Category: Podcast

Ep 216: Masterful Storytelling with Craig Valentine

RV (00:07):
Hey, brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview as always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders, group.com/pod call. We hope to talk to you soon.
RV (00:53):
Well, it is time that you meet one of my legendary mentors. One of my personal coaches up as I kinda came up through the speaking ranks was this man Craig Valentine. He’s one of my favorite people ever as you’re about to learn, he is a wealth of knowledge and just a really, really cool dude. So I met him because he was, he is the 1999 world champion of public speaking for Toastmasters international. That was a contest that I came in second in 2007. He was one of my coaches for that. And it’s a worldwide competition where 25,000 contestants compete from, you know, over a dozen countries to be called world champion. He won that when he was still in his twenties. He also has an MBA from Johns Hopkins university. He’s the author of a book called the nuts and bolts of public speaking and the co-author of a number one, Amazon bestseller called world-class speaking in action. And so he’s built a career largely out of presentation skills coaching, and he’s also a speaker. He speaks on some different things, but in my mind, he was one of my speaker original speaker coaches still to this day, he runs something called the speak and prosper academy and he has a coaching certification program. That’s also called world-class speaking and a piece, just one of my go-to trusted authorities on, on all things presentations. So Craig, my man is so good to see you. It’s been way too long, brother
CV (02:21):
And way too long. It’s great to see you. I remember those days when we were working up to the world championship, you had a lot, I still believe if you had used the Jessica Simpson line, you would have won the world championship, but you took it out, but that’s okay. I thought I saved face for her, but that’s that a lot about you that you were, you were willing to take that out and, and be the type of person that wouldn’t be remembered for that type of thing. So you were a champion in my eyes. Always. I can tell you that when I won the world championship, Rory, I’m telling you like two days later, I realized it was a blessing and a curse, a blessing and a curse. Yeah, because if you have been walking towards me in the Chicago two days after I won the world championship, you would’ve seen my wife on one side of me and me carrying is right there. This gigantic crystal trophy, right. Just walking through the Chicago airport, everybody’s looking at me like, well, who is that? Yeah, right. I thought, Rory, I thought I heard a lady say, is that Denzel Washington? Right? But this is what I realized my life would never be the same. This petite lady in a pink dress runs up to me in the middle of the airport and everybody’s watching. And she starts reading the bottom of my trophy and she says, Hmm, 1999 world champion of public speaking. Wow. Say some things.
CV (03:40):
And Rory, I was speechless, but that’s when I realized no matter where I go in life, people are going to say, would you mind saying some things? Right? So I came to a fundamental understanding about my life as a speaker and really about your life and anybody listening, I can no longer get ready to speak. I have to stay ready to speak. Yeah. That’s my new, my motto is don’t get ready, stay ready. Because then you can take advantage of all the opportunities that exist. And so what I help people do nowadays is stay ready to speak and learn how to craft and deliver and sell their message. So people take the exact next step. They want them to take you know, and also get them to present in such a way that keeps the audience on the edge of their seats and makes them glad they came. And speaking of that, I’m very, very glad that I’m here.
RV (04:25):
Well, man, you know, it’s interesting to me because my, my dream originally was like, I wanted to be a speaker. And then I kind of learned, oh, you gotta be, you, you know, it helps if you’re an author and I became an author. And then now it’s like these days, I viewed myself probably more as an entrepreneur business-wise then than anything. But it’s amazing how much, those skills presentation skills, they apply to everything. Podcasts, interviews, webinars speaking in front of an arena or five, 10 people, or you’re at your, your leadership meeting or doing a prayer at the family dinner table. I mean, this stuff is everywhere. And you just, you don’t like, if you, if you didn’t go through Toastmasters, you might’ve had a class in college that teaches this stuff.
CV (05:13):
Exactly. It’s almost like personal financial management. You usually go through college without even knowing that, and you get out there to make this money. You don’t know what to do with it. Right? So to me, it, it’s always interesting because of what happened with you is what happens with a lot of people, including me, which is you get on this road. People say, stay in your lane, but they don’t realize that sometimes the road curves, right? And sometimes the market tells you what to do next. So for an example, for me, I got a call like maybe two months after I won the world championship from a guy who said, Craig, this is Wade Randolph. And I’d like you to coach me on my speaking. And I’m Rory. I’m like, I’m not a speech coach. I’m just a speaker. I wouldn’t even know where to start. And he said, I’ll pay you. I said, that’s a good place to start.
RV (06:01):
As I said, I must be.
CV (06:05):
And I’ll never forget. We met in the Martin Luther king library in Washington, DC. He drove up from Virginia and I started coaching him, but I had no idea what I was doing, but he kept coming back and I kept learning more and more ways to, to help Wade. And then I started getting other clients and other clients. And it wasn’t until Darren LaCroix, a buddy of both of ours said, Craig, once you realize you’re also a speech coach, you’ll be much better off because I was like, no, no, that’s not what I am. Once I embraced it. And I do what I call a jump into what you fall into. It opened up a whole new world of opportunities for me. And I’ve been living in it ever since.
RV (06:41):
So, you know, present on that note presentation skills is one thing that’s universal underneath that, or maybe next to that is another skill, which in my mind, I’ve always thought of you as a master of, and this is something that I’ve always struggled with. And even in this interview, I don’t know, it’s probably been 10 years since we’ve talked, I am reminded of how good you are at storytelling. You are a master. You you’ve already told at least two stories in the first like five minutes here where I’ve just been captivated. Like I got this whole laundry list of questions I was gonna ask you and I am drawn in to your stories. And that was one of the things you helped me with. And I’m also reminded like, man, I still have a lot to learn in this area. And it, because that applies even more universally than speaking does is just the art of storytelling. So what can you talk about what makes a good story? Like why are stories important? And like, you know, just for the average person out there, that’s doing lives on Facebook or running webinars, or maybe they’re speaking and they’re hosting a podcast. Like what should we be thinking of when it comes to how to tell a good story and why do most of our stories suck?
CV (08:06):
Well, I think the first part is the why is not, why do they suck? But why do we tell stories is because you want to be remembered. But not only that worry, I’ll learn this a little bit later in my career, you don’t speak to be remembered. You don’t tell stories to be remembered. You speak to be repeated, right? If you get repeated, then your brand grows and people can talk about, like, for example, people will go around right now and say, Craig, Craig Valentine says, don’t get ready, stay ready. Right. Just from the message I told you earlier. So I think to make a good story, you want to have a story and a foundational phrase. That’s a phrase that’s repeatable. That’s you focused meaning focused on your audience. And that’s fewer than 10 words, right? Give you a quick example. One of my foundational phrases is don’t sell the product, sell the result, never a product sell the result case.
CV (08:57):
In point decades ago, I went to buy my first car ever in life, went to the dealership. Salesperson came up to me. He says, are you looking at that car? I said, yes, sir. He said, great. Let me tell you about it. This car has these types of Mo this type of motor, this type of window, this type of engine, this type, what was he trying to sell them? The car, right? I just said, never sell a product. Always sell the result. So I said, no, thank you. I’m not interested. And Rory, I went to a different dealership on the same day, different salesperson, same car. Now I gotta be honest, bro. He must’ve anticipated where I was mentally and emotionally at my life. In that time, you know, I was, I was young and single and looking to mingle. And so he walks up to me. He says, you looking at that car? I said, yes, sir. He said, you’re going to look good in that one. He said, you’re going to be flying down the road. The winds gonna be blowing through your hair and the girls. Let me tell you, the girls will be all over you, Roy, what do you think I did sign
RV (09:53):
Me up. I said, where do
CV (09:54):
I sign? See he made the sale. Not because he sold me the car, but he sold me the results. And he lied. I was lonely in that car. I’m telling you, but do you see what I’m saying? Or I tell the story, I make the point and then I’ll give them the foundational phrase. So never sell a product. Always sell the result. Now what goes into a good story is having some kind of conflict. What goes into
RV (10:19):
On a positive right there before you do so. So this is kind of age old, you know, national speakers association, classic Toastmasters, tell a story, make a point. And what you’re saying is like nail that point. First we call them pillar points, the foundational phrase, just like that tweetable moment, that, that catch phrase, that like one liner don’t sell the product, sell the result. And then
CV (10:42):
No matter what, no matter when it comes up, it could come up at the beginning. I could come up at the end, but it has to come up at some time so that they can walk away repeating it. And not just remembering, you want to be remembered, repeated, re, posted, retweeted, all of that. That’s going to help build your brand. Okay.
RV (10:57):
And do you come up with the point first and then the back, the story into that? Or do you just go like, okay, here’s a great story. And then I figure out some point to make out of it.
CV (11:08):
The answer is yes. The answer is yes. Both, both. Like, I’ll give you an example. He’s probably over there listening right now, but when it was 2012, the, the summer Olympics, the oldest participant in the summer Olympics was a 74 year old equestrian from Japan. Right? 74 year old, a question from Japan. So my seven year old son and I are watching this on TV and Roy on, unfortunately all the commentators kept harping on was the guy’s age. And they just kept saying, he’s 74. Can you believe he’s 74 by golly, he’s 74. And finally my seven-year-old son looked up and said, well, how old is the horse? Right. And I could not stop laughing. I could not stop laughing. So then at that point, I said, I’ve got to make a point out of this. I got to make a point out of this.
CV (11:51):
And so maybe a couple of months later, I realized, you know what? My son asked questions about everything, about everything, and yet he’s going out there. My son is going out there and winning national championships and track and field missing. How is he doing? And then I realized, never stop asking questions, never stop it. So I turned that into that point, not the most original point, but it’s an a, it’s a point that allows me to slide into questions. I can ask my audience. So I tell that story. I make the point, never stop asking questions, and then we move on to something else. So in that case, the story came first and I said, I got to find a point to make with this. But sometimes it works the other way around.
RV (12:31):
So, all right. Yeah. So it can be either way, right? You can have a great story and go, okay, what’s the point? Let me translate that. But or you go, all right, this is a great point that I need to make. And then let me back it into the story. Yeah. I think a lot of people can’t tell a good story and they don’t understand conflict. So, so talk about what you were just saying. Cause I said, what’s the most important thing and you immediately said conflict.
CV (13:01):
Yeah, I’ll go to conflict. And then I’ll go to dialogue, hearing what the other characters say to each other, hearing what you say to yourself. But conflict is the most important part. I’ll give you just the beginning of this story, Rory. So you can get a sense for what the conflict is. But I mean, let me ask you, cause you’ve been around. What do you think is the number one thing that stands between most people live in their dreams? What do you think that is?
RV (13:23):
Self doubt.
CV (13:24):
Self doubt. Yeah. And a lot of people will say fear and the fear of change and this and that. And those are all great answers. But the number one thing is not what you think. See, I used to work for an internet company and I wanted to go full-time into professional speaking. That was my goal. That was my dream. Right, right. I was asked Molly, raise your hand. If you have a goal, raise your hand. If you want to do anything in life. Right. Me too. So I went to the vice president of this company. His name was Steve John. I said, look, John, I’m going to be leaving because there’s always been my dream to be a full time professional speaker. He said, that’s your dream, Craig? I said, yes. He said, well, that’s great. I really admire you for having one, but you can’t leave. I said, hold on now, what do you mean? I can’t leave? He said, well, Craig, we’ve been thinking about it. And we’re going to raise your salary up to this. Now Rory salary means the same thing in Nashville right
RV (14:13):
Now. We’re talking
CV (14:14):
Now you see my dilemma. I said, John, this is not a financial decision. This is about my dream. In fact, I call this a dream decision. He said, okay, I understand. I really do. How about if we raised a salary up to this? I said, this is not a financial decision. This is a dream decision. You know, he raised it four times. I kid you not. I kept him going to raise the salary up to this. I said, this is not a financial decision. This is a dream decision. He said, okay, Craig, how about if we raised your salary to well above six figures? I said, dreams are overrated. Now that’s a funny line. But let’s look back at the conflict. Let’s look at the conflict. The conflict in that story, the reason had people’s interest is because I set the conflict up for him to say, you can’t leave.
CV (14:57):
Boom. That’s when the conflict was established, that’s when the Titanic hit the iceberg. But Rory, the thing that makes a great story is not just the establishment of the conflict. You got to escalate it. You got to escalate it. Think about the movie, the Titanic, the Titanic hit the iceberg, but how did it escalate? The water started to rise on the Titanic, right? If the water never rose on the Titanic, I’m telling you right now that would have been a terrible movie. So what I’m saying is how do you raise the water on the Titanic in your own story? If you look at mine, it was, he kept offering me more money to stay. I kept getting more frustrated, more flattered, more frustrated, more flattered until something had to give. And so if you get your audience to that point, they’re like, well, what did he do? What did she do? How did they get over it? And the reason why conflict is the hook to your story is because your audience wants to know, did you overcome the conflict? If so, how, what tools did you use? Can I use them? Can I use them? And that’s why conflict is so important. But the other part that’s so important is dialogue. You’ve got to hear what the other characters say to each other.
RV (16:03):
Yeah. So I want to talk about dialogue in a set in a second, by the way, one of the things that I have quoted you for is the rest of this story, which is a dialogue from your wife, which is his amazing line, which is not just as, is a great line, but it’s actually had a meaningful impact in my life personally. But so is conflict. Like what is conflict exactly. Like, like, especially if I’m architecting a story, like to the point of, you know, let’s say, I, you know, like I’m actually working on this right now. I have a presentation. I have a presentation tomorrow. And I’m working on kind of a new story and I’m sitting kind of trying to craft it to make it sharper and more sort of state stage. Ready? What are you doing there? Like what are you looking for? Like, I, that I really love escalate the conflict. I don’t recall you saying that. You probably did say that to me a long time ago, but that’s a new thing for me is just raising the stakes, intensifying it. But when you establish conflict, how do you establish it?
CV (17:02):
Yeah. You have to recognize where, where it’s established and what happened. So when I ask people the question in that story, where is the conflict established? A lot of times they’ll say something like when you wanted to leave or when he was giving you more money. No, the moment the conflict is established is the moment something gets in the way of your dream or your goal. So it’s not when I wanted to leave nothing’s wrong yet. It’s when he said you can’t leave home, that’s it. So what you would look for in your story, Rory is the conflict is the moment where something gets in the way or someone gets in the way of what you’re looking to accomplish. Okay.
RV (17:40):
By definition means you have to have a goal. And that has to be clear. There it is. And then there’s gotta be something that gets in the way in order for there to be conflict.
CV (17:52):
I remember Darren LaCroix used to talk about Charlie Chaplin. He had, he had Charlie Chaplin had broken it down really well. I think he had like a, there was a bench and there was a girl and he was trying to get to the girl. And then it was something that got in the way. And that was in a nutshell what conflict is. Right? And that’s what a good story will do. You will establish the conflict. And here’s the, here’s the other thing about the story, Rory to many people, pre ramble, they pre ramble. What I mean by that is they take too long to get to the story in the first place. And then once they get to the story, they take way too long to get to the conflict. You should get to the conflict as early as possible. Because the earlier you get the conflict, the earlier you have them hooked in right away.
CV (18:34):
And a lot of times I try to get to the conflict in the question like I’ll tap into my audience’s world before I transport them into my story. I’ll tap into their world by saying, what do you think is the number one thing that stands in the way of most people live in their drinks, some already starting to establish some of the conflict in their own life. I learned this from Charlie, tremendous Jones, about a year before he passed away. One of the greatest speakers we had, he said to me, Craig, don’t get people to listen and memorize, get them to think and realize. So that made me become a master of asking questions at the beginning of my story in the middle of my story at the end of my story, to make sure that even though the story is about me, the message is certainly about them, them being the audience.
RV (19:18):
Yeah. I’m just thinking about my story. The problem is I don’t have a goal. The problem is the goal. Isn’t clear in my story. The conflict is the thing I’m struggling with is clear, but what’s clear is not, I don’t have the goal clear.
CV (19:31):
It’s almost like that old saying that, that, that if you, if you don’t, what’s the old saying, you don’t know where you’re going. Any road will take you there. Right. So we need to have,
RV (19:42):
Yeah, you gotta, you gotta know. So, okay. So let’s talk about dialogue and I don’t want to leave our audience with an unanswered question about this brilliant line that your wife delivers that changed my life and clearly changed your life. So let’s get back and talk about, okay. The F the most important part of a story is conflict. The second or a close second is dialogue. Why? And what do you mean?
CV (20:06):
Well, let, let, let’s give an example. Let’s give a reference. I’ll get right back into that story right after I say you dreams are overrated, right. And I’m laughing. And I say, I looked at the John said, look, John, I got to talk to my wife about this before I go, before I say, yeah. So I went home to my wife. I said, honey, I don’t know what to do. What do you think I should do? What should I do? And my wife looked up at me with her big brown eyes and said, take the money fool.
CV (20:34):
And then I’ll go into another part of the story. But here’s the thing about dialogue. I always ask people, raise your hand. If you’d like to add humor to a speech. And of course they all raised their hand. I said, add humor to a speech, uncover humor within it. How do you do that? You uncover humor within the story, within the characters, within the characters dialogue, and within the spaces and faces in between the lines. So if you think about my story, you only heard about half of it. Think about the funny lives. Dreams are overrated. Funny line dialogue, take the money, full, funny line dialogue. And then later on in the story, my wife says to me, I don’t care how much they try to compensate you. Your dream is not for sale. Your dream is not presented. So even the poignant lines, it’s dialogue, but guess what?
CV (21:23):
Rory, here’s the secret to storytelling in the story. She said it to me, but in reality, she said it to you, right? Anybody listening in that audience right there will hear it the same way. I heard it feel it the same way I felt it. And she speaking directly into their hearts and minds. And I know this because people have come up to me years later and said, you know, I was looking at leaving this company and doing my own thing. And, and your, your wife’s words popped into my mind. Your dream is not for sale. It made a big difference in a lot of people’s lives. So dialogue. Yes.
RV (21:57):
So Nan, so, and you’re saying uncover humor, because humor is one of the things that we teach. I know you talk about it. I’ve learned a ton from Darren on it and other other people, and you go, it’s, you know, adding humor. There’s a, there’s a lot to it. But one of the easiest, fastest ways to add humor is to just uncover humor. And you said, uncover it. What did you, you kind of breezed through that you said uncovered
CV (22:22):
From it. First thing you want to do is look inside of your story because the only thing worse than no humor is forced humor, right? That makes the audience cringe that that’s going to disconnect. You I’d rather have no humor, but you look inside your story. You look at your characters and you look at your characters, dialogue, what they say to each other and what they say to themselves as well. You know, I have a story. I say, raise your hand. If w if you feel like sometimes the reality hurts. Now, be honest. Do you ever step on a scale and been forced to face reality? Not, I know what you’re thinking. You’re probably looking at me like, Craig, what do you know about stepping on a scale? I mean, look at you. You’re obviously built, like, I don’t know some sort of Greek statue.
CV (23:07):
So if we just take it right there, there, there are different types of dialogue, right? In that story. And one of my favorite lines of dialogue or uses of dialogue is what I call projected dialogue. And I know this is a little bit advanced, but it’s when you project dialogue onto somebody based on how they’re looking at you. So my audience didn’t say that, but I can look at my audiences that I know what you’re thinking. You’re probably looking at me like, Craig, what do you know about boom? So I’m projecting dialogue onto them to uncover some humor. So I have usually five different types of dialogue that I like to use. It’s character to character dialogue, what they say to other it’s inner dialogue. What you say to yourself, because that’s very funny. Often it’s projected dialogue. What you project onto them based on how they’re looking at you.
CV (23:56):
Like right now, if I was teaching this in a class, somebody, I would say, John is looking at me like, Craig, I have no idea what, this is, what this means. Right? I’m projecting dialogue onto them. And then of course there’s actual audience dialogue. There are things that will your audience members will say while you’re in a story. Like, even in that story, I’ll say, raise your hand. If you have kids, then you know, the doctor is always going to measure their length and their, and Rory, inevitably, somebody is going to say height, and I’m going to say somebody say hi, let me explain the length. When you turn them, that actually becomes the hot, right. But so I can use actual audience dialogue. And then I can use quotations that are from outside of the story that pertain to the story. Right? For, for a quick example, when I was in prison visiting an inmate came up after one of my presentations, he said, Craig, I’m getting outta here in a few months. I’m feeling good about life. And I’m back on the right track. I said, well, there’s a quote by will Rogers who says you might be on the right track. But if you just stand there, you’ll be run over. So I can bring in quotations like that. That might uncover some humor as well.
RV (25:06):
I heard about it. The internal dot, the inner dialogue is inner dialogue is a gift because you can make up whatever you want. Like, and as long as it’s like exact, you know, it’s an exaggerated, there’s like no rules. They inner dialogue could be anything.
CV (25:24):
And here’s the key, Roy, if I thought it, then I can say it. Now, all I have to do is use a stem, like, and I was thinking, boom. And I thought, boom. And at that moment I thought, boom. And I promise you, the line of dialogue will land just as hard as if you had actually said it. So yeah, it really is a gift. But guess what? So as per the dial, because based on how they’re looking at you, they might not be thinking that it’s like when I went to share the stage with my, with my speaking hero and I said, oh my gosh, I’m Craig Valentine. I get to introduce you today. You’re the man who made me want to get into this business in the first place. Thank you so much for being here. Nothing. He just looked at me as if, to say you don’t belong on the same stage.
CV (26:09):
So it doesn’t have to just be humor. It can be poignant moments like that, but he didn’t say it. He looked at me as if, to say you don’t belong on the same stick and worried. That is the look he gave me, make no mistake about it. And I feel like I interpreted that look correctly, but it still gives me the freedom. And I think that’s what you’re talking about. It’s a gift because it gives you the freedom, freedom to say, now what you thought then, or to say what he looked like he wanted to say. And those are two very important ways to use dialogue. And, and, and there are, I like the way you put that.
RV (26:44):
Yeah. I mean, those are, yeah, that, that, it’s just like, all bets are off. You can, you can do so many things with that.
CV (26:52):
You see how I brought, I was able to bring in quotation from will Rogers to help push that story forward. It’s actually a Patricia Fripp story that I was going to, it’s my story, but it’s about Patricia Fripp. So anyway, that’s, those are the types of quotations types of dialogue that I like to use. And so if I was to really break it down, conflict is the hook dialogue is the heart because dialogue is what really pumps blood and pumps life into your story. If you’re ever watching a story. And I say to you, when did that story really come to life for you? You’re going to say when so-and-so said something to so-and-so right in that story, but dialogue is what makes it breathe and brings it to life. Mm.
RV (27:33):
Yeah. That’s that is interesting and powerful. And you know, to the, to the point of what you were talking about earlier as you, we call pillar points. I think you said you call them foundational phrases. One of the other lines that you, you said, and we quote you on this, like, I believe with a picture of you and as well as your name is you tell an eye focused story with a, you focused message that stuck with me for 15 years, man. Wow. can you talk about what that means?
CV (28:06):
Yeah. It’s kind of like what I was saying when it comes to Charlie, tremendous Jones, that the story is about me. Right? But the point needs to be about you. So even yelling back to the audience, you, the audience, even going back to the story about my son and me watching the Olympics, right? That story is about us. We laughed. We had fun. When I got to bring the point around to be about you never stop asking questions. The moment you stop asking questions is the moment you stop growing. The moment you stop growing we know from nature is the moment you fall, never stop asking questions. But what I also like to do is do what I call you focused. Check-Ins just like you heard me do in, in, in the one story where I, that I started to tell, I said, now raise your hand.
CV (28:52):
If you have kids, boom, that’s another check-in with them. Or now be honest, you ever stepped on a scale and been forced to face that’s another check-in with them. So I like to check in throughout the entire story so that they keep understanding, oh yeah, the stories about Craig. But this point in this message is about, is about me, the audience member, and I can use it. And that’s one of the things I just came out with a product about four months ago with Les brown called legendary speaking course. And that’s one of the things we’ve talked about all, all the time is info bites. He called them info bites. I call them foundational phrases, but they should be three things in my mind, foundational phrases, fewer than 10 words, you focused meaning focused on the audience and rhythmic. Now I don’t mean they need the rhyme.
CV (29:38):
I mean, they need to be easy to say and they need to roll off the tongue. Your dream is not for sale. Don’t get ready, stay ready. What got you here? Won’t get you there. I know that’s Marshall silver, but I had been talking about it for like five years before he wrote that book. But what got you here? Won’t get you there. Never stop asking questions. Average speakers placed blame, average leaders, place, blame, exceptional leaders. Take it. If you make, if you, if you make them visible, they’ll make you valuable. These are all of these foundational phrases that I have. And they’re all you focus. So I focus story message about me. I’m sorry. Stories about me. You focus point where the point in the message and the application is for you.
RV (30:18):
Yeah. You know, and this is so powerful. I mean, you can see why, like, what what’s amazing about this is, you know, when I stepped into speaking in the world championship and started learning from you guys, to me, it was like this very unattainable, almost like mythical skill of how to captivate an audience. And the more I studied this, the more I realized there’s so many techniques like dialogue and conflict that, you know, and using a foundational phrase that exponentially improve the impact in the experience for the audience. And it’s, it’s, it’s not that you’re, it’s not that you’re not amazing and charismatic as an individual, but everyone can be charismatic. But these mechanics, these are, these are practical things you can learn to do. And Craig is one of the masters, as you could tell, just by how these little tweaks make such a huge, huge difference. And Craig, that’s why I was like, I gotta have you on, got to introduce you to everybody. Where do you want people to go? If they, they want to learn more about, you know, this kind of stuff.
CV (31:31):
Remember we talked about never selling the product, always selling the result. This is what I would say to my audiences. I, if I’m in front of an SRO, raise your hand if a year from now, you’d like to be at least three times better than the speaker or presenter you are today. All hands go up. I said, well then great. You can go to one of my websites for free 52 speaking tips.com. That’s five, two speaking tips.com. And every week for a year, you’re going to get an audio lesson for me. And at the end of that year, you will be at least three times better than the speaker presenter you are today. So Roy that’s where I would have them go. But also if we just broke that down for a second, what was the result? Three times better? What was the resource? The website 52.
CV (32:12):
Speaking to which one that I mentioned first in an audience, somebody will say free. They will always say, but it’s the result. And that’s what I like to get across to people never sell the product, always sell the result, but always put the result before the resource, always as a leader, find a way to state the result before the request. Because if I did it the way most people do it, Rory, even people who are marketing people, it would have sounded like this. Raise your hand. If you’d like to receive 52 emails from yeah. And I don’t think my opt-in rate would be as high. So you go to 52 speaking tips.com and you’re going to be three times better than the speaker you are today within one year.
RV (32:50):
Yeah. This is Craig Greg Valentine. This is one of the people who coached me and still coaching me. I mean, this, this conversation is powerful and sharp. There are so many things you can listen to my recap with Aja here in a couple of days, we’ll break it down for you. What our big highlights were in the meantime, go follow Craig. You know, give him some comments, share some social media. Love, let them know that you’re listening. Say hi, check out the 52 speaking tips.com. We’ll put a link to that in the show notes, Craig dude, thank you for your impact on my life. I mean you and Darren and ed and mark and Dave, like, you know, David Brooks, I’m referring to like you guys helped shape me in a lot of ways that I can look back and go a lot of, a lot of what we have done in our career and what the people we’ve been able to help points back to. A lot of these things that we’ve learned from you.
CV (33:42):
The Royal, I just want to tell you, you, you were a champion on the day that we met and you still are, and I’m glad you’re doing what you’re doing and keep touching lives.
RV (33:51):
Thanks brother.

Ep 214: Video Content Systems with Marley Jaxx

RV (00:07):
Hey, brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview as always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders, group.com/pod call. We hope to talk to you soon.
RV (00:54):
One of the greatest mistakes that I have made in my career as a personal brand is I missed the boat on YouTube. I missed it badly. And then and then we sold all of our social media and I had to start over anyways. And so I started over on YouTube right away, but it’s difficult to build a following from scratch. And that’s one of the reasons why we brought in Marley Jaxx today. I had an opportunity to see her live. She spoke at an event called funnel hacking live with Russell Brunson. She shared the stage with him and Tony, Tony Robins, and Tom bill, you and Frank Kern. And she’s worked with a lot of other, she’s worked with other friends of ours. Alex Charfen has been a long time friend of ours. And we really just enjoyed her content talking about video and her specialty, I think is, is understanding video and YouTube and specifically using that to drive leads for your business. And also I think another specialty of hers is selling high dollar offers and kind of like more complex offerings, not just the, you know, the $200 video course, but you know, converting it into high high-dollar offers and high ticket stuff. So anyways, Marley, welcome to the show.
MJ (02:09):
Hello. Thank you for having me.
RV (02:11):
Yeah. So I wanted to just start with the, like the, the camera in general. I think, you know, a lot of people are still uncomfortable. They’re kind of camera shy. They you know, they, they get a little nervous about YouTube and just kind of video in general. Do you have any, like, what do you think are some of the big mistakes that people make or do you kind of have any advice for somebody who’s kind of sitting in that mode going like, yeah, I kind of want to step out of this, but I’m still nervous and reluctant. Yeah,
MJ (02:44):
Definitely. When people say they’re, they’re afraid of the camera, I usually try to lighten the mood and kind of joke. Like you’re not afraid of a camera, it’s a piece of metal and plastic, what you are afraid of. It’s the fear of stepping out of your comfort zone, but we know that nothing grows there, right. And the fear of what other people will think, but you’re going to be judged no matter what, whether you’re doing something you hate or that you love. So you may as well be judged for doing something that you love that you know, is making an impact and is part of your passion and purpose. So when people say that they’re afraid of the camera, it’s typically or shy, you know, it’s typically something like time tech or talent. It’s what do I say on camera? What kind of equipment do I use?
MJ (03:27):
What, what do people actually want to hear from me? And that’s where that’s kind of the, the personal development, the self discovery and the research of, of your audience around you and what you’re good at that people are asking you for that they want to hear your stories and your message. And, and just starting, you know, sometimes I compare Gary Vaynerchuk, who a lot of us know, he’s, he’s a very popular figure online and he’s got like, whatever, 5 million people following him now. But when he first started his YouTube channel years ago, wine library, TV, he didn’t have many people watching at the beginning, but he kept going. He kept finding his voice. You don’t always get to see the 10,000 hours someone puts in to find their voice. So when you start creating content, you first start creating content for you to find your voice. And that’s, what’s going to build the audience.
RV (04:17):
That’s interesting. Well, and on the tech thing for a second, cause I do think that people get tripped up and you know, at this, at this point, even now, like I have, I have a ring light and and my phone and I shoot all this stuff on the phone, but w w is there like a camera that you recommend or like a, something that’s not super intimidating just to get going, or like, what’s the, what’s the big tech thing that you, you just need to know? Like, if you just want to hit start and you just want to go and you don’t want to spend like six months learning about equipment and all that, but, and you also don’t have a bunch of money to hire a team. Like, what would you recommend for that?
MJ (04:56):
The best camera to use is the one you have. And often in these little smartphones that are attached to our hands or hips at all times, lady Gaga, Selena Gomez, they filmed some of the recent music videos on their iPhone and they’re good quality. And honestly, you can get a little tripod from Amazon. You can get a ring light, or you can even be in front of a window for natural lighting. And those can be really high quality. And the thing is, people want to watch people that are relatable. So sometimes when you think, oh, I got to get all this big fancy equipment and gorgeous luxury is backdrops. That can almost take the personality out of it. So I say, start with your iPhone and what you have.
RV (05:37):
Th th this is one of the things that we learned is you know, every week we kind of do like a little five minute video and we re we have some editors, they run a process, you know, just some, just some basic stock photography they drop in there. And some like royalty free music, those videos perform about a third as well as when I just am in a t-shirt with, with my hair on done. I turn on the camera and I just talk for two minutes and post a to GTV. It will outperform the professionally thing, three, two on every single time.
MJ (06:11):
Yeah. We want to see people that are relatable, that we can see ourselves in them to think they’re just like us.
RV (06:18):
Hmm. Yeah. I love that. I love that the best camera that you use is the one that you have. So, so, all right, so now we get up the courage to record you know, you mentioned time tech or talent when it comes to talent. I think of that as like, what selecting, what do I talk about? What do I say? You know, and everyone that listens to this podcast is, I mean, we have literally billionaire billionaire entrepreneurs who listened to this. We have New York times bestselling authors, and we have, you know, 16 year old kids, like in high school, trying to figure out how to make money on the side. So you’ve got a broad mix of people, but how do you know what to talk about? Or like, you know, what your talent is in terms of what you should put on camera?
MJ (07:07):
There’s a few different places that I recommend looking when you’re trying to come up with, what, what do I talk about? What are the topics to speak to? The first one is the frequently asked questions. You get, what are people asking you all the time? What are the, what’s the experience, the expertise, or the stories that they want to hear from you, that’s going to help them along their journey, or even think about the questions that you were asking that you wish that there was someone like you to answer for, for yourself years ago. And it’s also pretty easy to look right on YouTube or Google and see what are people searching for. Like, you know, when you start to type in the search bar and it autocompletes a tries to finish your sentence, to, to suggest what it thinks you’re typing. Well, that is auto-populated based on what people are searching for.
MJ (07:48):
So if you start to type in how to train your dog underneath that, it’ll be like how to train your dog, to sit, how to train your dog, to stay, how to train your dog to bark. All of those suggestions are video ideas, because that’s what people are searching for that like Google is giving you the data right there. You can also look at other people in your industry or niche and see what kind of content they’re creating. And you could do a similar topic with your own spin, your own story. And, and that’s going to be able to help your audience. And especially when you’re on YouTube, you want to be creating content that, you know, your audience is searching for because YouTube is a search engine, not a social media platform.
RV (08:26):
Yeah. That’s a big distinction to understand. And I, it’s almost like you know, the, the search thing, like you know, there’s all these, these different tools [inaudible] you know, SCM rush and yada yada, that will just, or even just Google, even just a Google like analytics. I forget what the, I think it’s Google keyword research, keyword research tool that will tell you, these are the topics that people are searching. Like these are the, the phrases people are searching for related to your topic. And it just gives you the content calendar. Or the other thing is Quora that website Cora has like a bunch of questions that people are asking. and so you just basically answer one video, answer, one question per video, you’re like off and running
MJ (09:10):
Done. And like, there’s another tool that we like there’s answer the public there’s SCR, where you can just type in a keyword and it’ll populate with tons of suggestions based on exactly how people are typing them into search. And you could make all of those videos, like you, you will never run out of content ideas as long as you just know where to look for them. Yeah.
RV (09:29):
I love that. So, all right. Now when it comes to optimizing and I will, I will openly admit here, this is where we are lazy. Like we is even saying it out loud. It’s so stupid. Cause it’s like, why bother doing all this work? And then not then not optimize the video, but we, we haven’t, we, I think the reason why we haven’t is because we’ve been like, just start just, you know, we have to start over our channel rebuild from scratch. It’s already discouraging. And it’s just like, let’s just get con like, just get going, but now I know we need to optimize and why do we need to do right. So, like after the video is up there, is there anything, or as you’re putting the video up there, like, are there a couple kind of key things that we should be paying attention to and spending the extra few minutes, like they’re worth the time to do? Yeah,
MJ (10:21):
Definitely. Well, the first thing is the title of the video. And you should, you should know what the title of the video is before you even start filming it so that you’re framing the message the right way that you’re answering what people are coming to. You don’t want to bait and switch them and you know, make them click off because they’re like this, isn’t what I clicked here for. So the title of the video based on how people are searching for it, and you’re just going to put that title of person, the headline of the video, and then in the description of the video, you want to be reiterating that title and other keywords similar to it. So that when YouTube and Google takes like just a snapshot of this video, they know this is the topic. And typically in my intro of the video, like when I’m physically, when I’m speaking on camera, I will say the title of the video in the beginning, in my first few sentences, because YouTube also they’ll transcribe your video. So then that also gives more keywords and input to what the video is about. And your thumbnail is also one of the most important things, because when you’re searching for a video topic and all these all these options come up underneath, you’re typically going to choose the video based on the thumbnail that stands out the image that’s more cooking or engaging or someone that you might think might look familiar if you know them already, someone that you already follow, or just that it captures your attention.
RV (11:39):
Yeah. That, you know, it’s interesting. So like one of our close friends is Lewis house. And, you know, I noticed that the titles of his videos and the thumbnails don’t match and his, his YouTube channel has really been a big, it’s really been a big focus this, this last couple of years, and they’ve, they’ve really done a great job of adding the optimization and you know, so like that thumbnail is interesting. It’s almost like it’s a whole separate strategy in and of itself to just go, like, what I mean, other, do you just basically go, what would someone need to see in order to click on this? Or like, is there any other kind of thought process that you use or for what makes a great time nail?
MJ (12:24):
The, the thumbnail is a whole other opportunity to hook people in. Like, it, it’s something that is, you know, is thumb stopping worthy. Like it’s going to stop their scroll because it, it, it stands out among the rest. So it’s not just like you smiling and the title written on, on the thumbnail. Again, it can be another like curiosity hook. Like you’ll never believe what this person said to me, or how did I make a million dollars in 12 months or whatever, like something that’s different than the title of the video. And then the picture next to it that really demonstrates that, like I saw one the other day from Alex, her mosey, he’s a channel that he’s just blowing up so fast he’s. So well-spoken he and his wife, Layla they’re both, their channels are incredible. And Alex had I think the title was something about like spending a hundred thousand dollars and the image was like influencer, like other influencers that we recognize, like grant Cardone and things like that. But then there was also like a supermodel in the background. So it makes you think like, what did he spend a hundred thousand dollars on? So it’s something that leaves that curiosity hook, or that question in your mind that you’re like, well, now I got to click this video to find out what exactly he’s talking about.
RV (13:35):
Yeah. I mean, the neuroscience, there is super powerful as the brain hates incomplete things and the brain hates unanswered questions. So it’s like, if you can create a question of some type with the thumbnail, it’s almost like we’re addicted to watch it to just to answer whatever that question is. Some people call them opening, like opening a loop or opening a question. So I love that. So then, all right, so now we got this put together, we’ve done some keyword research. We know people are searching for we’re answering this question. You mentioned early on you say in the first few minutes, what the video is about. Is there anything in terms of like, when you put together a video and you think about how to structure, like the outline of it in terms I’ve also heard competing answers on how long a video should be.
RV (14:33):
Some people are like, oh, they should be short. People’s attention spans are short, but then it’s like, well, no AVD average viewer duration is the primary metric on YouTube. And so they want it to be long, but they also pay attention to how many people watch the whole video. And if it’s too long, then people don’t watch the whole video. And I’m just like, oh my gosh, like what’s, can somebody just tell me what the answer is? Do you have a philosophy on the right kind of length of time and then like a general kind of outline for structuring one of these videos?
MJ (15:01):
Yeah. Typically, like we aim for an average of 10 minutes. And in that 10 minutes, we can insert about three content hooks, three different stories or frameworks, or three steps of one general framework inside that video. So that also makes it fairly easy to reach 10 minutes. When you’re thinking like, well, how am I gonna, what do I talk about for 10 minutes? So our formula for kind of putting together the script of the video is any intro. Like I mentioned, you want to repeat kind of the title of the video. So I’ll give an example. One of our clients, Cristy code red maybe her video is how let’s say that people are searching for, why am I dieting and exercising and not losing the weight? She’s a weight loss coach. So she could be like, if you’re someone that you are stalled, you’re at that plateau and just tank it that last few pounds off you’re in the right place you ever asked yourself, why am I dieting and exercising and not losing the weight?
MJ (15:54):
I’m going to answer that question for you in today’s video. So she reiterates the title in that intro. Then before going right into the topic, she’s going to give three content hooks. So this is teasing what’s coming up so that people hear that and they go, oh, I got to stay for 0.1 0.2 point and three for the things she’s about to talk about. But we want to introduce these again, as curiosity hooks, things are gonna, that are gonna open up that loop or that question. So she might say something like, first of all, I need to share with you the number one biggest lie in weight loss. This is one that we have all been fed to believe. And one that you no longer have to believe. And so that makes you think like, what is the number one biggest lie? Like I’ve been lied to.
MJ (16:33):
I need you to know, then she can go. And after that, I’m going to make sure. And then she could say and you know what? My clients come to me when they are stalled, when they’re plateaued, I changed these two things in their routine and they hit their weight loss goal faster than ever. Ooh, what are those two things? And then she said, and lastly, I’m going to share with you my strategy for how to get 10% of your body weight off every month without diet pills, shakes, or exercise. Oh, that sounds amazing. 10% every month. How do I do that? And so that creates these three bullet points. These three content hooks that are typically going to make people stay to the end because we’ve now opened up three loops and we want to keep people watching as long as possible.
RV (17:12):
And it almost sounds to me kind of like a table of contents to what a table of contents would be for a book, but you’re, you’re titling. And that actually made my mind go. Hmm. We should probably put more focus on the titles of our chapters, in a book for the same reason to help people to just like actually reading it. And that’s sort of what you’re doing, you’re doing here. So you tell them who the videos for, then you kinda like roll the little like bumper and then you just go in and you just do 0.1, 2.3. Yeah. I mean, it’s pretty straightforward. I mean, it’s pretty straightforward. Yeah. So how does it turn into money? So let’s not, let’s talk about that for a second. Right? Cause it’s like, okay, now I’m making videos. I’m, I’m putting them out there. How do we, yeah. How do we make this into, into money?
MJ (18:11):
So the greatest thing is that you’re creating content based on what, like we already said that people are searching for. So we know that by the time people land on our videos, they are already problem aware. They’re coming to solve a problem for themselves, that your video is now answering and sure you’re giving them lots of value. You’re giving them these steps, but then you’re like, Hey, if you want the framework or if you want the next thing you need, or if you want a done for you template or some kind of resource, that’s going to help you to now get results from what you just learned, click the link in the description below. And that is your lead magnet. It’s a freebie. Maybe it’s a low cost, low ticket thing to bring them into your value ladder, but that’s going to be the most important part is that you take them from YouTube into your funnel so that then you can nurture and ascend that relationship.
MJ (18:58):
And you can even bring them right on to maybe like you maybe bring them into a challenge. Maybe you bring them into a webinar, or we have clients that will bring them straight to a webinar or a challenge. And then from that can very quickly sell into high ticket because the clients that come through YouTube, like I said, they’re already problem aware. And often they’ll binge watch a few of your videos and then are just like, look at how much value I’ve gotten for free. Imagine how much I would get if I invested, if I spent some money and actually invested emotionally and financially into getting this result. And we have clients that say, if they get on a sales call with someone that has come through from YouTube, they’re like, they’re as good as sold. Like we have a a very high conversion rate because they’ve been warmed up so much through YouTube.
MJ (19:41):
So YouTube turns into an evergreen lead generation machine because people are finding this content completely organically just by searching for it. So this isn’t like Facebook lives where you can do a Facebook live or an Instagram story or whatever that disappears in the timeline. Like the algorithm pushes it down to put the more recent stuff up at the top. But with YouTube, like you can have content from years ago that is still showing up at the top of search. I have videos from 2016 that I made once never put any ad spend towards it. And it’s still generating leads for my business. Like I don’t even touch it. If I were to stop posting any more videos, these videos would still be building my email list. And because we have the funnel set up on the backend could still be driving sales consistently.
RV (20:24):
Gosh. Yeah, it’s so true. I mean, sometimes it’s like I did one Ted talk and it’s years ago we get more speaking leads from that Ted talk. Then every other thing we have ever done added up all together and multiplied by two, like I’m going, I should not do anything except just do another Ted talk. Like, because it’s, it’s that evergreen, that power of evergreen of YouTube, it’s totally different than the other, the other platforms. And so w you know, generally speaking, like here’s the thing that I always kind of struggle with is you go like one piece of content, one call to action. That’s super simple. Like, what you just said is basically deliver a 10 minute value bomb and then offer them a lead magnet to take the next step. And then that drops them into whatever your funnel sequence is, which is super simple. When, and how do you do the, like, hit the subscribe button? Like, do you w which one, like, which one do you do first, or do you do them both together or is it sometimes one and not the other, like, does it matter?
MJ (21:34):
So I never want, and this is what I recommend for clients is that we don’t wait until the end to ask for that subscribe. We want to be able to just go straight into the call to action. And even when we do the call to action, I don’t, I don’t want to lead my audience into thinking that I’m ramping down the videos. So you’re not like, all right, thanks so much for watching. I hope you liked this video. If you want some more value, click the link below, like we just go straight into it as if it’s another content hook. So like with the example with Christie about weight loss, and she’s talking about like the, how to lose 10% of your body weight every month, like this strategy works, I’ve seen this person, this, you can give some social proof and I want to help you with this next.
MJ (22:10):
So click the link below and join my 10 pound take-down challenge. That’s so she’s not like slowing her role. She’s, she’s going right into the call to action. But the best time to ask for that engagement is between your content hooks. So let’s say between content hook, number one and two. Now, before I tell you the two things that I change in my client’s routines, this is something that I’m talking about every single week. So hit that subscribe button to my YouTube channel. So I can help you with your weight loss goals, or it can be an engagement break asking for for a comment. Now before I go into my next point about the two things, I change in my clients for teens to help them to lose the weight I want to hear from you, what weight loss programs have you tried tell me in the comments below what’s worked, what didn’t work. Let’s all, let’s all collaborate here. So she’s, you’re always asking for the engagement in the middle of the video when people are still engaged and present. If you wait till the end, typically people are, you know, they’re losing their attention span by them. So we ask in the middle.
RV (23:05):
Yeah. So that’s the other one is about the comments. So you really have subscribe, comment, share, and then like opt in. So you just, you just kinda like vary them up and mix them in, but you do. I like, in-between the content, like, like I like that term engagement break. I’ve not actually heard that. Like, you take an engagement break, almost like a little commercial. I mean, it’s like, how, what on TV? It would be like a little commercial break, but it’s an engagement break.
MJ (23:33):
Yeah. It’s just subtle. So like, you don’t have to stop. And like, before I go into my next point, you could do that. That’s just the example I gave, but it could just go straight into the question. And by the way, I want to hear from you, like what, what weight loss programs have you tried comment below? I’d love to hear what’s worked or like, Hey, and by the way, I’m, I put out videos like this every week. So hit the subscribe button if you’re loving this just quick.
RV (23:56):
Yeah. That’s that that’s super quick. And then what about like the editing part? Like you know, multiple camera angles putting B roll footage under it, stock footage, all that kind of stuff. I mean, you know, jump cuts back and forth is all that pretty important. You can live without it. You do it if you can, or it doesn’t really matter. Yeah.
MJ (24:21):
Do whatever you have the capacity for. And honestly, I’m a huge proponent of outsourcing. And especially when you can hire people overseas who have a lower cost of living, that you can bless their lives by paying them more than even, you know, I hired my first video editor for $15 a video. And that was incredible for me, starting out as an entrepreneur. And that was more than what he, they were actually asking for at the time and my time, like how long it would take me longer to fill, to edit that video, then how long I could make $15 back. And then now knowing that that video can be an evergreen lead generation machine, I’m likely going to make more than $15 from that video. So I highly recommend outsourcing that, but when it comes to the editing quality and that can be a personal preference, it can you know, we want to make sure that it’s aligned with your branding, but typically you can totally go simple.
MJ (25:15):
Of course you want to cut out any ums and AHS or sometimes leave those in because it makes you human. But cut out any parts where maybe you tripped over your words and you restarted. One of the things that I really like to do though, is have attention resets. And that’s just very quickly like subtly moving the camera angle from like, you’re zoomed in now, you’re zoomed out. Now you’re a little to the left. Now you’re little to the right. And it’s very subtle that people don’t even really notice that it’s happening, but it just, it changes the view, but you don’t have to have different cameras to do that. It’s just all in the editing. And especially when you’re starting, I don’t film with multiple cameras. I think that that would be complicated. And what I want to focus on is the message that I’m sharing and who I’m speaking to. I don’t want my head to be caught up in the tech.
RV (26:03):
Yeah. I love that. Cause they’re just zooming in, zooming in zooming out to the side, they do all that. They can do all that in post-production. So the video, where do you find these people? So like you’ve mentioned this, this person and, and I, I’m a little bit shocked that there’s not, maybe I’m just looking in the wrong places, but in my mind, I would think that, you know, like there’s gotta be a whole bunch of kids graduating high school or college that are just like been editing YouTube videos since they were 12 years old and they can make good money doing this, but I’ve, I’ve had kind of a hard time finding these video editors. Are you just looking, where do you go to look? I mean, is this are you posting jobs on like job boards? Are you going to like Upwork and Fiverr and just doing that or, or like, where do you find them?
MJ (26:58):
My favorite ones to go to or Upwork online jobs.ph is specifically for people in the Philippines. So that’s another one that you can find people overseas. Fiverr is good fibers. Okay. I’ve just found more success on things like Upwork. And I think a big part of finding the right people is also you setting the right expectations and giving them what they need to be successful. So for us, like we have a very specific job description and examples of the videos that we want ours to look like. We have a branding guide of, of here’s what our colors are. Here’s here’s examples of videos that we’ve made even giving them some of the editing templates, like my lower third, how my name comes up on screen. It’s the exact thing. Every time I don’t have to ask him to, or my editor to recreate the wheel of here is the resource that I already have.
MJ (27:49):
And then from there, like go expecting that there’s going to be back and forth. Like I rarely even editors that I’ve worked with for years, we rarely have a, we call it like a one hit wonder, like it’s, it’s rarely perfect. On the first time there’s typically little things to go back and forth like, oh, the music I’m going to, I want to change this here to match the emotion a little bit better, or that lower third came in a few seconds too early. Let’s change this or oops, little typo here. Or the B roll. Let’s change out to this one. So expect that back and forth. And then the longer that you continue to mentor or nurture that relationship with your, with your new employee or contractor they, they can improve and get to know your branding and your style. So it’s, it’s just to be expected. And I actually have some YouTube videos on my channel where I talk about our hiring process for hiring video editors. So people can go check that out. Cause it’s, it’s quite a, kind of an intensive process because we want to make sure that we are finding the right people and that we’re setting them up for success.
RV (28:53):
Yeah. And the pay for this. I know I’m a very, it’s like you, you, you said you’ve been able to find people in the Philippines that can edit a good video if you give them some instruction and it’s, well, I mean, what’s the pay range that you’re usually seeing to like edit a video? Yeah.
MJ (29:09):
Sometimes people will will ask for like by the hour and they can be like five, seven, $10 an hour. Typically, and this is something that I learned from experience was I like to pay them by the project that we were both incentivized. Like you get paid quicker, if you are quick and efficient with this. And then I get quality of work at a, at a good timeframe. And we’re both incentivized. I had an editor once that would take longer to, to edit things so that they would get paid their hourly rate. So I just think it’s a win-win to be by the project.
RV (29:42):
Interesting. Yeah. I guess I’ve never thought about that. That way. You think of it as like, well, if they do an efficient job, they’ll make more money doing it by the project, but you’re in, you want to do that because if you’re happy, they still, you still have to be happy and sign off. That’s really cool. Well, Marley, this has been super helpful and tactical which is awesome. You mentioned, you know, you’ve got your YouTube channel. Where else do you want people to go? If they want to learn about you, connect more and see, like, see some of your other tips and stuff that you’ve got here on you know, video and you’re, you’re managing your YouTube channel and converting that stuff into revenue. Yeah, that’d be great.
MJ (30:20):
Well, YouTube is great. Instagram, instagram.com/marley jacks. I respond to all the direct messages there. So if anyone has any questions, please reach out. And we also have a free training. If you go to hello to high ticket.com, it’s a system that teaches you how to generate leads the hello through YouTube and the send them all the way to high ticket. So that’s hello to high ticket.com.
RV (30:43):
Well, there you have it friends Marley. This is just empowering. It’s just very clear and direct and straightforward. It makes, makes it feel like it’s doable. And that we could, we can pull this off. So thank you so much for sharing your expertise and your insight and your time. And we look forward to watching you. It feel like you’re a very much a rising star that you’re yeah, you got big, big things coming into your future, and we’re glad to catch you on the way up.
MJ (31:10):
I appreciate that. Thank you so much for having me

Ep 212: Moving Past Limiting Beliefs with Celinne DaCosta

RV (00:07):
Hey brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview as always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders, group.com/pod call. We hope to talk to you soon.
RV (00:54):
How much of the work that we do at brand builders is helping people to clarify their position and understand and present who they are in the marketplace in a way that’s really, really clear. And people often think they have a copywriting issue, right? Like what are the words I use to tell people what I do? And, and they often don’t realize how deeply connected the words on their website are to their own personal life and their personal story. And that’s what we’re going to talk about today with someone who I think is one of the masters in the world at that specific topic, her name is Celine de Costa. She is a fairly recent friend of mine and she is a brand story and life design coach. She’s also a contributor to Forbes, which is how we met. And I think she does a lot of this, the deep work with people of understanding how their past connects into who they are and who they’re supposed to be and turning that into a story. But anyways, she is absolutely wonderful. She’s in Bali has been in Bali for the last couple years, and it’s just really been a bright spot of someone that I’ve run into here, you know, networking through the world. And I’m so glad for you to meet her and welcome to the show saline.
CDC (02:07):
Thank you. That was a beautiful introduction. I’m extra excited.
RV (02:11):
Nice. Well, so, so yeah, I guess a good starting point would be to just tell us like what you do and, and why there is a w w cause one thing I love about you is I feel like what you do is just like a very specific thing that is really important and it’s, it’s, it’s really meaningful and a lot of people struggle with it. And I love that. I love finding people who really feel connected. I mean, that’s what we teach people to do, find their uniqueness. And I, when I look at you and your brand, and that, I really feel like you’re living in your uniqueness in this really wonderful position of strength and power, but explain what it is you do and why, why there’s a need for it.
CDC (02:54):
Yes, of course. So the super condensed version is I help people tell their story. And the way that that manifest is I specifically work with people in leadership roles to help them connect to the story of who they are, not who they think they are, not who they’ve been conditioned to believe that they are, who they really are at their core. And I help them communicate that to the outside world so that when they show up in their brand in their company and they share what they have to say, their vision, their why, their values it’s packaged in a story that deeply connects to the hearts of their audience. And because of that, it helps them grow their influence. It helps them grow their income. It helps an impact more and more people. So this is really, really powerful work. And you’ll see in this episode that I’m very, very passionate about because when it comes to, you know, building your brand, to putting yourself out there in the world, it’s really important to understand yourself and your uniqueness, your gift, your X factor, and all of that.
CDC (04:09):
Your story is the map. It’s the treasure map to everything that you are. It contains all the codes of what’s important to you, why it’s important to you and why it matters and why you want to help the people that you want to help. It’s all encoded in your story. So I really help people go through this beautiful, powerful explanation process to help them understand what it is and how do you transform that into a message that you can share in the outside world that is going to get you results in your life and your business. Hmm.
RV (04:40):
Yeah. I love that. And I love how we’re going to think. We believe the same thing there that
Speaker 4 (04:48):
So often
RV (04:49):
People look externally to figure out what the story is. They should tell, they go, well, what am I compared to my competitors? Or who am I supposed to be? Or like, and they’re not looking internally, which I think are probably some of the mistakes to go. Like, like you said, your story is the treasure map. I love that. So why don’t we do that? Like what, what is, what is the, what is the roadblock or the cause of that, like going, you know, I come up with these kinds of artificials, you know, words are this artificial kind of surface level story that I tell the world, why do we, why do we do that instead of connecting and going in deep into who we actually are, and then bringing that to the surface,
CDC (05:38):
Rory one word conditioning, and I’ll explain that. So many, many, many, many of us, I would say most of us grew up in certain circumstances where, because of our environment, because of our society, because of the way that we grew up, we were conditioned to believe certain things about ourselves and we all have. And the reason why your story is so unique, because we all have our own unique map. And my map is not your map. It’s not someone else’s map. It’s, it’s really like your map. And so for example, and you know, I can, I’ll, I’ll, I can speak to my own experience, which is that growing up, I grew up as an immigrant, the us conditioned to believe that if I wanted to be successful, I needed to work really hard. I needed to get this kind of job. I needed to climb a corporate ladder in this kind of way.
CDC (06:30):
And so ever since we’re children, we have all these beliefs, these habit patterns, these complexes that we come to believe is true, and that shape our reality. So a lot of you know, the big, the big journey of coming into yourself and really revealing and remembering your true identity is looking at all the things you assumed to be true a lot, which are in your unconscious that are not even conscious to you, looking at those things that you assume to be true about who you are and actually being, questioning them and saying, is this true? Is this actually who I really am? And I’ll give you an example. You can be an extremely successful entrepreneur. You can make lots of money, get featured in lots of places. And at your core still feel that you are unworthy of your success. You can still feel empty.
CDC (07:22):
You can still feel like you’re overworking because you keep need to prove yourself that you need to prove to other people that you are this person, which keeps you in this condition loop of generating lots of success, but without ever having fulfillment. So when we look at your story, we need to not only look at the amazing things you accomplished and the heroic things you’ve done and how many people you help and all the beautiful things about you. But we also need to look at what are the pieces that the beliefs and habit patterns and complexes that you hold about yourself that are holding you back from that next level of success. So it’s really looking through the lens of, okay, here’s my talents or my skills, then what is unconscious and how do we bring what’s unconscious into the conscious so that you can heal it, release it, let it go and rewrite the story from the inside out once and bra. Mm. I love that. So
RV (08:19):
How do we do that? Or like, how, how do you, how do you take yourself on that journey? So part of it is awareness to go, oh, interesting. I might be defining my business, my personal brand with words that I think whatever the public understands versus telling my own story. And you wake up to that and then you wake up to the idea of going, w what I have been telling myself, maybe isn’t true, or what, I’ve, what, I’ve, what the world has told me, which I have now accepted or taken on. Maybe isn’t true. And then I hear you saying kind of the part is to question, who am I really like to question all those foundational assumptions? What happens? What happens next? Like what happens after that?
CDC (09:04):
Yeah, of course. So the first step is especially, you know, when you’re your personal brand, you’re an entrepreneur you’re, you’re growing your, your brand and your company. You have goals, you have things that you want to set, whether it’s, what is that next income goal? What does that next you know, how do I get known more in industry? How do I grow? How do I help more people? There’s always something that you want to get to. And there is a reason why you’re not getting there. And so what happens is a lot of times, and this is how we go down the hamster wheel of more money, more success, more fame, and then not actually matching that internal story and that feeling of self-worth or, or wellbeing from within. And so we, you, you first start with, where do you want to go?
CDC (09:49):
Where do you want to end up what’s that next milestone for you? Because I, you know I’m not going to say, okay, where are you got to go meditate? And now, like, really think about all these things that you want to like fix about yourself and, and which are unconscious to you. And to begin with, and to sit there and question the truth of who you really are. I mean, yes, you can do that at a, at a monastery there’s many, if you want to go do that amazing. But a lot of us, you know, we got to do. We got places to go and we want to accomplish really amazing things in our lifetime and still feel good while we’re addicts. So setting that goal of, okay, here’s, I’ll, I’ll use a really simple one which is here is the next level of income that I want to hit in my business.
CDC (10:30):
That that one is common for many people. So the mistake that a lot of people say make is that they will want to find the next hack, the next strategy, next thing that they can do, oh, let me implement this funnel. And let me implement this strategy. And like, this group is saying that I should be doing this. So let me do that. Let me hire a copywriter. So we’re still looking for an external solution for what is an internal symptom. And so you’re gonna, you know, you might find some that funnel that will make you more money, but again, you might feel like you’re still overworking. You’re still stressed out. You’re still unhappy. So looking at your goal, it’s important to realize what is actually on my way. And it’s not the thing that you think it is, and it’s not going to be an external band-aid, but what is actually in my way, and what you will find is that usually what it comes down to is that there is something around your money story that you don’t believe you’re worthy of that next level of success.
CDC (11:28):
That there’s a part of you that believes that if you do make that next level of income, you are going to have more responsibility and you don’t feel like you can handle it. You might feel like you don’t have the capacity to hold that kind of money or you’ll lose it. So obviously I’m giving a few examples. There’s 1,001 ways, which is all going to be found in your story, but you have to look at the reason, you know, when my clients come to me and they’re like, okay, I want to tell my story, help me tell my, and we look at what their goals are in telling their story, which ends up being around the realms of influence income and impact. The first question I ask them is why are you not telling your story in the first place? What is holding you back?
CDC (12:09):
And then I’ll get back some answer that is along the lines of, well, I don’t think my story is interesting enough, or it’s too boring. I’m really afraid of what people will say about me. I’m afraid that my peers will reject me or ridicule me. I don’t know where to begin. I feel like there’s so many pieces and I don’t know how to string them together. So those are a few examples. And then if we dig even deeper and ask the question, why are you afraid that your peers are going to judge you? Why do you think your brand is boring? And we dig a layer deeper, and then you start to see that there’s all these little stories that were formulated often. We were young around, well, you know, growing up, I was, you know, this is common for people like in, in the like UK or New Zealand or Australia where there’s like that tall poppy syndrome where it’s like standing out.
RV (13:00):
Explain what tall poppy is for the Americans that listen, because that’s a really interesting concept. That’s, that’s UN it’s it’s it’s counter-cultural it’s counter American culture.
CDC (13:11):
Yes. Yes. So tell poppy is a syndrome where basically you know, if you look at a poppy field and you have a poppy that stands out it’s, you CA everybody needs to be the same. Everybody needs to be equal. And if you stand out, you’re going to get made fun of or alienated because essentially you’re, you’re not with the tribe. You don’t, you’re not doing what everyone else is doing. So classic example is growing up in a small town and you have these huge dreams and huge ambitions, and you want to go travel the world and everyone around you is not doing that, or they’re perfectly content with their everyday mundane life. And and then you’re getting made fun of, or shamed by your colleagues, your peers, your family, because you’re dreaming about something bigger than what you have. And so now it’s like, oh my God, look at Rory.
CDC (13:58):
Like he wants to grow this big company and travel the world, what a loser, right? So you get this almost like, and I know in it for Americans, it’s very counterintuitive Judah, but the reason why I bring this up is because someone, for example, this is super common in Scandinavia, super common in Oceania in the UK where you’ll get a successful, you know, I’ll get a very successful businessman, a business woman who grew up in one of those countries, and they don’t want to show, have a beautiful story that they’re sharing their irons because they don’t want to stand out. They don’t want to, like, they don’t want to be unique because they have these deep rooted fears and from childhood where they were taught and conditioned that if you stand out, you will lose friends. If you stand out, you will be alienated. So you carry that with you. And even if you do leave your small town and do amazing and start an amazing business and make lots of money, you’re still carrying this old internalized story of, I cannot stand out too much or I’m going to get alienated. So that willfully, you know, that’s just one small example. There’s so many different ways. There
RV (15:08):
Are so many of these, I think of like like in the Christian community, there is this massive, massive story that it is holy to be poor or that to be, to be holy, you can’t have money, or if you have money, then you’re not dependent enough on God. And so it’s like, if, if you even pursue making money that somehow you’re not spiritual, or you’re not a good Christian, or you can’t follow Jesus because you’re chasing, you’re chasing chasing money. And that, that is an example of a story that is just, you know, very deep rooted in people which is funny because scripture doesn’t actually say any of those things, but it gets it, it gets translated or assumed. You know, so like the Bible does say that you can’t, you can’t serve two masters. You can only serve one, but that doesn’t mean you can’t serve one and half of the other.
RV (16:08):
Or, you know, it’ll say, you know, you shouldn’t have a love of money. A love of money is the root of all evil, but a love of money. And having a lot of money are not the same thing. So I, and the tall poppy thing is fascinating. I remember when I spoke in Australia was the first time I had heard this and they were like, yeah, the tallest poppy is the first to get cut, which was like, you don’t want to be the number one you don’t want because you’re, you’re the one that gets criticized and, and, and ridiculed and all the things that you’re saying. And that was so counterculture to me as an American going, what, like, I go, what a weird way of thinking. And yet in our own life, or like, in my own life, I have, I have silly beliefs about myself that hold me back.
RV (16:51):
That if someone else heard them, they would be like, that’s so silly. Like, how do you not think you’re good enough? Like, you’ve done all these amazing things. They’re like whatever. So you, so you, so basically you’ve started out with what you want. You figure out what’s really holding you back, which is not it’s, it is very often not a, a technique or a strategy or a tip. It is more of a a mental block, a story, and then you dive in and go, okay. And then as you do that work, does it just kind of start to surface and you go, well, I guess I’ve always thought if I had money, my family wouldn’t love me anymore. Or if I became successful. And, and is, is that basically is that most of the work is just identifying the story or is there more, more, more to it?
CDC (17:42):
There’s more so I have you know, when, in my work with clients, I have a four-step and it is called unlock and body design and amplifies. So unlock is really the phase as the name suggests is where we need to unlock what’s going on. What’s blocking you. What is in the unconscious and bringing conscious. There’s a really amazing quote by Carl Young. And I might not, I might not be saying it verbatim, but it’s something along these lines, which is until you make the unconscious conscious, it will rule your life and you will call it fate. So the first phase is really understanding what is ruling your life unconsciously, that you’re just calling fate, and you’re just allowing to dictate the way that you’re showing up in your life, in your business and your messaging. So the online part is really understanding, yes, there’s all these little niggly stories that are holding you back, that we, the moment you start to bring them from the unconscious, into the conscious, you can actually do something about them because when they’re unconscious, they’re just operating on autopilot and screwing up your goals and, and, you know, and, and getting in your way.
CDC (18:49):
But when you bring into the conscious, then there’s a process that I teach to really start to dissolve them on a mind-body level, because a lot of times, without going deep into neuroscience these things are so visceral, very, they’re so stuck in your body. There’s almost overpowering, which is why some people, you know, when they, it comes to like your money story, it’s not just a thing, a thought the story is like, it’s an emotion, it’s this, this your heart beating faster, it’s this gut wrenching feeling in your stomach. So there’s a lot of processes that come into play to actually really be able to release this so that it stops having you grip on you once and for all like on a mind body somatic level. And so the next piece is the embodied. So once you, you, yes, it’s Superman.
CDC (19:34):
And I can literally do a whole podcast just on the neuroscience of this, but I’ll, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll keep it high level for, for this. And so now that you have identified, okay, here’s all the internal stories that I’m telling myself, they’re disempowering me. Well, the next step is all right, cool. What are the ones that are going to empower me? Because you know, the, and this is true for not just for your story, but for any venture that for you to overcome a fear for you to overcome an obstacle, your willingness and desire, and why needs to be bigger than the thing you fear your vision needs to be bigger than your fear. And that’s how people are able to do really scary things, really uncomfortable things. Even, even when they don’t want to do it is because that Y is bigger.
CDC (20:17):
And this is the piece around embodiment, which is, you need to understand the you need to embody your story before you tell it, like it needs to be who you are, and you need to feel it in your body. When people ask, how do I get confident telling my story saline? How can I get in front of a stage and really feel like what I’m sharing is true and authentic. It’s not a script. It’s not something a copywriter has written for you. It’s not a five page manifesto that you memorize and read. It’s actually remembering and connecting to the big reason why you do this. So in this space, it’s really understanding what is that bigger? Why, what is that big, overarching, right? Of why you’re doing this. A lot of entrepreneurs confused there wa there what, with our, why? So I’ll ask people, what’s your why?
CDC (21:03):
And they’re like, well, I want to help women build better businesses. I’m like, no, that’s what you do. It’s not why you do it. And oftentimes your why is not even what you think it is your, why might be, I want to be a role model for my child. I want to, you know rediscover what it means to be a human living, a spiritual experience. And then you’re like, well, I sell socks. So what’s, what’s the connection. There is a connection. So you always need to go back to your why and then be like, okay, what’s your vision?
RV (21:33):
What is a spiritual experience? Just for anybody? It just, as a random side note, I mean, fuzzy socks on your toes, like that is a spiritual experience, but, you know, as you’re talking, it also occurs to me that like, you know, everyone’s like, oh, I need to hire a copywriter to write copy for my website or for my funnel or my, whatever, whatever my press kit. And then they get the copy back and they go, this copy sucks. And in reality, it’s like, it often has less to do with the copy. And it has more to do with either the copy doesn’t align with my identity, because I’ve been too scared to share who I really am with the copywriter or the copywriter might be writing it even in a more aspirational sense than I believe to be true about myself. And so there’s an emotional disconnect and we blame the copywriter and it’s like, well, really it’s our own, it’s our own internal work that hasn’t been resolved here.
RV (22:26):
And, you know, when you hear about the embody thing, you know, I think of like athletes and I think of, you know, Kobe Bryant, Michael Jordan tiger woods. Like whoever you hear these athletes talk about visualization and like experiencing the game in their mind before they go out and play it. And they, the brain cannot delineate. The brain has a hard time delineate between what is real and what is made up like dreams are very real. Your body responds in a physical way to a dream, even though it’s not quote unquote real and using that in our advantage. I love that. So basically we’re now going to go, who do I want to be? And how do I experience that? You know, start to experience that now, before I even begin
CDC (23:14):
[Inaudible] and getting very clear on what your values are, who it is that you want to serve what is it that you want to create? And this is really connecting to your soul and really understanding and what, like you’re saying, you’re hiring, you’re dumping all this money on copywriters or brand experts or whatever. And then basically, you’re, you know, if someone’s just copywriting something for you and you, they can be the best copywriter in the world, but how can they know what you want? If you don’t know who you are, if you don’t know how to articulate and why this matters to you, you’re going to give them some kind of like, oh, I think this is what I’m supposed to say. And they’re going to come back to you and they might do an amazing job, but you’re not going to connect with it because you, yourself, aren’t embodying the story of who you are.
CDC (23:58):
So once you figure it out, you’re like, okay, this is who I really am. And by the way, Barry, I love the example you said around you know, visualization, because it has been scientifically proven that the brain does not know the difference between imagination and reality. Like it just, it, the subconscious cannot differentiate. So our visualization is really powerful. And when it comes to the embodiment work, not only is it powerful for you to become more confident for you to get, become more clear on who you really are, but also when you’re working in a team or you’re hiring contractors, you actually know how to direct them in an, in a way that isn’t is like, you’re transferring your authenticity to them so that they can actually do something with that instead of them having to do a bunch of guesswork around who you are and what you do based on their filter of the world.
CDC (24:45):
And so once you’ve done the embodiment work, then we move into the design piece. So the unlock and embodiment is all about the internal story, clearing out the gunk, clearing out the that’s holding you back and reconnecting to the bigger, why the vision, the values, the truth of who you are. And now that you have that connection, now that you’re anchored into that into what you would call, you know, the brand DNA and like really that the soul, the essence then you’re like, okay, now what is the story that I need to tell? And this is the part where I work with people to help them design a bespoke story that aligned with
RV (25:22):
Theirs. It means customized for those of you Martin’s out there.
CDC (25:28):
Yes, I have an American accent, but I’ve spent quite some time abroad. So sometimes I get lost in other terminology. Bespoke
RV (25:35):
Bespoke also means you can charge twice as much for the suit. If someone is, if there is a tailor selling you a piece of clothing, so be aware of the, the word bespoke means you can, you can charge, you can just charge more
CDC (25:50):
Premium. Yep. I love it. Yeah. So this really beautiful practice premium story. And and now we look at, okay, what are the parts that I want to talk about? What’s my hero’s journey. How do I tell my story of, you know, overcoming obstacles and achieving success and being able to essentially what I say, you know, the easy way to explain it is what’s the story of you going from being lost, Luke Skywalker, to bad-ass Luke Skywalker, to being Yoda, and how do you show people, your audience, and now you’re Yoda, and you can help out all their Luke Skywalker’s out there. And what’s that for brand story that you can then transfer into your social media, into your website, into your sales page. It goes everywhere and it’s uniform. It’s not like all over the place. And a really scattered it’s becomes a very coherent narrative that can live in a five page manifesto.
CDC (26:43):
You feel like it, but what makes it really powerful brand story is that it’s a narrative of the emotions and the facts that you brand and bays. And it doesn’t have to be, doesn’t have to be constrained to a document because now it’s an essence. It’s just a story that permeates everything that you do and all your messaging. And when you have that story, that beautiful, premium, powerful, rounded story. Now you can take that story and do where a lot of people want to just skip ahead to this step or eight. Now you go and you amplify the hell out of it. You know, you get in front of Forbes, you get that TEDx, you publish that book. And you just, you know, just put fire on the gasoline, but a lot of people want to just skip ahead to that. And then they’re like, why isn’t Forbes picking up on my story? Like, why doesn’t TEDx you answer me? Like, why am I so stopped writing my book? And it’s like, well, I’m not surprised because you’re, you’re just trying to skip ahead to the part where you get the fame, the glory, and you know, the influence, but you haven’t gotten clear on what is that deeper message that you’re delivering with to the world. And the way you get clear on that is getting clear on it, first meeting yourself, and then you amplify it out. It’s an inside out process. No,
RV (27:55):
Amen. And that I think is the much harder work. It’s the much rare work. It’s the more difficult work that less people are willing to do. But so many of the, the biggest influence of the, of the world have experienced deep pain and they’ve been able to walk through it. And that’s what gives them the foundation and the power to go out and then amplify a message. So well, this has been awesome. Where do you want people to go saline? If, if they to learn more about you and to connect up at the risk of having all of our brand builders group clients leave us and go work for you and us going broke and living in the gutter. Cause this is really, really beautiful and wonderful. And I really believe in what you’re saying. No, but in all seriousness we we’d love for, for people to, if, if, if what you’re talking about is speaking to them, we’d love for them to check you out. Where, where should they go?
CDC (28:46):
Yeah, absolutely. So the first place I would direct you to is my website. The only thing you need to do is know how to spell my name, right? Cause I know this people get there’s a lot wrong. It’s a one L two ends. So it’s C E L I N N E D a C U S T Selena costa.com. And there, you can learn everything about my programs, how I support learn a bit more about me as well, and this work that I’m doing and as well, if you want to reach out and contact me for any questions you can do everything is in the website. So number one, I would direct you to go there. And then number two, I will also direct you to go and follow me on Instagram at Celine D’Acosta. If you’re listening to this and you’re like, wow, I really want to know, how is this done?
CDC (29:30):
How has this executed, what is this story thing all about? Or you want more tips, more advice then every day I’m posting some posting talking about this. And not only that, but also showing, showing you, not just telling you how it’s done. So and also some fun stories showing you Bali life and my beautiful ocean views. So selfishly also a little bit of lifestyle and there’s also definitely go at, hit a follow on Instagram. If you have any questions for me, feel, feel free to DM me. And and yeah, we’d love to connect.
RV (30:00):
Awesome. Well thank you for the work that you’re doing and helping people get clear on, I think it’s, it’s inspiring and it’s, it’s much bigger than just telling, coming up with words for a website. It’s it’s the real impact is the healing. I think that it has on each individual person and from that, it gives them the power to go out and help other people. So really important. Thanks for your time is so great to see you. We wish you all the best.
CDC (30:28):
Thank you so much for having me today.

Ep 210: Gaining Instant Attention with Mike Michalowicz

RV (00:07):
[Inaudible] Hey, brand Builder, Rory Vaden here.
RV (00:10):
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. Well, my man, Mike Michalowicz is one of my favorite thinkers on entrepreneurship.
RV (01:00):
I, you probably have heard of his book profit first. He’s the best selling author of that book has got thousands of reviews on Amazon is very popular among the entire entrepreneurship community. He also has written several other books, clockwork fix this next. And he’s got a new book coming out at September of 2021. It’s called get different, which is what we’re going to talk about. But by age 35, Mike had founded and sold two different companies wanting to private equity, another to fortune 500 he’s a former small business columnist for the wall street journal. He was a make-over specialist on MSNBC and he travels the world speaking to entrepreneurs. He’s he? He is a speaker he’s on stages. We’ve met each other, gotten to know each other a little bit over the years. And I just think he is one of the most influential thinkers and thought leaders in the space of entrepreneurship. So Mike Michalowicz welcome to the show, man. I was in
MM (01:57):
The house. Yeah.
RV (02:00):
So get different is it what’s this is, this is the newest, you’ve got a nice, you’ve got a nice building brand, like a very consistent just body of work that you have done, which I love. So what’s, what’s get different. Why, why the need for this book? Why now?
MM (02:22):
So it’s the why I want to do is boil down what the essence of effective marketing is. And the reason is most small businesses are highly ineffective at marketing. Actually that’s the whole reason your business exists is because so many people, we can’t do it on our own, but what’s interesting is you know, this is kind of pre COVID with all the traveling that’s going on and starting to come back. But nothing like it was in 2019, is that when I go to events, I just ask people by show of hands, like an informal survey, what is your number one source of lead generation marketing cash lead flow. And I would say, raise your hand if this is the number one source word of mouth and like 90% of the hands go up. I like the whole survey is done with the first question and realized that most businesses are dependent upon their clients to do the marketing for them.
MM (03:18):
It’s a blessing. If your client wants to refer you business shows that they trust in your service. They think of you to a high enough degree to refer you. But at the same point, that means you’re at the whim of the customer to market for you. And so I said, what was the consequence of this? And consistently it’s these pendulum swings of too much opportunity for me to handle. And therefore we stopped doing service effectively, or we fumbled the sales process and we actually disappoint people, even in marketing and sales before they do business with us. And then the flip-flop side is no opportunity. We’re panicked. We have to start cutting costs. And as this kind of maniacal bipolar existence for business. So I wrote at different, I spent 10 years working on this. I’m in the research phases, extrapolating knowledge and stuff, but really in the last three years actively writing the formula and testing it and then writing the book and what it boils down to is a, a, we have responsibility to market like you, I, we, the listeners, if, if we have a offering that is of service for our clients, if our offering is better than the alternatives are considering competition doing it themselves, if what we offer is better, we have responsibility to market because if they don’t discover us, that’s going to be the client’s problem.
MM (04:41):
It’s, it’s admittedly our fault for not exposing our brand. So the first component is, is like, wow, people are afraid to market because we think it’s invasive. And the reframing is you must mark it because it’s the only way to be of service. Then I go through the elements of effective marketing and there’s, there’s these three key elements that if you miss any single one, your marketing is going to fumble. So that, that’s what the book’s about.
RV (05:04):
I love it. So maybe we’ll dance this into some of those three things, but the first thing is just going you know, word of mouth, isn’t predictable. It’s not scalable. It’s not controllable. There’s not a, there’s not a button that you can push or a lever that you can pull that says, bring me more clients. Right. And if you don’t have that, like if you don’t have that one button or that one lever, I feel that’s a pretty freaking scary place to operate. And you’re saying you think that, I mean, do you think most businesses, like the massive majority, the large majority, most som all, like, just kind of like how many people you think are living in that world.
MM (05:49):
Yeah. Yeah. So I’ll give you the shocking observation on buggy tobacco numbers. So the massive majority are highly ineffective and marketing, meaning they’re not doing any marketing whatsoever besides getting a referral from a customer which is not marketing in the first place. It’s this customers referring us out now, here, here’s the data that backs it. Over 98% of businesses are defined as small business in the U S so it’s only the, the very few that the mega corporations, the names recognize the Amazons and the Facebooks of the world are truly the exception. And others, 98% of small businesses 90% of them or thereabouts are micro enterprise, meaning they do less than a million dollars in revenue. So your company is Rory is the exception to most businesses. Most businesses are a handful of people. And the, the marketing is a kind of a shotgun or pot shot approach reactionary.
MM (06:50):
So we don’t have enough leads. Oh my gosh, why are clients referring us? We better do some marketing. Hey, I heard some potent rent. Someone ran Facebook ads in our industry and had great results to start running Facebook ads. So we go in, ill-prepared not understanding what the marketing is or how it works. And then when it fails to succeed, we’re like, oh, Facebook socks, no, we didn’t even understand the basic principles of how functions, but more importantly, we didn’t even know the basic functions of effective marketing. So it’s a very kind of knee-jerk reaction, which has no marketing at all. And sadly, that’s just the majority of business.
RV (07:23):
Yeah. Well, and it’s like, not only is the business vulnerable, the, the, you know, certainly the revenues vulnerable for the owner, but even the, the viability of that business. And so the job security of those people inside the business is a little, that feels, that feels pretty vulnerable. So what should small businesses be doing? Okay. So if they’re not, if they’re, if they don’t want to do that, or in addition, let’s say in addition to that, right. Cause you’re not saying word of mouth is bad. You’re not saying referrals.
MM (07:52):
I think it’s wonderful, but it’s Hey, right?
RV (07:55):
Yeah. Like what should we be doing if we’re not doing that?
MM (07:59):
Yeah. So if client referral is the icing, we need to be in a deliberate process. That’s the cake and what we first need to do. And we talked about this to some degree already is see that marketing is not a burden. It’s not to the client or prospect. Your targeting is not offensive. Marketing will either be ignored because it’s irrelevant or not seen. In fact, most cases it’s just not even seen. But when, and we’ve all been there, I, I need, you know, I’m, I’m so hungry. I need somebody to eat right now. I, gosh, I’m driving on the highway, going back to visit my Alma mater. Thank God for those marketing signs that say, you know, restaurant or diner this way. And that’s marketing because it’s satisfying a need. I have. If those signs didn’t exist, I wouldn’t find the restaurants. I wouldn’t know where they are.
MM (08:50):
Thank God for GPS has made. I can find it that way. So marketing satisfies need. And so we have to realize that marketing is a necessity, a responsibility that we also have because it serves clients. But then to market effectively, we have to go into these three elements that explained in the book. The first one is the acronym is called dad, dad. And the first one stands for differentiate marketing. Doesn’t get noticed once the same as everyone else’s. So you have to do something that is unique for your target audience. So for example, if my community of readers all get emails from other authors, all saying, you know, read my next book. Well, my message gets blurred into that. So I have to find a way to differentiate, to get noticed. And why is it so important is the human mind is wired to ignore what we expect and already qualified as irrelevant.
MM (09:48):
The classic example is, Hey friend, the first time I got, Hey, friend, email, Rory, I was like, who is this friend? Like, you know, it’s probably five, six years ago. I’m like, Hey friend. I’m like, oh my gosh, I have a friend called me friends. Like, which friend is this friendly friends? Like I told you, and as I was reading it, then I’m like, oh, this is not a real friend. This is a marketing message. That’s totally not applicable to me. Well, the next, Hey friend that came in a day or week later, I was like, Hey friend, last time was a marketing message. I read this, this one’s a marketing message. The third one, everyone, since the tens of thousands that got sent to me or hundreds, I don’t know what it is. I’ve never looked at one again because it’s habituated. Habituation is where our mind is designed to efficiently ignore stuff that is irrelevant.
MM (10:35):
And if you mark it and a common method that everyone else uses, you’re deemed irrelevant because it’s already known to be irrelevant. So stage one is do something different and don’t confuse different or outrageous. I’m not saying you’ve got to wear a bozo, the clown costume with those big floppy shoes. And you know, Wakawaka lapel and tell people to do business with you now will get noticed, but it may not pass some other tests. Just what is uncommon in your industry. Maybe you can take something from another industry introduced to your clients and there’ll be enough to awaken them. It’s like, if you and I were outside in your yard behind you there, and somebody squiggled on the ground, if it’s unexpected, we will take notice of it because we have to qualify it as a threat or opportunity.
RV (11:18):
Huh. Yeah. This is a kind of the concept of a pattern interrupt. Yes.
MM (11:24):
Right? What it is, it’s exactly what it is. So our mind, there’s a thing called the reticular formation. There’s a thing called reticular activating system that some people are familiar with. But reticular formation is this neural web that says the brainstem it’s job is to ignore 99.999. He goes on for a long time. Percent of the stimulus round is, and right now, where if you look around the that’s you’re at I look around mine. There’s stuff that could just draw our attention and go on for hours and hours as picked up this blue pen, I could look at it and say, well, you know who, why blue? First of all, who invented the word blue? Hello? You know, why is that rhyme with two? And whoever had the word and you know, it just goes on and on. It could just be endless consideration, but our minds are wired to ignore all the stimulus so that we can pay attention and gain value.
MM (12:11):
Hopefully the dialogue we’re having. So differentiate breaks the pattern and it works, but here’s the deal. It works for one 10th of a second. So I call us the blink test. If you do a deliberate blink now, as fast as you can, like your fastest blink ever, that’s still slower than how much consideration we put into something. Meaning as subconscious level, our mind can evaluate is something worth considering further or can it be flushed out in less than one 10th of a second? So differentiate gives you this one 10th of a second window, that gets you to the next part of our brain, which is the prefrontal cortex where conscious thought happens. And this part of our brain, the mind then says, okay, this guy know this got prioritized as something to consider that squiggly snake in the grass. Now I’m looking down at it.
MM (12:58):
I’m consciously considering this is this a snake. Does someone turn the hose on? It’s kind of flopping around what is this? Our brain is looking for three things, threat opportunity or ignorable. If there’s a threat, we’ll go into fight or flight or freeze. There’s other things, but we’ll, we’ll basically combat it. So you don’t want your marketing to be a threat. I can sell you, send you a mailing piece and say, you know, direct mail works so effectively when you put white powder in it, everyone pays attention. Yes. Yes. Everyone pays attention to the white powder coming out of the envelope, but it is a threat. I will go to jail. You know, you will call 9 1, 1. You will never want to receive or open that email, that message I sent. The next thing we go through, is this an opportunity? So by the
RV (13:37):
Way, on this one, so, you know, like people always, I was always confused. Cause I heard people say stuff like the first thing that people look at when you meet them is your hands. And so, you know, I heard someone say like, oh, that’s a reason why you should have, you know, get manicures or like take. And then I realized, I learned later that it’s like, no, they’re not inspecting your hands. Like, are they lotioned? They’re looking to see if you’re carrying a weapon. Like that’s what, when people say that, that’s what they mean is your brain is instantly calculating. Like, is, is there a, is there a threat? But even, but even that it’s, it’s almost like even a threat would be better than being ignored. People like to be like, you don’t, if, if you’re doing the same marketing as everyone else, you don’t even get that consideration. Like you don’t even make it to level two without the pattern interrupt. That’s correct. That’s correct.
MM (14:29):
A threat though. Causes problems down the marketing chain, but you’re right. Again, it guarantees attention. Like if you and I have a meeting, I said, Roy, we got to have serious conversation here. And I plopped down a gun. We’re gonna have a serious conversation. The thing is, you’re gonna punch me in the nose is the second. You get a chance. And take that gun away from me. So it causes conflict. The ignorable is a risk. Like if, if it’s, if we don’t see it, but once we get the attention of the prospect, if it’s not a threat, they will then say, is there an opportunity and an opportunity? Is there something that delivers value to me
RV (15:04):
By the way today is this attention, is that the D is differentiation, is this? And then the next
MM (15:09):
One is called attraction. Oh, okay. Yeah. So differentiate is stage one and it gets to the prefrontal cortex and the prefrontal cortex says, is this a threat run? Is it an opportunity consider or is it ignorable? And then it just, it qualifies it. Or it puts in the catalog to ignore in the future. If you get the opportunity at the differentiate level, you get forwarded on to the next step, which is attraction. Once I say, Hey Rory, I got I have someone that you got to meet wherever I get your attention. I got someone you gotta meet. Now I’ve positioned yourself for attraction. Attraction is where we go through the qualification process. Like, well, tell me about this person and why is this an opportunity? Our mind is now going into incremental segments of, should I continue this conversation? Is there a continuing value to me?
MM (15:57):
And yes, it plays out at multiple levels and we have a rapport. If I say someone you should meet. And that person is of no value to you. Since we have rapport, you may want to maintain that so we can maintain rapport, but the primary level is, are you going to derive direct benefit? And when I’m marketing, I have to show that very quickly, that direct benefit could be solving a problem. It can be entertaining you in some capacity, if we arming you for the future education it could be just a curiosity factor where you’re you keep people engaged in something as they learn more, as you kind of drip it out. The key to attraction is it happens in these millisecond increments also. So we’re, we’re looking to constantly stay engaged or dump out. And so our job during the attraction phase of our marketing is to keep people engaged.
MM (16:41):
The thing is the longer you try to maintain attraction, the less compelling it is to stay. And therefore people over time, if it’s not building a compelling argument, people are gonna drop out. So be concise and grow the compelling nature of it. So if it’s going to be long, make sure that keeps on building more and more interest engagement, not Dwayne waning, but growing. And then the final phase of effective marketing is the direct phase. So we differentiate to get attention, attract for engagement and then direct to compel the audience, to take a specific action. And is your, is your friend, our mutual friend, Don Miller says, you know, if you confuse, you lose and most people just kind of leave their clients or prospects in ambiguity. It’s like, w what do I do? I guess nothing. And they fade away. So here’s where we give them a specific action to take.
MM (17:33):
But the key for this is it needs to be reasonable. So say you’re in the market for a car and on the sorts of the sales guy and you come in and I’m like, Hey, we’re already nice to meet you. Give me a hundred thousand dollars. Now I’ll start searching for your dream car and wherever the distance difference is, I’ll it to you. You big? No, but what could happen is that you can come to the showroom and I say, Hey, Rory, would you be willing to give me your cell number? I will then text you pictures of the cars in our inventories. We discovered the cars to see if they match up with what you want. And we find the one and we can take the next step together. That may be much more reasonable action. And I have permission to market to you. So the direct stage for me, the person trying to do the sale, I want to move you or matriculate you as fast as I can toward the ultimate transaction by the car. And I need to balance that with you feeling safe at every step of the way. So that’s the three elements that
RV (18:26):
Huh. I love that. The, the, you said that last, that last line is, you said, I want to move you as fast as I can towards the transaction, but I need to be able to balance that, that you said an interesting phrase, you said with you feeling safe. Yeah. Why did you say that?
MM (18:48):
Yeah, because a threat is the trigger for avoidance or conflict. And so you’ll see every step of this, if the threat presents itself, transaction’s over. So if I differentiate, because I walk into the room with a gun, you’ll notice, but the transaction’s over. It’s about survival during the attract phase. I am putting threatening messages out there. If you don’t do this, I’m gonna destroy you. Now, I’m going to combat a situation at the very end, as I’m trying to direct you to take action. The second you feel threat, you know, you’re out you know, we’re, we’re like any other herd animal that the second that CA the antelope sniffs, a hunter it’s bolting. So I need to make sure that I’m moving you in reasonable substance, kind of the Goldilocks porridge. It needs to be just right, that you feel safe and comfortable taking that next step together that there’s trust building in these, these different interim transactions before the ultimate transaction. But also I need to do as quickly as possible
MM (19:42):
If I move so slowly,
MM (19:43):
We may never get to that transaction. You may be engaged in another marketing campaign or sales campaign. That’s moving into a transaction much faster, and I lose out. So I want to move you expeditiously to get to the transaction, but also reasonably so that you maintain a comfort level throughout.
RV (19:58):
Mm. Love it. Y’all I mean, that’s what I’m saying. Like these are so sharp and concise and understanding, you know, what I love about what you’re doing here, Mike is this book get different, is connecting the neuroscience of the brain into marketing strategy and the, and the fundamentals of marketing. So this has been so powerful. I think there are there’s, there are at least three ideas here that are going to stick with me for the longterm. Where do you want people to go? If they want to get, if they want to get a copy of the book or keep up with you and all, all the things you’re up to.
MM (20:38):
Yeah. I invite people to go to the one place, singular direct, right? Go to go get different.com. And the reason I invite people to go to site is if you want to get the book, there’s ways to get it through that site, all major retailers and so forth, but more importantly, there’s a resource link there. It has always different case studies. So we ran hundreds of companies through this, and we came up with these case studies. Some that you can apply immediately in your own business, out of the box marketing that is different, attractive, and gets results and case studies where you can just see how another company went through in the experience of implementing campaign like this. So it’s go get different.com.
RV (21:17):
We will put links to that. Go get different.com. I like the dad method. I like the dad model. Cause I’m dancing. That’s the stage of my life.
MM (21:29):
[Inaudible]
MM (21:29):
You’re saying at the end, any marketing you look at simply ask yourself, does data prove certain context is a little bit creepy when you’re older, but you
MM (21:36):
Know that doesn’t approve. We ain’t doing it.
RV (21:39):
I love it. I love it, man. Well, thanks for sharing your time and your wisdom and your insights. So sharp. I know we’ll see you again soon and we wish you the best. Thank you, brother.

Ep 208: How to be Funnier with Darren LaCroix

RV (00:07):
Hey, brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview as always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders, group.com/podcast. We hope to talk to you soon.
RV (00:54):
Well, if you go back to the very beginning of Rory Vaden speaking career, one of my mentors told me I needed to join Toastmasters, and that was how I would get stage time. And shortly after I joined Toastmasters, I learned about a contest called the world championship of public speaking. And one of the legends of Toastmasters who I then made my mentor is who you’re about to hear from today. His name’s Darren LaCroix. He was the 2001 world champion of public speaking for Toastmasters, but he was one of my personal mentors early in my career. In fact if you come to our world-class presentation craft event, and then I start talking about humor, I share the story of how I spent my last thousand dollars on buying a ticket to Darren’s class and then buying an airplane flight to go see him in California in a hotel.
RV (01:50):
It was like the last I had in my checking account as I was coming out of graduate school. And it was the best thing that I ever did. Darren’s training on humor, which is not the only thing he talks about. He teaches all sorts of things around presentations, mechanics, and business. And we’ll talk about stage time university and some of the other things that he’s got going on, but, but that commitment to come and spend a few days with him changed my entire career. And the things that I learned from Darren have stuck with me for years and years and years. And we’ve never actually made the time to go back and do an interview. And I saw him last week at the national speakers association. I said, buddy, we got to bring you on to share the secrets. So welcome to the show.
DL (02:32):
Hey, thrilled to be here. Rory and I, as I told you, before we even started, I am so proud of you and what you’ve done and what you’ve created. There’s nothing cooler to a mentor than seeing the students surpass the mentor. You have stolen the pebble from my hand.
RV (02:50):
Well, I really appreciate that, man. I you know, you and ed Tate and you know, Craig Valentine and Mark Brown, I mean, you guys were, I really learned the craft of speaking and specifically with you. And when I often tell your story, I, it most comes up just around humor because that was, that was the thing. Like for me, that seemed the most unrealistic. Like I knew when I said, if I’m going to win the world championship of public speaking, like you have to be funny. And I said, I’m not funny like that. So that was, that was like this big roadblock. And also to be a professional speaker. I was like, this is going to meet my biggest dilemma. Like my biggest barrier is that I’m not funny. And then I met you and you had gone through all of this work and this research of figuring out and making it, making it practical of going, actually, this is a skill it’s not, it’s not just talent. So do you still believe that? I know it’s been 20 years since
DL (03:59):
I believe it more than ever, you know, that’s the one thing you’re either born funny or you’re not, and that’s a, that’s a big myth. I remember when I first was working up the courage to ask a comedian for advice to go through this crazy thing. Cause I just like, you was not funny. I was quiet. I was shy. I had no business being on a stage and I just decided I was at such a low point in my life. I’ve got to just try it because I can’t live with the regret of wondering what if, and I asked this comedian, that was, he was a headliner, never been to a comedy show before. And I said, what do I need to do? And he asked me a question. He said, are you funny? I said, no. And he said, good. And I’m like, good.
DL (04:40):
What do you mean? Good? And he was the one that first explained that people who are the class clown, people are the naturally funny people. He said, that’s one skillset. He said, but if you handed them a microphone and put them in front of a group of 100 strangers, they couldn’t make them laugh. He said, but that skillset can be learned. You know, I turned into Scooby doo. I’m like, what? You know, he just handed me an ounce of hope. And as you know, just like I told you, number one, he said, go get the book. And I’m like book, there’s a book about standup comedy. And so, yeah, of course his books about everything, but I wasn’t thinking that way. And you and I both got the book by Judy Carter, stand up comedy, the book and going through the exercises. I realized comedians don’t want you to know that they actually go through a lot of work to get there. But what I learned was the structure of comedy, the structure of humor and that just like anything can be learned. And eventually I was able to find a way to make it work for me and my style.
RV (05:44):
Yeah. Well, and I, I did read that book as well as every other book that you recommended. Yeah. And then, and then wrote one. And, and I, I actually, after I went through all those, I, one of the reasons that I wrote, and this is, you know, Darren knows, but nobody else does because my very first book, people think take the stairs was my first book. Because we set the world up to be that way. It was my first traditionally published book and our team, you know, we did the huge bestseller launch and all that stuff. But I actually wrote a book called how to be funny, to make more money, which was a self published book before that Darren remembers, that was how I paid my bills in the early days. And I was disappointed with a lot of the books that I read because they weren’t as straightforward and practical.
RV (06:29):
They felt still artsy and not science-y. But when you taught it to me, I felt like, yeah, there’s there’s structure here. There’s a, there’s a, there’s a systematic process to the, to the, to the whole game of, of of comedy. So can you talk about what that is? You know, just like what, what, what is the premise like you even say that because you go, even the class clown, can’t grab a mic and suddenly make everybody laugh. I think that is that’s worth everybody knowing. And so when you dive in or you think about, okay, what is it then that makes an audience laugh and what is the work that comedians are doing that they don’t want us to know about as a part of like, you know, getting to that place.
DL (07:17):
Yeah. I have presenters and speakers come to me like I got to write a funny speech. How do I write a funny speech, especially in Toastmasters, around humorous speech contest time. And they’re like, what’s funny, what’s, what’s a subject. What’s a funny subject. I’m like, I don’t know. I don’t know your life. And just like you and I went through the Judy Carter book, she said, what are your flaws? What are your failures? So Craig Valentine. And I say, what are your failures, your flaws, and your first, your failures, your flaws and your first. So again, it’s understanding the process, a class clown. If you force them to go up on stage in front of a hundred strangers, what they would do is they’d go do movie quotes. They’d do characters, they’d rip off Robin Williams or Jerry Seinfeld. And they’d tell other people’s material.
DL (08:03):
Well, that’s, that’s illegal. It’s not right. And you would never get booked as a speaker or a comedian if you’re doing other people’s material. I remember in my early days of standup by Saara, I was studying Robin Williams, so much word for word and writing out his jokes. And I was doing an open mic night. I saw this guy go up for his very first time. And he was literally doing Robin Williams, word for word. And he bombed. And that was a whoa, it’s not just the words. It’s the character, it’s a persona. And it’s also coming from your life. You know, one of my first jokes written out of the Judy Carter book was what’s a failure. Well, my subway sandwich shop, you know, that was a huge failure. And then she walks you through a process and understanding the delivery part of it, the attitude part of it.
DL (08:53):
I think, you know, Rory, when people telling stories, whether they’re funny or not, but it’s that storytelling bringing it to the point of dialogue where we hear thoughts or their internal thoughts, or we hear the conversation. That’s where the vibrant emotion is. So I looked at my $60,000 debt and she said, okay, brag about it. I’m like what brag about it? And that’s not how normal people think. So if you’d agree with this, that funny people think differently than if we want to be funny, or we need to think the way funny people think. And what we’re saying is we’ve got to look at it the way they look at it. And that’s what you discovered. That’s what I discovered was there’s processes that comedians and humorous go through to create the humor. And then there’s still some testing and tweaking and testing and tweaking great jokes.
DL (09:50):
Aren’t written, they’re rewritten, great speeches. Aren’t written, they’re rewritten. But most people, when you see somebody on their own comedy special, or on one of the late night comedy shows or tonight show or something, you’re seeing the culmination of years and years of one little five minute routine, you don’t see the work. And I think that’s the thing. If you’re willing to put in the work, you could make something funny. You know, the fastest way would be to hire a humorous joke writer, but still you’ve got to own the material they’ve got to interview you. They’ve got to dig it out of you. And then you could have somebody quote, unquote, punch it up, but you still have to deliver it. And so the Judy Carter joke, as you know, my Mark Brown story, that wasn’t even in my championship speech. And mark said, Hey, you know, your speech is about failure.
DL (10:40):
We need a failure. And I’m like, oh well, I used to do this joke about my shop. And he said, go ahead and do it. And I delivered it right there in the board room. No one else is around. And I said, you know, I don’t want to brag, but I took a $60,000 debt. And in six short months I doubled that debt. And so, you know, but it’s a bragging about failing and without the structure and understanding from Judy Carter and going through the exercises like, but when you go through the exercises, what you’re doing is training your brain to look for those things. I mean, you know, you probably watch comedy now and after you learned it, you can see the joke coming. You can see the twist, you can see the punchline. Why? Because you’ve trained your brain to think in a funny way.
RV (11:27):
Yeah. And I, I think, you know, you’re, you’ve, you’ve mentioned a couple of components here that I want to draw out for everybody because you know, the way that I’ve kind of even teed up this conversation is the writing of the joke, right? Like, okay, how do you write the joke? But you’ve already touched on that. A huge part of it is the delivery of the joke and the persona. But then there’s this other part, which I P I think people overlook and even I overlooked for a really long time, which is that identifying the opportunity as the first, like the first key step is to identify, oh, there’s something funny here. And I think it’s like, if you could, it’s, if you can capture it, like, if you can set this alarm, like, ah, there’s something around it, and then you can run it through the mechanics of writing it.
RV (12:20):
And then you get enough stage time, which, you know, I’m surprised we’ve made it a few minutes into this conversation. And we haven’t talked about the Darren LaCroix mantra is stage time, stage, time, stage, time. I mean, that was the thing that was just drilled into my head and thousands of Toastmasters over years and years and years just hear Darren say stage time, stage, time, stage, time. Cause that’s the delivery part. Like you can’t learn the delivery part without just practicing, but coming back to identify, because I’d like to talk about writing and then maybe delivery a little bit as well. Now you, you said earlier, you know, your failures, your flaws and your first. That’s awesome. I’ve never heard you say that before. Where was, where was that? 20 years ago when I needed it. So are there any other tips you have around identifying the opportunity? Cause it’s, I think that’s kind of what, what, I didn’t know, which I do now, and you’re alluding to it is that there, nobody just sits down and goes and writes this brilliant line. Right? It’s, it’s a process that we take people through and if we can go, how do we, how do we identify? Is there anything else around like us noticing it? Yeah.
DL (13:32):
And I know your audience, there’s a lot of people who are presenters. There are entrepreneurs, there are coaches here listening. So one of the ways is if you can create some humor for your specific audience and we’re, we, I don’t know if you knew this early on. When I came from a stand-up comedy into keynote speaking, I basically had no speech. It was just, what is the humerus? So what I would do is I took my clean jokes and I turned them into corporate jokes. And then I was just, I didn’t have enough content for 45 minutes. So what I did is I overcompensated and I customized about them because I still had a day job. And I had a lot of time. Cause I wasn’t speaking that much. So what I would do, one of my secrets leading into what your question is, is I would always call up the clients.
DL (14:22):
And I would ask for 10 names of people who are being in the audience, not just the board of directors, I want the people on the ground, whatever that means in that organization or association. And I want to interview them. And what I ask them is what are your pet peeves? And then I’ll ask them, what are your frustrations? It’s pretty much the same question, but it actually kind of like jumps into a little different part of their brain because humor, okay. Different. Let me differentiate bringing comedy and humor. Comedy cuts down, humor, lifts up comedy. It cuts down means there’s a victim means where, you know, we’re making fun of someone. Well, you can’t really do that in the corporate world, unless it’s the competition. That’s, you know the exception then they’ll love you, but humor lifts up. So when we mean lifting up, what are we talking about?
DL (15:12):
Well, we’re talking about a release of tension. So finding the humor is where is the tension? Where is the tension in their lives? So if I’m talking to a bank, okay. At that bank, where is there tension? If I’m talking to entrepreneurs, where is there tension? Okay. So for entrepreneurs, it might be their employees or staff. If I’m talking to employees or staff, it might be the boss. So where is that frustration? So we need to find where the tension is in order to release it, find where it is order to release it. And then one of my favorite principles, I don’t know if I learned this before I worked with you or after, but I call it the registration desk principle. When I go to a convention or conference, when they’re live, I go to the registration desk and when no one’s around, I pull aside the people who are working the desk and I say, why are people complaining about because their complaints are their frustrations.
DL (16:07):
So I’m not looking for one rogue thing I’m looking for. What is that commonality? So just to give you a quick example, one, I was speaking to save international society for the advancement of value. Engineers still don’t know what that is, but that was, and it was in San Antonio, Texas, and you know, every convention and conference, there’s the tension of those people, the engineers, but there’s also the tension of the event. So I was asking them and at first they said, no. And then they said, well, yeah, everybody can’t find a, one of the meeting rooms HASI and the G. And I was like, oh, that’s interesting. Cause all the meeting rooms are in one area, but they had one more meeting room and it was way off the beaten path. So when I walked up there on stage, I said, you know, good morning, Hey, if you’re looking for HASI and the G and boom, okay.
DL (16:58):
Because it is the common frustration. It is top of mind, I got them. And then I just tagged it. I said, just go out the back door, go through the kitchen. It gets a laugh, go out to Crockett avenue, go about a mile and a half down. When you get to the Alamo, take a right. And they were just rolling, but I identified their tension and that would work anywhere else or would it I’m speaking at the Rio and I was speaking for contours express. These are owners, entrepreneurs, owners of a workout place that used to be, I don’t even know if they’re still in existence, but they were the, the competition to curves, you know? So a woman’s workout place and they’re all the owners and they’re here in Vegas at the Rio. If you know the Rio if you don’t know the Rio, there’s like one tall of rooms where all the rooms are.
DL (17:52):
And then the convention center, you’re going to walk a mile and a half down a hallway, take a right walk, another mile and a half, take a left, walk another it’s far. And so the cool thing about being a middle-aged bald guy is I blend in and nobody notices me before I go on stage. So I just go in and I’m listening, I’m listening. And I hear women. It was 99% women. I hear women in the hallway. They’re wearing their heels. They’re like, wow, this is a long walk. Oh my gosh, I should’ve wore my sneakers, dah, dah, dah, dah. And so I go up on stage and I say, Hey, welcome to the Rio. Isn’t it beautiful. And everybody claps. And I say, I don’t know if you know this or not, but Rio is actually a native American term, which stands for long flip and hall.
RV (18:40):
And in that moment, boom, boom.
DL (18:43):
He loved it. And you know, it won’t work in anywhere else unless there’s a similar frustration. So
RV (18:51):
Go ahead. Well, how do you, so, so I love this, cause this is, you could add this to your list of apps, right? You’ve got your first, your failures your, your flaws, your failures, your first, the frustrations. So like, so how do you write it now? What is one thing that you know, these are, these are such great examples. And in my experience, this is also true. That anything that is real-time in the moment, it’s like, it doesn’t even have to be funny. Like, all you have to do is mention Hacienda G it doesn’t matter how you get there. You just say HASI and to G you know, couldn’t find it. Like, it, it, it’s hilarious is that basically all there
DL (19:32):
Is it’s about them. Well, that is easy. That’s a first step. And the more you do it, but again, just like you, the more you study it, the more you can identify, but you also have to be careful that you’re not upsetting the event planner. You know, if you’re brought in as a speaker. So I always go and have a conversation with the person who paid me, not the person who works for the person who paid me and I run it by them just to make sure I said, look, they’re already upset. They can’t find Hacienda. G like, if I can relieve that tension, you’re going to get less complaints later on. If you don’t want me to bring that up, that’s fine. It’s your call. So I kind of run it by them. And usually they’re like, oh, please do something. Cause they’re complaining.
DL (20:16):
Anyway. So, but as you know, going through the books like that, what most people don’t know, but comedians do is that there are formulas. There are comedy formulas that we learn that you go through. So Rio is a native American term means long flip and hallway. Well, Robin Williams, believe it or not, even though he’s unbelievable at what he does, nobody was better at improv than him. And he would just, you know, fire things off like that photographic memory, but even used formulas when the formula works. So knowing the formula and then how you can take that frustration and pop it into a formula. So for example, Robin Williams had a joke that was a divorce coming from the Latin term, meaning to rip a man’s genitalia out through his wallet. But it’s the same exact formula. What’s the word. Okay. Rio. They were all in his divorce. And then you take the term and I call this, I didn’t invent the formula. I just noticed it. And I named it redefining the redefining formula. So I redefine a word named that the audience is aware of, but I redefine it tying into the frustration of the audience. Right. So that’s just one example, but knowing the formula, so first step is like, Hey, go and learn all the formulas and then you’ll start noticing patterns. Yeah.
RV (21:48):
Yeah. And, and, you know you teach the formulas, we teach them that we’ve come to. But you know, I think all of them, all of these formulas kind of come back to this one idea, which is around the, like basically predicting the brain predicts what it thinks it’s going to hear. And when you say something different than that, that’s kind of like, that’s kind of like the twist now, the thing that’s cool about the F the frustration part of this is like, you don’t even have to know the formula. You just have to, you just have to say it. Once, you know, once you know, the formulas, it’s super powerful because you can, you can, you can kind of like quickly fill in the blanks for things, but on, on that one, w would you say that half, half the battle, at least half the battle is just identifying, this is what everyone’s talking about. This is what they’re frustrated about it. And you just kind of like, bring it up. Yeah. Yeah.
DL (22:43):
That’s 80% of it. I would say because you’re, what’s top of mind set up and a punchline. So a setup is already in the mind of the audience. So what we’re looking for is what are they thinking about? What’s top of mind. Now, if I go back to a convention or a conference two years ago, of course, COVID, isn’t even on the radar screen now it’s top of mind, but now it’s also over done. You want to puke when you hear the word pivot, you’re like, oh yeah, that’s a brilliant idea. So, anyway, it’s knowing what’s top of mind, but again, asking the question. So frustrations change over time and going back to what you just said, the twist, the best analogy I’ve ever heard was George Carlin. He said, it’s like a train going down, a train track. You can see clearly and exactly where the train is going.
DL (23:31):
You see the tracks, you know, the train is going that way. We laugh when our mind is successfully tricked. We laugh when our mind is successfully tricked. And what that means is we laugh when the train is derailed. When we an expectation, what I say, the way I define it as a setup is creating an expectation. A punchline is changing that expectation. So in my championship speech, I talked about Dr. Goddard’s rocket launch, and I said, the rocket took off and it went vertically and I do a big motion, really enthusiastic. And then I say, landed in Auburn. So I create the expectation the rocket went far, but then I do a very matter of fact delivery that it landed in Auburn,
RV (24:18):
Right. Where it took off. Yeah. And that’s, I mean, there’s, there’s there, there’s so many great moments in that speech, which I think is that it’s on, is that on YouTube? Can you go just Google, Darren LaCroix, 2001 world championship speed is still, is still on there. So not, not all every year is up there, but certain ones are, and yours is one of them
DL (24:37):
For the rights to put it up there. Yeah.
RV (24:39):
It’s just, it’s it’s it is literally just classic. I mean, seeing the, the punchline after a punchline. The, the, the other thing that I wanted to talk about in terms of identifying slash writing is callbacks. So frustrations and callbacks to me have a very similar I guess like characteristic of one another, which is that you don’t really have to know the formula. You pretty much just have to comment on the thing and everybody laughs you know, that you got frustration. So can you, can you talk about what a callback is? Cause I think callbacks are one of the easiest ways to get laughs immediately, if you literally just know what it is and just like, you just gotta like flip the switch in your brain and go, okay, I need to be looking for callbacks. Can you, can you talk, talk us through the concept? Yeah. When
DL (25:34):
I get to a convention or a conference, I try to get there and spend a day with the people at the convention, just sitting there listening and observing. But what I’m looking for is what are those big emotional moment or what are the funny moments? Like if a speaker has a funny line and it’s lampshade, like I want to in my speech, see if I can hide it, but then bring up lampshade because it’s gotta be an automatic trigger. So a callback is literally calling back or referring back to a word or a moment. Now we don’t want to just call back to anything. We want to call back to either big emotion or big laughs. So I always, if I’m not able to be there a day ahead of time, I will literally walk around asking people, Hey, what was the funniest moment? What, what do you remember? And it’s looking for commonality, that’s the key I’m looking for commonality. If one person thought one thing was funny. That is not enough. We’re looking for that commonality. So, eh, I don’t know if you were there, but in 2002 I was speaking, I was doing ouch, my winning at the NSA convention from the main stage and it was in Arizona and they had this big opening pomp and circumstance and a guy’s riding in on a horse. Do you remember this
RV (26:57):
Guys? I don’t know if I was there.
DL (26:59):
Okay. Guys riding in on a horse, playing a banjo and it was a big pomp and circumstance opening. It was great. He was awesome. He was talented and the horse goes right up to the front of the stage and he’s playing his banjo well in the middle of the song, the horse poops, but he’s got, but he’s got a bucket on, but the horse overshoots the bucket. Oh. And now, and so yeah, it was a funny moment. It’s like, Hey, it’s a horse. That’s what horses do. So I got Michael on, I don’t know if you know, Michael on a pass world champion, ed Tate and a couple other people. And I sat down and I was like, okay, tomorrow morning, I’m speaking on this stage. How can I use that? How can I call back to that moment? So I’m looking at the opening of my speech.
DL (27:44):
And if you remember, I CA well, I came out and I follow my face in my winning speech. And I give Potter my speech intentionally from the stage. So I do it the same way. I always do it. And then I just go, is this where the horse did it? And it was an 11 second laugh. It was the biggest laugh I’ve probably ever got then people in NSA, still talk about that moment. I’m like, this was a setup from God, you know, like to be able to do my speech the next day, where I fall on my face and the horse pooped the night before and everybody, sorry, you know, that’s the thing is if everybody didn’t see it, it, wouldn’t be funny, really looking for that universal callback in that situation. So if there’s a speaker who talks about microphones and you know, the microphone fell in the toilet, you know, you want to, okay, how can I use it? How can I call back to that? So you look in the middle of your speech or maybe at the opening, how you can connect. Cause it’s taking that emotionally charged moment and tapping into the goodness, the good energy of that moment. So it’s one of the simplest, most powerful things that anyone can do. The callback.
RV (28:55):
Yeah. That’s and if, if I were to follow you, I would go, oh, Darren LaCroix laid off, fell on his face and was laying on stage. That would be an opportunity potentially for a call back. Like, I wouldn’t know exactly in that moment, just like you didn’t in about the horse, but you go, this is a big moment that everybody saw. Everybody will remember this moment. And so that’s where you identify, I love what you said. I did not know that backs, that backstory that you said, okay, you identified it. And then you grab some of your buddies and said, Hey, this happened, how could I use this? And again, it doesn’t have to be the, the beautiful part about both frustrations and callbacks is they have to be brilliantly written, like 90% of the game is just like mentioning it. And I, I love that. So I want to ask you about delivery too, but before we do that, so I got one last question about delivery. Darren, where should people go? I know we’ve had, this has been an awesome deep dive in, into the world of humor, but you teach storytelling stage mechanics, like all the components of also, you know, creating speeches, getting books for your first speeches. Where, where do you want to send people to, if they want to learn more about what you’re up to? Sure. Thanks for
DL (30:19):
Asking. If you want to know the top 10 mistakes speaking mistakes, I’ve been coaching for two decades all around the world, executives, speakers, coaches, and just go to be a sponge.com and it’s a free download. It’s a PDF and yes, you would get my newsletter. So if you want to just get the PDF and opt off, no worries. Just do it. And also the top 10 virtual mistakes. If you want to know about my [email protected],
RV (30:47):
I love that. So we’ll put a link there to be a sponge.com. You can download that. All right. So we talked about identifying a couple of tips on writing when it comes to delivery, what would you say is the, the, the biggest thing that you have to know or understand about delivering the moment like delivering the punchline? You know, the joke, the set up like just the, you know, standing on stage and saying, saying the bit.
DL (31:16):
Yeah, to me, the biggest thing is understanding the power of dialogue. You know, I had been a Toastmaster for seven years in four clubs work my butt off part-time professional, but it wasn’t until I met my coach, Mark Brown, where he showed me that I was telling my stories in the past tense. What I needed to do is bring the audience into the moment. In the first version of my speech, I told people about telling my parents, I wanted to be a comedian. He said, no, no, no. Bring us to the moment, let us hear it, which is dialogue. And then piggybacking on that, my delivery, like one of the places I stand out, every speaker has their skills as a coach and as a speaker and one of mine is character delivery. But what I do well is I convey the emotion, body language, not gesture.
DL (32:04):
A gesture is a rehearse body movement that has no emotional connection to the moment. So what I teach people to do is go watch a Pixar movie, but keep an eye on the eyes of the two dimensional character on stage, because they, the shape of the eye changes with the emotion of the character. When we’re delivering, we need to say it in dialogue, whether it’s internal or external, but we need to convey the emotion of the moment. And then the third biggest thing is we need to show a shift of emotion. So if the story, if we’re telling a story for business purposes, for entertainment purposes, the heart of the story, there’s a shift in emotion. So I always get people, identify the emotion at the beginning of the story and the emotion at the end of the story. And if there’s no change of emotion, that’s not the story.
DL (32:58):
You have the wrong part. There has to be some shift and at least one character. So to show that, you know, you can record yourself and go back and watch the recording shut off the sound and would, you know the emotion of the character. Now, you don’t, I’m animated, but that’s just me and my style. You’ve got to do it your way in your style. But when I went home to tell my parents, I want to be a comedian on stage. It was. So I was all excited. Imagine, you know, my parents’ reaction after stretching their budget to help me through college. And I go home and I walked in the door, mom, dad, I want to be a comedian.
DL (33:37):
I was met by silence. Ouch. So if you’re listening to the podcast, you couldn’t see my face change, but you probably heard it in my voice. Same thing. They’re connected. So I come in excited. So if I was to break down that story, just break down your story, look at your characters, name, each of the character and that one, there’s three characters, mom, dad, and Darren. And what’s their emotion at the beginning. Okay. Mine’s excited. Okay. Mom and dad, they don’t even talk, but they have a beginning emotion, which is they’re anticipating what their son’s going to say. They’re eager. They want to hear. And then boom, I asked that question and mine goes to shock. There’s Kosta, shocked and dismayed. So in that tiny little 17 second story, there’s a shift in at least one character. So if you you’ll be a better storyteller, if you can identify the beginning emotion, the end emotion and make sure you convey it through dialogue, using body language,
RV (34:34):
Love it. Love it, love it. Y’all this is just the beginning. There’s so much to explore here. Obviously we’ve been students of it, our whole career, myself, a J our team. There’s, there’s so much just in the mechanics of presentations that everybody thinks they’re a great speaker. When they, when they come to work with brand builders group, nobody said like, very few people are like, oh yeah, I need help with my speech. Everybody goes, oh, no, I got that part down. And it’s like, you have no idea. Like you have no idea the level of crafting, and it’s not just what Darren does or what we do. Like you said, it’s Robin Williams. It’s Jerry Seinfeld. It’s it is every like the greatest orators on the planet are that way, because they have worked at this. They’ve had stage time, stage, time, stage, time, they’ve been coached through it.
RV (35:25):
They, they, they work onlines, as Darren said, grade lines, aren’t written they’re rewritten. And anyways, Darren, thanks for giving us a little bit of insight into that today. And some practical things that we can do to, to be funnier. I’m so grateful for you, man. And the impact that you’ve had on my life our life, you know, and then yeah, now the, the hundreds of members inside a brand builders group that we’re trying to help, you know, go make a difference in the world through the stuff that you’ve taught us. And man, we just wish you the best. Thanks buddy.
DL (35:55):
Thanks for having me and congratulations on all your success.

Ep 206: How to be a Better Writer with John David Mann

RV (00:07):
Hey, brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview as always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders, group.com/pod call. We hope to talk to you soon.
RV (00:54):
I would consider my first major media appearance ever to have been in an outlet called networking times magazine. And I got, I want to say I was maybe 22 years old when I got a full, like three page spread story that was written about me. That was huge because it was huge for my confidence. We got some great reach out of the article, and then we included screenshots of that article in the book proposal that we ended up using to get our, our first book deal for take the stairs. Well that the writer of that article is the man that you are about to meet today. His name is John David Mann, and so we had been friends literally since the beginning of my career. And then he Koa, he he’s written about 30 books. They’ve been translated into 35 languages. They’ve sold millions of copies.
RV (01:50):
I still to this day, my, my favorite book and John has written so many since then, but the go giver is my favorite book. He coauthored that with my friend Bob Burg, and that book has just been one of the top five books of all time for me that I’ve ever read. John’s written several fables and just released his first fiction book, which is pretty fascinating. We’ll hear about that. And he also has a new ebook out that’s exclusively only as an ebook called how to write good or at least good, or, and so anyways, my old friend is really great to have you, I can’t wait to pick your brain on some of the writing secrets. Thanks for making time for us.
JDM (02:39):
It’s great. It’s a cliche to say, but it has been too long, but the time is just right. So yeah, good to be here. Good to see you.
RV (02:46):
And I feel like, you know, we, we kind of have touched base every couple years for now, like 20 years and it’s like a few, a few years ago by, and then it’s like, you got a new book or we’re doing something and you know, tell me about so I want to hear just about the fiction book quickly. I mean, I wanna, I wanna understand your writing process, or maybe you can merge these together. What I’m really interested in knowing you know, this podcast is all for personal brands. A lot of what we talk about is digital marketing and branding and positioning and messaging. And we actually don’t talk that much about writing, like at its true core, writing a story, creating content, and you’ve done this non-fiction, you’ve done fables now you’ve done fiction. And I, you know, my only goal today is to try to like steal all your secrets about your writing process for F to get, to get those out of you for free. But you, you just did your first fiction book. So I’m curious, how, why did you do that? How is that different from the other stuff that you have done and like, what are some of the lessons that have come out out of that experience? Yeah.
JDM (03:56):
You know, it’s in the course of all these books, you know, as you know, this, there’s been a lot of different kinds of books. I’ve written a handful of memoirs, which is interesting. It’s like basically telling somebody else, tell me your story and I will make it into a book. And so when you read a memoir, your you’re, you’re taking an existing story. That’s reality that really happened to this person. Right. But you’re still trying to find the story in it. So in a sense, you’re taking that person’s story and you’re rewriting it as you’re not making stuff up, but you’re choosing stuff. You’re framing stuff. It’s like making a biopic. If you’re a movie director. Right. And you’re going to write about, you know Freddie mercury are going to write about you know, Gandhi or whoever you’re gonna write about what events do you choose?
JDM (04:42):
How do you string them together? So you’re fashioning a story and you know, about writing in general. My belief is that no matter what you’re writing, whether you’re writing somebody else’s memoir or a straight non-fiction book, like some of the books I’ve done that are sort of business nonfiction, concept books, or a parable, a fable clearly, or a novel like this was, it just came out or Hey, if you’re writing a blog post or you’re writing a Facebook post or a LinkedIn article, or you’re writing a promotional piece, you’re telling a story, you’ve got a beginning, middle and end. You’re, you’re creating an arc, you’re creating some suspense, you’re creating some interests, you’re creating some intrigue and you’re answering some questions or at least you’re posing some questions. It’s all kind of the same thing. I mean, they’re really different, really different forms, but there’s this, there’s this basic sort of storytelling, DNA imprint.
JDM (05:41):
We’ve all got inside us, huddled around a campfire or huddled around, you know, in a cave however long ago hearing about the saber tooth tiger that one of us killed. We’ve all still kind of got this. Tell me what happened next gene in us. And that’s what expresses itself in story in any medium. So yeah, the novel was wild and completely different experience in one sense. You know, as I think it was telling you before we started that, that I feel like I’ve been climbing these lovely little Hills for 15 years. And all of a sudden I’m like with an oxygen mask on the top of Mount Everest, climbing this novel, say, how do I get up here? And how do I get down, especially how do I get down without breaking my neck? Cause 400 plus page novel. That sounds, that’s a thriller on top of it, which means you can’t let up the tension for a moment. You can’t let it dispense for a moment. You can’t let up the pace for him keeping someone’s attention. So they’re turning pages for 460 pages. It’s a whole different challenge and a whole different world than writing the golden giver which has to do the same thing. But in this little tiny form, it’s like the Go-Giver is like a miniature.
RV (07:00):
I know in a lot of your books are so short, like, like the fables there, you can sit down and read them in one sitting like 400 pages is it’s totally different.
JDM (07:10):
Yeah, yeah, yeah. It’s totally different. By the way, out of all the writing I’ve done, I’ve come to a point where the two things I love to do most are the, are the fables and the novels. So it’s, that’s like, that’s, that’s my, that’s my career, Catherine. I love those parables. I love taking a life message or, or a life principle and spinning that into a story that feels real, that feels compelling, you know, about people that you care come to care about. And if a parable, you know, I say it in the book, how to write good. I say a parables are really easy to write poorly.
RV (07:50):
Yeah. I mean that, like, to me, it freaks me out because you know, I just think the power of a parable, like I think of AIJ. So my wife my business partner, this, our CEO of brand builders group, she, you know, she always makes fun of me for reading boring business books. She calls them boring business books. And, and she loves, she loves fables cause she gets hooked on the story and she, you know, she, she loves to read fiction. And so the, her, her favorite, you know, books, business books are fables and some of mine are too, you know, I think of like the five dysfunctions of a team from pat Lensioni. And then of course you guys did a whole bunch in the, in the Go-Giver series. But like, so can you so here’s my question. Here’s what I don’t think I’m very good at. And I think a lot of people aren’t good at both in writing and speaking is how do you create suspense? Like you just mentioned that for 400 pages, you can’t let off the gas for a second. How do you, like, what is suspense? How do you create it? And then like, how do you know how to write it?
JDM (09:07):
Yeah, I think that’s, that’s a great question. And I think that you know, contact kind of thinking, I’m kind of framing my, my thoughts in the parable space at the moment, because there’s the Go-Giver books. I had the opportunity to write the sequel to who moved my cheese, which was a experience on the other end of the spectrum, right? Cause steal fear. The novel is like 450 page thriller about a serial killer on an aircraft carrier at a wholly different thing who moved my cheese is written at the level of a child it’s Spencer Johnson wrote children’s books. And, and he actually wrote literally children’s books in addition to his adult books. And so to write in the style of Spencer Johnson and write a SQL to who moved my cheese, it’s called out of the maze, was like, I had to, you know, put your brain into that, into that container.
JDM (10:00):
But there’s still suspense in there. And the suspense of the Go-Giver because there’s, you know, in the Go-Giver for those of you who haven’t read it, there’s this character called the connector and you don’t know who he is. And there’s this character called the Friday guests and you don’t know who he is and Joe has got this problem and you can’t imagine how he’s going to solve it. And there, there are these various questions that you don’t really see how they’re going to resolve themselves, but they do the, the, the requirement for the ending of a great mystery or a great suspense novel. Even the book, I would say like the Go-Giver requirement is that when you reach the end, you go, wow, I never saw that coming. And yet the moment you see it, you go, of course, that had to happen. It has to be inevitable, but a complete surprise at the same time, if it’s a surprise and you go, like Yvette came out of left field, I have no idea how that happened.
JDM (10:58):
That’s not fair. You broke the rules of the game. It has to be believable and inevitable and yet I didn’t see it coming. So, you know, actually our lives are like that. I mean, my marriage is like that. I’m, I’m married to my best friend, this amazing woman. And I meeting her was a complete surprise. It’s not something I ever could have planned, you know, writing the Go-Giver with Bob Berg was a complete surprise. It wasn’t something I sought. I’m getting off topic there, but so how do you create suspense? It’s kind of the opposite of giving a lecture or, or lecturing in the worst sense. You’re lecturing in the sense of, of just talking at people. Obviously if you give a great public talk, you don’t do this. You tell stories in a great public talk, but when you’re just lecturing at people, when you’re just telling people something, when you’re just talking at, let’s say you’re mansplaining, I’ll use current terminology.
JDM (11:58):
Like that’s, that’s this awful form of communication where you’re not listening. You’re just talking. Suspense is created by questions. What creates suspenses you pose questions. And not only do you not know the answer, but you can’t even imagine what the answer is. Like, where is this going? Like, where did that come from? What, you know, the classic thriller is kind of a, who done it, you know who somebody’s got dead, it’s murder in there. So who, who killed the person, but you don’t need murder to have mystery. There’s mystery in the seven habits of highly effective people, because the moment you see the title, you go, wow, what are those? How well does Stephen Covey unwrap those, those seven habits? The stories he tells that reveal them. It’s not a super suspenseful book, but he unwraps beautifully. So suspense is about setting up a question and then unwrapping the answer piece by piece in a way that every little morsel is delicious and every little morsel leaves you wanting more. That’s I don’t know if that’s a good way of describing it, but that’s the best way I can think of. I
RV (13:16):
Know. Well, I know it’s, it’s, it’s just hard, you know, I think of storytelling and there’s like so many things, it’s this beautiful blend of both science and art, right? Like there’s structure, there’s a lot of structure to it. And I think you know, a lot of it is artistic even, even to hear you describe it, I mean, to go, okay, I know I need to create an ending that is inevitable, but unpredictable, I’m gonna, that’s how I captured what you were saying. Right. It’s it’s like, of course it had to end that way, but I didn’t see that coming. And then you go, okay, I have to create questions along the way. And so, you know, do you just create questions through characters or like what, what if it is a non-fiction type of writing? I mean, obviously if it’s a parable, which I, which maybe is what you’re saying, like, you you’ve really come around to enjoying payables and novels, because you’ve got, I presume that you’ve got these characters and these kinds of dynamics that can create questions without just kind of posing. Well, I was on a, I was on a mission to understand, you know, the answer to this problem. And so I spent five years researching it and here’s what I found is that, that kind of thing. Yeah.
JDM (14:28):
And if you look at I mean, if you look at great non-fiction writing and I’ll give you an example Malcolm Gladwell, you take a book by blink or, or a book, the tipping point, or, you know, he’s got so many of these that are there along the same lines where they take the hero of the story is not a person. The hero of a story is a concept. It’s like an idea, like the tipping point, it’s how little things make a big impact. That isn’t the exact word, but something like that. Right? So he takes an idea and he unwraps it, using a lot of stories. He does exactly what you do when you’re on stage or what any good speaker does when you’re on stage. You have an idea you want to convey to your audience and you convey it by, by stringing stories together, little vignettes from your life or other, other people’s lives.
JDM (15:19):
Because when you can, you can, you can frame a principle around real people or real characters. It comes to life for people. So Aesop could have said, you know, if you’re slow and steady, if you’re careful what you’re doing, you’re gonna, you’re going to get there sooner, but people will go. Yeah, actually, that’s great. So instead he creates this hair and this tortoise, and now you go, well, who’s going to win the race. I think the hair is going to win. It’s obvious. Right. But it must be not him, but it must be the tortoise because he’s the slow one. But how is that going to work? You know, it’s like, it’s interesting. Suddenly that’s an example of a story at the parables in the Bible, in the new Testament are great examples of teaching tools, teaching stories that are, that, that make principles come to life with characters.
JDM (16:01):
But so back to your question for me, the answer is, yes, you said, do you create these questions through characters? I do. I do. I set up, you know, for me, whether I’m writing a novel or a parable, there’s a basic idea of kind of the setup. Like when Bob and I started working on the Go-Giver, he already had the title. We kind of knew the point of the story. Not kind of, we knew the point of the story. The point of the story was if you put your focus on others, more than yourself, on what you can provide in value, as opposed to what you can get in a value in any situation, your life will be better. That was the point, oh, we could have done the Go-Giver in a sentence and then a sentence. Yeah, that’s it. The point of my novel steal fear is a disgrace Navy seal stocks, a serial killer on an aircraft carrier in the middle of the Pacific ocean.
JDM (17:12):
And obviously you figure the point is going to be, he gets caught. We think, we hope you can kind of tell the story in a sentence. But then you, you create these characters and then you, you just breathe enough life into them so that they feel real. And then you see what happens and you start asking the questions like, well, what happens when he goes here? What happens when he goes there? Joe is beginning of the Go-Giver has a problem. What’s his problem. He’s in a business he’s frustrated. What’s, you’re frustrated about. I don’t know. We didn’t know. So you start asking questions. The beauty of, of doing that in both a parable and a novel is that I, the writer don’t necessarily know the answers. It’s like, I work to figure out what the answers are. I work to follow the story and see where’s this going? And so when, when the reader, when you, the reader start to follow the breadcrumbs from page to page, I was doing the same thing. You were a few months, I didn’t know either when
RV (18:17):
You have the whole arc mapped out, like you kind of know the ultimate destination, like you’re saying like the premise that he will have the book, right? Like you kind of know, okay, this is the very end. And then you kind of go, okay, let’s, here’s a couple of characters. And then, and then you just kind of like day by day, you go, what if this happened? What if that happened? Like how, how would these people interact? That’s right,
JDM (18:38):
Exactly what feels right. What seems, and I’ll give you a great example. There’s, you know, the Go-Giver has several books in the parable series and by the way, there’s a fourth one coming. We’ve got the, give her a leader that Go-Giver influencer, which I want to talk about for a sec. Cause it is an example. And then in the spring, we’re going to have the Go-Giver marriage, which my wife and my wife and I co-wrote this one. So we’re excited about that. But in the Go-Giver influencer, the third book, the basic premise of the book is it’s about seeing other people’s points of view. It’s like we could have called it. The Go-Giver negotiator. It’s about people who see things differently, turning an argument into a resolution, turning an opposition into an Alliance. That’s the basic thesis of the book. And so we start out with two characters who are in a tough negotiation and they’re basically opponents.
JDM (19:30):
And we knew that by the end of the book, there was going to be some really cool resolution that neither of them saw coming, but which would totally work. And the thing of it was neither of, neither of us saw it coming either. Like we didn’t know what that resolution was going to be. So it’s like we set up the situation, is it, I wonder how this is going to resolve. We knew what was going to happen at the end was going to resolve how, you know, we were discovering it in the process. So I think there’s, you mentioned earlier, there’s a balancing act. You have sort of the science and the art. There’s, there’s a structure side to writing and there’s kind of a flow side to writing and you’ll hear writers debate about whether you should use an outline or not. They call them plotters versus pantsers, plotters figure out a plot first.
JDM (20:21):
This is what James Patterson does figure out a plot. And then you kind of write the story. Pantsers like writing by the seat of your pants. Pantsers just start at page one and go, Stephen King says he’s a pantser. And I think this debate is a little specious because I really think that if you look got inside their brains, everyone’s doing a little bit of both or a mix of both. I know for me, I always have an outline, but it isn’t where it starts. This is by the way, true for a novel, a parable, it’s true for a blog post. It’s true for an article I’m going to write, I’ll have an outline, but I don’t, it’s not where I start. I start with just like an idea, a concept, a situation, a character, a piece of dialogue, whatever, from something that just as a spark and it’s always going back and forth between taking just random ideas and spontaneous writing stuff and kind of molding it into a structure and then taking the structure and saying, yeah, but then what happens over here? And then messing up again? So I go back and forth between structure and flow. I even have two different places in my, in my room where I, where I do it. I’m sitting at my structure place in my desk and over there in the corner, I can’t get over there in the corner. I have my overstuffed chair, which is where I sit with a pad of paper and a pen and just make stuff up. And I have no idea what’s coming.
RV (21:55):
So how do you get, how do you, well, maybe talk, talk to us about characters, right? Like how do you develop a character? Cause I, you know, like I’ve started watching I’ve started paying attention to this a lot in recent years because one of the things I realized is like, gosh, I have to become a better storyteller. Like to what you’re saying. I’ve realized if I want to get my points across more effectively, I have to become a better storyteller, which actually for me has been frustrating. Like I love the boring, just give me the information. Like I, and it’s hard because as a consumer, I actually do like that, but it’s, I think it’s very rare. Like people, they have to be engaged and entertained and you know, if you just deliver the punchline, it’s not punchy. If there isn’t that suspense or that conflict along the way, it doesn’t sink in. And then so I’m like, well, crap. I have to like, learn how to do this thing. I’m not naturally good at it. And I don’t really love, or didn’t really, I didn’t really love storytelling. And so, you know, like I think of, I think of one of our favorite shows as modern family. I mean, it is, it is our favorite show. We’ve watched it. Have you ever, have you ever seen the show
JDM (23:01):
Completely? Totally. Yes.
RV (23:03):
So we have seen every single episode in every season, every one of them we have seen at least at least six or seven times every single episode. And you know what I realized finally, after years now of watching the show is going, oh, there is a formula to this, which is basically each episode. They start with these characters who have very salient features. So each character has very distinct features. And then every episode they basically say, okay, what if we put these three characters together in these two characters together and these ones, and then go, what would happen if these extreme personalities got paired up in these different arrangements? And then I, and I kind of feel like, oh, that I think that maybe is how they’re, how they’re writing like a chemistry set. Yeah. Like I’m mixing these things together, but you know, so how do you develop characters? Where do you come up with these, you know, ideas? And if you’re just, you know, if you’re doing it, if you’re a pantser and you’re just kinda like letting it flow, how do you do it to where it doesn’t suck and isn’t boring. Yeah.
JDM (24:09):
So for me, by the way, I’m much more structure oriented than, than, than, you know, flow oriented. It’s kind of a very methodical nature. I come at it like a composer and I S you know, I was a composer before I was a writer and classical music was my training, my upbringing. And so I think like, like, you know, a symphonic composer which is a very structural thing. So a couple things about, about characters. First thing I want to say is the fact that you said you’re naturally suck at this is awesome. Because if, if you, if you come to something from a place of nothing naturally inclined to do it, you can become so great. Like, I’ll give you an example. I, I started doing these military books with Brandon Webb, my Navy seal friend. I know nothing about the military. It’s like writing a book in German when I don’t speak German.
JDM (24:57):
And I have to learn the language just to write the book. But, you know, there’s, there’s no one who loves the English language, like somebody who was brought up somewhere else who learns it as their second language. That was my dad’s case. He came from Germany and he like, no, he loved English, like no native American, whatever love. So that’s the first thing I don’t come up with these characters automatically. I’m not, I don’t consider myself a gifted at this naturally, like Stephen King just kind of shakes his arms and colorful characters, spill out. I’m not like that. So I’ll start out with a character, with a character. And by the way, one of my writing teachers says that before you start a novel, you spend weeks and weeks and weeks writing character profiles, where like you ask all these questions, you answer them all, and you, and you come to know this character, like better than, you know, your brother.
JDM (25:50):
Then you start the novel. I tried and I couldn’t really do it. And interesting when I S when I start a character, when I create a character, he’s kind of a, like a stereotype or a caricature at first. So like, you know, Joe and Pindar Joe is this, you know, struggling young business guy. And Pindar is this wise old mentor or in my novel, there’s this captain, the ship captain who a jerk he’s, he’s, he’s a, he’s an. And it was, it would have been so easy to make him like a cartoon villain.
JDM (26:28):
So then what I do is I do something very much like what you do in real life. I used to run a sales organization, and I had people who were terrified and making cold calls and terrified and making sales calls. And they would say, when I get, and they would say, when I get in the phone, it’s like, you know, I freeze up because I feel like, I don’t know. I I’ve got all this stuff, I want to say, but it feels can, that feels hollow. And so my thing was, when you get on the phone, ask yourself the question, who is this person I’m talking to? Yeah, you got your product or your service. You got your stuff, you got your pad, or you’ve got your, your, you know, all of that. That’s already in your head. So just let that go for a moment, ask the question, who is this person I’m talking to?
JDM (27:16):
Not like, what do they need so I can sell them. But just who are they? I’m just curious, be curious about the person and not, you can’t grill them like third degree. Where did you come from? Where’d you grow up? How many siblings do you have? But just be curious. That’s what it’s like with a character. Curiously, these characters, this guy is, is a jerk of a leader. He’s an aircraft carrier captain that is terrible leader. He doesn’t have any sympathy of risk people. He doesn’t talk to his people. No one really looks up to them. They just do, because they have to go that’s the position, but they don’t naturally because they think all things is a jerk. Okay. What is he most worried about? What concerns him most, when a problem comes up, how does he react? It’s like, I just get curious about asking questions and you see just like popping up little detail tales about somebody, the way they, the way they respond, the way they say certain, like catchphrases will come out or certain ways of talking will come out.
JDM (28:24):
And they start to come to life. It’s I still find it challenging for me. It’s not something I, I I’m, I come to naturally, so I have to work at it, which is good, because that means I have to make it happen. You know, that’s true with, with everything, right? Whether it’s a parable or it’s a novel or, or anything else, or for that matter, if I’m writing a like a principal, like I’m writing a blog post about, you know, leadership. Well, I say to them said, give me an example of that. I try to think of an event that’s happened in my life that somehow reflects that. And I think of the people in that event, I always ask myself questions. What does that look like when it actually happens? So that’s, you know, that’s, that’s kinda where it’s at in the novel.
JDM (29:13):
There are a lot of things that happen. There’s a lot of situations or characters. They were vaguely echoes of real characters and real just because that’s, you know, that’s where I went there. Well, I dipped into to start to make it the life. You’ll hear film actors, talk about how, in order to play this role, they had to excess this memory of their own, his own experience. Like in order to play this greeting father, they had to access when their dog died and how sad they were. And I used to think that’s so pretentious. That’s like actors speaking, Hollywood actors. That’s how they talk. But I, as a writer, I started realizing that’s really true. You know, when you want to write somebody, who’s grieving, you go find a place in your life where you’ve grieved and you remember that, and it kind of opens that door for you. And so I think the, the real skill to answer your question about where characters come from, it’s empathy, it’s all empathy. You tap your empathy. And that’s where I think stories and characters kind of that’s the wellspring that they come out of.
RV (30:23):
Wow. That is so good. That is so, so powerful. I think suspense, plot lines, being curious, characters, you know, coming from empathy really, really great stuff, John, I I just admire so much what you do and, and you’re truly an artist in the way. You’ve been able to apply it across so many different things. Where do you want people to go? Okay, you mentioned this book how to write good or at least good, or which is a, is an ebook that you have, or, you know, where, where do you want people, if they want to connect with you or people who are aspiring writers or just wanting to be better at the craft of writing how can they learn more about you?
JDM (31:06):
Yeah, it’s funny because the book itself grew out of podcasts and interviews, just like this conversations like this, where people would ask questions about writing and I’d come up with an answer and say, oh, I should write that down. I only meant to do a little like 12, 14, 18 page, little sort of ebook article. And it turned into a full fledged book. So I hear it is masquerading as a physical book. I’m doing it right now, as you said, just as an, as an ebook, it’s a free download on my website. I imagine someday I’ll really publish it. And it’ll be, it become a a real boy like Pinocchio, but right now there’s a new book that you can buy. You can get free on my site, which is just my name, John David mann.com. And you go to Johnny batman.com and you’ll see up there, you know, ebook free ebook, whatever that’s, that’s, that’s what this is. I love
RV (31:54):
That. I love that so much. Well, you know, thank you for the work that you put into this because your, your characters are delightful. And they’re everything that you just described there they’re dynamic. They are real, they are multi-dimensional, they, they are people that we have all met in real life, which makes sense, because there, there are people that you have met they’re based on those, and, you know, specifically the way that you weave a tale into you, you can take one simple principle. That is a sentence like it literally could be a tweet. And from that you extrapolate this, this beautiful, wonderful, entertaining, uplifting, curious page, turning, sorry, that’s just such a bit more, it’s just such a more enriching way to get to that destination and a more effective one too, you know? And so we really appreciate your work and we appreciate you very much sharing several of your secrets here with us for free.
JDM (32:56):
I certainly appreciate it too. I love being here. And I have to say, you know, in the balance between telling a story versus teaching a principle, either paranormal, you’re always doing both. It’s a tricky balance because in my mind, the story, the story has to always lead story has to be king because the principal only works with the story as king. I got to the end of steel, fear, the novel, and turned around, looked back and realized that it was teaching a leadership principle. It’s like, it’s a parable, it’s a leadership, parable disguised as a crime novel. My parable, my parable, I have it’s, you know, w we’ll never die, I guess. It’s like they don’t go away.
RV (33:32):
That is awesome. That’s awesome. Well, we wish you the best, my friend. Thanks for being here. And thanks for your support after all these years. Yeah, yeah, yeah. We’ll do it again. A couple of years away.

Ep 204: How to Start a Keynote Speaking Career with Shep Hyken

RV (00:07):
Hey, brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview as always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders, group.com/pod call. We hope to talk to you soon. I love
RV (00:55):
When I get to introduce, to introduce you to some of my long lifetime or career long friends, and that’s what we get to do today with Shep Hyken Shep is one of those people who is amazing. And he truly is out there as a leader in his niche and his vertical and this entire industry. And a lot of people say, they’re speakers. And I know if they’re really speakers by whether or not I speak on the same stages with them. If I lose events to them, if I say, who did you have last year? And Shep is one of those guys where it’s like, oh yeah, we’ve had Shep. We’ve had him. We loved him. He’s here next year. Dah, dah, dah, dah. So he is a, in the professional speaking hall of fame. He is also a New York times and wall street journal, bestselling author.
RV (01:40):
He is a customer service and customer experience expert. And this is the author of several books moments of magic to a loyal customer, the cult of the customer several others. And anyways, we’re his here gonna share some war stories about how do you actually build a real speaking career? How do you, how do you actually sell, write and sell books? And and then also I think, how do we create a better customer experience as speakers, authors, coaches, financial advisers, small business owners, let’s call it for our customers. So anyway, Shep, welcome to the show, man.
SH (02:17):
Hey man, it is so great to be here, Rory. You’re awesome. I’ve known you for, I’ve known you for years. Many, many years. I was a kid. I was like, you were in the program when I first met, you know, you were running.
RV (02:31):
I was a volunteer that I was, I was, I was I think the first year I met you, I was the chair of the youth program because Eric Chester was like, you know, leading the thing or sometimes I got volunteered through it. But anyways man. Yeah. It’s, it’s great. So, and I would love to hear about your start to little bit. I think that would be helpful. You know, people hear these terms, New York times, best-selling author hall of fame speaker. Right. And it’s like, well, It happens overnight, right? Yeah.
SH (03:00):
It takes 20 years for it to happen overnight, but it happens. Yeah.
RV (03:04):
So how did you get, how did You get started? Like how did you get your first gigs? Like what did you charge? And you know, like in the very beginning, how did it come together?
SH (03:13):
I’m going to tell you everything, nothing will be held back. I’m going to speak a hundred percent from experience, no opinion. I want to give you data and information and if it works for you fine or not fine, if it doesn’t, but it worked for me or if it didn’t work for me, I’ll tell you that as well. So I’ve been doing this for quite a while. I don’t have gray hair that you can see, but 1983 was the year that I started my business less than a year out of college. And what had happened is go back gosh, 10 years, even before I graduated college, I was about 12. I started a birthday party magic show business. And from there I grew into working in nightclubs and eventually corporate events and other types of private parties, maybe for adult parties. But the point is, is I had a background in performing.
SH (03:59):
Now. All that meant is when I saw a couple of motivational speakers shortly, like I say, less than a year out of college, I thought I could do that. I, I, I don’t stage before. I, I, I, I think I could do that now. I just have to something I have to write about something and I don’t know what it’s going to be yet. And, and so understand that my parents taught me some great customer service skills when I was younger, like saying thank you, calling people up and asking them how they liked the show and getting specific feedback to make the show better. And I had no idea that was all about customer appreciation, process improvement, getting feedback, but that those are tenants of customer service. So I saw Zig Ziglar and Tom Hopkins and we all made, I hope most of us know who they are Zig since passed away, but Tom’s actually out there still kicking.
SH (04:46):
And I bought two items that night. I bought a set of audio cassette tapes and some of your audiences too young to know what that is. And there were eight of them. It was called see with the top, it was total motivation goal setting. I also bought a book how to master the art of selling. And I believe it’s still available today. And I read that book in about three days and I listened to those tapes over and over again, over the next maybe three, four or five days, I was immersing myself in Zig Ziglar and Tom Hopkins. And I went to the bookstore and I bought every, I went and I said, what am I interested in? I bought like three or four books in the entire, the entire bookstore business section was maybe six feet. It’s one shelf. That was it. There wasn’t racks and racks of books.
SH (05:32):
And I was drawn to the customer service experience books. So that’s how I decided I wanted to do this. And that’s how I, I kind of chose my topic at 22. You’re like early twenties, actually 22. When I saw them, I might, I did had just turned 23 when I started my business. Okay. And when I graduated college, I was asked to go to work for the family business, which they own gas stations and they own I mean, it was a small chain of station, so it was kind of a cool job. And I would go from station to station, a little dirty, getting, doing audits, going out in the, you know, checking the tanks and all that with the meter stick anyway base that was in June when I started full-time and in September they said, Hey, we’re selling the company.
SH (06:18):
I went, what am I supposed to do now? So I stayed with it for a short time as they won some things down. But that was it. I mean, a few months later I’m without a job, but that’s okay. I mean, I never really thought anything of it. I just thought this is all part of life and this is what you have to do. So when I went to the bookstore, I’m attracted to like in search of excellence from Tom Peters. And I believe Waterman is his name. And then I saw a couple of books by Ron Zemsky and Carl Albrecht on customer service. So I bought these books, read them. I said, this is it. And how am I going to get clients? And this is to your point, this is how I really got started. I went to the bookstore, I mean, to the magazine store.
SH (06:55):
And I bought every magazine. That was a business magazine, which was like, you know, there weren’t that many, I can’t remember what they were business. We, whenever they were, if they had a full page ad, I thought they’re big enough to be selling something. They probably got a Salesforce. Then maybe they need a speaker. And always the phone number was never the right phone number, take it to headquarters. It was like a call center. I went to the library. There was no internet back then. Remember you wouldn’t remember, you weren’t even born back then,
RV (07:25):
Were you? I was born in 82. So I was [inaudible]. I’ve
Speaker 5 (07:32):
Been in business almost as long as you are. That’s
RV (07:35):
Right. That’s right.
SH (07:38):
Anyway, I tore out all the full page ads. I went to the library and they had these directories. Some of them were on microfiche. Some of them were actually in big volumes of books that I can open up and find out who the current president C you know, executive VP of marketing, you know, all of the salespeople
RV (07:56):
To get clients, but you looked at it as like they’re advertising for, for them to become a client of yours. I love this. So you look them up and you’re like, this company must have some money. And so you, and so you look up their contact information every day and you could
SH (08:11):
See their sales and, and it was, you know, so I went to these directories and I made this list. I call it the target 100 and I made a list of a hundred companies. And I said and by the way, it took me, I don’t know, month and a half to go through. Because even though I said, I’m going to make 20 calls a day. You might only reach two or three people. And there was voicemail. There was no email. It was just, it was, it was, and I put everything in little file cards and I had my little tickler file and
RV (08:40):
CRM,
SH (08:41):
Like, yeah. So there wasn’t such a thing as CRM. Now I did get my first computer. One of my clients was Epson EPS. When they make printer, they also made computers and I, the guy wanted me to do a regional sales. So I went and did the meeting in exchange for expenses and a computer. And I remember my, my first database was floppy disks. All of the A’s were on this disc. The B’s were on this, this, this, oh, wow. Yeah. And so
RV (09:12):
Sorry. So you just called these people up and, and you said, you just said, Hey, I’m a speaker. And you just said, I’m a speaker. I speak on customer experience. And, and, and then you just, and they said, what’s your fee. And you just gave him some number and that’s how you start
SH (09:29):
It. And I don’t mind, you know, I share, I would tell you, I would share my number. It was $500 for a speech. And my goal was in 1983. Remember I’m only 22, just turning 23 if at the end of the year. So this is about, I would say the official start date of my business was I mean, I ramped up a little bit. I had everything ready to go, but August 1st was doors open. Yeah. And so for the next five months, my goal was to get at least two speeches. That would be a thousand dollars a month. I remember my living expenses with apartment and utilities room and board was about 11 or 1200 bucks a month. I had some money in the bank, not a lot. I said, but if I could make a thousand a month, I can make it through this year.
SH (10:12):
If I could make 2000 a month by next year, I’m in the profit zone. And I wanted to double every year. So I learned this from Zig. I created a ten-year plan from age 23, the age 32. Okay. And I hit that plan at around age. I’m going to say right around age 30 or so, I hit my mark five or six years. Yeah, well maybe more like eight, eight years, but it took eight years to where I’m ma so I had a thousand, 2,004,000, so 4,000 and then 8,000. And so it’s like, then I got a hundred thousand gross than a hundred thousand net. And then eventually my goal was a quarter of a million a year in income. And then when I hit that, I had to reset my goals. So that took me to age just under age 40. So now I had a goal for my next decade of my life.
SH (11:01):
And by the time I hit age 40, my goals were starting to change from 100% financial to lifestyle mixed with financial. I even had my wife tell me one day, chef, you’re doing really well. You’re working so hard. You’re never home. And one day you’re going to come home and nobody’s going to be here. The house will be empty. There will be no furniture and you will be on your own. And that was a big eye-opening, you know, whoa. I need to get some balance in my life because I was churning and burning. And but the part I was burning was my life was my personal
RV (11:36):
And all of this just comes from basically finding people that have meetings, contacting them, letting them know that you’re available to speak on X topic, which has not changed. Like it has not changed in 50 years. It’s, it’s, it’s the same thing now where you doing some speeches for free early on?
SH (11:58):
I, you know, I $500. It’s almost for free. Yeah. But, but I would do anything. I mean, it wouldn’t
RV (12:05):
Be considered that today, but back then, I mean, 500 bucks was still like $500,
SH (12:10):
Like making 1200 or 1500.
RV (12:12):
I mean, it’s still something. Yeah.
SH (12:14):
Yeah. And so yeah, the short answer is yes, I would do free. So between 1983 and 1988, I was really rogue on my own, no support. Nobody told me what to do about anything I had. I had found Dottie Walters, which is a name from the past, which you may or may not know. She was very involved in the national speakers association. She had a speakers bureau and she had a directory of other speaker bureaus. And somehow another, I came across her publication. So I bought her book. And so I was learning about the industry, but I was really out on my own, but in 88 I joined the national speakers association. And this is a, this is definitely a plug for NSA national speakers association in that even if you’re a coach, a consultant, even an accountant or a lawyer, if you go with the idea that all you’re going to do is learn how speakers market themselves. It’s the exact same way that every what I would call entrepreneurial and for lack of a better term, I’ll call it a practice type of business would market themselves. Yeah. There’s a lot of advantage there. Right. Anyway. And I would
RV (13:20):
Say too, when we, we S we talk about this a lot, that both, whether you’re cause a lot of our clients are financial advisors, they are accountants, they’re lawyers, they’re chiropractors, they’re whatever is that. And, and as a speaker cause, cause, cause our story about how we started would be very similar. We called out of the phone book, the yellow pages phone book, and we went and spoke for free. But even to this day, the fastest way to take, we tell, we say to clients the fastest way to go from being a stranger to a lifelong fan is a one hour presentation. And so if you just go deliver, I mean, in financial services, they call this the like dinner seminars they’ve been doing that for decades. It’s still work.
SH (14:04):
It does. And you know what, if so over the years a transition from me making those calls to my assistant, making most of those calls doing nothing, the only people I would talk to is if it was set up in advance is an appointment to talk to someone. Not because I’m a that was just seemed to be like, it’s hard to not know because
RV (14:24):
You’re a prima Donna, even though you are, but that’s not why
Speaker 5 (14:28):
You did it that way. It’s not because it’s
SH (14:30):
The same way. Right? It’s positioning you, you know, the guy who’s groveling for money is probably not the expert you want to hire well and it saves you time. Yeah. And, and you know, it was, it was efficient by the way, in the beginning, when I didn’t have an assistant, I just doing this on my own. I would be really, really busy and then nothing. So what did I do here? And that nothing time I would get back the phone and smile and dial, and then I get really busy again. And then when that war wore off, because I couldn’t make phone calls and it was really hard to, to stay and do calls from on the road compared to what you do today. You can’t, we didn’t have a cell phone back then. So anyway, what happened over time is yes. I transitioned to my assistant making most of those calls today.
SH (15:13):
It’s a little different. I mean, my business today is tons of word of mouth. I am, I don’t consider myself just a speaker. If you ask me on the airplane, what I do for a living, I’m not going to say I’m a professional speaker who, you know, but we can get, well, what did you say? I w well, I would ask you a question. Have you ever walked away from a business or gotten off the phone and you thought, wow, that was an incredible experience. That was amazing. Those people are just unbelievable. And of course, you’re going to say, yeah, I go, well, that’s what I help my clients achieve. And it begs for how do you do that? And I said, well I actually write books and hundreds of articles on customer service and experience and companies hire me either to speak at their events, industry events, corporate events, or my trainers go out and deliver training. We have online on demand, virtual video based training, you know? So then we get into the how tos, but we want to set up like, yeah, I totally understand what that concept is before we get into how I do it. But I love that guy. That’s a cool, I love
RV (16:14):
That of going to the average person on an airplane. If you say a speaker, they go, oh, that’s cool. And they would be like, I can never hire you. I don’t know anyone who needs like, but if you go this amazing customer experience and they would go, you should work with my friend. Cause they S they suck. Or you, you would like these people because they really like, you know, customer experience. That’s great winds up
SH (16:35):
A conversation as opposed to a, because sometimes, oh, I’m a professional speaker. Okay. I don’t even know exactly what that is, but it sounds good. And I’m just going to start reading my book again. And by the way, I prefer if they would read their book and that just all
RV (16:49):
You have to do is tell them you’re a pastor or you sell insurance. Or if you say like, Hey, I, I raised money for political foundation. Then they stopped talking
SH (16:58):
To you. There you go. And we won’t say which one, if we can find out who they love, then we go the opposite direction, no matter who it is. So I can be conservative. I can be liberal, whatever it takes to get them to leave me alone. So, but all kidding aside today I’d even said it, you know, we’re coming out of the pandemic, right? And we need to spend more time doing the direct interaction we need to get back in front of our clients. That’s not going to happen by hoping the phone’s going to ring. It’s going to happen because we’re emailing more. We’re going on. Linkedin. We’re finding people that whose titles and their companies match up with my criteria. We’re asking them, Hey, we’re just connecting with people that you think would be interested in my content, you know, or you and I were talking about our annual reports that we’ve created from studies, by looking at different parts of the population.
SH (17:52):
Mine is on customer service and experience. So last year we created the achieving customer amazement report. And we went out and did a study of a thousand consumers, you know, weighted to the census of the U S and we’ve got great insights. That’s what we send to our potential clients. They go, wow, this is pretty interesting. What would you like to talk about it and how it applies to your business? No charge. I would just like to learn what you do. You learn what I do, and maybe we work together. Maybe we don’t, it doesn’t matter, but we’re all friends when it’s over. And the LinkedIn is the new telephone. And it’s great because it seems like the response, first of all, you can send out a lot more queries through LinkedIn or, or make more potential connections. The percentage of getting responses are much higher, you know, based on the effort you put in, I might make a hundred calls in a week.
SH (18:40):
And I’m lucky if I talked to 10 or 12 people, and I’m lucky if it goes 12 people, maybe one of them, maybe two could be interested. And if I can amass a group of about 20 people that might turn into one or two speeches of those people that are really interested. So I actually had, at one point we tracked every number and that’s so important to track what works and what doesn’t work. So as I learned from going to the national speakers association conferences, when I make those calls, there are certain questions that I want to ask that qualify them for me. Now, I got to know my industry pretty well. So I would ask, do you hire professional speakers? And if they say, no, what’s a professional speaker, then we know they’ve not paid for one. I’m happy to explain it to them, but I’m very quick to get off the phone because I don’t want to make a two-step process in the sale. I don’t want to convince them they need to spend money and then convince them it’s me. They need to spend, I just want to find out if they go, yeah, we’ve hired speakers. Well, tell me who you’ve hired. And sometimes they’ll tell me, well, we brought in our best customers. Well, that’s not a professional speaker, but if they say, yeah, we brought in Rory Vaden, or we brought in, you know Scott McCain or Jay Baer, all my friends, I knew
RV (19:52):
Awesome. They got at least 500 bucks. If they’re bringing, if they’re pulling in those guys, they got at least 500 bucks,
SH (19:59):
Right? So, I mean, the time I got to NSA, true story, I was charging a thousand to $1,200 a speech in 1988. And when I joined NSA. So you remember I did magic as a background. I was still doing some magic shows, but I said to myself, as long as they’ll pay me the same thing as it is to speak, I’m happy to do that magic show. So for a thousand dollars, that’s a great gig for a magician. But as my fees started to go up, not a lot of people willing to pay a thousand bucks for a magic show. So I, when I joined NSA, I found a mentor. His name was Phil Wexler, still around, just as birthday, the other day, same as mine and Phil. I went and we did it. I recommended him for some speeches. And he said he was going to send me a commission.
SH (20:45):
And he owed me quite a bit of money. And it isn’t like he owed me money, but he would have paid me that money. But I said, before you write the check and send it to me, would you keep it? But I want a day of your time. I flew out to San Diego. I spent an entire day with him. And when I came back, I tripled my fee. I said, no more magic shows. And I became laser focused on just what I wanted to be hired to do. Now, could that have happened a year or two earlier? Sure. But it doesn’t matter. I was doing pretty well. Anyway. I was booking 150 dates a year. Things were good and I was making a thousand, 1200 bucks a speech. So I went up to 3,500 and never looked back. It was a little scary right away because I lost all of these clients that were used to paying me lower amounts of money.
SH (21:30):
But with by the middle to three quarters of the end of the year, I was making a gross wise as much I’d made the following year. And of course, you know, now we’re, we’re in that sequence. So it worked out real well. But the point is, that’s what I did to get started today. It’s, it’s content marketing. I really think of myself more of a media company than I do a professional speaker. And I do have a business versus a practice. Now, the speaking is like a practice. If I don’t speak, I’m not getting paid, but I’ve got trainers out there delivering my content. We’ve got influencer activity where I’m hired for several months to tweet, write articles. You know, we’ve got all kinds of, I have seven different streams of income that help offset, you know, areas that might get hit hard by a pandemic or by an economic downturn. Yeah.
RV (22:25):
Well, and I think it’s just an interesting shift in general. Like, you start out going, Hey, I want to be a speaker and you, you and I have this in common. I think there’s less and less people today. Maybe not, maybe that’s not right to say, but it’s not like, oh, I want to be a speaker anyways, you and I started going, I want to be a speaker. And then it kind of has it evolves to more of like, I’m not marketing myself as a speaker, I’m marketing my expertise of which I can deliver that to you in a variety of different mechanisms or mediums or, or outlets. And do you think that’s a necessary evolution that that happens or do you think there’s power in just going, Hey, if you want to be a speaker, just market yourself as a speaker, go knock that down. And just, that is what, you know, that’s what you deliver and that’s, that’s the only thing you do.
SH (23:16):
So a great question. And I think the answer really lies in what you want and where you are in your career. If you are an executive who worked as a high level executive fortune 100 company, and you’re at about age 55 or 60 and ready to hang it up whoever that executive is, he, or she might say, I had a lot of experience. People are willing to pay a lot for that. I’m done with the corporate world. I’m going to just go out. And this is kind of like my retirement you career, then it’s okay to have that practice. And I’m totally cool with that. You may be in that world where you’re, this is what you love more than anything. And I say, go for what you love. And if you can make a living at what you love and you actually have stability in it.
SH (24:00):
Great. What concerned me is that I know we’re not invincible, so you always have to worry about, am I properly insured either through life insurance, health insurance, you know, business interruptions, insurance, that kind of thing. But you also need to realize that, you know, you’re not in control of, you know, a pandemic shut people down for a year. You know, I know people that had the leave, the speaking business because they never did. I thought they were successful, but they didn’t save anything. And they weren’t prepared for a downturn. Well, maybe they think, oh, how long could it last two or three months? I was kind of thinking we’d be back in March. Oh, well you backed by September. Right? I didn’t realize it would be September 20, 22, right. Or whatever it is when he went. But anyway, I digress. So to your point, the question is where do you want to go first, 2000 nine 11, 2001.
SH (24:55):
Was it, was it? Yeah. And when nine 11 hit nine 11, 2001. Yep. Yeah. So in December of that year, I’d already signed up to spend the weekend with needle Cobain. We all know Nieto in this, our industry, he’s a guru. And one of the exercises he had us do is an amusement park exercise. And he says, draw your business. Like it’s an amusement park. Now I started in 1983. This is 17, 18 years later. Right. My amusement park, I thought of it in terms of like six flags. There’s that big stage, the main stage where they had that show. And then as you walked out, there’s a gift shop kind of like even going to a Disney, you know, going on the ride and then you have the little gift shop. And then my amusement park had nothing else around it that was in the parking lot.
SH (25:38):
But then I looked to the guy next to me and he was drawing an attraction here in the corner. And another one, I go, what is that? He goes, this is a mastermind group that I put together of my top clients. This over here is a membership group. I created that has, you know, 500 members that are paying me X number of dollars a month. And he had these four or five attractions. And I looked to the guy next to me, same kind of thing I want, okay, what are they doing? They’re bulletproofing themselves from having this as part of their business being wiped out because they have other areas. So I quickly pivoted, if you will, I hate that word because like you turned your back, but I was flexible. That’s the word I showed flexibility. And that I said, I know what I’ll do.
SH (26:20):
I’m going to create a training program from my speaking. By that time I’d written no, maybe two, three books. And so I went to a course designer. I found a freelancer and for about 3000 bucks, maybe 3,500 bucks a week, much more than that. They wrote my training for a two hour, half day full day and gave me ideas for multiple day programs. And then I went out and did my first full day training program. I hated it. It was like, I got to talk for a little bit. Then I have to let them work. And then I got to listen to a lot more that keynoter. But the brilliant thing was I started hiring other people to deliver this content because it was written with the idea that a person who could just pick up a facilitator guide, study it and go do it if they knew what they were doing.
SH (27:04):
And that started the second phase of my business because we were in my mind, one terrorist attack away from the annihilation of being of going to a hotel to have a big meeting, because nobody was going to put their sales people on an airplane or send them to a hotel where, you know, somebody could detonate a bomb and wipe out their company. And I know that sounds morbid, but that was the way I was thinking one terrorist attack away from the end of my business. But as a trainer, I could send trainers to their offices. They could have a training room and my people could train their people. And that’s really what started the expansion of my business. So I, you know, what’s right. It just depends what you want to do, but realize as you get into business, you know, Rory asked me how many people I have working for me,
RV (27:51):
How many people you have working for you about half of them.
SH (27:56):
But seriously, when you want to get into doing this, you start to hire other people and you can hire freelancers, but you’re still hiring a force. And you want to try to, you have to keep motivated. You have to meet. It’s a totally different game. I enjoy that game. It’s fun to me. So that’s where I am today. We’ve evolved to I have seven ways that I make money speaking, sending out trainers on demand, video based training selling books when they come out, by the way, new book coming out, I’ll be back how to get your customers to come back again and again that’s book sales influencer role where companies now hire me just to have me tweet about them, write articles about them, because I’m considered a thought leader in my space after all these years sponsorship, if you go to my YouTube channel, you might see a little ad sponsored by whoever the company is. It’s sponsoring me that month. And we have them sponsor my blog, my YouTube channel, my podcast, et cetera, et cetera. And, and so we’ve got packages for that is that six. And then, oh, number seven is special projects. Like we’ll do special video projects or consulting type projects for companies. So interesting, but it started with
RV (29:07):
One, it started really as a speaker at the speech. And then, and then you, you expanded and turn that expertise into something else. Wow.
SH (29:15):
Well I love
RV (29:18):
That ship. I mean, this is, this is super interesting and I think powerful for anybody out there, you know, going okay, how do you get started? Cause to me, you know, you did this in 1983. You know, I would, I would say for me, I did this really, I feel like between 2006 and 2000 and, and maybe 12, 2 13, and there’s not that much difference. And there’s not that much difference from today. It’s like, you got to find some people who need what you have, let them know you have it and then do a really good job delivering it. And like was pretty much that’s all there is. And then you just do it over and over again. And then at some point you get other people to do it, to do that, to do all of those same parts. Yeah. If you want to, if you want to go that route. So it, I think it’s, it’s super encouraging. And yeah. I wonder where do you want people to go ship if they want to connect with you or like learn more of what you’re up to?
SH (30:17):
Sure. Go to hike and.com pretty easy. H Y K N. There’s lots of free resources. You know, I give away pretty much everything I have. From there you can find my YouTube channel, but it’s, you know, I have 600 videos on YouTube. People watch him chairman meetings. My goal is the more you give, the more you get, they come back and give you information, you know, book you to, to share their information.
RV (30:42):
Well, and I’m, I’m curious to know, okay, so what is you? We didn’t really get into the customer experience stuff too, too much. But what would you say is one great customer service tip that personal brands could do immediately just to like, whether it’s love on their clients or love on their team or like when you go, okay. When I think of like all the speakers, coaches, consultants, practices out there, this is like a small business tip that you go, oh my gosh, like, this is a, you could just do this right away and it’ll make a, make a huge difference in your, your expense.
SH (31:17):
Well, I’m going to give you three. One is kind of strategic and this must always happen. One is a bigger project and one is something you can do right away. And I’ll do them quickly recognize that every interaction that you have with the customers, an opportunity for them to form an impression about you. So manage that interaction. It’s called the moment of truth. I can go on and on about that one, but you get the ideas. You need to see what every interaction is now. That’s number one. Number two is how do you look for those interactions? Create a journey map of every interaction that your clients would have of you from the time they might see something in a website, search on Google to get to your website, how they get to you, you know, do they reach out to you via email phone and the whole plot, the entire process, all the way to where they book you, and then what happens after the booking or what happens, where they buy you or after the sale. And so that’s number two. And that journey, map process is going to take awhile because you think you got it. And then you’re gonna find more and more and more, every little tiny interaction counts. And number three, just return people’s emails and phone calls immediately. And you’ll see what a difference that makes you can do that. Starting this moment.
RV (32:29):
Huh. That’s funny. That’s a big one for AIG. She’s super big on responsiveness. Just even you let them know, Hey, I’ll get to you. Like I saw your email, I’ll get to it tomorrow. Like yeah.
SH (32:40):
You know, it’s holiday weekend. I’ll call you first thing Tuesday or Wednesday or whatever it is. Yeah. Which
RV (32:45):
Is interesting. Cause like, you know, I think of all the people we hire that are vendors, contractors for the house, for the business. And it’s like, the number one thing is like, are they staying in communication with us? So that’s really great. Well, hyken.com. Y’all we’ll put a link to that. You can follow him, get a lots of awe. I mean his, his depth of knowledge and expertise around the customer experience, you can see a super powerful chef. Thanks for sharing. What I think is probably the, not so often shared story about how you got started in this career and have built everything that you’ve become, man. We wish you all the best.
SH (33:17):
Thank you, sir. Great to be here.

Ep 202: How to Hire Great Contractors with Hanson Cheng

RV (00:07):
Hey brand builder 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/podcast. We hope to talk to you soon.
RV (00:54):
Biggest business blunder ever have I made the interview you are about to hear is not the real interview Hanson. And I have been working on our schedules for like three months to do this interview. We did the entire interview two days ago, and at the end of the interview, I got to the end and I was like, where’s the stop button where wait a minute. Where’s the stop button, no stop button. Because some bone head moved named Rory Vaden forgot to hit the start button. So we didn’t record the entire thing. And Hanson’s been, so you’ve been so gracious man to come back. Thank you for that. I feel like a total bonehead. I mean, nothing frustrates me more than losing time. And so to do it to somebody else is just like sucky. But no, oh
HC (01:47):
Man. Things happen, right? We’re entrepreneurs things, always seeing the not happen the way we planned, but you know, I’m glad we could get it done and do it again. Well,
RV (01:56):
Yeah, so here’s the good news for y’all is Hanson is going to save you some time. We had an epic interview and we just, him and I are newer friends, but we met on a project that he was working with. We have a mutual friend, Celinna De Costa, who is a writer and you know, they’re friends and we met for a thing. They were, they had going on for Forbes, but Hanson is really smart. And as soon as I met him, I was like, gosh, I really liked this guy. I like his brain. You know, he is a speaker, he’s a multi, multi seven figure earner. And he helps CEOs basically figure out how to remove themselves from their company. Either with people or processes. We’ll talk a little bit about both of those. Just so they have more freedom and flexibility and make more money and, and, you know, just more profit and, and be able to have more time on their vision. So he’s really good at streamlining things, automation he has worked around the globe and he, he lives Bali and right now I happened to catch him in DC. So he just, all things, entrepreneur and systems and, and man, the interview we did was awesome. So I couldn’t let him get away without getting it actually recorded, man. So anyways, welcome back officially.
HC (03:14):
Thanks for having me back.
RV (03:16):
So so freedom to ascend dot com is your website. And you’ve worked on a lot of different things, but I think that our conversation, you know, that we had a couple of days ago, what stuck out to me was I was going okay, how do you help entrepreneurs? Who is get their time back? And basically the way I thought of it was, you said, okay, we’re going to either put in awesome people and, or awesome processes. I mean, is that, I mean at a high level, is that kinda, what is that kind of how you think about it?
HC (03:59):
Yeah. I mean, every, every business is different, but we can use the same principles and analyzing how to best leverage the owner’s time. What we do is we just, you know just take an inventory of where they spend all their time, what is moving the needle most and how can you automate that exactly with systems current software. So keeping up with technology out there to replace or reduce the amount of people or time needed and adding people in to either do those tasks or to maintain those, those, the software.
RV (04:32):
Yeah. So the I’m a big nerd, like autumn marketing, automation, nerd, and, and, and stuff like that. And I like a lot of the systems, but I want to talk about the people part here first. And I think the thing that’s so frustrating for so many entrepreneurs, whether they’re trying to hire a VA or a full-time employee, or just a contractor who can get something done, like, you know, like I need a guy, like I need a guy who can edit a video. I need a, I need a gal who can like write some copy. I need a, I need someone who can like build a website or do design me a flyer. And it is so freaking hard to find good people to just like, knock out a job. And you’ve got two tips on this that I’m going to make you reshare, because these were two things I had never heard. But you know, you don’t, you don’t have to dive into those exactly. If you don’t want to, I do want to, I do want to cover them, but like, how do you find the people? Like, what’s the mindset here? And then, you know, like what, what give us like a couple techniques or strategies on this.
HC (05:44):
Yeah, sure. I think what most people default to is searching for job listing boards, like Upwork or Fiverr you know, or Craigslist or whatever it is to find these people and problem with that is we run into a lot of stuff we need to sift through. Right? You definitely can find quality in there, but I mean, it’s, it’s a lot of stuff to sift sifter. And a lot of times as business owners, we just want to get that task done in a, in a, in a hash process. So what I’ve done is like, okay, how can I basically make this process, the system more efficient and what I, so I found this hack. I’ve never heard of anyone doing it before. But what I do is I use this for my actual website was I was like, okay, where do I want my business to be?
HC (06:28):
If I were to five or 10 X or 15 exit, and who are the people in the market right now that are leaders in the what in my market who are 10 times ahead of me, I would go to their LinkedIn profile. And I will look at the recommendations they did. Not that they received, that they actually give, because what that will do it will show me who along the way, in the last three, four or five years have they worked with who experienced that growth or help and skill that growth that I can now talk to bring in as a consultant or ideally how I hired them as part of my team to then they have the blueprint they’d experienced the blueprint, they know where I am, and they knew they know what they did to get to where the person I’m looking at. Gotcha. And so I can just hire them, bring them on. And automatically I absorbed, it’s like a matrix. I can absorb their knowledge, right. Just by hiring them. So this is one way I like to acquire new skills or knowledge is just by hiring people. Who’ve already done it. And the fastest way to find those people is to hire the ones who have been recommended by the people who are invested in your industry.
RV (07:34):
Dude, that is such a practical tip that is, is free. And it makes so much sense. And we have, we have learned and studied so much about recruiting and hiring and we’ve hired so many people, employees. I mean, we’ve hired hundreds of people at this appoint, like between our various businesses. We’ve helped our clients hire hundreds of people. I have never heard anybody share that. And it’s such a simple tip. And you know, when you think about LinkedIn, of course, LinkedIn has its own job board, which we’ve used a ton and, you know, costs, I don’t know, maybe 500 bucks or something. We’ve used Upwork, we’ve used Fiverr, you know, whatever Craig’s list marketplace. Like we do all, all the things. But we have always found that like our best hires come from referrals either from like friends and family or clients, or from people who work here, but on your LinkedIn network, like those are referrals.
RV (08:39):
It’s, it’s like you don’t, and you don’t even have to ask for them, you’re going, who is out there, that’s the best in my space, or that does the best in this, this thing. And then like, we all think about recommendations in terms of who’s given us recommendations. How do I get recommendations, but never have I even thought to go, oh, and there’s an, you know, anyways, so we, you and I recorded this interview. It, two days ago this morning, I went on LinkedIn. I started doing this and I was like, whoa. And I, I found a VA case. I found one person that was like a VA. I found one person who was a social media marketing manager for somebody. And this is like top people. And this is like, the recommendation they wrote was like six years ago for like five years ago before they even became who they are now going, oh man, like they’re right there. And it was really amazing. And I saw a bunch of others, like web developers. I saw membership some, someone who had built memberships for one of these people. And I just, I don’t know. I dunno, Hansen. It was just so simple. And I just can’t believe I’ve never heard of that before, so that, and you’ve done this for yourself, but then also like you can help. You’ll help, you know, what clients you work with. You’ll go do this for them and figure out who they’re hiring.
HC (09:59):
Yeah. It’s very, very easy. Once, you know the process now I don’t even have to do it myself. Right. I can train a very like one of my team members to do this or a VA just say, Hey here are the competitors. Here’s a list of the people that are in my market, who are the best. And I don’t care. Like I want to know everyone they’ve ever given a recommendation and recommendation to, because I may be looking for a social media manager, but they might have recommended someone completely. I’ve never even thought about hiring. And then now that gets my brain to start thinking, like, why did they hire that person? Let me talk to him, shoot him a message on LinkedIn. Hey, I saw that you worked with this person, what did you do there? What were your results? And everyone’s super, super, because it’s just like a referral. Like you said, you, you refer them to who gave the recommendation and you’re like, I’d love to learn more about you and add, I’ve never had anyone not respond in a, in a, in a good way.
RV (10:50):
So do you just send them a yeah, I mean, that’s just so, so cool. And, and it is true. There’s something about LinkedIn recommendations. Like I even find that people will kind of write an Amazon review and there, you know, a lot of times they’re like very forthcoming, but there’s something about a LinkedIn recommendation that feels very like vulnerable and honest and real. It’s like, I won’t write a LinkedIn recommendation for just anyone who asks for one. No. Oh
HC (11:18):
No. It takes some time. It’s not easy. You got log in. You’ve got to go to recommendations. You need to set it up, you know, rent it out. Yeah.
RV (11:23):
Yeah. So, well, that’s awesome. That is such a great tip, you know, and, and, and on the LinkedIn recommendations, I mean, this is not really what we talked about it and not really the topic of this conversation, but the other Jim of how to use recommendations is like you know, like for keynote speaking, we, we have done, this is you go look at other speakers. We don’t really consider other speakers as competitors because they hire different speaker every year. Right. But you go look at who is a top speaker and write on their profile will be recommendations from all their past clients. And if you’re, and you go, like, these are the peop, like, these are literally the decision-makers who hired this person to come speak. And you just never think about using the tool like that. Like, it’s, it’s the, it’s not even just like the cold search power of it. And the social engine it’s like working through real human relationships and they’re all visible missing as an incredible so okay. So then the other thing I wanted to ask you about was you live in Bali, you grew up in DC, right?
HC (12:37):
I grew up in DC. Yeah. How long do you live in Bali?
RV (12:42):
I would say about four years. Okay. So the international hiring place, right. And you always hear of these, like hire someone in the Philippines for two bucks an hour to just like do this. And we’ve had certain things that has, that has actually been, it has actually worked, but in most cases it’s like, it takes more time than it is worth. And you shared with me that there is another kind of secret little thing that you have figured out about hiring, about hiring great people. Can you share, share it with us? Yeah.
HC (13:22):
Yeah. This is, this is a superpower of mine because when I discovered this man, it made, it made hiring so much easier for, for teens of people who have been working here. So I’ll, I’ll just get right to it. So I do have a competitive advantage, so I’m gonna let you know upfront. My, my fiance is Russian and my, my hack is to find groups of people, teams of people in Russia to hire who have been working with each other for specific pieces of, of, of labor in my businesses. And the reason I do that is because like you said, when you hired from the Philippines or India, and you’re looking for the low-cost salary for unfortunately their level of education and, and just their mindset on, on problem solving is a lot different from Western countries. Okay. I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but if they find an, a problem they have trouble finding a solution to a problem.
HC (14:21):
They’ll come back to you and you have to basically use your mental bandwidth to figure it out for them. Now, Russians, on the other hand do not, they are very, very competitive. Technology wise, they, they consume so much education Americans, Canadians, like they, cause they want to grow their skills so they can get out of Russia or at least perform on a competitive basis across the entire world. So what I’ve found working with Russians is that they’re, they’re sharp as, or maybe even a little bit sharp enough because they have the work ethic and they have the education and the mentality of like, okay, like what are all the different options we can do in chess? And what I’ll end up in there? Their cost of living is so dramatically lower than ours, that you can get a very, very one of, some of the best teams in Russia. And I’ll give an example. I have a social media team, well, more of a marketing team about four or maybe five people on the team and I’m paying less than 2000 a month. Or, and these are these, these, this agency works with grants like Coca-Cola pioneer, large, massive brands. So I have a lot of experience with the most up-to-date marketing strategies.
RV (15:36):
Huh. So, yeah. So like, what I hear you saying is, you know, each, each culture, like when it comes to hiring internationally, you have to like pay attention to the kind of cultural norms and the like course you do. Right. And it go, yeah, it’s, it’s different. Hiring someone in India is different than hiring someone in the Philippines is different than hiring somebody in Argentina is definitely the higher. And you know, I, I had to think back over the years, I’m like, I don’t think I’ve ever worked with a contractor from Russia. And what I hear you saying is going, Hey, there are certain countries that have an education level. That’s very comparable to what you might see in wherever the U S or Canada, or, you know, w England or whatever name, your pick and the work ethic is similar or better. And the problem-solving skills are similar or better, but the cost of living is still much lower. And and Russia’s one of those places. Are there, are there others, or as right now, is Russia like, well, Russia is also massive, so yeah, yeah, yeah.
HC (16:42):
Yeah. I mean a lot of the Eastern European countries. So my main sources are Ukraine and Russia. Okay. And this is what I call it’s like labor arbitrage. Right. you’re getting a very, very, very high level of skill for Le much, much lower price. Now the trade-off however is English is not a first language. Okay. So and I’m going to introduce you to a soccer. We did not discuss about this up the last conversation. This is another tidbit that I I’d like to add in here. I found, I found a software that uses AI to now repurpose, so I can have a Russian write anything. And they, they use the same structure, but it’s in Russian. I usually translate it. It’s not proper English. And this is where I was struck that man, I still got to hire an English copier.
HC (17:31):
Now I found a software just recently, just a few months ago, and I’ve been playing with it. It works tremendously. So I’ll have a Russian copywriter write email sequence or redo a website. And I will take that, dump it into the stock where that’s AI and it will repurpose it in perfect English. Really perfect. Yep. And now I’m even exploring might maybe even replacing my copywriters because I can take a copywriting. They’d let you funnel, hack your competitors. You see what kind of, what, how they’re speaking to their audience and their what’s on their website, their emails. You can just take that, dump it into this AI software. It will rewrite it. 99% plagiarism free. You can repurpose email copy. You can repurpose website. You can repurpose blog posts is incredible. The software I’m using is called conversion.ai.
RV (18:23):
I thought that’s what you might say. I thought you that’s what you might, you might say. Yeah. I’ve heard about this. Yeah.
HC (18:29):
Yep. And yeah. So this one, this one has closed the loop that had been like, okay, the trade-off is there. They don’t have the, the first or English as a first language. Now that’s not an issue for me. However, I’m still paying the same rates.
RV (18:43):
So that’s amazing. Does it go the other way too? Can you take your English and run it through conversion.ai and move it to like Spanish?
HC (18:56):
I have not tried. I haven’t tried to that. Yeah. I’m not sure I have that, but that would be a really good case study or case use.
RV (19:05):
Huh. Yeah, so this, I think I heard this tool in regards to in, in regards to like headlines and stuff like that. Yeah. Is, is I heard it as like basically like you’ll, you’ll plug in some copy and it’ll kind of like spit back some stuff. So I have not heard about this feature. So actually AIJ is the one. So our CEO, my wife, she’s the one that’s been telling me, Hey, you gotta look at this, you gotta look at this. You gotta look this, I haven’t actually gotten to look at it. But now that don’t tell her crap, she’s gonna listen. She’s gonna listen to this. There’s nothing more annoying than when your spouse tells you something like a thousand times that you don’t do it. And then like some random person says it and you’re like, oh, Hey, let me tell you
Speaker 4 (19:53):
About this awesome tool conversion. He’s like what? I’ve been telling
RV (19:58):
You this for years. But so you’re saying you’re getting a copywriter at a much more affordable price who kind of like understands persuasive marketing, et cetera, et cetera, writes it in their native tongue. You run it through this tool and bam, it spits it out in English for you.
HC (20:17):
Well, they write it in English, but the English is not, you know, it does. It’s just, you can tell it’s not written by speaking person. And then I read the word it. So they do have caught like they work with international brands. So they’re starting to try to find copy, but that’s their struggle in Russia. It’s really hard to find English speaking, Russians who sound like, you know, you can just tell it’s not written by a native English speaker. And so they can get 78. They, you get the idea, but just didn’t sound right. You plug it in here and now it sounds great.
RV (20:53):
Okay. So they are writing it in English, but it’s a little bit of broken, broken English, and then you, and then this cleans it up, basically
HC (21:01):
It’s better than Google translate. Not as good as you or I, right.
RV (21:05):
Huh. Got it. Okay.
HC (21:08):
For the Russians and then a conversion AI polishes it up to where you and I, even better than you arrived. I write it because they did different variations. So you can plug in, like they can write one thing and you can just sit you compose or generate generate journey. So they would come up with unlimited variations of that. So then you can AB test each one and be like, okay, I, they wrote one great headline. I’m going to create this one headline and put it into 20 and then I can give it to my person and they can run tests on all day.
RV (21:37):
Huh. And then see basically split test different headlines and see how they perform. Yeah. That’s how, that’s how ADA described it. To me was almost like a headline generator tool and kind of go in like, Hey, you know, different. Like we could even take our email sequence, put it in there and then it can give us like another rendition to kind of test. So
HC (21:56):
W w I want to real quickly, so re talked about basically SEO and stuff like that. So this is where it’s starting to hit the STL market Flores. SEO nurse are listening. You can actually take, and people have built software. I’m actually working with a developer, build a software where you can go and see, all right, here’s Google’s top ratings for how to make money online. The top 10 articles, take those top 10 articles, dump it into Jarvis or conversion.ai, re spin it. And then you have a brand new article, not plagiarized that you can now clean the top topics from those other articles. And you have your own on your own website without hiring an SEO. Right.
RV (22:39):
Interesting. Yeah. That’s interesting. Cause it’s like, it’s definitely not plagiarism. You’re literally not copying the words, but it’s kind of like you’re taking the concept and the content and then re re repurposing, which people have done for years as you go like, oh, look at what this, this, I want to research this search term. I’m going after this search term, this is the website. These are the 10 that have it. And you go, w you know, what are they doing? And then you’re just kind of like reverse engineering it. But you’re saying using a tool like this kind of like, does the reverse engineering for you? And then you kind of add your Polish and then you do this is like it’s almost like digital war games
Speaker 4 (23:22):
Is like
RV (23:24):
The, the, the future of, of this stuff is going, you know? And, and, and I think that to me, of going, like, when I hear somebody, like you talk at your, like, w dealing live in this world all the time, and I go, there’s a lot of people who don’t even know this is happening still. Like a lot of people are just like, what does SEO mean? And it’s like, Hey, you’re still living that world. Like, you got to pick it up here. Like, you need to do some binge listening of, of some influential, personal brand podcasts and like some stuff, because this is, this is where it’s at. And, and I think here’s what I think is amazing is there are like, this kind of tactic is kind of like a nimble small business tactic applied to a huge, big business concept of like SEO and keyword research.
RV (24:12):
And, you know, just like page optimization and traffic analytics. And there’s like this merger of these like small business hacks, and also small businesses are able to compete with big businesses without having to spend like massive dollars for the clicks because of, of, of techniques like this. And a lot of big businesses are trying to become more nimble and, and smaller businesses are being able to compete. Anyways, I’m coming back to the, to the international thing, you know, is there a place you can go to find great talent? I know you said you have an unfair advantage because your fiance those of us that are married should probably not go get a Russian fiance. Is there is there another way whether it’s Russia or, you know, you mentioned Argentina last time we’ve worked with some folks in Argentina, some creatives that were, have been really, really spectacular w finding the right people overseas, is there a way to do that other than the LinkedIn thing, cause that would lead you to some of those people? Probably.
HC (25:14):
Yeah. How I would do it if I did not have, like, Beyonce is, I would find similar to you kind of went over it, you conferences, finding the speakers that so you could find, if you want a social media person, you can find the top social media conferences in Russia, look at the speaker list and reach out to those speakers. And then just through those connections, figure out okay, who recommended them? Who are they working with? It’ll be a little bit tough because it OER in Russian. However, you can very quickly decipher, okay. Who are the best. But the, the good thing is, is that you’ll know, I, I you’ll be much more likely to be able to afford the best because their rates are so low. Okay. So you don’t have to do a lot of digging for a comparable rate because it’s going to be pretty comparable to what you might. Yeah.
RV (26:03):
So it’s kind of the same way you would, you would find like, who’s the top person, who’s the top expert on blank and English or whatever. Like you would just search it and you’d, you’d see it, but it would be in Russian, but you could also view it through Google translate and be able to kinda like read a lot of those sites. Yeah. And then, and then just reach out to them. You’re going, it’s not that hard to find the top people. It just be, you just wouldn’t have much relationship connection with them. So you got to like, you know, reach out to, or whatever,
HC (26:31):
But you’ll be, here’s the thing you’ll stand out because you’ll be a non rush and reaching out to them. They want to work. And we talked about this before. They really want to start branching out and working with American or Canadian or UK companies. And so if you reach out to them, they’re going to super excited. You may even get on the phone with the actual owner CEO of the company and they’ll bring their, their 18. Right. They’ll roll out the red carpet. And they many times I’ve, I’ve had like zoom call, interview calls with the owner, the, his right hand, man, and then three or four of their top project managers. I’m not sure if it’s a training car or whatever, just to, just to really put their best brains together to work on, on my, my businesses. Yeah.
RV (27:14):
I mean, that’s, that’s interesting. Guess it’s just people, it’s people and going, what, what do they want and how can I help them and where are they? And yeah, that, that’s super, super interesting. So w what I want to talk to you about the PR concept a little bit, so we didn’t get it to chat about this last time, but I, I wanted to understand this. I feel like, I feel like I’ve heard that you’ve created a similar kind of system, which is like, you know, just in general, I feel like how your brain is working. You’re constantly reverse engineering. What is like, you know, labor arbitrage is such a great concept. That’s such a great term. I’ll just go and how can I solve this problem in a different way, in a more efficient, economical way. And I feel like you developed some good process with this related to PR and publicity, which is obviously how we met. We, you know, we kind of met through this, this Forbes article, which wasn’t even under your name I noticed, or Celine’s like, I was working with you all, but somebody else wrote the article. Like I expected it to be under her pen name. And then I was like, oh, this didn’t even come out under her name. So I was like, clearly you were doing something there behind the scenes for relationship building. And like so how do you, like, how are you tackling some of this PR stuff and building relationships there?
HC (28:40):
So very similar I’m reaching out on LinkedIn. I’m just, this, one’s a lot more manual. I mean, when you want to develop a relationship with cause Forbes, contributors or entrepreneurs, they get messaged a lot. Right. And so I, I come in and I’m very, very, very focused on just providing value develop relationships. And once they, I give a lot of free advice and coaching or whatever for this area, they don’t get paid to contribute to these columns. Right. And so they have other businesses. So what I do is I come in and if we click on a good level, I will give free advice. I’m like, okay, I’ve grown up several companies. I’m what are you working on? A lot of them are in my niche, which is building websites for there. And so I give them a lot of value in exchange, not even exchange.
HC (29:30):
I just say, Hey, I have a PR company. This is not based on any exchange or anything, but if they’re a good fit or I have an article that you’d like to publish, like, could we work? You know, basically could I, could I interview some of my clients? And so if you think they’re a good fit and you might write about them, and that works really well, super relationship-based. And I just, I’ve been doing that for a couple of years now. So I’ve built up a really strong network of people that contribute to different magazines. And as I’m growing my personal brand, now I have ins with editors or, or people who can make decisions. So eventually when I build my personal brand, I can have my own columns as well.
RV (30:12):
Yeah. I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s crazy. Like I think, I think this wasn’t our conversation that I was saying, media is like the thing that has the littlest financial dollar value of anything you ever do short term, but this monster credibility and influence and relational power, which all leads to financial stuff later on. And and yeah, that’s, that’s the thing. Is this going like, what’s, what’s different about the world today is these people are accessible. Like you’re not going through some, like secretary on a phone tree, or like a, you know, some people blocking you to get to the writers. They’re all out there on LinkedIn and Twitter. They’re super easy to find. I mean, we got on good morning America last week because the guy I’d never even met he’s on Twitter. He saw some posts that we made about this national research study that we just, that my wife did that we just, we just published.
RV (31:13):
It’s just coming out now. And he was like, Hey, can I do an interview for you? And, and he reached out, you know, he’s ABC news.com and we’re like, sure, we did an interview. He didn’t even say it was going to be on good morning, America. We thought it was going to be on some late night, late night show that he does. We, we knew he was reputable, but then, then they rerun the story on good morning, America. The next morning, we didn’t even know some, our friend was like, Hey, did you know? You’re a good morning America? And it’s like, they’re there, they’re there. They’re right there. It’s,
HC (31:43):
It’s incredible. Yeah. I mean, I would say maybe three or four, three or four years ago. I, I had no social media for, I still don’t. I haven’t worked on it, but know nothing about me. I met some guy and we became friends. We hit it off. Same thing. We just were talking about business. He wrote an article. This what happened. I found his article on Reddit, reached out to him about, I love your article. We just started talking. And I was like, Hey, something working for me. I figured out a way to hack Cora. And I got a million views in less than 45 days. So I was like, Hey, I don’t know if you’ve heard about this, but I did this. And you know, I don’t know what you’re working on, but maybe you can work at di didn’t expect anything in return.
HC (32:23):
It turns out he was a contributor for entrepreneur. Ended up reaching back out to me like couple weeks later, like, Hey man, I was thinking about your core hack. I’d like to write about it. Had a full feature done on me in entrepreneur, out of nowhere. And then we’ve just became really good friends after that. And yeah, if you’re just providing value out there and you want to be strategic, you can provide that value to contributors of these large publications that you can find on LinkedIn, but you’re not going in saying, Hey, I want you to write an article about me. It’s like you go in and you find out, okay, they might be someone you were friends with. They happen to write for whatever publication, just
RV (33:00):
How can you help them? Which is the, which is true of anything. Like that’s the way you build relationship with anybody is you go, what can I do for you? How can I support you? Who can I introduce you to? Like, what tip can I give you? Can I share your stuff? Like, can I volunteer at your conference? Can I give you an endorsement? Can I like give you a retweet? Like it’s, and this is what people like, just don’t understand. And it’s so freaking simple as you go, how can I add value to this person’s life? What can I, and that’s why, you know, it’s funny. Cause I think Hanson that one of our brand builders courses is called podcast powered and we, you know, we teach people like, Hey, here’s how to like create a unique podcast and the technology. And here’s how you like deal with the, the premise of the show and you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, like everything you needed to know to like launch an awesome podcast.
RV (33:49):
And one of the things that we always tell people is we go look, the best reason to rock launch a podcast is not because of the money you’ll make it’s it’s, you know, hopefully because you’ll impact a bunch of people. But even if like you don’t have that many listeners, there is no faster way to meet. Like anybody you want then to go, Hey, I have a show. Can I interview you? Can I tell my audience about your book, about your website, about your column? I mean, it’s just the, it is the most incredible networking tool in the history of mankind, because you could, you could email that person a million times and call them and they would never respond. And you’re like, Hey, I’d like to interview you. And this is the power of writing for entrepreneur or for Forbes. The it’s, it’s, it’s one of the things I’m doing at success now is I’m you know, here you go.
RV (34:41):
Like we were friends before and now suddenly I’m the entrepreneurship editor of success magazine. That wasn’t even a thing. I don’t think when we met. And you know, there’s all these people that it’s like, they would never respond to me, but now it’s like, because I want to interview them. They’re like, yeah, of course. When do you know is next week? Okay. And it’s like, this is crazy. Like the power of being the media is it, you know, it’s just crazy and anyone can start a podcast or a blog. And then if you get a chance to write for entrepreneur or Forbes or any of these, like Celine does, I mean, it’s lien rights for ton of these. But you’re just giving value to them. Yeah. What you’re doing right here, right here for us. That’s so cool. Y’all so anyways, Hanson is as you could tell, he’s a real smart guy.
RV (35:28):
Like he’s kind of like that guy where you go, I need something. I don’t know who to talk to. I should, I should, I should hit up Hanson and see what he thinks about this. Because if he doesn’t do it, I’m sure he knows no. So who does it? And if you’re going, Hey, I need someone to like build some systems and processes so that my business isn’t like completely dependent on me all the time for everything and every question and every problem freedom, freedom to ascend.com, right? Is your website. That’s where you want people. Where do you want people to go to learn about you?
HC (35:59):
Yeah, they can come to your website. They, if they want to reach me personally they can go to Instagram. My Instagram handle is Canson. Shane H a N S O N C H E N G G
RV (36:11):
Extra G on your instant handle. Cause someone stole your,
HC (36:15):
Another Hanson. J was a little bit quicker on the trigger. Yeah.
RV (36:19):
Chang’s a kind of a tough, that’s a tough last name, man. I mean, you, you got S E N G, but it’s like, it’s like being Smith or Williams or something. You’re just like, you got a lot of people out there you’re racing to secure URLs and yeah. Before social
HC (36:35):
Media, I thought it had a very unique name, but I think there was like seven or eight aunts and chains in the United States. Yeah. Yeah.
RV (36:42):
I, I, my, I got lucky with the Rory thing is there’s not a ton of, not a ton of Rory’s, but I always feel so, so sorry for someone where it’s like, yeah, I have, like, I have one of, one of my buddies is Mark Brown.
Speaker 4 (36:54):
It’s like, oh man,
RV (36:55):
Like good luck. Like good luck. That’s that’s, that’s tough. But anyways man, super creative practical. Thank you for these tips. And we just wish you the best Hansen. Yeah. I look forward to getting to know you more and, you know, seeing how you work on, on these projects and stuff and, and just good luck to you, man.
HC (37:16):
Awesome. Thank you so much again for having me on the Chevron,
RV (37:20):
The good news Hanson. It looks like this has been recorded.

Ep 200: How To Get A $10 Million Business Valuation with Kevin Kruse

RV (00:02):
I’m excited to introduce you to one of my quote unquote, real entrepreneur friends. I, today I use that, you know, air quotes just because, you know, personal brands and information marketing. I, I love, I mean, it’s my, my life it’s been our life. But I, I kind of think of it as distinctly different from most entrepreneurs, which are people who, you know, build a widget or a service or something that is not built around the person that has a true enterprise value. And we, we often don’t get to hear from a lot of those people. And so the reason that I brought on Kevin, so who you’re about to meet Kevin Cruz is a long time friend of mine. I mean, at this point we’ve probably known each other closer to 10 years and just kind of been in the circle. So as a personal brand, he’s very successful.
RV (00:54):
He is a New York times bestselling author of nine books. One of his books is called unlimited clients. He wrote one called 15 secrets. Successful people know about time management, which is really when I think our paths really kind of crossed. And then he wrote one called great leaders, have no rules. So he understands personal branding, but as an entrepreneur or an executive he was a co-founder at a company called Connexa, which went IPO, initial public offering. And then eventually got acquired by IPM IBM. He’s also had other companies, a company called ACI, a company called Axiom professional health learning a company just those companies also were acquired. And today he is the founder and the CEO of lead X, which is fascinating. It is an AI powered platform. So artificial intelligence that helps companies scale leadership behaviors and employee engagement. So he knows a lot about SAS software as a service. He knows a lot about personal branding, knows a lot about entrepreneurship. And anyways, I just felt like you got to hear some of the wisdom from Kevin Cruz. So buddy, welcome to the show.
KK (02:07):
Thanks for having me. I’m looking forward to chatting. I have no idea what you’re going to ask me, which is going to make this even more fun. Well, yeah,
RV (02:14):
I mean, I think, you know, I, I was mentioned to you before the show that brain builders group, we’ve got our curriculum and it’s divided into four phases. And our fourth phase is, is, is all really built around what we call eight figure entrepreneur, which is scaling a personal brand into a business and to a real business. And, and I guess my first question would be around that, which is what do you think? Personal brands, people who build personal brands either don’t know or don’t understand, or don’t see when it comes to building an actual business with enterprise value, like, what are they not aware of? And, and you know, that like how do, how do they not think, or how do they think differently than how kind of like a traditional entrepreneur might think?
KK (03:08):
Yeah. And I don’t know it’s a great starting place. And, and I don’t think of it as as a traditional entrepreneur that there’s different kinds of entrepreneurs. I think, I think it’s just, what are you focused on? What do you want? What I mean by that is I think a fundamental question and, and Roy, this is a journey I went on, you know, I, a fundamental question, when you decide to go into business for yourself, is, are you looking to be like a solo practitioner or do you want employees? Because that is a big thing, right? There are, are, do you want to be selling and delivering the work? So, and having a lifestyle, quote, unquote lifestyle business, and you make a ton of money doing that. If you get your brand to the right level and provide a lot of value, or do you want to build a business and it could be a small business, a five person business, a 50 person business that’s a big first question.
KK (03:57):
And if you decide, I don’t want to just be a consultant or a coach, I want to have a consulting practice. I want a coaching practice that gives you some scale. And that decision alone gives you the flexibility in that it’s rare for someone to buy a one person business. Because if that one person gets hit by a bolt of lightning, then you’ve lost the value. You’ve lost the business. But if I’ve built a 10 person coaching company, a 10 person consulting company, there is something there that even if I get hit by a bus tomorrow, there’s nine other coaches and the revenue will keep flowing in. So that’s a big decision. That’s a big wealth multiplier. And I did that the first few businesses when I, when I was younger. But then I saw the power of SAS software and SAS software. The valuations are incredibly different. So if you took a, a $1 million consulting company,
RV (04:58):
Yeah. Let’s talk about valuations for a second and just assume like ticket from the beginning, like, assume someone’s listening. Like they’re going, Hey, I used to be an employee. I started a personal brand. I’ve never even had the conversation about what a multiple is, or even though, or how, how it works, right? Yes.
KK (05:15):
Right. Okay. So if some, if someone, if I want to come along and buy your company, the fundamental question is, you know, what’s it worth, what’s a fair amount and everybody sort of who does this, they’re sort of rules of thumb about it. And, and there are times when valuations, the price of your company, the valuation is lower. Other times it’s higher. Like right now, valuations are very high historically. But kind of a rule is if it’s a service business, you’re going to get your company is going to get valued on a multiple of your profits. So if you’re making, if you have a million dollar, I’m just making round numbers. If you have a million dollar business with a hundred dollars in profit every year, I might come along and I’ll say, I’m going to give you,
RV (06:02):
Hold on a second. So Jessie, you’re saying a million dollar revenue per a hundred thousand in profits. So that’s a 10% profit margin,
KK (06:09):
10% profit margin. And I’m just using round numbers. Sure. I would say to you, I’m going to give you a multiple, a multiplier on that profit. Now it might be seven times the profit. It might be 10 times the profit. If I really like you and you’re growing, maybe I’ll give you 12 times that profit, but you’re basically going to take that hundred thousand dollars of profit and multiply it. Let’s say by 10 and your, your business is worth a million dollars. Okay. So on a service business, they’re viewed as no, there’s nothing wrong with them, but okay. They’re going to probably grow a little more slowly. And they’re complicated because at the end of the day, you’re selling hours. So if I’m going to double the size of the business, I need to double the number of hours I’m selling and delivering.
RV (06:56):
Like that’s the widget. The widget is an hour of somebody’s time.
KK (07:00):
Beautiful, right? Yes. That’s, that’s the widget. Now let’s, let’s say though, that you can figure out how to package your value into something that people will pay a subscription for. And it might be an app. It might be a piece of software that’s traditionally what it, what it is, but the entire world is moving to a subscription economy. We can go down that rabbit hole later, but let’s say now, but you’ll see
RV (07:30):
That with Disney plus. And like, everybody’s gone from like rent a movie at blockbuster to Netflix and Disney, moving to Disney plus and discovery plus, and they’re all there. Everyone’s doing that.
KK (07:41):
Everyone’s doing that. And it used to be when I was selling software connects in the early days, we would go to a company and say, Hey, give us a million dollars. And we’ll put this on your servers. You’re going to pay us 1,000,001 time. And there might be a maintenance fee, a service fee. But like you own that instance of the software by selling a subscription. I say, you know what, you’re only going to have to pay us $200,000, but you pay us year after year after year. And so it’s smaller upfront and you get all the upgrades, you get all the service, but you’re kind of locked in over time. And so back to that valuation, let’s take the same million dollar company with a hundred thousand dollar profit. So the numbers are the same in the business, but if it’s a subscription business, all of a sudden the valuation is a multiple off your revenue, not your profit.
KK (08:30):
So I’m going to say like right now, multiply the multiples on a, a, a SAS business, a small SAS business. It’s going to be 10 to 30 times revenue. So if you’ve got your million dollar company there and it’s SAS, I’m going to look at it. Now, look, if it’s like, if I say, ah, I don’t, I don’t trust the leadership. I think Rory’s going to quit on, or he’s not as good as he thinks he is. Or they’ve got some problems here or they’ve got a big competitor that they’re feeling pressure, or maybe they’re just not growing that much. All right. Maybe I’m going to value at one times revenue. So you’re back down the worst case scenario, a million dollars more than likely, I’m going to say, wow, you’re a, you’re a smart thinking entrepreneur who made this SAS business, you’re growing faster than a service business and your profit margins are going to get higher because you’re not selling hours. Once you build the widget, you can sell it over and over and over again. So I’m going to give you to you know, anywhere from, from 20 to 30 times revenue. So if you have a $1 million SAS business ballpark, you’re going to get 10 million to $30 million valuation on that business today now.
RV (09:48):
And if I have a service-based business that does a million dollars in revenue, then I might only get a few hundred thousand, maybe half a million or a million bucks would be 10, multiple, a 10, multiple on a hundred thousand in profit. If I got a 10 multiple of EBITDA on a service-based business, a service-based business to an a million in revenue might be worth a million dollars. A SAS business, doing a million in revenue might be 10 to 30. It’s 20,
KK (10:16):
$30 million. Today is the valuation of that business. That’s how high is that? So it’s assumed that the S that the whole world like software is eating the world. SAS is eating software. So the assumption is if you’re selling a million dollars today and did nothing, the market is going to demand more of that SAS. And again, like if we’re selling time, I’ve got to sell that same time. And this is, I mean, let me just, let’s just talk real world. Back when I had a dozen service professionals, we would build custom training programs for Pfizer pharmaceuticals. Okay, great. We’d land a million dollar project. You’re saying you actually did this. You had, this was one of my businesses in, when I was 25 to 30 years old. This was one of the businesses I sold.
RV (11:06):
You got 12 people on your team and build a custom training program,
KK (11:11):
Right? So we go to Pfizer. We say, Hey, let’s, let’s build some workshops and some training, and we’ll go teach all your reps about sales and leadership and all this. And we get a million dollar contract. Wow. That’s fantastic. Well, what happens January of the next year? Rory I’m back at zero again. So just to get the same level, I got to go back to Pfizer or a new company and say, Hey, do you want a million more dollars worth of workshops? You got to sell it to them all over again, but now what do I do today? I go to fight. Well, I won’t, I won’t say we go to Pfizer. I go to Northwestern mutual. So world’s largest a life insurance company, financial service company. I say to them, don’t give me a million dollars for give me hundreds of thousands of dollars for this leadership app for this subscription. And you’re going to give it to me year after year after year. And they say, okay, and now suddenly I’ve got that 20 multiple, because my leadership training is through a subscription model. It’s not through Kevin showing up in front of the classroom, guiding them through because I’m selling my time.
RV (12:21):
Yeah. Now when you talk about subscriptions revenue, okay, so you have like service revenue, which is this one-time revenue subscription revenue is I’m paying on repeat, but inside of subscription revenue, like coaching, like you can sell a coaching program that subscription revenue is that multiple higher, lower, or the same than like a software subscription revenue.
KK (12:44):
Great question. So, five years ago, it wouldn’t have counted as subscription. Like it had to be softer. People be like, ah, that’s still, even though you’re subscribing, you’re still selling hours. We don’t believe that today you will get credit for that subscription service revenue. If, if you can show that the clients are buying more every single year. So if you sell a subscription to Kevin and I don’t renew, they’re gonna be like, eh, that’s, that’s not really subscription. He’s not keeping it going beyond six months, 12 months. But if you say, you know what, Kevin gave me whatever, $5,000 for consulting services, you know, in 2021. And then in 2022, he gave me 6,000. It was so good. He wanted to keep it up, but he, he elevated to the next level, you know, the 2 0 1 level course. And the year after that, he escalated to 3 0 1.
KK (13:40):
You will get credit for that revenue today, but they are, they want to see negative churn. So churn is a term about when you lose your customers. So if I have a hundred customers, you know, at the start of the year, at the end of the year, I’ve only got 80. I churned 20% of them. Well, they want to see as you start the year of the a hundred customers. And at the end of the year, you’ve got the same hundred and they’re giving you more money at the end of the year than the beginning of the year. So it’s all about are, is it follow the dollar? So it doesn’t have to be software, but software so powerful, but even if it’s not software, are the clients renewing and expanding renew.
RV (14:21):
And you think that service based subscription revenue, let’s say it has negative churn. You think it would get, this could get a similar multiple as a software revenue. They are Roy,
KK (14:35):
Let me, we’ll just, I’ll just say it. So the giant company out there called better up many coaches will have heard of them or be part of the better up platform. Okay. They have been raising hundreds of millions of dollars. They just latest hire was prince Harry. And they’re raising it out of Silicon valley as a tech company, even though they’re selling ours. Now they have a little app that kind of tracks the sessions. I’m sure, you know, there’s, there’s other platforms out there that do that. And the reason why, and for, for years, many of us traditional software SAS are like, how are they pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes? Like this is crazy. And it turns out, I mean, the there’s so much money in the markets that better up is getting valuations. Maybe not as pure as a true software company, but, but like a SAS. I mean, it’s like, Hey, they’re custom, they’re adding customers. Those customers are buying more this year, over last year. There’s a little bit of a tech component. Boom. Let’s give them that 10 to 30 multiple. So
RV (15:44):
That’s amazing. That’s, that’s really, really fascinating. You know, because, so, so, all right. So let me ask you this. When the role of personal brand, you’ve done SAS, you’ve done subscription revenue. What, where’s the real opportunity for personal brands to develop subscription revenue? Like, what are, if you just said, let’s only talk subscription revenue for personal brands, what are different ways they could pull that together? And like, how might that actually look in real life?
KK (16:21):
Yeah. So I think in real life, I mean, you know, so I’ve, I’ve started over several times in the last, you know, 30 plus years, including, you know like when I did the 15 secrets book, I wasn’t known as a time and productivity expert. You were, I mean, other people were, I wasn’t. But when I launched that book, I said, all right, well, you know, let me spend a couple of years earning my, keep, you know, in, in this area, you know, royalties, coaching, keynotes then you start by, then you start adding on, right? So you do the, the the group coaching programs. So that’s the easiest thing. Hey, you’re going to give me now the traditional model is you give me, you know, $2,000, you’re going to get all this online, digital video content. Plus every week you’re going to hop on the phone with me, we’ll have a live group session, and you’re going to go into a Facebook group forever.
KK (17:15):
Okay. That’s a good start. But if you’re buying more time in the values in those videos, you don’t have to deliver it all yourself. But instead of it being, give me $2,000 and you get this eight week program, give me X thousand dollars and you’re in the monthly forever program. And in fact, I don’t know if if you follow him, but a lot of coaches out there know Brendon Burchard who has a pretty big brand, right? And his high performance academy is big and he’s look, he’s successful. He’s got a, of people would like to have his brand and his books in his full workshops. He’s launching an app. I called the growth app or something like that right now. Yeah. So a growth day growth day. There you go. So even someone as successful as, at that level, they realize, wow, all this money I’m making by scaling my personal brand and delivering and all the ways he delivers the ultimate way to scale is get someone to build an app that people will pay for month after month after month. Now, I think a bigger question, Rory is if I can, everybody should do this. Who’s going to be serious about this space. You know, you’re not just buying a talk. You’re not just buying a book. You’re not just buying a two month program. You’re subscribing the way I would to Fitbit or Peloton or something like that. This, you know, this is your ongoing fitness program for the topic of X, you know, whatever your, your expertise is.
RV (18:47):
So let’s talk about apps because on the, on the one hand, it’s like, great. Let’s, let’s build an app and get a million dollars in revenue and sell it for 10 million, no big deal. Like that sounds great. Let’s can we let’s do it this weekend? What do we do this afternoon? Grab a beer. The reality. Okay. Talk to us about the reality of, of apps. You had to go there. You had to say reality. How do we, how do you build one? What does it take? How much does it cost? Where do you find the people? What’s the w w like, give us a, give us a reality check. Cause, cause I mean, literally you’re saying build an app, get a million dollars of, of, you know, ARR annual recurring revenue, and that you might be able to sell that thing for 10 to 20 to 30 million bucks. That seems like a pretty good plan. Talk to us about the actual roadblock it takes to get there. Okay.
KK (19:41):
So let me, let me give you real data, but then, then start with a smaller version of it. So as an example, roughly if Lalit X app is doing a million dollars in annual recurring revenue today, and we are getting valued at around $20 million, what did it take to build that million dollar app? Well, it has taken me four years and about $4 million of investment into building that app. Wow. A million dollars of revenue that I’ve spent four years and a lot of investment putting into that’s one way looking at wow. He spent 4 million and he’s only doing a million a year, the other way, look at his, he spent 4 million in four years and just got a valuation of $20 million. So there’s another, you know, there’s the upside to it. Where do you get that startup capital? I didn’t start on day one with 4 million.
KK (20:33):
So in my case, you know, I was able to self-fund for awhile, but I went to friends and family angel investors and got enough money to do this. Right. Like I I’ve done this before. So it was like, Hey, I’m going to hire a software engineer. I’m going to hire a software designer. I’m going to hire, you know, there’s going to be a small team and we’re going to put a million in and every year and let’s raise that first million and grow. Now, that’s not the way I started doing things 30 years ago though. And I think the easiest thing to, first of all, it’s cheaper than ever before to launch software, right? So it’s whether you’re, you’re buying developers, you know, off of Upwork or whatever it is, whether you’re renting server space on AWS, it is easier and cheaper than ever before to do this.
KK (21:27):
It doesn’t mean it’s cheap and easy. It’s cheaper and easier than ever before. And you know, one of the things that I did with lead ex learning from experiences, I went out and got a technical co-founder, you know, so I Lucas Carlson is my CTO. And there’s different ways you can structure those deals, but you know, you can, if you have money, you can hire an engineer or a couple of engineers to do it. You can outsource to a small firm to build your app, although like outsourcing anything, pros and cons cheap and easy, and you turn on, but like they screw it up or they go out of business and there goes,
RV (22:03):
They ghost you like the, the biggest, the biggest pain on this is getting reliable kelp and people to be responsive and hit deadlines and show up and do what they say they’re going to do. I mean, that’s the 1%,
KK (22:20):
If you’re working with individual contractors, they just, there’s often a reason why their individual contractors, you know, the reason why they’re not employed by somebody. And again, like I learned that the hard way I lost a lot of money and more important, lost time by going to like, Hey, you know, here, I’m a F I’m a full service app developer in whatever country around the world for $2,000, I can build drive. Hey, sounds great. Go. And it’s horrible. It’s terrible. There’s no responsiveness. You’ll spend a lot more going to a small company, maybe one in, you know, in your state or in your country that is geographically, you know, nearby, but they’re going to be more reliable. They’re not going to disappear or ghost you. So it’s not Rory, what I want to say is, first of all, any anyone out there who already has like, they’re already well into six figures, they have a small consulting firm.
KK (23:14):
They should have a digital transformation, subscription strategy in place. Like if I was running a five person consulting firm or coaching firm, I would say, okay, we’re not gonna do this overnight, but how are we going to launch an app one year from today? Like you just have to do it now, if you’re a one person personal brand, you know and you want to do that, your app doesn’t have to do everything. You know? W what is it you want the app to do? Is it just gonna deliver videos? Is it gonna be a little financial calculator? Is it going to be a way for you to give them messages every morning? There’s a lot of different things you could do, and you just add to it, iterate it, make it better, make it better, and then you’ll, you’ll grow it.
RV (23:54):
Huh. And then in terms of app, like what do, what do I need to know as a non-technical person about the language? You know, like what programming languages do they write in? What skills do I have to ask them if they have like, cause you know, I think most entrepreneurs are not the coder that like you’re saying, you, you bring in at, it helps to bring in a technical partner. But like, I mean, is that basically it is going, Hey, you got to have someone that’s a technical partner.
KK (24:28):
Well, no, well you need to either have a technical partner or hire your technical partner, you know, as an outsider. And now I am not technical. So I don’t know, like, I, I don’t know enough about any of those things you asked about to like, maybe I should, you know, but to me what’s most important is not just having the general vision, like, Hey vendor, Hey freelancer. I’m a, I’m a coach in this area and I want to make an app. Like the more you can describe it in detail, the user opens it up and they’re going to see a picture of me or they’re going to open it up and it’s going to ask them to enter their goal, or they’re going to open it up and they’re going to inter there are three strengths, like whatever you need to translate, the big picture into what does the user do when they open the app?
KK (25:22):
That’s what you need to do. And then a good partner will sketch it. Like in, you know, they call it like wireframes templates though. They’ll mock it up before they code it. So then you would say to them, all right. So I’ve told you the use case, you know, I’m a, I’m a fitness coach and I specialize in working with busy executives over age 50. So I want them to be able to put in their, their weight and their fitness goal. And then I want them to look at exercises and have a meal plan. All right. Great. Well specifically, what do you want? Go down, down, down, and then your partner should give you almost like a set of slides or PowerPoint. Okay. Here’s when you open the app, it looks like this and it might be a sketch. It might be placeholders. It might be a stock image, not a picture of Rory on there, but then you’re going to say, oh no I didn’t mean that.
KK (26:18):
I meant this over here. You almost design it on paper before they then design it in, you know, in real life. And the only other key I would say is, is iterate. Keep the loops very short. You know, we, it used to be when I was doing e-learning software, we would work on quarterly releases and people thought that was fast. So every 90 we tell our clients, Hey, over the weekend, we’re going to release this new version. Here’s, what’s new in it. We do releases every week now. So it might be, Hey, let’s add a disc assessment and boom. Now that’s the release of this week. Next week, it’s going to be a new performance report. It’s going to be a new set of nudges or whatever it might be. So just think about, it’s not like you design it and someone’s going to deliver it a year from now.
KK (27:07):
No, you tell your partner, here’s my design. And I want, I want a delivery that I can actually a minimum viable product, an MVP, a minimum viable product. I want an MVP in 30 days. And then they can say, well, what you’ve asked for is too much. And then you say, okay, well what can you do in 30 days? And then boom, they deliver it. And you give them feedback, add a new feature and they deliver it again in 30 days. So it’s more about iteration and, and, and never stopping. You know, it’s always, it’s always improving.
RV (27:37):
And then when do you go for revenue? I mean, do you just like right out of the gate as soon as you can. And do you do, is it like a dollar trial? Is it free for 30 days? I mean, or is it just kind of like you try all of it and see what, see what actually gets people to sign up?
KK (27:54):
Yeah, so great questions. I think, you know, th the sooner you can get real potential customers using it the better. So if you have to give it away for free or give it for free to your current customers, the better like you need real world, Guinea pigs using it, reporting bugs, giving you feedback. So you always want to think of them as like an advisory council. You’ve got your 12 target market users who are always going to have it for free and give you feedback in return for giving you feedback. Then the, the bigger question, it’s a business model thing. And so like with lead ex, when we launched four years ago, I had this vision, Rory that everybody loves leadership as much as I do. And if you look on Forbes, there’s millions of people following their leadership channel. If you look on LinkedIn, there’s tens of millions of people following the leadership, you know, channels.
KK (28:48):
I thought, oh, this is great books. As we know, you know, tons of people buying leadership books, let’s release a leadership app to consumers and let’s do a freemium model. So, Hey, go download this for free, play with it for a month, give us $20 a month like LinkedIn, and you’ll love it. And they don’t show up. They didn’t show up. And LinkedIn did not build LinkedIn initially on consumer subscriptions. So we pivoted and said, you know, who pays a lot of money for leadership development, big companies, you know, Roy, you think about how many people write keynote speaker checks, big keynote speaker checks. It’s not small businesses. It’s not individuals, it’s big companies for their annual event. Like they invest in leadership. They investing in culture and associations. And so we pivoted, and that was my Connexity’s. It’s like, why, why was I trying to think I was the B2C just because I was selling books and doing that stuff.
KK (29:45):
So when you’re selling to an enterprise customer, a big fortune 500 fortune, 1000 company that freemium and stuff, doesn’t, it goes away. Now it’s calling up a director of leadership development or wellness, or a head of VP of sales, you know, wherever you’re in is and saying, Hey, we got this solution. That’s going to transform your culture, your skills, et cetera. Why don’t we do a short pilot to see if it really is as good as I’m telling you it is. And then if you like it, you’re going to write a big check for a year’s worth of usage. And so I’m not against B to C for other people like that. It’s just, wasn’t my background and not my passion. My personal and now corporate mission is to spark the next 100 million leaders around the world. That’s a big number. I’m not going to do that with my books, my articles, my speeches. And I thought I could do it with B-to-C. And we have a free B to C version Rory, but that’s the real way to do it is to get companies, you know, that already have a hundred thousand employees around the world to give it their, to give it to large organizations.
RV (30:56):
Got it, got it. This has been so fascinating, Kevin, like, so it just I just, this is exactly what I hope for this unique blend of someone who really deeply understands personal branding and who really knows e-learning and who knows SAS and who knows entrepreneurship business valuations coming together. Because I mean, look, there’s, it’s no accident. Y’all wide brand builders group is a monthly coaching program. Like it’s, it’s no, it’s, it’s, it’s no secret why we do this. And coaching is something that we have a lot of experience doing and, you know, we’ve, we’ve received some of the benefits of, of some of what you’re talking about. Now, the app thing that that’s a, that’s a new venture, and I’m literally going to have to go have a conversation with AIJ and I’m going to be like, listen to this interview with Kevin, because now we need to hire 15 programmers. And we’re going to spend $10 million in the next couple years because Kevin said it was good idea. And and then if it doesn’t work ominous complainant on you, Kevin, where do you want people to go? If they want to connect with you? I mean, you, you write for, you written for so many online publications, you’ve got your books. Where should people go to connect with you?
KK (32:20):
Here’s what I’d say. If anyone is at all interested in leadership type personal development, just go to your favorite app store type lead X, Lea D X. You can download the free app and check it out. If you’re interested in my thoughts on personal branding, go to master your personal brand.com and you can download a tip. I run the lead X leadership podcast. We’ve got about 400 episodes. People can dive in and just email me [email protected]. And I’m happy to connect with anyone.
RV (32:53):
I love it. Well, we’ll link all that up in the show notes, man. Thanks for your wisdom. And just for sharing so openly about what you’re up to and what you’ve learned. I mean, just super duper valuable. I’ve always trusted you. I’ve always admired you and always just been grateful for our friendship. So keep going, man. We, we, we wish you the best and you know, I just, all I want is a ride in the private jet. That’s all I’m saying. I appreciate the opportunity, Rory. All right. See you, man.

Ep 198: Creating Distinction in Your Personal Brand with Scott Mckain

RV (00:02):
You can’t have a podcast and business about personal branding and finding your uniqueness and positioning without at some point interviewing Scott McCain. This man is a legend in our space. He is owns I think the word distinction this is something he spent his career studying and talking about. He’s a personal friend of mine. I very much consider him a mentor. I’ve known him for years. He is is the globally recognized authority on distinction and, and really how to stand out in a hyper competitive market, how to separate yourself from the crowd. So much of what we talk about with she hands wall and finding your uniqueness. And Scott has worked with apple and SAP and BMW and Merrill Lynch, and Cisco. These are the kinds of companies that are hiring him to help them create more distinction. He’s in two hall of fames, he’s in the professional speaking hall of fame, which I share with him. And then he is in the sales and marketing hall of fame as well. He appears in major media outlets all across the country USA today, New York times. And his most recent book is called iconic. How organizations and leaders attain, sustain, and regain the ultimate level of distinction, which Forbes called a top 10 business book. Scott McCain, ladies and gentlemen. Welcome to the show.
SM (01:30):
I’ve got to make sure to play that introduction for my wife. Just so maybe I’m going to borrow the best Rory. I tell you, man, I’m just sitting here with goosebumps. It is so great to be your friend. It is so great to be your guest. I really appreciate it. Thank you.
RV (01:45):
You’re so welcome, buddy. You’re you are genius. I quote you all the time in so many places with, with, with full attribution. I learned this from,
SM (01:54):
I do the same with you. My friends,
RV (01:57):
There’s so many things, but here’s a personal thing that I don’t know if you even know this, but those people who’ve been following me for years know that when we launched the take the stairs book, we did a bus tour. And that was a huge part about how we hit the New York times. And that happened because of a conversation that you and I had at lunch at an NSA meeting, we peeled off her lunch. And you told me about how you did your bus tour, and then we freaking did it and it worked. And you know, that’s just one of many things that we can point to in our life to say, because of Scott McCain.
SM (02:30):
Oh, you are okay. Well, it’s a blast. I think the other thing is, I don’t know how musicians do it, their entire lives. I was thrilled to do it for the tour, right. I mean, the tour was great, but how they do that for, you know, I’m buddies with the Oak Ridge boys and, and, you know, the, the newest guy in the group has been in the group for 46 years. So the new guy, and he’s been there 46 years and they are on a bus every week, or they’ll not with COVID, but they’re back out and I’m like, how do you guys do this? It’s just, it’s incredible. But again, it is the commitment to the craft, which is different in different businesses and industries. But so I’m just so thrilled for your success. And I I just sit back and see all of the things that you are, not only that you’ve done, but it, you were doing that’s, that’s what really matters. I mean, you, you you’ve attained such significant success and you continue to inspire and inform and lead you rock. Thanks.
RV (03:31):
We are you know, we’re fascinated by your topic and another person that we quote one of your best friends, Larry Winget, we, we say all the time find your uniqueness and exploited in the service of others. And we talk about Peter Xi Han and breaking through what we have named as she Hans wall, which is really breaking through from becoming unknown to, to becoming known, which is really a result of uniqueness, distinction originality being the expert on one thing. And so I guess my first question is just what’s what are the problems of being indistinct? Like what are the problems of similarity and you know, cause there’s some good things about being similar people understand you. I mean, if I were a financial advisor, a real estate agent people get it. I mean, so there’s some good things, but what are the, what are the problems? If you don’t have distinction, what do you have?
SM (04:29):
You know, Roy, when you stood that what popped into my head is because I’m also friends with your beautiful bride and you guys know my wife, Tammy, I will bet dollars to donuts when you proposed, just as, when I proposed to Tammy, I did not get down on one knee and say, honey, will you marry me? You’re exactly like every other woman I’ve ever dated, not a strong strategy in the history of business, regardless of what field you’re in, no customer, no client has ever left an encounter and said, I love doing business with them. They’re exactly like everybody else. We’re attracted, not for our similarities. We’re attracted for our uniqueness. And if customers cannot see a difference between you see, I think many times we’re misled by it by our training, by our thinking. And we think the customers choose us and that’s not a complete way of looking at it. Customers choose us instead of all of the other alternatives out there in the marketplace. And so if they don’t see a distinguishing factor between you and your competitor, then it’s going to come down to price or some other area that’s outside of our control, which is the last thing that we want is we try to take the long view in business about, you know, how do we get repeat business? How do we inspire referral business? You know, none of that comes from being exactly like everybody.
RV (05:59):
Yeah. I mean, I, I think gosh, that’s a really interesting way of thinking about it in the parallel of, of marriage, you know, is of, of your uniqueness. So I feel like a big part of your career, you built upon these four cornerstones of distinction. I’ve interviewed you on them before as relates to business, but we’ve never had this conversation in the context of personal branding, which obviously you understand that you are one, but can you just rattle off for people who just never met you before rattle off the four cornerstones of distinction? And then, you know, I’d love to kind of talk through how those apply to personal brands, because I know most of the work that you do is kind of in the corporate world, people hiring you to speak and consult and do that kind of thing. But I mean, do they, and then I guess, do they apply? I feel pretty confident they do, but you know, so just rip through those.
SM (06:52):
Well, the first one I think in many ways is tough, was stolen and that’s clarity. It’s not only being precise about what we are, it’s being as exact about what we are not. And that’s, what’s really hard, I think, particularly in creating a personal brand because when it comes to a company you know, they can say, oh, well, we don’t make those products because we make the product. But a personal brand, I think is, is a little bit more difficult to attain that we can come back to that. Then the second one is creativity. And, and I learned a lot from research I did in, in your home area, there in Nashville from interviewing songwriters. Because when I, when I started researching this, I thought that I thought the creativity would come first. You know, Hey, think outside the box, all of those things we think about innovation, but I interviewed 15 songwriters and to a person, everyone said, you got to get clear before you can get creative.
SM (07:44):
And the reason we say think outside the box is because we haven’t defined the box to begin with. Right? So creativity is the second aspect. What’s our unique twist on that. Third is communication. And what that really means is narrative. It’s understanding the principles of story and how we can communicate through narrative in a way that emotionally connects us. And, and you’ve done some pioneering work on generational differences as well. Rory and, and, and one of the things that really strikes me is that a great story appeals to every generation. So as, as we try to communicate our brand story, so that it’s appealing in the marketplace, not just a one segment, but to all segments, having a great story as a part of that. And then the fourth and final one is a customer or client experience focus. What does it feel like to experience our brand? W we, we, we think a lot about customer service to the customer experience, but a focus on it means that everything we do is how has this brand, that we’re trying to create, going to impact those that we seek influence. So it’s clarity, creativity, communication, customer experience. It’s fun.
RV (08:58):
So I love that. And clarity to me is the most important, like I agree with all of that. It’s, it’s, it’s it’s basically, you know, we have, we have in our curriculum, we have four phases and each phase has three courses. So we have 12 courses in our curriculum. The entire first one is just dedicated to trying to help people get clear on this. And you mentioned, you mentioned that it’s harder for personal brands, so why do you think it’s harder and how do we get clear on what our personal brand is about? Because I think the struggle is that humans are multi-dimensional right. We have many different passions. I mean, you’re passionate about music. You’re, you’ve got all of these different things you, you know about. You’ve been in business long enough. You’ve had your own business long enough to know a lot about a lot of different things. And yet you’ve been very consistent your entire career of like, you know, I, I am the guy, I am the guy on distinction. So how do we get clear?
SM (10:02):
Well, and you nailed it. I mean, it’s, it’s harder because we are multi-dimensional. And the other part is it seems to be safer to have more offerings, right? I mean, if, if, if I do all of these things, then there’s a range of things that people can choose from. And, and that will open up more opportunity for, for me and my business is what we assume, but instead it’s, it’s exactly the, it’s exactly the opposite. You know, I, I use the old story sometimes about how we shoot down planes in, in times of battle in world war two, what they would do is fill the skies with ammunition. It was called flack, and they would just shoot an abundance of ammunition into the air. So what technically actually happened is we didn’t shoot down their plane. The enemy’s plane ran into ammunition because they just threw so much up there, but these planes would run into the ammunition.
SM (10:59):
Well, now, as we know, it’s, it’s incredibly precisely targeted, and I think that’s a good analogy for what we need to think about in terms of business. But I’ll tell you that there comes to be a point when, when I first started my speaking career, I kind of did the motivational humor, customer service, kind of generic thing. And I went through a personal situation that caused me to reevaluate my business. And honestly, I was trying to look at how do I stand out from everybody else in the crowd? And I couldn’t find anything you know, there, there were a couple of books out trout wrote one called differentiator die. There were, there were a few things out there, but nothing really how to stand out. I, by the way, let me throw in real quick, the reason I use the term distinction instead of differentiation, is that merely being different doesn’t mean that’s going to have traction in the marketplace.
SM (11:53):
You know, if I slap every customer in the face, I’m different, but it doesn’t mean they’re, you know, they’re going to relate to what I’m talking about. So I’m talking about distinction, having a meaningful difference. That that really means something to the people that you’re hoping to connect with. So, you know, I went through that personal tragedy and I’m looking through and how do I stand out? I started researching it and really want to, I you’re taking me back to really one of the toughest points in my life because a speakers bureau that I did a lot of business with bookmobile lot called and said, for goodness sakes, we don’t get any calls asking for distinction, speeches, will you please go back and talk about customer service? And at that point I had to make a decision. And and, and it was the best decision, one of the best decisions of my life, but it was really hard to make it that time because it’s almost like they were dangling this checkout here. If you just, if you just get away from what you’ve said, your clarity is, if you just don’t do what you’re talking about, here’s, here’s a check and I turned it down. And I think that is what builds a brand. Had I accepted that, see, one of the things I find is that when people say, oh yeah, I’m that too. That’s when they lose the clarity, that really creates your brand in the marketplace.
RV (13:16):
Yeah. I mean, you know, you said this earlier about it’s being clear on who you are and also clear on who you’re not. And yeah, AIJ and I had spent so much time doing sales training for corporations in our former business. That when, when we started brand builders group, we were very clear that we don’t do branding for companies at all. We do personal brand strategy, exclusively for individuals. Now, every individual works at a company, but we don’t do the company strategy. It’s the face of an individual. And that every time that we have taken something where someone said, Hey, can you just like do this project for our company? It’s like, it doesn’t, it just, it just creates so much conflict and extra work. And it’s just like, it’s just not what we do. And so I think, like you’re saying, it’s just, it feels safer to offer more things. And it also like, inevitably there’s a time where someone’s going to dangle money in front of your face and you have to say, no, that’s not what we do. That’s hard.
SM (14:20):
It’s really hard. Yeah. And I’m really glad you said that because I think sometimes people think that folks like you and me advise that, but we really don’t know how difficult it is. Right. Because it’s really hard to say no. And the smaller the businesses, I think the harder it is to say no, but it’s one of the best things that you can do. And you mentioned my pal, Larry Winget earlier your friend as well. And you know, Larry says to be really successful, you’ve got to get really good at saying no. And I think truer words have never been spoken. We want to say yes to everything. And I, I, I think we sometimes confuse saying yes and making a customer experience go well, as opposed to saying yes to all of these things that will dilute our differentiation. And so you don’t want to dilute the distinction that you’re trying to create in the marketplace because Hey, no one is loyal to a generic. I mean, w we have a mutual buddy mark Sanborn, and mark talks to me all the time about this latest IPA that he’s trying, or yeah, he’s totally into craft beers. And, and mark and I were talking about, I remember those, maybe they’re still there. I haven’t seen him for a while. At least white cans in the grocery store with just black block lettering said, beer,
RV (15:39):
Chips, whatever
SM (15:42):
Nobody brags about. Yeah, I have that beer, but they do want to talk about this IPA that they’ve found it’s brewed in Maine on the ocean somewhere. And again, that kind of gets to another one of the cornerstones. I’m getting a little ahead of myself here, but you know, you like the IPA or you like the business. That’s got a story.
RV (16:04):
Yeah. I mean, that’s, that’s really true. So you, you also talk about the five factors of iconic performance and going towards the idea of how do we find this distinction, and then how does that, how does that distinction manifest itself? Like in our, in our actual business, in the customer experience and the things that happen every day,
SM (16:29):
You know, what happened is I had written the book on distinction and Fairmont hotels became a really good client. And they, they went through a really cool process about, you know, what, what, what is distinctive housekeeping? You know, what, what’s the distinctive front desk? How do we, how do we take everything that touches the customer and, and even things that don’t, and what would that look like? So they went through this process, they had great success with it. And I’m having Brett first with the CEO of the Fairmont Scottsdale princess, wonderful guy named Jack Miller. And he said, man, we went through the distinction thing. Now, what do we do? I didn’t have an answer. I realized I’d written a book about how to create distinction, but, but not one how to take it to the highest level of distinction and not what, how to sustain it once you get it or how you regain it once you, you know, if you’d lose it.
SM (17:28):
And so I started studying it. It’s kind of a difficult definition, but distinction means you stand out in your field. You know, if you’re a financial advisor in Las Vegas where I live, or in Nashville where you are, you’re the go-to advisor that, that people are referring that’s distinction. You are at the top of your field, in your industry. Yet. We also know that there are businesses that transcend their industry, you know, and they’re the Annapolis. One of the case studies they use in the book, iconic is St. Elmo’s steakhouse. It’s not just the, I mean, they have higher gross revenue than Tavern on the green, in New York city. They’re one of the most successful restaurants in America. So it’s not just that, they’re the best of the restaurants, man. If you’ve got a car dealership in Indianapolis, you want to run your car dealership like St. Elmo’s runs their restaurant. That’s iconic when you’ve reached that level. And so as I studied iconic businesses, I mean, the old cliche is like Southwest airlines and apple and, you know, Starbucks and all those, but even more so regionally, locally the iconic businesses that, that a business that every business in that particular community respected, I found a really five factors. And, and the first one was they play offense. You know, I’m a sports fan and we always say defense wins championships. Yeah.
RV (18:55):
People say that all the time.
SM (18:57):
So I looked at the numbers and more top off offensive teams have won the super bowl, the top defensive teams, more top rated offensive teams. And one of the playoff games in the NFL, then the defensive teams look at what’s happening in the NBA right now. It’s running gun, man. The way you’re successful is firing up a three-pointer not by clamping down on defense, like it was 20 years ago. So, so what I found was that iconic individuals and I kind of like organizations,
RV (19:26):
You know, my high school basketball coach right now is having an aneurysm listening to this because that DCS you’re just you’re attack the fabric. The fabric of the philosophy of it’s been around for some people for a really long time, I’m drawing
SM (19:42):
A blank. Oh, where did he sign up? There? There was a high school coach and he’s, this will be his first year coaching division one colleagues. And I’m drawing a blank on where he is, but he always goes for it on fourth down. They don’t even have a punter on the team. If it’s, if it’s fourth at eight on the two yard line, they go for it, you know, on their two yard line, they still go for it. They always go for it on fourth down. And the S and, and he just says, look at the data. The data shows that the benefit of playing offense and, and pushing the ball is always greater than defense. Now, can you apply that in a business situation? And here’s what the CEO of, of that Fairmont grouped pill me later on. He said, I realized that every moment I was playing defense against the competition wasted a moment, I could be innovating to make them irrelevant.
SM (20:42):
Say that again, every moment I was playing defense against the wasted a moment, I could be innovating to make them erupt, irrelevant. Wow. I just thought, well, when he said that I’m writing that down, man, I got to get that. So, I mean, when we think about whether it’s the clue and Hey, look, I know that speakers use the same examples a lot. Well, there’s a reason for that. It’s not because we’re lazy. It’s because, so it’s so breathtakingly difficult to do. There are so few universal examples that, that you can use, but, you know, Steve jobs didn’t sit around worried about what Microsoft was doing, you know, and, and, and when we use that in our personal brand, as an example, when we play off offense, then it becomes really remarkable what, what we can achieve, because then others, you know, our competition, their natural reaction will be to play defense against us, which puts us in the driver’s
RV (21:44):
Seat. So when you, when you, like, I know you work with companies, but like, cause cause I really buy into this. AIG does as well. We we’ve, we have said consistently that it’s like we don’t care about what other people are doing. Like our philosophy is not even, it’s not even differentiate from what other people are doing. It’s find your uniqueness and exploited in the service of others is what Larry says. It’s like, do the thing that you do. And then it makes other people or other customers irrelevant. And it’s like, but, but the thing I think is people struggle so much with figuring out what is the thing that they can do that no one else can do. What is the thing that they do that is truly distinct or unique. And H how do you help people find what that is?
SM (22:37):
What a great question. And it’s one that’s often overlooked. Jeff Bezos said your brand is what people say about you when you’re not in the room. Well, that creates an inherent problem. It, it means we’re not in the room when people are saying what our brand is. So what’s the second best thing that you can do. And so few of us do this and it’s it’s was part of my journey to try to create distinction for my speaking business. And that is, I went to the people that were booking me for speeches. I went to speakers bureaus, and I said, when you recommend me, what do you say?
SM (23:16):
And far and away, the answer at that time was a good speaker and a nice guy. Now, they thought that was great. And I realized, that’s the kiss of death, man. I mean, you know, apple is not planning their next corporate event saying, Hey, what we need, the keynote is a really nice person, but they want it. They want somebody that’s known for something. And it’s the same thing. Whether I’m picking a financial advisor or a grocery store or a, any kind of personal service or a speaker or whatever might be, there has to be something that they say. So one of two things is going to happen either. Number one, you’re going to find out that you’re thought of as a generic, Eric, you know, good at what you do and a nice person. And there’s nothing wrong with that. You know, I want to be good at what I do and I choose to be nice, but, but there has to be something more than that. Second is, if what they’re saying is precise and specific, then there’s your biggest clue. You know, about what people are saying about you, that’s what your brand is. And then at that point you’ve reached a crossroad. Are you going to exploit that? And, and as, as you say, and as Larry says, we may exploit in the best part of the term, you know, it’s not bad exploitation.
SM (24:34):
Yeah. And making the most of everything we have. And, and so is that the area that you, that you want to be known for, well then how can we ramp up what we’re doing? So we accentuate that if that’s not the areas, here’s the other aspect. It’s always tougher to reposition and to position, if I’m starting new and I’m trying to position, I have to create a memorable message that that will strike you. And that you’re going to retain to reposition. I got to get you to forget about everything you thought about me in the past, and now start thinking about me in a new way. So if you need to reposition your personal brand, you have to begin by thinking, okay, how do I, how do I come up with a message that’s so compelling? Not only will it be memorable in the marketplace that I want to succeed in it, but it will get those people to stop saying what they been saying about me and start saying, this that’s difficult. But if you don’t understand that principle, you can’t begin on the road to achieve it.
RV (25:42):
Yeah. And then to your point about clarity as a cornerstone, I think that is just super like, that’s the first thing is too many of us never even asked the question. What do I want people to say about me? What are they saying about me? And how do I, you know, change? How do I change those or align those? And we just kind of go out and we’re just like reactive to whatever shows up and whoever will hire us for this or that or anything. And we’re just like, I’ll take it. I’ll take it. I’ll take it versus going, no, this is who I’m going to be. And I’m going to drive this. I’m going to drive this space. But you know, I think it’s, I think, you know, asking your customers, asking the people who have hired you, why have you hired me?
RV (26:26):
What, what is it about me? I mean, that’s a great place to start because like you’re saying either, they’ll tell you, this is why, and this is what makes you unique, or they’ll say no specific reason, which means you’re not really unique. But then after that, do you effectively, just at some point, just decide you go, hell, I’m going to be, I’m going to be the guy known for this, and then you just own it. And you just drive it. I mean, is it that simple as you just go, what do you want to be known for pick it, own it and drive it? I mean, is that it?
SM (26:59):
Yes. I wish I wish I had a workup flex answer to that. But the decision is that I think in some ways the toughest part, because it’s defining what you are, but it’s also saying I’m, I, I have the intestinal fortitude, you know, I, I have the drive and the determination that I’m going to leave these other things behind. And I think that’s one of the most important things, Rory and establishing a personal brand. It’s it’s, it’s what UNH have done. I mean, when, when you said, this is who we are, but you also said, this is who we are. Not that decision, every, everything it’s like a tree. I mean, everything grew up from that planting from the, that decision that you made. And, you know, it’s, it’s, it’s just remarkable the, the power of that decision that it gives you in your life, because it, you know, once you, once you’ve made that decision, then other decisions become more clear. Now it’s a challenge to make them, right. I mean, it’s a, it’s a challenge to, to turn down that check as we were talking earlier. But boy, when you’ve got that initial clarity, then the other decisions that you need to make, tend to become a little bit more apparent.
RV (28:17):
That is so good. Y’all most of this is a matter of just making the decision and then just driving it. I love it. Scott McCain, the book is called iconic. We put of course links to the book and to Scott on our site, Scott, where do you want people to go? If they want to follow them, follow you more, or learn more about what you’re up to.
SM (28:41):
W w where are you? One of the things that folks might do is just go to Scott mccain.com. It talks about, you know, the, the resources we have, the courses that we offer. For example, you got a course that teaches how to tell a more distinctive story, how to create distinction. You’ll find links for everything right there. And it’s M C K a I N a. So Scott mccain.com and that’ll send everybody there, Scott
RV (29:04):
Mccain, I encourage you all to follow him. And this is Scott is one of the smartest people I’ve met. He’s one of the people that we have learned from so much just about these concepts that, you know, have, have shaped our life and are shaping many of your lives by way of following us and listening to what we’re doing. So, buddy, thank you for the work you’ve done. Thank you for your being here and just your support in our life. We’re so grateful for you,
SM (29:30):
The world of you and everybody there. So thank you so much where I, I appreciate it so much, and it’s always great being a part of anything with you. So thank you.