s like, man, I, I had to shut it down. And I’m like, well, why like, well, you know, COVID, I’m like, well, dude, you, you know, if you need some help get back on your feet, I’ll be glad to help you with that. He goes, man, I’ve I’ve, I’ve had to pivot my entire business away from it. And he gave me like three key factors that I don’t have permission to share. But the dude had a huge heart and he said, the number one driving factor, preventing him from like relaunching that is simply the the cost of actually putting on a live event. And I got to talking to him. I said, well, I said, dude, I’m standing in a live event center. What if, what about using my place? Like
RV (00:32:20):
You haven’t.
SS (00:32:21):
Yeah. And I was like, dude, I’ll I’ll I won’t charge you a thing. Just like, let’s go. Right. And he said, man, he said, I’d love to, but you know, I’ve already launched this other thing. I’m going to focus my attention over here. I said, well, dude, this is a major problem. Like I, you know, that’s the reason I came to you in the first place. This is a major problem for a lot of people. And it just is a, and it’s just exactly, and I just happened to be doing a live event. AIJ was actually teaching it. I briefly covered that little conversation with AIJ and age. And I was like, I, you know, I’ve got this event. She’s like, dude, so many of my, our clients need like this, you know? And then, so we went from like just really brainstorming really fast. And then a good friend of mine have Carmichael. Who’s been really helping us on, on with, with a lot of our YouTube stuff specifically. He said, he goes, man, I know people that need that. And then I know people that need that. And then I know people that need that. And I’m like, well, the, the building sits, the auditorium sits empty half of the week.
RV (00:33:18):
Right. It’s only there for Stephen to shoot his videos and nobody else is selfish it’s so, so, so anyways, the short of this is, you said I’ve got the space, I’ve got the capacity, I’ve got the team. The other thing that you have, which is really unique is it’s when you have 400 employees, it’s actually quite easy to assemble a real life audience because you go, Hey, guess what? Today it’s personal development day, everyone funnel into the auditorium. And so, so, so what happened? He basically just said, take this business and do it.
SS (00:34:00):
Yeah. I mean, I called him right back after AJ and I had a quick conversation and I was like, dude, can I, are you cool if I do this? He said, man, it would mean a lot to me. If you actually ran with it, to be honest, he said, I always felt bad for the fact that I had to close it. And I said, well, dude, I got you. If any point in time you want to reengage, just let me know. And then that’s how it started and ended. And as a result, we began thinking, okay, well, how do we take now? This is going to sound kind of weird given the fact that we haven’t really told everybody about what’s going on. But I said, well, how do we take that event and amplify it? That was like the question that we were having at our, at our little team
RV (00:34:32):
Meeting. Well, how could you, if you’re going to take it over, how do you, up-level it like, how do you make this even more valuable? Like, you know, what, what could you do to make it better? Sure. So
SS (00:34:42):
I asked Aja, I said, Hey Jay, I’m just curious, what are, what are all the things that you think?
RV (00:34:48):
And sorry, just to clarify, when he says, Hey Jay, he’s talking about our AIG, my AJJ the CEO of this group and the, and the woman I sleep with, right. My wife, she’s my business partner. This is art. So he’s used an ADJ. Cause again, it’s, you know, he, he’s one of our team members, but it’s our AIG that you hear do the recaps. So you two are having a conversation by the way, completely unbeknownst to me, strategizing and scheming and planning and never did either of you think, Hey, we should talk to Rory about this. You guys, you guys plotted this whole thing and then told me, Hey, this is what we’re doing. And by the way, by the way, you’re flying to Raleigh.
SS (00:35:28):
Yeah. I mean, it was, you know, it was, it was one of the situations where I was like, what, what did brands need? And she just rattled off just off the top of her head, the sales letter demo, video, mini courses, webinars, sequences all these different photography. [inaudible]. I said, we can do all of that here. Like all of it. I have, you know, quite a bit of income invested in rhino sliders and jibs and Gimbels and all these different camera devices.
RV (00:35:53):
These are all equipment jargon terms he’s using for fancy equipment stuff. And not only do you have the live event center, which is, that’s probably the hardest, the hardest thing to recreate is that beautiful stage live event experience. It’s like, even if you want to do it, it takes so much money. Like, like this guy was saying, he, it was his full-time business and you can barely, barely do it cause it’s expensive. But then you also have the podcast studio, by the way, I know this because I went there. And I’m going to tell you about my personal experience here in just a second, but, but the podcast studio that you’re sitting in right now, you can see that if you’re watching this on YouTube, you can see or go watch on our YouTube channel. You’ll see this, the beautiful lighting, a soundproof studio that’s there. You’ve got like what, four or five? There’s like five whiteboards. There’s
SS (00:36:47):
All right. So in this one room, so this is the magic of camera, right? If everybody’s watching from home or on YouTube or whatever, they’re going to say, well, he’s in a podcast studio because they see all the podcasting equipment. Okay. What they don’t know is over to my left hand side is another set over the truck and my caddy quarters, another set over there against the walls, another set, and in three other rooms, I’ve got other sets and I’m building two more sets.
RV (00:37:10):
And by the way, if you’re listening, if you go to brand builders, group.com forward slash brand amplifiers, we took a video of this. So there’s a video of all these different sets and layouts that you can, that you can, you can see. And that’s, you know, part of, part of what we’re we’re we, we did is we went on site to understand exactly what Scoggins the visual went on here. Yeah. And we were, we became clients. We went through the whole process ourselves personally. But one of the things that we did was we got a video of all these different sets so that you can see and we also recorded a video course cause that’s another thing that we teach all of our clients is, Hey, you need to build a video funnel, something that is just like sh a mini video course that you give away for free.
RV (00:37:59):
That adds value. That is kind of your first introduction to people. And so me and Elizabeth Stephens our, you know, our director of events and then Jeremy Webber we went and we’ve filmed. We did, we did the, we did the full experience. We, I recorded a keynote, a new keynote that I’ve been working on my team in front of your team, personal development day with, with Rory Vaden, which, you know, we’re stay loved by the way, which, which they were forced to be at against their will, but I was grateful for it. And then, and then while we were there, so we, we, we, we shot the keynote and then we shot a video course and we shot each video in a different set. And you can see that also, if you go to Bramble, there’s group.com/brand amplifiers, you can actually see what those sets look like.
RV (00:38:52):
And you see screenshots of, of me and Jeremy and Elizabeth. And then we also did a photo shoot. So it was like we were there less than a full day. No, in our case, how much, how much time was it? I think you were four and a half hours. Yeah. Now we had the whole place to ourselves. You didn’t have other other clients there, but we in four hours shot a full video. Course. We shot a keynote demo video. I think I spoke on stage for like 25 minutes. Yeah. And then you guys produced a five minute demo video for me, which again, you can see this demo video, if at that URL, I mentioned brand builders, group.com/brand amplifiers. And, and one of the things that we did with this demo video, which is cool is we didn’t use any of my other footage.
RV (00:39:45):
We didn’t use any of my like TV appearances and yada yada, yada, like other stuff we have, we did this as if this was the only footage I had ever had so that anybody who’s brand new can see what you, your team can create. Even if you have zero assets before arrival and the actual full length, it’s like a six minute demo video, five minute demo video is up at the, at that URL. So sorry to interrupt. So I just thought that was the place to interject, like what we did and what happened. But, but basically you’ve got this keynote experience, which is impossible to recreate. You’ve got all these video studios, which lots of people do that they’re not easily accessible, but the cool thing is if you’re there, why not knock it all out at once? And then the other thing was wa again, if you’re there and you’re all in makeup and dressed up and hair dead and like teeth whitened and whatever, you might as well do a photo shoot. And so you, you do all of this in one, one shot, right? Like how does it work? Like in your words?
SS (00:40:57):
Yeah, no, I mean, so, all right. So first of all, everybody’s a little bit different on their journey. So some folks may already have keynote, but then they may need updated photo shoots for social images or for a website, you know, your header bars, your transparent images. Like there’s a lot of color
RV (00:41:11):
Ads, Facebook ads, like all stuff like that. Yeah. Lifestyle shots and yada, yada back book covers for the back cover of your book or whatever.
SS (00:41:20):
Yeah. I mean, all of that. So there’s, there’s so many different places that these assets can be deployed. But one of the things that I feel is really important is that people are, have definitely gone through certain phases of the brand owner process. So they don’t come here and waste time. They come here and they can knock it out and it’s super duper important. Right. but when it comes down to it, we’re going to book off a whole week. Right. We’re only going to allow 20 people. We just, because it, it, when you see the movement of all the people that we’ve got working behind cameras and sound equipment,
RV (00:41:48):
Stuff like that coordination. Yeah. It’s,
SS (00:41:50):
It’s, it’s a, it’s a symphony. I mean, it really is. And as a result, we can only have a max of 20 people on, unfortunately, you know, in a week’s timeframe. And so we’re gonna book off a week. Yeah. Well,
RV (00:42:00):
You guys must have had like 20 people there, just, just taking care of the four of us, three of us, there were three of us for four hours. And you, you guys you, your team, which your team was incredible, you literally rolled out the red carpet for us. And they were young and savvy and sharp and professional and, and, and intelligent and service minded and catering, and just helpful and, and brilliant. And it was like, I, I have been around so many different production teams and this, this was probably the single best experience I’ve ever had. And just being directed, go here, go here, go here. Now this, now this, Hey, change that, tilt your head this way. Look over here. Let’s get, let’s move this camera. And like, I mean, it makes you feel like a celebrity, like you guys directed from the minute we got out of the car door until the minute we left back to the airport, you guys directed this with like first class a first-class experience. It was incredible. Yeah. Yeah.
SS (00:43:06):
And again, it all comes down to treating people how I want to be treated. Right. When I went through this experience that most of my major frustrations came from the fact that everything was disjointed. No one took me seriously. No one really cared about my end product that I was then trying to use to impact other people. Yep. That is a major underlying problem that we have worked really, really hard to solve. We want everybody that comes through those doors to feel like the million dollar brands that they’ll soon be. Hm. That’s what we want. Right. Because we’ve learned that a healthy visual identity is to a personal brand like emotional health is to mind a mental mindset, right? Those you can’t separate your visual identity from the personal brand that you are ultimately trying to become. Right. And there is a time to do it yourself. There is absolutely a time to do it yourself, but there’s also a time to say, enough’s enough. I’m going to make an impact. And I need the assets to get me there.
RV (00:44:03):
And that’s, you know, that is true. I mean, if there is one thing that I wish I would have done sooner, as I wish I would have invested sooner in high quality production of, of these things. We’re talking about video assets, speaking, speaking, real footage and photography. But frankly, you know, the more I’ve thought about that, cause I told you that whatever it was a couple of months ago when I was at your place or when it was like a month ago, a month ago, or two months ago, what I realized, even as I said, you know what? I actually would have made this investment. If I had confidence in the vendor, like if I would have found somebody who I was like these people, first of all, they care like first and foremost, they give a crap. It’s, I’m not just a number they’re cranking through a system.
RV (00:44:49):
And they’re only touching one little piece of my brand. And they’re trying to like spin me out, you know, as, as profitably and as efficiently as possible. So they have to care. And then they have to be extremely con like competent. They have to know what they’re doing. And then they have to be like reliable and, and responsive. And that has been the experience with you, by the way. So brand amplifiers is the name of this, that we’re, we’re, we’re talking about a, and w we’re not going to ask anybody for a credit card or anything today, but if you, if you go to brand builders, group.com/brand amplifiers, you can read a little bit about this and you can see the different services that these guys offer. The Quito, you know, demo video experience, the video course experience the photography. And you can just request a call with their team.
RV (00:45:42):
And they’ve got, I mean, I’ll say this, I don’t have all your prices memorized, but they’re extremely reasonable. They are for what you get, especially, but it’s like, you’re getting a top tier experience, like a top, top tier experience for what I would consider a very low to reasonable price range, which, you know, it costs something because you can’t do all this for nothing, but it’s much less than what you could, you could be charging. The other thing is at that URL brand builders, group.com/brand amplifiers. Again, you can see this cause you can cause we went through the experience. So you can see samples of the pictures that your photographers took. You can see the demo video that y’all produce just from that one visit. You can see the video of course, that we knocked out in a couple hours. And, and so anyways, the way that this happens for you guys is you have the venue, but you got to get all the staff there. And so it all happens inside of a week. And so you’re saying there’s there’s room for 20 people. They, they have to fly to Raleigh. So, so they, they, they got to pay their expenses and on top of whatever, they invest with you, they fly to Raleigh and there they’re there for how many, how many days. Yeah.
SS (00:47:04):
So it depends on what product they need. The reason we coordinated a full week is because with 20 folks, we’re going to have keynote day. So we’re going to do all the keynotes in one single day. But then on the other days, most people can get most of what they need done filmed within a two day window, possibly a three-day window, because we’re going to put the keynote day in the center. That way you have time to get your mini courses, sales letters, all the photography and everything else. You,
RV (00:47:30):
The other thing we’d even talk about the sales videos. We, we, we actually recorded one of those, which is also on that page, that the brand builders group.com/brain fires at the top is a, is an example of a sales video that we recorded. So you can see that as well. I totally forgot about that one. That’s a huge one. Yeah.
SS (00:47:48):
I mean, there’s, there’s, there’s, there’s so much, they’re going to get from a content and strategy side of things. You guys did a wonderful job in, in creating the strategy environment. You got to have the assets to deploy it. You know, one of the things that common questions I used to get as a strategist repeatedly is how come I can’t go faster? How come I can’t go faster? How come I can’t go faster? How come I can’t go faster? And I’m like, take it from me. I literally wasted millions of dollars, millions of dollars in the last five years, because I was unclear and I was deploying capital at a rate that was just straight up foolish, get clear and then put the assets together. And when you actually have those to deploy on a regular basis, literally you could turn on the faucet, you call it the revenue engine. You, you turn on the revenue. Right. But you can, you can’t scale what you don’t have to sale. Right. You got to get it filmed.
RV (00:48:37):
Yeah. So one of the other things that’s really awesome about this y’all and, and, you know, we want you to at least look at it and it’s, it’s like you said, it’s, if you’re, if you’re flat, flat broke and you have no choice, you might be where I was, where it’s like your first demo video, you’re recording in the public library in some back room with a, with a camera. You just start there, but you, at some point you got to go, I’m going to level up. Because I was embarrassed about my visual identity for years, for years in my career, I was like, you know, I have to do this, but I kind of don’t want anyone to see it because I don’t think the production level matches my expertise level. And there was always this gap. But you know, when you’re ready to level up and go, I need to get my first true set of quality assets.
RV (00:49:28):
And I’m actually going to hire you guys to do my next full production demo video, where I give you all of my assets and we do a real one. Cause I want to see what your team can do. If we like go all in on, like, let’s create something awesome. That’s going to be a project. But you got to do this. I mean, it’s super affordable. You knock it out all at once. You guys know what you’re doing, it’s a real life audience. It’s not a fake, it’s not like a fake simulated thing. It’s it’s a real experience. You meet other speakers and personal brands. And then the other thing is, you know, Stephen, you mentioned this, this has basically become, even though this is not technically a brand builders group offering, this is basically become a brand builders group guided experience because we created some tools exclusively for this that are available for our clients and anybody who finds out about this.
RV (00:50:21):
You know, even if you’re not yet one of our brand builders group clients, but you, you, you think you could use Stephen services. If you, if you come through our, our page brand builders, group.com/brand amplifiers we will give you some tools. We have a tool called the demo video template. We also have the brand builders group guide to photo shoots specifically for personal brands, all the different looks that you need. And we’re giving you these tools to make sure, in addition to what you guys provide, anyone who comes from us that comes to you is going to be dialed in. They’re going to know I’m coming to knock out this and this and this and this. I know where I’m going, what I’m doing, it’s aligned with my brand positioning statement. So, you know, and by the way that that URL that I keep mentioning, it’s just a free call.
RV (00:51:10):
So if you, if you go there, you’re just going to see samples of these assets, and then you request a free call with Stephen’s team. So this is, this is not a brand builder group offering officially, but you, as I mentioned at the very beginning of the show, because of your journey, because of our relationship with you as, as a customer, a strategist, you also, now through brand amplifiers have become one of our preferred vendor partners. Frankly, we don’t even know anyone else like after 25 years of being in this business. Well, how long? No, I guess more like 20 years we’ve been in the business for 20 years. I don’t even know anyone else who does what you, what you guys have put together here.
SS (00:51:56):
Yeah. It comes down to, what did I need to get to where I’m at today? What did I learn from that experience? What are the problems that we can solve? Which is something that is very clearly taught at brand builders. And as a result, we have tried to think through every facet of not only the experience for the personal brand, that’s going through the experience, but everything that they could possibly need to launch, right? You can’t, you’ve got to launch, excuse me, you’ve got to launch you’ve you’ve, you’ve got out there, you’ve got to get yourself out there. And you know, and we simply want to treat people how we want to be treated. We’ve kept that as close to cost as possible, because I knew how expensive it was to kind of get stuff going and it’s even more expensive and stuff’s disjointed. So we we’ve done everything in our power to put together a, a process and a program that helps messenger. Mission-Driven messengers, man, get to get to market. Right. That’s what you call a mission-driven messenger. So I’m happy to be one of them.
RV (00:52:47):
Yeah, absolutely. So anyways, the, I hope you’ve gotten, you know, just value from this conversation in general. I mean, Stephen did this because it’s a cautionary tale as well, that you can spend so much money. So fast trying to piece together, different things from different places. That’s why brain builders group we’ve created our, our what we call them, our brand implementation partners. It’s our trusted vendor network, which you’re one of because we just see our clients spending money left and right with people that have no idea, really what they’re doing, it’s totally disjointed. It’s, it’s, it’s falling down, but also going, even if it’s not with, with brand amplifiers and Stephen’s team, at some point you have to do this, you have to one of my favorite pieces of advice that I received from a mentor was a guy named Randy gage.
RV (00:53:39):
And he told me this early in my career, he said, Rory, you have to be the number one investor in your own dream. Yep. Like at some point you have to be the one that says I’m going to, I’m not going to put my money on a, on a house or a car or into someone else’s business or into like via stock or angel investment. Like at some point I’m going to take my money and I’m going to place a bet on me. And I’m going to say, I feel called to do this. And there are certain tools and assets that I need to do this. And I’m going to invest that money as a bet on who I am and what I feel called to do. And, you know, if you trust brand builders group we’re extending that trust to Stephen’s team and brand amplifiers because he, even though brand amplifiers, technically is not a brand builders group offering.
RV (00:54:37):
It is one of our trusted vendors. And Stephen is a strategist of ours. Like he is in this all the time. Like he knows the stuff that we teach and we know him. And if something goes wrong here, this is our reputation at stake too. And we care about this cause we want to see this work. Not, not so much because we love Stephen, not so much because we get a small referral fee from this, if you do do it. But because we know you need this to succeed that sooner or later, you’re going to have to solve this problem of photography and, and video funnels and sales videos, and, and most rare and difficult of all that speaker demo video. And we think this is a rare opportunity in a, in a very rare chance. Like I said, I don’t even know anyone else who does do this.
RV (00:55:26):
And so we need this to work. We want this to work because we care about Stephen, but, but more because we care about you and because we’ve been there before, and Stephen has been there before we’ve experienced this, this problem, this massive frustration that I can’t get new subscribers because I don’t have a quality video funnel. I can’t get conversions on my sales page because I don’t have a great sales sales letter video. I can’t get hired to speak because I don’t have a demo video that shows people what I can do for them. And we’re working together to try to solve this problem for you in as fast as a way as possible. So, so the, the net, the net result of that question was, you said, this is like two to three days.
SS (00:56:08):
Yeah. Yeah. Give me, you know, give us, give us three days. If you need everything, go ahead and come for the week. Be part of the experience, share in it. You know, that way you can hopefully go home and tell your friends and family about the experience that you had, you know, but more importantly, come get, you need, let us serve. You, let us help you, let us help, help you make you the million dollar brand that you are.
RV (00:56:29):
Yeah. And you feel that way when you go. So anyways I hope this episode was valuable for you. I mean, just hearing Stephen’s story and how, you know, he’s become an entrepreneur and the power of clarity first, right? Like I hear that as a, as a consistent theme here is don’t start producing assets until you’re clear, right. And if you’re not clear, come to brand builders group and get clear, then go to Stephen and produce, produce these, these visual assets. So I, I hear that you know, I hear very powerfully this idea of that. You gotta be a beacon of inspiration for other people because that proves to themselves that they can do it. And just believing that you’re worthy of a voice and then B, and then being willing to invest in your own dream. But if you are interested in this, then go to brand builders, group.com forward slash brand amplifiers.
RV (00:57:19):
It’s, there’s, there’s nothing, there’s no credit card or anything there. You’re just going to see samples of the work of the experience that we actually went through. You’ll see me there, our team there, you can read about it. And then if you’re more interested, then you can request a call with someone on Stephen’s team and they will help customize, customize a package for people you’ll help them. And it depends on what you need. Not everybody needs a photo shoot. Not everybody needs a demo video. Not everybody needs a video funnel, but those are things that you will need at some point. And you might be able to knock them all at once or upgrade what you have or just, you know, make contact with these guys. So we’ll link up to that, obviously in the show notes, brand builders, group.com/brand amplifiers Stephen, you have such a great story. We feel so lucky to attract people like you as clients and strategists. Again, like, you know, I think we pay our strategies really well, and we strive to always like, be able to pay them more. But you know, clearly for you, it’s, it’s not about the money. It’s just about this desire and this whole business of brand amplifiers, basically as, I mean, not basically it legitimately came out of a frustration, a problem you struggled to solve for yourself that you said, Hey, I, I I’m in a position. I can help other people solve this.
SS (00:58:34):
Yeah. I mean, I, you know what, it’s one of the greatest things that you guys have taught me and I’ve heard of repeatedly is if you see a problem in the world and you have the capacity to solve it, don’t let a night go by until you try something, you know? And that’s at the heart of everything we’re doing. A lot of the folks that I’ve worked with as a, as a strategist they had the same, the same concerns, the same means, okay, well, I got my clarity down now, what do I do? You know? And, and, and they’re in my heart and my mind, as we were thinking through this thing, man, it’s going to be special. I firmly believe it.
RV (00:59:03):
Yeah. I mean, I’m excited about it. We have total confidence in you. And you know, the other thing was is that this episode, you know, whether you’re interested in doing this now or later with Stephen’s team or not is just going at some point, people have to be able to sample you. Like they have to be able to see you. I call it chicken on a stick. I’ve been using that phrase a lot chicken on a stick. Cause like when you go to the whole foods or Costco or the food court, they give you a free piece of chicken on a stick because they know once you taste it, you’re going to go, Ooh, that was awesome. I want to buy the whole, I want to buy a bag of that. We’re the same way as personal brands. We’re like basically our marketing assets is just chicken on a stick.
RV (00:59:44):
It’s like, here’s a chance to sample me. And if people aren’t buying from you, there’s a good chance. It’s because you haven’t, you either don’t have a sample available or you haven’t spent enough time in care crafting and preparing that sample in the same way that you would craft and prepare an entire meal. And, and so you need to, you need to give them a chance to sample. You need to put out something that you’re proud of. You need, you need for the viewer of that video to get to S to experience a small taste of what it’s like to do business with you. This is a chance to do it. And whether you do it with brand amplifiers, or you do it on your own, you, you need to do this at some point and be willing to invest in your own dream. Stephen, thanks for sharing your story. So much of this. I think emulates our story. And so many of our, our values are aligned. And so anyways, man, I hope that a few of our people will take you up on it. We’re going to take you up on it again. I’m going to be investing money with y’all to, to produce my next demo video. I want to see what you could do at full, full strength. And we just, we just wish you all the best for your continued inspiration,
SS (01:00:56):
Dude. I, I, I firmly enjoyed law or love being part of this community. And so grateful. You gave me a chance to share my heart today. Thank you, Man!

Ep 188: How Entrepreneurs Should Use Their Personal Brand to Launch Their Startup with Claire Diaz Ortiz

RV (00:08):
Hey, brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview as always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders, group.com/pod call. We hope to talk to you soon.
RV (00:55):
You know, sometimes you have these friends where you’re like, gosh, they’re such a slacker, but I like them anyways. And Claire is somebody who has a bachelor’s and a master’s from Stanford. She has an MBA from Oxford. She was an early employee at Twitter. She got the Pope on Twitter, according to wired magazine. And she’s the author of nine, nine books that have been translated into 10 languages. And, you know, even though she’s kind of a slacker like that, I thought, well, gosh, we should have my good dear friend, Claire Diaz Ortiz on the show. Obviously I am being facetious dramatically. She is one of the most intelligent people that I know. And one of her books she wrote was called one minute mentoring, who she wrote with her mentor, the legendary Ken Blanchard, who we went to a conference and that’s how her and I really connected.
RV (01:53):
We’ve known each other through Donald and Betsy Miller for awhile, but AIJ and I went to this lead, like Jesus event that Ken Blanchard put on, which was amazing. And Claire was there and that’s when we really became friends. And she’s just incredible. And I think what’s really cool. So she lives in Argentina and right now for the last couple of years, she’s really been involved with investing. Okay. So she is an angel investor. She’s a VC. And specifically, recently she’s been working on you know, doing investing down in Latin America for female entrepreneurs and just, you know, anyways, she’s, she’s all things entrepreneurial and investor backed companies, and we just thought it would be cool to have her perspective on how to use your personal brand to launch your startup and to get funding. And for those of you that listen, that are true entrepreneurs, but even if not she’s got a new book called social media success for every brand, which will apply to everybody. So she’s just someone we got to learn from, and here she is welcome to the stage. Claire Diaz, Ortiz. It
CDO (03:00):
Is so good to be here. We were just trying to figure out what year we were out in Palm desert at that event must have been four years ago or something like that. I don’t know. I’m trying to remember how many children I had at the time. It’s hard to keep it back. You’re in the same scenario, right? You had a baby at that event, right? Yeah,
RV (03:19):
That’s right. That baby is now four. So I think it was okay. It was like three, three, like three and a half years
CDO (03:25):
Ago. And
RV (03:27):
Dina Dwyer Owens was there. She’s another sweet dear friend. I don’t know if you know her, but that’s she was who invited us to that event. And yeah, it’s like pre COVID pre-baby. I mean, that’s how you keep track of things when you get, you know, our state just by, by children. But so anyway, so you’ve been, I mean, you grew up in Silicon valley, you kind of grew up in that world, both like literally lived there, but also at Twitter and, and that, and I think it’s fascinating that, you know, I know a lot of people, I know a lot of people kind of that are like from the entrepreneurial VC angel investing world. And I know a lot of people who are from like the social media, personal branding world, but I know very few people who have straps, both of those worlds.
RV (04:15):
And what, what are some of the things is that you’re seeing Claire in terms of how, how are quote unquote real life entrepreneurs using personal branding and, and, and how should they be thinking about their personal brand when it comes to, you know, and I’m, I’m not talking about coaches and speakers and authors and consultants per se. Although I know you understand that world because that is also you and you, you hang in that world a bit, but specifically for our listeners who have a business that isn’t so much based on their personality, what are the things they should be thinking about and doing and using you know, and maybe even just you as an investor where you go, these are things that capture our attention in terms of the way the founder presents online or with social or et cetera, et cetera. And I just, I’m just honestly fascinated to hear your opinion on this,
CDO (05:20):
Right? So I think one of the sort of big things we need to sort of address when we think about kind of the answer to this big thorny question is just the fact that personal branding is basically completely different than it was 30 years ago, right? It’s no longer about you writing a typing and a typewriter, a press release, finding a PR person to send it out, and then watching that person try to get you in paper magazines, right? These days it’s really in the power, the entrepreneur hands, a lot of the time to, to get out there and to share your message and your story with the world. And although there are, you know, great examples of PR teams still doing wonderful things, and I love PR people, and I think startups should hire them and individuals should hire them. A lot of it these days is really up to you.
CDO (06:16):
And I think that is terrifying, but also encouraging to a lot of people, because it basically means that you have most of the tools at your fingertips to execute. And so it’s just a matter of trying to learn a few of them so that you can essentially, you know, make a splash, right? I mean, I think a classic example of this would be, you know, I can’t tell you how many times in, in a startup that, you know, I’ve invested in or been working with, they have hired PR people or PR teams, you know, or entire departments of teams to basically execute on a lot of things that you can do individually as, as a solo preneur. Right. And so learning how to do some of those things is, is probably one of your biggest kind of value adds if you are a solopreneur or if you have a small startup and you don’t have a lot of staff.
RV (07:12):
Yeah. And I, you know, I think this is helpful to hear you talk about this because you know, AIG and I kind of straddle this world a little bit of entrepreneurs and the, especially at success magazine, I’m I’m entrepreneurship is kinda my explicit focus. And then that’s kind of our friends circle and social media. But even in my own mind, I’ve always kind of separated and thought of like personal branding, quote, unquote, social media, podcasting writing books. I’ve kind of thought of that as like, that’s a thing for speakers and coaches and consultants. But what I hear you saying is that’s not, it’s not just for those people that, that this is a, those skill sets applied directly to entrepreneurs even where the brand is not their name per se, but it is, it’s trying to create awareness for this new company or this new idea. Am I hearing,
CDO (08:12):
I mean, I think there’s sort of two factors. There’s one issue, which is, you know, with every passing year, there’s more pressure to have some sort of a presence online, no matter what your job is. Right. that may be simply a, you know, a LinkedIn profile saying what you do, but you know, there’s different ways to have a presence online, but with every year there’s more pressure to have presence online. Then I would say the second issue is just what we are seeing is that many people are now leading these multi career lives, right? So you might be an executive coach today as your full-time job. And then in five years, that might be a part of what you do, but you might also be publishing your first book. And when publishing your first book, you’re going to need a little bit more of a platform to get the word out. Right. So there’s kind of this idea that personal branding is a thread that takes you through your whole career and trying to get some of the tools in place to build a little bit of an audience now will be valuable to you in the future, wherever you may go.
RV (09:16):
Yeah. I mean, I think that’s really cool. I think you’re a great example of someone who’s done that, and it hasn’t been a through line. Like you kind of built a personal brand starting early, and now you’ve had these kind of different seasons that you continue to move through. The, I guess the other thing I didn’t really connect directly is how important is PR for a startup, because in my mind, again, I sort of separate them and go, okay, personal branding. It’s almost like a little bit of a it’s for, for many years. It has kind of felt like a vanity thing. I’m like, oh, likes and followers and yada, yada. But now I think the world is waking up more to it’s like, no, this is just about marketing it’s advertising. It’s it’s, it’s reaching people. So is, is that like, is PR pretty critical for startups and, and for venture backed companies or the companies that you looked to angel invest in? Is that, is that a, is that a core component of what you look at and evaluate is like the ability of this company or this founder to go out and get attention for what they’re doing
CDO (10:28):
Well. So in this day and age kind of, we are enticed by things that are able to get our intention online. Right. And that means that we read those things, we click on those things, we download those things, we buy those things. So if you are a startup or an individual, if you were trying to sell something, whether it’s your own services, your own book or your own widgets, you will have to get an online presence and try to build that. That’s really quite honestly what the world has come to. Right? So it’s time to stop sort of saying, do we need social media? And instead think about how you can use it sort of biasly for your business or your individual kind of empire. Now, that being said, I mean, one of the greatest tools or assets of sort of the social media world is the ability to create kind of an outsized impression of the work you do.
CDO (11:20):
Right? And I’m not talking about it in authentic impression, impression by any means, but I am talking about the ability to get out there and get your product in front of lots of people on Instagram, say when maybe it’s just you and two people in a garage pumping out those widgets, right. And someone on Instagram might see how effective you, you seem to be promoting this, or, you know, how it’s in the hands of so many people and not really understand the humble beginnings or the humble origins that, you know, this amazing widget coming from. So I think that PR is, is probably, you know, in the age of social media, you know, probably should be rebranded into just something like moment making, essentially, because that is really kind of the key to most social media success. I mean, so I wrote this whole book, social media success for every brand.
CDO (12:12):
And one of, kind of the big things behind it. One of the big key seeds is that everybody needs to be on social media, everyone who has an individual brand or, or a company, but you don’t need to be everywhere. Right. So you really need to pick one or two. And in that book, I walk you through how to find the one or two that are right for you. And then you need to really focus on that. Right. And so when you have a platform that works for you and works for your followers, let’s just, let’s just say it’s Instagram, right. There are kind of three main things that you’re always trying to think about when you are thinking about your presence and your brand on that platform. The first thing is, is just your story. I mean, you and I are both fans, Don and StoryBrand, and so understanding your story and what you’re actually trying to share is the most important thing.
CDO (13:00):
The second thing is making sure that you are engaging with the people who are following you, engaging with your current followers is way more important than trying to get new ones. And then the third thing is just making sure that you are always to some extent, so you’re saying on outreach, whether it’s to influencers or to other sort of peers and your network, but always trying to grow that network through outreach. So those are sort of the three things within whatever platform choice you are choosing that you’ve got to really think about. And then I think when, when you think about those things, I think there’s a way to sort of reframe the idea of PR as, as really moment making, I mean, going back to Don Miller again, I remember he wrote some blog posts or maybe it was on Twitter, or maybe it was on Instagram some years ago about reading you know, the heat Heath brothers chip Heath, and rather, okay. So what’s the book they wrote. That’s called that’s about moments. I don’t know,
RV (14:00):
I’ve read made to stick, but I don’t think that okay.
CDO (14:02):
That’s what I’ve read some book that has something about moments and Don, I believe he posted this somewhere. Maybe he just told me I’m not really sure, but he said that there is a section of that book, which is basically just talking about the importance of creating moments in your lives. And it’s convicted him in the power of moments. It’s very cryptic. And so after reading that book, he and Betsy and some couple were out at dinner and it was just the four of them. And he, you know, using the knowledge that he gained from that book thought, you know, what can I do to really make us have a fantastic moment at this, at this dinner table? You know? And so I, I think the end of the story is he did something crazy with some dessert that the waiter waitress brought out and everyone was shocked and it was very funny and that always people would remember. But the point is just that this idea of moment making is probably one of the simplest and the most effective things you can think about when you think about personal branding on social media, because you’re going to have to come up with sort of a long-term strategy for what you want to be and who you want to do and who you want to be. But ultimately making sure that that long-term strategy is really highlighted by interesting moments is, is going to be the key to pushing your brand forward.
RV (15:26):
I love that. I mean, I think that’s so cool. The moment making thing there’s several para like that. I found that to be true in our own career and several of our clients and friends is that is really the value of PR is it’s like a reason to come out and tell them something, which is if you’re already talking to them every day. You know, and I guess the way I think about it is on a daily basis, your shoes should be talking to your audience in a way that you’re just adding value to them. And when you get these PR hits or moments, it’s, it’s, it’s kind of a natural way to also let them know what’s going on with you sorta sorta through a third through a third party. And and, and you’re saying that as a VC firm, or as an angel investor yourself, your, one of the criteria that you are using to select the opportunities that you invest in is based on either a person’s ability, a proven ability to go out and kind of get attention, call a PR, just get attention for what they’re doing, or your belief that either that person or the product itself is noteworthy enough or remarkable enough that it will gather attention true or false.
CDO (16:52):
True. So either, you know, I’m already seeing it to be so just to be clear. So I’m, I invest in venture capital and I’m basically a venture capitalist. I invest in early stage startups with really high potential growth for growth in the tech industry. And I’m investing at the really, really early stages, right? So sometimes you’re, you’re seeing someone who has already been able to, you know, get a hundred thousand Instagram followers who like their blog and they just come up with a product idea and, you know, you don’t know if the product’s going to work, but you see that this person has high engagement in their personal brand. And so you think, okay, this would be an interesting person to back. Let’s put in some money into a very, very early stages of their new company, which is going to be about creating this widget. Right? So that might be sort of one scenario, right?
RV (17:40):
That’s that’s like betting the G that’s like bet the jockey, not the horse kind of a thing.
CDO (17:44):
Totally, totally bet. The jockey, not the horse. Now there’s another side of really early stage, which is basically betting the horse, not the jockey, right. Or you’re betting the horse and the jockey, but you’re kind of looking at the horse. You’re saying this is an incredible product. I’ve never seen a razor, this awesome in my life. The founder’s also very strong, but, you know, I believe that I can sort of make this fly by, by helping them on sort of the media side. So those are sort of the two ways kind of, I think about how branding is related to early stage startups. Some people sort of already have it naturally, and that’s great. And they’re trying to figure out how to operationalize a product and a business out of that. Other people I believe are just riped to be sort of pushed into the spotlight, essentially.
RV (18:31):
That’s awesome. Yeah. I love thinking about that. It’s either bet the jockey, not the horse or bet the horse and the jockey which I think is really cool, but I guess, you know, part of like the, the underlying current I hear you saying is that you guys are making investments of real money into real ideas here. That, and it’s, it’s not just a game of vanity of like, oh, likes and followers. It’s this is real big business, big business decisions are made based upon whether either the, the horse or the jockey can actually get in front of a lot of people, because ultimately that drives whether a huge part of whether or not the business is successful.
CDO (19:14):
Absolutely. So what I typically invest in is consumer, right? So anything in consumer, whether it’s on the internet or it’s a physical good being shown on the internet. And when it comes to consumer media is super, super important. I mean, I can sort of tell you that this is a really crazy random example of, of something that I’m doing with a company. So one of the ways you met me was when Ken Blanchard and I had recently written that book one minute mentoring, I’m a huge fan of mentoring, of being mentored. And so I really see investing in early stage companies as a form of mentoring, you know, for the most part, I’ve got a couple dozen companies in my portfolio. And depending on the day, I’m having some type of talk with the founder about some issue they have, and we’re trying to figure out some thorny problem or, you know, encourage them in, in an important way.
CDO (20:04):
That’s pretty much what I do, right. And there’s money involved in the mentoring relationship, but that’s pretty much what it is, right. Investing being an early stage investor is a form of mentoring. So I have this one, founder, her name is Emma, and she has a women’s neobanks. So it’s a women’s digital bank. She came to me about a year and a half ago. I had heard of her because I had seen her at a, at an event winning a big contest. And so she had come to me for funding about a year and a half ago. I was super interested in this, you know, there, we have digital banks these days for all types of individuals. You know, we have them for immigrants and for teens and for kids and for parents and black people and for Asian people and for millennials. But we don’t yet have consumer banking for women.
CDO (20:52):
That just hasn’t been something that has been created yet. So I was really interested in this idea. She came up with, so I invested in her company once I invested in her company. Again, now it’s been a year and a half. And Emma is now at this sort of critical point in her journey where she’s got 150,000 women who are, you know, trying to get on the wait list for this new women’s bank that she is creating, but Emma is now pregnant. And so what is she going to do? Because it is, it is her first baby. And, you know, she wants to take some time off. And so we think through a strategy of how we’re going to handle that. And then we think, Hey, you know, we can handle this, but then we can also think about a way to share how we are handling this.
CDO (21:35):
And so what we did is we basically created a moment out of it. I flew up to see her in Seattle. I put on a funny costume, we put it on Twitter and it went viral, right? And essentially that helped us to share our solution, which was that I’m going to help out and step in at Emma’s company for a couple of months while she takes some maternity leave and turning it into a moment that could help her company. And so those are the types of things that really early stage entrepreneurs can always be thinking about. I mean, having a day-to-day strategy is important, but having sort of these peaks and these reasons that people are going to be interested in your brand in the first place are interested in your story in the first place and have a reason that they’ll come to you for the first time is really essential.
RV (22:21):
Yeah, that is so cool. I’ve never thought about early stage investing. It’s kind of funny. Cause normally, normally the client pays the coach in this case, the investor actually puts money into the business, but it’s for the long-term payoff of, of what that business will become. And then you just like, you put money in and you put the time of coaching and mentoring and you know, then you get paid. If it, if it all works out. I you know, as you’ve been talking here, I’ve been, I can’t help. But think of, there is a this statistic that came out of one of our study. So we did, we started to realize that brand builders group that wow, a bunch of our clients are not just, I would say, just not like in a demeaning way, but you know, I, I consider myself like an author and a speaker first and had been a coach consultant my whole life.
RV (23:13):
AIJ is more of the entrepreneur of the two of us. But what we’re realizing is that about half of our clients are aren’t personalities, they are entrepreneurs. And so when we did this trends and personal branding study, we asked a lot of questions around how much does a personal brand drive a business. And one of the key data points was this was it’s a US-based study is that 82% of Americans agree that companies are more influential if their founder has a personal brand that aligns with their own values. So you know, to your point about sharing the story that of our entire study and, and by the way that 82% is, that’s all ages. If you just look at older millennials and, and younger millennials, it’s more like 88%. So in the next generation, this is going to go up even higher to your point about going, sharing your story. It’s wild. But, but so to finish that sentence, I was going to say is of every question we asked in our entire study, that was the most dramatic number that was the largest like percentage number of, of, of any other question. And it has to do with this idea of the founder sharing their, like their personal values. And if people align with that, then they’re more likely to buy from that person.
CDO (24:51):
I mean, a hundred percent, you know, while you’re talking I’m of course having visions of when I was working at Twitter 10, 15 years ago, and we were working hard to get basically CEOs of large companies on the platform, right. And at the time it was much harder than it would be today, but it’s kind of funny that in some ways, it, it maybe wasn’t even much harder then than it is now, simply because when you get into huge size, big size companies, you often have the top executives not wanting to sort of go through the process of creating a personal brand, not really knowing how there’s lots of layers of, you know, comms teams, PR team bureaucracy. So it’s interesting that when we think about personal branding connected to the statistic, that 82% of Americans agree that, you know, whether the company CEO has an influential product, it matters. It’s really an advantage to basically small business owners or solo preneurs or people who, you know, can pull the, can pull the strings in their own business. Right.
RV (25:50):
Yeah. Yeah. And that’s, it’s, it’s it’s kinda like, you know, you’re mentioned the chip chip and Dan Heath book. This one makes me think of Malcolm Gladwell’s book, David and Goliath. Totally. A hundred percent. Yeah, of course. Of course. It’s kind of the idea that, okay, we all think of it as like, you know, David is this huge underdog, but in fact, every underdog has advantages that the favorite doesn’t have. And to your whole point here about the founder and executive using social media, it’s like, it’s easier for a solo preneur to do this. It’s more natural for them to do this. There’s not as much risk. There’s not as much bureaucracy. There’s not as many people with an opinion. There’s not as many protocols and guidelines. It’s just kind of like, you can press a button and tell the world the reason I started this, this, you know, Sara Blakely as a great example. She’s like I started this company because I realized that every other company in this space was started by a man. Like it’s not actually a woman making products like intimate products for women, like, and that’s super powerful and people, and this data point was exciting, like really shocking to us going. It totally makes sense that we buy into the story of the people who share the same values as us. And that that’s an asset that far too many CEOs are under-utilizing.
CDO (27:16):
I mean, the Sara Blakely example is so great. So Sarah is in so incredibly authentic on social media, right? And Instagram is sort of her place where she really shows you her personal life. But her engagement is so incredibly high. So over the years she has posted, I guess, three times about one of my books. She’s taken this one book I wrote some years ago called design your day, which is a book about productivity. And she takes it on these sort of mini think weeks she does. Right. And this has happened three times over the years. And every time it happens, it’s like, my Instagram just blows up. Like, I’ve never said more engagement in my life.
Speaker 5 (27:51):
I don’t know her at all. I don’t know her at all. I don’t know her at all,
CDO (27:53):
But it’s because he has developed such a very authentic connection with her followers. It’s, she’s an incredible, incredible case study of that. And it’s an interesting one because she already had a big business when she was starting to do that. So it’s kind of unusual in that sense, but right. I mean, there are lots of yeah, there are lots of examples like her out there.
RV (28:17):
And, and so, you know, we, we obviously share the mutual friend, Donald Miller. His is the same way if Donald it’s like going on Donald’s podcast is a bigger deal than being on the today show, like in terms of, and that’s another thing I think that’s kind of fascinating. That is another shift that’s happening here is that the big media opportunities aren’t from companies, they’re from individuals, just like you’re, you’re saying that, you know, getting an, getting a writeup on, you know, some major media outlet is always really nice, but you don’t, at least I don’t typically see the kind of engagement from that as I would from, you know, with if Lewis Howes makes a post about us, it, it blows us up more than anything. And it’s, it’s all because of this, this transferred like trust with a perk between people, rather than like this, this faceless enterprise, which is either a company or a meat, even a media outlet, it it’s, it’s really wild, this shift that’s happening.
CDO (29:22):
I mean, you and I, as authors know, you know, it’s think of the work that goes into trying to pitch you to something like the today show, right? And sometimes it can be awesome sometimes, you know, you can spin the wheel and it’s the right morning on the right day of the week and it’s the right segment and it really hits. But most of the time, these days, those major opportunities simply do not produce the type of engagement or sales that, that you’re looking for. And these basically more niche opportunities will, it’s incredible. It’s really, really interesting how we’ve sort of broken the wheel of marketing and re redrawn it with social media.
RV (30:00):
No, it’s, it is really, really wild. Well so I have one other question for you before we do that. Claire, where do you want people to go if they want to learn about you and kind of connect into you know, some of the stuff that you’re doing and get ahold of your books and all that? Sure.
CDO (30:15):
So I’m really active on Twitter at Claire C L a I R E or otherwise I’m at Claire Diaz or teas.com. And those are sort of my homes on the interwebs. You know, as, as I was saying, everyone sort of has to pick one or two social media platforms that work best for them. And so for me, Twitter is really my space. I’m on Instagram, but for me, Instagram is really pretty personal. I, you know, I tend to share a lot about my kids and my house and, you know, the bad things I’m trying to cook and that kind of thing. And so I think that if there’s sort of one point of encouragement, I could give to anyone out there, who’s thinking about how to sort of get their mind around this concept of personal branding. You really need to just step back and think about one social media platform as being the place to focus on. And as I said in my book, you know, I can take it there. I take you through a quiz about how to figure out the one for you, but sometimes people just know inherently, you know, this is the place where, where I belong, where I think the people who follow me, who care about me, who want to read my books or buy my widgets will be, and just, just focus on that one place and focus on engagement.
RV (31:24):
Oh, that’s so cool. Well, we’ll link up to that book that you’re referencing social media success for every brand which is Claire’s latest and as well as social media and Twitter, it’s pretty cool that you’re such an OJI on Twitter that it’s just at Clare. That’s like Oprah. It’s like you know, that’s, that’s the re that’s the rare air, but that was going to be my final question in terms of like, what’s the one thing that people should do. And I think that’s super encouraging to go pick one platform and, and dominate it and, and do that. And this has been so insightful, Claire. I mean, you just, it’s really edifying. I think for me speaking into both the world of, of personality driven personal brands, as well as, you know, entrepreneurial driven personal brands, that, that this is a big part of the future of business and the way that decisions are being made about growing those businesses and who gets invested in and just really appreciate your time and your friendship and, and for sure, your professional perspective on this, it’s, it’s been awesome as always
CDO (32:29):
To be here to say hi to AGA and the kids. And I hope you can get in that pool afterwards. It’s already, it’s already summertime at Nashville, snip. That’s right.
RV (32:38):
It’s on the docket. Thanks Claire.

Ep 186: How to Sell 10 Million Books with Tom Rath

RV (00:58):
I am filled with joy to reconnect with an old friend who I never really knew that well, but I always found that he was so humble and gracious. Especially for his stature. You are about to meet Tom wrath and you probably will recognize Tom Rath. He has sold over 10 million copies of his 10 different books. And my favorite stat about Tom is that his book StrengthFinders 2.0 is the all time bestselling nonfiction book ever on Amazon. So, you know, we have a lot of bestselling authors, but Tom is the best-selling author. When it comes to non-fiction, of course, he spent over a decade at Gallup and you know, it was, it has been a senior advisor and, and a senior scientist there for years and years and years. He’s got degrees from the university of Michigan and Pennsylvania, and he’s written several books.

RV (01:58):

His first was, how full is your bucket? I interviewed him on my old podcast. When are you fully charged? Came out and he’s got a real passion for balancing productivity, with wellbeing. And you know, so we had a conversation about that and then we lost touch for a couple of years and we just recently reconnected and turns out he’s actually in the world of publishing among other things. He’s doing some leadership training, which you’ll probably hear about, but he’s in the publishing world and he’s helping other authors, you know, to do some of the things that he’s done. And anyways, just Tom is so good to see you and, and to be reconnected my friend, welcome to the influential personal brand.

TR (02:39):

Good to see you as well. And thanks for inviting me to join you.

RV (02:42):

So I only have one question, which is how do you sell 10 million books? Can you just give us the answer really quickly and like one sentence share with us secret?

TR (02:52):

You know, I think the reason that a lot for that number most likely is the way that a lot of the teams I’d worked with a Gallup over the years put together in addition to the concepts that went around the book about essentially focusing more of your time in the areas, we have the most talent over the span of a career. They were able to put together a pretty good application that in addition to just being a book and a concept, it gave people something to do. And so, I mean that, according to the latest numbers I’ve seen from Gallup looks like, I mean, maybe 10 million people have read that book, but I think over 25 million people have gone through that Clifton strengths assessment that goes with the books. And I think that’s really helped a lot of people to have a new lens into who they are and how they can contribute in different parts of their career.

TR (03:42):

And so it’s, it’s been fun for me to see that take on a life of its own. And it’s also been a really good learning for me around books and publishing where I think in, in this day and age where, I mean, it’s so much easier for any of us to just let the Netflix show play automatically. If you want somebody to really embrace and think about more learning oriented instructional type concepts, I think it always helps to give people something to do in addition to just something to read or listen to with the traditional books that you and I have been so used to.

RV (04:15):

Yeah. So I I’d love that. That’s fabulous. I mean, what what what that’s actually a very clear answer to. I was being kind of facetious, right. Tongue in cheek. That’s a very clear answer. And, and, you know, I think the assessment is, is very famous, right? I mean, StrengthFinders and, and, and that clearly 25 million people, how do you go about it? There’s, there’s two things. W you know, when I think of when I think of strength finders, which still to this day, I think it’s like almost every week sells, you know, 8,000, 10,000, 12,00 7,000 units every single week. I think of the research and I think of the assessment and those to me are two things that I would say are intimidating for authors, right. Let me just speak for myself and say, it’s somewhat intimidating to go. You know, if you don’t, if you don’t have that background of working at gala, or you don’t feel like, you know, assessments, what qualifies as valid and what isn’t, and, and, you know, are there, are there certain ways, and maybe we should talk about those separately research versus assessments. But you know, I, I’d love to just kind of hear your thoughts. I know you, you guys really started the whole Gallup publishing, you know, division while you were there and a number of the books, not just yours, but several others are really based in both research and then have, you know, other tools around them.

TR (05:41):

Yeah. You know, one of the things I’ve observed and I’ve probably like you, I’ve been a student of business and non-fiction books for 20, 25 years at this point. And I, and I speaking across all the books I’ve read and followed, I think the ones that I would say are true evergreens that sell year after year and decade after decade there, there are a lot of cases where it doesn’t require an inordinate amount of original or proprietary research, and it doesn’t require a lot of technology or a fancy website. I think a lot of those really timeless books that I think I’ve had some of the most influence on people, both personally and professionally, it’s about boiling down a few central or Seminole concepts. And then most importantly, giving people either a new lens to look through in terms of the way they act and think and behave on a daily basis or giving people something to do.

TR (06:38):

I mean, I look back at, I was just challenging a few authors that came to us and for one does to publish their book and said, you know, if you really go back and look, I mean, back the origins of mega business books, you start with one minute manager who moved my cheese, who moved my cheese was kind of essentially, it was like giving your employees a subpoena to say, you need to get ready for change and deal with it. Or you might not make it here. Right. And when we worked on how full is your bucket? I mean, that was the first book I ever really spent a lot of time on. And that was a, such a simple message. You got every time you interact with a customer or another employee, or one of your friends or your spouse, maybe it fills their bucket a bit, or it takes from it it’s rarely neutral or in between.

TR (07:21):

And what people at do. There was just an incredibly simple metaphor to help you think differently about each of your interactions with other people. And then when we worked on that book, one of the things I was kind of insistent on that people didn’t agree with me about it first was we had these drops that Gallup would develop, which was a simple note card. And it said, I it’s a drop for your bucket. And you just write in there, what you appreciated about what someone did during the day. And we put five of those drops in the back of every book and it costs another 30 cents or whatever, to put the packet in the back with all these drops, but that really caught on in public schools around the country. And so now you walk into almost any school district in America, I would say they have these walls with drops for your bucket.

TR (08:06):

And there’s a kid’s version of that book. And, and I don’t think any of that would have taken place if you didn’t give somebody something really simple to do. And so I think that’s just, that’s one small example of a book that caught on with something very simple that wasn’t entrenched in all of that research, and it didn’t require a complicated website or scientifically validated application, but I would challenge any author to try and boil their message down to something that basic. And I mean, you saw it with some of the activities and what color is your parachute? You see it with the five love languages it’s sold for year after year after year. I mean, I could go on about books that kind of sprint methodology and startups or lean startup where it’s, it’s a methodology essentially. And so I, I always authors to try and bring it back to something that basic that people can really latch onto and use with their teams.

RV (09:02):

Yeah. I, you know, it’s funny cause when I think about take the stairs, so one of the lessons that we use as a cautionary tale is my second book procrastinating on purpose, which I think is a much better book, a much much more original premise. Yeah, we did a Ted talk that did really well. It had a few million views, but it doesn’t sell as well as take the stairs, which is to me take the stairs is a much simpler book. It’s timeless principles. And yet to what you’re saying, I don’t think we did a great job necessarily with either of them in terms of like giving something to do, except the actual metaphor of take the stairs and doing things you don’t want to do. People do it even still, it’s been almost 10 years, that book has been out. People send me pictures, they tweet at me. Yeah. Took the stairs today in Minneapolis. And it’s amazing just the lifespan that, that has, like you’re saying not just an idea, but in action and exercise. So you’re, you’re saying it’s not so much about the science or the research methodology. It’s more about I guess creating some physical evidence in the person’s life that exists posts, reading the book versus prereading the book.

TR (10:23):

Yeah. I think that’s a really important thought in there or because my highest level goal with any book project I’m working on is that when someone finishes reading it, they do just one thing differently in their lives on a continuous basis. And I think even that’s a high bar, I most people put down a book before they even finish it. I think maybe a third of books get finished. And then if someone does finish a book, the odds of that actually changing their behavior might be one in 10. So, I mean, if you aim for something like that, and then you get a critical mass of people who start to have that conversation and share it with others, and there’s, there’s also something about the, share it with others because my, my second goal with any book would be that someone wants to have a conversation with a friend or coworker or colleague about it.

TR (11:13):

And so, and let me go back to health. Was your bucket for a second? We learned really early on when we started, but we poked. That was the first book we published is Gallup crest and w the whole time I’d been working on that book, the title I really wanted was why negativity kills. And so we agreed, we test everything at couch. So we put out 10 or 15 titles, got a big sample of people and said, what title do you like most, or suggest another one and an analyst who is working in gala at the time said, well, how about how full is your bucket? Cause it’s kind of based on that metaphor, I thought it was odd and quirky and probably wouldn’t work, but we tested it and it crushed the title I had up there about 10 to one. And so sure enough, that was the title that resonated with people. And so I would also encourage writers to do kind of basic AB type methodology testing to figure out what messages do people remember and maybe give them a heuristic that’s likely to change their behavior, like taking the stairs really early on in the process. So now nowadays we test titles before we write books

RV (12:19):

[Inaudible] and then the share it with others. Part is the talk, tell me, tell me more about that. So you’re just saying like, is there a, is there a way of thinking and approaching the project or is it, is it just as simple as that going, how can I structure this concept in a way that it naturally facilitates a transference to someone else?

TR (12:44):

Yeah. And that’s, I think in the most recent book I worked on it, we were kind of publishing and then put on hold for a bit in March of 2020, it’s called life’s great question. But it’s a book that has a, an inventory that goes with it and it allows each person to put together a baseball card of how they want to contribute to a team or a project or a company. And we gave people two unique codes. They kind of scratch off in the back of that, so that they can sit down with a colleague and have this discussion about how each person can contribute uniquely to a team. And they kind of, in that way, you have a one pager for each person in a room when you sit down as a new project team. And so that was an attempt to give people an opportunity to share that code and to have that conversation.

TR (13:31):

And so I’m always looking for ways to kind of build that in both practically and back to your point about procrastination. I think you need to find topics that people want to have those conversations about. So, I mean, I could write a whole book on mistakes with publishing and writing books based on my experience. But one of the things I learned was I wrote a book. I think it was after help was your bucket called vital friends. And it was all about how to make more friends at work or how to have better friendships at work. And nobody really wants to have that conversation and it’s a difficult conversation to broach with another person. Right. And so, I mean, even though that would put a lot of research into that, where there was an application with that, I think you need to have conversations that are easy to move around that a manager wants to share the book with somebody on her team or a leader just naturally talks about it when they’re out in groups and circles.

TR (14:24):

And just an example from this past week, I had a colleague out of this retreat center that we ran and he kept talking, I couldn’t stop him from talking about a book he read, I think it’s called breath. And it’s all about a lot of people are talking about that. I mean, it just permeated our conversations for two or three days. So now I’m going to go read that book and the next time I get a chance, right. So you want more and more of that, it’s kind of that, that’s what leads to evergreen books in my, his organic word of mouth more than anything else.

RV (14:55):

Hm. So, gosh, that’s so amazing. And you know, I think in, in the, you know, I, I think I’ve taken the stairs and I go, gosh, that’s, that’s probably the luckiest thing that we just did. Was we just, it was just that metaphor of like, you take the stairs and your family’s like, what are you doing? And you’re like, well, I read this book, you know, I saw this guy and, and and, and, and then, you know we have one of our friends is Hal L rod. He wrote the miracle morning, which was, self-published a self published book, you know, has sold 2 million copies because he gives people this, this morning routine that they go through, Dave Ramsey’s you know, seven baby steps for total money makeover of how to get debt free. And you know, another friend, oh, go ahead.

TR (15:43):

Well, I was just going to try and I was going to add one there, you’re talking like that. I mean, the number of people that have done that whole 30 diet, and I think it’s because it’s such a quick 30 day regimen, so it’s kind of a practice like you’re saying. Yeah.

RV (15:54):

Yeah. Well, and, and so, and then Donald Miller, StoryBrand, you know, it was his, you know, his new, his first business book and he created this SB seven framework, which is basically like a checklist that you would fill in and he gave a tool to go. Here’s how to come up with the words you need to tell your story. I mean, they really, there’s a lot of really great examples that fit what you’re saying. Let’s talk about assessments for a second. How do you go about establishing in an assessment? I mean, does it, do you think there are help? I mean, are there certain like academic rigors that you think somebody has to take or is it you know, is it, is it pretty complex or do you think it can be very simple?

TR (16:43):

It depends on what you’re talking about. And I’ve spent probably too much time thinking about some of those distinctions or my career where, when I first started at Gallup, I was working with my grandfather, Don Clifton. Who’d been kind of a leading scientist in the strengths and positive psychology field. And he put together thousands of interviews for jobs over the years. So I was like, what does it take to be a great teacher? What does it take to be a great truck driver? What does it take to be a great chef and all these different talents? And so the project I worked on with Don, when I started there, it was could we put all of his ideas together in one big inventory or assessment and pull together a way to identify the most common human talents across all these occupations that he’d seen.

TR (17:27):

And so really it was 25, 30 years of his work that went into the creation of that one big assessment. And as we put that together with a leading academic at Harvard and a guy at UCLA at the time we test it with college students, a lot of the star, but all of the scientists at gala and I were looking at what are the liabilities, these themes or categories to make sure they were statistically distinct when you looked at this factor analysis across that. And so there was a lot of real scientific and academic rigor and even more decades of conceptual knowledge that went into something like that. So that I would say is a big endeavor, millions of dollars and decades of research go into something like that. And that’s kind of a dedicated assessment, obviously companies and governments and schools use all over the world. Now, I think if you’re looking more at a, what I would call a quiz or a test that authors can put together to give people unique insights around a book that normally doesn’t require all of the testing and all of the rigor and the background and statistics and scientists and those pieces. And I’ve seen a lot of good tools people put together, but I’d call them tools or tests or quizzes that give people practical and unique insights without doing years and spending millions of dollars on R and D. That makes sense.

RV (18:53):

Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we had, we, again, just, we had one called the focus 40 and take the stairs that it was, you know, just to quit is a quiz. People love that thing. I mean, it’s crazy. They take it and, you know, there’s only like five things they to that’ll come out and they’ll spit out some, you know, a couple of words of encouragement basically for, and it’s amazing people, people love it, but to your point again, it’s like, it’s something for them to do to help them apply to apply all that information. But so, so if you, if you really do want to go through the work of creating, you know, a statistically valid assessment, then you’re probably partnering with somebody who is a, is a data scientist or somebody who knows statistics and that kind of a thing.

TR (19:40):

Yeah. And I mean, aside from the StrengthsFinder work that I know a lot about and is involved with, there are a lot of really popular a set personality type assessments people use out there that don’t have that much science behind them as well, but yet I’ve heard people say they’re very practical anecdotally. I mean, really from my vantage point, if something gives you more confidence in what you want to do and more self-awareness, and, or it leads to meaningful conversations with other people about how they can develop and how you can work together, that has a benefit. So I, I’m always trying to put things to kind of the test of practicality. And one thing I do, I mean, one of my concerns is like you were mentioning, everybody loves these quizzes because they essentially turn a mirror around and help you to look at yourself in a different way. Right. but in a lot of the work I’ve done lately and some of the conversations I’ve had, I really like to challenge people to look in more of an outward direction and spend even more time thinking about what the world needs, how they can make a contribution to that. Because I think we’ve, we’ve spent a lot of time looking inward in some cases.

RV (20:55):

Hmm. Yeah. I I’m, I’m excited about that. I noticed. So the, the theme, so life’s great question. And then also it’s not about you, which is a brief guide to a meaningful life. These are some of your, your newest works, right. Are they, did, you said you paused it,

TR (21:13):

It’s not about you as an exclusive project with Amazon published on the first of 20 January 1st, 2020. And it was kind of a short, shorter story preview of the ideas in life’s great question. It was kind of a story book. Hey, all, it was all just story and life’s great question had the research and the application and that inventory I was telling you about. And we were launching the live screen question book in March, 2020, and it had just launched. And then everything hit with the pandemic. And so we just kind of stopped all of our launch and publicity and all of my interviews turned into conversations about what do I do now that I’m at home with five kids and how do I manage? And and so we, I just went with the conversation and what was relevant to people at that time. And I think once people get back into the world of work, we’ll kind of relaunch that and get back into it because it’s a tool that a lot of people who did get their hands on, it found some benefit and based on my experience. So it’s, yeah, it’s, as someone who’s studied the modern workplace and the relationship between people and their work for the last 20 years, it it’s been a complete realignment of everything I thought new and really fascinating to study and watch over the last 14 months.

RV (22:27):

Yeah. Yeah. Well on that note, I have, I do have one other question I’d love to ask you before I let you scoot off, but the where do you want people to go if, if they want to connect into you, I know you have your leadership retreat center that you’re doing in Washington, like in the DC area where do you want people to go to connect up with

TR (22:48):

You? Yeah, I’d encourage them to go to Tom rath.org where there’s info about all the books. And there’s the website for the tool I was talking about the inventory it’s called [inaudible] C O N T R I B I F y.com. And that’s the inventory where people can put together a profile of their big experiences in life and where they can contribute to others. And I I’d love to get people thinking a little bit more about what are the things that the communities and circles around me need, my customers need. And then how do you map back to what your talents are and what your strengths are and how you can put those things together to have a, I guess, a more meaningful and energizing career, which is the big target I’m always spending time thinking about.

RV (23:32):

Yeah, well, so related to that, I, I, you know, I wanted to ask you about humility. I mean you’ve sold so many books. I mean, you were a lead scientist and influencer Gallup you know, you teach at top universities, you know, invited to speak and all these places how do you manage to kind of keep the level of humility? I’ve, I’ve, I’ve always been so impressed at how gracious you are. And I, you know, especially, you know, when you’re in a world of academia and things, you mean, you just have so much notoriety, but you, you never come across as pretentious or you know, pompous or arrogant at all of, of all, you know, and so many of the people that I’ve ever met, it’s like, if, if somebody does you, you’d probably be on that list. So why aren’t, why aren’t you more of a jerk? Oh, I’ll work on it. The promise.

TR (24:34):

But no, I, I mean, I, I think I’ve, I feel like I’ve been, we’ve all had our challenges in life, but I feel like I’ve been pretty fortunate to be surrounded by really smart people who I’ve enjoyed working with. And I’ve got my, my kids are 10 and 12 and my wife who they’re, they, they do a good job of keeping any ego from being in check on a daily basis. It’s, you know, what I’ve observed over the years is I’ve spent a lot of time interviewing leaders of big companies and organizations. And some of the ones that I’ve admired the most over the years are the ones who try and keep themselves in the background and they really learn to thrive off seeing other people succeed. And I, I was mentioning this when you and I had a brief conversation before that in the last year, I’ve spent more time on publishing other authors and thought leaders and republished the book by the former chairman of the joint chiefs and Patty McCord from Netflix.

TR (25:34):

And I’ve actually enjoyed working on those books more than I’ve enjoyed working on books that I bothered lately. And I’ve probably been happier and taking more pride in some of their success. And I, I think that’s a theme that in the next 15, 20 years of my career, I’d like to do even more of that. And again, I think that, you know, I spent enough time, 10 years ago over the last 10 years, studying wellbeing to learn that if you want to increase the collective wellbeing of the world and of your family and society the best way to improve wellbeing is to not be focused on your own happiness and to just direct as much energy as you can outward. So I’ve been trying to practice that and live that over the last 10 years and it’s has been helpful.

RV (26:22):

I love it. I love it. Well, Tom wrath, my friends we’ll put a link to Tom rath.org. Make sure you stay tuned. Life’s great question. Of course, is the book that came out most recently that right before COVID March 20, 20

Speaker 2 (26:37):

Boy, you picked, you picked a perfect time

RV (26:40):

For that, Tom, thank you so much for your encouragement and support. And just for being here, my friend, we wish you the best.

TR (26:46):

Thanks for your time and good questions. There is fine.

Ep 184: 4 Keys to Reinventing Your Career and Your Personal Brand with Pete Wilson

RV (00:06):
Hey, Brand Builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview as always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders, group.com/podcast. We hope to talk to you soon. Pete Wilson is our former pastor.
RV (00:57):
We love Pete Wilson. He was the founder and senior pastor of our church that we still go to in Nashville. It’s called cross point. It was one of the fastest growing churches in America and to reach 10,000 people each weekend. During that time, Pete published four books with Thomas Nelson, including his bestseller plan B, which we have read through together. And then in 2019 he started good vibes management, which is an organization that kind of pairs up celebrities with court with like corporate brands. So this is people like Kane brown and Tim McGraw with, with brands like boys and girls club of America and the MBA to do these inspiring press grabbing projects while also giving renewed purpose to the celebrities platform, which is super cool. And today he also hosts a new podcast called the good talk podcast with his wife where they inspire people to be healthier and happier and more purpose-driven versions of themselves. We’ve been friends for years. I mean, a decade a decade at this point, Pete was one of the first people we met when we moved to Nashville. And anyways, we just love this guy. And you’ll notice AJ is sitting here with me because she hijacked this episode because she was like, I want Pete to come and I’m coming too.
AJV (00:57):

New Speaker (02:23):
Very rare that I do a co-hosted interview. And it’s not to just say, I wouldn’t want to be on all the episodes that typically our schedules don’t align, but since I scheduled this one, I made it work
RV (02:37):
Anyways, buddy, welcome to the show. It’s great to see you.
PW (02:40):
Thank you. It’s an honor. It really is. I’ve been looking forward to this for so long as you know, I’m a huge fan of both of you. I’m a huge fan of this podcast. So it it’s, it’s great to be here.
RV (02:52):
Yeah, well, I, and, and I think one of the reasons that, you know, obviously our relationship with you, but, but AJ has a knack for reinvention.
AJV (03:03):
No, honestly, what it was is I know so much of our audience or is going through this phase of their business or their life where there’s this concept of reinvention and it’s for so many of our clients who have been very business minded. So they’d been entrepreneurs or in corporate or in sales, and now they’re going, but there’s something else out there for me that I feel called to do. And a part of that has this personal brand. And I just, we hear all the time that people are going through this. Like this is, you know, the next phase of my life or I’m in, you know, this is my life version 2.0. And, and so I follow you on social and clearly I know you a bit, it’s you have gone through like this massive reinvention and I love what you’re doing and all the things you’re talking about and all of your posts. And so one day I reached out and I was like, Hey, do you think that you would want to come on our show? Because I just feel like this, this whole conversation around re-invention affects every single piece, every single person that we work with. And so it’s going to be applicable to everyone.
PW (04:07):
Yeah, for sure. Yeah. And I think you’re right. I think there’s a lot of people going through reinvention and for a host of reasons, right? I mean, sometimes you have to go through a reinvention because it’s forced upon you either you made some serious mistakes or you work for someone who thinks you made some serious mistakes, or you just find your line of work to reach the people you really want to reach, you got to do something completely different. And so there’s a host of reasons, but you know, the, the process of reinvention for everyone is pretty similar. And I think there’s some things that you can do to help prepare yourself to do that in a successful kind of way.
AJV (04:46):
I love it. I’m so excited to get, to hear all about it too. You know, I
RV (04:50):
Think all the way back, you know, plan B probably feels like years and years. I mean, it was years and years ago, but it probably feels like a lifetime ago for you, but you know, that whole book and, and story about just like, what happens when the thing you thought was going to happen, doesn’t happen. How do you think that applies to this in terms of like, what’s the right mindset that you think you go in, you, you should go into a re-invention with, or that just that you, that you’ve gone through. I mean, you’ve gone from being this very well known senior pastor in this space and then, you know, have moved to a whole different space in some, in some ways what’s the mindset there, you know, and just to start with,
PW (05:42):
Yeah, it’s, it’s very humbling to write a best-selling book about, you know, what do you do in life? Doesn’t turn out the way you thought it was going to turn out when I wrote that book. And at that point in my life, to be honest with you, everything had turned out the way I wanted it to out. Like, if you go back and read that book, it’s full of everybody else’s stories. Cause I had to pull from all the people around me whose life hadn’t turned out the way they thought. And then years later, you know, I live out my own plan B and my own life feels like it kind of imploded in some ways. And I’m like, wow, I really need to rewrite that book now because there’s some things I would say much different having lived through it personally. But I think there can be, you know, you, you look at these opportunities that you have in life reinvention.
PW (06:28):
Like I said, sometimes they’re kind of forced on you. And then in, in my case to some degree, it’s not a path I would have chosen, but I had the opportunity to either go one direction, which is just to be bitter the rest of my life, to wallow in mistakes that I’d made to say, you know what, I’ve, I’ve made the biggest, greatest impact I’m ever gonna make. It’s never going to be that good again. I’ll never have that kind of audience again. And to be honest with you, I had that season, I needed that season. I needed to hold on to that pain long enough until I’ve learned all the lessons that I needed to learn. But there came that day of saying, all right, enough’s enough. I’ve learned what I’ve needed to learn from that pain. And now it’s time to build back.
PW (07:15):
Now it’s time to reinvent. And the beauty, the gift I’d been given was a blank slate. And so all the patterns of overworking the patterns of being a people pleaser and finding my identity through the validation of others. I had an opportunity to build everything back, but do it in a healthier way. And I just got to answer the question that some people never get to really ask themselves, which is what do I really want to do with my life now? And I started building from that, that, that, that point forward. But one of the first things I always say to people is, number one, I’d say commit to the process like reinvention as you guys know is not easy. And it is a process. Sometimes it’s a painful process, but you’re not going to go to bed, a successful CEO and necessarily wake up a New York times bestselling author, right? There’s a process there. There’s going to be some work there and you got to embrace that process. Have you guys seen that to be true?
AJV (08:20):
That’s an understatement statement. No. And I think one of the things that we see a lot, even in our own lives and our own business, because I think one of the reasons I so wanted to have this conversation, our podcast is brand builders group is the product of reinvention, right? This was not our life as a full-time business five years ago. Right? In fact, brain builders group, we’ll celebrate three years in business officially next month, next month. And so this, I think for, even for us, it’s like, it was a very, again, not a process we would have chosen probably wasn’t planned, wasn’t chosen, but oh my gosh, the fruitfulness and the blessings that have poured out because we got that second opportunity to reinvent. I’ve been so incredible, but there’s something that you said earlier that I really resonate with. And I know a ton of people in our audience with is that process of, well, how do you go from, well, F this isn’t what I planned.
AJV (09:24):
Cause I felt like a lot of people are in that. Okay. You know, the last, roughly 18 months of rocked, my world turned my business upside down. I don’t know if I’ll ever go back to the business I had. So what’s next. How do you go from that O F moment to no, actually this, this is, this is a blessing and this is an opportunity to reshape and reshift, even though it’s going to be hard work, but I’m getting a second chance to do life and a whole new way. How, how do you do that?
PW (09:54):
Yeah. Yeah. That’s a great question. And you know, I think for me, I’ll tell you a big part of the process for me was changing my mind shift towards gratitude because there’s a season that I wanted to focus on everything I had lost. Right. And honestly, that, that, that kinda came from the spirit of my life of entitlement. Like I was owed that I, you know, I did this, I did that, our target, you know, I really felt like I had earned all of that. It was all owed to me. I had to shift my mindset to one of gratitude. It’s become one of the most important practices in my life to just in that gratitude journal, every morning list of things that I’m just grateful for. And the more I started to see all of life as a gift, as I started to see even my, my skills, my abilities, those were gifts that were giving them, given to me.
PW (10:49):
It wasn’t owed to me when I started to see everything through that, that, that perspective. It really allowed me to stop looking at things as if they were obstacles and start looking at them as if they were opportunities. And I started to that whole mind shift of, oh my gosh, all these obstacles that I’m looking at, they’re not blocking the path. They are the path, right. This is the way I need to walk down this road because all of this is forming and shaping me, not only what I’m going to do next, but it’s forming and shaping who I am as a human being. But I took a while to get there again, that wasn’t an overnight thing.
AJV (11:28):
No, but that’s so good. It’s these things aren’t blocking their path. They are the path that’s really, really well. And
RV (11:37):
You talk about entitlement. And I think that it’s really weird because when you have been successful at something, I mean the word re-invention, yo basically, no matter how you slice it as starting over, and that is it’s, it’s a painful part about going well, I already, I already fought this battle. Once I already did this war, like I already ran this race. I shouldn’t have to do it again. And that is so frustrating. It can be frustrating and maddening. How do you get yourself past that? Because you’re like, you know, one day, as you said, you’re a CEO or you’re you have this big business you’ve started, you’ve got this huge team of people until just like crank stuff out. And then the next day you’re gone, it’s all gone. And here I have this beautiful blank slate, but it’s also like, do I really have to do this again?
PW (12:43):
Yeah. That’s why I say, I’d say the second step is you’ve got to embrace humility. It takes a tremendous amount of humility because you’re right. When you’ve had tremendous amount of success and a particular season of your life, or in a particular industry, right. That you’ve been working in. And then all of a sudden you find yourself having to either leave that industry and start something completely new, or maybe you’re, maybe you’re staying in the same job, but to really get the results you want. Now you’re having to learn a completely new skill. Right. it’s humbling. You know, we were joking around a little bit before this podcast started, as we were both fumbling around with some it issues that, you know, there was a time in my life that I had a video team of four or five full-time people. I had an it department of three or four people, you know, I really got to just show up and do the part I love the most and walk away.
PW (13:37):
And somebody made magic out of that and made me look good. You know, these days you know, I am the video team. My wife is the it department. Right. And you know, we’re, and she’s only in the it department cause she knows a little bit more than I do. And when stuff doesn’t work, I tend to throw it. It gets expensive, replacing stuff. So you know, it’s humbling, right? And again, you could look at that in one or two ways. And, and to be honest are times I’ll look at it and I’m so frustrated because I can’t get this cord to work or this program, the work, or I can’t figure out how to do lights. And then there are other times I sit back and say, you know what, though, like again, part of this process is it’s, it’s leading towards what you wanted and you started with a blank slate.
PW (14:24):
One of the things that was of value for me was flexibility. There was a time in my life that I worked 80 hours a week. And in that process, I wasn’t focusing on some of the things that were most important to me in life, such as family. And so, and part of that was, you know, I, I had a staff from over a hundred people that I was trying to manage and lead. And so again, my ultimate goal, these days of wanting some more flexibility means I don’t have a staff of a hundred people that I’m leading day in and day out. It also means I don’t have three separate offices anymore. I have a two foot wide desk in my laundry room. Right. So there’s, yeah, there’s, there’s humility that comes with it, but I have to keep that long range goal.
PW (15:11):
And there’s some, also some values kind of started with that blank slate. And I said, what is it that I ultimately want? And for me, flexibility was one of those things. So, but yes, the humility it’s huge. In fact, you said something recently on your podcast. I wrote it down. I have it here on my desk because you were talking about Jim Cohen, who you had had on there and you guys had helped her. And so she had had tremendous success right. In one area, but now she’s wanting to do this TEDx talk and she comes to you guys to help her organize that and create, you know the possibility but viral Ted talk. And you guys did that for her, but that only happened because she was willing to be humble. Right. And to kind of go through that process. So you said this, what you said, be humble enough to learn a process and follow the process.
PW (16:03):
And so that’s been in the back of my head ever since I heard you say that is, you know, you again, just because you had success before, doesn’t mean that’s going to be ODU again. And so you gotta to read, if you need to hire a coach, hire a coach needed, send a online webinar, attend the webinar, you know, but become a sponge, commit to that process, get rid of the pride that makes you want to think that you’re too good to start over and you’ll automatically greatly increase your chances to be successful at your re-invention. Whatever that reinvention might be.
AJV (16:37):
This is so good. Cause I know you’re going to talk about something in a second, so I won’t give it away, but I think this is a really nice transition into that because we hear a ton of people come to us going, well, I should just be here by now. I should just have been making this much money by now. I should have gotten this by now. And I’m like, why, why and what is buying now? And I think a lot of it is what you said is like you get entitled to this previous idea of success or your role without going, Nope, I’m actually going to clean the slate and I’ve got to humble myself and realize I may not get there in the timeline that I want, but that doesn’t mean I won’t get there. But also I think what you said, I think is so powerful it’s to redefine, like, what is it that you want?
AJV (17:25):
Like, do you want to just go back to what you did to do it in a different industry or a different avenue? Or do you really take the time to sit back and go? No. What, what is this opportunity to reinvent really mean in my life? And I just don’t know if a lot of people sit back and take that time. They kind of go from, you know, to use your example. I was working 80 hours a week as a corporate CEO, a CEO. Now I’m going to work 80 hours a week to be a New York times bestselling author. I’m going, but is that what you really want or is that just a conditioned part of your life that you’ve gotten used to?
PW (17:57):
Yeah, yeah, you’re exactly right. That’s it leads right into that third thing, which is, I think you have to redefine your success and the temptation is to take whatever metric you were using before and just apply that right. To whatever it is that you’re going through to, you know, in the midst of this reinvention. And it just rarely works that way, especially if you’re going to pivot industries like I did. So I went from being a full-time pasture speaker for over 20 years. That’s all I had really ever done in my adult life. And now all of a sudden I’m doing something a little different, right? And so these days, you know, I have the podcast, a good talk podcast, you know, we have this good Bob’s manner management that we’ve started, where we’re partnering, you know, celebrities and entertainers with nonprofits and corporations. And then I have my personal coaching, all three of those things were quite different in many ways. And what I was doing before I pivoted along with that, you know, the, the reality was I had an audience that I had gained over 20 years of working in ministry. And some of that audience translated over to what I do now, but many of them did. And so it was, you know, I had to redefine success because, you know, I started with maybe 30,000 Instagram followers and every time I’d post about the new things I was doing, you know, I’d lose a thousand and gain 50. And
RV (19:25):
I find that to be a motivating experience when I post something in my followers, not only do not grow, but when it goes in reverse, that really drives me to continue in the perseverance passion.
PW (19:40):
Oh yeah. Yeah. I had some choice words for Instagram. I get it. You know, it’s like what they had originally signed up for. It had changed. It was different. The content was different. I had a little different angle. I had a different feel to it. And so I had to redefine what is success? Then success is gaining those 50. And I had to focus on that because those are 50 now who are signing up for what it is I’m doing. And I had to be okay with losing that a thousand at that time, you know, it’s the same thing. It’s like, I used to get paid pretty good money to stand in our arena full of, you know, 20,000 people and talk for 30 minutes. Well now, like I love the opportunity for free to stand in a room full of a handful of executives and talk to them about how I can help them go to the next level level and their business and their life and to redefine what success looked like and all those different offerings that I was able to provide.
RV (20:41):
I love that about the metrics. I mean, that is so true. Cause it’s, it’s funny, like, you know, you’ve heard that you were saying this before you hear that, don’t compare your step one to someone else, step 100. But when we reinvent in our own lives, we do it to ourselves against ourselves where it’s like, I’m comparing my new step one to my former step 100 and carrying the metrics over, man. It just creates pressure and like anxiety. And it brings a whole bunch of negative habits
AJV (21:11):
With it. Yeah. I think one of the things you said, I was like that I think out of everything, it’s like, that’s where you have to humble yourself the most, even comparing yourself to yourself because it’s not going to be the same in the beginning, nor should it be, nor should it be.
PW (21:28):
If you can get that early on, it really sets you up because you guys know this you’ve had seasons in your life where you got the awards, you know, you had the New York times and
RV (21:39):
AIG got the awards. She got so many awards. You had a box full of awards from our former life. But the only one she kept, this is funny. This is anecdote. Most of you don’t know. AIJ literally was the top producer, top leader, top revenue, earner, top everything. And, and when, when we started brambles group, we left, right. We had re-invention she left all those awards except for one which was corn hole tournament.
AJV (22:17):
Yeah. I still have it in my office. And it’s like in the shape of a little corn and every time somebody comes in, I’m like, I want that that’s right.
Speaker 4 (22:25):
I want to love,
PW (22:28):
I’m not surprised by all the other awards, but that one, that kind of surprised. I know you would not
AJV (22:34):
Think I’m so talented in the skills.
Speaker 4 (22:38):
Let me just I’ll leave it at that.
AJV (22:40):
But that’s like, I think that’s so important is redefining success because when we, you know, departed from our former company and former partnership, you know, I really struggled when we started brand builders group and settling into my new role because I settled in as the role of CEO and wasn’t so client facing anymore and I wasn’t getting all of the accolades, right. So I was very, very client facing before and got a lot of praise and a lot of you’re so awesome. This was amazing. And now I get, is this sucks.
RV (23:15):
I use for problems. It was a very humbling
AJV (23:20):
Experience that I appreciate, but it was really challenging to go no longer am I the one who people want to see or want to work with or nor do I even get really paid for it. And it was a very challenging first 18 months of me settling in that my worth does not come with the amount of revenue that I produced. And it was a real challenge. And it wasn’t really until I had our second child, which was in the midst of our startup with this, but I said, I didn’t want the life I had before. So why do I miss it now? And it was a very poignant moment that I remember when Liam are now almost two year old was just an infant of X. I remember at that first with Jasper, I only took a three week maternity because I was so afraid that if I wasn’t working that I wouldn’t be significant.
AJV (24:11):
And with Liam, I took a three month maternity leave. And I just remember sitting in that moment, I’m like, why do I miss a life that I didn’t even want? Yeah. And it was so tied to this. I really had to really look at my pride and my ego of, I cared way too much about the way I looked and the way I seemed, I cared more about that than my own happiness. Yeah. And it was a very humbling experience to settle in and go, I’m going to have to really redefine what success looks like in order for me to step into this new role in our new company and, and actually seek happiness. Yeah. And it was, it was that right there, it was redefined success. And that it was, it wasn’t until that moment that I really was like, okay, I don’t have to be the one to have my name everywhere or be the one on stage or get the huge contracts. Like that’s no longer success to me, but being able to take my kids to school that I, you know, just like those little things, it was, it was a very humbling, important process that was redefining success. So I just, I know when not you sent this outline over, I was like, we’re going to have to talk about that because I know so many people who listen to this podcast, they’re dis their success is being defined, but what’s happening around them, not what they actually want.
PW (25:40):
Yeah. That’s so true. And you know, for me, one of the things was, you know, you ma in ministry, you’ve measured things. And the number of people in almost every category is kind of one of the things that gets measured. And so when you’re speaking in front of large groups, as you guys know, it feels good. It’s momentum somewhere along the way, though, for me, I had bought into a lie and the lie I bought into was because I’m so good with large groups of people. It means I’m not good one-on-one. And I repeated that for years. I repeated that to people, people would compliment me on a wow. I mean, you can stand on that stage. And just, and I had always say, well, thank you. I appreciate that. But I’m, you know, I can’t do what you do. Like I’m not good, like one-on-one with people or with small groups of people.
PW (26:26):
What I discovered that wasn’t true at all now what it required the one-on-one, that’s why I love coaching these days, but it, it requires a level of connection with people that I didn’t have to have with 20,000 people. And so it’s that I wasn’t good with people one-on-one it was, I wasn’t prepared to have that level of emotional connection with them that are required to go there. And so that’s really helped me again and just redefining what that success looks like. And success for me these days is loving what it is that I do, which ultimately is so much more important than any kind of accolade. You could get any kind of awards you can get. Cause those things, again, they, they feel great for about a day. And then it’s, if you don’t love what you do, you’re going to be miserable because all those awards, all that stuff, except for the corn hole, they’re going to end up in a box somewhere. Right.
AJV (27:28):
But it’s true. And I land, I love that. And I think too, it’s like so much for our audience. And this is a shout out to everyone to remember. It’s like, you are not defined by your followers and the number of likes that you get, or it’s like, it is not about that. And we had a guest on the show several months back, he’s also a personal friend, John Ruhlin. And I love what John Ruhlin said. And you, something you just said made me think about it is like, you do not have to have millions of followers to make impacts impact in millions of lives or even to make millions of dollars. And so often in the world of personal branding, we look at our followers and go, oh, the, you know, if you have a lot of followers, that means you’re successful. And it’s like, no, you can have 10 followers and be incredibly successful. It’s just, what, what is that success for you? I love that. I think that’s so important
RV (28:17):
When one of the things, when we were kind of talking about reinvention and, and, and how we might frame the conversation, you know, so much of this is like humbling yourself, re you know, changing, redefining success sort of like letting go of the past. But there’s also a little bit of a nuance to this that you thought that you brought up that I thought was really fascinating, which is that there’s actually, some of it does come with you. That is healthy. Can you talk about that?
PW (28:48):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I, I think, I think the reality is you’re never actually completely starting over, you know, the reality is whatever work it is that you’ve been doing, like, wow, you know, you’ve got, you know, for me to 20 years in ministry, it didn’t like just completely disappear. You know, I spent 20 years working on this skill of speaking and communicating, right. I had 20 years worth of relationships that I had built. All those didn’t disappear the day that I started to kind of reinvent and kind of shift or pivot. And so for me, I had to look back and say, okay, you, you have a certain set of skills. Cause I started with this. I started with the mentality of all you’ve ever done in your life is be a pastor, which is true. I mean, it was true. That’s all I had ever done as far as an actual title.
PW (29:41):
But the reality is I had 20 years of skills that I could dig back into 20 years worth of relationships. I could go back into. That would be helpful. So I’ll give you a great example of this. And it’s one I think you guys will identify with when I started decided to launch good vibes management, and I just had this idea because as a pastor, over the years, our church being in Nashville and being a large church, we had over the years, many celebrities who had kind of come through with huge hearts, we definitely
RV (30:11):
Relate with this. We know lots of celebrities. I mean, we can keep on parts. They’re always trying to come over and call us and bug us. I mean, I mean, we definitely relate to you
Speaker 4 (30:20):
On this, but they had great hearts. They wanted to do good
PW (30:25):
Things, but often they’re so busy. They didn’t even know where to start. Right. And so sometimes as a church, we we’d help them. Hey, here’s three or four amazing things going on in our community that you could be a huge help to not only with your resources, but with your platform. And so I just had this idea of what if we launched good Bob’s management and we do this with artists and athletes. We part, we paired them with nonprofits and really add purpose right. To their platform. But I knew like let’s take music business. For instance, I don’t know anything about music business. I knew that managers of these artists would be kind of the gatekeepers. So I literally got on my Instagram feed and I started going through my followers, looking for followers who had something to do with music management. And I saw this girl, her name’s Nikki Boone.
PW (31:13):
I’m like it said a music management. So I clicked on her profile. She happened to be like the day-to-day manager for a guy by then McCain brown, who was this really up and coming country music artists who had had some crossover hits. I literally just like reached out to her and said, Nikki, I don’t need you follow me, but I don’t even know if you know who I am, but I would love to pick your brain. And we sat down and she told me everything there was to know about music management. I told her about my idea. She was like, I think that’s a great idea. In fact, I think like you could really help me with some stuff with Kane, six months later, I’m putting a deal together between the world’s largest nonprofit and one of the world’s largest blowing up country music artists.
PW (32:01):
And they were doing incredible work together and lives were getting transformed. And it was all because I thought for just a minute may be there’s some people in relationships from my past that could help me with my future. And so I know that in the process of your reinvention, whatever it is, there’s some people you’ve worked with. There’s some relationships that are formed. There’s some skills that you used and you honed that can come over and you can use those in whatever new endeavor you have going on. And I said that you guys would be able to identify that because I recently saw you with Lewis house. And I tell story on Instagram, about how, when you guys went through your reinvention, he was one of the first people that you guys kind of reached out to, and he was incredibly generous and really helped you guys out. And I just think there’s more people like that out there in the world than we realize who want to help us. If we’re willing to ask
AJV (32:56):
And to, to what you said, it’s you already possessed this unique skillset from your past. You were just doing it in a different way. It’s like people were coming to the church of going, Hey, how can I help? And you’re going well, what if I went to them instead and said, Hey, let me part you. Or it’s like, I think that’s too, it’s really a powerful to remind everyone. It’s like so much of what your future holds. You’ve already developed those skills and your past. You just need to learn how to apply them in new and different ways towards your future goals. And we definitely relate to that in so many different ways in our business, but then also the, the people too. It’s like, just because you’re, re-inventing doesn’t mean that people of your past the, you know, the things that you did, clients even don’t they, they come with you. Yeah. Some do some don’t. I mean, to
RV (33:41):
The way that you said, you know, one of the things that you just said P which was a light bulb for me, I guess this is kind of a random anecdote, but w we have a good friend, a guy named Ron marks and, and he used this metaphor one time. It has stuck with me my whole life. And when you were talking, it’s sunk in with me that, wow, we have a little bit of this in common with you, between what we used to do and what we’re doing now and what you used to do and what you’re doing now. And Ron here’s here was the illustration. He said, you know, one of the great things about becoming a leader is you go from being in the spotlight to becoming the spotlight operator. And that I think is something that we both have in common, which is where we used to be more in the spotlight.
RV (34:26):
And now both you and us, we are more the spotlight operator. We’re trying to like facilitate other people who have, you know, to grow their platforms and to do meaningful things with them. And you know, what an amazing what an amazing and beautiful unexpected part of the way that God’s plan works and rolls out that the pain we’re going through, isn’t about the pain at all. It’s about him preparing us for the work that he always originally designed us to do. And I, I can’t let you get out of here without asking you I know you’re not officially a pastor anymore, but like, how has your relationship with God? Like, how has that affected or the plate into reinvention and, and how much do you think that that shows up or, you know, matters or has changed, or just like, yeah. Talk to us a little bit about that specifically, you know, going from a, to, you know, what you’re doing now
Speaker 4 (35:39):
I’m just, I’m fascinated about that.
PW (35:41):
That’s great. And, and your illustration, what you just said is huge that idea of being in the spotlight and now facilitating people who are in the spotlight and what that moment does for you is it helps you understand, okay, what is it that I really love that I love being in the spotlight spotlight, or did I love the impact that was being made? And if you love the impact more than you love the spotlight, then you’re going to be just fine and sliding into that new role of allowing other people. One of the things for me to just continue on with that illustration is I’m stepping out of the spotlight for a season, really helped me kind of redefine my relationship with God. You know, I I’ve found it in this all pastors wouldn’t feel this way, but I kind of felt this way.
PW (36:29):
There’s kind of this line this, this feeling of working for God, right? Instead of kind of working with God. And I think for me, I got up, I got caught up in a season where I just started, I was working for God, which also meant, I felt like I was working for God’s love. And one of the beautiful things that I’ve discovered over the past five years is, is truly God’s unconditional love. And for me, what that means and what that represents might look a little different than what it means and represents for some other people, but for a big part of my ministry, the driving force behind it, and you guys were a part of the church long enough to know this. I used to say all the time, it’s okay to not be okay. I used to talk about this idea that there’s no perfect people.
PW (37:19):
You know, everyone’s welcome because nobody’s perfect was kind of that tagline. And I remember when I was going through my reinvention part of it for me was some therapy. Right. And I remember my therapist asking me about kind of my life message and me saying, yeah, part of my life message is I believe everyone’s welcome because nobody’s perfect. And he said, you believe that for everybody else, but for yourself. And that was a turning point for me. He was right. I didn’t believe that for myself. I believed in God’s unconditional love for everybody, but for me, I thought I still had to earn that. Right. And so he said on the other side of all this, I believe you’re probably going to still have the same kind of life mission he said, but it’s going to sound a little different this time, because this time you’re going to believe that for yourself. And I do. And I feel like it’s the same message I’ve always had. It’s coming out in different ways to personal coaching and through good vibes management and through a podcast. Now with my wife life looks a lot different than it did 5, 6, 7 years ago. But it’s still the same message. And it sounds a little different because I’m embracing it for myself for the first time. And that’s been a beautiful thing.
PW (38:35):
Wow. I love that, buddy.
RV (38:37):
We love you. We’re so grateful for you.
AJV (38:40):
I’ve heard the record. We will always consider you one of our pastors. Thank you. Thank
PW (38:46):
God. I still get to do some ministry. I work for a church up in Detroit, outside of Detroit, actually in Plymouth that I get to speak at quite a bit and love serving there. So it’s still, it’s still a part of my life which is awesome. And that’s another thing about reinvention is sometimes you don’t have to walk away from all of it, or maybe you walk away from it for a season and somehow it kind of comes back around. But yeah, it’s a, it’s a beautiful thing. And that means the world. You guys, I mean, the world, this podcast, what you guys do is huge and you give really practical tools. I listened to it every week. It’s been so helpful to me, to Jordan. And I hope you guys will just keep doing what you’re doing cause you are, you’re making a big difference. Well, thank
RV (39:28):
You, Pete. And, and the you know, one of the other hallmarks I’ve always heard of a great leadership is that, you know, that the great leaderships will build something that eventually outlasts them. And you know, we still go to cross point where you know, I, we’re still involved with the leaders.

Ep 182: How to Develop Stronger Social Justice Sensitivity with Kim Scott

RV (00:06):
Hey brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview as always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/podcall brand builders, group.com/podcall. We hope to talk to you soon.
I am excited to introduce you to a new friend of mine, Kim Scott.

RV (00:57):
You probably recognize her as the New York times bestselling author of the book, radical candor but a mutual friend of ours introduced us to each other. And so we’re really just kind of getting to know each other, but I’ve got a lot of respect for her work specifically with radical candor, which was you know, a huge book is a huge book. She also turned that book into a business an executive education company. And we’ll talk a little bit about that and she’s done the same with her new book. So she has a new book that is out just came out. If you’re listening to this, this episode, as it’s being released called just work get BPO stuff, get stuff done fast and fair. And that is her newest book. So what you may not realize is that she’s been a high profile CEO coach for years and years, she worked with people at Dropbox, Qualtrix, Twitter, several other tech companies.

RV (01:57):
She was also a member of the faculty at Apple university. And then before that she worked at Google on the ad sense and YouTube and DoubleClick teams. There was a portion of her career. She worked directly for Sheryl Sandberg. She tells some great stories about that. And so anyways, we just thought it would be fun to have her come on, talk a little bit about her journey, becoming an author, but really talk about just work the new book and also how this, you know, kind of getting things done fast and fair applies to those of us with personal brands and businesses and our online community. So anyways, Kim, welcome to the show.

KS (02:36):
Thank you so much. It’s an honor to be here. Thanks for having me. Yeah.

RV (02:40):
So how did you go from radical candor to a book about work? I mean, correct me if I’m wrong. I, as I understand this, this is just work. The new book is really about workplace injustices. How did you talk to us about how did that transition happen?

KS (03:02):
So after I wrote radical candor, and by the way, if you write a book about feedback, you’re going to get a lot of it. And I started, and so I was giving a presentation about radical candor at a tech company in San Francisco. And the CEO of that company was someone I really liked and admired a lot and had been our colleague for the better part of a decade and is one of two few black women CEOs in tech. And after I gave the presentation, she pulled me aside and she said to me, I really love the idea of radical candor, Kim, and it’s, I think it’s going to help me build the kind of culture I want, but I got to tell you it’s much harder for me to put it into practice than it is for you. She said, yeah, as soon as I offer even the most compassionate candor, I get slimed with the angry black woman stereotype.

KS (03:54):
And I knew this was true. And I sort of realized three things at the same time. The first was that I had failed to be the kind of colleague that I wanted to be, that I saw myself as, because I had been in denial about the kinds of things that were happening to her. I had failed to notice that over the better part of a decade working together, she always 100% of the time showed up as cheerful and pleasant and never the slightest bit annoyed and believed me and that period of time she had what to be PO about. So it never had occurred to me that the, the toll that must take on her and I had ignored the kinds of things that were causing her to have to behave that way. Furthermore, I had also been in denial about the kinds of things that were happening to me as a woman in the workplace, because it was harder for her than for me. It was harder for me than for the men who I worked with to put these ideas into practice. And I had just kind of glossed over that fact, but touch very lightly on it in the book and the third revelation I had. Yeah, you’re talking

RV (05:02):
About in radical candor, you touched on that very lightly about the, about the messenger in addition to kind of like the method effects that can affect things just

KS (05:15):
About sexism in the workplace. And, and the third thing that I realized was that throughout my career, I had very often failed to be the kind of leader that would prevent this kind of nonsense from allowing everyone on my team to just work, to, to do the best work of their lives, sort of unimpeded by nonsense by, by, by, by various sorts of bias, prejudice and bullying that happens at work. And so I realized this was something I needed to give more thought to, and that was sort of when I sat down to start writing just work.

RV (05:53):
Gotcha. Okay. So you’re, you’re kind of waking up to the idea that in justice or bias, which I guess would be a lighter form on the, on the continuum is, is something that is there all day every day. And I mean, is that, I mean, is that part of the conclusion you would still stand in? Is that like what you said it was harder for her. It was, you know, it was harder for her than you harder for you than maybe a white male. And do you still stand very much convicted in that space? That, that is the truth. Yeah,

KS (06:26):
Yeah, absolutely. A hundred percent. And in fact, I would say it’s not only biased. I think one of the mistakes that I made for a lot of my career was that I, I tried to commence myself. It was always bias, but I think it’s one of the core ideas in the book is it’s really important to distinguish between bias, prejudice, and bullying. So bias. I’m going to define as not meaning it prejudice, I’m going to define as meaning it, it’s a very conscious belief and bullying. I’m going to define as meaning harm. And these are three very different attitudes and behaviors. And I think both when we’re confronted with them as the person harmed by these idea, by these, by these attitudes and behaviors, we’ve got to respond differently. And as leaders we’ve got to respond differently, we’ve got to, we’ve got to create very different kinds of interventions depending on what we’re facing.

RV (07:20):
Huh. And so w I mean, I think that’s really fascinating delineation there, but between those and what are some of the, as a, as a, as a leader in the workplace or as you’re training leaders, what are some of the things that you’re teaching them to look for to kind of identify, you know, bias, prejudice, bullying? I mean, and I think bullying to me feels a little more obvious, a little more noticeable, but to me it’s more like prejudice is a little harder to identify and then bias is almost like invisible. So, I mean, yeah,

KS (08:00):
So you’ve got to make the invisible visible. So, so, and by the way, it’s, it’s, you’ve got to notice what you are reluctant to notice, I guess, is a better way to put it. So one of the things that I recommend that leaders do is to create bias interrupters on their team. So, and there’s all different kinds of bias. There’s racial bias, there’s gender bias. There’s, there’s bias around sexual orientation. There’s bias around mental health. There’s all these biases that we have. And so rather than doing an abstract, unconscious bias training for folks, what I recommend is, is to teach people to, to come up with the phrase that they’re, that everybody’s going to agree on, that, that they’re going to use to flag bias when they notice it in a meeting or, or just in the hallway, in the office, on the zoom. And the important thing is that it’s a shared vocabulary.

KS (08:54):
So some teams we’ve worked with have chosen to say bias alert with my editor. He and I would use yo. So if he said, yo to me, I knew that night that I had said, or done something that was biased with tree air Bryant, my co-founder and I, we use a purple flag. So, so if tree air says purple flag to me, I know I’ve just said or done something biased. And then the nuts thing that leaders need to do is to teach people when you’re, when you are the person whose bias has been flagged how to respond. Because very often when, when somebody, when somebody points out that we sat or done something bias, we feel ashamed. And very often when we feel ashamed, we don’t respond well. In fact, we respond with denial or

RV (09:45):
Defensive, for sure. Like, nah, I didn’t say that. I didn’t mean that. I mean that, yeah, for sure. Yeah.

KS (09:50):
Yeah. I mean, I’ve, I’ve done that. I bet you we’ve all done that.
RV (09:55):
I feel almost like it’s a human instinct to that. It’s almost like a form of being attacked, like, like a same way. You would deal with a physical attack with like running away or fighting back. It’s like, when you under encounter this, like, you know, professional feedback is like, nah, nah, you know, that’s not, that’s not me. Yeah. Yeah.

KS (10:13):
So I think what you want to do is you want to teach people either to say, you’re right. I get it. I’m sorry. I’ll try not to do it again, but please point it out if I do. And if you don’t understand why, what you said or did was biased. You just say, I don’t, I don’t get it. Can you explain it to me after the meeting? And then the meeting goes on and it’s important that it be very quick, but these bias interruptions because bias happens so often. If, if, if we don’t learn how to interrupt it quickly and publicly, then, then it’s bound to keep going. So I, and I think you, you want to, as a leader, teach people to have kind of a growth mindset around their biases because obviously if you’re learning math or you’re learning to throw base, you’re learning any new skill, throw a baseball, you’re going to make mistakes.

KS (11:02):
And then you can only get better if someone points your mistakes out to you. And if you can overcome that natural feeling, and this is true in general, when I was teaching medical candor, I still do. People are defensive in the face of any kind of criticism. There’s specially defensive in the face of criticism around something that they said or did is biased. But we’ve got to learn how to accept this with a growth mindset, except this kind of feedback with the growth mindset and unlike other kinds of criticism, this needs to happen in public. It needs to happen in a meeting publicly because otherwise, if you don’t, if you don’t interrupt the bias, it’s gonna, it’s gonna continue and people will keep making the same mistakes. So, so that’s my, yeah. Let me tell you just like a quick story about a successful bias interruption.

KS (11:58):
So friend of mine, alien Lake walks into a meeting with two colleagues who are men and she sits down and her two colleagues sit down to her left and Ayleen is the person who has the expertise that is necessary for her team to win the deal with this other company they’re meeting with. So they’re sitting down on this long conference table, people from the other team file, and the first guy comes and sits down across from the guy to aliens left. The next guy comes in and sits across from the guy to his left. And then everybody files on down the table, kind of leaving a lane, dangling by herself at the end of the, at the end of the table. And so this is a little awkward, but she doesn’t let it bother her. She starts talking and the people on the other side of the table respond to the men who she’s as though she hasn’t talked as though they’ve taught. And this is a very sort of standard kind of no, not

RV (12:52):
An uncommon, not an uncommon, probably all too uncommon thing. Yeah.

KS (12:57):
Happen all the time. And it happens once it happens twice, it happens a third time. And finally the, the, her business partner stands up and said, I think Eileen and I should switch seats. So this is a small bias interruption. They don’t have like a co you know, they don’t have this. It’s

RV (13:14):
Not an intervention, like a big intervention, but they’re saying, Whoa, something’s going on here. I

KS (13:19):
Think Elena and I should switch seats and, and they switched seats. And the whole dynamic in the room changes because all of a sudden, the other side realizes what they’re doing and they stopped doing it. They didn’t mean to do it. And so I liked this story for a couple of reasons. One is, it was so much easier for him as an upstander to do this than it would have been for Eileen to do it. If she had stood up and said, I think we should switch seats. And then there would have been like bias heaped on top of bias. She, all of a sudden would have been aggressive or abrasive or having knows what else she would have been called. So it was much easier for him. And also his motivation is really, as an upstander is really important. Part of the reason he did it because he cares about Elaine and he didn’t like seeing her get ignored.

KS (14:03):
But the other part of the reason that he did it was because he wanted to win the deal. He wanted to just work. And he knew that AYLIEN had the expertise. And if he couldn’t get those people on the other team to listen to her,then they were not going to win the deal. So it’s, this is the just work part of just work. It, there was a justice element. There was like a, I just want to get the deal done. And, and there was also him just standing up, not for Eileen. It wasn’t like she was a helpless person, but to what was going on in the room. So that’s a simple example of somebody who used an I statement to intervene to, to flag. And, and the reason why I think it’s so important that leaders create these bias interrupters is that that sort of thing happens so rarely. And if you can get that kind of thing happening more on your Team
RV (14:59):
and the bias interrupters happen, the bias

KS (15:01):
Interrupter happens. So rarely. Yeah. The bias itself happens lot. Yeah. All the time incessantly. So if you can get that flywheel going, it’s like, doesn’t have to be a huge deal. And that it wasn’t like a major conflict, but it is a huge deal in that they won the deal because of it. And and everybody was able to do better work because the, the, the bias was gotten out of the way. Yeah.

RV (15:28):
And I, I mean, I, I really appreciate the message and kind of the spirit of that, you know, of the title, which is, you know, in alignment with the book, which is like, Hey, if we can get this bias and this prejudice out of here, then it’s like, we can just work. Like we can, we can come together as a team. We can focus, we can drive results and not like get caught up in, you know, nonsense as you, that word I think you used earlier. I, one thing I hope you don’t mind, I’m fascinated about this is I was wondering if, if I could talk to you a little bit about, you know, a lot of people who listen to this show are influenced. I mean, pretty much everyone who listens to this show in some level would re probably considered an influencer.
RV (16:07):
Some of them have very large following, some have very small followings. I think it’s really fascinating how you’re talking about how bias interrupters, this type of feedback should happen publicly. Whereas typically feedback is, is usually more private. You know, it makes my mind think of social media. Like this is the world we’re, we’re, we’re trying to navigate, particularly our community is going okay. One is, I guess, I guess my, my biggest question is to go, how do we catch ourselves? Particularly if we’re creating content, which is a little bit different, but not too much different. I wouldn’t think like, how do I create catch myself? And I, it could be with creating content, but I think it’s probably the same in a board room or the same at a restaurant, or anywhere we go, how do we catch ourselves committing these biases? And is there a way that we can create these interrupters for ourselves? And then is there a way that that does or does not shape our communication, our public communication through social? Yeah.
KS (17:12):
Yeah. It’s a really, it’s a really important question. So one of the things that I did when I was in the course of writing this book, because I was, obviously, I knew that I was probably writing in a way that was biased revealing certain prejudices. And so sometimes I tend to use very aggressive language that some people might consider bullying. And so I really wanted someone to help me flag this. I mean, I think that some people can, can give themselves feedback and can catch themselves, but I find I need others. I need other people to offer me criticism. And so I actually, I actually worked with a number of people who, who were sort of biased busters. So I asked them to read the book with, with sort of looking for examples of bias that, that, that were making revealing themselves in my choice of words.
KS (18:07):
And breeze Harper is one of the people who I worked with as a, as a, as a bias busters, as well as a number of others. And she was incredibly helpful to me to, to help me understand where I was going wrong. So to help me identify problems before the book got published, which was really important to me, sometimes this is called like a sensitivity read, but I really object to that term because it wasn’t really just about sensitivity. It was I did not want to harm people. I did not want to do harm to people with the words that I chose. So I’ll give you an example of one of the things
RV (18:47):
That, and that is the definition of bias you, that you gave earlier. It’s like, I’m not meaning to do harm, but it kind of happens anyways. Yeah. Yeah.
KS (18:56):
My intentions don’t really matter. My impact does. And and so, so one of the, one of the words that, well, one of the things that happened actually in this, I think happens to a lot of people. So I’ll share this breeze flagged about nine words that I tended to use that were problematic nine. And my instinct, my first instinct was I like God, no word of English. Language is saying, which is ridiculous. Right. But I think a lot of people. So anyway, one of one thing I would recommend to people is that you try to quantify your biases. Like there were nine words I needed to change, and they’re hundreds of thousands of words in the English language. So it was not that big of a deal really. And one of the words in particular that you flagged as I tend to use the word, see when, what I mean is notice or understand.
KS (19:45):
And so this is called abelist language. I’m sort of, I’m sort of a S because the implication, the UN, the unintentional implication is that if someone is blind, they don’t notice or understand. And of course that’s false. I know that’s, I don’t mean that, but that, that’s kind of the way a sloppy metaphor slop while I call them soppy sight metaphors. And I care about this, and I care about it because I believe words matter and I’m a writer. And so I should care about words. And I also cared about it because another one of the people who was helping me to edit the book is a guy named Zach shore. Who’s a historian who’s blind. And so the last thing in the world I wanted to do was to, to use the language that would, that would harm Zach and people like SAC and other blind people in some kind of way. So, because I care about Zach and also because I wanted to use better language, I thought I had fixed this problem that I had. And and, and, but I decided to do a quick search right before I sent the bark to my editor. And I had used sloppy site metaphors, guess how many times? In a 350 page book?
RV (21:02):
I mean, I don’t know, 25,
KS (21:04):
99 times, 99 times. A lot of times. So, so it is, it’s difficult to become aware of your biases and I believe we need, this is why I think it’s so important to flag bias publicly, too, to say bias alert to have these bias interrupters, because only when, when they get our biases get interrupted repeatedly, do we begin to change our thought patterns around them? So I think that’s really, so I really, that’s a, long-winded answer to your question
RV (21:40):
Though. Social plaster. Yeah. But social media kind of serves is, is more and more serving in that way. Right? Like people are speaking up very clearly when they think you have said something or done something wrong. So the let’s talk about the response part of it for a second. Cause I think that’s really, like you said, like the, I think my default, whether it’s in a business boardroom or if it’s at a family Thanksgiving, or if it’s on social media, my, my initial feedback, my initial response is probably the same to reject, denied, dilute Dodge, you know, defend whatever, you know, variation you want to use of that. And I, and I think, you know, so many of the events that have happened, particularly in the last year, I feel like have at least opened up a number of people to go, you know what? I want to get better at this. I want to, I I’m open to the idea that maybe I do have some biases. Maybe I even have some prejudices that I’m not aware of and I’m wanting to be open to it. So when it comes to us, how should we receive it? Yeah.
KS (22:56):
It is one of the best, one of the best things I’ve ever heard about this is a podcast by Bernay Brown about shame. And she said and she, she, she offered this podcast shortly after the murder of George Floyd. And she said so often, and she said, I’m speaking to my white audience here. She said, so often when we get feedback that we’ve said something or done something that’s racially biased, or even prejudiced, we feel shame. And she encourages people to like notice in your body where you feel shame. Like, I feel it in the back of my knees, the same place. I feel like if I get too close to the edge of a high drop, I feel afraid, you know, it’s a physical feeling. And when you feel ashamed, you learn how to calm. You’re having a fight or flight response. And we rarely respond in the way that we want to spot respond and we’re having a fight or flight response.
KS (23:54):
So you gotta learn how to calm yourself down. So the first thing is calm down, like take a few deep breaths, walk away, don’t respond immediately, walk away from Twitter or wherever you are. And then even if the person, I think there’s her point Bernay Brown’s point was that there’s a giant difference between feeling ashamed and being shamed. So very often the person is giving you some feedback that is perfectly reasonable. And so you want to make sure that you respond to that reasonable feedback with a reasonable response. So try to stay open to the feedback, but even if, and this is true of any kind of criticism don’t criticize the criticism, when someone is offering you some criticism, try to look for the gold in it, treat it even, even if it’s not perfectly delivered. And so, and this is something I’ve found over and over again, when I’ve gotten, I got feedback, it was couple years ago.
KS (24:50):
Now I tweeted something and I used the word crazy and enable list way. And I didn’t w what I really meant was irrational, you know, and somebody pointed out that it was, it was unfair to to people who struggled with mental illness, for me to use a sloppy soppy metaphor. And, and I really appreciated that. They said it very nicely. They, they sent me a link to an article that I read that was really helpful. And so I said, thank you. And then I retweeted it so that others could avoid making the same mistake. And there, I got some trollish response, you know? Oh, everybody’s over-sensitive. And so now all of a sudden, I’m in the position of having to explain to folks why it’s, it’s worth listening to this, to this kind of feedback. So I think that’s really important is, is being open to the feedback, even if the feedback is, especially if it’s well-delivered, but even when it’s not well delivered.
KS (25:56):
So I think social media kind of, it kind of lends itself to moral grandstanding. And so, so people are likely to, to call you some terrible name and if you can, and those, and this has happened to me over and over again. If you can say, if you can find like the 5% of what you can agree with and, and, and state that rather than going fighting and attack with another attack, it’s incredible to me what good conversations you can have with people, how you can actually turn them around, even on social media, but don’t give in to this moral grandstanding. Don’t play
RV (26:37):
That game. Well, it’s funny too. And I, you know, you said don’t criticize the criticism, which is really good. What I find myself doing is I not only criticized the criticism, I criticized the criticizer, so they attack me and I go, well, yeah, I might’ve done this, but only because you, yeah, you did this. And it, it just becomes this really negative spiral. Yeah. Navy seals have this thing called arousal response, which is like, you know, there’s a stimulus and it’s like, don’t just react to the stimulus, like process it for a second. And it’s, it’s such a, it’s like an emotional discipline or like a mental mental discipline. Yeah. So I think you know, on, on the, on the topic, you know, in the space of this, is there any sort of advice or wisdom or counsel specifically that you would give additionally to people who are out there, you know, that are messengers, they’re communicating you know, these are the content creators of, of the world that are listening here and going, is there anything that we can do to kind of like I guess just be aware of this and drive more towards fairness and be sort of sensitive to, I mean, I think you’ve used some really hyper, granular examples with you.
RV (28:05):
That would be, I think you, you know, you could, you could argue are overly sensitive or certainly being very hypersensitive. I mean, do you think, do you think that all content creators should be that way or, you know, or any other kind of like last wisdom you would leave with us?
KS (28:23):
I think you w you want to be aware of the impact that your words have on others. I think that whenever you are writing something or offering a podcast, or even just tweeting words, matter words really matter. And if you’re going to communicate with other people, you need to understand the impact of your word. So let’s imagine that you were accidentally stepping on someone’s toe and someone said, Hey, you’re on my toe. You wouldn’t stand there and continue to stand on their toe and say, don’t be so sensitive or wear steel-toed boots, or I didn’t mean to stand out. You would just get off their toe. And I think if you can kind of use that metaphor, that metaphor, that can be helpful. Another thing that I would say is when you notice bias, use an ice statement, and I statement invites someone in to understand things from your perspective, when you notice prejudice and you don’t necessarily want to have a big debate, because people have a right to believe, whatever they want to blame, but they don’t have a right to impose those beliefs on others.
KS (29:29):
And so when you, when you notice prejudice, when you notice an actual prejudice where somebody is saying something and meaning it, I think in it statement is much more effective. And then it statement can appeal to law. It is illegal to, it can appeal to common sense. It’s ridiculous too, but use that it statement to demarcate that boundary between one person’s freedom to believe whatever they want, but another person’s freedom not to have that belief imposed upon them. And then when it’s bullying, you want to use a use statement, sort of which pushes the other person away. You can’t talk to me like that, or what’s going on for you here. If that feels like it’s going to escalate. My daughter actually explained this to me in third grade, she was getting bullied. And I suggested to her that she, that she used an I statement.

Ep 180: How Personal Brands Can Create an Unbeatable Mind with Mark Divine

RV (00:06):
Welcome back to the influential personal brand podcast recap. It’s your man, Rory Vaden breaking down the interview with my time friend, Todd Henry. I’m all about accessing your creativity, which I think is just super relevant. Right. And, and I guess it’s funny, cause I’ve known about Todd’s work for years, but now more than any other time, I think in my career, how do I feel like we’re playing in this space of creativity on a regular basis? And, and I would say even feeling like creativity is a core component of succeeding in the workplace today. And I would say probably my first biggest takeaway from the interview with Todd was even just kind of reframing what is creativity and what, what should we think about and what does he think about, or as someone who’s spent spent a lifetime studying this which is that creativity is just problem solving.

RV (01:09):
That’s it? Creativity is problem solving and there’s constant problems. I mean, this is the story of being an entrepreneur. It’s the story of being a leader? It’s the story of being a parent? It’s the story of building a personal brand or building an empire it’s like life is basically just a series of one problem after the next, after the next, after the next and the problems just get bigger and different and more complex, the more successful you get and a lot of the most fundamental problems, you never, you never resolve completely, right? Like what are we eating for dinner and how do we keep the house clean? And you know, what are we wearing? And like, there’s just this, this rhythm of life that is a steady stream of problems. And so if you don’t have creativity or if you’re not developing that, then I think you’re going to really struggle.

RV (01:59):
And I’m realizing that, oh my gosh, this is, this is an essential skill that isn’t just relevant to artists, but relevant to all of us. And you know, so I think this first takeaway there’s two big definitions that are in this. So one is what is the definition of creativity? I think Todd defines it as problem solving, which will, will stick with me. The other was what’s the definition of art. And I think the way that Todd said it was, he said that art is an expression of values, right? So it is your values, the things that you care most about the things that you believe in the things that you buy into, the ideals that you hold, the, the principles that you know, to be true, it is those things codified, manifested, extrapolated transformed into some expression, whether it’s, you know, a painting, a song a movie a, a book, a speech, a course like a business.

RV (03:20):
I mean, I think business is art. Like creating a business is, is nothing other than expression of values. I think it’s like, I love that definition because if you go, okay, well, core values are to a business. What personal philosophies are to an artist. So your personal viewpoints and philosophies come out as the expression of art. Well, if you’re an entrepreneur, your business basically is that, I mean, it is that, that an entrepreneur being an entrepreneur is our chance to create a reflection in the world of the things that we believe, the things that we hold value to the things that we, we most trust and we believe to be true and that we want to see more of in the world. And so I think that is a really fascinating way of seeing it is that art is this expression of values, businesses and expression of values.

RV (04:16):
You know, and, and I think when you, you know, that it’s art, when it moves people emotionally, we talk about that in world-class presentation craft which is, you know, our course, our, our course on teaching people how to speak from stage and the mastery level, stage mechanics of what, what set mechanically, what separates the greatest speakers in the world from everyone else. And it is all about, can you move the audience emotionally? Do they have some type of visceral response in their body to the things that you are saying? And you know, some of those are techniques, but that you can do, you know, there’s, there’s things that you can practice and we teach a lot of those, but a lot of it is more of it is aligning your art, your presentation, your, your masterpiece, your creation, being in alignment with your uniqueness, the things that you believe.

RV (05:11):
So that was really beautiful. And I, I really loved that. And, and I loved the practical application of that also with kind of like this artistic juxtaposition was, was really good. Now, the second big takeaway that I want to highlight is how do you find, like what art you should create? I mean, a brand builders group, right? We would call this finding your uniqueness. It is always the first thing that we do with every client as we help them identify their uniqueness. It’s the thing that so many people struggle with. It’s, it’s almost a thing where it’s like, it’s, it’s kind of impossible to like, figure it out yourself. You need help doing it. It’s really, really difficult to nail this, but if you nail this, I mean, it changes everything. It changes everything because you’re being the person that only you can be.

RV (05:57):
And I love what Todd said here, which is another way, or I would say a hint or a clue or a suggestion. You could say, I guess a shortcut, probably not a shortcut, but, but maybe corroborating evidence for you to find your uniqueness. Here’s what he said. This is my second takeaway. The thing that you’re most equipped to put into the world is the thing that feels most obvious to you. The thing that you’re most equipped to put into the world is the thing that feels most obvious to you. It’s, it’s parallels kind of what we say a lot, which is that your most powerfully positioned to serve the person that you once were. And that’s because, you know, in full integrated detail, what it’s like to be that person. So it is obvious. Yes. Do you, because that’s what you have done.

RV (06:52):
It’s what you have lived and not just what you have learned about. And I think the way that he comes at it here in, in the way he says it is, is kind of like you know, a different presentation of the same core concept, which is what’s most to you. What is the thing that you do without, you know, trying, what is the thing that you do naturally? What is the thing that you’re gifted at? What is the, what are you like? What have you become? What super powers do you have you naturally developed over the course of your life. These things that you don’t think are special, there’s a huge need out in the world because other people have not gone through what you’ve gone through. They haven’t walked the path that you have walked down. And so you’re super equipped to help those people, which is amazing.

RV (07:37):
It’s amazing when you tap into this, because this is a gift like this is, this is such a great blessing that your personal brand is built, not on having to create something out of scratch, not on, not on having to manufacture ideas out of thin air, but rather to express things you already are to, to convey things that you’ve already been doing to, to translate the very persona in history and experience that you have lived, the more that we can access that the faster and the shorter, the distance to you breaking through with your personal brand. And it’s in a lot of times, it is the thing that’s, it’s so obvious to you that you don’t even notice it. I would say that a lot, like a lot of our clients, like it’s it’s, so it’s such an ingrained part of them. Like their uniqueness is such an ingrained part of them that they can’t see it.

RV (08:39):
Cause they’re so close to it that they’re, it’s almost like they questioned like, well, why would this have any value in the world? Like surely no one would care about that. They have the curse of knowledge, right? They, they automatically, we assume and believe that everyone else out there in the world knows the same things that they know. And they don’t because they haven’t studied. They haven’t researched to use the, the brain DNA helix term. They haven’t researched the same things that you have researched. They don’t have results doing the same things that you’re doing. They don’t have the same passions. They haven’t tried to solve the same problem. And and so it’s like, it’s hard to see. So that’s really, really important. And even though it’s hard to see, it’s a place to start with is, you know, what is most obvious to you?

RV (09:22):
Like, what is the problem you have most overcome? What is the path that you have walked down? Or as Todd said, it you’re most equipped to put into the world. The thing that feels most obvious to you, which by way of the curse of knowledge, you probably think has no value in the world because you assume that everybody knows it just because you do. And they do not. My third takeaway. And I would say this one was my, my favorite part of that entire conversation is the difference of pursuing a craft Haft versus pursuing stardom. This is the difference between pursuing a craft versus personal, doing the stardom. And it actually reminds me you know, so one of our, one of our longtime pals is John ACOF and we saw John at church a few weeks ago, and we were just having this conversation.

RV (10:16):
We hadn’t seen each other in a while. And, you know, he said something, something about how far we’ve come over all these years. And, you know, I told him, I said, yeah, honestly, I think it, it has more to do with the fact that you and I have just stuck around than anything else. Like we have weathered so many storms. Like we’ve just been, we’ve been in this space now for 15 years. I mean, I met John AJ and I met John 12 years ago now. And so it’s, it’s like, we’ve known him for 12. He was already, you know, just like us. He had been around in awhile and it’s like, I think what we’ve both been doing is, is like we’re pursuing a craft, right? We want to get really good at what we do, which is we want to get really good at helping people.

RV (11:01):
We want to get really good at providing solutions, really good at providing answers. And when you do that, you have true staying power. I mean, it’s, it’s so powerful because you’re not constantly tied to the results of your last post, right? Like you’re not constantly consumed with how many video views did I get, how many podcast downloads or even your last book. Right. It’s it’s like, yeah. If the book sells or not, I mean, it’s, it’s one part of this lifelong journey that is the, your craft. But you’ll see a lot of times when people are like, oh, I just, you know, like, I feel like I need to just like, do this one, one thing. Or if they’re just pursuing stardom, like they just want to have a lot of followers, like you’re going to burn out, you’re going to burn out, or you’re going to look for shortcuts, or you’re just, you’re going to make a lot of sacrifices because you’re ultimately serving something that isn’t that significant in terms of its, its staying power.

RV (11:58):
And it’s, it’s, it’s lasting power. And it’s trick, it’s a little bit of a trick because look at like at brand builders group, right, we win when our clients win. Like we love when our clients get hundreds of thousands of followers or millions of Ted talk views, are they, you know, hit the New York times bestseller list or they land, you know, six figure consulting, deals, all, all things that happen, you know? And, and recently they’ve been on a pretty regular basis. But even those things, it’s like, we want those things to happen for our clients, but they’re not what we measure success by because it’s like, first of all, certain parts of those things can kind of be like manufactured, right. And the, the, the reality is going, but, but it’s not these external achievements or these vanity metrics that change anyone else’s life, nor do they provide side the kind of meaning and deep satisfaction that a true mission driven a true mission driven messenger seeks in their own life.

RV (13:03):
They’re certainly not bad. They’re great things. We want them to happen. It’s just not how we measure success at brand builders group. Because, you know, we focus on, on reputation, over revenue. We want revenue, we want wins. We want money. We want likes, we want followers. We want views. We want all that stuff. But at the end of the day, we’re more focused on helping people figure out what are you called to do, do that. Nobody else can do. Like what problem were you put here on this earth to solve, solve that nobody else can solve. And, you know, focusing and, and standing your identity, grounding your identity more in that is much more significant and long lasting. And it’s going to be a greater source of fulfillment and satisfaction. Even if for some reason it wasn’t going to bring more money. And over the long term, we are convinced that it absolutely does.

RV (14:04):
But there are certain things that do create more results. Short-Term I mean, there are certain topics and there’s certain things you can do. Like, I mean, anything sexual, anything outrageous anything to do with money like there are certain topics that just naturally draw more attention, anything that’s based on celebrities, there’s things that you can do to kind of manufacture short-term attention. But if that’s, if, if that topic or that thing, isn’t what you want to spend your life doing. It’s like you can’t chase that because you’ll, you’ll eventually be running from an empty tank. So pursue mastery of craft laughs don’t pursue stardom, pursue figuring out how can I help versus how can I known? And if you do that, you likely will grow your influence and you will have all of these amazing things happen to you. And that really, really was powerful to hear Todd talk about that.

RV (15:07):
Especially since he’s spent a life around. So many creatives is, is, is to just really pursue that, that craft. And don’t get caught up, resist the temptation to be caught up in the fame and the vanity metrics and the stardom and you know, whatever word you want to call it. Cause it’s not ultimately what changes lives and it’s not, what’s going to bring you satisfaction, but find what’s the message you could spend your life sharing. What’s the problem you could dedicate your life to solving who is the audience and you can dedicate your life to survey.

Ep 178: Accessing Your Creativity with Todd Henry

RV (01:01):
One of my favorite things is when I meet somebody, who’s kind of starting out on their journey and then I lose touch with them. And then I come back and we reconnect and they have like exploded and become huge and influential. And just even, you know, as awesome as they were. But now the whole world knows that. And that’s how I kind of feel about Todd Henry because we’ve known each other for years. And I feel like I was around as a guest, maybe on, on one of his early podcasts. And now his podcast, if you haven’t heard of, it’s called the accidental creative. It has over 10 million downloads and he is one of the world’s leading thinkers on creativity leadership and passion, and just kind of like bringing out your everyday brilliance. And he describes himself as an arms dealer for the creative revolution.

RV (01:54):
He’s written five books. His most recent is called the motivation code. And I just think he’s amazing at helping people access their creativity and helping leaders learn how to pull out the creativity and the ingenuity and the innovation of their teams. And so he’s one of my favorite people in the space. I love his podcasts. I was on his podcast again recently, and we shared the stage on different years at a, at a very large speaking event called the global leadership summit. And that was how we reconnected. And man, it’s just great to see you and I love what you’re up to. So thanks for making some time for us

TH (02:32):
Rory. It’s great to see you as well and always a pleasure to chat with you. I, I always walk away with a combination of like ins inspiration and challenge. Every time I talk with you challenged to up my game, but inspiration that I can actually pull it off. So thanks for all that you’re putting into the world as well.

RV (02:52):
Yeah. Yeah. Well, likewise and I, you know, I think as you know, we’ve known each other as colleagues, but as like a consumer I’m very interested about the stuff that you teach and at about accessing creativity. And I find you know, as I get further, along in my career, there’s a li there’s even more focus on and more, more flexibility for me to go. I want to dive deeper and I really want to even, you know, understand my passion and speak my passion and access some of my truth.
So Rory when we have that conversation, whether it’s an, a new, younger, personal brand, or, you know, someone who’s more experienced like URI, what do you think are some of the roadblocks there to accessing that creativity, whether it’s writing a book or starting a podcast or a course, or being a speaker? I think it’s like when I think about being creative, it almost seems like it’s less of a, maybe this isn’t right. Less of something we have to learn, and it’s more of roadblocks that we have to remove. So that, that naturally shows up. So what are some of your thoughts around those roadblocks and how to get past them?

TH (04:05):
Yeah, I think one of the big challenges for anybody who wants to put something into the world is that the very thing that you’re probably most equipped to put into the world and probably most motivated to put into the world is the thing that seems most obvious to you. It’s something that you’ve been thinking about for a very long time. Maybe the other people don’t think about quite as much as you do. And so for a lot of people, when they start thinking about putting an idea out into the world in some capacity, they think, well, that’s not going to fly. I mean, everybody knows that, or that’s obvious to everybody. And the reality is though it’s obvious to you. It’s not obvious to everybody. I mean, I felt that way with the back in 2005, when I first launched the accidental creative podcast you know, I was talking about things like creating on demand and how do you quell uncertainty in the workplace and how do you create an infrastructure for your team and how do you build rhythms and practices and disciplines to help you have ideas when you need the most?

TH (05:05):
And I thought all of that stuff was obvious. You know, of course every creative professional is doing these things, but, you know, Hey, I wanted to talk about this. And all of a sudden the podcast just gained thousands of listeners. I mean, I wasn’t, I wasn’t, by the way, was not trying to start anything. I just wanted to have a conversation about these things. And I thought, Hey, there’s this great thing called podcasting, where you put audio out into the world and people can listen to it. It’s like my own radio. That’s really cool. I had no desire to like start a business or do anything. And I was a creative director in an organization, had a team of like three dozen people. I was leading, like I was in a good place, you know, and it just kind of took off. And the reason is I was putting something into the world that was scratching an itch that I had something that I was needing and also something that I was maybe in a lot of ways uniquely positioned to be, to talk about because of my purview at that time.

TH (05:59):
But frankly, a lot of that stuff felt kind of obvious to me until I put it out there and realized, oh, people don’t sit around thinking about how they do their work. You know, people are so busy doing their work. They don’t think about how they’re doing their work. And so there’s room for that conversation to happen. So I think you, the one thing I would really encourage people to consider if they’re thinking about trying to carve out some space in the marketplace for themselves is the place where you’re probably most well positioned to occupy space is probably an area that you have already discarded because you think it’s too obvious or it’s something that it’s too familiar to you. And just realize that it’s probably not nearly as familiar or obvious to other people. It’s just that you’ve spent a lot of your time honing that expertise to the point where you’re ready to present it to other people.

RV (06:55):
I love that. I mean, I think, you know, our very first book take the stairs, which still is like, to this day, the best selling thing that we’ve done is just all about self-discipline. And I, you know, that very much felt that way. Like, doesn’t everybody do this? Like, doesn’t everybody think about this. And then when we started brand builders group, it was the same thing. It’s like, well, everybody knows like how to build funnels and how to do book launches. And you know how to like get speaking deals and tell jokes. And it’s like, oh, actually they, they don’t. And I think, you know, what’s interesting about that too, is it doesn’t feel creative to me. Like when you’re saying not only is it the obvious thing, so you go, well, you know, people aren’t, you know, people maybe wouldn’t buy that or wouldn’t consume that content because it’s obvious. Everybody knows that the other thing is in a weird way. It’s like, well, that doesn’t feel creative to me because it’s the thing that I do naturally. I do it all the time. But would you say that that’s where the magic happens is just really diving, diving deeper and deeper into that, like leaning, pressing into that space more?

TH (08:07):
Yeah, absolutely. At the heart, creativity is problem-solving, that’s all it is. If you are an entrepreneur and you’re creating a new product that scratches an itch in the marketplace, you’re being creative. Obviously, if you are an engineer solving a problem for your organization, you’re being creative, or if you’re an artist out there making art, you’re, you’re being creative. Obviously I think we tend to conflate creativity and art. We tend to think that creativity means that I’m one of those like mystical singer, magical unicorn people who can go out and just, you know, a little pixie dust in something amazing appears. Those who are really in the trenches is creative professionals and emphasis on the professional part, know that a lot of the stuff that you produce that ends up being really successful there isn’t that magic moment that magic, oh, this is going to be the best thing I’ve ever done.

TH (09:05):
Right. Instead it just feels like the logical next thing. Okay, I’m going to make the next thing. And now I’m going to make the next thing or okay, now I’m going to tweak it this way or tweak it that way. But you’ve been working on it for so long that by the time you get to the place where it starts gaining some recognition in the marketplace, it just feels like the next thing. I mean, success, I believe comes in layers and you’ve experienced this. I’m sure you have. Most people think that there’s going to be some defining moment where all of a sudden you can say, okay, now I’m successful. Right. It doesn’t work that way. And frankly, when you finally get those moments, I mean, they’re very special moments for sure, but they just kind of feel like a data point along a journey. You know, that you’re on. I mean, you mentioned the global leadership summit. That was a, I mean, anybody who’s spoken that or bend to that knows it’s a phenomenal experience to be on stage in front of 400 and something thousand people around the world. Like that’s a really cool, like 10,000 or something in the room. Like that’s really unique or zero in the room. If you happen to

RV (10:05):
Do it the year that Rory does it, which is the COVID the year of COVID where you just talked to the camera. I’m sorry. Yes, I know it was actually, I mean, it was, it was awesome.

TH (10:16):
The event where it was a huge event, so experiencing it, and that was a, that was a remarkable experience. And frankly, the reason that you or I, or anybody else who can step on that stage feels comfortable doing that is because we’ve spoken in the holiday in your conference room for 20 people. Most of whom are only there because their boss told them they had to be there that day. Right? Like we’ve had years of speaking to groups of people, of all different sizes, honing our skills. We’ve done. I’ve done at this point, you know, probably two or 3000 podcast episodes where I’m communicating my ideas. We’ve written multiple books. We’ve been out doing these things for years and years and years. So yes, it’s a very cool, special moment to step on a stage like that, but it kind of feels like the next thing you go and you do that. And then, you know, then the next day or a week later, again, you’re like speaking in a conference room to accompany with a hundred people or whatever it is. Right. Which is still a really cool experience. But these are just like data points along the way. So I think one of the things we have to sort of demystify for people is what this journey of success looks like as you’re building something or as you’re focused on building the personal brand. I mean, there’s a great scene from,
RV (11:43):
Oh, movie scene alert here comes, okay. Sorry about that. And now we’re going the
TH (11:47):
Other way to the sea. It’s a movie a, that was made back in the nineties, called the comedian with Jerry.
RV (11:56):
Oh, it’s Jerry Seinfeld. I’ve seen it. Yeah. You’ll love it. Phenomenal.
TH (11:59):
It’s just a phenomenal, phenomenal film. And there’s a scene where this young comedian and I can’t remember his name, frankly, there’s this young comedian who has been working and working and working. And he like is starting to kind of feel like maybe this isn’t going to happen. And I don’t know if I’m going to break through and he’s talking to Jerry Seinfeld, he says, but you know, like what, what, what about my parents? What are my parents gonna think? And Jerry Simon was like, your, your parents. He’s like, yeah, my friends are like, you’re getting cars and buying houses and having kids. He’s like, you’re what, like, you know, Jerry Seinfeld is just like a gas at this. Guy’s like worried about what other people think or about other people getting ahead of him or whatever. And there’s a scene where that young comedian gets the call that he’s going to be on the tonight show right in the midst of all this.
TH (12:52):
And he calls like five people he knows. And the very next thing that happens is he’s sitting there on the corner and he’s like, that’s it like, that was the moment I’ve been working for was to tell everybody that I was going to be on the tonight show. And now like, that’s it. And the whole, the whole premise of that film, at least as far as I can see is contrasting Jerry Seinfeld’s mindset of like, listen, if there are 10 people in a hole in the wall bar, somewhere in a basement in New York who will listen to me, do comedy, I’m going to show up and I’m going to do comedy because comedians, right. And comedians make jokes and comedians go in front of audiences and share their work. That’s what they do versus the mindset of like, I want to be a star, right?
TH (13:39):
I want to, I want to be somebody who is known for doing my comedy versus somebody who does my comedy, all of us. And I spent time in my early twenties. I jokingly call it with my kids, my misguided twenties, because I was a musician. And I kind of don’t want them following that same path through. But I spent a lot of time opening for big, big, big acts, right? These huge name acts. Some of them were the most lovely people in the world. Some of them were people who quite frankly, like they would, they would stare you into non-existence. You know, if you w if you took a step in the wrong direction, like don’t even come close to my drum kit, like don’t even, don’t look at my guitar, right? Like, like that kind of thing, the really weird thing was there is no correlation between success and attitude.
TH (14:29):
Like some of the most successful people that we encountered were the most unbelievably generous people. They were helping. They were, they would offer advice. They would stand in the wings and cheer us on. They would talk about us when they went on stage, like unbelievably generous people. And some of the people who had just started to kind of break through where the most miserable, selfish, you know, argumentative, frustrating people. And I think what I learned Rory in that moment was the people who were the most generous were the people who were in it because they love to make music. And every single night they showed up and they walked on stage. After spending three days in a metal tube with a bunch of sweaty guys traveling across the country, they would walk out on stage. And they, every night, they just had this mindset of, I can’t believe I get to make music with my friends tonight.
TH (15:18):
This is unbelievable. And the miserable people were the people who thought they were doing it, not because of the music, not because of the craft, but because of what they would get out of the craft, they were chasing the fame or the money or the, of being a star or whatever. And so when they realized, oh, this is actually about doing the work, this isn’t about all those other things. This is about doing the work. They were a little bit disillusioned. So what I always tell young professionals, young creative professionals is you have to fall in love with the work that you do. You have to fall in love with the craft, with the process. You have to fall in love with your message. If you’re out there trying to put the message into the world, you have to be a person who is in love with the process of what you do. Because at the end of the day, if you’re looking for the outcome for the product, for the recognition, for the aura to fill some void in you, you’re going to end up miserable, frustrated, depressed, sitting on a corner in New York city with your cell phone and say, I can’t believe that’s it. That’s all it is. Right. You have to fall in love with the value creating in the process of what you do with the craft.
RV (16:23):
Yeah. That is so powerful. And, and, and moving of just, it’s like, if you really love the craft, whether or not the crowd’s there, the money’s there, the credentials are there, you show up because you’re, you’re there to make art versus to, to be a star. That’s really good. You know, you, you meant, so you mentioned earlier, there’s a difference between creativity and art. Yeah. Can you touch a little bit more on the dis the distinction between those two? Because when I hear you talk about lot, like creativity, even you’re you’re you even used the word logical or sequential several times. Like, when I think of art, I almost think of it as like obscure or abstract or kind of like a, I don’t know, esoteric or a theorial like and yeah. So just, what do you think is the difference between creativity and art
TH (17:20):
Creativity at the, at the base of it is problem solving. We are creative beings by nature. That’s what we do. We solve problems. Your mind is wired to do projects. Your mind is wired to solve problems. And you know, and so as human beings, biologically, you know, me hungry me, need food, right? Not me hungry need to build restaurant. Like that’s not what he’s thinking. Like I need to find a source of sustenance. And creativity is the same thing. Creativity at the, at the root of it is there’s. I need, there’s something that needs to be solved. And I need to find a solution. I need to be resourceful. I need to find a solution. Now you might apply your skills, your artistic skills, even in solving that problem. So a designer designs, something designers by the way, are not necessarily people who are great at drawing or graded at necessarily at the technical skill of bringing something visual into the world.
TH (18:14):
They see things differently. You’re great. Visual artists see things differently, great artists who are great writers think differently that their minds function differently. They see different combinations, different patterns, different systems at work, right in their mind, when they’re going about their writing, they’re trying to solve a puzzle is what they’re doing. How, how can we use all of this experience and connect some dots that maybe other people can’t quite Intuit, but I can Intuit. I can make that intuitive leap. That’s what great writers do they write? Something that feels so familiar to you that you think why couldn’t I have thought of that? It seems like you should have thought of it, or maybe you have thought of it a million times. They just put it into words that you didn’t how to, how to use, right. And the same with great visual art or great music.
TH (19:01):
Great music feels familiar the first time you hear it. Very creative art feels familiar. The first time you hear it. The reason I like to differentiate between creativity and art is because I think sometimes people say, well, I’m not creative. You know, I’m just, I’m just an engineer. I’m just a sales person. I’m just an executive assistant, right? I’m not creative. And yet, and yet I’ve known many executive assistants for C-suite executives and organizations who are some of the most ingenious, creative, resourceful people I’ve ever met, who can on a, just on a dime can turn around and deliver results because they’re so stinking creative in terms of how they use the resources. They have to solve the problems in front of them. So the reason I say that is because when I say creativity, a lot of people think, well, that’s for those people.
TH (19:59):
When I talk about the disciplines that are required in your life, or the practices that are required to prepare you to be creative at the moment’s notice, sometimes people think, well, that’s for those people. That’s for the designers and the writers and the musicians and the unicorns. No that’s for anybody who has to solve problems every day. So if you’re in a position where you have to solve problems, you need to have some practices in your life to prepare you, to be able to connect dots at the moment’s notice to prepare you, to be able to bring those resources, to bear, to hone your skills so that you’re prepared to deliver when it matters most. So if you solve problems, which by the way, surprise, surprise, most of us do these days for our job. That’s what we pay people for, for the value they produce. You are a creative, which means you have to be prepared to deliver the moment’s notice, which means you have to start building practices into your life to get you to a place where you’re prepared to do that.
RV (20:49):
So what is art then? So I love that. And that is totally I’m guilty of going, oh yeah. Creative. I mean, I literally spent the first 15 years of my career speaking out loud to people I’m not creative. Like, you know, and it’s like, I’m not, I, you know, I’m just a speaker. Like, and, and then it was like, I create content. I’m like, I’m not creative. I’m, you know, I’m only writing a book because I have to, to be a speaker. And it’s like, I’m not a creative, I only build websites. Yeah. I’m only like build a website because I have to have something up there. And then it was like, oh my gosh, like, I’m totally creative. Like I am an artist. I just don’t, you know, my, my, my can like the, the, my canvas is different and my brush is different. It’s like words are my paint. And you know, like the canvas is different. So, so if creativity is problem solving, then what is art? Yeah.
TH (21:45):
So I think the best way to think about this is to think about it in terms of, and this is maybe a worn out comparison, but think about the, you know, the Greek computer wars of the early 1980s, right? You, you basically had IBM and sort of this more sort of engineering mindset where we wanted all of our hardware to be infinitely expandable. We wanted the people to be able to tinker with it, people to be able to do what they want, insert chips, if they want insert memory, however they want to basically it’s an open system, an open box. And then you had apple being led by Steve jobs in his first incarnation at apple saying no we’re ticking open our computers. Absolutely not like everything about this is going to be beautiful. Everything about what we make is going to be exactly the way we meant it to be.
TH (22:39):
And it’s going to be an expression of who we are and what we value as an organization. You could argue that they were both solving the same problem, you know, IBM was producing hardware that would crunch numbers and do whatever right. Apple was doing the same thing. The difference was the apple product was an expression of values. Brought into the world into physical form. In some capacity, I would argue that all arts has to be creative, but not all creativity is necessarily art. Say that again, say that again, art is creative by nature, but not all creativity is necessarily art. I can be creative without putting my personal values into what I’m making without spending the extra care to craft it in such a way that I feel like it is refined and honed. So that it’s an expression of who I am in the world in some capacity.
TH (23:40):
And really, I think that’s what art at the end of the day, that’s really what art is. And its essence is an expression of the point of creator in some capacity expression of values. Yeah. And expression of values or an expression of my point of view in the world. I can make things. And I do that all the time. I make things that are creative, but I wouldn’t call them art necessarily. I mean, I don’t think every podcast interview I do is necessarily a work of art. I wouldn’t say that every post blog, post or Twitter posts that I created this early, a work of art, I would say there certainly are some that I’ve put blood, sweat and tears into where I’ve really tried to create an expression of something that is putting my value into it, where I’m spending myself on behalf of the work.
TH (24:24):
And I’m being a little bit vulnerable in how I’m presenting it. I’m taking a bit of a risk because at the end of the day, I believe all art requires risk. In order to be effective, you have to risk something in order to produce art that is going to resonate with other people. And so that’s really probably the cleanest Dylan Lane delineation I can make is like the apple Macintosh was a work of art. Whereas, you know, something else is just kind of utilitarian, right? And another computer might just be kind of utilitarian because the apple Macintosh expressed the point of view. And it was something that was created to make a statement to say, no, this is the way that computers should be. And so it’s going to be exactly what even had Steve jobs even had. I think engineers autograph, the inside, like the circuit boards of some of the, some of the computers, because they saw it as a work of art. Right. and so that’s probably the cleanest delineation I can make is when you’re making art, you’re putting yourself into the world, your values into the world in a way that requires you to risk and be vulnerable. Whereas you can be creative and come up with a creative solution that isn’t necessarily a risking much, or isn’t necessarily expressing your values. It’s not, well, I
RV (25:38):
Liked the problem solving thing is very clear, right? It’s like, you know, we live on a hill, we live on a hill, a very steep hill. We have to figure out a way to get the grass mowed. It is a problem. It’s not as easy as hiring a landscaping company. We’ve had to like solve this problem with different tools in different ways. It’s creative, but it’s not an expression of art. Versus if I plant a garden and I manicure like hand select what flowers are in there, it’s a, it’s almost like as an ex, an external manifestation of like my identity, then that garden would be art. And I liked that a lot. I, I was pressing you on it because I, I struggled to delineate between those two. And I think that’s really, really good and really, really clear of that. You know, creativity is problem solving, which we all do.
RV (26:32):
And sometimes it is also art because we we have put our heart and soul into this kind of like, you know, personal communication almost of like what we believe in into that. So I have one last question for you before I let you go. So before that, where, where should people go? Obviously you’ve got the accidental creative podcast, which is, is some way that, you know, people are probably tuning into a lot of our audiences, probably already listening to it. Where else should people go if they want, if they want to connect with Todd Henry and learn more?
TH (27:04):
So my personal website is Todd henry.com T O D D H and R y.com. And you can access the podcast, my writing, and my books. And anything else you want to access there? The website for the axle creative podcast is accidental creative.com. And then I’m on all of the socials at just Todd Henry, T O D D H E N R Y. That’s the benefit of being old and getting in early is you get [inaudible] handles with just your full name,
RV (27:30):
Everything. All right. So last little thought for you here is if somebody is trying to write something, an article, a blog, post, an ebook, a book, or they’re trying to create, you know, a piece of, of, of art, a speech, or, you know, a Ted talk or something like that. And they’re struggling because they don’t feel like what they’re saying is creative. What advice would you give to that person? You know, what do you think they should know? What do you think they should do to kind of access the, their, their deepest levels of creativity and art?
TH (28:11):
Yeah. So a couple of things, first of all, recognize that everything in the moment of creation is either going to be the greatest thing you’ve ever done or the worst thing you’ve ever done. Like there’s very, very rarely is it like I do I write something and think like, that’s okay. That’s all right. Like it’s either, oh, this is great. Or, oh, that’s complete garbage. Neither. The reality is that somewhere in the middle, we are the worst judge of our own work. Because we have context. So we’re comparing it against what we did yesterday and what we plan to do tomorrow, and maybe the best thing we’ve ever done. You know, that’s, that’s one of the challenges. That’s why, and you’ve written several books. I’ve written several books this way into editor is so critical. I’ve had editors in, well, I’ll give you an example for herding tigers.
TH (28:57):
My editor Niki Papadopoulos said, yeah, we’re going to lose chapter six. Like in other words, we’re going to cut 6,000 words out of your manuscript. By the way, 6,000 words represents, I write about 500 boards a day, every single day, when I’m writing a book, that’s my discipline. He has 500 words before nine 30 in the morning is my discipline. When I’m writing a book that represents weeks of work that I put into working on that chapter and my response wasn’t, you know, how dare you cut an entire chapter out of my book and it wasn’t, you know, why is it not good enough? Like maybe I’m not a good writer. My, my response was, I’m really glad that you’re my editor, because I probably would have kept it in there. And you’re, you’re exactly right. It actually doesn’t belong. We can use it in other ways.
TH (29:44):
It’s not bad writing. It just doesn’t belong in the flow of the book. I totally get it right. We need other people in our life to speak truth to us. And the reality is some of us, maybe some of us, our writing, isn’t where it needs to be. Maybe it doesn’t move people in the way we need it to move. Maybe we work on our craft for sure. They be selfless, really great writers, but we haven’t refined our point of view to the point where there’s an idea set that’s compelling. And so we need to work on honing that idea set, which is where an editor really comes into play in that, in that situation. So my advice to people is, listen, you have to have one or two at the, at the minimum trusted people in your life that you can bounce things off of.
TH (30:25):
You can share things with who will not be afraid to speak truth to you, but also will really encourage you when you need to be encouraged. I’ve shared things with people before and said, I don’t think this is very good. What do you think of like, what are you talking about? This is like maybe one of the best things I’ve ever read that you’ve written, you know, but those are also the same people who will bring me back down to earth. When I think I’ve written something really great. So we need those people in our lives. My wife reads all of my manuscripts when I’m finished with them and she marks them up. And you know why? Because a, my wife’s going to speak truth to me, B my wife has skin in the game. She is, wipes
RV (31:00):
Are really good at that. Oh, absolutely invested
TH (31:04):
In me succeeding. And she’s going to give me really good advice, right? About whether something works or doesn’t work. And nine times out of 10, when she’s given me advice, it’s been the right advice because
RV (31:16):
That’s such a great relationship because the spouse is so emotionally invested spiritually, financially invested like reputationally invested. And they want it to be honest, but they want it to be supportive. I mean, any spouse is, is, you know I’ve made a trusted spouse. A good, healthy relationship is a great, you know, that’s a great one.
TH (31:37):
It is. And you know, you have to hold your work very loosely in your hands. And that’s really difficult for a lot of people, especially younger people. You have to hold your work very loosely in your hands, because you’re about to put it into the world and it’s going to belong to other people. And so if you hold on too tightly to your work and you don’t let other people shape it, you’re going to, you’re going to strangle it. You have to let other people help, help you, help it become what it needs to be. And really at the end of the day, it’s not about you. It’s not about you and your voice and all that. It’s about the other people you’re going to impact. And so that’s why it’s so important to have other people in your, in your world. The other, the final thing I’ll say about all of this, sorry, there’s a long answer is whenever I create something, I create it for one person, not an avatar, not a group, not like I, I conjure up.
TH (32:28):
I could tell you the specific person that the axon creative is written to the specific person die empty. It was written to the specific person, that lot of the words, hurting tigers, motivation code. I wrote each of my books specifically with one person in mind and as if that person was sitting across the table from me. And that the funny thing is because I’ve done that people come up to me at conferences or wherever I’m speaking. And they’ll be like, I feel like you wrote this book just for me. And the reason is I wasn’t writing to an audience of is writing to a person. And I was writing as if I’m speaking to that person. So when you read the book, you feel like I’m speaking directly to you. So no matter what kind of art you’re making, or whether it kind of creative problem solving you’re doing, or what kind of brand you’re building, I encourage you don’t think about your avatar. Don’t think about your audience. Think about the person that you’re trying to communicate with. If you do that, you’re going to come across as far more authentic to that person, and far more useful to that person.

RV (33:20):
I love it. Todd Henry a friend is so great to have you so inspiring and deep and just insightful on how do you, how do you, how do we bring the breasts the best out of ourselves? How do we create everyday brilliance? Check him [email protected]. We’ll put links over there. And my friend, we wish you all. We wish you all the best. Thanks so much for being here.

TH (33:44):
Thanks, man. It’s great to be part of it. Thanks for all the great work.

Ep 176: Lessons in Personal Branding from the Ziglar Family with Tom Ziglar

Well, if you followed me for a while, you’ve probably heard my stories about me being mentored by the one and only Zig Ziglar and getting to be backstage with him at the get motivated seminars and having dinner with him and his son, Tom, and his wife, the red head. And that is how I met the man that you were about to meet Tom Ziglar, who is Tom, who is Zig Ziglar son, and is today the CEO of Ziglar. And Tom is an author and a speaker as well. He had a book come out recently called choose to win, which they’ve expanded into a coaching program. And he now carries the reins of the Ziglar family. Of course their philosophy is really based on what has become just a worldwide famous quote. You can have everything in life, if you will just help enough other people get what they want.

And so I thought it would be good to talk to Tom and catch up with him. We haven’t talked in a little while and hear everything that’s going on at Ziglar. And some of the story about how his dad built his personal brand and what they’re doing now in the succession and the legacy and transitioning to everything that Tom is doing. So Tom, welcome to the show, my friend, well, it’s great to be here. Rory, it’s been too long, right? I’m excited for what you’re doing and just honored to be on. Well, thank you buddy. I was trying to think I there, I have a video on my YouTube channel unlisted, I think is the first time you and I met, which was at dinner with your mom and dad. And I think I was like 23, which means we’ve known each other for 15 years now, already. Which is, which is wild. Give us an update on what’s what’s going on over there at Ziglar. And you know, I just, I think it’s fascinating. Your dad has such an incredible legacy inspired so many people. It’s really exciting to see that everything is still going and it’s transitioning. So talk to us a little bit about, like, when did you take the reins? What has that been like and where are you guys at now? And, and, and what is Ziglar focused on as Ziglar legacy?

Yeah, well, since we’re talking about brand building you know, my challenge was our brand was built on a personality and it doesn’t get better than Zig Ziglar. And you know, who in the world influenced more people through his spoken word on stage, and then through his books and his audio programs, I mean millions and millions, but he told us, I mean, he told the whole family, he told me that his gifting is not our gift, right. I mean, he, he could reach into the bootstrapper the individual and inspire and motivate them to become the person that God created them to become. And each of us have our own gifts and talents. And so at the end of 2019, I really sat down and I said, well, what do we do at Ziglar now? Because as much as I would like to speak, like Zig Ziglar, I can’t neither can anybody else

I’m not, Oh, welcome to the club. Right? Like he was a one of a kind. So what in, what year was that you really started?

Well, I’ve been thinking about this for 20 years because you know, the transition and everything. But I looked at where we were at the end of 2019, and I said, how w how has our company transformed? And so I wrote these words down. And so I want you to think about when dad was leading and his voice was out there. His market was everyone. I mean, it, if somebody wandered in off the street, their life was, was likely to get changed if they just came with a friend or whatever, because he, he really spoke to that individual. And now we, we do the same thing, but we’re very focused. There are four groups of people that we work with, people who are intentionally building a legacy. So these are very successful people who are looking at, you know, what am I going to do next?

How am I going to impact my family and my business so that it lives on the ripples through eternity. Then we work with coaches, speakers, and trainers. And so what we decided to do was to equip coaches, speakers, or trainers with our life-changing content, so that they could take it and go and reach their own community. And so that’s really the focus of what we we do. And we do that in four ways, by encouraging, by transforming, by equipping and by supporting. And so anybody who comes in and they’re going to find all the Ziglar material we’re going to encourage you, we’re going to help you transform. And then if you’re called into one of those areas, Hey, I want to, I want to build an intentional legacy, or I want to take this material and speak on it or train on it, or coach on it. That’s where we get into the equipping and the supporting.

Yeah. Well, and I think a brand builders group, a lot of what we do is we help draw out of people, their own content. We help them create their own original IP, their own sort of like thought leadership, but many, and I would say most coaches and a lot of the most successful ones do this, where they get certified and trained in an, in an existing curriculum with an existing brand, like what you guys are doing. And so, so if I hear you, right, you are now licensing the, basically the the Ziglar content, so that coaches, they don’t have to actually create their own content. They can just basically take yours and go out and apply it directly to people.

Absolutely. And that’s one big category. And let me just give a, a common the second category, and that’s this, we built our program to align with somebody who is already a coach or a speaker or a trainer in a niche. And what they need is, is they got all the professional experience. They’ve got the industry scars, they’ve got the network and they’re going to get the attention in their area, but they also might want to dig into the foundational quality of life things. And here’s a big trend. That’s just happened. In the 1970s. Dad said this, this is, you know, dad’s like when I look at his material and what he was saying 50 years ago, and all the research, that’s proven it out, it’s, it’s unbelievable. But he said this. He said, if, if standard of living is your goal, quality of life almost never goes up.

But if quality of life is your goal standard of living almost always goes up. So you fast forward to the pandemic. And now everybody’s working from home and there’s all these new pressures and changes and challenges and disruptions. The number one issue in large companies today that HR, all the reports have shown is the health and wellbeing of their people. In other words, the life stress that’s happening is the biggest challenge to productivity and performance bigger than the technological challenges. And so what does that mean? It means this, that the world at large organizations have realized beyond the lip service, the quality of life equals quality of work. And so the way we work with leaders who were coaches and speakers and trainers, is they speak in their own area of expertise. And when you dig in, you realize that the challenges in that organization are usually relational hits. It’s usually problems stemming from individuals who don’t know how to do life. And we provide that content, that material that allows them to add that to what they’re already doing.

How did you, I guess, come up with that? Or how did you transition? I mean, that had to be a pretty big transition in terms of you taking the reigns and figuring out the business model. Cause I feel like when your dad was around a big part of the business model was, was speaking. Right. I mean, so you’ve got speaking and then, and then like tape tapes and CDs and like the, the recordings and where you guys weren’t at least, I, I don’t remember you having have been as much of a coaching model back in those days. So that’s a, that’s a big pivot that you’ve, that you’ve made as the CEO. Right. It’s a big pivot.

And it happened, let’s call it part one, part two. So part one is I just started speaking and it was gut wrenching. I mean, not that I did a bad job necessarily on stage, but I hated it. I mean, it was just the anxiousness and all these things. And I had to go and sit with myself and say, why, why is this such an issue? Because dad never put pressure on me. So in my head, I had told myself, people want to hear Zig Ziglar. They want me to be like dad. And I translated that into, I have to speak like him. And so what I’d done is I’d bought it and bought into a lie that had been telling myself. And so immediately I started working on that mindset and I said, no, people want me to be me, but they want me to have the same principles and values that dad had.

So that allowed me to, I’m a why behind the why guy? I like to know, you know, I like a lot of evidence. I’ve got a dry sense of humor. And so once I became myself in leading, then you start noticing, okay, who, who gets naturally attracted to this? And what are my talents? So dad was speaking, I’m more a trainer and a coach. I like a little bit longer. And so we created our Ziglar legacy certification where we work with speakers and trainers to go teach it. And then the coaches started showing up from, from every direction and even crazier. It was a lot of business owners came in and said, Hey, I don’t want to make a business out of this, but I do want to take this back to my own company. I want to develop my own people. So that’s been a great, and so, so first I had to realize, quit trying to be somebody else, what are my gifts and talents, and then how do my gifts and talents best serve our customers. And so that was the, that was the graduation or the, the timeline, if you will.

And then what’s the, what is the organization look like? Like how many people are on the team, like employees versus contractors in terms of like how you support. Cause you guys just to be clear, you don’t do coaching per se, you license your content to coaches. And like you mentioned, like maybe business owners to go out and, and teach the content. Although you do provide support some support to the coaches, but you’re, you’re you’re, am I understanding that right?

That’s right. So this is kind of cool. We have three employees.

Wow. Okay. And then contractors is everything else.

And we have about 200 and some odd Ziglar speakers and trainers, and about 150 Ziglar coaches. Wow. And these coaches and these speakers they’ll have their own brand. And it will say Ziglar legacy speaker, or choose to win coach or see you at the top coach Ziglar coach. And so that’s how we kind of partner with them.

I love that. Yeah. I mean, I think that is, is so cool is yeah. Who doesn’t want to be associated. I mean, anybody who, you know, has known the brand, it’s like who doesn’t want to be associated with it and, and be able to talk about those principles. And so I think that’s part of why I’m asking is just, I think it’s a really great model. Like it’s a very great it’s you guys are in a licensing model where you have figured out if we can, if we can take our content, which we do content really well, your dad created all this content. You’ve created all this content. If we can take all of our content, package it up so that people don’t have to create their own content, they can use it or use it. In addition to the content they’re creating, you basically got this, this license licensing model and a wonderful network of people who you do, you know, are like friends and comrades, as well as people helping market the brand and like push the brand out there.

That’s awesome. And, and people are attracted off of the quote that you mentioned at the beginning. You can have everything in life you want, if you’ll just help enough other people get what they want, that’s why they come in to Ziglar. And then we help them gain clarity on what, what does balanced success mean for them? What’s their purpose and what’s their why. And then we have decades of content that we equip our speakers and our coaches with to dig deep on that. And you know, one of the cool things that I love is that when corporate world says quality of life equals quality of work, they’re recognizing that people are spiritual.

And so I see, you know, one of the big disruptions that’s coming is I think the spiritual conversation is it going to be politically correct and dangerous anymore? It’s, it’s literally going to be, Hey, you know what? I want to be successful. I want to spend time with my family. I want to live in Costa Rica. I, you know, that’s what a top performer is going to say. And these principles and values are important to me and who they are and who do they want to work for? If I’m a top performer and I can work anywhere in the world, I’m going to want to work for leadership that says, you know what, you’re right. We value that we, we understand that life is more than getting the next project done. And what’s weird about it in a very cool way is that once you start to support that productivity and performance goes up, everybody thought when we went home for the pandemic, that it was going to kill our performance for people who could work remotely performance went up.

Yeah. I mean, I, I think that is so valuable and important. I think the, the human spirit has in many ways just been ignored at the workplace for too long, just viewed as just, you know, some hands or a cog to produce something and, and people waking up to the quality of life. And I think the other thing that’s driving that trend is that leaders are waking up. Cause they’re going, man, I’ve been doing this for 25 years. I’m burnt. Like I’m, I’m toast. Like, you know, the, the raise isn’t worth it, the title isn’t worth it. Like I’ve had two divorces or whatever, you know, like they just I haven’t had two divorces for those of you listening. I’m, I’m still married to AIG, but I think people are going, yeah, there’s more to it than this. And so what I heard you just say is you think that part of the future includes just as people are waking up to this idea that the whole person is you know, fitness and you know, like finances outside of work and free time. Do I hear you saying that you think that the faith conversation is also coming up is going to be coming up more and more in, in the workplace environment?

I do. And the reason for that is, and I’m going to give a new term that I’ve landed on and there’s so much going on. So here, so here’s the term that I’m kind of coining in that and that’s this ACE, asynchronous vulnerability. So we now live in an asynchronous world, which means that people in different locations in different times zones are working on the same project together. And they’re doing it through technology, you know, Slack or Google docs or whatever they’re using. But we also know that the, the, probably the number one aspect of a winning team or organization is vulnerability. Lindsey only talks about it. Renee Brown talks about trust and those different things. And vulnerability means that if I have a doubt or I don’t understand something, or I have a crazy idea, I can throw it out to my, my team.

And I know it’s a safe place. Well, that’s difficult to do around the conference table. It’s really difficult to do if you live in different countries in different time zones. And you’re only communicating through a static document in zoom, right? And so what creates an environment where somebody would be vulnerable in this new world? It comes down to virtues like kindness and respect and all the spiritual qualities that we talk about. The old style top-down leadership do it because I said, so command and control. You know, this is the way it’s going to be. That’s gone. The millennials are pretty much ushering that out anyway, but now through a camera, if you tell somebody what to do over a camera, they start looking 46%. I read a study this week. I think it was a Microsoft study. 46% of employees are going to look for a job somewhere else this year.

Wow. That’s crazy. So what are they, you got to ask yourself, what are they looking for? In my mind, they’re looking for a coach leader, somebody who’s collaborative who asks questions, who’s more focused on the growth of their people. Then the results. Let me say that again. They’re more focused on the growth of their people than the results. Not that they don’t want results, but that they know this when a pandemic black Swan happens and you try to revive a business plan based on an environment that no longer exists, you’re doomed to failure. So what, what old-style companies and organizations do is they beat that horse. That’s lying on the ground, hoping that it will get up and run it’s because they’re focused on results. If they were focused on growth, they would look outside and go look at all this opportunity. People have more problems than ever before.

This is a buffet for us because our people are growth oriented and they get excited about embracing the change and some of that. And so leaders who embrace the growth mindset, which I love all the research that validates what that started in the see at the top book in 1974, people who embrace that, they’re the ones who do well in a time like this. And when we look at technological convergence and the things that are going to come in and change, I mean, Warren w when we do this podcast five years from now, we’re going to have on glasses and the video screens going to be on the back of our lenses and our brains going to think we’re having coffee together. We won’t even know we’re not in the same room. So why would we ever go into the office if our brain thinks we’re in the office? Why would we go? It’s a, that’s what I’m wanting.

Yeah. It’s a wild time. I mean, I, I, I think that, and I love just this. It’s kinda just like developing your people and not just focusing constantly on profit. And it’s like, that’s what a leader is. It’s, it’s like, that’s, that’s who I am willing to submit myself to. As someone who’s looking after me versus someone who’s just trying to get something out of me. And yeah, certainly principals and virtues. Your dad made a career out of talking about long, long before. You know, there was the data and the, and the trends. Let me ask you this, Tom, where should people go? If they want to plug into what you guys are doing and, and you know, just get connected to you and the team and, and what’s happening in the Ziglar these days,

I’ll make it easy. Kind of one of these weird, crazy guys. So first is easy. Just go to ziglar.com. You can check out what we’re doing, but if you, if you want to reach out to me, just, just email me, Tom, at ziglar.com. So

That’s pretty, that’s pretty easy. Thomas Ziglar, Thomas ziglar.com or go to ziglar.com. I, I mean you’ve always been so approachable, my friend, and you’ve always been so supportive of me and Ajay and the stuff that we’re working on. You know, I’ve, I’ve, I’ve felt almost like a distant part of the Ziglar family, as I

Imagined, probably millions of people do. Because your whole family has that now

You got brothers and sisters all over the world, and it’s just unbelief. If there’s anything that I could, that I would say about the legacy is I could walk into any room and I’m speaking to friends and family. I mean, it’s just amazing.

Yeah. Well, we wish you the continued best for you and the family and the friends. And you know, of course, the honoring memory of your father who carries a dear spot in my heart and always will. And thank you for coming on and giving us an update and you know, tuning in. So we’re praying for you guys, appreciate you.

Ep 174: How to Write a Great Book with Allison Fallon

Hey, brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for tuning in to listen to this interview, we are so excited to bring you this information and wanted to let you know that, Hey, there’s no sales pitch coming. From anything that we do with this is all our value add to you and the community. However, if you are somebody who is looking for specific strategies on how to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and we offer a free call to everyone that’s interested in getting to know us and is willing to give us a chance to get to know them and share a little bit about what we do. So if you’re interested in taking us up on a free strategy call, you can do that at brand builders, group.com/summit. Call brand builders, group.com/summit. Call to talk to you soon on with the show.

I trust people who my good friend, Donald Miller trust and Donald was how I originally found out about the woman you are meeting about. Alison Fallon comes it turns out we’ve got several mutual friends, several mutual clients that we share. Allison was living at Donald’s house for a minute here as she, she moved in her family moved to Nashville, but Allison Fallon is an award-winning author. She’s got this new book that just came out. It’s called the power of writing it down a simple habit to unlock your brain and re-imagine your life. So she’s a speaker but she’s most well known for being a a writing coach. In the past she’s ghost written very successful books. She’s worked with New York times bestselling authors. She’s worked with newbies and really her company finds your voice specializes in helping people to basically complete their manuscript more or less to get the ideas out of your head onto paper, into a book proposal, into a manuscript, you know, and or manuscript and then get them out into the world, which is important if you are building a personal brand.

And that is why she’s here. So, Allie, thanks for Coming on.

Thank you for having me. I’m so happy to be here.

You are so cool. And I’ve known you for years. I mean, I guess I knew you because you used to work with Don official. Like

I did. Yeah. I was on full-time staff for maybe a couple of months until I realized that I didn’t, I just worked better as a contractor and a freelancer and whatever, but we, I’ve worked very closely with their team for a long time teaching workshops and traveling and teaching keynotes and that sort of thing. So

I know, and you know, we know several of the same literary agents and you just, you’ve got such a great reputation in this, in this space of writing. And I, you know, I’m probably AJ and I probably get, I would say at least two pitches a month from people who are writing coaches that want to come on to this show and, and, you know, so there’s very, very rare where we bring someone on and it’s because writing is such an intimate process and it’s, we really, really trust people who have, have really, really done it. What do you think is the biggest kind of hurdle here for people? And, you know, I know you talk about in the book about the blank page and getting started, and can you kind of just set the, the stage of like, what are the mental roadblocks to writing? Because I think that’s, that’s as big of an issue to overcome as the actual, like writing itself

A hundred percent. Yeah. Well first let me say, I’m honored that you are having me on the show, hearing. You say that you get requests and you’re having me just, I don’t take that lightly. So I hope I can do justice to this conversation because there’s definitely a lot to talk about, but I think you’re making the point here that I would make, which is that the biggest obstacles to actually writing our book are mostly mental. In fact, the number one obstacle that I see most people face when it comes to writing their book is just feeling like they aren’t a writer or a lot of people will say to me, well, I’m not a real writer. I’m not a writer. I’m not really supposed to be doing this. What they don’t realize is that this is a conversation that I’ve had with almost every client that I’ve ever worked with, regardless of how many books they’ve ever sold, whether or not they’ve ever been on the New York times bestsellers list you know, whether or not they make a full-time living from their writing, I will hear people whose names you would recognize and whose books you’ve read.

Say to me, I’m not really a writer. I’m not a real writer. I wasn’t ever supposed to do this. A publisher came to me and asked me if I would write this book. My field is really this other field, but I just got sort of sucked into this idea of writing a book. And here I am, and I have this book out in the world. So I think it’s helpful for people to know here, understand that they’re not the only ones who are facing this. It’s like the, it’s like a different version of imposter syndrome specifically in the field of publishing where people feel like, because I don’t necessarily call myself a writer. That means that I don’t have the chops to get this finished. And it’s just simply not the case. I mean, the biggest predicting factors to whether or not someone will ever publish their book have far more to do with how passionate do you feel about the topic or subject matter? How important does it feel to you to have this book out in the world? How much do you want to be considered a reputable source when it comes to this topic? And those are really the things that drive people to get to the finish line far more than whether or not they have any training or background in the specific field of writing.

So once you get past that hurdle what do you think really makes a great writer? And I think like, and I want to just talk about the pure form of writing here, right? So there’s a whole different conversation, which is, you know, half the battle probably, which is the marketing, but yeah, just the purity of the written word. Yes. What do I need to know about that? That makes, would make me a better writer.

I’m so glad you’re asking this question, because I say to writers all the time that great writing is really great thinking and we get confused. We think that great writing is great grammar, and this is no knock on great grammar. We need good grammar and we need good editors to fix our grammar and edit our grammar because you know, the you’ve heard like all the jokes about how, if you get one piece of grammar wrong, it changes the whole meaning of the sentence. It’s like, let’s eat grandma, let’s eat comma, grandma. You you’ve heard that example. So, okay.

I haven’t heard that. Exactly. It’s funny. It shows you how original, like you take things like assume everyone has heard it, but if you’re not in the same space, even yeah, it’s true.

So grammar is important. It matters because you know, changing the grammar can change the meaning of the sentence, but when it comes to really creating a great book idea, it’s much more about how can we think about this idea versus how can we execute it perfectly. So I teach writers that great books start with great questions. And so if you’re not happy with where your book idea is, let’s ask some better questions. So so that’s a lot of the work that I do with writers is, is helping them dig a little bit deeper, ask better questions, really get to thinking about this idea in a multilayered way, in a multi-faceted way to think about it from a lot of different perspectives. And then to think about how this idea is really going to impact your reader. I teach authors outline books based on the transformation that you want to take place in the end reader. And so that’s, that’s sort of the path that I take writers on, but I think the biggest paradigm shift is really moving away from feeling like, well, if I don’t know exactly where the commas go, then this isn’t going to be written well, and that’s just not true.

Yeah. And, and when you go to the go to the written part, so, I mean, I love this distinction that great writing is really great thinking fully believe that and support that. When I think of the concept of great thinking, my mind kind of goes to logical right. It’s like I’m, I’m presenting some logical arguments, some logical structure. I mean, let’s table fiction for a section for for for a minute. Most of our audience are, are non would be nonfiction. We do have, we do have some fiction clients and stuff, but you know, when I think of non-fiction there, you know, that even my mind kind of goes to the logical, how do we find the balance? Or how much does the balance of logic and emotion matter? Does it depend completely on the book? Is it like some books are all, you know, they’re all heartstrings and emotion. Some books are all logical. Should we always have a balance of both? How do we find it? Is it more one than the other? And, and then, you know, if I’m an emotional person, how do I access more of that logical, if I’m a logical person, how do I access more of the emotional? So can you just like touch on that balance for a second?

Yeah, I totally. So we divide books into two categories. This is connected. I promise, but we divide books into two categories, either story-driven books or content driven books. And I think of content driven books, the content driven books are driven by the content. So this a really great example of a content driven book would be a how to book or some sort of educational resource. That would be like a really clear cut content driven book I’m picking up

Storybrand or take the territory, ran from Donald Miller, even take the stairs from, from like our first book. Those are con content books,

Content driven books. It doesn’t mean that they won’t include stories, but they’re much, they’re usually much more logical, rational, reasonable, analytical, linear. And then there are story-driven books, which are driven by the story. So when you pick up a story driven book, you’re not wondering, you know, how do I like cook chili? You’re picking up a straighter and book because you’re wondering like, will this person survive this obstacle that’s in front of them, will they be able to overcome the obstacle? What’s going to happen to them next, who they meet? Who do they meet tomorrow? You know, wild by Cheryl strayed is the most common example that I give with a story-driven book, because you’re not wondering, you know, the book is about a lot of things. It’s not just about hiking, the Pacific crest trail, it’s about grief and it’s about drug use. And it’s about, you know, a coming of age and all kinds of things.

But you don’t pick up the book because you’re wanting to know more about illicit drug use. You pick up the book because you’re wanting to know what happens to this woman and does she make it to the end of the trail? And that’s what a story-driven book would do. So that those two categories don’t exactly match up with what you’re talking about, about like, you know, some writing being more logical and something more emotional. But I think there, there are some parallels there. And a lot of times people will say to me, I don’t know if my book is content driven or story driven, because I definitely want to tell a lot of stories and I’m going to tell some personal stories, but, but there’s still some content that I want to teach. And there’s a lot of gray area. There’s some books like wild that are obviously story-driven and then some books like, you know, business made simple that are obviously content driven, but then there’s this middle ground where like an author, like Bernay Brown for example, is a great example of an author who tells a lot of stories.

And there’s a lot of emotion in what she talks about, but the book is really content driven. It’s focused on delivering information and sometimes the medium that you use to deliver that information is a personal story. And sometimes in order to deliver that information to the reader, you need to sort of tug at their heartstrings or get them to feel a little bit emotional, or even be a little bit vulnerable as an author. So the question I don’t think is about like, how analytical should we be, or how emotional should we be? It’s more like, who is the end user? Who’s the reader that’s going to pick up this book. What kind of transformation do you want to create inside of the reader? And then what are the tools at our disposal in order to create that transformation that I’m trying to create. And then these two categories that we use of content driven and story driven are more just helping us think through, you know, like what’s the frame, what’s the structure that we’re going to use to deliver the message.

I mean, one thing I love about those questions is, you know, who’s the end user, what kind of transformation in the reader is that they are audience centered questions. And the biggest mistake that I think first-time authors make is they’re all self-centered questions. Like, am I smart enough? Is this good? Will anybody like this? Like, are they going to know I’m not really a writer? And it’s like, they’re so caught up in their own self centered questions. They’re not even thinking about the actual, like, how do I make this valuable for the reader? And if you kind of scent sit and center on that, it’s like, whether it’s logical or emotional, it’s going to be good.

I mean, think about a book like five love languages. And this is not meant to be a negative statement about this book at all, but the book is so simple and it has sold better. I don’t know the exact current stats on the book, but I just, I I’ve heard a lot of statistics on the book because publish I, the same publisher who published my first book, that book is still a hundred percent funding that publisher still to this day, it’s been translated into more languages than almost any other book. It’s I think at one point it was selling more copies than the Bible. So to think about the kind of reach that that book has had, and then the way that the, the five love languages themselves have become totally ubiquitous to the point where I can say, like, what’s your love language, and you know exactly what I’m talking about, regardless of who you are. It just is a good reminder to us that your, your idea doesn’t have to be complicated. It doesn’t have to be very intelligent. And I’m not saying that that idea isn’t intelligent, I’m saying it doesn’t have to be like some really complex way of thinking about the world. All it has to be is helpful for people and it will land.

Yeah. I, I love that and I, I think that’s so true. In fact, I think it’s, you know, like I think back, so like my second book procrastinate on purpose five permissions to multiply your time, you know, it’s based on how to multiply time and there’s this focus funnel. I think the ideas are so much more eloquent and forward thinking and advance that book. Doesn’t sell a fraction as well as take the stairs, which is basically like, you know, more or less it’s do, do hard things. Like it’s a kind of a motivational, but I, you know, I was reading a book here about social media strategy recently, and it was kind of saying the number one thing that matters more than anything is not how advanced the idea it is. That how advanced the idea is it’s how shareable is the idea, how transmittable is the idea, something like five love languages. It’s so transmittable because it’s so freaking simple and applicable. Whereas, you know, sometimes I think some of the stuff that I’ve written is like, it’s too complex to be easily transmitted. And so people like it, but they can’t transmit it

A hundred percent. Yeah. It also feels important to say that there are a lot of different reasons to write a book. And sometimes we write a book because we’re trying to understand a very complicated topic. Or sometimes we write a book because, you know, we, we feel this like creative work coming through us and we kind of can’t, can’t not do it. I would imagine in your audience, those reasons to write a book or maybe more secondary, and the reason I would recommend most people in your community write a book is because it will establish you as a credible expert in your field. It basically tells people, this is the thing that I want you to know me for us. This is the thing I want you to remember me for. And when you’re, when that’s the end goal for your publishing life, it actually makes the act of writing a book much simpler because it doesn’t have to be like this complicated or like really, it doesn’t have to be like this, like masterpiece, you know, like

You’re not trying to win. You’re not trying to win a Nobel prize. You’re just trying to like, make sure that people know, you know what you’re talking about

A hundred percent. So it actually makes the process of writing the book a little bit easier. And you know, like I said, all of those reasons are great reasons to write books, but I work with authors on establishing at the beginning. What’s what does success look like for you? What is the reason that you’re writing this book? Because, because there are so many different reasons to write a book. If you set out trying to achieve them all, you’re probably achieved none of them. Whereas if you set out to write a book so that people remember you as the guy, who’s the expert on commercial real estate, you’ll write a very different book than if you’re trying to channel some great piece of art, you know?

Yeah. I love that. And I I mean, I think that’s so good at even, even determining up front with like your whole publishing strategy, what kind of publisher do I need? And all of that is, is like just being clear on why, why are you writing the book? And it kind of, it kind of points to one of the things I wanted to ask you about in terms of the New York times bestseller list. So brand builders, I’m letting the out of the bag a little bit, depending on when this comes out. So we conducted an independent nationwide research study, weighted to the U S census. We had an independent firm conduct this study about the importance of different factors when it comes to hiring somebody. And we asked them things like, how much does it matter to have a Ted talk? How much does it matter that they have a blog?

How much does it matter that they have a YouTube channel or a podcast or a large social media following? And one of the things we asked them was how much does it matter that they have a New York times bestselling book or a wall street journal, bestselling book. And only 36% of people said that they would, that they would be more likely to hire someone because they have a wall street journal, bestselling book, but 62% of people said they would be more likely to hire someone if they have testimonials on their websites from real people who have experienced an actual transformation. And so it’s like in the industry, we all think of like, I gotta be a best-selling author, but our study literally proved that people don’t give a crap. Like they don’t care about that only you care and authors care, but I do think it matters.

Cause I do think it’s like, sure, you know, in the industry it matters, right? Cause it’s like, if you’re going to get on someone’s podcast, it matters. If you’re going to get on good morning, America, it matters to that. But it doesn’t matter to the end user. So when it comes to the New York times or wall street journal, or just when it comes to the bestseller lists, how much do you think the writing of the book matters as it relates to hitting those lists? Getting on them? Cause I know you’ve worked with authors, you’ve probably ghost written books that have actually hit the New York times. How much does the writing matter when it comes to hitting those lists? Do you feel like,

I mean, I wish I had more like verifiable data, but just from Ali’s brain, it matters very little if at all. Yeah, I mean, I would say there are books that have been in the New York times list that are the kind of books you would save forever and you would underline and that could really transform a reader’s life for the long haul. And there are also books that have been on the New York times list that I don’t think are all that good. Now that’s subjective. It’s my it’s it’s Allie’s opinion. But I would imagine probably if you went through the, the, you know, hundreds of thousands of books, I don’t know how many books have been on the New York times list over the decades, but you would probably find some books on the list that you don’t think are that good either you don’t even think are that interesting.

You think like why would anyone ever pick up this book? So I think that’s good and helpful for authors to remember, because there are a lot of things that you can do if one of your publishing goals is to get your book on the New York times list. But I think it’s helpful for people to remember that there are only certain people who consider that a requirement, they consider it a benefit. They see the sort of value in it and those people, most of them are inside of the industry. So these are the people who you mentioned, it’s national media outlets that care about New York times bestseller it’s other publishers or agents who care about New York times bestseller it’s other authors who, you know, you may be sort of like, they might be colleagues of yours who might see that you hit the New York times bestseller list.

And they might think like, Oh, that gives you extra credibility in my mind. But for the most part, the end user, the consumer doesn’t pick up a book like blue, like jazz by Donald Miller or the shack by William Paul Young, because it was on the New York times list. They pick up a book like that because someone handed it to them and said, you have to read this book. So that’s social proof is far more valuable than the, the tag or the, you know, the title of New York times bestselling author. Although I don’t think that there’s anything wrong with striving for that, that title either. I mean,

So in this study, because we asked, you know, New York times bestselling author versus wall street, journal, bestselling author versus self published, author people, more people said that they value a self published book than a wall street journal bestseller. Like the average person doesn’t even delineate between the two.

Yeah. When people get really caught up about whether they should self-publish or traditionally publish, I will ask them like, what’s your favorite book? And they’ll tell me, and I’ll say who published it? And the fact of the matter is most consumers don’t have any clue who published the book. Wow. People, unless you work in the industry, because I work in the industry, I pick up a book off of the shelf and I go, who published this? And I flipped it, flipped open to the title page and I’ll find out who published it. Most people don’t have any clue who publishes books. So the only way that you can know that a traditional publisher published the book is because it’s sitting in a Barnes and noble, and that’s the biggest that’s the biggest obstacle that currently exists in 2021 for self-published authors is distribution. That if you choose to self-publish your book, it means your book. Won’t sit in a Barnes and noble. It’s not going to sit in and books and books a million, but also the fact of the matter is in-person retail is down significantly since COVID happened far fewer books than ever have been sold in in-person retail stores. The internet happened. Yeah. I mean, truly. So like even my book is my book is traditionally published. It’s in all of the brick and mortar stores, but 90% of my book sales are coming from Amazon.

Yeah. It’s it’s, it’s like getting in the store is not the thing that’s going to make you sell millions of copies. It’s it’s your platform will drive millions of copies. And like, man, they’re going to buy it off of Amazon or wherever anyways, like that’s a really, that is a really, really great insight Allie, in terms of like who nobody even knows who published it. I love that. And it’s yeah, you read it. Cause your friend, like, you know, really it’s like you had three friends tell you, that’s how I do it. I’m like my mine is minus the three friend rule when I’ve had three people who I respect that are like, dude, you have to read this. I’m like, okay, let me like, look at what this is really about. And, and you know, so many books sell thousands and thousands of copies never even hit the New York times. They sell hundreds of thousands of copies, never hit the list. And to your point too, like, why are you doing it? If you’re doing it to help you get clients for your business, your clients literally don’t care if you’re doing it because you’re trying to build respect and notoriety and credibility among your peers and like the industry. That’s a little bit of a different story. Yeah.

This is actually an interesting story along those lines that I heard from a colleague of mine the other day, who, where he helps in book marketing. And he was telling me about a book that I know and love. And probably many of your listeners have heard of called boundaries, Dr. Henry cloud. And he told me that, that book, when it first came out, it didn’t hit the list. And it, for a long time, it didn’t hit the list. And it wasn’t until years later that the, with some marketing help, they pulled that list out of, or they pulled that book out of a backlist and got it to hit the list. So now it does have that title of New York times bestseller. But it’s just a great example. There’s very few people in our space who wouldn’t have heard of the boundaries empire, you know, like boundaries and boundaries in dating and boundaries and business and boundaries and leadership and whatever. And it’s been a very influential book in so many people’s lives. And to think that it wasn’t immediately, you know, like number one on the New York times bestsellers list is kind of helpful because of what we’re trying to do is create positive transformation in our reader to know that we can do that without necessarily hitting a New York times bestsellers list.

That’s a Dave Ramsey is the same way. That’s the same. That that’s also true about total money makeover was out, I think for like nine or 10 years before it hit the list. And that’s where it’s like, those are the books where it was well, in his case, he also built a huge platform in those 10 years and that made a difference. But you know, it’s also great writing, but Dave Ramsey is also, I think he’d be the first to say my ideas are very simple. Like by design, they are transmittable, but the, they are very simple. He’s, he’s not trying to have the most complex investment strategy out there. It’s the opposite. It’s like the simplest plan they like get debt free. So this has been super fascinating, Allie. I I want everybody to know. Okay. So if you go to brand builders, group.com forward slash publish brand builders, group.com forward slash publish you can learn about Allie she’s.

She has a course that several of our clients have been through called prepare to prepare to publish. But if you just go to brand builders, group.com forward slash publish, there’s different, there’s different ways you can do at different investment levels. And you can kind of check it out, but I’m telling you, we, we have it. I mean, I can think of five clients off the top of my head, that brand builders group works with that also work with Allie. And these are people that you would recognize. There are people that we feature on our website and stuff. So yeah, she’s doing a great work. Obviously we share a lot of the same philosophies. Is there anything else, Allie, that you would want to leave people with? I mean, just, you know, someone that’s debating out there, should I write, should I not, or they’re kind of struggling with some of that self doubt or does my story even matter? What would you, what would you leave them with?

I would just leave them with the encouragement that if you have a book idea, I believe that book idea has been gifted to you and that you are the steward of that book idea. So nobody else is going to get that book idea. It’s yours alone. You’re the only one who can, can communicate it in exactly the way that you could communicate it. And I feel like that that gives us hearing that gives us a little bit of like responsibility and accountability over this idea and delivering it to our readers in our particular way. The, the voices in your head that tell you, someone else has already done this. I’m not a real writer. I don’t know if I have the time to do this well, what if I put in all the time and no one ever reads it just know that those voices are happening in the heads of your favorite authors, whose books you’ve read and who you keep on your shelf and who have changed your life too. So you’re in good company.

I love it. Alison Fallon, ladies and gentlemen, go follow her on Insta and tag her on Facebook and say hi and give her a shout out and hello, Alison. We’re so grateful for you, and we’re glad you’re living in Nashville now. And we wish you the best. Thanks for thanks for having me.