Category: Podcast

Ep 152: Fear Fighting and Being Bold with Luvvie Ajayi Jones

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

I love Luvvie Ajayi and you are, this is the second time we’ve had her back on the show.

You left the Jones out Rory!

That’s right. You’re Jones now, too. I can’t believe that I should have said that. Lovey Ajayi Jones. Now she’s a married woman. Yeah, coolest wedding ever, by the way. Pictures on social were awesome. But so Luvvie is a friend she’s a New York times bestselling author. Her first book was called I’m Judging You the Do Better Manual. She has a viral Ted talk that has I think like 5 million, more, more views than mine, which makes me also a little bit jealous.

5.6 million. I just checked today.

She is, co-authoring a book an anthology with Bernay Brown, which is pretty awesome and a whole bunch of awesome people. She has hundreds of thousands of people following her on social and through her blog. She’s, she’s been you know, one of the OG bloggers for like 15 years, she hosts a a fantastic podcast.

And the reason that we’re talking to her now is she has a new book out called professional troublemaker, the fear fighter manual, which is all about overcoming fear and living audaciously. And so when lovey was here, the first time we talked more about like the technical parts of how she built her audience over years I don’t know what episode number that is, but we’ll put a link to it in the show notes back to that first episode, but we didn’t really talk about, which is what we’re going to talk about today is the emotional side and, and the kind of like mental side of putting yourself out there and overcoming fear when it comes to building your personal brand. So anyways, Luvvie Ajayi Jones, welcome to the stage.

Thank you so much for having me back.

Yeah. Well, all right. So let’s talk about fight and fear, the fear fighter. And I have to say one of the things there’s so many things I love about you, that I admire about you. There’s a thing specifically that I think you have, like one of the things that you have that I think I wish I had more of was boldness. I think that that’s, that’s held me back in terms of, you know, my ability to grow on social to not be as pointy and sharp as I probably could. And, and I think part of the reason why is because I am scared of being judged, right? Like I am scared of what people will think and et cetera. And anyways, I think that anyone building a personal brand has some of that, except you don’t seem to, you just like, have such so much confidence and boldness, like, how do you do that? Where does that come from? Like, were you born with it? Or can I learn it?

I think it can be learned, but I think I was born with some of it. Some of it, I think the boldness of it all that I show up as, like I say, what other people are thinking, but they’re not to say, it’s not that I’m not afraid of being judged is that I realized that being judged is not the worst case scenario. It’s one of those things that is a foregone conclusion. If you aren’t going to be somebody of notes and create, and be somebody of impact, you will either repel people or also loved them like, or, or, or be loved deeply by them. There’s no middle ground to be able to be loved deeply by people means your whole character, how you will show up will also repel some people. Some people will judge you for it. Some people will not connect with you.

And that’s fine. I always think about the people who am deeply loved by the people who, when I write, when I speak, say you just took the thoughts up my head, put it on paper, thoughts. I didn’t even realize I had now. I think a lot of us have the tendency to swallow away what we want to do and how we want to show up because of that fear of judgment. We’re afraid of somebody not liking us or, Oh my gosh, I’m afraid of how somebody else is going to take this thing. And I think for me, growing up, I come from a family and a culture Nigerians are culturally loud and really just boisterous.

I was gonna say, when I introduced you, I was like, you’re my favorite Nigerian friend. But then I was like, unfortunately, I don’t, you might be my only Nigerian friend, And I was like, well, that sucks. That’s not good for you or for me. But anyways, I think you’ve, you definitely hold that title, but I need some more Nigerian friends. But anyways, you are my, you are my favorite.

I’m just the gateway Nigerian for you. Don’t worry.

I’m the gateway. Nigeria, you will find other Nigerians through me. But I think we’re very boisterous as a culture, like growing up, who I was, was never told to be less. I was given permission to be bold. I was a four year four, or five-year-old who, when I got in trouble, I would challenge my mother about it. I’d be like, I don’t think it was fair. I here’s the part that I think was not fair to me. And even though I’m sure I got on her nerves, she never did

I’m not going to let Jasper listen to this episode. Just so you know,

Jasper, let him have it. Let him have it.

He’s not gonna listen to this one.

I used to literally be like, mom, I’ll accept the punishment. I’ll take it. Whatever the punishment was. And then after the fact, I circle back with a note telling her my perspective, telling her why I didn’t think it was fair telling her why I think I was wrong. Okay. And it’s funny, like she never told me not to be that person. So I grew up not doubting that person that I was, I grew up not doubting my voice. And I think the power of that is that the boldness became less of a, I have to push myself to be this. It became my default. And one of the things that we can learn in being more bold is being pragmatic about the, our purpose and our I in, in what we’re doing in this world is you, you create a whole business on helping people solve a problem.

And you, one of the things that you pointed out that I do is I help solve the problem of powerlessness and the way I do it is through my boldness. I show up in a certain way and people get to see and say, if she can do it, maybe I can do something close too. Maybe I can also be myself. So in learning, the boldness honestly comes in just watching other people do it. Rory, like you were on, you were on a thing with the cohort that I had, where we talked about brand building and the last five minutes of you being on. I told my team afterwards, I was like, we have to put this as an episode of the podcast, because in that moment, it’s like, you borrowed boldness from me. How you actually showed up that day was way more bold than I’ve actually typically seen you.

And what that lets me know is, I guess we can borrow other people’s traits or the people that were around will infuse certain things into us, which lets me know that we can actually do it even when they’re not there. So like you came and gave such, it was so pointed. You’re typically very pointed, but on that day, your energy was different. It was so like strong. And so I’m just going to say this thing because I need you guys to understand why it’s important for you to stand in your purpose and you came with full fire and I’m just like, Rory’s typically very chill, very like, Hey, but you came with fire and I was like, okay, it can be done. And you do do it. It just shows up differently.

Yeah. I mean that, that really is true. I mean, I do feel like it is it is contagious and you, when you see someone else doing it, I mean, now let me just ask you this. Like, I’ve just been curious about asking you this and you don’t have to answer if we, if we, if we tread into water that you don’t feel comfortable about, but you are very outspoken about personal beliefs. You know, like you’ve got this X, you got expertise around helping people live audaciously and chase down fear. You also share a good bit of your political viewpoints and whatever socioeconomic or whatever you want to call it. Cultural, cultural beliefs. Do you, do you wrestle with the idea, first of all, I’m curious, do you actually wrestle and go, do you ever wonder, should I post this or does that, do you not even have that filter? Do you just go, Oh hell no. If I’m thinking it it’s coming out and if you do have a filter, how do you kind of determine what passes through the filter of going, like, does this serve my audience somehow? Does it, does it align with my business goals? Or like just how like, yeah. So is there a, is there a filter? And if there is tell us like what, what that is?

Yes. I have been blogging for 18 years at this point, half of my life. Wow. I started blogging in 2003. And when I started, there was no strategy behind it, but I think as I got bigger, as I finally called myself a writer, as my platform got bigger, I started understanding what was happening was kind of like the unfolding of purpose. And as my platform got bigger, I didn’t change my voice. What I did change, what changed was my level of responsibility in how I was showing up, like, right. Like when I had 300 followers, I could say whatever I wanted into the ether, it didn’t matter today. I can’t say whatever I want. Right. I, it has to be, it has to be way more thoughtful. So I do absolutely have a filter in how I say something. What I jump into as a cultural critic, as a side-eye source risk as a writer is shady Nigerian.

I think having the filter is good. Like it’s really good. You have to have a way to figure out when you’re not gonna just be impulsive and saying something just to say something I want to always make sure I’m not just speaking because I want my voice heard because I just feel like talking. So that’s why I have three questions that I ask myself whenever I want to say something. Especially when it feels like I’m going into territory, that could be contentious. And the first question is, do I mean it, like, am I actually saying this thing? Cause this is my belief. So too, can I defend it? If I am challenged on it? Can I actually back it up? Can I stand in it? Cause here’s the thing is the judge will be judged and then three, can I say thoughtfully?

So all of these are important because if I say yes to all three, I decided to say it, the third question of, can I say thoughtfully is really important because then it’s what makes it come out more thoughtful. It’s what makes it come out without, with as little as possible hate. Right? And I, and I, and I hope I never operate with hate, but I always try to figure out what is the way to say this that will land the best, or do I think it’s going to land the best now with my three filters, these three questions quantifying my decisions. It’s not with the guarantee that whatever I say will be like, well received. It’s just a risk mitigator. It is just a way for me to create some criteria to at least anything that doesn’t pass. I don’t say it out loud. If, if it’s not passing the three questions, I’m not saying it, but then if it does pass and I say it here’s the thing.

It can still go weird where somebody is like, Oh, I don’t like this thing you said, or, Oh my gosh, this is what I took away from it. And I think those are the moments where we have to understand that we are not here to appease everybody. It’s not our responsibility to make everybody comfortable or to make everybody feel good, because we were really nice that day. I think our responsibility is to do what we were put here for. And a lot of times that thing is going to run a foul of somebody because if it is purpose-driven, it’s pretty strong in some way, you know, they’re going to be people who are going to be like, I just don’t like what she just said, just because it’s Monday or Tuesday. But I think once my filter runs through, I go, that’s my obligation. My obligation is to myself, have I done my own job of making sure I’m showed up as best as possible if I have. Hey,

And so then how do you balance this? Right? The, so on the, on the one end, it’s like you’re unapologetic, you’re bold, you’re audacious. But then even, even you, you’re saying there is a level of discernment or filtering or you know, might even use the word diluted or like the, that you’re, you’re tempering, you’re tempering it, you’re tempering it some, some somehow. And you know, I guess I’m just trying to, I, I, I’m asking because I’m genuinely interested for me. Like sometimes I feel like I’m too tempered. Like I’m too safe. I’m too, I’m too comfortable. I’m too afraid to like stir up whatever. But then I think, you know, I also see much the danger and the risk of like, ah, yeah, go on too far or whatever. And, and so I, what I hear you saying is that basically, it’s just, you got to just stay centered in your purpose, what you believe that you were put here to say, and then just say that as cleanly and loudly as you can,

That’s it that’s really it. And honestly, it’s not even a case of temporary or sensory myself. It’s that the sermon is actually the right word for it. That is the right word for it. Getting the spirit of discernment because you know, when you’re young and you decide, Oh, I’m just going to just keep it real. Yeah. You’re probably going to be saying a lot of thoughtless things, but I think the older you grow, like again, the bigger the platform gets, you also have to wheel this power responsibility, like responsibility. So I, people who know me in real life and who like have known me since high school, we’ll read a piece I wrote and say, this sounds just like you still. So I always want to make sure that I am present in whatever I put forward. That even in my, as the a platform is getting bigger, nobody can say that doesn’t sound like lovey.

No, no, it’s always going to be me. I’m just being smarter about it. And that doesn’t mean I’m not cussing. That doesn’t mean I’m not showing any anger or strong opinions. I’m sure I’m still doing all of that. But I think I am a better thinker and a better writer and a better leader now than for sure, 10 years ago. And it’s not because I was censoring myself. It’s because this sermon, like the spirit of discernment is even better. I’m sharper about it. And I want you to not think too hard about going the other way. Like I see how you move, Roy, you straight you straight. Like you keep it nice and cool. But I think giving yourself permission to say what you truly believe is necessary, it’s necessary because you also have so many people who are watching you, who are listening to you and how you show up as amazing your words matter in a big way. So if I was to ever see you say something strong, I’ll know you actually meant it. And it would make me pay attention even more. I’d be like, wait a minute. Rory’s out here using caps. What?

Yeah. Well, it’s funny. Cause I saw you, you know, I made a post about my dad on his birthday about this story, about how I found my dad. And I noticed that you left a comment and a lot of people did it, and that was a very emotional, just like a very, a very real thing. So I, so let me ask you this. What are you afraid of right now? Or are you afraid like, like what’s going on right now that you are scared of?

You know, I have a fear of success.

We talked about fear of failure all the time. I think fear of success is just as real. And it’s part of the reason why I self-sabotage sometimes by procrastinating, I figured that out in therapy when my therapist was like, you’re PR, cause it was last year actually, when I was on the hook for finishing my book and I’d go into sessions and she blocked, so where are you with it? How’s it going? I’ll be like, yeah, about that. I didn’t really write anything this week. And one session she asked me, she was like, so why do you think you didn’t write anything this weekend? I was like, I don’t know. I didn’t have time. I was just sitting on the couch and she was like, could this be a form of self-sabotage? And I was like, what do you mean? She was like, what are you afraid of with this book that is making you stall on it? And I think I was afraid of like, what if the book did what I think it will do? Like what if it does somehow help a billion people conquer fear? Like how does that change my life? Do I, how does that level up change? What I what’s around me? Yeah. Fear of fear of success is real.

And so you’re saying that, you know, let’s, let’s say the book sells a million copies that forces you to live a different in a different way because your life at that level looks different than the way it does now. And that is, that is uncertain and that escape, it was scary.

Yeah. I have to hire more people and get it’s just, it’s like, are we, it’s the fear of like, am I equipped for the next level? Yeah.

And so how do you overcome that? Then?

When I say it out loud as a starting point, acknowledge it. I talked to people like you who know what level of look like I basically say and ground myself with some affirmations, that’s like, whatever you need, you got it. And I just ride the wave and I try to figure out the moments when I’m self-sabotaging, when I’m trying to pull myself back I talked to friends and yeah, I do all of that. It’s a, it’s a constant ritual of like, you got this, you got this. If you do have to hire more people, you got this, like, it’ll be fine. And again, like talking to and having, you know, a lot of friends who are really successful also trade war stories and say, Oh, I’ve been there. And because a lot of people who have come before us have already done this, they basically give you the map on how to navigate it. So I’m definitely leaning into my community. And my friends to just tell me what I need to do to get ready for a massive book coming out. Like you’ve been in the immense help. I’ve been talking to Glenn and Doyle, you know, talk to chase Jarvis and it’s just, just getting ready.

Well, I think so who did you write this book for? Okay. So taking it specifically back back to this book and you go, you know, the book’s called professional trouble troublemaker again, but the fear fighter manuals, the subtitle, which I just love. How, like, who is it targeted at? Who’s it, who’s it aimed at?

I wrote this book for me. I feel like this book was, was was something that I created for me because I like to create work that I need, you know, when I was afraid to call myself.

Yeah. See, like, I don’t think of you as being scared. So this is just the person you once were.

This is the person that I once where was, is can sometimes lean into some times. Like, I think, you know, we don’t just become bolded state both 24 seven. Right. We will have moments where we’ll go. Hmm. Should I think that big? Or should I actually say that thing? You will still have your moments of fear here. And their fear is not always about the big time. I think even in the small moments where you are afraid to say something that might feel scary. And I think I honestly wrote this book for me because I think about how 10 years ago, I was afraid to call myself a writer. I think about, you know, turning down my Ted talk twice because I didn’t think I was ready for it. I think about shoot now being afraid of what the level up looks like. You know, it’s a constant reminder.

And I think the best things that we do is when we create something that we need when we fill our own need. Because when we do that, we fill somebody else’s need. And I think for me, this is a book that I wish I had even last year when the pandemic happened and I’m sitting in my house like, Oh my gosh, what’s, what’s the world gonna look like? And I remember feeling convicted to be like finished this book because this book is what you need right now. So I think about people like me, like whether or not you’re bold or not, you know, people who have big dreams and who want to create impact in the world whose lives like their ideal lives, aren’t going to call for them to do or think bigger than they’re currently doing and who are going to need to be loaned courage from time to time.

So that’s why I really wrote this book for it. It’s the dreamers or the people who are still afraid to become the dreamers, the very pragmatic foot on the ground. Folks who were just like, you know what, I’m just going to do this one thing that feels easy, do it just really well. But what happens when people are given permission? Not just told they can be bold, not just told they can dream audaciously or speak the truth, but like told I need you to, I need you to speak the, I need you to dream audaciously. I need you to get a Nigerian friend. Okay. I need you to build the squad. You know? So I want my book to be permissioned for people. The permission they might not ever be given to be themselves to be too much, you know, to be too soft, if that’s who they are to be too hard, if that’s who they are. So it’s the permission.

And, and what about like lightened? You really like, do you, are you afraid of offending people?

Sometimes. Sometimes. And yeah, like there’s a, there’s a whole chapter in my book called failed loudly where I talk about my biggest public fail in how it knocked me off my square for a year, because something, I said offended thousands of people and how I recovered from it. But I realized that, and it actually also taught me the lesson of, it’s less about what you say and it’s more about people also projecting themselves onto you and it’s something you can’t control. That’s the part that’s frustrating, right? That’s the part that scares people. It’s like, how do I control it? How do I make sure nobody ever gets mad at me? And I was like, you can’t, you can say the sky is blue. And somebody, somebody somewhere would disagree and say, I’m offended. That’s actually red. And that’s why we cannot be tied strictly to the landing of everything that we say.

We can’t be tied strictly to other people’s thoughts and ideas of us, because it will move us away from our purpose. It’s why you have to know what your compass is. You gotta know what your center is and stand in it because people will want to move you off it. And it’s going to be up to you to kind of drill in and say, okay, I am growing as a person, but this is what I’m supposed to be doing. Like I’m supposed to becoming to help people think critically, I’m supposed to help people feel joy. And I’m supposed to basically compel them to leave the world better than they found it. And in that whole purpose driven life, I will be the villain. In some people’s stories. I will burn some bridges, but if at the end of it all, I actually left this world better than I found it. If I actually stood in my purpose and help people feel more powerful. If somebody somewhere can say, I heard you speak, or I read your book and it changed my life, then I’ve done my job.

I love it. I love it. Loving where she wants people to go. If they want to learn about professional troublemaker and learn about you and more like more of what you’re up to,

Yes, people can go to professional troublemaker, book.com. Pre-Order the book come to my book tour. I’m in conversation with seven people who I think are also living purpose driven lives that are huge and audacious and they can find me all over social media. I am at lovey L U V V I E one word on all platforms. Okay. I got the one screen name.

Okay. The Oprah level, you got lovey lovey.

That’s all you need to know. BBI

E is Luvvie. And I, you know, I really think that that’s interesting, you know, this term earlier that you can, that you loan people courage. And I think that’s what this book does. And I think that’s what you do. And you know, to that point of that last conversation where you had me in front of your audience is that you do give permission to people. And, and I think it is contagious and it’s like you loan you loan people courage. So if you’re listening and you don’t have courage and you need to borrow some courage, get some of Luvvie in a professional troublemaker, the fear fighter manual. Thank you for giving us permission to be more bold and to to be more courageous, lovey it’s, it’s really, it’s really fun and inspiring to watch.

Thank you so much for always sharing space with me, Roy, like you you’ve changed the game a little bit from you, Rory, you chase, the guy said something the other day. And I was like, that feels like a Rory fading quote. I was like, that sounds very Rory Vaden. I like it. Let’s keep it like,

That’s good. I love it. Well, we wish you the best, my friend. And we’ll look forward to staying tuned. Yes, indeed.

Ep 150: How Billionaire Entrepreneurs Overcome Self-Doubt and Learn to Believe in Themselves with Jamie Kern Lima

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

You know, it’s not every day that you get to sit down and learn from a billionaire especially somebody who is according to Forbes, one of the richest self-made female billionaires, or, you know, self-made richest females in the world. And you’re about to meet Jamie Kern Lima, who is a new friend of mine. And she is most known for being the co-founder of it cosmetics, which was a company that had millions of customers. They sold it to L’Oreal for $1.2 billion a few years ago. And she became the first female CEO and L’Oreal’s hundred and eight year history. She also has been in lots of media. She actually started her career as an award winning TV news journalist, and then her story has been featured on good morning, America. The today show CVS this morning, ABC Nightline and in the last really year.

So she’s been building her own personal brand as she’s working towards her new book, which is called believe it, how to go from underestimated to unstoppable which if you’re listening to this live comes out two day. The book is out right now at you know, if you’re listening to this, as soon as this is published and you know, building her brand has happened very her personal brand has happened very fast. She spoken for Tony Robbins. She spoken for Dave Ramsey’s team. She’s worked with a lot of very influential people, but her story and her book is really about how to overcome self doubt and achieve your wildest dreams. And so she’s here to tell us a little bit about that story and how that applies to all of us building our personal brand. So Jamie Kern, Lima, welcome to the show, Lori.

Thank you so much. It’s so, so great to be here.

Well so, you know, when you look at, can you just give us the, tell us the story, right, so that, you know, obviously the, the, the book you go walk us through, but you went from being a Denny’s waitress to having an idea to start a company to 10 years later, selling that company for $1.2 billion. I mean, that all happened in 10 years, like real in real life. Yeah.

Yes, that is true. And you know, what I kind of realized is, is, you know, over the years and just hearing from so many people all the time who maybe you see like a headline on my story or something like that, that, you know, I’ll get messages on Instagram and people will say, Oh, you know, did you get lucky or how did it happen? Or, you know, I wish I could do that, but I’m just facing so much rejection. And what I realized worry was that so many people, you know, they, they see sort of like the highlight reel out there. And what I wanted to do is, is for the first time ever, like share the story behind the story of everything the one I hope has everyone out there in their own journey of building their personal brand or any other dream they’re going after helps them feel less alone. And and, and more connected also in the struggles we all go through and cause really, you know, believe it it’s the first time ever, I think like 85 or 90% of the stories in the book I’ve never shared before, but it’s really

Share some personal stories in there. Like some very intimate, like when you were on a reality TV show and you share some stuff about that, like in your younger days, like you really, it’s really honest,

It’s super honest. And it’s really the heart and soul of this book. It’s a story about a girl who goes from not believing in herself to believing in herself and not trusting herself to like learning how to, you know, hear my own inner knowing and then trust myself and going from doubting I’m enough to knowing I’m enough. And the reason I really wrote it as I think it’s the story of so many people out there right now, probably so many of your listeners and people in your community on their own journey of, of learning to believe in themselves and trust themselves and, and know they’re enough. And

Let me, I want to, I want to ask you about this because one of my favorite stories is the story of, I think it was the first time that you were pitching to one of these companies, all tower, maybe it was an investor and this investor said something to you and, and you know, if you’re not familiar, it, cosmetics is now like the, the leading luxury brand of cosmetics in, in the United States. And, and, but where this started, there was an executive who said something directly to your face. Can you, are you, are you comfortable sharing with everybody with that?

Yeah, I, you know, we I had this dream and this vision, you know, to create a makeup company cause I had a skin condition and, and in the process of, of realizing that I couldn’t find a product that worked for me, I’d also realized that all the images I’d seen a beauty in my whole life never showed women that had problematic skin or women of different ages or sizes or shapes or skin tones or skin challenges. And I kind of had this big aha moment when I launched my company that, Oh, if I can really create a product that works for people that have skin challenges like me, it’s going to help so many people. But at the same time I had this like deeper, deeper, deeper why, but I had identified really early on, which was, you know, my entire life, you know, seeing all these images of, of kind of like flawless airbrush models on, in ads, on TV or in magazines.

Like I growing up, I always aspire to look like those, but they also always like made me feel deep down inside. Like I wasn’t enough. And I had this huge moment creating my, my company where I realized, Oh, it’s not just going to be about a great product that works. If I can get this thing off the ground, if I can create this, this beauty company, when I know nothing about the industry, by the way if I can do this, I’m going to use models and calm and beautiful and mean it that are every age and shape and size and skin tone and skin challenge. So I had this whole vision of something that meant more, that was bigger than myself because I wanted to do it, not just to create a product, not just to, but like to try and shift culture in the beauty industry for every little girl out there who was about to start doubting herself and every grown person who still does.

So I had this deep mission, meanwhile, to, to get to the investor story you’re talking about you know, the first several years of launching my company was really hard and I love that you share like, Oh, you know, it, cosmetics now is the largest luxury makeup company in the country, which is crazy and amazing. But, but the first three years was packed with no after no after no and rejection and down to no money. And, you know, after hearing no from all the department stores and even QVC and so forth we finally got what I thought was going to be a life-changing meeting that this potential investor, and this was a private equity company. And they had invested in tons of, of consumer product companies. A lot of them pre-revenue in their small and then they built them. They helped build them into these companies that like we all shop at grocery store for, and they’re they’re household names.

And I thought, wow, they love our product. Like this is going to be huge. And so we took meetings with them and started the diligence phase, which is when you hire you know you just show your financial projections. Sometimes you end up hiring bankers and lawyers. We got pretty far along thinking they were going to invest in our company. And I thought two things were going to happen. I thought, Oh my gosh, if they invest then a I’m not going to go bankrupt and maybe they can use all of their leverage to try and get us into these stores that I’ll keep saying no to us. Right. Because QVC said to us, you’re not the right fit for us or for our customers. So for us and no, all the department stores. So I’m like, okay, no, one’s believing in this vision.

And when I keep checking in with my gut, I keep feeling like I’m on the right track and that people need this product and we need a new definition of beauty, but everyone’s saying no. So I thought like it, like this investor is going to change my life and I’ll never forget I was with my husband actually. And we went to the final meeting where I thought, okay, this is going to be, yes, this is going to be huge. And I was standing about three feet from the head guy and, you know, he thanked us. He said, we really don’t. We think your product is really great. And all that, but you know, it’s going to be a no, we’re gonna pass on investing in a cosmetics. And I was like, okay. And by this point I’m super used to hearing, no, right.

So I’m like, okay, can you share why? Like, can you, can you share why? Because feedback is always a gift. At least usually it’s a gift. And I said, can you share why? And he goes, well, do you want me to be really honest with you? And I’m like, yes, please. And he was literally like about three feet from me. And my husband was right next to me. And then he looked at me and he said, I just don’t think women will buy makeup from someone who looks like you, you know, with your body and your weight. And I remember like, it almost felt like his mouth was moving in slow motion. I remember the words coming out and you know, anyone who’s dealt with with body doubt, self doubt, which for me had been my whole life. At that point, I remember feeling like my whole body flood with this like self, like a lifetime of body doubt and self doubt.

And it, when, as I was watching him say these words to me, it was almost like I was staring my own fears straight in the eye. And I, I knew in that moment, two things, okay, I’ve got to figure out how to keep my faith bigger than this. I’d also hurt really bad, but he was saying, but one thing happened in that moment. That would be a defining moment. That would happen to me many more times, which is, as he was saying, these words to me, I just don’t think women will buy makeup from someone who looks like you with your body and your weight. I got this like deep feeling in my gut that he was raw. It was like this deep knowing that he was wrong and I felt it. But I also knew like if I was ever going to prove that it would come down to me, learning how to believe it for myself.

And the other thing was, even though it hurt my feelings, like I didn’t, I didn’t get mad at him. I actually felt no ill will toward him. One thing that happened was I was like, Oh wow. It, this whole beauty industry, isn’t just about making me as a little girl feel like I’m not enough. Like he’s actually making a business decision to not invest in my company because guess what? He’s been impacted by it too. He’s using his best judgment to say, Oh, I think you have to look a certain way for people to buy from you. Right. He’s making a business decision based on my weight. And so he’s as much of a by-product of evidence me. And so for me, while it hurt, I also, I also used it as fuel to go, wow, why I’m doing what I’m doing is really big. It needs to change. Not, you know, not just because it impacted me growing up, but there are so many people out there that are in this kind of, you know, that, that it needs to change for. So yeah, I mean,

I mean, it’s like they’re living this whole industry is living with this paradigm that they don’t realize, like there’s this set of beliefs that beauty can only be sold. And you talk about how they literally used to say things like you have to show them what, what, what was the language and impossible level of beauty or a flawless. There was like a term that they used to always say. And if you, if you don’t show them that people won’t buy, it’s amazing how pervasive a limiting belief can be on an entire industry now. So that’s a big part of your story. So you you’re, you’re at Danny’s you have this idea, you start in your living room, you’re working hundred hour weeks. You’re being told, no, you get this meeting with the investor. This guy tells you that. And then you fast forward to, you finally get a chance to be on QVC. And one of the parts that I I love, well, we’ll talk about how many presentations you did. Cause I think that’s really important for personal brands, but the very first time you were on QVC, I want you to walk us through that moment, that story of your thoughts going into it. And then what happened when you were live on the air and how you were feeling, and then just like tell us that story. Yeah. So it

Had been, gosh, three years of nos, we even Rory had QVC, you know, I had, at one point I had gotten their head of hot beauty there who was like, he’s literally a visionary in the industry. I’m responsible for building this multi-billion dollar division of beauty there. And I got him on a phone and I thought, Oh my gosh, if he’s going to bless me with his time, it’s, it’s going to be a yes. And, and I remember getting him on the phone and him telling me I’ve met with all the buyers at KVC and it’s unanimous that you’re not the right fit for us or for our customers. And I remember crying myself to sleep three nights in a row. Not knowing what we’re going to do, but every time I would, I would check in with my gut.

I had this, like this, knowing like this feeling, you’re going to be on QVC. You’re going to sell your product. Can you see? And sometimes we have these gut feelings, but then like nothing around us, how’s us we’re right, right. And we start to doubt our own intuition. And every time I would send my product to them, it was always a no. And you know, a lot of times when we have these dreams on our heart or these feelings, it’s so easy to let self doubt creep in. It’s so easy to second guess ourselves. It’s easy to think that our gut is wrong when we still don’t see the proof around us, that it’s right. And even in the hardest times of QVC, I just kept feeling like we’re going to be on there. Like we’re supposed to be on there, but it was three years of them saying, no, I just share that.

Because I think a lot of times people let things hold them back or they just get stuck or they just give up because they feel like, well, I think I’m just wrong. I have this feeling, but like I tried and it didn’t work or they keep, you know, in this case they literally said, you’re not you the word, because you are not the right fit. Which when someone says you’re not the right fit for us, obviously it feels like rejection. But it also, it feels like these, these statements of you’re not enough, you don’t belong here. All those things. Right. And, and the one thing that really truly kept me going, and for some people, this is how they hear God and their faith. And it’s every time I would get still, I would just hear that voice saying, no, no you’re supposed to, you’re supposed to be there.

So so we eventually, after three years, we’re at this big beauty show, demonstrating our product in it and a really amazing moment. And a bunch of other stuff happened that I share in the book, but we eventually got a meeting and one shot on QVC. So, so, and, and we were down to under a thousand dollars in our bank account. I didn’t know how we were going to make it. We were only selling two to three orders a day on our website pack them up in our office, which was our living room. And we get this one shot. And what it meant though, was we had this 10 minute airing where you’re going to go live. Right? So QVC a live TV shopping channel for anyone who hasn’t seen it before, it’s, it’s a live TV shopping channel, your broadcast live to a hundred million homes and there’s no script, no teleprompter, nothing you’re, you’re live.

And in homes, yeah. A hundred million homes shot big shot. And it was, it was 10 minutes, but Rory, what it meant was, so even though we were selling just two to three orders a day down to our last thousand dollars as well breast to say yes, to this one opportunity, this one chance, this one shot we had to actually, it was a consignment deal. And we had to sell over 6,000 units of our product in a 10 minute window in order to hit their sales goal. Why not come back? And so we had to apply for SBA loans and 22 banks said no. And the last bank, the 23rd bank gave us an SBA loan that covered just that inventory to be able to do that 10 minutes segment. And so but it was consignment. And what that, what that means for anyone who’s unfamiliar with that word is, is we had to pay for everything ourselves we, to pay, to make all the 6,000 units pay to ship them in, pass all the clinical testing regularly, all the steps

Like you got to have the physical product sitting. You have to have 6,000 all the money to PR to create 6,000 units sitting there so that if they sell them, they can actually ship them. And you weren’t selling, you were selling two or three a day. So you basically leveraged your whole life on this one moment, like all your financial on this one moment,

And you should never do this. Like, like in the business world, they say, never take a purchase order. You can’t afford to lose. This was a decision we made because at this point it was like, we didn’t even know what we’re going to do. We were about to go out of business. Anyway. It was like, okay, we have one shot. Let’s just go all in. And so we got the loan manufactured is over 6,000 units, got them into the QVC warehouses. And I’m sitting there with one shot and 10 minutes and it was so stressful. And, and here’s why and, and, you know, when I talk about that, this is a book about learning to believe in yourself and trust yourself. Because to me, that’s everything, right? Not everyone’s going to want to go create a product company or build a billion dollar company or whatever, but I think every single one of us, no matter where we’re at in our own personal brand or why we’re doing what we’re doing, I think all of us are on the journey of learning, how to hear ourselves, our inner knowing and learn how to actually like step into all of who we are and all of who we’re created to be.

And, and in this moment on QVC was really this big defining moments. I get this 10 minute window. And I we had hired these third-party experts consultants, which are amazing. They help so many people sell their products on TV and in stores. And but in my case, I wanted to do something really different. I wanted to not use the traditional type of models with perfect skin. I wanted to sh to show like, like Rory, I kept imagining, I know, I know from so many people who love being your clients, and they talk about the amazing work they’ve done with you and AIG, and they talk about like their customer avatar and things like that. Right? So this is a real life example of that. I was sitting in my car. I flew out a week before this 10 minute airing, okay. This one shot, I fled a week before I sat in this rental car, in the parking lot of QVC staring at the front door, watching people walk in and out knowing the next time I walked in that building, I was either going to be out of business or a whole new world was going to open up.

But here’s where here’s here was the big challenge. And the big dilemma I faced, we worked with these third party experts who are amazing with amazing track records. And when I had explained to them, well, the reason I’m doing this company is like, you know, I would imagine my customer avatar to use your words. Like I would imagine that women sitting at home and let’s just say I’m 70 years old. But if I’m only seeing models that look like they’re 12, how I know the product’s going to work for me, or, you know, I have a, you know, a skin challenge or, you know, a different, you know, skin tone skin issues. If I don’t see someone live on TV, show him in this, how do I know it’s going to work for me? And I would argue with them, I’m like, in fact, let me just show my bright red rosacea national television. Let me prove to everyone live that like why I created this product.

Yeah. So pause right there. If y’all didn’t catch this. So Jamie’s got her whole life on the line and you make the decision that not only are you not going to use models, you’re going to go on there personally with out makeup. You’re going to show the world rosacea, which was what your, your skin situation was all about. And you’re going to like show people your real skin on TV, which at the time was crazy. I mean, crazy. Unheard of. And your height, the people you hired told you, this is stupid, that they, the people almost never let you on because you want it to do this. And yet you believed in it and you’re going to do it anyway.

Well, I, and I think it comes down to like, do we learn how to listen to what our guts telling us to do? Even when other people are telling us to do the, and you know, QVC was supportive. QVC was like, you do, whatever’s authentic to you. But I knew I had one shot. And so it was the, you know, third, third party experts are so good. And I said, yeah, I want to show my bright red rosacea. And I said, and you know what, because you need to, you need to use models to show the product. I’m like, Lemmy actually put models that are ages and shapes and sizes and skin tones. And I S I remember but, but here’s the thing. They, they are all, they all thought I was crazy. And they’re like but they wanted me to when they had the best intentions of at heart, but sometimes even people that are, that are visionaries still can’t imagine something working.

If it hasn’t been done before. And if I learned that lesson earlier, I would have saved myself. So many nights, cry myself to sleep. When so many people did it believe in this, this vision I had or what I was trying to do. And, and so, you know, it felt heavy. I knew this was going to come down to this 10 minute moment. And I sat in that rental car in the parking lot. And I imagined who my customer was like, I imagined who I was talking to because honestly, worry self-doubt did enter my head. I thought thoughts like, well, what if your gut is wrong? What if there’s no proof around you now for three years, that what you’re trying to do, you is going to gain any traction. Right? You have all those thoughts. You have friends and family that love you so much, but they’re like, you know, are you sure, sure.

This is how you should be doing it. Like, didn’t, you want to be a talk show, host your whole life. Are you sure you want to stay in this makeup industry? Like, you know, all those things, you hear everyone who loves you. They mean so well, but all of it can turn into this noise of self doubt. And I just remember this moment sitting in that rental car going, who is, who is my customer. And I imagined her sitting at home like watching this 10 minutes and who is she? I imagine all different types of women. And I imagine like, you know, women that maybe had never seen someone who looked like them on TV as a model, and I wanted to show real women, call them beautiful and mean it, you know, literally. And, and, and I, I had this moment where I realized, you know, if I was going to get one shot, I would rather have women turn their television on and not buy anything, but see someone that looked like them, someone that I am authentically saying is beautiful, but that, that makes them, or reminds them that they matter that they’re enough and have them by nothing.

I’d rather do that than sell a ton of product and stand for nothing. And it was this, this moment where I knew what I had to do, but sometimes we know it doesn’t mean that it’s easy. And you know, when, when I walked into the building so, so for all the everyone building a personal brand and, and, and doing all kinds of stuff right now share this, this part of the story. I thought I had my 10 minutes, like produced in my mind, right. I had a whole script of what I was going to do and what demonstration I was going to show and how the flow was going to go. And so you get like a two minute meeting with the host right before the show. And they meet with all the different presenters from all the different companies. And and in that two minute meeting, I was explaining to the host that I wanted to do in my one big shot.

And she’s like, well, thank you, but that, but here’s what we’re going to do. And she basically threw everything out the window that I wanted to do. And at that point, you have to just trust. You have to trust. Cause the last thing in the world you want to try to do is become the expert of something. You’re, you know what I mean? That when someone else is the, I had to trust and, and, and I prayed like crazy, but we went out there and I remember that, that there’s this big 10 minute clock and there’s cameras everywhere in the studio. And here’s the thing when the, I knew once the clock boom went live and it was nine 58, nine 57, I knew everything was on the line. I knew I couldn’t do it both ways. But I also knew that you can’t fake authenticity.

And in that moment, there is so many thoughts going through my head thoughts about, Oh, if, if this doesn’t go well, you’re not guaranteed 10 minutes to sell your product. If it doesn’t go, well, your clock gets cut live. You can go from, you know, maybe you’re at nine minutes and it’s not going well, boom, you’re down to two minutes like that because they’re wrapping up and they’re onto like Dyson vacuum or vitamin X or whatever, right? Like it’s no one messes around. They’re like, it’s high pressure. And, and so, you know, I had to kind of like get thoughts like that out of my head and focus on like, why am I doing what I’m doing and how it’s bigger than myself? And I remember little moments where you know, things I’ve never shared before, but I remember being live on air and being like, Oh, my dress feels a little tight or, Oh, I feel sweat, literally dripping down my back.

And I hope that’s inspiring where you’re like, this is the biggest moment of my life. I can feel sweat trickling on me. Yes. But, you know, I, I knew I knew it enough to know and something I share, but then I learned it. I share a lot about authenticity and trust and belief in this book for everybody, regardless of what journey they’re going on, lessons I’ve learned in that. But one of the lessons is like authenticity alone. Doesn’t guarantee success, but in authenticity guarantees failure. And I knew in that moment, I could not show up as somebody else or as this, this version of a brand that works for everyone else that wasn’t authentic to why I was doing what I was doing. And I also couldn’t stand up there on live television and, you know, be all about inspiring women to know they’re enough, but then stand there in my own head about my own stuff.

Right. So I knew it had to, it had to be bigger than myself. It had to be about the woman watching at home. And that’s the only way that I was able to get through those 10 minutes because the pressure was so heavy. I remember, you know, I had practiced this demonstration on my wrist a million times, but when we went live, my hand was shaking so much that I couldn’t even show this demonstration properly on how our concealer didn’t crease like the other two departments are concealers. So the host had to kind of like put my hand under the pedestal. I remember the moment, my bright red rosacea, my bare face before shot came up on national television and then walking over to the models. And I remember there was about a minute left and the host was like, the, the deep shade is almost sold out the tan shade. We’re down to 200 units. And I was like, and then I remember it was like at the 10 minute Mark, the sold outside came up across the screen. It was like this big diagonal sold outside. And I literally Rory started crying. Like I, it was just, it was, the pressure was so much and I just started crying and I remember they cut the segment and my husband came rushing through the double doors of the studio and like sobbing. And I’m like, real women have spoken.

He’s like, we’re not going pay crops. And it was this whole thing. One airing turned into five that year and then 101 the next year on QVC, eventually 250 airings a year. I’ve done over a thousand live QVC shows myself and we grew to be the largest beauty brand and QVC is history and right. In many, did you say a thousand worth over a thousand live shows? Yeah. and, and right now at this moment that we’re talking it cosmetics is, is still the largest beauty branding in QVC history. And I only share that because for three years it wasn’t just like, no, or, Oh, can you come back later? It was like, you’re not the right fit. Right. And that wasn’t just QVC. It was everybody. It was, it was all the retailers, all the stores. It was, it was everyone. And I just think that for me, one of the biggest lessons is a, no one can tell you you’re not the right fit.

That’s the first thing. And the second thing is when you check in with your, your knowing, right? And by the way, I hear so many people just saying, Oh, just don’t quit or just don’t give up or whatever. I don’t agree with that. I think, check in with your gut, check in with your, your, your internal knowing, because sometimes letting go of a dream, knowing when to let go of a dream is as important as knowing when to go after one. And, you know, I thought it was gonna be a talk show, host my whole life. And it was working as a TV journalist and thought that’s what I was going to do. And when I got rosacea and I felt this, knowing that I’m supposed to let go of that dream and actually start this makeup company, even though I knew nothing about it, you could see it as quitting or as like the victory of knowing what you’re, what you’re feeling in your, in your own intuition and then deciding to trust it.

And I think that, I think that for me, that’s one of the greatest, the greatest lessons. Cause when I look back now, you know, it cosmetics, we eventually gotten to all of the stores that said, no. L’oreal said no for three years and then they eventually acquired us. But you know, in that whole journey, when I look back all the times a I, most of the times I made mistakes, which I talk a lot about the stuff I did wrong in the book too, as well as like lessons personally and professionally. But when, when I didn’t, when I trusted either other, you know, other people’s opinions or whatever, when they, when they differed from what my gut said, when I didn’t trust myself, that’s usually when I made the wrong choices and, and the wrong decisions. And, and similarly during all the years when there was no proof around me that we were onto something or no traction, or when it didn’t make sense to keep going, like, like getting still.

And, and, you know, for me, just praying and trying to hear that, that gut feeling that still small voice, when it would say to keep going, like I made the decision to trust it, even when it was hard, even when we had no money, even when you know what I mean. And, and I think, I think that that that’s the greatest journey, not, Oh, are you going to build a personal brand that has millions of followers? It’s Oh, on your journey of building a personal brand, are you listening? Are you learning to believe in yourself? Are you learning to trust yourself? Are you learning to stay authentic to who you are? Are you learning that you’re not here to compete with anyone else you’re literally just here to compete with who God made you capable of becoming like, like all these lessons, like to me, that’s the victory, that’s the success, the journey of stepping into all of who you are and all of who you’re created to be is is the success not any types of other outcomes.

Yeah. Well, my friends, if you go to believe it.com right now, you can order the book. There is a little, there’s a special for the moment that if you go right now, believe it, dot com you get a couple bonuses, right. Jamie. So what do they get if they go order right now?

Yeah. Yeah. Thank you for sharing that. I’m so excited to share it, share with everyone at brand builders group, too, that everyone in the community yeah, if you get, believe it the book anywhere, you can get it anywhere at sold, which has all the retailers like Amazon Barnes and noble, independent bookstores target, you pick it up anywhere. And then you go to believe it.com. So the book’s called, believe it. And then the websites, believe it. Dot com. If you go there for, it’s a big, big launch celebration, you’re going to get a bunch of free stuff. It’s all free. So you’re going to get this action plan I put together. So it’s like a 90 page action plan, which is how to implement all the lessons from the book into your real life. You’d get that for free plus yeah, I, I’m so excited.

I’m so excited for this worry. But, and then also my first ever course called becoming unstoppable how to overcome the things holding you back. You’ll get that for free as well as a, as a book launch bonus. And and I’m just excited for all of this, you know, I’m donating a hundred percent of the proceeds of the book. I’m literally just doing this because I believe that we’re all in this together. I believe that when we share, like really share the stories behind the stories, that’s how we all, you know, rise. That’s how we all grow. It’s how, you know, w we’re really all in this together. And I think every one of us has a powerful story and it’s, it’s been a crazy journey. I’ve made a lot of mistakes personally and professionally, and I’ve, I’ve also learned how to accomplish some of my, my biggest dreams. And, and now it’s like my greatest joy is helping other people on their own journeys of accomplishing their, so it’s an honor and I’m, I’m super grateful and I’m grateful for you and AIG, by the way yeah, grateful for your friendship. And just so many people I know have their businesses and also just who they are, has been impacted by the two of you. So I just want to say thank you for that as well.

Of course. Well I’ve read, believe it. It’s awesome. It is not every day. Again, you just get to hear a story like this, and you, you do such an, a good, just such an honest job of walking us through the self doubt over and over the rejection, but systematically just continuing to follow that intuition and overcoming it and learning to believe in yourself. And then, you know, you’ve got, there’s so many great lessons and takeaways, so go to believe it, dot com. You can get all of our pre-order bonuses, which you all know, we teach you how to do book launches, right? Like, so there’s, Jamie’s have some killer ones, the course, and the workbook are legit way massive. Over-Delivers just for, for ordering the book during her launch, but check it out and I’m telling you, you’ll love the book. It’s really entertaining and inspiring.

It’s funny. I laughed out loud several times. I cried a few times. Like I’ve never, I’ve never heard the story of how a billionaire sold a company. So that was fascinating. And her husband Palo and adopted not, not adopting, excuse me. But you had surrogacy as a mom and also you were adopted, I mean, there you’ve had the craziest story. Y’all, it’s, it’s like a movie. It probably will be a movie at some point. So go to believe it, dot com check out the book, plug into what Jamie’s doing. We’ll link to her social media, of course, on our website so that you can follow her. And Jamie has thanks for the gift of, of changing an entire industry of challenging the status quo of believing that there’s a better way to do it a more uplifting way to do it. And following that intuition. And then also, I would say caring enough that it’s like it wasn’t about money. That it’s been about mission for you over money the entire time, which goes to show why you would write a book when you don’t need money. Like you don’t need the money. You did this because of mission. And we think that’s a great gift to the world. So we wish you the best. And thank you so much.

Thank you.

Ep 148: Using Written Articles to Grow Your Personal Brand with Robert Glazer

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

A while back, I was in a mastermind, a true mastermind of colleagues of best-selling authors who got together to spend some time to share some of our secrets with one another. And Bob Glazer is somebody who was there, who I got a chance to meet, who I really have enjoyed following and learning from and watching here ever since, you know, he is like me a practitioner. One of the things I really love is he teaches not so much from theory, but from experience. He’s a serial entrepreneur. He’s the CEO of a global marketing agency called acceleration partners. And you know, he, he has they’ve won a lot of different awards for his actual business. The reason I invited him a lot of people come talk about, which is really through writing.

He is a regular columnist for Forbes, for Inc., for Entrepreneur. He really started his brand with something called Friday Forward, which was very simple. It’s a weekly inspirational newsletter that now reaches over a hundred thousand people. He is a podcaster, but also as a writer, he has written several books. He’s a wall street journal and USA today bestselling author of four, four books. And I just think he’s a really great example of somebody using writing to leverage his personal brand. So anyways, welcome to the show, Bob Glazer, thanks, Rory excited to be here. So, you know what I just shared about you? I don’t even know how much, you know, that that’s how I kind of view you as an outsider. When I look and go, this is what I see about what you have done. Would you say that’s an accurate assessment or, or would you say that you’ve built your personal brand based on something else or other other things?

I mean, it was no, I think totally accurate sort of by accident, you know, it started, it started within our industry. You know, I, I always felt like I could communicate clearly in writing and our industry is just devoid of thought leadership. And I started writing stuff that was a little controversial, a little different you know, people really resonated, you know, with people in our business was strong and I realized it really set us apart within our industry. And then I kind of followed the cam. Harold was a coach and, and Tucker and we, you know, there was no industry book. So we said, look, we’re going to, we’re going to write the definitive book about our industry and how to use it and, and really lean into that. And then along the way, like how we were growing our business, in those words that you were saying around culture and stuff, I, I B sort of became passionate about how we were.

I thought we had figured out some things and leadership and culture and, and, and started to then take that writing and share it outside. And, and, and, you know, in articles, getting, getting, you know, byline articles, getting columns, you know, related to the books. And then as you mentioned, the big thing that sort of blew up really unintentionally was a note that I just started sending to my team every week that was getting, that was just about getting better. Just about sort of some of the core things I believed in and pushing them to this notion of build their capacity. And basically it started getting shared outside the company to the point where I then opened it up. And when I opened it up, all these people were interested in it and it, and it kind of exploded and then turned into two books later on. So it w it wasn’t an, it, it wasn’t

When you say, when you say industry, you’re talking about like marketing agencies,

Partner, marketing, affiliate marketing, like really about like the opportunity within our industry. But, but we always were trying to do our industry better, but part of the way we did that was build a company that focused on development and leadership and people. And so it became almost these two separate trees of topic. And, you know, one of the things that I always say, I, because we work in affiliate marketing, I see people write a lot of stuff to try to make money. Right. I, I never, for me Friday, I actually got a lot of questions. I, I, I never was clear how it was going to help my business, whether it was going to make any money. I was getting really great feedback from people. And it made me the next week to say, how can I deliver value to this audience that, that, cause I’m making a difference for them and not worry about what I was going to get out of it. And, and probably the best thing I ever did for myself or my business or otherwise, but because, but I didn’t have a goal other than to add value to, to the readers every week.

How, how long did it take you? Like, so at you’re at over a hundred thousand subscribers on this, this week?

Yeah. Probably reaches about 200 now across LinkedIn and a variety of channels each week across in about 60 countries.

Okay. And, and how long, like when did you start it? Like how long has it taken you to ramp to five

Of years? And I think like anything I’ve heard, you’ve probably heard James clear, like we were, writing’s like, it rewards the long game. Like I think, you know, it it’s a hockey stick of both SEO and stuff, getting out, you know, it was probably, you know, w w you know, year three to four, I probably added more people than year, you know, w one to three. So this is the thing, whenever I see anyone looking for the outcome before they put in the work, I kind of think you have to put in the work and then hopefully hope for the outcome. I, I, I’ve never found a hack to, to doing that.

Yeah. I love that. You know, the hack thing is like, sure, little tips and tricks here are always good, but I’ve felt the same way. It’s like, no one, no one’s significant ever hacked their way there. It was value over the, over the long haul. Now, when did so writing for like Forbes and entrepreneur and E Inc, right. Those are things that I think really helped with credibility and all that. And also search engine optimization, and also just reach, like, there’s just flat out people who will find you there that would never find your own blog. So how do you, how did you get that? And when did you add that to the mix and like, how do you even go about getting one of those

Posts? Yeah. You know, a lot of times a book or something, or it’s just a reason to connect with people. And, and I think I had done some work with John Hall and you probably know him in his team, and I think they were able to help me. I was actually at a conference when I met the guy he had been on Friday for, we talked for an hour and he, he handled some of the Forbes columns, was able to get me that column. And then it was when I launched I think my elevate book, that part of the outreach and some of the PR connected with the leadership writers, they saw what I was writing about offered, offered a column, and then, you know, it’s like anything, once you have one or two, it’s much easier to go to the third and say, you know, I, I, I do X and Y I think one of the things that, that the mistakes that I made I’ve learned is, is I think sometimes you just try to create too much new stuff.

Right. I, I could adapt the Friday forward into an Inc article and do different angle. I learned to take the articles and put them on medium and put them on LinkedIn. And I really, in the last year or two, try to, you know, cause some of the commitments on those things that used to be pretty high, you know, in quantity to write weekly and, and, and for free, which is so, so it’s a lot to do. So I focused on syndication more. I focused on bringing something back from years ago and redoing it again and reaching a new audience. There’s always the desire, something new and shiny, but I, I I’ll bring back like one of my tried and true, you know, new York’s posts you know, into, into one of my things every two years. And I will do just as well or better than the first time.

So, yeah. Would you mind sharing with us a little bit about like, do you have a system for how you sequence that? And then also like, you know, are you, I know you’re saying now that you’ll repurpose on more like social, like you’ll,

Unless something like the LinkedIn or medium, right. You can bring stuff back as much as you want.

Now, were you having to write unique articles for each of these Forbes and entrepreneur and Inc like, like, were those when you first started, were those all new, new proprietary? Like, you’re only see this post here.

Yeah. Those have to be new, but then after two weeks you can take them to LinkedIn. You can take them to medium, you can take them to other places. Right. And they’re even in other places that will syndicate them. So you write new for them. But I would also have something where Friday Ford was a certain storytelling format, but I could take just the core essence of that and make a eight ink article about it. That was different, but on the same topic. Right. So just in terms of trying to leverage, and a lot of times, I know I knew the topic resonated, right. But, but Friday Ford is a storytelling and Forbes and anchor like a one, two, three, so you need to take it. And, you know, you’ve got to shift the format a little bit, but yeah, I, I think there are a couple of places, right. That require that it be new, but, but I was in the LinkedIn pulse program earlier, early you know, I have a 305,000 followers on the newsletter system there. I think it’s the number two newsletter. And so obviously that built a little flywheel around, you know, publishing on LinkedIn is as well.

Hm. Hm. Yeah. I, I love that. So, so what is your rhythm now? Like how frequently do you think I have to write a new article? Is it still once a week for Friday forward and then everything kind of emanates from that or, yeah.

I slowed down the new creation, so I read it on Friday forward. I syndicated on LinkedIn. I will then, you know, if I’m doing an article for ink or Forbes that is timely or something I want to write about I’ll then do that. I’ll wait the two weeks and I’ll, I’ll put it somewhere else as well. But I I’ve actually slowed down the new because it, it became, it became a lot. And, and, and that was easy to do actually, because it got complicated last year to write about things at certain times, just from April to may, to June you just certain topics you couldn’t write about. And, you know, didn’t want to write about COVID stories every, every week. So also, you know, you start looking at the data and, and, and what works and where do you see impact and where do you see, you know, the flip side of this sometimes is you can get caught up with, you might have a column somewhere or whatever, and it does nothing for you. Right? You got to kind of look after a year to say, look for the hundred hours I put into this. Should I have put them out? Where should I have created a course or written a book or, or otherwise. So I, I’ve tried to really look at the data and what worked and where are people hearing me from it. And I’m always sort of calling something every time I add something. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, that’s true about anything, right. You could spend that time creating Tik TOK videos, or creating YouTube videos or creating whatever. But so at your peak, would you say you were writing like three new articles a week, five new articles a week,

But two, three a week. And it was, it was a lot of work. How long

Did that go on for

At least a year or two.

Okay. So, so you’re doing like two at the peak. You’re doing two to three new articles a week. And how for how long were you writing at that frequency?

I think about 12 to 18 months just to see if it made a difference, but I, but I had sort of an assembly line. Like I had the ideas, I do the drafts. I have some really good editors behind me and we’d have kind of a bunch in, in, in motion. Like I can write really quickly, but editing takes me forever. So that’s something I have people that can edit really fast. So I, you know, you need, you need a system, I think, behind that in order to do something like that.

So, yeah. So I agree. So the ideas thing is interesting cause I, I have yeah, I basically write on for kind of four topics, all influence. I think of my areas just influence, but I’ve got four different topics in each of them. I have a sheet with ideas for posts in each of those categories. How do you do your drafts? Do you sit in front of a computer and like, just type it, do you talk it out? Do you shoot a video and then transcribe it like

I I’ve had two getters I’ve worked with for years that, you know, at this point, understand me and my race. I have actually tried everything except for the video I’ve done recording and memos. I will do like a really deep outline where I’ll write a couple of the things and I’ll say, what we need right here is a study or a reference to this point, you know? And then I have some they’ll research it and grab it for me. So I I’ve tried a bunch of different ways, honestly, as long as you’re comfortable with it, like, like for me to like, I can get it done fast, it’s messy as typos, but I’ll just sort of say, look here, I, I got this all out. This is a thing. Can you just, can you clean it up? You know, for me

Are these editors like contractors? Are they staff or are they PR like, were they provided by somebody like else or did you just like find it person?

Well, I I’ve used outside. I think it takes three to six months to get to somewhere where like someone’s editing or stuff and they think it’s you, I I’ve worked with outside, but these were staff. So we had a head of content for our business. And then eventually I brought someone on who handled a lot of my personal stuff and writing, you know, it was a big part of that. So I think there’s two people I’ve reached that level too. I always, I always joke with her if he could write something and send it back to me and I would think I wrote it because one of the things that I, that I do when I’m getting to work with that editor is I make a lot of comments around their edits. So like, one of my things is I never used things. I have a thing about sort of super motives, like always or never things that big can be disproven. So if they ever edit without word, I will say, I wouldn’t use this word. Right. Like I I’ll never use always. I don’t use never. So I, I actually will try to comment to them and give them some of my like isms so that as we edit, you know, it gets, it gets better.

Yeah. We’ve we do a similar thing. Like we’ve been doing something very similar with videos where, you know, a video editor will be editing and then it’s like, I’ll make a comment specific to something I want them to change, but then I’ll make a second comment that says why this is, and then we add it to a style guide that it’s like a list of just if you’re going to edit for me, these things should always be there. I mean, that’s interesting, just like the super-light sieves and you go, don’t ever send me something with a superlative in it. If it, if you are, then that means

Something that says never, never

Send me something

Explained. I explained it to, I said, because again, in my writing, I think if, if, if you’re trying to get to the reader and you say this never happens, and if someone can think of an example where it happens, then you’re sort of discredited. Right. So I it’s, I’m conscious to never, never say that. Okay.

So, so, so that you have this process, you kind of idea that you just sort of like puke it out there in whatever format, and then you let the editors do it. And you’re just kind of like always running that production cycle. Why that’s what you did for like 12 to 18 months. Yeah.

We have one in early, early development, middle development, like late development. Right. And they’d be coming back and forth.

Yeah. But if you do 12, I mean, if you’re doing three articles a week, let’s just say, so that means you’re doing, you’re doing 12 a month. You do that for 12 months, you got 144 articles. Then basically from that point, you can repurpose and backlog again, switch things around and brush it up. And now you’ve got a stable plus anything.

And then you go to write a book or something eventually, and you’d realize that four or five of those articles are key concepts in the chapters of your book. In fact, I’m, I’m doing that for my next book. Now I did the outline and I was like, I’ve talked about this concept before I’ve talked about this concept before. So, so we’ll be able to pull in some of that stuff.

Yeah. Plus the data, like what you’re saying is going on the readers are really responding to this. It’s like this needs to be in the book and know, you know, the book’s going to be a hit before you publish it because you already have the data out there of going, I know people love this. Right.

I know they love this unless you blow the title, which is, you know what, I learned a lot from you on that, on that map.

Yeah. That’s pain. That is, that is the pain. I mean, it’s funny because procrastinating on purpose, that that is a lot of what ended up in those, that book was they were, those articles appeared on my blog and there, you know, like the 30 X role is this, the section that I wrote and it’s like, I never wondered if my Ted talk was going to be a hit because there, it had all been proven before, you know, we, we messed up the title, which was super painful, but

And by, and by the way, in writing and in articles and Inc and Forbes push this, the title might matter five times more than what you write. So you get, you spend a lot of time on the title. And I saw this in ink, it’s a B test, every title. And you cannot guess sometimes which title will do better. But what they did was they would send out the top 10 articles every month. And there’s this travel guy and he’s number one, two, three every month. And it’s his formula. It’s just really clear. So this is where you have to use, you know, Ben, Hardy’s big on this. You gotta use data. And I know for people who are really good writers and purists, they don’t like getting into the sort of title and they think it’s clickbait. But I always say to people do want, you could write the same article and 10 times the amount of people will read it. Everything’s going by people really quickly. And they need a reason to read that article that day, that hour, because once it passes, they’re not going back to it.

Yeah. So let’s talk about that because you know, you’re referencing the story that I shared with you all about titles and we’ve, you know, my second book, which is painful, which we share a lot of our, like a lot of our members know that story, but let’s talk about titles. Like, is there anything that you can share that you go, man, this, this works like, these are general rule of thumbs, actually. Can you tell us what should we always do? And never do as it relates to our titles.

Look, I think you got to get uncomfortable with making it a little sensational. If I look at all, every time they send out the top lists, you know, the formula tended to be, you referenced a well-known company or name or something. And you said, this is the top reason or what they do, or the single thing. Like you see that a lot. But every time I get a list of the top performing articles, those titles are already on top of it. So this is, you know, this is the one thing Michael Jordan did to get ready for games. And here’s how it can help you like those title or, or those titles work. It’s coming by your desk. You’re like, Oh, what’s the one thing. And you’re not going to get to the one thing until halfway down. Now, I, I don’t consider that clickbait at all.

I consider clickbait when, what you get them into the article is not what the article is about or not. And it’s a bait and switch switch. Yeah. I don’t consider a clickbait like something that’s a little sexy in terms of, you know, bringing someone to the topic. But I, but when I get the list and again, if you’re ever an ink, it’s fascinating. They send out the top performers, this travel guy every month, it’s like, you won’t believe the one policy change Delta just made their customers love it. Right? His title is always something like that. Or United airlines just made this huge blunder and their customers revolted. And, and you know what, I even go through that list. I’m like, what was it? I wanna, I wanna, I wanna learn what it was. So it’s very clear that there’s some formulas that, that work.

So, you know, I really resonate with this though, because it’s like, I hate feeling like I’m pandering. Right? Like I hate feel like I’m just, you know, it’s, it’s like, I don’t want to,

You’re like, I wrote a good article. I wrote it

And cheap what feels like cheap wrapping paper.

Correct. But when somebody, if you get to the why someone said, what’s the point, I want people to read the article. Cause I think it’s, I think it’s good. It’s not true. And I think it can help them. Well, if you can tell me that one approach, we’ll get 10 times the people reading it than the other, then, then I can get comfortable with, you know, why I want to do that warm. As I, as I said to my editor, sometimes when we’re debating titles, this, this is something that someone at my company said to me, like warm cup of tea, titles, like don’t work. They just don’t things that sound like, you know, could check it out. Like, so-so that travel thing, right? The Delta airlines made this policy and their customers freaked out. You know, if I said like, you know, this is why it’s never good for an airline to change, you know, its policies on its customers without notice. Like, it’s kind of like the warm cup of tea Virgin. I got, I got, I see it. Come on. I don’t really need to read that. It, it is, it is interesting. Yeah.

If it’s not a warm cup of tea, what is it like, what’s the, what would you say it is? Is it like the extreme or the like, like what

I think that formula is like is ER urgent and simplicity, right? That’s what that formula is. Like. You want to it’s news. You want to read it now and by the way, there’s a, there’s a quick, not a quick, but there’s a simple takeaway for you. It’s always better to have the one thing than the seven things right here are the seven keys to success in life versus bill Gates said, this is the one thing that made him successful in life. Like which one are you more likely to read quickly or think you’re going to read quickly because you’re just curious. You might just be like, well, what’s that bill Gates? One thing I can look at that quickly, but then I get pulled into the article.

Hmm. Yeah. So you’re saying quality article, be okay with a little sensationalism or you’re just saying that’s what works, which I agree with. It’s like, whether you like it or not, that is what is, that is what people respond.

Sorry. I had to, I had to get comfortable with it because the data is clear and you’re in this, you know, if you ever watched a 16 year old these days, their phone, you have three seconds to like, you know, get someone’s attention as they’re going through. I mean, you know this from books, I always say to you with books, you can have a great launch and a book, or you can have a great launch and a great book. You can, you can pump a crappy book up at launch and then it will kind of crash afterwards, right? Or, or if you have great content or like how L rod, it’s not about the launch, it’ll come back. But if you have really great book, you will do better. If you have a great launch and you get the flywheel going, right. And it’s it’s, you shouldn’t feel bad about trying to sell your great book. If you wrote a piece of crap, you know, infomercial bug, then you might feel a little dirty about trying, you know, it up in the book. So this is predicated on that you wrote a good and meaningful article that has value to people.

Huh. So as long as it’s good and meaningful, then wrapping it in a trashy title is no problem, no biggie.

Again, you said it best. You can not do it, but, but the data will show that you’ll get maybe a third of the amount of people on it. And then the algorithmic world, you know, the more people that click and read it earlier, the more it gets shown

It’s it is such a heart it’s Russia, but it’s the same thing, right? It’s like, what good is if I have the cure for cancer, what good is it? If nobody knows that I haven’t. Right. But I feel they’re there. It’s like an artist struggle. You know, this is like a, this is like an art.

I struggle with it. And then the data became so clear to me that I became released.

What’s what convinced you. You’re just like, it doesn’t matter just that the data tells this is clear. It’s a strategic decision. I just got to make.

Yeah. I want people to read my content and get value from it. So if the title, it makes them more likely to read it, then I’m going to do that. As long as I don’t, I, again, I’m not, I don’t feel like I’m beading and switching them or trying to go with them into something. I think that’s where it gets a bad name. You know, ones that get you into these 25 clicks or whatever, but just talking about an article on ink, that’s been edited. Like it’s not, it’s not selling you, you know, potion or anything. Like it’s, it’s just content for someone to read.

Yeah. Well, I I like this. This is good stuff. I mean, this is, thank you so much for just kind of sharing, you know, like your, your process, Bob, where do you want people to go? If they want to connect with you or learn more about you and kind of like follow, follow up with your work?

I sure I I’ve got ever everything finally integrated which I’m sure you’ll appreciate at Robert glazer.com. So you can get the podcast Friday forward books courses, all this stuff is, is right on that page. It’s a GLA Z E r.com.

That is awesome. Well, you won’t get warm cup of tea titles. You won’t, you won’t get super Latinx, but you will get awesome insight and practical stuff. This has been so great, man. I really appreciate you opening up to let us see a little bit behind, behind the curtain of how you’ve been using the written word to just really build and grow your personal brand.

Great. Thanks for having me. It was great discussion.

Ep 146: Exactly What to Say to Sell High Dollar Offers with Phil M Jones

Speaker 1: (00:07)

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

RV: (01:04)

Sales is something that I love. It’s something that I spent my life doing knocking on doors as a teenager in direct sales, of course my mom was in direct sales and the first company, if you don’t already know this, the company that AIJ and I built was an eight figure sales coaching company. We coach salespeople how to sell after 2018, when we left that business, we’re no longer in the sales training business. And over the last couple of years, I have started following a gentlemen that you’re about to meet named Phil M Jones. Phil is one of my favorite experts in the world of sales in the world right now. He is the author of several different books, but the three kind of, I guess, flagship books are called exactly what to say exactly how to sell and exactly where to start.

RV: (02:05)

He has sold close to a million over over 750,000 copies of these books. And so he serves as both a resident expert on building a personal brand, and we’re going to talk to him about how has he built his own brand and sold so many books. But also we’re going to apply his expertise to the process of how to sell for personal brands. Because Phil sells consulting, he sells keynotes and he teaches organizations like Microsoft, Virgin, Atlantic pampered, chef DHL Volkswagen, ADT, Isogenics he teaches companies like that and those people how to sell. And so since we became friends recently, I was like, buddy, I need to get some free sales training for all of our peeps on the podcast. And he agreed. So welcome to the show, Phil.

PMJ: (02:59)

Hey, it’s a pleasure To be here, always good to chat. And hopefully we can share some things today that are useful to our listeners.

RV: (03:05)

Yeah, buddy. You know, I I know that you and I, you, we’ve only, we’ve only really, I think had one encounter where you and I are in this kind of non-paid mastermind of off a group of authors. And that’s where he mad. Of course we share Jay Baer as a mentor. I think he’s a mentor to both of us in a very dear friend, but you know, at brand builders, our audience is what we call mission-driven messengers. So we’re after people who are more about making impact you know, it’s not that they don’t want to make money, but what I’m, what I love about the stuff that you teach is it feels like it’s less ego. It’s less, it’s not about lies. It’s not about manipulation. So how do you think of sales? Like what, like when you think of just the word selling, how would you describe it? What do you think about it? Cause obviously your philosophies are resonating deeply with the world in terms of the way you think of selling.

PMJ: (04:10)

Okay. So how do I think about selling? Well, Phil Jones dictionary definition of what selling is, is, is firstly earning the right to make a recommendation. So, but break that down real simple. And it means you should never, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever, ever suggest to anybody that they should buy anything. Unless you can say these words first and the word you should look to say, first of the words, because of the fact that you said, because of the fact that you said blank, blank, and blank, then for those reasons, my recommendation would be blank, blank, and blank. Like that’s how you earn the right to make a recommendation. If you do the work before the work, it’s putting yourself in the position that this is the ultimate solution to other things I think about from a sales point of view.

RV: (04:52)

So just on that, that, that, that, to that, to me, that tees up listening, right? Like in order for me to be able to say, because of the fact that you said it means that I must have first asked questions, correct?

PMJ: (05:06)

The answer to suggesting that if you have not done the work to get into a position where you can say that, then you haven’t done the sales job, right. Too many people think it’s about embellishing, a product or service with features and benefits. Hoping one of them might stick. What you’re better to be able to do is to uncover true needs analysis, to see if there’s a genuine fit and then move yourself into a marketplace at one, there’s another ingredient though, that goes into being great on the ethical side of sales. And it’s understanding your job description and your job description is really one of being a professional mind to make her other people think no is the enemy of yes. Yet in the world of sales, indecision is the enemy not, no is people stuck in maybe. And if you can find ways of being able to actually move more of the right people who were stuck in, maybe choose you as opposed to somebody like you, or to choose you as opposed to choosing to do nothing. Then that’s where you get the ability to be able to fast track your success. So we are either decision catalysts or professional mind maker offers.

RV: (06:12)

I love that. I mean, that’s a total reframing of just what the enemy is and the real part part, you know, that reminds me of like, you know, so my first book take the stairs. People often ask, well, you know, which, which was overcoming the psychology of procrastination and helping people be disciplined in all areas of their life. And, and people said, what’s the connection of that between sales? Like, why do you have this company about the teacher’s sales training in your book is about helping people be more disciplined to take, because I said, well, it’s the same problem of inaction. It’s getting someone to take action. And in a sales conversation, I love that. It’s like, it’s not that they’ll tell you no, it’s that they won’t tell you anything. They won’t make a decision. They just, you live stuck in this world of maybe which takes a lot of pressure off of you as a sales person. I feel like, like, if, if, if, if knows the enemy, it feels like in order for me to win, I have to get them to say yes, but if they say no, then I lost and they won. But if indecision is the enemy, it’s like, we can both win.

PMJ: (07:16)

Right? And if you can help people make smart decisions that are mutually beneficial over the test of time, like people talk about great salespeople as being able to sell sand to Arabs or ice to Eskimos or any of these cliche sales sayings that have sat around for 30, 40, 50 years is that doesn’t wash in today’s as well. You sell somebody, something they don’t need that they already have in abundance. So they have no useful purpose for off to the transactions involved. And you, my friends are a crook, right? Like that, that is what exists there. What we’re looking to be able to do is to create mutually agreeable outcomes that go on to me, that your promise outperforms, the expectation that was delivered at the time, the promise was made yet still. We want them to choose you for that promise and not somebody else.

RV: (08:03)

So how do you, you know, like I think a lot of people that are listening, there’s a lot of technical training to sales. That’s, you know, we’ve spent a lot of time with teaching people. I mean, and that’s another reason why I love what you do is literally you teach people exactly what to say. There’s a, there’s an extraordinary sales as a technical skillset is a whole world of study. But I find that most of the people who struggle with sales, it’s more of the mental part that they can’t get their mind wrapped around. It’s like, I don’t want to be the slimy, whatever car sales man or, or pushy sales person. So how do we get our mind wrapped around this idea that in order for me to monetize my personal brand, I have to learn how to sell. Even though my initial response is like, eh, I don’t want to be a salesperson. Like, what’s the mental part of that

PMJ: (09:01)

When you’ve been around salespeople, that chunk right, is just type that, that stereotypical sales person I’m going to reverse the interview for a second. And I want you to throw some adjectives at me that would describe a stereotypical salesperson.

RV: (09:16)

Yeah. So pushy, manipulative, dishonest, disingenuous over promising over exaggerative like, I don’t know [inaudible], but if it is a word

PMJ: (09:31)

And we have to make out words to talk about made up people, right? So here we are. In that situation, you are seeing a very clear vivid image of somebody in your home. And everybody listening in is jumping to their version of that same name. What if I now ask you to read your mind and not those that describe a stereotypical salesperson, but instead attic teams that would be used to describe a professional sentence? What words would we got there?

RV: (09:57)

Well, it’s interesting, you know, if, if you took out, if you just said professional, like if you drop the salesperson, if you just said professional on purpose. Okay. So if I thought a professional salesperson, I don’t know. I mean, I, when I think of the word professional, I think of like educated, articulate, intelligent, you know, I think of like doctors, lawyers, CPAs, but, but I still, if you add Salesforce and I still think of like, you know, still a little bit overly persuasive, a little bit, it’s more just like sly and how they’re, you know, kind of influencing. But, but the word professional makes me think of an advisor of like like like I go to my doctor for answers because they’re an expert. That’s how I think of just the word professional by itself.

PMJ: (10:50)

Right. And I think even in that one example, I changed one word and you changed all the words you saw a different picture. When you thought about a professional sales person, first is a stereotypical salesperson. And that’s part of the starting point is we have to decide that we are not the devil like that has to be that we understand that that exists in a percentage of the way that people sell yet. That doesn’t have to be the way in which I’m going to do it now, often in my work, I love that.

RV: (11:21)

There’s only like just changing the way you’re thinking, like changing the way you define yourself to go. Like, yeah, some people are that way, but that’s not what I’m doing.

PMJ: (11:28)

Right. And love that. There’s a simple way of even being able to analyze this is people often ask me, you know, what’s the difference between manipulation and persuasion. Yeah. What’s the difference between the two that difference in my mind is easy. So integrity. Like one is with integrity and one is without integrity, right? That’s the missing dish that exists is you can persuade somebody with integrity and therefore your open to deal with the consequences of that persuasion, you are prepared to run the distance with what happens. The other side of that persuasion. If you manipulate somebody, then chances are that you’re not going to have the integrity to be able to deal with the consequences because you’re too busy now manipulating someone else. So if you have integrity in your actions, being persuasive is what people want in their life. What people want is people to help lead the change.

PMJ: (12:18)

You’ve got thousands of people to plug into your work that are passionate about leading the change. What I would say is if you’re not prepared to dive into the conversation with the lives of the people that you’re looking to help change, then you ain’t that passionate about it. Talk about it. But like, if you care about saving people from burning buildings, I don’t want to read your article about saving people from burning buildings is find a building that’s on fire and go get someone out of it. Right. And that would be my advice back to many professionals. I see in these times that we’ve lived through through 20, 20, early 20, 21 is people are claiming to be an expert on a thing yet their expertise could be remarkably helpful for the world that exists right now. And they’re not bringing that help to the world now being paid for that help. Isn’t a bad thing. It’s actually just the sign of the applause of a job. Well done. It’s another way of keeping score. If you’re good at what you do, people should value that. You’re good at that. Well, that do, to me that they’ll pay you more than the next guy or girl that’s doing that thing.

RV: (13:17)

Yeah. Well, and I, I mean, just that, that, that idea that you were talking about a moment ago hits me really hard, where it’s like, if you really want to take the money out of it, even if you go, if you really exist to solve a problem, you should never be afraid to pick up the phone and talk to somebody one-on-one about that problem. If you, what I heard you say is if you’re not willing to do that, then you’re not that passionate about reading the world of that problem. And you’re not that passionate about helping people that have that problem. That’s powerful.

PMJ: (13:51)

And it’s also true, right? And sometimes that’s all it is. Let’s just hold a mirror up on it. Now what you might find out is that you’re scared. You might find out that you’re lacking skills. You might find out that you’re so fricking confident in 85% of what it is that you do, but you’re missing the 15% over here, which is the skill, which means that all of a sudden, you’re like, I don’t want to come across embarrassed. And that’s what stands a lot of people back from being able to dive into meaningful conversations, because they’re fearful of the unknown, just like everybody is in any environment. Many people who’ve grown to be an expert in something wants to feel like they need to have that expertise in everything later, right? Rookie mode is the best place for us to go for growth here. I also think about a sales conversation though, is if you move it from being a I win or I lose, and instead define a series of levels of success, where level one is I show up and I give a good representation myself and my company level two is I managed to build rapport with this person, find some common interest level three years.

PMJ: (14:57)

I can create a genuine opportunity. I can now only judge my success or failure as if a genuine opportunity presents itself. So my job is to explore. Is there a possibility of a genuine opportunity in this phone call? Ah, I can show up for that as opposed to, can I sell my high ticket coaching program, right.

RV: (15:17)

So yeah, totally different. It’s totally different. And, and, and to me you go like, if you’re there to serve the person’s need, if they don’t have a need, you didn’t lose. If, if, if they had a need and your solution, wasn’t the right fit for them. You didn’t lose. If they had a need and your solution was the right fit and they needed to take action, but you couldn’t get them to take action because they were scared or they had reluctance. Then that’s a loss for both of you.

PMJ: (15:51)

Right. But it’s not happening to you, but you learn getting better from that through reps, not from, you know, thinking about it, worrying about and getting hung up about it, you know, getting up, having to go and then waking up the next morning and thinking, what should I have done differently? And then carrying that experience the next time.

RV: (16:09)

Well, yeah. Reps and education. I mean, that’s, that’s the thing, right? It’s like, once you get past the mental block here and you go, you do need professional sales training. Like you do need to learn this. This is a, a skill and it is an important skill. If you’re an entrepreneur or you’re a personal brand, or you’re a marketer like anybody who wants to build a business, like you have to learn to sell. And there is a skill set there that’s learnable. And if you get like, once you get past that mental block, you go, okay, great. Like I need to get, I need to get some of Phil’s books. I need to go through some brand builders training. I need to go to any anybody else who teaches sales and go teach me what to do. And then you, you just deal with it and you learn it like anything else.

PMJ: (16:53)

Right? And if you learn that you’re developing a skill set to help people make smarter decisions, as opposed to I’m learning a skill skillset to help sell my thing. It shifts the intent. And now all of a sudden, the decision for you to, to work towards mastery in this era of salesmanship, isn’t that your working towards mastery in something that is working for the enemy,

RV: (17:20)

A men. Okay. Love this. So now question for you at the intersection of both building a personal brand and your expertise around sales. So you do a lot of speaking too, right? So like when you sell yourself as a speaker specifically, I’m talking about speaking, do you think that is more of a marketing function or is that more of a sales function to get, to get speaking gigs?

PMJ: (17:58)

And in terms of getting speaking gigs, there were really only two areas that generate speaking gigs more than anything else. One is I’ve seen you speak and I’d like you to speak at my event. The other is somebody has seen you speak and think that you might be a good fit for them, right? Those two things trigger more success in the speaking world than any other thing. Even if that somebody is a Bureau agent or that somebody is, you know, somebody referring you in from elsewhere, the influence of other people’s perspective, the things that you can do from a marketing point of view, to create more of those conversations without you being present the crate, I saw you, I heard you, I listened to you a bull. Like any of those moments that say you might be the fit are all marketing activities that I would have classed as pegs in the board. There are two things to focus on as well though, that when we come to creating speaking opportunities, because not only do you want the speaking opportunities, so you want somebody to have an idea on how valuable you are as a speaker.

RV: (19:02)

Yeah. That’s a whole different conversation. Yeah.

PMJ: (19:08)

150 gigs at one pay a dime, right? Like that’s not necessarily what people are looking for, or do you want high fee paid speaking gigs? If you want high fee paying, speaking gigs or high revenue opportunity platforms to be on to then speak to those, you need pegs in the board. What are the pegs in the bullet that you need that different for different people, but you need a quantity of quality picked in the board. Best selling book might be one of that. You’re known by a lot of people. You have heavy reach on social. You’re seen as a trusted expert by an accredited group full of people. You’ve got reps and experience that mean that you are a trusted provider of these services where the huge rich history of high levels of performance, like these roles in marketing activities that needs to be done.

PMJ: (19:52)

So even getting into the game where the sales part comes into play in a speaking point of view, his final mile, and probably not even final mile or final 10 meters of final mile. And this is the part that I now do the most work on is say that if I’m in the shortlist of two, three, four, five, what do I do to mean that I went in that short list and unfair number of times, and the things that I can do to do that is one provide sales tools that deliver levels of certainty to my customer. And those would be examples like how do I prove that I’m easy to do business with, through the wind, the bid calls, some of that is providing resources. Some of that is just having a support staff that are easy to do business with. Some of it is sending a LinkedIn connection request to everybody.

PMJ: (20:50)

Who’s going to be on the pre event planning. Cool. Before I get to the pre event planning call saying that I’ve done some research, right? These are all things that showcase and I might be different to others. The next part is the conversation itself and the conversation itself when you’ve got an opportunity to win a speaking gig, is that I do believe that nobody can sell you better than yourself. I have an agent, I have bureaus that rep me, et cetera. And I think they’re great for positioning and also great for positioning of fee. But for final mile decision, they’re looking to employ your services. So they want to get an experience of you and what you’re about, and not necessarily your content, but your content plus their circumstances and how you might join those two things together. So here is almost a structured exactly what to say formula for speaking inquiry. Oh

RV: (21:47)

Yeah. Brilliant.

PMJ: (21:49)

So is speaking inquiry comes in, what two things do they use? Typically, every inquiry ask if you, one is, are you available date? And two is, yeah. So how do you respond to that? Well, most people respond with yes. And what’s your budget, right? Which just leaves them into this dark hole of despair, or they blindly shoot a rate card across, across the fingers. Here’s my play by play alternative. Firstly, I’m going to check the date and I’ll check the day and I’ll say, good news is the dates available enough place to hold on our calendar. Right? So there’s a date, things switched down and I’ve also given some level of intent that I’m taking their interest as intent. And my next question is the killer question, which is what is it about me and my work that makes you think I might be a good fit for your event, zip it, and they’ll watch them sell you. Well, we had Rory Vaden last year. He crushed it. I asked him somebody who could build on our ideas that might be out, it’d be a good fit. And he said that you would be his number one pick. I will just happen to my confidence if that’s the thing they say next, or they say love is browsing Google. When we looked at a hundred videos and yours was one of the top three, like, what am I doing? I’m earning context.

PMJ: (23:15)

And that context is valuable to me for two reasons. One is now I can start to see the world through their eyes. Two is my confidence is growing because of the fact that I can see the world through their eyes, all in one question, listening, and then building on the answer that comes next. I still need to position fee. Here’s how you position a valuable fee is you create a problem that is bigger than your price.

RV: (23:38)

And right there, I’m going to pause the interview and say, if you don’t think you’ve got something to learn from Phil M Jones, at this point, you probably are realizing that you do and the power of why we had him on this show. Like, I mean that question, what is it about me and my work that makes you think I’d be a great fit for your event? Main, this is the kind of tactical stuff that he does all day, every day, not just for selling keynotes, but for selling consulting for selling coaching. So your high dollar course, like whatever it is. So Phil, where do people need to go? If they want to find you and follow you and learn more about exactly what they need to say.

PMJ: (24:22)

Well, the first thing I’d point [email protected]. I’d like you to see that we’re a product of the product of putting pegs in the board of proving that we’ve got reps behind everything that has to do with the personal brand. So it comes to the website. I have a nose around and see what you can learn from just seeing how we set our stall out. If you want to connect further, you’ll find links to all the social channels. You’ll find contact forms. If you want to buy books and you cannot find my book exactly what to say, that’s my problem, not yours. So tell me where you couldn’t find it. Then that’s an issue I need to address. But wherever you look to buy your books, you should be able to find mine pretty straightforward.

RV: (24:57)

I love it. Well, we will, of course, link to Phil M jones.com. The direct places you can buy the book and feel social on the show notes and on at brand builders, group.com in our podcast area. Of course, bill, brother, this is awesome. We’re aligned. I love what you’re talking about. And I just thank you for being here and we wish you the best,

PMJ: (25:20)

Absolute pleasure, my friend, and yeah. Good luck on the show. And maybe we’ll pick up the other side of that conversation at some point in the future. We’ll just tease it out there forever.

RV: (25:29)

I like it. I think we can have a few more chats about this. All right. All the best. See you soon.

Ep 144: How To Get Bigger Brand Deals with Eric Dahan

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

Now, y’all know, I don’t very often bring someone on to this show that I don’t personally know or haven’t seen speak or something like that. And occasionally we get those cold pitches and they make it through our team because of how relevant they are for you. And this is one of those I’m excited to introduce to you and really meet along with you for the first time. A gentleman named Eric Dahan and Eric is the co-founder and CEO of a company called Open Influence. And he’s a graduate from Pepperdine University and I’ll tell you what they do in just a second. But he was on the Forbes 30, under 30 list in 2017. And his company’s clients include people like Disney, Google, Amazon, Facebook into it Unilever P and G Coca Cola, Pepsi L’Oreal Under Armour and a whole bunch of others.

And so what he does is, is he’s basically an ad agency. His client is the company, but what open influence does is they source influencers to help place ad spend to help their clients accomplish their ad advertising goals. So he’s looking for people like you probably that are listening to say, who has the audience that my client is trying to reach and helps to identify them, contact them, negotiate the deal, create the strategy, and just kind of oversee the whole campaign so that his clients spend their advertising dollars well through influencer marketing. So with that, Eric, welcome to the show. Awesome. Thanks for having me. Is that a pretty accurate description of what y’all do? I could not have said it better myself. You nailed it. Well, awesome. So, so that is, that is so great. I’m so excited about it because I feel like this is coming up a lot for our clients.

You know, some of our clients have really explosive growth where they’ll, you know, like I think of one of our clients who went from zero to half a million followers on Tik TOK within 60 days. And now all of a sudden she is like in this world of brand deals and trying to navigate it. And so I guess what I, I would love like if, if, if I put my influencer, if I put myself in the shoe of the influencer, what I really want to know is what do I need to know to help your clients be successful? What are you looking for? You know, when you identify influencers kind of, how do you go about it? And, you know, let’s just start with that.

Yeah. Yeah. So you know, like you mentioned, we represent the advertisers and when we start off the process, it’s really all about finding the right influencer for that campaign. And you know, typically we’ll work with, you know, dozens to sometimes even hundreds of influencers on a given project. But we, we use the data first and foremost really find out who’s the right match. And so we look at you know, we look at things like our size. We look at audience metrics, we’ll look at impression rates as well. But also like just what you talk about and how does your audience engage, which is really the first and foremost most important thing is when we’re working with a brand, we want to find influencers and creators that you know, really just having an audience that will be very receptive to that kind of messaging to that kind of branded content.

And so we’re looking at things like past sponsorships, we’re looking at how your audience reacts to different subjects and different pieces of content. And so if you’re an influencer, for example, we’re running your videos and images through image recognition or seeing what’s actually in the content itself, we’re looking at keywords that you may be using such as hashtags or mentions. We’re looking at freeform text and all this comes together to let us know. You know, how does your audience react when you talk about a certain thing, do they engage in lean forward or do they kind of tune out? And one example, it could be like, you might describe yourself as a fitness influencer, but you know, when you talk about yoga, your audiences are really engaged, but when you talk about boxing, they really engage in lean forward and they, and they really engage in that kind of content. And, and that tells us you’re going to be a much better, a much better match for a brand looking to talk about boxing, maybe like an Everlast, as opposed to an aloe yoga or Lu lemon. And so, you know, that that’s sort of first and just really looking at the data and understanding that, and then in terms of what can influencers do or creators do to make,

So hold on for a second. So I want to stick on the data, cause we’re, we’re, we’re, we’re huge data people, and we love data dashboards and we love doing studies and all that. So how the heck do you know my audience metrics? Like, clearly you can tell audience size, but how do you know how whether or not they’re engaging and what the impressions are like, how do you see that as an, as an outsider?

Yeah. So some data we can’t get as an outsider and we only get, once we start working with influencers, but we work with thousands of influencers a month. And so that gives us access to more of those lower funnel metrics, but at a high level you know, we’re, we’re pulling a lot of data from a lot of different sources from a lot of different platforms. We’re marrying that with with other data that we get from different data providers and really most importantly, most basically, you know, you post a picture on the beach, we’re looking at how your audience is, you know, engaging, how are they liking that? Are they commenting? What are they commenting? So we’re taking all that public information. We’re putting that side by side. So we can say, you know, when Rory talk, you know, post about, you know you know, going surfing his content does really, really well. His audience really engages on average, as opposed to when he talks about, you know cooking. Right. And so, you know, and, and so these are just random examples, but

Not very often that Rory Vaden talks about cooking. I mean, let’s be, let’s be, let’s be honest. I, I, outside of like, geez, I’m not, I’m not adding much value to the community there.

Well, you know, and maybe it could be entertaining if you do start talking about cooking, you know? I, I’m a terrible chef. But my girlfriend gets, gets a laugh out of me trying to cook. So, so clearly there’s something entertaining that

You’re saying that you’ve got data sources like these kind of like aggregators or whatever, you’re pulling those in, you know, to your company. And then at some point when you research, you literally just go to the person’s profile and like, look and see, do they have comments? Do they have lots of likes and views and saved? Well, I guess you can’t see saves. But is that what you’re saying? Like part of it is just looking at their profile.

Well, I actually a lot more sophisticated than that. So, so we’re pulling information directly from the platforms we’re pulling information that’s publicly available on the web. We’re then marrying that with, with other data sources that, that we might be able to pull. And we’re, you know, we built a proprietary system. That’s bringing this all in. And so rather than someone just looking at your profile and saying, Oh, here’s what you tend to post about. You know, we’re, we’re running this through our machine learning and AI, and we have hundreds, millions of posts that we’re analyzing. And so I could actually look and say, here are all the different keywords you talk about here, all the different, you know, here’s how many times you had a wine bottle included every one of your posts here’s the average performance when you do it, here’s how you perform.

You know, here’s how your audience engages when you do sponsored content versus not sponsored content. Here are the 20 brands you, you, you mentioned in the past 180 days, so we can get really in-depth with that. And then we could use that to surface. So I could say I wanted to find an influencer. You know, coming back to the yoga example, I want to find an influencer that performs really well with their audience when they talk about yoga on, you know, on YouTube and Instagram. And, and I could type that in I’ll, I’ll find that people, I could sort that by engagement rate, I could sort that by number of posts, if we have the data, we can look at impression rate and, you know, our video views. And then we could say, okay, here are the people that are going to perform the best. And these might not be the people that are, you know, when you think about yoga, they’re not maybe the first names that come to mind, but these are the people who have a lot of influence in that category that you’re not necessarily thinking of as a brand.

Interesting. So do you ever furnish that kind of data back to the, to the influencers or only when you contact them and say, Hey, did you know that when you post about boxing, you’re, it’s like some of you, you know, your engagement rate is super, super high, or is that not really, that you’re just, you really only bring it up when you get into actively kind of, you know, I guess, recruiting an influencer for a campaign.

Yes. So it’s funny, actually, we like, all that data is, is pretty much brand facing. Like we don’t, you know, we’re not, we’re not necessarily going back to the influencers, giving them reports on their own accounts or on what we’re finding. You know, we’re definitely letting them know like, Hey, you know, we’re working with you because of these different things or, you know, here’s why we’re engaging with your, you know but you know, one of the things we kind of talked about, it’s like, we’re sitting on this mountain of information and it’s been pretty much exclusively, exclusively used to be brand facing. We said, you know, maybe there’s something we can do. That’s influencer facing. Also, we’re playing around with some ideas now, but you know, whether it be to help influencers, you know, proactively find the right brands to partner with, or just see what different brands are doing are there similar influencers that a brand is working with to them, which could be a good signal to say, okay, I should reach out to that brand. I could be a good match. So these are sort of the ideas we’re playing with. But to be honest, we haven’t really delved into that too much.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well that, you know, that is interesting as a, you know, as a business idea because it’s like, you know, I think there’s whatever there’s, well, there’s a thousand fortune 1000 brands, but there’s 2 billion people all trying to figure out what is their audience respond to, which is like the part that you really figured out. So it’d be interesting to see if that flips at some point to where you, you, you offer that. But so then, so now let’s talk about, so that’s really cool. So you’ve got some different data sources you’re pulling from, you’re aggregating it in your own tool and you’re basically going, okay, Everlast hired us to do a campaign. We need to find all the people who have audiences that respond when it comes to boxing, you plug that in, and then if I am an influencer, do I just randomly get a message one day from, you know, Eric or someone on your team at open influence that says, Hey, we’re doing a campaign for Everlast, you’ve been identified as someone in an influencer in this area. Like, is that how it works?

Yeah, yeah, correct. So, so we in our network you know, we have a lot of influencers that we’ve worked with before. And, and yeah, if you’re a new influencer or someone from our account management team, we’ll shoot you a note outlining the opportunity. That part is automated in our system actually. So, you know, account manager would say, okay, you’re a good fit based on the data, I’m going to add you a reach out, we’ll go out. And then from there, we’ll, you know, we’ll negotiate a rate and, and, and the terms of the deal. And you know, we’re, you know, we’ve gotten this down to a science where we know, you know, w we essentially know what the ask for and what the outline, and, and also eliminate surprises on both sides, because for us, you know, we, we don’t want to, you know, we want to avoid reshoots. We want to avoid surprises. This is definitely a business where you want to be very, very clear. And so, yeah, so essentially when we reach out, we outline the full scope of work for that influencer. And, you know, they’re able to, you know, to say yes or no, and we’re not a talent agency. So, you know, we’re not asking to represent you. We’re not asking for any exclusivity is just like, Hey, here’s the deal if you want to do it. Great. And if not a well,

Yeah. So you’re, and does that usually happen like through a DM or something? I mean, do you, or do you, are you scraping their emails somehow offline? Or is it like, Hey, it’s most likely that it’s going to show up in my, my DMS because your software scraped that information and then followed me and then automatically sent me a message to say, Hey, we think you’re a candidate for this, for this campaign.

Yeah. Typically it’s through email, right. We’re, you know, a lot of, almost every influencer has some sort of contact detail, whether it’s on their Instagram account or their YouTube account, or on their own website, our blog. And so you know, that, that information is there and we just send them an inquiry to that, you know, essentially to that, that information provided and you know, and if they choose, they could, they could provide us with, with, you know the ability to contact them through, through text message as well. But you know, initial reach out is always done through, through email.

Okay. All right. So I’m just, you know, I’m trying to help people identify if they get one of these, like, how do you, how do you vet as an influencer? How do you vet the legitimate ones from the, from the, the, you know, the scammy ones, but before we do that, tell me what your, so I get the engagement. Well, I guess here’s a specific question. How much does followers matter? Like how many followers do I need to have before I might get one of these opportunities? Do I need to have millions, hundreds of thousands, 10,000, 50,000? Like how, how does that factor in here?

Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, I, I think from a, from just a visibility and kind of vanity standpoint, I think when you start looking at like 20 to 30,000, it starts to become interesting. You know, you, it really depends on what your niche is as an influencer as well, and what you’re talking about. So like you’re talking about something really specialized or you’re doing something really unique, like stop motion, animation, having a huge following is not really as important if someone’s looking to access that niche, they’re going to come to you because, you know, you’re an expert in, in that. You know, if you’re talking about teen fashion, you know, there are people with hundreds of thousands to millions of followers in that category. So you really have to look at it from the lens of supply and demand. But yeah, I would say that 20 or 30,000 is arranged now from an advertiser standpoint followers size doesn’t really matter at all.

What really matters are how many impressions we’re getting, what kind of click-throughs are you getting? Can you really drive and move your audience? And, and, you know, sometimes that process is hit or miss where, you know, you, you might think your audience will be a good fit for a certain product, but they end up not, or, you know, or a product you thought they wouldn’t be a good fit for ends up, you know, you ended up converting really well. So it just really depends. But you know, I, I think the key is to really just look at how many people are actually consuming that content and legitimately engaging with it, as opposed to just looking at follower count, because that could easily lead you to optimize for the wrong sort of things.

Right. Okay. So, yeah, so I, it’s interesting, you bring up the impressions where it’s like at the end of the day in advertisers paying either for impressions or some type of a conversion. So it’s, they don’t really care how many followers you have, but the number of impressions and conversions you drive is going to be related to, you know, to the number of followers you have and what your audience is interested in. So talk to me about the money for a second. Like, you know, you hear stories of, you know, people making $50,000, a hundred thousand dollars, millions of dollars, but realist like, realistically, like what’s the real, like, what’s the real world on this and what’s a baseline and you go cause, cause you know, the other thing that I hear a lot is it’s like influencers, a lot of influencers end up doing deals for just like merchandiser product. Right. And so they’re getting free and they’re not getting any money and they’re missing out on realizing, Oh, actually my audience is worth something. How do you kind of like cost justify? How does the brand cost justify? Is there like a, you know, any type of rough standard or baseline you’re looking for?

Yeah. So there are a lot of variables involved with it, right? So you have to look at one like the influencer size and just the amount of impressions they get. You have to look at the market that they talk to in the audience they have. So, you know, if you’re looking for like again, like teen fashion verse, like if you’re looking at like Sonic high performance, mountain biking equipment you know, an influencer in that category can definitely command a premium because they’re so specialized. That’s the platform

And like the niche, the niche ones command a premium because of supply and demand. There’s not a million people talking about high-performance mountain biking equipment.

Exactly. And they’re really focused, so they could really convert. And so brands know that if they want to engage with influencers, these are the ones that are really right to talking to that audience. And so and then you have to look at like platforms, content, formats, usage, rights exclusivity scope. So there are a lot of different factors to consider. And then also like bundling it, like, it’s, it’s very rare that, you know, you’ll just pay an influencer for a one-off post. Typically, you know, these are more involved activations. And so you know, and it, it just depends out what, what we’ve seen is it’s actually very rare in, in our world to, to have, you know, working with the brands we work with to have those engagements just pay like for merchandise or free, I guess the trade-off is, it makes it works when you’re working as a brand working micro-influencers, but the trade off there is, you know, those influencers are in your favor for you, right.

They can’t pay their bills with merchandise. Like it’s nice, but you lose the ability as an advertiser to really, you know, essentially, you know, set a schedule, set the terms, outline what you want from a content perspective. You know, you, you can’t really dictate and say, Hey, I want the post to go live on Tuesday at 2:00 PM. You know, you’re not paying for that post. You’re not paying that influence or they’re, they’re doing a favor for you. And so, you know, what ends up, hold on. I’m just going to pause my Slack notifications, right. So, you know, you end up, you know, it ends up just not making a whole lot of sense. Now when you, you know, when you’re an influencer, you know, you, you might, you might do that because you have a relationship with the brand or someone, but ultimately you know, th this is definitely a paid model.

You know, brands are going to want to hedge, you know, from our experience, like some brands want to pay influencers on the back end of the deal with like some sort of rev share, but you know, that, that, you know, a lot of influencers aren’t really receptive to that because they’ve gotten burnt with small brands and like, you know, like startups just, you know, kind of, you know, not having their business model, figure it out to where they’re not able to drive conversions. And so you know, so typically I, you know, I think there’s some upfront amount what those dollar amounts look like can change, but, you know, you could look at, you know, a thousand dollars, couple thousand dollars to tens of thousands of dollars, depending on the influencer size you know, and, and the activation type, and also you know, how good you are for that Cuban brand.

Yeah. So if you, you know, let’s say if you’re, you got 30,000 followers, and maybe you are a fitness person and it’s like, Hey, there’s a, there’s a yoga campaign. And they want you to do, you know, like if T for a $5,000, let’s say like a $5,000 deal. How many posts is that usually? Is it, are you, is it is a brand typically going to be looking for like three posts, five posts, 20 posts. I mean, I’m sure the larger, the fee, obviously the more posts they want and the more control they want and, you know, that kind of thing.

Yeah. Look, they could be looking for three to five. You know, they’ll look at like some stories typically, because stories are sort of your, your most transactional and cheapest form of a posts, right. If it’s, you know, Tik TOK is a little bit of the wild West right now, it’s pretty new. So you know, that that’s a little bit all over the map. If it’s on YouTube, that might be part of it, right. Where you’d like saying, okay, I, you know, 30,000 followers or 30,000 subscribers, you know, from a story standpoint might not be a lot, but if I’m creating a YouTube video, that’s really focused and it’s a dedicated video you know, then, then a bulk of whatever fee I’m charging would go towards that. And, and, you know, and, and then brands will run the assessment and say, okay, well, if you’re working like a DD brand, they’re going to look and see how that converted, right.

If you’re a smaller influencer, you’re, you’re going to tend to fall in the realm of you know, more direct to consumer type businesses that are looking for like a direct response to whatever you’re doing. And so they’re going to look at that say, okay, well, we generated X amount of sales from that post, you know, they might not break even, but they might be really happy with that because they understand that, you know, as an influencer, one part of it’s branding and, you know, prospecting a new audience and the other part is converting. Right.

Huh. And, and would you like if you’re dealing with a real brand deal kind of a thing, do you typically deal in almost like, kind of like a set type of cost per impression, where if you show up and you come to me, you basically have a budget in mind because you have the data and you go, okay. I think if Rory runs a post with a surf board, we’re going to get about this many impressions, and I know my client’s willing to pay on average around, you know, this much for a CPM or whatever. And so you kind of have a number that you’re coming to me with to say, Hey, Roy, this is what we feel like we want you to do for this many posts.

Exactly. Yeah. So, so like, we, we have, you know, and we have a pricing model based on, you know, tens of thousands of transactions per year that we run. And so, you know, we’re looking at that and we’re saying, okay, like, based on all these metrics, here’s what we’re willing to pay for based on all these different variables. And, you know, we know this is competitive. And we also look at, instead of, if everyone’s saying yes you know, then it probably means worth pie. And if everyone’s saying, no, it probably, it means we’re too low. Right. So you know, we want to find a rate that’s competitive for, for the advertiser you know, our, our clients, but, you know, makes sense for the talent as well.

Interesting stuff. It’s so interesting, Eric, just that, you know, this kinda, I mean, I don’t know, five, 10 years ago, this was like only available to the biggest media companies in the world. And now it’s just like, this is becoming an everyday occurrence for anybody with any kind of reasonable following. Like if you’ve been, if you’ve been dedicated to building an audience for a few years, you know, you’re gonna, you’re probably gonna be in this space you know, if you’re doing it well and you’re doing it consistently. I think it’s, I think it’s fascinating stuff. Is there anything that you would say this is kind of like a last question in terms of mistakes that you see let’s say that influencers making consistently that either kind of ruin their reputation or immediately kind of like throw them out of your pool to either where you would never contact them or, you know, they say something to you early on and you go, I definitely know. I mean, this, person’s not a, I obviously, if they’re a total jerk, but like beyond, beyond that, are there any kind of like red flags or common mistakes you see that you go, man, this influencer just lost five grand because they didn’t do blank.

Yeah. Yeah. So, so I mean, you know, the metrics are the metrics, right? So we, like, we know that upfront, we don’t get hung up on that. What tends to really, you know, kind of screw up a relationship would be things like just, you know, being unreliable and unprofessional you know, changing scope midway through as an influencer or like, you know, not following through you know, or just in general being difficult to work with. Like ultimately you know, this is you know, it is a people’s business. You know, we are working on a piece of content gathering it’s collaborative and someone that’s going to be combative and difficult and unreliable will just automatically, you know, get put on our, do not use lists or do not work with lists. And you know, we have a whole system internally for rating influencers and on, on things like from responsiveness to professionalism.

So, you know, I, I really think, you know, going into it as an influencer with the right attitude, really treating the brands you’re working with, whether it’s us or a brand directly as your partner, right. And as a customer you know, that’s, that’s really what goes along this way because ultimately brands and agencies want to work with, with people that they can trust and that they enjoy working with. Because they know that, you know, they can come to something reasonable and that’s going to make sense, but, you know, no one wants to work with someone that’s going to be difficult to throw a tantrum or, or, you know, not follow through.

I love it. Really good stuff, Eric, I think fascinating, you know, just your business, even the existence of your business. Again, I think you’re, I mean, you guys have done a lot. You’ve got a great, a great thing going on, open influenced.com. We’ll link up to that, of course, in the show notes and y’all can see know just a really interesting space, something that, again, didn’t, we wouldn’t have existed as an opportunity even maybe a few years ago. And it seems like you guys are early to the space and you’ve got some big brands on your roster and you’re doing great stuff. Is there anything that you anywhere else that you want to point people to, if they want to like connect up with you or learn more about what you guys are up to?

Yeah. I’m pretty active on LinkedIn, so you can just follow me there and connect with me there and same with, you know, open influence. You could, you know, I, we have a great content marketing team. That’s, that’s pumping out you know, latest trends and insights and, and white papers on the influencer industry. So you know, follow us on LinkedIn or sign up for our newsletter on our website and you know, stay tuned with, you know, with everything, especially from a brand perspective.

Love it. Eric Dohan is his name open influence? Y’all hopefully you have learned a lot. I know. I certainly have Eric. Thank you for being here, man. We wish you the best. Awesome. Thanks for, I appreciate it.

Ep 142: How Entrepreneurs Can Use Their Personal Brand to Grow Their Business with Liz Bohannon

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

Now you all know when I bring someone on the show, it’s almost always somebody that is a personal connection. There is one other time when we had Kristen Giesa on to talk about television. And today I’m introducing you to a new friend, Liz Forkin Bohannon, who was a cold media outreach from her PR team to us. But you’ll see, there are lots of great reasons why we have had her on the show. She’s amazing. And we actually, I just realized she spoke at global leadership summit last year, which are some of our best friends. We love the global leadership network. I’m sure some of you listening probably saw me speak there. And some, I, my pal Jason Dorsey speak there last year, but anyways, Liz got a chance to speak there because she’s incredible. So she founded a company called Sseko Designs and it is an ethical fashion brand usethat has gone from literally like three women making sandals together under a mango tree in Uganda to this international fashion brand. That’s been featured in Vogue and O magazine and Marie Claire and in style and red book. And it provides employment and educational opportunities to and just like entrepreneurial training and education to women all in East Africa and across the globe. And you know, so Liz and the Sseko story had been featured on shark tank at good morning America and just lots of other places. And so anyways, we’re realizing we have all these connections and anyways, Liz, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me Rory quite a, quite an honor to be one of two connection. So I’ll look forward to, you know, anytime after this will be considered personal connections from here on out, we ever connect a non-personal connection way. I love it. Yeah.

And I think, you know, you’re, I know that your real business is Sseko designed to, so I want to talk about, but like to that point for everyone listening you’ve done a great job of using your personal brand to build a real business. Like you, I get the sense that you are a true entrepreneur. You, you have your, you have your, you have your book beginner’s pluck, which y’all can check out. We’ll put links to that, but it’s like, what you really have used your personal brand to do is like forward your mission and your work as an entrepreneur. Is that accurate to say

Very correct. Yeah. I consider myself my day job. My, my main kind of mission in life right now is growing Seiko and Sseko is very much so a company that’s bigger than me that that works, that operates without me necessarily at the center, although my role is very much so kind of the face of the company and how my personal brand interacts with that is really important. But yeah, I’m not, I’m not a solo preneur. Like my goal is, is to build a scalable international company.

Yeah. And can you give us, so, so can you tell us a little bit about the story of Sseko? Cause I do want to hear about how you’ve used your personal brand to build it, but just like some reference in context to how this thing got started to it’s become, you know, this very recognized just almost like a social, like movement and the good work, like social conscious, like conscious company. And then when did it start where you at give us like a frame of like what, what the businesses is like,

Why don’t we start the thing long story short and it’s never super short. So I feel like I’m starting to lose credit.

I wouldn’t even preface it with that,

But, but 10 years ago I graduated from grad school with a degree in journalism and was really interested in issues that were facing women and girls living in extreme poverty and living in conflict and post-conflict zones. The only problem was I had zero experience living, working really actually understanding issues facing billions of women and girls across the globe. And so I graduated from grad school with all of this information and all of this kind of intellectual understanding and no context, no community, no relationships that were actually representative of that kind of more intellectual interests that I had. And so I moved to Uganda. I didn’t have no one would hire me by the way, I looked for a job that would like take me internationally. And it was like, like I said no real life experience or anything to offer. And so that was kind of a dead end. And finally basically just got to a point where I was like, okay, I’ll just go. Like, I’ll just go in the, in, in the goal will just be to learn and kind of to fill that education gap of like actual experience, real people and in relationships and in community. And so, I mean, I showed up in Uganda, I was what, 22, 23, like knew nothing. And just the goal was just like, okay, just go make friends, just like go build community, learn about these issues and what you think, you know? And,

But like he had no plan, no job, no like family connections there. You’re just like let’s

I knew one girl, we weren’t even really friends in college. She was like kind of an acquaintance who had moved to Uganda and about, Oh, about two weeks before I moved to Uganda, I emailed her and was like, Hey, you still in Uganda, like, I’m, I’m coming. I literally don’t have a place to stay. I don’t have a job. I have nothing. And she was like, wow. Okay. Well, I mean, you can like stay with me in my apartment until you like figure things out. And I was like, great, that’s amazing. So I had one connection in the whole country and just showed up and just started like making friends, trying to learn. And yeah.

And did you have a vision like you didn’t have at that point, you didn’t have a vision for the company, but you had a calling to try to do something for these women.

I had a desire to learn is literally all I had. I considered myself still more a journalist at that time then definitely not an entrepreneur. Couldn’t be actually like reacted really strongly against the idea of being an entrepreneur was not interested in business. Really believe that like, you know, I was like a pretty tried and true like bleeding heart humanitarian. I believed that like the solutions lied or, you know, we’re with the journalists and the truth tellers and the nonprofit starters. And so when I went to Uganda business was so far off my radar. I went as a journalist to go learn, live, understand more what I was going to do with that information. No idea. So I’m in Uganda and I’m just, I have my curiosity hat on, right? Like I have my little like, no one’s paying me investigative journalists. Like just being curious literally for my life, just, you know, 14 hours a day, just asking questions and following leads.

And through that process is when my world totally turned upside down. And my perspective on business really turned upside down because I came into the situation being like, no business is mainly part of the problem. It’s like, you know, it’s like greedy in it, oppresses people. And it’s all about like maximizing profits for stakeholders at the cost of, you know, whoever happens to be, you know, in the way. And, and what I realized through a series of events and learning is like, Oh my gosh, it’s such a big part of the solution. In the mechanics of like capitalism and business and building economies and creating employment, like so many of the problems that so many charities and nonprofits to solve wouldn’t exist. If people had access to good jobs where they were treated fairly, where they were paid on time, where they were safe, where they were treated with dignity.

And that’s not to say every single problem can be solved with a job, but a lot of them can. And so in Uganda it’s like, you know, you got to has one of the youngest populations in the entire world. And yet their youth unemployment rate in some parts of the country are 80%. And so just kind of like thinking through my understanding of how development happens completely turned upside down. And I was like, Oh my gosh, if I want to contribute specifically to enabling really high potential young women to kind of further their leadership and educational journey, which was my heart was like, okay, I know if there’s one thing that I can buy into it’s that educating a girl can change everything and that gender equality and that creating access to economic and educational opportunity for girls, specifically girls in the bottom billion. So those living in extreme poverty is one of the fastest, most effective ways of ending global extreme poverty. How we do that became definitely an evolution and using business as a tool to actually use that, to solve the big problem is coming of,

That’s a big shift, like going from like businesses, the enemy to, Oh crap, like businesses, the solution. And then you’re also going, I don’t know much about business. I mean, I’m, yeah. I mean, guessing like you’re in your twenties, like

Journalism, I hadn’t taken a single business class in my entire life so far.

So then, so then I guess you, you have this realization and from that you go, what could we do? Like what resources exist here that we could turn into a company that we could sell something to create income and jobs for people in a service for, for customers? Is that basically it,

So it was all backwards in the sense that I can didn’t start with a customer problem. I started with the problem of like the present issue, which was, I had met a group of girls that were getting ready to graduate from high school, wicked smart, top 5% of students in the country were getting ready to go into like a nine month gap in between high school and university gap year that everybody in the, everybody in the school system, in Uganda experiences and knew that there was a real likelihood that they wouldn’t make it onto university. Not because they weren’t smart enough, but because they wouldn’t be able to find a job during that nine month gap. And so started out with my big, hairy problem was like solve the nine month gap. How we did that, like what we were creating, what we were making. I literally couldn’t have given a flip. Like I w I started a chicken farm and was like, Oh, I don’t know. Let’s do chickens. Like this seems viable. And then I was like, what am I doing? No, no, no, no, no, I don’t want to run a chick.

I’m not going to be the chicken lady. I can’t be the chicken lady. The chicken farm is not the answer.

Oh, it was not the answer. And it wasn’t because I didn’t know, because at the end of the day, I didn’t know anything about what I ended up doing, but I didn’t, I didn’t, it, it, chickens are gross. They freaked me out joy. And that became very clear. And then, so I was like, okay, we can’t do this. We need to do, I need to make something. And ultimately probably sell it in the United States. There’s a real hunger and desire to get us dollars and build up the export markets. And so I was like, okay, there’s probably more of a pathway for that. And I know I’m an American woman. I kind of know that market. It’s not, I don’t have professional experience there, but I have a lot of intuitive experience there. And so ended up designing a pair of sandals. And again, at the time I was kind of like, man, chicken sandals. I don’t, I’m not really passionate about either of those.

You were solving the problem, not for customers, but for the employees.

Yes, exactly. And so ended up making these sandals, which actually were really cool. And I think if I would have started with something more like we sell jewelry now, too, we have, we’re a whole lifestyle brand. So we do footwear and apparel and leather goods and handbags and jewelry as part of our business. And our jewelry business is great. I think if I would have started there, I would have really struggled because the kind of fair trade, ethical jewelry market, there’s a lot of options there. Because just the barrier to entry to jewelry is, is a lot lower. And our product was pretty neat. It was a pair of these. It’s still one of our kind of flagship products. It’s got a leather base and then these five anchor points and these interchangeable straps. So the deal is you buy the base and then you can buy multiple pairs of straps. You can tie them and style them in different ways. So it’s a really unique product. There was nothing like it on the market at the time, and it’s really interactive. So the customer gets the product and she immediately starts playing around with her sandals. And she’s like, Ooh, look at this tie I invented. And the likelihood that she’s like, Oh, so I’m going to take a picture of it. And I’m going to put it on at the time. It would have been Facebook early Blogspot and talk about how she’s styling her sandals and

Myspace profile. I’ve got all my pictures of my best Sseko ties.

It’s a super interactive kind of versatile co-creating product, which is cool. Kind of got the energy that it did. In the beginning,

Lucky, like, did you design it that way? We were like, I’m going to let them,

No, it was, I would say, I would say it was more plucky than lucky.

No

Real thought. I think honestly, because I came from a background where I wasn’t particularly interested in fashion, I was, I’ve always been really drawn to the idea of versatility and fashion. So how can one product serve multiple purposes and solve multiple problems and B be clever. I think I’m really drawn to like clever things, as opposed to just like make a thousand designs that each can be worn one different way, this idea of like, but what if we could make one thing that could be worn a thousand different ways? And so it really, when I got home and started selling the product, I realized that we did kind of have that magic one, two punch of one, the product was, was interesting. It was clever. It was something that people want to talk about. I think, you know, you, you’re onto something when people are like, Oh, I thought about something like that before, you know, or they like say something like that.

And you’re like, Oh yeah, but you didn’t, you didn’t do it. I did, you know, but it’s like almost this sense that it’s like, Oh, I think I, maybe I invented that. Or maybe I had a dream about that, you know, and that combined with the story, which like, Hey, you’re going to go buy a pair of new sandals this year. Anyway, like you’re going to go to target. You’re going to spend 25 bucks on a pair of sandals. The last you may be a year, maybe two years, you have no idea where they came from. You have no idea what the impact is, or you could buy sandals from us. And in addition to getting this really cool product, you can be a part of this really rad story. Like there’s these awesome bad-ass female entrepreneurs, any staff Africa who are going to go on to change the world. And like, by buying sandals from us, you get to be a little part of that.

And so, so what’s the scope. What’s the scale of the company today.

So we now operate, we have a manufacturing facility in Uganda, Sseko Uganda, we’ve got about 75 full-time employees there. And then we have now artists and partners in Kenya, in Ethiopia, in India, in Peru. And so we’ve got now global partners, basically almost on every continent. And we actually just welcomed a Southeast Asian production partner. So we’re employing at this point are partnering with thousands of artisans across the globe to make our, our catalog of goods. And then those products are all sold in the United States by Seiko fellows. And so Seiko fellows are our stylist consultants. These are primarily women that sell the product in their community, using social media, using their personal brands, hosting trunk shows, and then they earn a commission off of everything that they sell. And then our, our entrepreneurial fellows are the ones who are actually building teams. So not only are they selling the product, but they’re recruiting other people to sell the product and building and mentoring a team. And then earning a really scalable income off of that.

What did you say the stylists are called? We call those fellows say co-fellows, and then you have entrepreneurial fellows.

Yeah, well, they’re, they’re all called Sseko fellows, but like in every, you know, kind of network marketing, we have different levels. So we’ve got women that are like, I love this. I love the mission I love being in. And it makes me feel so good. And I like earning really beautiful product for my wardrobe that maybe I wouldn’t spend on myself otherwise. And so I’m going to host three shows a season and earn a couple hundred bucks and get free or discounted product. And then we have women who are like, no, I’m, I’m an entrepreneur. And I want to build a business. I just want to outsource all the crappy parts of building a business, you know, like totally development and logistics. And so they’re really focusing on leadership development and really building up a marketing and sales organ and leadership organization whilst they could go corporate takes on ticks on all the dirty work behind the scenes.

Yeah. We, we love direct sales. We have lots of direct sales and clients, you know, network marketing and obviously most people that listen, know my background, a very in depth background with, with it. So let’s talk about that part, the personal branding more for you specifically because you, so it’s one thing to do personal branding for direct sales. But what, what I’m really curious about is you took this mission and you made it a brand as a company. You started a business and you’re not monetizing your personal brand through selling like advice or anything like that. And also you’re not selling a service really. I mean, you, the direct sales is kind of an opportunity, but but the brand itself, like you took your personal brand and how so, like how do you, how do you think about the relationship of your personal brand with your business and, and like the, some of the practical questions we get.

So like, we have a group of people who are personal brands, they’re just, you know, like Rory vaden.com and, you know, they got their speaker and they got books, et cetera. And then we’ve got entrepreneurs and they’re going, one of the first questions is what should the domain of my company be? Should it be Rory vaden.com or should it be brand builders, group.com? You know, like we have that for our actual company. So how do you balance that relationship? How do you think about your personal brand as an entity in, in relationship to this business that you’re building and to this corporate brand, like you’ve got your personal brand, but you’ve built this, this amazing corporate brand, which also is socially conscious brand that has a lot of equity. So what are your, some of your thoughts and philosophies there,

But yeah, so for me personally, the company is its own entity sseko designs is not Liz Bohannon. They’re very related obviously because I’m the founder, I’m the spokesperson, I’m the chief, you know, like, you know, I speak on behalf of the company and I’m really the chief storyteller. The chief inspire the chief connector, whether that is for our customers, whether that is for our fellows. But I would say actually since the very beginning was very clear about this is going to be a business and this is going to be a business that is going to be bigger than me. And I actually don’t want to be the center of it. I want to build an organization. I want to build a brand that exists, maybe not even necessarily outside of me, but it’s bigger than me. And so my perspective on growing my personal brand, at least up until now, you know, for the last 10 years has always been like my personal brand is in service to this larger organization.

I’m much more much more at this point, interested in using the opportunities that I get as a human person to build this larger organization than I am in building up my personal brand. Now I say that, and what’s amazing about having a person. I still do very distinctly have a personal brand, right? Like I wrote a book that launched last year, it’s called beginner’s pluck. I have a podcast called plucking up. Like I use social media. I have all of the like elements of a personal brand. I think my framework for the question of building

The website, I mean like a whole whole thing. Yeah.

I just asked myself as like, does this go to actually serve my main goal right now, which is growing and scaling Sseko, but what’s awesome is that when you have a personal brand that is compelling, that is, and I hold, you know, they’re not one in the same in the sense that I really use my personal brand to talk about things that I care about on a personal level, that aren’t necessarily like Sseko’s core values or brands. So there is separation between the two, like if you follow Seiko designs on Instagram and you follow Liz Bohannan, you’re going to have two pretty different experiences, but what’s so amazing is like the access that I get, because I’m a person who cares about a cause and has expertise in that area to share about my company. It’s remarkable. Like if I could quantify the amount of free marketing and advertising that Sseko has gotten over the last 10 years, because of the opportunities that Liz Bohannen has actually gotten, like people aren’t inviting the CEO of Sseko, they’re not looking for a representative from Seiko to come talk at this event. They want Liz Bohannan to come share her experience, her story, her expertise. But because what I care about and because my mission and my philosophy on life is so tied up in the values of my brand. I get the opportunity to share the brand story.

Well like global leadership summit is, I mean, that event is the biggest speaking event in the world. That’s amazing. Cause you get, you get, not only do you get free marketing, you get paid and you get the marketing, like you get paid to, to, to, to, to share your story with people around the globe. That’s incredible.

Yeah, it is. It is a really remarkable when, when you can make it work, the value that that can provide to the entity, to the organization that you’re building is I really do believe it’s unquantifiable. And I think that there is a real legitimacy play there as well. Like I know for us being a direct sales, you know, a multi-level marketing company when I’m recruiting or when someone else is recruiting to come be a part of our company leadership development, it’s a big part of our industry. Like people are joining a company one because they want to sell a product. They want to earn an income. They want to be a part of a community. They also want to better themselves, right? Like they want to push themselves. They want to, you know, they want to learn how to grow their own businesses and grow as a person.

And so when the leader of that company has all of this external validation in the leadership realm of like, Oh, our CEO is like really highly sought after and valued in all of these other spheres to come teach her leadership knowledge. And like, we get that here at our company just by like, you know, I go live on Facebook all the time with my fellows. I’m way more active with our internal community that I am even with our external community. Cause I’m like, I’m going to give you my best. Like those followers on Instagram, those people that go to my website, like I love them. And I, I really want to create content that serves them. But heck if I’m going to, we only have so much time and energy in a day. Right. It’s like I would rather pour my resources my time, my best into those people that are then going to go out. Cause they’re like, they’re the magnifying voice for the brand for the impact. And so it’s like, that’s how we create and really scale impact. I don’t think I do it through me and through growing my personal brand. I think I do it by equipping using my brand to then go equip and inspire thousands and thousands and tens of thousands of women to then go do that in their community.

Yeah. So since you brought this up, so this is interesting. I didn’t realize that you guys were direct sales company before the, for the interview, right? Because I’m putting together pieces of the Liz fork and Bohannan story here as we go along. But you know, now knowing that, and, and, you know, I mentioned to you that I speak at direct sales companies. It’s like the number one financial services and then, you know, direct sales companies. And so I love this, but to the topic of using your personal brand for the business, a lot of direct sales, there’s a lot of old roots of direct sales. It’s been around a long time. Social media is a very new and I would call it a disruptive, I would call, I would just say personal branding is I think occurring as a very disruptive force in network marketing.

You know, multi-level marketing, direct sales, whatever you want, whatever term you want to use. And I feel like I’m seeing a split in philosophy that some direct sales companies are going, Nope, no personal brand promote the company focus only on the, only on the company. Like this is what we do and others are going, you know, like I think of like Rhodan and fields is a good example. They’re just going, it’s all about the personal brand, all in, on the personal brand, all in, on social media. And, and I really understand the dilemma because from a, from a brand perspective, it’s like, you want to make sure people are representing the brand accurately and ethically and saying, you know, consistent things in trying to like reinforce some scalable systems that make them successful, but then it’s like to ignore the power of the personal brand and the power of social. So now knowing that you are, you actually happen to be a founder of one of those companies, clearly you’re on the side of the value of the personal brand. Like how have you reconciled that and how do you reconcile that with the fellows in terms of what you promote in terms of how, how they should use their personal brand to build their direct sales company? I E in this case, Seiko.

Yeah, definitely. I mean, one of the, we were kind of chatting a little bit before the show and I, I confess that I am a founder and CEO of a, you know, an MLM, a direct sales company that has literally never had any experience battling for buying from like day one of my exposure. I kind of thought here here’s, here’s the real truth. I kind of thought I made it up. I was so unfamiliar with the industry that I like had this whole thing. And I was like, we did these party in a boxes and I would send a box of product. It was usually at the time it was like college students. And they would, you know, like host an event on their college campus and literally like send back an envelope of cash. And I would let them keep some product and exchange. And I was like, this is good. Like the energy, the connection, like the experience they’re able to create. They walk away from, you know, a Seiko campus show with a totally different experience with the brand and connection with the brand than they do. If they bought that at the boutique down the road that also sells the product because at the time we were a traditional retail company

Can I just, I have to just interrupt. Cause I, in my mind, I, I, I can’t help, but laugh because you’re like this bleeding heart journalist chicken farmer level marketing, like direct sales, like the pendulum swung pretty far in terms of what most, how most people view it, but all based on this realization to solve this problem of giving women opportunity in these developing countries, both economic and educational. And I just, I just think it’s so ironic and radical and fun to see this, how your life has gone in this way, where you’re like, I invented this awesome model of party planning and, and then you can recruit somebody and get a percentage sauce. It’s, it’s awesome.

Even with the recruiting and stuff, like at this point I was running a traditional retail organization. So it’s like, you got your VP of sales and then they earn a commission off of your sales reps. And the sales reps actually go in the field and they sell to the stores. And I was like, what if we just did that? What if it was the same, but it was just like with, instead of with stores, right. So you’re totally right. And I honestly, this is where, you know, my book beginners plaque is kind of all about how you’re in competency, your unknowing of how the industry works of how it’s always been done of the rules can, is actually, could be your superpower. If you understand how to be really intentional about harnessing it and using it to your advantage. And this would be a really good example of had I known I wouldn’t have done it in the sense that I think I would have had all of these preconceived notions about what MLMs are and who I am and like, you know, and my goal in the world.

And I think I would have probably been too, there would have been too many reasons for me to talk myself out of it. I was so ignorant that I was like, I’m inventing this, I’m just making this up as I go along and it’s this incredible model it’s going to be really scalable and we’re going to have this exponential growth. And then what that enabled me to do is to take the roots of the model to take the structure, to take the skeleton, which is brilliant. It’s just amazing and build it out and layer on top of it, a different way of thinking about it. A different reason, like 80% of the people who are in our community selling have never been a part of an MLM or direct sales company before, which obviously has challenges. It also has an incredible advantage because we’re just doing things in a way that’s a little bit different and there’s, we’re able to access specifically a younger market, younger market.

It’s really comfortable with social media. That’s really familiar and passionate about kind of more of a cause marketing values-based like consumer relationship that frankly would never sign up to sell a product that didn’t have something that touched them on a deeper level, on a values level. And we’ve created that we’ve created a space where it’s like, Hey, come earn an income. But also you get to be a part of this community where you wake up every day and you know, like the work that you were doing, it matters so much. And you know, like when you become a Seiko fellow, you have the opportunity to get matched with a Seiko sister. So this is one of our team members, one of our colleagues in Uganda, you take a quiz. So you each kind of put in your like preferences and life and we match you up with somebody.

It’s like, Hey, you actually have a lot in common. You, you know, like Susan from Minnesota, you’ve got a lot in common with Sharon. Who’s our head seamstress and Uganda, we connect them, they learn about each other. They can actually write letters back and forth our top incentive trip. So, you know, every MLM sends their people, you know, incentive trip is an all expenses paid trip to Uganda, right? Like that’s normal necessarily. That’s not like we’re going to go, we’re going to have the experience of a lifetime. You’re going to meet your Ugandan colleagues. You’re going to learn how the products are made. We hang out in the factory, we do dinner and one another’s homes. Like there’s a real, it’s a different flavor, but the model and the structure of it is still the same.

Yeah. Is that, is, is there, are there fellows

In Uganda or just the manufacturing and like the production happens

Right now. It’s just manufacturing and production. So all of the sales is us and the partners are on the production side. You’re in Oregon. I’m in Oregon. Yeah. And we’re is headquartered in Portland.

Yeah. wow. Well, that’s just, it it’s, it’s fascinating. I’m glad you mentioned that because I wanted to come back to the, to the concept of pluck. The book is called, you know, your book’s called beginner’s pluck. It reminds me almost of the a little bit of the Malcolm Gladwell, David and Goliath, where, you know, that book talks about how everyone assumes that David was the underdog. But in reality, you know, he was much faster. He didn’t have a lot of the weight, you know, it was a sunny day. He was nimble, et cetera, et cetera. And how the underdog, isn’t always the underdog you think. And that as an entrepreneur, I mean, it seems like that’s kind of the premise that you’re saying is that there’s a brilliance in that unknowing that you don’t talk yourself out of something. That’s basically what you’re, what, what you’re talking about. Right.

Totally. Yeah. So the book has, there’s, there’s 14 things, 14 principles of beginner’s pluck things that I believe that natural beginners do naturally it comes more easy to them. They do it more quickly. They’re more familiar with it. And as we gain expertise and mastery, we actually lose those things. And I believe that over time, when we lose those kinds of that ability to channel our inner beginner, we actually become less effective. We become less curious. We become less innovative over the long haul. And so it’s all about like this concept of, if you actually are a beginner, here’s what you just need to know that this is your advantage. This is your secret weapon. So lean into it. Don’t be afraid of it. Don’t deny it actually lean into it. And if you are an expert or master, if you’re 10, 20, 30 years into your career, here are the things that you should be intentionally trying to get back to and to channel in a way that you probably did without knowing it more when you were a beginner that you’ve probably naturally lost along the way. And that’s totally fine, but being really intentionally about kind of getting back there for the purposes of becoming more creative, more innovative. Okay.

So cool. So cool. Well, we’ll put links to the book. Liz, Bohannan everybody, Seikos the name of the company? Liz? Where do you want people to go? If they want to learn more about the stuff that you’re up to?

Yeah, well, you can go to Seikos website, it’s S S E K O designs.com. You can shop Seiko, you can host a trunk show. You can become a Seiko fellow and you’ll hear me run my mouth a lot more. I’m on Instagram at Liz Bo Hannen. I have a podcast called plucking up, which is one of my newest, recent loves where I interview amazing people like Liz, Gilbert and Arianna Huffington, like wildly successful people. And it’s all about their pluck ups. So the whole concept is basically like, Hey you’re going make mistakes along the way. And really kind of like pulling the curtain back on, like those really challenging seasons, the rejections, the embarrassments, the seasons where you felt totally lost and upside down and underwater. And it’s been a really, really fun space and really fun community for people to come together and go, Oh, when I’m messing up it.

And you know, when I got rejected, when I did that thing, and it was a total embarrassment or flopper failure, it’s actually not because I’m broken or I’m stupid, or I shouldn’t be trying this in the first place. It’s because you’re probably trying something that’s pretty challenging. And you’re in really good company of a lot of us who were doing awesome stuff and plucking up all along the way. Usually sometimes a little bit of both at the same time. And so you can subscribe to plucking up and find me there as well. So, cool.

Well, keep providing jobs and education turns out business is part of the solution. One of the best parts of the solution, a lot of problems can be solved with a good job. That’s going to be one of my big takeaways. I think so, Liz, thanks for being here. We wish you, we wish you all the best. Thank

You so much, Ray. I really appreciate it.

Ep 140: How to get millions of followers on TikTok with Maggie Thurmon

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

I have certain times in my life and career where I just feel old. I used to be like this young guy making the moves up and coming and now people like the woman you’re about to meet Maggie Thurman. They make me feel old because I guess I am old. I am almost 40 now. And young Maggie here is the daughter of Dan Thurman. Who’s been a longtime friend and acquaintance. We had him on the podcast a while back. But Maggie is 18 years old and she has been on Tik TOK for about a year. And within one year she has managed to accumulate not one, not two but 3 million followers in a year. And it’s dramatically changed her life. She’s had over a hundred million likes on her videos and her and her dad do some fun things together on Tik TOK.

But it’s really been her personal account, which is just named it’s at Maggie Thurman that has really just blown up. And so I figured we got to bring in, you know, we bring in a lot of the old timers to learn from, and it’s like, we got to bring in the young movers and shakers. So Maggie, thanks for making some time for us. Thank you for having me. This is awesome. Yeah. I mean, it’s, it’s, I’m so proud of you. Like I know it’s weird. Like we’ve never met before, but it’s just really, it’s really cool. So can you just like, just tell us the story, like, how did you get started? Why did you get on there? Was it a joke? What have you, did you start with like, I’m going to become an online influencer or what happened?

Yeah, absolutely. I downloaded the app beginning of my senior year, which was fall of 2019. And I originally just got it because I kind of had no idea what it was. The app had previously been musically, which I had been on for a brief time and then deleted it. And then once it became tictok, I kind of wanted to see what everyone was talking about. And my first post actually was essentially saying that I was going to make one tiktok for every week of my senior year. So at the end of my senior year, I could look back at my Tik TOK page and it would be somewhat of a scrapbook like a really cool online scrapbook that the whole world could see if they wanted to cool

One a week. That was the original, like one a week,

Once a week. Yeah. and that post got maybe 80,000 likes and that was insane to me. I thought I had peaked. I thought that was the highest I could go. Okay.

I definitely would have thought I would have peaked. I, if I got 80,000 views on one of my videos, I’d be calling everybody. I know being like I am a baller. Yeah.

Really funny. I actually, I walked into school the next day sat down in my first period anatomy class and people were telling me that they saw me on there for you page last night. I was like, I know isn’t that crazy. And so from there I got a little bit of a following. I think I got about 15,000 followers of people who just, they didn’t know me at all, but they were interested in seeing my senior year. And a few weeks later I kept doing the one a day tech talk. I did a Tik TOK dance with my dad too, for delicious. And that tic talk blew up. I think it has 3.5 million likes at this point. A few maybe like 20 million views or something, not sure. But it was all over tech talk. I saw it on Twitter. I saw it on Instagram and that is what really kind of gave my page a lot of traction.

And from that I got a few hundred thousand followers. I think I was at 400,000 or something. And then I just kept going about doing tech talks every week. For my senior year, my dad was in a lot of them just because we genuinely had so much fun doing this. My dad travels a lot or he did before COVID for his job. He was a motivational speaker. And so even when he would fly home really late at night and only have a day here, he would make time to learn a dance and we’d go do a dance. And it was just this really cool thing that the two of us had. And then I’d say we’re really changed, was quarantine.

So hold on a second. So pause right there. When was the, so you originally were going to do one a week, but then you started doing one a day.

I I’d say the one a day kind of started in quarantine, but from the one a week, it kind of got to the point where if we could do more than one within our busy schedules, we’d shoot for two, but it was still a lot of work trying to get the two of us to learn a dance or do whatever we wanted to do and get it to a point where we wanted to publish it. But one a week was the original plan and it slowly built up to the goal of one a day.

Okay. And so then, and then have you been doing one a day, like consistently

Ben trying to, it’s a little, little different with college now I will say. Especially when I’m at school for the semester, I’m on break right now. But especially when I’m at school, I’ll try and get a few done on the weekend so I can post one a day, but it doesn’t always quite equal out.

How long does it, can you, so like how much can we, do you mind sharing your process a little bit? Like what happens? I mean, so I know most of yours have been like dances and stuff, which are really fun and entertaining, which lends itself well to, to the platform. And even though most of our audience is probably not going to make dances. What, what I’m, I’m trying to understand is just your creative process. And then also like how much time it takes, but so do you just, do you just hear a song and then you’re like, Oh, I should do a dance to that. Or do you come up with some other idea or like, how do you come up with the idea? What do you do to like develop it before you turn on the camera? How many times do you turn on the camera and then how do you edit it? And then is there anything you do to promote it other than when you don’t have to answer all those in one breath, but that’s like what, what, I’m what I’m interested in hearing. Yeah.

Yeah, for sure. I think a lot of tic talkers have a different process. I don’t, I mean, I know that from talking to my friends, but for my dad and I, in particular and for me in particular, in the beginning, it was strictly, we’d see other people do a dance and we’d learn their dance and the learning process, he’s gotten a lot better. He’s gotten a lot better at learning them quicker, but sometimes we would learn for two hours and then go shoot a tech talk. And we’re both not perfectionist, but very, we want our product to be as good as it can be. And so we’ve had times where we’ve been feeling

And you were a cheerleader, right? Like when you were in high school, so you and, and yeah, for those of you that don’t know her dad, Dan Thurman, I mean, he’s Acrobat and top of being insightful and inspiring and amazing. He’s also an incredible acrobatic performer and juggler and physical specimen of man. Did you dance it around and stuff? So you guys have a little bit of athletic talent, so you’re putting that to work, but you’re saying you would prepare, you like spend two hours maybe learning the dance and then you record, how many takes are you recording?

Say our longest sometimes a few times, maybe two times we’ve gotten it within one take. But there’s definitely been times where we’ve done over a hundred takes trying to get something perfect.

Yeah. Wow. A hundred takes now. It’s only like 60 seconds, right? Yeah. The top

Is 60 seconds. Usually the dances are closer to 1520, which is helpful. But especially when it’s two people, one of us can feel like we completely killed it and the other one got off a little, so we’ll have to redo it. And then there’s the process of once you’ve done all the takes, watching all of them to decide which one you both agree on is the best.

Oh my gosh. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, how long does that take?

That can usually, I’d say about 30 minutes. Just to kind of watch them. Sometimes we just watch one, we both agree on it and we say, okay, we’re not going to watch anymore. We’re just going to go with this one. But that’s more in specific talking about dances because a few months ago, well maybe more than a few months ago, we kind of started to do more comedy. And sometimes the comedy videos we’ll talk about days in advance and then plan them out. And then sometimes we’ll have spur of the moment things where I’ll just say, I have something I want to tell you, can I turn on a camera while I tell you and we just get your genuine reaction. And we found that people really like to see that because it’s kind of a more authentic view of our relationship, which I think is one of the reasons why a lot of people follow us is just because of the connection we have with each other and the fun we have with each other. And so those are often a lot easier to make because there’s a lot less prep that goes into them.

And, and when you’re editing, what are you editing for? And, and are you taking, you know, like if you’re doing, let’s say a few dozen takes, are you taking clips from each different take to put it together or do you mostly just like, no, the reason you’re doing all those takes is for one and then like, what, what do you, what’s your, what’s your eye searching for,

For dances? It’s always a one-take we never edit those together. Which that’s one of the reasons why it takes so long because there’s no room for error in that

It doesn’t take you as much time to edit. So you’re doing it all in the shoots and it’s just like, once you nail it, 30 seconds, like, bam, we got it. Yeah. Okay.

But more comedy you’re talking videos, I’d say there’s a lot more room for editing editing, depending on the video, I’d say usually takes me around 30 minutes to an hour. Especially when you have to add close captions to videos, which we’ve really been trying to make that consistent, just so we’re more accessible to the deaf community, hard of hearing to add that onto our platforms, but that’ll, that’ll add on a good bit of time. So it really does stack up

Is, and, and, and are you so, so the non dance videos, like I know a lot of the videos you, you do with your dad, you do as a team, but you do a lot of them by yourself too. And, and here’s the other thing I was trying to figure out the music that you actually hear on Tik TOK. That’s not really the mute, like when you do the dance is that that music is playing. And is that what it’s recording? So that’s recording the actual music in the room. So you’re just like hitting rewind on the track.

It’s Hmm. I don’t know how to explain this. So the actual audio that plays through it, doesn’t pick up our audio when we do the dance. It just uses the audio that we’re hearing, but it doesn’t rerecord it with our room audio. It just takes the audio directly from talk.

That’s what I was trying to understand. So, so because you, you choose the song to play in the tick talk app to overlay with your dance, right? So, so when you record the dance, you’re playing the same song to dance to the music, shooting the video, but then it’s basically, you’re just stripping the like you’re, you’re effectively stripping the audio off of that when you upload the video.

So what you can do, and what we usually do is select the audio beforehand. So every time, once you select the audio and go to record inside the Tik TOK app, the audio will automatically play as you record and you can dance to it. And when you go to publish it or edit it or whatever, it uses the same audio that you were hearing during it, the one you previously selected, if that makes

Got it. So you’re actually dancing to the song that is playing out loud through the Tik tock. It’s not like you have some other speaker or something that you’re dancing to and then overlaying it. Okay. So and then you do this and I mean, there’s a lot of time going on here. I mean, this is like one, one 60 seconds. How long does it, I mean, all in for one 62nd video, how much editing time are you putting in?

I’d say 30, 45 minutes, maybe an hour with closed captions.

Okay. Now that’s just the editing, right. But the whole, like researching the dance, learning the dance shooting, the takes, then editing, you’re talking about three hours per, per one minute of video,

Depending on the style. Yeah. like I said, sometimes it’s very spur of the moment. Things are, sometimes we immediately get a dance if it’s easier and we can knock that out in 20 minutes, but there are certain times when we really want to shoot for a hard dance or go for a concept that requires a lot of editing and it just takes more time.

And are you kind of like, so you kind of built the platform on dance, but now you’ve mentioned like, you’re, you’re, you’ve gotten more into comedy. Has your audience like, have they received that pretty well? Not as well. Not at all more than dance. Cause that’s an, and, and, and are you, you know, like what’s the balance in terms of, you’re still doing dance videos, but now you’re, you’re doing these like sketch comedy kind of skits.

Yeah. I’d say they received it very well. It’s one of the same kind of, like I said, where it’s an even more genuine look at our relationship. Cause it’s us communicating with each other. It’s us joking with each other, which does play through in a lot of dances, but it’s kind of another aspect of that. Yeah. I think people really appreciate seeing another side of our relationship. And honestly, I think it has done better performance wise than a good bit of our dances. Which is interesting. Cause we used to be so specifically just dance take talks, but it’s really nice to be able to do both.

Yeah. And the way you described this, it’s basically like, you know, your, you and your dad is it’s the epicenter of this. It’s not an ancillary thing. It’s like, it’s the relationship between the two of you that kids and parents like whoever’s watching, they enjoy and it is endearing to see your relationship together. And you think that that’s part of the secret sauce?

Yeah, no for sure. I mean, what I’ve always kind of strived for with my tech talk is I want it to be genuinely me and a huge part of my life is my family. And so I think that plays through on my take talks because they mean so much to me. They are truly, I mean, my parents are some of my best friends and so it’s really easy for that to show through on my page. And I think people really appreciate that.

Yeah. Well, I mean, that’s awesome. The idea of a teenager being best friends with their parents is, I mean, that’s like AAJ my wife. So my wife is also my business partner and that’s like, her dream is just that our kids would grow up to like want to just be our friends. So I could see why a lot of people tune in to watching, watching that. Cause it’s kind of rare really. And you know, coming back to the videos, do you feel like you’re able to predict which ones will go viral? Is there, is there certain things that you see like, Oh, I know this one’s gonna go well because of this or not really. Is it a, is it a total like toss up every time?

There are a lot of the times it is a toss up, but there have been a few instances where all even I’ll even say to my friends or my family or something where I’m, I’m feeling this one, I think people are really gonna enjoy this one. There was one where my dad and I did this trend where we put my dad in heels. I was like, no way, is this not going to do well? He’s, he’s a 50 year old man and heels. It’s amazing. And sometimes, sometimes we just get feelings or a lot of the times it’s things we’re just really proud of that we put a lot of work into and that we think other people are going to enjoy as much as us. And usually I’d say that’s correct instinct.

So it’s just, it’s not really a formula as much as it’s like an intuition. Yeah, I’d say so. Okay. And, and are you at this point, it seems like the way that you described this, it’s, it’s a lot of entertainment, you know, it’s basically, you’ve got dance and now you’ve got some comedy and it’s, you know, a little bit of this kind of like showing your relationship with your dad. Do you, do you kind of plan on using it or do you, do you intentionally, like, are you deliberate about kind of saying, yeah, this is, you know, we’re putting out content that is really for entertainment, not so much for like education or encouragement or, you know, some other type of content, but you know, that’s, is that how you see yourself as basically like an entertainer or how do you, how do you see yourself in your product, as you say, like your content,

I’d say as much as, as much as it is entertainment, it is also become somewhat of a business. For me in particular over the past, I’d say about six months, I signed with some management and we’ve been working together where it really has become a business. I make my living off of it. Which was really cool. But I’d say overall, what I’ve come to know about the tick talk app is it can be very full of negativity. I’ve seen a lot of my friends struggle with that. I’ve struggled with that. And with the platform I’ve been given, like I said, I didn’t really start out on Tik, talk with the intention to become an influencer. I wanted to have fun. And over the time kind of realize what I’ve been given and with the negativity on Tik TOK, my goal has been to just make something that’s going to make someone smile. If there’s something negative on their page and they can scroll. And it’s one of my videos. I want it to have a positive impact. And so entertainment. Yes. Joy. Yes. That’s all stuff that I aim to accomplish with this, but it is also at the end of the day, a bit of a business.

Yeah. So can you tell me about the business part of it? Like when did that w at what, how many, like followers did you have before you started monetizing and then how are you monetizing? Like what actually what’s the vehicle that money actually shows up? Cause this is like, like you’re saying here, it’s like three hours of time for a one-minute video. It’s not like you’re just slapping together or something and throwing it up there and it’s going viral. Like this is a job.

Yeah, no, absolutely. It was, I, I had just hit a million followers. I’m pretty sure. Or I might’ve, I think it was a few days right before I hit a million followers. I had previously worked with Hollister as part of their high school media team. And I had some connections there that translated to United talent agency and they reached out, we had a meeting with them and we started working with them. And I’d say that was the game changer in this shifting from something fun. I do to a business, to my source of income, to, it was one of those things where I’d been putting in the hours beforehand. And this was kind of the turning point where I began making money off of it. And with that essentially, I’d say the main source of income is collaborations with brands, which my team will bring to me, we’ll discuss it. We’ll either take it or leave it. And then from there, we’ll go off working with the brand to create a monetized product.

And, and so what does that mean exactly? Is this like, does that mean we’re going to do a product placement in a video somewhere and you guys are going to dance while that people are seeing that product, or is it more involved in

The, I’d say it ranges for sure. Depending on what the brand wants. A lot of the times I just, I just did a deal with Amazon where I had a call with Amazon discussing what they wanted to promote being their Amazon prime students. Since I am a college student who that’s eligible to and we discuss how that would fit in authentically with my brand and in a way that it will be well received by my followers. And that’s a huge part of being successful when working with brands is it can’t seem too forced or like a blatant ad. And from there, we came upon a conclusion where I was going to order some things as a prime student, create little presence for some of my friends who were going through finals and give them to them. And through the video that ended up being the ad, it was following me, ordering them through Amazon prime, me, building them and me giving them. So while it was an ad, there was still a little bit of a storyline and something positive that came out of it. And we decided that that would resonate well for my audience. So it’s what we went forward with.

And did it, did the video perform well relative to other videos?

It did. Yeah. that one actually did pretty well. I think it has 130,000 likes which I consider good for an ad. But it was very it fit in very well with my brands and with my content. And I think that’s one of the reasons why it said well. Yeah.

Yeah. And I guess when you, when you’re making that decision to going, okay, what, how do I make this fit with my audience? Is that, is that a gut instinct or, or is there something specific like, like when you say fit in with my brand, what do you think of as your brand? Like, so, so when these other companies are bringing opportunities to you, what, what do you think of as your brand when you’re trying to like assimilate the two together?

Yeah, for sure. I think it directly goes back to who I am and kind of, I mean, when I think about my profile, my brand, I don’t cuss on the internet. I don’t do any very sexual things. I try and keep it very wholesome and family content. As well as with my personal things, like who I am as a person, I had a butcher shop, reach out to me for an ad. I’m a vegetarian didn’t quite make sense. And so it’s just things like that, where if I were to promote a butcher shop, my followers would be a little confused and it would look very much like I was just doing it for a check, but when you can do it for things that actually fit with who you are as an individual, if it comes off as a lot more organic, like I use Amazon prime, it worked out

Right. And then do you, when you have this is so interesting to me, I just think this is so cool. I mean, and you know, we have we have at least a handful of our clients who make real substantial income from Facebook watch. And I mean, just for you listening, you know, this can be tens of thousands of dollars a month in income that people are making. I mean, it can be Randy, I was, I mean, what, what are, what are some of the numbers don’t, you don’t have to share your numbers, but just like, since you’re in the community, like if somebody is listening, going, gosh, like maybe I should spend more time putting into editing my videos. Like realistically, what are some of the numbers that you hear from like other influencers and different brand deals that somebody could realistically expect after, you know, if they are able to build their profile over time? Like, what are these arrangements look like?

Yeah. I’d say they definitely vary a good bit because there’s certain partnerships, collaborations that are one video and done. And then there’s other that have posting commitments consistently throughout a six month contract, a year long contract. One in particular I can think of. I have a friend who does a deal with bang energy drinks. I’m not exactly sure what his deal looks like. I think it’s one a week. I’m not entirely sure, but I know he’s estimated to make six figures within a year, which is crazy as an 18, 19 year old. Absolutely crazy from one sponsorship from individuals I’ve heard of people making between two to, I think this was a much bigger influencer than myself, but somebody made like $80,000 off of one video. Absolutely. Mind blowing.

Yeah. It’s, it’s, it’s pretty wild. I mean like on YouTube. So for those of you that are members, right? So we teach in phase three in lesson one, we are events called high traffic strategies. And we talk about paid traffic and YouTube specifically, you know, there, which as I understand is also how Facebook watch works is they’re paying you for the length of time that people are watching, but also who they are, who is watching matters a great deal, because you’re getting paid per based on the performance of the video. And so you know, like statistically, the English speaking audience is going to pay the content creator much higher than a non-English speaking audience. And then it’s like, you know, there’s certain demographics like women, as an example, if you have women viewers, typically those pay higher than male audiences cause they’re buyers, but that is very different than what you’re describing, which is you’re not getting paid based on the performance of the video.

You’re getting paid a flat fee, regardless of how well the video performs by a specific brand for a specific project. Which I guess is for everybody, that’s the, I guess the difference between a brand deal, which is what you’re talking about. Somebody saying, I will pay you a flat fee to make this video and post it versus getting paid based on the performance of your videos from the platform itself like Facebook or YouTube or in this case, Tik TOK. So are you monetizing your channel as well from Tik TOK? Like, are you also receiving like, is that that’s a, that’s the other stream of income here, right?

Yeah. So that’s actually fairly new. I’d say maybe it was may when creator fund became a thing, because before, if you were a creator on Tik talk, you made no money just based off of your channel and its performance. Your only source of income was work with outside brands. And that could be a performance-based income based on certain videos or a flat fee. But none of it was coming from Tech-Talk like YouTube monetization. It was completely different, but a little while ago, the Tik TOK creator fund was announced. And that is essentially a payment each day. You can take it out after 30 days after the end of a month, you can receive your earnings from that month. And it’s a payment based on views. So that was a fairly, fairly new change to Tech-Talk where now it can be monetized that way. And I think the only qualifications you need is 10,000 followers. And roughly, I think it was 50,000 views within the past year or something that may be completely wrong, but you, you can find it on the internet, but it’s not. That sounds about right.

Cause I think that’s what you’d like. Although actually, no, I think with YouTube, I think you need, maybe it is 10,000. I think it’s a hundred thousand. I think you need a hundred thousand subscribers before you can monetize from YouTube on YouTube, but these brand deals like you can get, you don’t have to have any there’s no, there’s, you just have to prove to a brand that you can reach their audience and that, you know, you’ll, you’ll help create positive brand awareness. Now you said you so immediately you hired an agency. Like you engage with an agency as soon as this started happening to help negotiate all this. So you don’t really deal with all that stuff directly. Right now.

I, I used to a little bit, I was kind of terrible at it though. People would reach out to me and say, you know, can you use my song in a video? How much will you charge? And I was like, it’s 20 bucks too much. Like I really didn’t understand the market at all. So I’m so thankful for my team. They’re absolutely amazing. But yeah, I don’t handle any of the negotiations now.

Huh. So, so cool. So interesting. Just two, two last little, two last little questions here. Maggie, this has been so, so informative and I think just helping people understand, you know, just the dynamics of how this platform works, what’s going on. It’s obviously a big mover in the, in the market. Do you, are you repurposing your content in other locations and how has that performed or not performed?

I personally try and keep it a little bit different on each platform. So I’m on Tech-Talk Instagram, Snapchat, YouTube. I don’t really repurpose content. I’d say I know a lot of people, a lot of tech talkers in particular, Instagram has a new feature called reels where a lot of people post their tech talks for me. I just never really got into that. I guess I, I just use each platform differently. So it doesn’t always make sense for my content to transfer, but again, I strive for my brand to be consistent on each platform. So I don’t really repurpose, but I’ve seen a lot of creative friends be successful in that.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. That’s interesting to hear different different philosophies there. And then here’s my last little question for you is certainly you’re dealing with your volume. You’re dealing with some number of haters and trolls and the negative comments. And we, we know that no matter what type of content you’re putting out there, that’s going to show up and I have to think even though your videos are awesome and hilarious and entertaining, I have to think that you’re getting, you know, some number of hateful comments. So how do you handle those? And, and what’s like, what’s been your, what’s been your outlook on dealing with those?

Absolutely. I think there was definitely a learning curve to it. I think I used to think, take things a lot more personally than I do now, because honestly though, at the beginning I didn’t receive hate for a good long time. My dad and I used to joke that our pages were just an enigma because people weren’t mean to us for a long, long time. But as we both got bigger on the app, we did receive more negative comments. And honestly, I kind of, every time I received that, I really sounds so like textbook, but I kind of have to ask myself a few questions when receiving the negativity. I have to think in my mind, did I do something wrong? Is there a reason I’m getting negativity? Do I need to change something? Or is, are these people just not my demographic? Are we not people who would get along in real life or are we just different?

You know what I mean? Like you’re not going to get along with everyone you meet and you meet a lot more people on tech talk than you do in everyday life. It’s okay. Not for everyone. It’s okay for everyone not to like you. And also just realizing that people are hurting everywhere. And it’s so easy to take that out on someone who you don’t really even understand. I think a big problem and why there’s so much hate on social media is that people don’t necessarily think of influencers as real people. To an extent there, someone they see on their screen. That’s why when I meet people, a lot of the times they’ll say things like, Oh, you’re so much, you’re so much different when I’m really kind of exactly the same. It’s just me in person. Like I’m a real person. People always think I’m taller than I am.

That’s kind of off topic, but it’s just like something where people don’t know you entirely. And so when you’re less of an actual person to them, it’s a lot easier for them to be mean to you. And honestly, at the end of the day, my rule that I’ve kind of told my family is at the end of the day, if I’m proud of the content, then I’m going to post it. I’m going to leave it up. If it doesn’t perform well, but I’m proud of it. I’m going to leave it up. And if people don’t like it, but I’m proud of it. And I think it’s a reflection of who I am and I’m going to leave it up. And I think that’s just something I’ve had to learn by is you can’t judge things based off of numbers because the algorithm is always going to change certain people aren’t going to like it. And you really have to kind of be your own moral compass on things.

I love it. Maggie Thurman is who you’re listening to. Maggie. Where should people go? I mean, obviously Maggie Thurman on Tik TOK is a one place they can find you. Is there anywhere else that you would direct people if they want to connect with you? Maggie

Thurman on Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube.

Nice. Well, thank you so much for this Maggie. Thanks for just, you know, your transparency here and sharing what this, how this, how all stuff works and for your encouragement and your entertainment and making the world a happier, more joyful place. Especially in a a year that’s been pretty dark for a lot of people. It’s great to know that there’s positive content out there that is spreading and that

It’s given you resources to, to make a bigger impact in the world. So we wish you the very best my friend. Thank you so much. [inaudible].

Ep 138: 4 Lessons Personal Brands Need To Know To Go To 8 Figures with Cameron Herold

RV: (00:07)

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

RV: (01:03)

So much fun to introduce you to Cameron, Herold this Cameron and I have been friends for years, we’ve shared the stage at events together. One of the things I love about Cameron is his pedigree of track record of success as a, not just an expert teacher, but an expert Dewar. So a huge part of his story was that he was a CEO, the COO of a company called one 800, got junk. And in six years he helped that company go from 2 million in revenue to 106 million in revenue. Eventually he left that business and became a personal brand. He’s a best-selling author of a book called double double how to double your revenue and profit in three years or less. He’s got other books. He’s also a great example of somebody that we think of as like has developed a real strong niche expertise around specifically serving a specific audience.

RV: (02:03)

COO’s the COO Alliance is something that he started, which is like the world’s largest community for number twos in companies, not the CEO, the COO, which is often a very underserved community that he identified and you know, found his uniqueness there and, and built that into something extraordinary. And he’s going to tell us all the secrets about how he did it, and he’s going to tell us for free, and that’s why he’s here. Welcome Cameron, Herold.

CH: (02:32)

Rory. Thanks for having me, but I appreciate it. Yeah, man. So my first chronic question for you is you know, we’ve got a lot of people in our community who are like coaches, consultants, et cetera, but I love your story of like, you kind of came out of, I don’t know if you call it the corporate world more of the entrepreneur world, but that’s gotta gotta be a shift from going. I’m a COO, I’m an employee that has a job every day, too. I’m going to build a personal brand, teaching people my expertise. Can you just talk a little bit about what happened, when did it happen? How did, like, how did that transition start for you?

CH: (03:14)

It’s interesting. So it’s an interesting, you mentioned coaches, I’ve been coaching entrepreneurs for 31 years. Wow. Since before coaching was a thing I had coached 120 entrepreneurs by 1993. All of the, all of these companies that I was coaching all had real, real businesses with real employees and, and we’re actually in two countries as well. So I’d coached a lot of entrepreneurs 30 years ago. And I also, I started to build one 800, got junk with my best friend who was the CEO. It was then going to be the fourth company that I’d helped build. But the other three, I was very much behind the scenes as a second and Columbia command or a very, very senior leader in one of the two. I was a very senior leader. The other two, I was second in command. And in all three, I was very behind the scenes.

CH: (04:03)

So my name was never really affiliated or attached to the brand. And I decided when I joined 1-800-GOT-JUNK, I was the 14th employee walking in the door. When I left six and a half years later, we had 3,100 employees system wide, but I knew on day one, the only way I was going to do it was either to have equity or to have brand equity. And I needed my aim to be attached to the brand because I wasn’t going to do it for the fourth time and have nobody know what I did so very, very early on. Yeah. So it was very much by design that I knew my equity play was going to be more valuable having my name attached to what I’d done versus having equity in the company.

RV: (04:43)

See, that’s awesome. Like I’ve never even thought about that as like, like when I think about personal branding, what we do, I always think about it as like, Hey, you know, either start your own business or did you do it to grow a business, but even inside of a company, it’s like the value of building your own brand and reputation and being associated with that company is equity value. Yeah.

CH: (05:06)

And then it got to the point where it actually became embarrassing last year where the founder had written a book called WTF. Brian was always one of my best friends. And in the book beat you up, willing to fail. When I started reading it, I was like, I just hope he mentions me. I hope he says, thank you to Cameron somewhere in the book. And, and then like on page three, he mentioned me. And then on page six, he mentions me and then on page 12 and I’m like, okay, good. You mentioned me were awesome. Thanks so much. And we get to the end of the book and I’ve been in there like seven or eight times, but no one else on the leadership team had been mentioned with the exception of the new COO who I’ve known for 34 years. Cause we started a fraternity together and he mentioned Eric, but I realized that the others who had helped build the company had fallen into the shadows much.

CH: (05:55)

Like I had fallen into the shadows and Gerber auto collision and Boyd auto body and college pro painters. And you bartered.com. And I just didn’t want that to happen again. So I was pleased that that was, but it was by design, right? So the way that I did it was making sure that I did the speaking events for the company, but I was very outward facing much like Harley Finkelstein is today as the second command for Shopify, a very outward facing COO or Sheryl Sandberg, very outward facing CEO for Facebook versus a lot of CEOs are very inward facing and they’re only known inside the company. I wanted the outward brand as well. So it was, it was a lot of speaking events for the company in the early days. And as we scaled, and then it was a lot of press interviews and generating press interviews. We had 5,000, 200 stories written about our company in six years, independent stories. And this was all before social media existed. So it was how do you build a brand with speaking and with PR coverage was how we did it.

RV: (06:53)

Interesting. So even as an employee, there’s just that value to building the personal brand, being out there, being in the public eye. So then

CH: (07:05)

Certainly being the one taking credit for things, but just being the one, explaining how we as a team were doing it, you know, I didn’t have to be taking credit for what my team was doing, but I could explain how we were doing what we were doing. Right. So very much like your guy Kawasaki did with Apple, you know, that he has described himself as technical evangelist for Apple. But what most people don’t know is there was a meeting that Steve jobs had that’s the guy Kawasaki was sitting in and Steve said, as of today, all of you, every single one of you employees, your title is technical evangelist. Like go talk about the brand. So guys like, it. I’m getting business cards that say technical evangelist. And he built his entire brand off of becoming a spokesperson for the company when the reality is every employee is a spokesperson for what you’re doing most just don’t stand up and talk about it.

RV: (07:57)

Awesome. Love that. Okay. So you guys, so you exit the business and then by my best friend, awesome.

CH: (08:07)

Yeah, my, my best friend fired me one morning after six and a half years on good terms, but he’s just like, look, you’re the guy that took us from 2 million to a hundred million. You’re not the guy to take us from a hundred million to a billion. So I left the company and took four months off. And, and for four months I just journaled and wrote lists and mind maps and tried to figure out what I love doing and what did I not like doing and what was I good at and what do I suck out and what gives me the energy and what drains me of energy and what I came up with that was, I love speaking and I love networking and masterminding and I love coaching. And outside of that, I’m great in a lot of stuff, but I don’t love it.

RV: (08:50)

And so that led you to go and Hey, I should, I should take this personal brand, like make it my income generator.

CH: (08:58)

Yeah. And I really started to look at, you know, I love being the person who helps the entrepreneurs make their dreams up and you know, even why am I on your podcast is to help you and your listeners, why I built one 800, got junk, was to help Brian. He was my best friend. He was my best man at my wedding. Three months before I joined him, I joined him to help him grow his company. Coaching entrepreneurs has always been, I love coaching them and helping them. So I just wanted to build a brand around us and build my name around being that CEO whisper, you know, the one who was just whispering and every CEO’s ear and giving them the shortcuts to scale their companies.

RV: (09:34)

Yeah. And that’s interesting because, you know, I hear people refer to you as like the CEO whisper specifically in that like entrepreneurial environment. You and I shared the stage at EO events. I think that’s every time we’ve shared the stage, which I think has only been twice, has been at an EO event. And but you’re yet your audience, you kind of, you kind of, you know, exploited this vertical of the seat. Oh, Whoa. So was that, was that deliberate or like, how do you, how do you reconcile those

CH: (10:08)

Very deliberate? See, I hadn’t played the COO four times, right? So I was in the COO role and I kept showing up at EO events and YPO events and Vistage events and genius network events and Maverick events and all these amazing events for entrepreneurs. But I didn’t fit in. I wanted to get into the nitty gritty and talk about the operations of the businesses I was building. So I realized that there were a hundred groups for entrepreneurs, but there, there were groups for marketers and lawyers and engineers and doctors, lots of association, but there was no association or organization or a mastermind group for the second command. So I started one for the COO. It was called the COO Alliance. But if I grow the CEO’s skills and if I grow the CEO’s capacity, they’ll grow their own entrepreneurs company. So it’s completely consistent with my core purpose. And it was just a need that wasn’t happening. But I was listening to my customers. I was coaching Bob glacier from acceleration partners and his COO. And then I was coaching Tucker max, and his COO. And I was coaching. Then like all these CEOs with their CEOs that I was coaching and I realized their CEOs were the ones doing it. I needed to really coach them on how to do it. I needed to coach the CEO on what needed to happen. Right.

RV: (11:23)

Huh. But that’s just like one of the things we say at brand builders all the time is your most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were. And you’re such a great example of that, of going, I was a CEO, a COO, I understand their world. I am that person. Holy moly, nobody is servicing this group. I’m going to do it. I’m going to start it. And that is that.

CH: (11:46)

It was also because I listened to my customer and I gave them what they needed instead of me trying to create something and market it to a group that doesn’t exist. They were all wanting and starving for more information and starving to talk to each other. So I just, I actually got 10 of my second in commands together from companies that I coached, pulled them together for two and a half day weekend. And they all wanted to keep meetings. So I’m like, let’s just start this thing. It’s like my books, I’ve written five books, but none of them, I didn’t have this desire to be an author desired, but my clients wanted more information. Like how do I get more press coverage? You landed 5,000 stories. How do I get it? So I just wrote a book and here there’s the content. Like I gave them the how to guide in every book.

RV: (12:29)

So it was more like it wasn’t going, Hey, I’ve got an idea for a book. It was more going, Hey, my clients have a need for information. And that was the Genesis of the book.

CH: (12:39)

That’s it? Like I have two others that I’m working on right now. One is on the highs and lows and CEOs and why most entrepreneurs ride this manic bipolar rollercoaster. And how do we, how do we ride that in a better way? And then the second is about building that CEO, COO relationship, that real two in a box model. And it’s, again, I don’t want to be a writer. I don’t like writing, but I like sharing my ideas because it helps so many people.

RV: (13:04)

And can you tell us a little bit like your, about your business model now? Okay. So you, you know, we know that you’re a speaker and you get paid a speaking fee. Okay. You know, you know, you get your, your rights and books and make some money from that. But like as a personal brand, what’s the, what’s the primary revenue model. Is it the COO Alliance?

CH: (13:23)

It’s a few. So if I, if I was to take you through what my funnel might look like, my revenue funnel, the top of my funnel is all the press that I generate for myself. So it’s podcasts, you know, speaking events it’s and sometimes being paid to speak, but all of that is, is press right. So all of the press coverage and then being paid to get press coverage is one, all of my books and selling, you know, tens of thousands of copies of each of my five books gets more revenue, but more brand building as well. And then my coaching of CEOs and their teams, because I’m paid, my coaching rate is $2,700 an hour. So I’m paid a good rate for the year to coach these people. And then I have the COO Alliance, which is really a business in and of itself that is, you know, already really revenue, positive and scaling. And then I have referral income. So I have, you know, I spent 14 years knowing who the best M and a firms are the best executive search firms, best copywriting firms, PR firms, fractional CFOs, fractional CMOs. And I refer companies to these groups. And then I just get checks in the mail from those relationships and those introductions.

RV: (14:27)

Yeah, yeah. Essentially that’s the whole, the whole brand builder model is, you know, we have a bunch of affiliates that we pay them a lifetime referral fee just to basically come on in and talk to their audience and do a free thing. And then anyone that comes from it, I mean, it’s incredible. It’s crazy how powerful that is.

CH: (14:45)

I’m going to number one, referral source to describe, you know, for booking the box Lewis, Howes is one of your clients is he’s the number two referral source in the book in a box right now it’s called scribe. I’ve got four of my coaching. Clients are working with this one, that one M and a firm to help them exit and they’ll get huge exits. And then I get nice referral fees. And then the last thing that I do is all of my coaching clients three years after their coaching ends, they have to write me a bonus check for what coaching was really worth when I was coaching them. So, yeah. So it’s based on, on an idea that the true value that they generate doesn’t generate during coaching. It generates in the years following coaching, when they actually implement all the ideas they’ve learned. So three years after we finish our coaching engagement, they have to cut me a bonus check for what they feel the value of the coaching really was.

RV: (15:38)

Wow. And it’s not, not set. It’s just, it’s based on what they feel like it was worth.

CH: (15:43)

Yeah. I have a guy right now who like, every time I talked to him, he goes, that was just a McLaren. He goes, that was a Ferrari. Thank you like this. He’s like, I know I’m writing some big checks here. You know, one of my clients went from 4 million to 52 million in four years. Another one of my coaching clients that I coached for six years, three years ago, he raised $255 million from Warburg Pincus. One of the top investment banks, I’ve helped four companies sell for 150 million or more. So there’s, there’s really nice income there when I focus on their needs and not worry about the check, the check comes later.

RV: (16:21)

So and that’s, that’s one of the other things I wanted to ask you about. So one was just a little bit about your story as a personal brand. I think that’s really fascinating to go that you’re getting like referral income as a percentage of just these introductions you’re making to these high value connections and what that is worth and that’s worth a lot. And but the other thing was, I actually wanted to talk about scaling a business. Okay. Because personal branding is, is interesting. You know, a lot of times people get into it and it’s like, Oh yeah, I’m gonna make some money. And then they start making money. And then it’s like, okay, they’re, they’re building their notoriety. And then they hit like this one to $3 million threshold like this ceiling. And they go crap, I’ll never get past this, this level.

RV: (17:08)

If it’s all about me and then it’s going, okay, how do I get from 3 million to 10 million or that eight figures? And I think it’s like, when I think of you just as my friend, it’s like, you are someone I put in that category of going okay. If I need to talk to someone about shifting my mindset from that, you know, seven figure to the eight figure nine figure mindset. You’re like the guy. So what do personal brands need to do if they want to make that leap? Not everybody does, but if they do want to go, I want to turn my personal brand into a real business. What switches do we have to flip?

CH: (17:47)

So I can give you, I can give you four been chomping at the bits. I, I, they both, all four of them came to me really, really quickly. So it’s interesting that you said from 1 million to 3 million, I don’t know if you’ve ever heard me talk about the ones and the threes, but the ones in the threes, the natural hurdle points in the company. When you go from one employee to three, everything’s different, and then you go to 10 employees. Now you have like a manager somewhere and you go to 30 employees. You might have a few managers. You go to a hundred employees. You don’t know the names of everybody. You go to 300 employees, you’ve got internal politics. You’ve got to like, and then from the, on the dollar side, a hundred thousand to 300,000, okay. Now you’ve actually got a real business. You’ve replaced a wage. Then you go to a million. Well, now all of a sudden you’ve got taxes to take care of. And you’re trying to figure out ways to Mont, like to minimize tax. And you’ve probably got employees and issues. Then 3 million, you’re dealing with banks and credit facilities and then 10 million and 30 million, a hundred million. So there’s these natural inflection points that happen. So the key is to get over.

RV: (18:42)

So one thing on that, can I stop you on this? Because I’ve never heard you say that, but I’ve heard other people quote that, but they they’ve always said, I heard somebody wants talk about, so are you, can I officially start citing you as the, the originator of the ones and threes? Because I love that. We talk about that.

CH: (19:02)

I’ve been talking about the ones and threes for ages, because it’s just this natural. I visualize everything. As a series of hurdles, I used to run hurdles. When I was in high school, I ran 400 meter hurdles. And I pictured myself as having to go over these hurdles. But the hurdles keep getting bigger. Right? As, as we were building 1-800-GOT-JUNK, you know, we had six consecutive years of 100% revenue growth, six years in a row. We D we doubled the size of the company. Every, it was like pushing a snowball up a Hill with one hand, like you had to climb your way up the mountain and the snowball kept getting bigger. So the hurdles keep getting bigger and you need to anticipate what happens at each hurdle point to scale your company, or you get stuck at the hurdle, right? So I’ll give you a couple of the core lessons I would give are the first one.

CH: (19:47)

If you don’t have an executive assistant, you are one. So every single person, who’s a thought leader or a brand that one of the very first roles you need to hire as an executive assistant or a fractional or part-time executive assistant to get all the stuff off your plate that has less than a $25 an hour job, $50 an hour job. Why do you think that my effective hourly coaching rate is 2,700 an hour. My speaking events are 30,000 or 5,000 for zoom. So I shouldn’t be doing anything that’s less than 2,500 bucks an hour. Like nothing. I should delegate everything except the stuff that is in my hourly rate. So executive assistants that first one second one is recognizing the ones in the threes and the tens and the hurdle points. The third is to delegate everything except genius, right? And to really look, to get stuff off your plate, just because you couldn’t do it just because you’re capable of doing it, just because you’re good at it doesn’t mean that it fills you with energy and the more of your day that you can filling up with energy as you’re working in your business, the more that positive energy just continues to spiral upwards.

CH: (20:53)

So it’s about getting stuff off your plate. It needs to get done, but not by us, right? So that’s, it’s kind of like, can you be that lazy entrepreneur and delegate everything except genius is huge. And then the fourth one, and this is a really powerful number that people need to understand when you’re running your own business. When you go from being a solo preneur to, to, to building it into a business, you’re only going to get paid a third of the time. Like only a third of my time. Am I going to get paid for speaking or paid for coaching? Another third of the time I’m dealing with stuff with my clients. I’m getting prepped for an event I’m prepping for coaching. I’m thinking about my clients. I’m making referrals, whatever, but I’m doing some unpaid work. And then maybe 30% of my time, I’m actually doing sales and marketing, trying to find more clients.

CH: (21:40)

So if I’m only going to get paid a third of the time, I need to charge three times what I think I’m going to charge to end up at the end of the year with what I want to make. So here’s what I mean by that. Let’s say you want to earn a hundred thousand dollars a year just for easy math. Let’s say a million dollars a year. If you want to earn a million dollars a year, that means your hourly rate. If you worked 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year, you would be getting paid $500 an hour for 40 hours a week, 50 weeks a year generates a million dollars in income.

RV: (22:09)

Okay. Slow down here. Just a little bit on the math cause I’m, I’m gone. Okay. So a million dollars a year is how much

CH: (22:17)

Is $500 an hour. So you can do the very quick math $500 times 40 hours a week, times 52 weeks generates a million dollars. Okay. Got it. But if you’re only getting paid 30% of the time and 30% of the time you’re working on the business and not getting paid for it. And 30% of the time you’re at finding new clients. That means you need to charge $1,500 an hour because you’re only really going to be billing out at about 14 hours a week. To end up with a million dollars a year. The reason most consultants never make enough money is they charge the hourly rate. They used to get paid. And then they realized that the end of the year, they don’t get paid for 40 hours a week. When they’re still trying to find work, you’re not charging enough. You got to charge more. One of the very, very first things I did at 1-800-GOT-JUNK was raised our prices by 40%. One of the, one of the first two weeks I was there. You know, like, what’s your speaking fee. I know you’re going to tell me, and I’m going to have to raise mine again. But what do you charge for your speaking?

RV: (23:16)

25 grand for a, for a one for a one hour. It’s 25 grand. And we’re doing, we’re doing 7,500 for a virtual.

CH: (23:24)

Okay. There you go. I need to change my virtual keynote. Cause five grand. I’m underpricing myself. Every time you think about it, you can raise your bar a little bit. And what I can do with that extra money is like, yeah,

RV: (23:33)

Well, our friend Dorsey Wright, every time I talked to Dorsey, I have to go crap. I got to tell my fees.

CH: (23:40)

I helped Dorsey with some time that guy used to check his suitcase at the airport. I’m like, dude, you can’t your suitcase and do 130 speaking events a year. But yeah, he’s, he’s doing like 136 speaking events a year at 50 grand each.

RV: (23:54)

Yeah.

CH: (23:55)

When you charge more than you can spend more on your website, you can spend more on your coaching. You can spend more in the masterminds, you’re in, you can spend more on your brand and you can spend more on your marketing. But if you don’t charge enough, you don’t have enough to spend on everything and you’re not making it up.

RV: (24:09)

So what about when you first start though? Like how do you, cause that’s hard, right? Like if, if you first start, if you’re just beginning, do you go set my price based on what I think I’m worth? Or do I take what I can get or do I just figure out mathematically here’s how much I need to make at the end of the year. I know I’m only going to get paid a certain, like, how do you calculate that in the beginning?

CH: (24:31)

I never negotiate price. I always add value. So my speaking event is 30,000. Oh, you can’t pay me 30,000. Well, my speaking event is still 30,000 for me to fly to you. But the night before I’ll do a dinner with you and some of your CEO friends, it’s 33,000. Okay. Well that was 30,000 plus a dinner. I’ll give you some books as well. Like I’m going to, I’m going to add some value, but the price is going to stay at 30,000. What most of the rookies do is they tend to negotiate their fee down too quickly. And they just, what they haven’t learned is that entrepreneurs negotiate. It’s just, they do it for sport, for entrepreneurs, negotiate for fun. It’s like being a Mexican and negotiating for the trinket on the beach. You just know that you don’t pay the first price. Right?

RV: (25:15)

I mean, yeah, it’s interesting. I’m trying to just go, you know, some of these are just like literally mental switches that you have to flick in, like in your brain in order to scale and to move. And

CH: (25:32)

These are the mental switches that I learned as a young child. So I had, I did a Ted talk or a TEDx talk it’s on the main Ted websites. If you go to ted.com, you look up raising entrepreneurial kids. I did a talk 10 years ago about all these different businesses that I ran before. I was 18 years old and all the business lessons I learned. So I learned how to negotiate when I was eight years old, selling licensed protectors door to door. I learned how to hire my first employee when I was nine. And I hired a neighbor to do deliveries for me, for the newspapers. So I would like the tips, but he didn’t deliver them during the week. You know, I learned all these lessons. So for me, the mental switches have always been there. Cause I was groomed as an entrepreneur at a very young age.

RV: (26:16)

W w w w one last little question here, which is not something I was planning on asking, but when you look ahead at the future of personal branding, right? Like you, you, you hang in a lot of these circles, you know, we hang in some of the same circles. You mentioned something that like masterminds and you know, a lot of these best-selling authors, you know, a lot of these high dollar speakers specifically on the valuation, this is totally, totally out of left field. One of the things I’ve been trying to wrestle with and think about is I’m just going, like, you know, there’s such a market for buying and selling companies, but I think there is an emergence of a market of buying and selling email lists and members and subscribers and podcasts downloads. Is there anything that you see related to the future of the valuation of certain assets, of personal brands being bought and sold like values of email lists or just anything really in general, like your mind on the future of PR PR personal branding

CH: (27:22)

Flip side of that actually, which is that most of the people trying to build personal brands, unless they’ve actually done what they are saying they can do are going to get filtered out because of AI or because of, it’s almost like if you go on Twitter today and you see a post that Donald Trump did in 30% of them are getting flagged by this is not true. I think we’re going to start seeing filters built into our AI or built into our social platforms that allow us to scan for who the frauds are really quickly. Like we’re going to just know that Roy vaping is the real deal. He’s running a real consulting company. You know, Jason Dorsey is the real deal. Like I’ve known Louis House for 14 years. I had lunch with, with us before he could afford to buy lunch in New York. It’s 13, 14 years ago.

CH: (28:04)

He’s the real deal with like what he built off LinkedIn with Sean malarkey, his old partner, like you’ll Victoria Lubbock is the real deal. Like you’ll know who these real business people are that are also the thought leaders. And then you’ll know the ones that have just become good marketers, but don’t have the content and they’re marketing somebody else’s content. So I think you’re going to have to be really 60 minutes per week. You have to be able to have people scratch the surface to know you’ve done what you say you can do. You’re not just out there quoting somebody else’s quotes or selling somebody else’s stuff. So I think there’s going to be a lot less of the good marketers selling somebody else to stuff. And there’s going to be a lot more or a better truer brands of people that have actually done it before.

RV: (28:51)

Interesting love that. We you know, I would welcome that both for us and our clients and just do it the right way. Play the long game don’t take advantage of people think hard, work hard, come up with meaningful stuff. And it’s like, it’s, it’s no, that that will pay off. And in the future, AI may be a part of that. It’s filtering people out.

CH: (29:14)

Well, that could be a really killer app right now that could be created that the, a layer or an API that ties in with like Facebook. Imagine if I go on somebody’s Facebook and then this little app that it’s like, Oh, you’re on Rory Vaden site. Oh, fraud, Rory has never done it before, or he’s amazing. And it gives us a score. But instead of me needing to load your name in and checking to see what your Instagram followers are real, like there’s apps right now where you can do it, but you have to do it manually. Imagine if it was a layer that oversaw everything right now, for us almost like a, like one of the coupon codes, like, Hey, a coupons available. Imagine if every single person’s profile you clicked on it overlayed and showed you what their real brand value actually was. So you knew who the frauds were and who the others. Weren’t

RV: (29:57)

Interesting. Yeah. I mean, I think about that this, I don’t know if this is still around, but there was a thing called the clout score, the K O U T I. And that was actually kind of like that, where it was like when you had to go into cloud to see it. Right.

CH: (30:13)

Imagine if I go click on John ruins profile and, you know, from Giftology and Facebook and it’s like, Whoa, cloud score 98. I didn’t even think to look, but it shows me his cloud score and his factor in his swearing value or whatever. It’s like, well, that’s an interesting,

RV: (30:30)

Yeah. And you know, it’s interesting too. And somebody like John Ruhlin is interesting because if you look at, if you looked at like his number of followers, you might not be that impressed. But if you saw the guy’s personal Rolodex, not just the Rolodex, but like the people who he actually knows and who he actually is

CH: (30:51)

Brick walls for him. Like the people that I just introduced John to a major, major, major player three hours ago, like a major player. Right. And if you think about who that guy knows, yeah. That can be some pretty powerful stuff.

RV: (31:05)

Yeah. It’d be interesting. Interesting to see. Well, I love that you know, Cameron, where should people go if they want to learn more about you? I mean, certainly anyone listening that has a second in command, which all of us should, if we’re building a real personal brand you know where to learn about COO Alliance and the stuff that you’re up to.

CH: (31:22)

Yeah. Check out the second command podcast for shirts and amazing podcasts where we have amazing guests. We will never interview the CEO. We only interview the second in command, the COO Alliance, for sure. And then all five of my books are available on Amazon, audible and iTunes. And then I guess my personal brand website, just go to Cameron, harold.com. You’ll see everything wrapped up there.

RV: (31:44)

Awesome. Well brother, thanks for challenging. My thinking, I feel like every time I talk to you, there’s something that’s like, it really stretches, stretches me to think in a new way and appreciate you making some time for us, man. And we just as always wish you the best.

CH: (32:00)

Thank you. The feeling is mutual. I get stressed every time as well. Appreciate it.

Ep 136: Secrets of Self-Publishing Your Way to Becoming a Bestselling Author with Chandler Bolt

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

The more time goes on. The more I start to feel like the old man in this industry, in this space and Chandler bolt is one of the people that makes me feel that way. Because when I met him, it was years ago, maybe like six years ago. And him and his brother, Seth, who is one of the, the, one of the members of my, one of my favorite bands, if not my, the favorite brand need to breathe, they were doing a book together and they were on my old podcast. And I just was like, man, there’s something about this guy. Like he’s, he’s legit, they’re they’re legit. And fast forward to today. Chandler is now the CEO of self publishing school and self publishing.com. So, you know, he’s written six best selling books, but self publishing school is like the premier world’s premier leader in helping people publish and self publish a book and understanding how to do it.

What’s the process, all the nitty gritty details. Where do we go? How does it work? Which is what we’re going to talk about today, but he’s also an investor, an advisor. And as an entrepreneur, this company, you know, they’ve got like 30 plus team members. They’re an Inc 5,000 company, three years in a row. He also hosts a couple podcasts to seven figure principles podcast and then the self-publishing school podcasts. And it’s so weird, cause like, I just am proud of proud of this guy. And and he’s a baller and y’all need to know him and you need to know what they do. A lot of people don’t realize this, but I self published six pieces of six different bodies of work. They weren’t all books before I launched take the stairs. So most people think of that as my first book, which hit the New York times and I was 29, but I had been self publishing since I was 22.

And we don’t hear that story a lot. So this is the guy and we got them here live. So Chandler, welcome to the show, Roy. Great to be here, man. Thanks for having me just proud of you, bro. And I, you know, I have to say at this point, I really have, in some ways been out of the self publishing game, you know, other than our clients do in it and, and, and from a, from a distance like watching it. So I guess, first of all, let’s talk about why self-publish, why, and when because there’s always that like, you know, Hey, I want to be a bestselling author and you know, do I have to have a traditional publisher? Do I need an agent, you know, is self publishing? Does it work? Is it, is it legit? Like, can you just kind of talk about that conceptually

For sure. And I think, and I think probably the first, the most important decision or question for most people here is like, even before then, like is a book, one of the best things I can do to grow my brand or to grow my business. Right. And then you get into the self publishing versus traditional publishing and it’s like, that’s kind of a mechanism or vehicle to take you there. Right? So like I almost look at it as like two independent questions of like is a book, one of the best things I can do to build my brand, to build my business. And we talk about this all the time, like to get, truly get more leads, sales and referrals, which I believe that it is like, you know, I believe that books changed lives. I believe that, you know, they changed the life of the author and also the reader, I believe, you know, they’re one of the best ways to set yourself apart, get your foot in the door.

Like we always joke. It’s kinda like the key that opens this door to Narnia, like this magical world, all these opportunities that only exist for published authors, right? If you have made that decision, then it’s just a matter of which path are you going to take and self publishing versus traditional publishing and like the long and short of it is, and this is not just because I run a company called self publishing school or own self publishing.com is as long as sort of it is that self-publishing makes more sense for most authors, 99.9% of people, unless you can get a big advance. And and, and that’s it, or, and, or you care about distribution like international distribution, especially that’s the only time it really makes sense to, to traditionally publish. Otherwise you’re going to be better off self-publishing and, and, you know, it’s kind of like, maybe you’ve heard the the sayings like banks only loan money to people who don’t need it. Right. It’s like, well, publishers only give posting deals to people who don’t need it and who can sell the books without them. So if you’re Oprah, Seth Godin, Rory Vaden you can get a big advance. Awesome.

Again, I just say, you know, I, I get about the same size advances, both Oprah and Seth Godin. I’m, I’m pretty sure. My, my advances are, are I’m sure they’re the same as what Oprah gets definitely in the Obama

Range, like selling copies on the first day

In all seriousness. I agree with what you’re selling. I think self publishing makes the most sense for the Mo for most authors. And the thing that we tell people is we say, look, if you can’t move 10,000 units on opening week and have a plan to move about 50,000 units within two years, you’re not ready for traditional publishing and you don’t really need it. And the economics of it don’t really make sense. So, you know, I totally, even though I love, I love commercial publishing and I, I love my publisher in that. I think self publishing is like a critical, essential, necessary step in the journey. And then people like Seth Godin, you know, they’re kind of going well, once I’ve done a few commercially published books, they’re going back to self publishing.

Exactly. For some people it’s a step in the journey for other people. It’s the journey, the journey. Yeah. Like how L rod, I mean, obviously that’s one of the most, one of the biggest self-publishing success stories, but he’s sold millions of copies of that. Self-Published and so really, I mean, I think to just like, bring this full circle for people when it comes down to is the time that it’s going to take you the royalty rates that you’re going to make and the cost of published, like those are the three bigger buckets. And so, so it’s traditional publishing is ironically enough, like actually going to take longer. Most people don’t know this is going to take you two plus years. They’re not going to do any marketing of the book. People think that the publishers will market the book they want. And, and then there’s the cost to publish, which, you know, you’ve got to cover that yourself if you’re doing it on your, on your own. So that might be, you know, a couple to a few thousand dollars.

Yeah. Yeah. Talk, give me, give me the details there. Right. Cause if someone’s listening, going okay. If I start looking at self publishing seriously, realistically, I mean, that is one thing that is awesome about commercially publishes. We’re not paying the cost of the editor to the graphic design, the printing, the warehousing, the shipping and those are big costs. Cause there’s a lot more volume, but when you’re self publishing, you also can do a hundred copy print run, right? Like how does that, what are the, how much does that actually cost and, and who does it and how do you do it?

Yeah. Screw all great questions. So there’s the cost of of creation and then cost of production, if you will. So the, so if you get a traditional publishing deal, you’re going to agent then to hopefully get a deal and get in advance. And then they’re going to cover the cost of that for you. Then there’s this middle ground, which is like hybrid or vanity press, which, you know, that might cost five, 10, 15, $20,000 a year paying someone to pay the books. So it’s like part service, part publisher, and then self publishing. Obviously you’re paying for it yourself. And there’s really three main buckets of costs. There’s there’s cover design, editing and formatting. Those are the main three. And if you don’t know what you’re doing, you might, you might spend five, 10 grand. Plus if you do know what you’re doing, you can do it for as cheap as a few hundred bucks, if you’re like really on the cheap and really bootstrapping or you’re typically a couple thousand bucks kind of in that range give or take is, is where we see people land. But that

Was cost of creation. You’re saying

Creation. Yeah. Yeah. So of, of actually creating a book that’s ready to be printed and shipped, and then you have the opportunity to go if you’re self publishing print on demand, so they’ll print it, package, ship it when someone clicks purchase, right? So you don’t have to hold inventory or you can do, like you said, runs of a hundred books or a few hundred books or whatever, but that’s the benefit of print on demand is you don’t have to hold inventory. It’s like, we all know someone who has like 2000 copies of their book in their garage and have had those copies of their book for like years. And so that’s the benefit there from a self publishing perspective is you don’t have to pay to carry that inventory. So that’s, that’s kinda how that works.

All right. So, you know, when you think about cost of creation, I want to, you know, cover design is obvious, right? It’s like you can hire the world’s best graphic designer and it’s 50 grand, or you can hire someone on Fiverr and it’s five bucks. So there’s the whole range there. Editing’s kind of the same way. It’s like reputation and all that sort of stuff. What is formatting? Because that was the thing that has always like, in the times I’ve self published. I was like, Holy crap. Like there is a lot more work here than I realized that there’s so many details of like, what’s the gutter size, which, you know, like between where the book folds, like how far the tech sits in the crease of the book. So when you say formatting, you’re saying you’re paying someone to like lay the book out to be ready for print.

Yeah. Totally. And funny timing, hopefully can you, yeah. Since it’s a big difference, actually. So one thing that we say all the time is your self published book shouldn’t look self-published right. And so we want a traditional quality book that just happens to be self published because the fact is not many people know. But what’s, self-publishing, what’s traditionally published, but what, what you really want to do here is a format, or is someone that takes like, think your word doc, and kind of what you alluded to a second ago. It was just like, there’s the margins, there’s the bleed, there’s the, all that stuff. And then they format it to be a, what, like a good looking book or a well formatted Kindle book. So essentially it’s making like th and, and it can be any variants of just like, Hey, literally just make this a book on the very simple side of things. And then, and then artistically, it could be as complicated as like, Hey, I want images here. And I want this format of this way. And I want, you know, these and graphs and stuff like that. So they’re kind of Jerry’s and complexity, but that’s the basics.

And so is that part of what you guys help people do is like pair them up with those people, like who actually do that, or do you just go on, do you just go on Upwork and grab someone?

Exactly. So our goal, like when we work with someone, our goal is, is, is three things like number one, we want to we’ll save them hundreds of hours in the process. Number two, we’ll say them hundreds, if not thousands of dollars in book production costs. So like stuff that we’re going to spend money on anyway and then number three, it’s, we’re gonna help them make more money by selling more books. And, but then also using a book to drive business. So that’s specific to number two, right. Which is you know, we’ve negotiated exclusive discounts since we have like our book production partners. And so we

Very similar to what brand builders group does. We’ve got, like, these are our copywriters and these are our podcast people. And these are our social media, like vendor partners. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. That’s cool. I mean, it’s worth a tremendous amount of just the pain of finding these people and knowing who’s legit and like, do they actually do what I need them to do? And that’s, that’s half the battle. So, and then, and then when you talk about print it, packet, ship it. Okay. So if I have a word doc, so let’s, let’s say I came to captivating content for brand builders group, and I outlined my deal. And then I joined self publishing school and you’re going to walk me through from that kind of outline and concept all the way to completion. At some point I have a word doc, then I send it to a format. That person lays it out. They probably, the finished products is probably a PDF. Right. Okay,

Exactly. Yeah, yeah. A PDF. And then there’s on the, I mean, this is getting into the minutia, but on the ebook side of things is a dot EPUB or.mobi file. And then on the flip side, it’s, it’s a well formatted PDF. That’s really an InDesign format, so that can be ready to be printed. Exactly.

And so then when you go to print it, so what, what does that mean? Like, do I just like run down to Kinko’s and print it, or you, you find like any printer or there’s people who specialize in printing self-published books or does Amazon print it or do you, or, or is there somebody who will print it, pack it and ship it all in one place? Or like is the answer yes. To all of those things? Yeah.

Yes. I, I, yeah. And so really it’s, it’s like there there’s, you could go down any path and there’s any of those things you can do. We recommend, we recommend Amazon from like a full, full perspective. So like they’re print on demand through KDP print, they’ll print it, pack it and ship it as soon as someone like your eye goes on to Amazon and says, Hey, I want to buy this book. They’ll they’ll handle the rest.

Okay. huh. So, so if you do it through Amazon, then basically you just kind of like upload the files, like for the, and everything and set the dimensions. And then Amazon will, like, they don’t really store it in a warehouse because they just print it when a sale comes through. But so you don’t have like warehousing costs, like you would with a normal book where you got to, like, the publisher has to print a bunch of books and put them in warehouses all over the country. You’re not dealing with any of that. And it’s already do. They automatically like index it in Amazon also. Exactly. Okay. So that’s, so that’s why Katie P is like, just the easiest on the production side, if you have it formatted properly. But then the key is to have, like you said, how do you make sure it doesn’t look like, you know, chintzy, self published book. And I, you know, I use that term respectfully, all of my initial stuff did, I mean, it was like, it was embarrassing. Like my first books, I, you can’t find them anywhere deliberately. You didn’t want anyone to be able to find them.

Yeah. So I mean really good cover and good formatting. Like those are the two things, like if I’m going to spend, I mean, I spend good money on editing too, but like pay for a good cover designer and then pay for a good format. Or that knows what they’re doing. This is not your friend or relative or whoever else people try to do that. Don’t do that. Like play, pay a professional and it doesn’t have to be crazy expensive, but pay a professional. And that’s what helps make the quality really. I mean, it’s, it’s indistinguishable.

And, and so when you were talking about earlier, like you might be in a few thousand bucks, this is really where your cause. Cause when you say you’re in a few thousand bucks, that’s for cover design, editing and formatting. Exactly. You’re not, you’re not having to shell out 20 grand to print inventory because it’s just, there is no inventory unless someone goes to Amazon and buys it.

Exactly. Yeah, exactly. And that’s a big benefit.

And then, and then what about buying your own book? Like do you just go to, do you literally just log on to Amazon and go, I want 50 copies and send it to my house. Yeah,

Yeah. You can do the same thing. And actually we’re, we’re exploring some different options right now that are more cost-effective. Cause I think it used to be about $7, 15 cents landed. Like the book landed to someone and I would pay, you know, three, $3 and 25 cents a book and then plus shipping. And that was landed if I shipped them individually. So that was pretty simple. But now we’re just, we’re we’re re-exploring this to say, Hey, where can we save a dollar or two, a book? Can we, can we wholesale print somewhere and then fulfill somewhere else? Or let’s like exploring alternatives of like print, pack, ship kind of thing. But, but yeah, I mean you can the, the most simplistic way to do it, it’s just, I can ship a hundred copies, 200 copies. I do this for speaking gigs all the time directly through KDP print.

Okay. And then if you’re shipping bulk, they don’t charge you the same shipping per book. Exactly.

Yeah. So your discount cost goes down a whole lot more. I mean, you might get, you might be four or five bucks, a book landed maybe a little bit more when you’re shipping in bulk. So it’s like it’s yeah.

So functionally speaking here, you’re like a word document and then some editing and a PDF away from a book, like that’s really a hundred percent gap these days. I mean, there’s the ideas and all that sort of, you know, the content stuff. Of course, but this is doable. I mean it’s doable more today than ever before, ever by far.

Yes. And not only in my opinion, is it doable, but it’s, I truly think, and I know it’s like, Oh cool. The book guys talking about how amazing it is to do books. But it, like, I truly think it’s one of the best things that you can do for your business. It, and I, I mean, I think this is why you guys integrate this as part of your brand building strategy. Cause you’ve seen the impact of this for you personally, but then also for so many other people, I mean, whether it’s Lewis house or it’s like the P S people build entire brands off of books, but not only that, it’s like, it’s, it’s the, it’s kind of this cataclysmic mechanism. If you will, to get your foot in the door to start doing podcasts interviews and start doing speaking gigs to start, like, at least it was for me. And so that’s, and, and we’ve seen that for a lot of people that we work with. It’s like, it’s, it’s one of the first steps and sure. It might not be the first step. For some people it is a, for some people represents like, Hey, I’ve finally consolidated what I believe in, put it in a book. And this is like my first step into this world. And for others, maybe it’s a step along the journey.

Well, like we, we work with like a lot of financial advisors as an example, right? And it’s like, they’re not trying to sell video courses and all that. They need a credibility piece that takes their 25 years of knowledge and they hand it to somebody and go, and somebody goes, Whoa, you’re an author. And like, to what you said, if it doesn’t look chintzy, the average person on the street has no idea if Simon and Schuster made that book, or if you printed it with Amazon, if you, if you do the things you’re talking about, you pay the money to have it nice. They’re going to go, Whoa, like it’s a big deal. So I liked that you raise the bar there on that like production piece of it.

Yeah. And then you plugged that book into your business and you watch how your business grows. I mean, it’s that financial advisor there, their close rate might go from 25 to 37% or their average order value might go up 20% or they’re getting more leads. Now they’re getting more referrals because now all of a sudden, and this is for, especially for businesses like this, or any brick and mortar businesses, we say, Hey, give two copies of your book to every single new customer one for them. And so now the onboarding process is shorter with that customer because if the book is your methodology like that, you’re going to save your team a whole lot of time because they’re being indoctrinated in that methodology. And you give them the second copy so that they can actively refer you business. So you turn customers into active refers, and they’re not going to go around town, handing out your business card, but they will hand a book to someone else and say, Hey, you should read this. Like, why don’t you try to start looking at your retirement, like check out this retirement book. Like I think it would be really helpful for you or insert book that solves whatever problem that you solved. And it just, you make it so much easier to refer business your way.

So, okay. The time is flying by. I knew this was just fly by, but this has been so helpful, I think because there’s, I think there’s still a little bit of a black box and most people there’s a lot of fear going on here. I want to try to spend a couple minutes on the best seller stuff. Okay. So let’s say you go through this, this birthing process of creating this thing, we call a book and then how does the bestseller list work? You know, and, and when we talk self publishing, you know what we tell people and, and, you know, it’s kind of like, you’re really talking about an Amazon bestseller. That’s really the game. That’s really what we’re going after with a self-published book. How does the Amazon bestseller list work? What does it take to hit it? How realistic is it? Is it worth the money? Like how many units are we talking about to, you know, like tell us a little bit about that

Great question. So there’s, there’s really two ends of the spectrum, right? There’s, I’m an Amazon bestseller and underwater basket weaving or some other obscure category,

Which is like a sub category of a sub category kind of.

And that’s where I think the term has really been ruined. And you have so many people just claiming that. And then there’s the other end of the spectrum, which is New York times. Right. And, and I think what’s important and it’s very impressive that you hit the list. It’s very hard to hit. You know, the DOE like you’ve got to sell 10 to 12,000 copies within week one, but it’s also like kind of this breakdown of like, some of them needs to be mom and pops to store some needs to be bulk purchases, some needs to be on Amazon, some of these. And so the fact of the matter is when you look at the landscape of lists, you’ve got kind of four main, you’ve got New York times, you’ve got USA today, wall street, journal bestseller, and then Amazon right now, New York times, most people chase that list.

It is an editorial list, which means it’s, it’s an opinion by the New York times, it’s not an actual bestseller list. Whereas the USA today bestseller lists is the is the most factual, accurate, like number of books sold. So you can make the USA today bestseller list and you can make the wall street journal, bestseller list self publishing, a book. It’s, it’s not likely if, if you don’t sell copies, obviously like the average self-published author, now, you’re not going to make one of those lists if you do it well. And so thousands of copies in week one, you have a great chance to hit one of those lists. But you’re right, functionally, like we look at Amazon bestseller and for most people, like that’s the most likely case scenario. And when we look at that, it’s okay, let’s get number one in a significant category on Amazon. That’s not underwater basket weeding or something

Business, how finance, something like that, those relationships, those are legit. Yeah. Yeah. And they’re, it’s kind of like they’re sub categories. They’re not sub sub sub categories kind of S kind of a thing. Yeah.

They’re meaningful categories with bills,

Books, how many units do you need to move? And is it like within a certain time frame and that kind of stuff,

If you move hundreds within the first day you have a chance depending on the category and then this, and there’s calculators online that, that kinda calculate like, Oh, the number one book in this category probably sells X amount. But definitely if you sell a thousand books within the first few days, you will hit number one and a lot of significant categories,

Kind of like how I said, w if you can move 10,000 units in week one, that’s where you’re like, let’s talk, let’s talk, literary agent let’s talk publisher. Yeah. And then it’s like, if you can figure out a way, how can I move a thousand units in, in, within the first week? That’s like, okay, let’s go, let’s go blow up a number one, Amazon. Like, that’s what it is.

Exactly. Exactly. And what I think is super important is, is we talk about this all the time is like kind of this concept of the the Toyota Camry and the sports car launches. And most people look at book launches like a sports car. It’s fast, it’s sexy. It burns up a lot of fuel AK energy. And it’s gone in a flash, right. It’s like, shoo, okay. That was our launch week. Right. But we really look at like, how do we create a Toyota Camry type book that keeps selling month after month after month? And how do we in our fundamental marketing, yes, we want to have a strong week, a strong launch week, but like, how do we make sure that we’re setting up to where longterm, this thing’s going to keep selling? So there’s a lot of strategic marketing stuff, but building virality into the book, like a lot of just kind of fundamental things there. And so really that’s what I would encourage people is like, make sure that you’re solving a fundamental problem, a painful problem that people have, that you get reviews that you, and then that you focus on marketing strategies beyond week one, because that’s where a lot of, I mean, that’s where the money is from both a book sales perspective. Sure. But also from a using this as something that’s like an, a continually driving drive, lead sales and referrals for your business.

Yeah. So this is, this is part of why we had Chandler on, obviously I’ve known him for years. Yeah. I know his brother like these, these are legit guys in the stuff they’re talking about. We believe in, we we’ve done. We do. And you know, th that’s what brand builders exists is to grow your platform. It’s the, we’re playing the long game and, and that is why Chandler’s here. So here’s one of the things that Chandler and I talked about, his team will do a free call with you if you are seriously considering, okay, what are the next steps look like? If you go to brand builders, group.com/s P S for self-publishing school go there, just like, just like most many of our clients did, you know, they’ll do a first call with you. They’ll figure out where you’re at, what you’re up to. And then they’ll kind of go, here’s some ideas, here’s some pointers. And if, if you’re a fit, then they’ll, they’ll tell you how it works. But brand builders, group.com forward slash S P S as in self publishing school. And, and and so you’re, you’re willing to do a call with people just to help them sort that out. Right. Chandler.

Totally. Yeah. And our goal is, I mean, it’s, I think it’s, it’s, it’s a helpful 45 minutes. It’s get clear on your goals for your book, your challenges with your book and your next steps. So how do we take this from something that you’ve been dreaming about doing, thinking that doing it’s been on the maybe next year list for like five years in a row and, and how do you actually make this happen and make this a reality, but, but in the process of doing that, like save time save money in the process and then, and then create an asset it’s going to build your brand. Which I think is just huge and, and, and a fundamental piece of, of what you guys teach. And I just wholeheartedly believe in the whole process and in this as, as a part of the process. Yeah.

I mean, the book that, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a critical, essential piece and self publishing is this necessary step. And you guys do self publishing better than anybody that, I mean, it’s all you do is why you’re here. Right. It’s why we is like, this is their world. Like they live in self-publishing books all day, every day. So go to brand builders, group.com forward slash SPS. If you’re interested, you know, if not keep hanging around. And then when the time comes, you know, you can take, you can take their team up on it. Chandler man, I’m proud of you, bro. I’m excited. I I’m, I’m, I’m really excited. I think you can help a lot of people in our community with this, you know, important piece, this really important piece of the whole brand building journey. So thanks for being

Here. Absolutely. Absolutely. Really. Thank you so much.

Ep 134: How to Serve a 7-Figure Niche with Lisa Woodruff

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

This is going to be really fun for me to introduce to you someone who has become a good friend over the years. Lisa Woodruff and I admire her business. I very much think of her as a classic example of someone who has a very specific expertise who serves an audience very well. She’s built a great personal brand. I think a lot of you will love what she does in her business. One of the other things that’s awesome is I guess, I hope you don’t mind me saying this. Lisa, I would consider you one of our star students of brand builders group and just we’ve worked together for years. So you’re both like a mentor and a colleague and a student at the same time. And that’s why it was like, Hey, we got to have you on the show. You all got to meet the powerhouse.

That is Lisa Woodruff. And I want you to know, so she’s the founder and CEO of Organized 365, which is really what you know, is like her, her, that is what her brand is all about and what her main business is. She has a podcast that’s called the same thing. That’s been featured as women’s day podcasts of the month. She appears in online media, a bunch, she writes for Huffington post regularly. She’s been on like more than 50 TV segments. And basically I think, you know, her expertise is just sharing strategies for reducing the overwhelm and kind of clearing the mental clutter that specifically women face, although it doesn’t only apply to women, but just helping them to live a more productive and organized life. She’s the author of several Amazon bestselling books their newest one, the paper solution, which I had an advanced copy of. And anyways, Lisa, welcome to the show.

Well, thanks Rory. As a former teacher and a lifeline learner, you calling me a plus student like that is the thing that I remember everything you just said. All I heard was, Hey, that’s all I heard.

I mean, in all seriousness, you know, brand brand builders groups, we have, we, we are, our official curriculum is 12 topics, but you know, as of right now, we only, only formally eight of them are available to the public. And he went through and I think you’re the only person there’s maybe two others that have completed all eight, but you did it in what the whole thing was like next month you lasted through which is not something we normally recommend, but for you, it was okay because you have the team to help you implement. I mean, number one, you got a team and number two, you’re the most organized person I know. And so you’re able, it’s, it’s crazy how you are able to learn information and immediately incorporate it into your business, your processes your structure. And so anyways, it’s, it’s worth celebrating, but you’re, you’re definitely one of our star students.

Yeah, well the whole brand builder curriculum. And as a teacher, I just look at curriculum. I love curriculum. I’ve built my business as a teacher first because that’s my formal training is as a teacher. And so I approach business differently. And I used to think that was a detriment. And now with the business coaches that I’m meeting with, who have grown these companies and sold them and everything, I realized that because I’ve created a company as almost like a teacher of the company and then a teacher of the community, I am able to implement things really fast in my team because I look at my team as students and they all have different learning styles. And I look at whatever we’re implementing as courses that need to be taught with a deadline and I’m able to break them down. And yeah, I think being a teacher actually is helping me win at business.

Yeah, it definitely is. And, and yeah, you, you’ve got the teaching background and then, you know, one of the things that we say around here a lot is, you know, in order to be a great teacher, you gotta be a great student first. And of course, you know, I’m promoting what you’ve done with brand builders group, but you, you know, one of the secrets, I feel like to you growing your personal brand so fast and so strong is that you are a major investor into personal development yourself. Like you play the role of student. Can you just talk a little bit about your philosophy there? Cause you’re, you are definitely the teacher of your community, but again, it’s as much as anyone I know, you’re always like the first person to sign up, to be in coaching programs, yourself and stuff. And I love that about you.

Yes. So when you take strengths finder, my number one strength is learning. Like I just, I’m a natural learner. I love to learn. I consume a ridiculous amount of content, anybody who I’m not good at telling you where I remember the content from, so that’s bad, but I consume a lot of content, diverse content, and I’m just filling my brain with a whole bunch of ideas all the time. And I listened to podcasts and I follow other entrepreneurs that are successful. And so many people say that the only thing you have control over is yourself. I say that when you’re getting your home organized, or when you’re getting your control of your life and moving from reactive to proactive mode, you have to focus on yourself, getting your mindset, right? And so when you’re growing your business, the only thing that you will have with you for the rest of your life is any investment that you make in yourself in your learning and your mindset and your connections and your relationship, the business they’re in now, maybe a different business.

But you all the, all of the resources you put into yourself will grow. And then I would say in the last three years as organized three 65 has started to gain some traction. And now I know that it’s going to be a company five years from now. It’s not going to go out of business. Like I’m more confident in the fact that we kind of know what we’re doing and that we’re going to stand the test of time now. And instead of investing in me and getting over my imposter syndrome, it has been more in investing in me and becoming a better leader and staying six months to a year ahead of my team, because now my team is growing because I’m a good teacher. Like I provide them with coaches and resources and courses. And honestly we did brand builders, not because I needed a brand builders, but because everything that brand builders teaches, I had learned in eight years on my own.

And it was time where I needed to disseminate all of that information into my team. I need to make sure that I had ticked off all of the boxes, dotted the I’s crossed the T’s so that we’re ready for scale because we are perfectly positioned to be a company that is going to scale soon. I overhired. So I hired people just so I could train them the way I want them to be trained so that we will scale with ease and with grace versus at a breakneck speed. That is fun, but stressful, especially for the women that I employ.

I love that, you know, and I, I have become, you know, more convicted on that, like brand builders is become is, has become such a curriculum, you know, and we’ve got resident experts who teach it that I think you know, a lot of personal brands come to us for like their education, their strategy. But I think in the future more and more people are going to look at us more like you did, which is get your assistant trained, get your team trained, get your CMO trained to where it’s like, you don’t have the time to unload all this information, let us catch them up in, in and also like you said, dot the I’s cross the T’s make sure you’ve got all the cracks sealed. So I love that. So let’s talk about your business a little bit. Can you walk us through a little bit of what your journey has been with organized three, five from when you started as a personal brand? You know, and you don’t have to tell us exact numbers, but any, anything you can, that that is empirical, that you feel comfortable sharing. You know, how many people did you start with? How many people do you have now? How many years did it take? How did your revenue, you know, roughly grow? You know, how many clients did you service in the beginning and, and how many now? Because I just, you know, I I love, I love this story.

I do. I love listening to it. So I know your audience is just like me. So I’m just going to get down to what I wish I was hearing. If I was an entrepreneur growing my own brand, we’re about to celebrate our ninth anniversary. And in hindsight, I now realized that I make leaps about every three years. So the first three years, January, 2012 to 2015, I was a blogger. I was doing in-home professional organization consultations as a service-based business. I represented a direct sales company that first year. And then I realized that products weren’t really what I was going to sell. And I was just getting a lot of boots on the ground, meeting with other people in their homes, men, women, children, old, young, different socioecono economics and realizing what are the true holes in organization? What is, why is it with organization books?

People are still not getting organized. And that’s when I learned some of the basic things I teach today, like organization is a learnable skill. I’m a teacher. I could figure out how to teach you this online. You have different organization in different phases of life. It’s roughly every 20 years, it’s, you’re a child then twenties and thirties, you accumulate forties and fifties. You’re in survival. And then 60 plus, if you stay in your house the same during all of those phases, you’re going to need to reorganize it. And the organization looks different. So all of that like mindset work and I was blogging and I was figuring out that this was the thing I was going to do forever.

And that’s almost like it’s kind of like field, like you’re in the field, just in the nitty gritty, like talking to clients in their homes and they’re going, this is why I can’t do this. And this is what I struggle with. And that’s a part of where your content really went from hypothesis to curriculum. Cause you’re like, Oh, everybody struggles with this.

And what is my unique spin on it? So my unique spin on it is I’m a teacher. I can teach you how to do this. This is a learnable skill up until that point, professional organizers always said, I have the answers. I can fix your problem for you. Let me come in and do it for you. You are not capable. You are important, organized, sorry. And that’s the message that we had as women. So then it was, how do you get that message out? The next three years, I hired a couple of contractors. I hired my first executive assistant. I started producing the Amazon bestselling books. I came out with two Amazon bestselling books. I moved into podcasting from doing the blog and slowly started to move that over. I was taking these concepts that I was learning in person. We still had in-person organization. That’s where all of the money came from for the first six years, I had grown a team. They were doing the organizing for me. And I was really formalizing that thought leadership into books and building my experience. So the first six years really, I mean, I was making a hundred thousand dollars or less a year. I was paying people on credit cards. I was just building up my body of work and figuring out what is it that is unique to me.

And you were, most of the revenue was service-based business, 85%. And when you say a hundred thousand a year, that you’re saying, that’s your ingrown, not your rev. Oh, grandma’s gross. Oh yeah. Okay. It’s taken a minute. Yeah. You laugh now, somebody out there listening it, ain’t funny. At least they’re saying it. Ain’t funny.

Yeah. Six years. I know when I was listening to all these podcasts, they’d be like, it takes seven years. It takes for you. I was like, I’ll do it faster. I’ll work. And I was working 100 hour weeks. Like I was clocking my time 80 to 100 hour weeks. You cannot outpaced time. Like there is a time factor to growing your expertise and learning and developing. I mean, you just can’t shortcut it.

Yup. Yup. Yup. Zig Ziglar used to say, well, no elevator to success. You’ve got to take the stairs, baby. Okay. So that’s year three through six. Is that about when we met the first time? Cause the very, the very first time we met, we were working on your infusion soft. That was when

We had Pat. Yep. And we were doing that. So that was going into 2017 in 2017 was like a landmark year for me in betting on myself and just saying, you know what? This is good, but it’s, there’s more here. It’s going to be great. More people need this message. Women need to hear about grace. They need to understand this is a learnable skill. Like this is a problem that no one else is going to solve. So I’m going to go all in and I’m going to solve it. So that was a year that I paid $10,000 to go to New York for one weekend and learn about how to get a professional book launch. I hired seven people in seven weeks at the end of 2017. Now all of them, except for one were contractors and they’re like three to five hours a week. So it wasn’t like I was hiring full-time people.

But I did this, I wrote my mission, vision and values. I moved from an LLC to a C Corp. I got a patent pending on my Sunday basket. I got a manufacturer to make the Sunday basket. At that point, we had no physical products. I just been talking about these on the podcast, but there was nothing people could buy to actually get their, to do list, eliminated, organize all of their tasks and ditch their filing cabinet. And I knew I had one course, the 100 day program was an active course. It was only sold in the launch model. Yeah, that’s all I had.

It started with an information product. Was the first sort of scalable offering that you had.

Yes, I did have that. And we had just added in 2017, the basic first planner that went along with that. So once I hired all those people, that was to get everything out of my head in the physical products created and to develop what you see today with the warehouse and fulfillment and all of that.

Yeah. So how many, so, so from, from zero, from your zero to three, it’s basically just you from years three to six, it’s like you one full timer and a bunch of contractors. And then years six through nine, it was like, okay. We, we kind of took some contractors, made them, full-time brought on a bunch more part-time contractors. And then where are you at now with like your staff size and, and you know, like how many customers you serve and like, give us a sense of the scale now, nine years in.

Yep. So in year six, seven when I hired all of these people are we ended that year at $441,000 in revenue. And we ended our last fiscal year. So at the end of that three years at 1.3 million in revenue. And I knew at that point that I had taken the company as far as I could, without a physical product and without a team to help me and I could stay at the level I was at, but in order to make the impact that I wanted to make, I had to take all of my profit and put it in people and products in order to then make the ultimate impact that I wanted to make.

Yeah. So that 1.3 million in revenue was, was that like,

Yeah, our year end is June 30th. So,

But that was like your ninth year.

Yep. Eighth year and third year. And it was three years after I hired all those people. So it’s yeah, the numbers are weird because I changed how I end my year.

When did w when, so when did we incorporate infusion soft into the mix? That was like 2015?

Yeah, it was right before I hired all of those people. So it was, it was that 2017 year. I believe it was in January that Pat and I got into that coaching with you to do that for the entire year, by the time we were done that’s when I was hiring all of the people.

Got it. Yes. Okay. So yeah. So then you had so there you go. So that was basically three years from that kind of point that you turned on the, what we would call phase four eight, figure entrepreneur. Like you turned on the like, okay, now I’m I’m turning my personal brand to a business, vision values team systems go. And then, and now here you are making sure.

Yeah, so we have seven full-time employees, one part-time employee, and then four part-time contractors that are still part of our team that all come to all of our all team meetings and then a whole bunch of other contractors, you know, just like you wouldn’t regular. Yeah.

I love, I mean, I just love this and, and you probably made more in income in the last two years than the first eight years combined. Is it something like that?

Totally. Yeah. Yeah.

And that’s, this is part of why I wanted people to thank you for sharing this because it’s like, when we tell people, you know, I know, you know, this I’m kind of talking to the listener right now is we’re always saying we’re playing the long game. We’re playing the long game. We’re playing the long game. If you follow the fundamentals, do the systems build, you know, build the processes, do this. And it’s like, ah, it’s like this slog Fest for the first four or five years, you particularly for the first two or three, but then it, all of a sudden, it’s like it started to catch you in all in you developed as a leader. And I don’t know. I’m just so freaking proud of you. I’m going to, it’s weird to say, but

The other thing I would say about that, well, thank you. Or the other thing I would say about that is when I became a C Corp in that summer, I put myself on payroll and I became an employee of the company. And until that point I had just been pulling money, Willy nilly. So when I became an employee of the company at year, whatever, five and a half six I then had a paycheck and I made my paycheck be the opposite week of my husband. So now we have money coming in our family every single week that is predictable after I’d been doing this about 18 months I realized that everybody in the company was kind of making the same amount. And so then I wasn’t giving raises. And I finally realized, Oh, give yourself a race. I’ve raised my own salary. And then I didn’t feel like I had to hold everybody else’s salaries down.

I was able to give raises there as well. And now that we’re going into year nine I hired a fractional CFO last year and we made profit last year. And he’s like, this is where you take a distribution. I was like, no, no, no, no. Put it back in the company, put it back in inventory, which is what we did. Cause we were in the middle of the pandemic and he says, you have to realize Lisa, you’re also an owner. Like you get paid as an owner. And so I’ve been wrestling for the last six months about how much should I get paid as an owner? How much do you take out as an owner? And I’m finally to the point where that will be a conversation we have next summer is like, okay, now what is your owner pay? In addition to your employee? I’m just so thrilled to have a paycheck now and know what my income is going to be. It’s hard to think about the fact that I’ve also built an asset in addition to a job for myself.

Yeah. And the, in the eight figure entrepreneur event, which you were, you were in, I think we did it in June Aja and I had to figure that out too. And we actually have three different sources of pay. We pay ourselves as you know, like a salary as a, as a, as a manager, we have profits that we draw from the company and then we actually pay ourselves for doing service-based work on the exact same pay plan that we would pay anyone on our team on. And it’s like, you really are wearing different hats. And you got to almost think about like, I am playing different roles, paid in different ways. The owner hat is the one that you don’t get paid on forever. And then one day you do. So I want to talk about your business model now a little bit because I feel like you are more rare. One thing I love about you is you’re the seven figure business. Is it, is it fair to say that products like physical products is now the core or more of a, is it the primary business model or secondary still?

So I will share with you as entrepreneurs when I came up with this idea and I think it is the thing that saved us in the pandemic. And I think it’s the thing that’s going to save us going forward. We’re not a product company and we are not a course company. It is a blend and it is hard for a consumer to figure out what am I paying for the course? What am I paying for the product? Because there’s so much integration and everything I sell has a lifetime value to it. So I’m not selling an MMR monthly recurring revenue. I have a couple of little offerings like that for people who want to go deeper. But the basic customer journey is you buy a Sunday basket, which you see behind me, which is a box and a set of slash bucket. So there is a physical cost to that.

But in addition to that, you get into a Facebook group where we do coworking spaces. Every single Sunday, you have on-demand training, you have extra printables that come out, I’ll come out with extra things that are bonuses for people who have a Sunday basket, like at tax time, I’ll do a tax training and give you some tax printables. There’s no cost. We just add that in there. So you’re kind of like in that level. And then once you do the Sunday basket and you have eliminated your, your to-do list and have five extra hours every week, you usually go into the 100 day home organization program. Again, lifetime membership. We have a on on-demand videos for all 100 days. There’s a planner you get when you purchase and then you can purchase additional ones. You can upgrade and do your planner with me every quarter.

How much is the Sunday best Sunday basket. Basket’s $97. So that’s the, that’s like the entry point. It’s just the 97 come into the community. And it’s like a lifetime access though, to this community which includes like, you know, effectively a course that walks them through what to do

Coworking like every week of the year. Like,

Yeah. And what’s the a hundred, the a hundred day program is the next step up. Yep.

That’s $500. Or you can do six payments of $96. If you want to stay in that $100 a month investment in your home organization, that has a whole bunch of extra things. We’re working on an app. We have extra blog posts, like all kinds of freebies are given into that group as well. And then after that, you go to all access, which is where you ditch your filing cabinet. You get the four binders that replace your filing cabinet planning day. And then you can add on the kid’s course or the photo course. And once you get all that done, then you usually jump into our work box in our work from home offerings.

So an all access. So 97, 500, and then all access is 500, another 500, but those are one time. Those are one time deals. So, so when you do in seven figures, part of what’s amazing about this to me is it’s not recurring, like everything brand builders do. We’re a slow snowball that builds and builds and builds and you’re, you’re new. These are new people coming in. Yep. That’s amazing. It’s extremely difficult to do. I mean, so what, how are you doing it? Like, what are you, what is your primary mechanism for attracting? And hopefully y’all are picking this up, right? Just home organization, expert, extremely clear vertical, you know, clutter in and disorganization, a clear problem, a clear need, a true expert, serving one audience with an entry point that you then, you know, rise up. So you’re like, you’re a perfect example of that. Like breaking through the wall, picking the riches in the niches. So how do you keep getting new customers all the time? Like what’s the acquisition model?

So something I had to realize, which we had a VIP day in addition to going through brand builders. I also did a VIP day with you. And we kind of talked about how I have sold a thousand people into this work box system. And we’ve never really advertised it. Like I don’t talk about it very much. And all of those people have come from the Sunday basket. So when you really look at what is your customer journey, 99% of people in organize three 65, start with this $97 Sunday basket, or they try to make one on their own. Like they get the idea of, I need to plan my week on Sunday. There’s a certain way to do this. It’s not it’s unavoidable. I need to get the time so I can get more time back during my week if they do the Sunday basket, which we advertise on the podcast. And now we have Facebook ads and I do webinars that we advertise through Facebook. If they do the Sunday basket, 60% of them will do the 100 day program. I think it’s 40%. We’ll do the 108 program. And 60% of those will go all access. And 15% of those will go into our certification program. And 30% of those will upgrade in our certification.

Okay. Hold on a second.

I know my numbers,

No. And your digital dashboards and the Facebook ads and stuff. I mean, this is what you would, what you would expect from an organization expert, but it’s, it’s like, it’s why I love teaching you. It’s like you get the stuff we teach implemented faster. Probably that our team does. Like you guys are so fast. Okay. So 60% of them will upgrade. You said to the hundred day, and then you said 60% of those will upgrade.

Yeah. It’s like, it’s like 45. One of them is 41 60. I’m not good with details. But basically if I can get people into the Sunday basket, if the system works because I’m a teacher, like it works. If you are a detail oriented person or a big picture person, it works. If you have ADHD, if you don’t like, because I’m a teacher, I built in all the learning modalities. The Sunday basket works. If we can get people to get it and then get into our community, they have success. And what happens is it’s nothing to do with the Sunday basket. It’s the internal realization that I’ll be darned organization is a learnable skill. She taught it to me. I learned it. Well, if I can learn that, can I actually get my it’s a confidence builder. It’s a quick win within six weeks to realize, Oh my gosh, I have more time than I used to have.

My brain is not talking back to me anymore. I don’t have an unending to-do list. If that worked, I, I can have my home organized women for years have thought they can never have their home organized. And the Sunday basket has to come first because it proves to them that they can. And then when they start believing in themselves and they get in that group, we just shower them with love. We have the most positive Facebook group ever. There’s no negativity in it whatsoever. Everyone is supporting everyone. And then once you have that success, then you get addicted to organizing. And then you’re like, fine. I’ll do the pit. Everybody says they don’t have papers. So as they do the 100 day program, they’re like, Oh my gosh, there’s so much paper in this house. And then they just go right through the customer journey.

But it’s all about believing that you can do it. And the reason I am not monthly recurring revenue is because my target market is women and women invest in themselves last and they need to feel successful. So when they have the Sunday basket successful, I mean, if their child falls down to needs stitches at the ER, Rory, they stopped doing their Sunday basket happened to us three times, maybe those unexpected events derail them. And if it is a monthly recurring revenue, then it’s guilt. Every time that money comes out, if it is a limited time, you only have 90 days to implement it. There’s this pressure on women that they already have so much pressure. I don’t want any pressure. I don’t want any guilt. I just want to love on you and give you the solution.

And I think, you know, you’ve always been so encouraging of my procrastinate on purpose book. And one of the things I think one of the things we tried to do with that book, which it occurred it’s occurred to me. Why one of the reasons why I think it is so aligned with you is we tried to, in that book talk about the emotional side of time management, not just the logical stuff. And I feel like you do the same thing with home organizing it’s, it’s, it’s tactical, but it’s also the emotional components. It’s the guilt and the stress and the anxiety and the worry and your own story of changing your life when you were 40 years old. And like just all of the mental health aspects that having an organized that come along with having an organized home which I, which I, which I just, you know, I really love so, so I hear you on the customer journey.

Basically give them something small that they can have a win, get a result, build community, and then accelerate them up, especially like, you know, I know with your infusion soft, you, you’ve got it all tracked in a, in a process to move them from one to the next, to the next to the next. The, you mentioned the Facebook ads you, we, we teach people not to do it until they get to phase three. Like most people do it way early, but you’re a great example of, like you said, you just started introducing that. And is that so, so are, have you kind of acquiesced to the idea of going okay now that I know what my lifetime value is? I can justify spending ads, driving people directly to Sunday basket. Is that, is that how you do it? You try to, you, you move them deliberately into the front of the, of the journey.

Yes. So we started Facebook ads two weeks before our customer locked in. You know, we all went into lockdown for the pandemic and we’ve been ramping up the spend as you told us to do. So we advertise to our current customers, new products that are coming out. We advertise to people to start in the Sunday basket. We advertise podcast episodes, and here’s something unique to us. And I’ve done Facebook ads in the past with little money. Now I’m doing it with bigger money. Our ads always convert because women are always looking for organization solutions. And there aren’t a lot of people in that industry. And our ads are always not very expensive because they’re not competitive. I’m not in the entrepreneurial space. I’m not in the political space. So I’m able to get a good return on our investment. And we usually have three to four times return on our investment every single week. And sometimes up to seven times return on our investment, which I know is unusual.

So then on that first customer one, do you do drive people to a free training? Like let’s just take Sunday basket, not, not your existing customers, but is it just basically an ad to a free training or do you do a challenge or do you do a video funnel? Like what is that ad driving people to, or do you just take them directly to the sales page to buy the basket?

We’ve been taking them directly to the sales page to buy the basket and, you know, over the course of the year

It’s 97 bucks. It’s also not like it’s,

We redid our website. So all of June, I think we drove like 30,000 people to the website and they all bounced off because the website was broken. So we’re trying it’s, it’s lovely. It’s great. But we still made money on our ads. I don’t know what to tell you. So now we’re retargeting those people for webinars and I’m, I’m doing another webinar. We’re trying that for a while. So we’re taking 90 days and driving people to a webinar that only Facebook ads is getting that webinar and then seeing what the conversion is. So we’re testing. Okay,

Well, I’ve got I did a, I did a training last week on this specific thing I need, I’m going to send it to you. So, because you know, I just, w you are, you’ve done these things, not just the right things, but in the right order at the right time. And it’s, it’s moving, it’s moving along. So I have one more question for you before that. I mean, where should people go Lisa, to learn about you, you know, if they want to connect. And I mean, I’ll also, there’s a huge part of being a personal brand, which is just keeping your crap organized. And so, like the actual skill that you’re teaching here, I think really helps accelerate the success of any, any entrepreneur and, you know, not, not just, you know, you’re saying women and like the home and, and, and that, but it’s any business owner trying to like keep parts of their life organized. So where should they go to find you?

I often say that men are not holding women back your houses. And that’s why I speak to women because the emotional components that you’re talking about do not impact men the way they do women. And so many women have something they’re uniquely created to do, but they’re waiting until the laundry and the dishes are done. And so that is the person that I’m trying to reach. Like I want to free you from your home, so you can go bless the world with what you’re uniquely created to do the best way I do that is through my podcast. So if you’ve liked this interview, go check out the podcast, which is organized three 65. We have over 9 million downloads on that podcast. So it’s pretty popular. I love it. I love, I have a lot of episodes every week. I love talking on the podcast. And then if you just want to know more about the products, go to organize three 60 five.com. You can click on the shop, you can learn about the work boxes, learn about the Sunday basket.

Huh. We got it. We got the sun. We have, we’ve got, we’ve got the Sunday basket. We have the a hundred day program. I mean just really, really great stuff. So, you know, since you know exactly what it is like to be a brand builders group, client, and you know, you know, three years ago, I mean, you had already been at it five or six years by the time we had met. And then, you know, coming, reconnecting with brand builders group here recently, what would you say to that person? Who’s like, you know, in year two and they’re just like, Oh my gosh, like I do it all this stuff and I’m not making any money. It doesn’t seem like anyone’s listening. It’s, I’m frustrated. Like I can’t get crap done. I can’t afford vendors. I don’t know how to do it myself. Like, you know, I don’t have time. Like, what would be your, your advice to that person?

I love that bill Gates quote, when he says we underestimate what we can do in 10 years and we overestimate what we can do in one year. And I think that’s true too. Like you just have to realize that you are in a marathon and it is a self-development and blessing of the world, like whatever you’re uniquely gifted and created to give the world, like is amazing, but it’s not going to happen tomorrow, but you need to take the next step, take the next step, take the next step. And if you’re in brand builders are looking to join brand builders, look at it as like your college education. So there are four different phases and look at each phase as a year of college education. Now, if you’re like, I was, when you came in and you’re in your eight, then yeah, you can get the whole thing done in a year.

It’s extremely rare. I was over ready. If you’re in year two, then I would look at that for those four phases is like, if I get these four phases done in the next four years, I will be six years in. That’s where you naturally are going to be this, you know, businesses growing. I find it so interesting. So many podcasts that I followed for years and years and years, female podcasts. So many of them in the last two years have become seven figure businesses and moving quickly to eight figure businesses. And it’s just time. It’s not that they found something out that you don’t know, or they have a secret or it’s the super special funnel or whatever. It’s just time. It takes 10 years to grow to a million dollar business. Like it just takes time.

Love it. Lisa Woodruff, ladies and gentlemen, we’ll link up to organize three 65, man, keep going, Lisa. So proud. It’s been such an honor to work with you and we just continue to wish you the best in your journey and thanks for all your encouragement. Thanks, Rory.