Category: Podcast

Ep 96: Using Micro-Influencers to Earn $65 Million in Two Years with Amanda Tress

RV: (00:06) 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) I am just ecstatic to introduce you to one of our newer friends. Her name is Amanda tress, and, you know, at Brand Builders Group, we’ve got 12 different events. And one of our events is called eight figure entrepreneur. And we talk specifically about building an eight figure business and turning a personal brand into a business. And frankly, it’s hard to find examples of people who have actually done that. There’s very few people that, that can turn a personal brand in an online business into something that reaches an eight figure level. And Amanda has done that. She is the creator of the faster way to fat loss which I’m sure you’ve probably heard of it’s it’s the premiere virtual intermittent fasting fitness and nutrition program. AIJ and I are clients of the program. So we we’re big believers in fasting. We use, we actually use it. RV: (01:57) And Amanda is Amanda tress, not my AJ. But Amanda used a micro influencer strategy to scale this company, get this… To from zero to $20 million in less than three years. Which what I heard that it blew my mind. And then we got introduced to her through a mutual friend. We’ve gotten to know her and her husband and their family. And she’s just awesome. And I just, I am so excited honestly, to learn with/ alongside of you here. Since we convinced Amanda to come on the show and anyways, Amanda, thank you for being here. Thank you so much, Rory. I’m thrilled to be here. So is this a true story, like zero to $20 million in revenue in three years? Is that a true story? You know, it’s, it’s not a true story. It is a one to 65 million in two AT: (03:00) Years. So that is the story. RV: (03:02) So you went from, from 1 million to 65 million AT: (03:07) In 24 months, a little bit over 24 months. Yes. That is the story. And, and that is with the fast way to fat loss being our main focus over the past two and a half years since I had my third baby, who is my wild child, she was a bit of a surprise, but I decided to truly focus in on the faster way after she was born. So it’s been quite the ride. RV: (03:34) So, and when you say 65 million, is that annual revenue or that’s the total AT: (03:39) The total gross revenue over the past a little bit over two years. RV: (03:44) That’s incredible. Okay. So you’re, you’re looking, you’re looking at like $30 million in annual revenues. I mean, it’s, it’s a membership model, so it fluctuates, but that is absolutely incredible. So I think for the rest of our interview, I only have one question. How did you do that? And I’m just going to shut up and I just, I’m going to frantically take notes as you tell us all of your insider secrets of you know, just tell us the story, like how did this happen? AT: (04:14) Yeah, absolutely. And I’ll back up just a little bit. So I talk about the past 24 months, but I created the faster way to fat loss in January of 2016. In January of 2016, I started the program with only 11 clients. I was able to quickly empower those 11 clients to become micro influencers for the brand. But at that time in 2016, I was still running my marketing agency for female entrepreneurs in the fitness industry. And to be honest, the marketing agency and serving clients with a managed services model through that particular company was my primary focus. I spent 95% of my time empowering other trainers and wellness professionals to leverage the power of social media, to ramp up their own unique companies. And what I found a couple of years ago after having my third baby is that although I could teach a female entrepreneur in the fitness industry, how to show up online video and spread the word about their program, or get more eyeballs on their content with effective marketing and sales funnels. AT: (05:28) Unfortunately, my clients, weren’t fantastic with programming. So two and a half years ago, I said, you know what? I have this little program called the fast way to fat loss that is highly effective. I was running it myself as a bit of a side project. And I said, why don’t I create a certification around this particular program? And then give my agency clients the opportunity to become certified, run my program with their clients. So my agency clients quickly hopped on board. They trusted me because I had been giving them sound advice for a series of years. They became certified and now my certified coaches serve as affiliates for the faster way to fat loss. And in addition to affiliates, we have micro influencers who spread the word about the program, but it’s only been in the past two and a half years that we’ve decided to focus on the faster way to fat loss and coach certification and actually shut down the agency. So we could be a little bit more powerful in our approach to ramp up that particular vertical, the faster way to fat loss. So it’s been, you know, a lot of shifts and pivots and changes for lack of a better word, but we have found our sweet spot now with the model. We now have a membership model, as you mentioned, which we launched last April, so a little bit over a year ago and the rest is history. RV: (07:04) Gosh, that is so wild. And what an interesting way to pivot, you know, as you’re describing this, this is very similar to the direction that brand builders group is heading. That, you know, a lot of our clients specifically that are interested in teaching people about like online business and they do that, they’re becoming our, our strategists and, and not having to kind of create the curriculum and being able to just do relationships and then kind of layer some of their own, you know, like some of their own stuff on top of it. But you know, you totally pivoted. So, so give us an idea of the mechanics. Like how much, how much does the membership cost? And then, I mean, so you’re talking about 70,000 people. You’ve had something like 70,000 clients AT: (07:52) We’ve had over 150,000 clients go through our new client six week orientation program. So I’ll just quickly break down our model. We like to keep things very simple here at the fast way to fat loss. Simplicity is bliss, especially in 2020. Our model simply involves a six week new client orientation program each and every person interested in burning fat with the faster way to fat loss and participating in our online workouts must go through that initial six week program. After the six week program, our client is then auto-enrolled into our VIP membership. The VIP membership is a month to month commitment. The six week new client program is $199. The VIP membership is $79 per month. A client will then remain in the VIP membership until they decide they are sick of seeing me on video, working them through high intensity interval training. But we have an incredible retention rate, which has been a massive blessing. So that is the model. It’s a new client orientation, six week program enrolled into a VIP membership. And we also have the certification that a client can then invest in if they love the program, love the lifestyle and want to share it with their friends, family members, community, and clients as well. So, RV: (09:19) So I love that. So, so basically anyone can become certified if they invest in it and then they go through, how much does the certification is? That AT: (09:25) That’s a great question. Yeah. And, and, you know, the truth is not anyone can become certified because we have a pretty exclusive group and an arduous process to become certified, do, try to focus on fellow wellness professionals for our certification, we just enrolled a cohort of new coaches last month. It was our second time to enroll coaches. This year, we had about 8,500 individuals on the waiting list. We accepted about 300, actually exactly 300 and to the new coach cohort, after an application process and an interview process, and then our coaches, they pay $5,000 for the certification. They are required to pass the exam with 100%. And once they do, they have the ability to share the program with their community and clients as well. RV: (10:23) Now can the other 8,200 people, can they share the program and be an affiliate? They, they, so they could, everyone can share the program, but only certain people are like certified to actually teach in it. AT: (10:38) Yes, that’s absolutely right. It’s difficult to become a certified coach. However, you can apply to become an influencer. If you are not accepted into the coach certification and you still receive a generous commission for spreading the word about the program as an influencer or affiliate, you just do not have the opportunity or ability to teach the curriculum. RV: (11:02) Got it. Geez, that is so cool. I mean, this is powerful stuff. I mean, and so, so talk to me about how do you get the client? I mean, so, so, so your first six weeks, so you have influencers. So what, so what you’ve done, and this is something we talk about a lot is turn your customer force into your Salesforce. You are a living example of, and what you’ve done, which is so cool, which is what I think modern day technology allows us to do, right. Is like business has always been word of mouth, but you’re tracking it. And you’re paying people for the word of mouth that they would probably do anyways. Brand mills are the same way as like, we want people to just refer us, but we actually want to track it and pay them so that they actually put a little more energy to it. And you’ve done that and it’s just spread like wildfire. So is that, is that the primary way that you generate new clients into the six week? Like new client orientation? AT: (12:06) Yeah, really good question. We have what I call a one tier affiliate model. So not only do we allow Rory for example, to become an influencer for the brand, sorry, but you probably wouldn’t be accepted to the certified coach. RV: (12:22) I know, that’s what I was like, Hey, some fitness classes, give me a camera AT: (12:29) They gave me accepted, but we would absolutely accept you as an influencer. As an influencer, you would then refer clients into the program and if your client became an influencer, they would actually be a child affiliate. And so there’s a one tier model and you would receive some passive revenue when your child affiliate refers their friends and family members to the program. I feel this is a really fantastic way to align incentives with our influencers. And we have influencers who earn up to $84,000 per month. We have certified coaches earning up to a million dollars in their first year, but the one tier affiliate or influencer model has been very powerful. And the beauty of it is that we are not network marketing. We are not an MLM. We have been very specific about our desire to stay away from that particular description and be sure that we’re not flirting with any lines. AT: (13:31) But having a one tier model has been really effective. So that is one of the primary ways that we drive new leads into the program. We also do quite a bit in the way of social media marketing. We don’t do a lot of advertising. In fact, for the first couple of years, as I ramped up, we did zero ads. We’re just now starting to run ads to our live trainings. But one thing that’s really unique about how we do marketing is for example, this month I created a marketing roadmap with steps for success, for both my influencers and my certified coaches. And I gave them the script. I gave them links to a lead magnet. I gave them links to a live training and because we have lifetime cookies, they receive credit. If anyone signs up for that lead magnet goes through our effective funnel or signs up for the training and receives the text campaign. So we like to leverage our army of influencers and certified coaches as we look to generate new, highly qualified leads. And then it’s a big benefit that my background is digital marketing because I’m able to, you know, really leverage those strategies. And, and I empower our community to do the same. Yeah. RV: (14:52) I mean, this is insane. Y’all like we do the exact same thing at brand builders group with the one tier affiliate. It doesn’t go forever like a network marketing company, but some of our affiliates are getting paid two years later. Like off of people they’ve never even met because we track, we tracked that. This gives me, this makes me excited because it makes me feel like we’re on the right track because one day we’re going to grow up and we’re going to be Amanda trust. I, I so I, I, I love that. Now you mentioned your background’s in digital marketing. So just a tech, a quick technical question. What are you using to track all the affiliate like payment? That’s a big, you know, like we have a few hundred, you’ve got thousands of people that you’re having to track and track a second tier and the original like cookie link. What are you using for that? AT: (15:46) Yes, really good question. I know, I keep saying good question because many of these are fantastic. We are currently using post affiliate pro. It integrates with our point of sale system, Sam cart, which is fantastic for upsell funnels. And I love a good upsell funnel. And so those two integrate, we have HubSpot as our CRM as well. But to be completely honest with you, Rory technology has been my biggest pain point over the past couple, few years. It remains my biggest pain point because probably a lot like you, we are always just a little bit ahead of the platform that we’re using. So for example, we are using Kajabi for some of our content and we outgrew them within about 30 days of being on the platform. And we’ve been trying to finagle and customize, but what we really need, if anyone’s listening and having speak fantastic at coding is a proprietary product where instead of having seven MacGyvered systems, I can have maybe one to three systems that work well, post affiliate pro has been adequate. However, I’m not going to sit here and recommend it for people with tens of thousands of affiliates like us, because we have plenty of issues that we have to problem solve on a daily daily basis. So that is what we’re using. I know that was a long, long question. RV: (17:12) Your tech stack. I mean, I think that’s helpful for several reasons. We talk about tech stack a lot in our overall, our whole thing is four phases in our phase two is where we get into a lot of like building your tech stack and thinking both short term and longterm and integrating the shopping cart with the reporting, you know, stuff with the con you know, the LMS or whatever with the CRM. And so I think it’s encouraging one to be like, Hey, you’ve done this. And also to, to go, you’re still struggling with it. Like everybody else’s. So I think, you know, that that’s encouraging and just go and like, Hey, but we’re always telling people, the technology is not nearly as important as the strategy, like make the tech, you can find technology or make technology do what you need to do. And when you get to your size, yeah. You’re just probably at the point where it’s like, you got to invest in building your own system so that you can get to where you have a million active members. AT: (18:07) Yeah. Yeah. Because of technology, we are still in a growth phase versus scalability. And my main goal by the end of 2020 or early 21 is to get to scalability. And here’s what I mean by that for people listening. If I were to go on the today’s show next week, we are not confident that we could take on the amount of clients who would hit the website and purchase the product. We are still capping registration. We are closing registration every single month. We are capping the number of people who come in as coaches. And it’s because our technology is not able to keep up when it comes to a more scalable solution. So that, you know, for me as an entrepreneur is, is something that keeps me up at night, you know, or wakes me up at night and two in the morning. What if, you know, we just today announced that we are the fastest growing fitness and nutrition company in America based on inc five thousands report that came out this morning. You know, if we get, you know, tens of thousands of new clients today from a website, then we’re going to have to say RV: (19:13) All the millions of people from the influential, personal brand podcast come pilot, we’re going to do shit. AT: (19:20) We gotta put them on a waiting list. Yeah. So yeah, you know, that’s something that I, as the CEO of the company need to continue to prioritize and problem solve. And, you know, I have the most incredible team of 25 full time staffers. We have literally one man on our team and no one really heading up the technology side. So it’s me creating our, I literally created our website myself on Squarespace, and we’ve been using it for the past couple, few years, free website, you know, we need a better solutions, RV: (19:59) But what a great example, though, of just like using the tools, the free tools and starting out and just kind of like growing and growing and growing. And then, yeah, I mean, you’re dealing with the real issues of you know, an age. And I have been through this once before with our, you know, past of it’s one of w here’s one of the things I don’t know if you’ll find this to be true, but I had a mentor share with me one time. They said that it’s at the ones and threes at all, the ones and threes are where there are big pain points. So a hundred thousand to 300,000 is this is, you know, like, and then a million, so 300,000 to a million it’s about the same. And then a million to like two and a half million is the same. RV: (20:40) But once you hit 3 million, it’s like, Oh, now there’s a bump. And then between 3 million and 10 million is like, we, it, the swamp that’s like almost no one makes it from 3 million to 10 million. And then from 10 million to like 25 million, you’re good. But once you hit 30 million, which is funny, that’s about right where you’re at, that’s where the next big like hurdle is. And then once you get through this hurdle, like, you’ll be good, totally. A hundred million, like most of the things you figure at 30 million, and then you’ll have another hurdle at a hundred million and then 300 million and then a billion. And so the next time we’ll be doing your podcast on your private jet, like we’ll be, we’ll be doing the follow up here. So okay. So that’s, so that’s awesome. So when you, now, when you first started, I want to just kind of like go back to those early days. Your, your, your first customers just came like anybody else, like just friends and networking and social media, but then you turn those first 11 clients basically into influencers and then, but, but, but to turn them into influencers, are they just like saying, Hey, are they emailing you and saying, Hey, Amanda, here’s someone I think would be a fit for the program, or did you build funnels for them that they could like plug into in? Is that how it started to really take off? AT: (22:05) Yeah, that is an interesting that’s an interesting process that we went through from, from the first days of micro influencers. My first 11 clients, I went to my former workplace, walked around and said, I’m starting something new. You need to join, write me a check. We’ll be back by your office in 10 minutes. You know, that’s kinda how I got those first 11 in those particular individuals had incredible results. And I said, listen, if you tell other people at your workplace, your family members, your friends, about the faster way I will gift you with 50% commission. And what I did at the time was I created lead pages for each influencer. So I literally would create on my own a lead page with their name, many times a photo of the two of us, because you know, we happen to be friends and I’d say, you know, share this on social media. AT: (23:00) And then I would do the nurture campaigns. So they would share the lead page. And then I would do kind of the followup. If they’re a family member or friend joined the program, then I would give them 50% commission based on our analytics in the backend we have since grown it a little bit better from that, that system and process to now where we have post Philly pro integrated with the website. But that is how, you know, we got going. And then things really took off Rory when I created the certification around the faster way to fat loss, because our coaches are technically a affiliates for the brand. So that’s when things really started to gain momentum. RV: (23:46) Gotcha. yeah, well that, I mean, that’s very much, you know, like you texted me part of, we hadn’t talked in a while and you’re like, Hey, I heard John Donald Miller’s podcast. That’s what we did. You know, like if you go to that URL that we gave on his podcast, it just, it’s a picture of me and Donald, and then it’s like drops them into the, into the sequence. It’s just amazing that we live in a world and like a time where this is all possible. Really, really mind blowing about that. Just the power of leveraging word of mouth and all that. So I got one last little thing for you. Holy moly. I can’t believe we’re out of time. So, so actually before we do this, allow me to give my affiliate our brand builders group affiliate link, because we want anyone to come and like check you out and learn about becoming maybe, you know, anyone that’s listening, that’s in more of that like fitness space that maybe is a good fit for you. RV: (24:43) So I think we have a link set up if you go to brand builders, group.com/faster way, right? That’s I think the link that we’re going with brand builders, group.com/faster way. And I totally just encourage you to check this out. Like I said, the program is awesome. That’s a whole, we could do a whole nother thing about how you’ve designed the portal and laid out all of like the, you know, the workouts and also like the the, the recipe, like the eating, the eating guides and all that stuff. But anyways, so go to brand builders, group.com/faster way. The last thing I wanted to ask you about is data. How are you guys tracking and keeping up with like average lifetime value and the number of people who convert from the first six weeks to become a member. And like you said, you had really good retention. What are like a few of the things just that have helped you scale and like that you watch and pay attention to in that regard? AT: (25:46) Yes. And your listeners might lose just a little bit of respect for me as I share how we’re going to do, but hopefully this is an inspiration to someone who’s saying I don’t have money to invest in all the tools, or I don’t have the BI dashboards established. Here’s the deal. I have a person on the team who manually adds to a Google drive spreadsheet every single day. I check it at least two or three times per day to see how many clients we were able to convert yesterday into the new client program, the VIP program, I check retention I check any number of things, our, our swag store our merchandise. We look at churn. We manually still enter this information into a spreadsheet. We have some other tools and dashboards that we’ve begun working on. But primarily it’s still very, very much so bootstrapped and MacGyvered and all of that we are able to see our lifetime value via Stripe and PayPal, which is helpful, that does integrate with our point of sale system. AT: (27:01) And then of course, we have a CRM. We recently you’re saying, right SamCart is our point of sale and HubSpot is our CRM. So we just recently transitioned from active campaign over to HubSpot. Hubspot has been much better in regard to marketing data. We track our marketing campaigns very closely but, you know, I wish I had a better answer. Rory, we are just very much so working as hard as we can, the best we can and, you know, we know what metrics truly matter. So those are the metrics that we track on a regular basis. We are most concerned with retention or churn. We are most concerned with conversions for our highly qualified leads that we bring in with marketing campaigns as well. But, you know, it’s, it’s also an example of we’re just doing the right things at the right time for the right reasons. And because of that, we’ve been able to grow very quickly. I can’t sit here and say that we’re just masters at Facebook ads, or we’ve cracked the code with XYZ. We just have a great program that delivers awesome results. And our clients don’t care that we MacGyvered seven systems together in the backend. They just know that I’ve given them hope to maintain their results, their fat loss, their energy their hormone health. And I think because of that, we have developed a strong sense of loyalty within our customer base. RV: (28:34) Wow. Well, a men too, that, I mean, that is the way to punctuate this because it’s just like, you know, there is no fear when the mission to serve as clear. And if you just focus on helping people, like you’ll figure out the rest they’ll forgive you, right? Like our clients are so graceful with us of just stuff that we’ve had to janky together. Janky is a verb now. AT: (29:01) I love it. We janky stuff together all the time. RV: (29:04) Now I do. I w I do want to tell you, I’m going to send you a weaken your data situation. We know the masters at this, that business intelligence dashboards they’ve changed our life. We interviewed him on the podcast. It’s, it’s, it’s practice metrics. It’s Megan, and AIJ, I’ll send you the interview with them and that, but like they do all e-com automated dashboards, lifetime value, like perpetually updating, calculating commissions. I mean, they are the ninjas, so maybe we can help you solve, solve some of that problem so that you can come pick us up in your private jet than later which would be great. So, Amanda, thank you so much for being so transparent. Oh my gosh. Like, I can’t believe that you just, you’ve been so generous with how you do things and the way you do and what, what tools you’re using. It’s just phenomenal. And we just wish you the best of success and just like keep changing lives both financially and, or, you know, physically and financially. And you know, you guys are awesome. So keep it going. AT: (30:10) Thank you so much. It was truly my pleasure. And I’m an open book. If anyone has questions, I’m happy to answer those on social media at Amanda tress, or even via email info at a managed trust. I want everyone listening to be very successful so we can always circulate our wealth to our family church and community. Thanks again, Rory. RV: (30:31) Amen. All right, we’ll catch you later. Bye bye.

Ep 94: The Vision Driven Leader with Michael Hyatt

RV: (00:06) 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, such an honor, always to introduce you to my friend, Michael Hyatt, if you don’t know him already you probably do. RV: (01:11) He’s the former CEO of Thomas Nelson. He is a number one wall street journal, bestselling author, New York times bestselling author of several books, multiple books. His new book is called the vision driven leader. And I’m so excited about the timing of how the timing worked out with this topic at this particular moment in history. And I mean, one of the things that you should know about Michael, that I just really admire is like he’s actually led large companies as a corporate, you know, CEO and also built a very large business as an entrepreneur. It’s rare to meet that type of a person. And so I, I really admire, and I’m an excited ticket sort of his instincts on leading right now. So Michael welcome. Welcome to the show. Thanks for having me back on. I appreciate it very much on the topic of personal brands. RV: (02:07) Okay. Just since that’s a, that’s a big part of our audience. Can you give us an idea of some of the magnitude of what Michael Hyatt and team has become? How many people are there? Like how many people do you reach or like, what are some of the metrics Cosco and you started as a solopreneur and, you know, cause I think of you as being one of the premier models in terms of scaling, turning a personal brand into a very real business, something that is scalable. And there’s not that there’s not that many personal brands that people can model to go like, Hey, actually there’s a big opportunity here of a big place that I can take my personal brand in terms of jobs I provide and people I reach. So like what are, what are, give us an idea of just like the magnitude or the scope of like what your team, what your team does? We have 40 people, so it MH: (03:00) Just started off with me that I got an executive assistant that I hired a copywriter and then it kind of grew from there. So today we have 40 full time teammates. We’ve got a lot of contractors that work for us as well. We’ll do about $16 million in revenue this year. Wow. That’s awesome. Yeah. And so we’ve been growing at about 60% a year, so, you know, we’ll probably hit 20 million this next year. And yeah, I’m trying to think of impact. We, we probably get a million unique visitors to our websites every month, RV: (03:33) A month, MH: (03:34) Probably 50,000 a week, you know, 200 to 250,000 a month. We have a big coaching program. We have 450 business coaching program or clients that are in our business coaching program. We have eight coaches that work with us. So I’m not the only one delivering the content by the way, this interesting thing, I think for people to know about a personal brand, at some point you have to say, okay, how can I expand this beyond myself? And as you’re successful, you get the opportunity to do that. Name is still on the company. My name is still on the company, but I’ve been able to replicate myself and have other people that are also delivering content. RV: (04:12) I love that. That is so cool. I mean, think about that. Y’all a million visitors a month, 50,000 down podcast downloads a week you know, like a quarter of another quarter million people versus that, not to count all your social media, right? And like whatever your social media is, your email list. Like you’re reaching millions of people. You know, every single, every single month that’s MH: (04:35) Our email list is about 800,000 people. And so we keep that pretty pruned, you know, people that don’t respond, you know, we take them off of it, but, but I, I will say to people that are building a personal brand, nothing is more important than your email list. RV: (04:50) There you go. There’s another, if you want a more, a more in depth interview of Michael and I talking about that we have that on the influential personal brand summit.com. You can listen to our conversation there. Of course, it’s also back in one of our earlier podcast episodes on influential personal brand. So what you know, vision-driven leader, like, how did you, I mean, it’s kind of perfect timing for that with like everything in the world. Of course you, this was had to be way in the works before everything that COVID was going down and quarantine and all that. But what, why did you decide to write this, you know, specifically right now, at this time in your career, MH: (05:31) Just a funny story. So the book came out on March the 31st. And so when the president gave his speech on March the 11th, the next day I called my publisher and I said, this has gotta be the worst time to launch a book. Is there any way that we could delay it? And they said, Nope, the toothpaste is out of the tube and all the, all the orders we’ll cancel it, Amazon in particular, but all the other retailers too, it’ll just create chaos. So I just dug deep and I said, okay, why is vision more relevant now than ever before? And I think that’s what every business owner has to figure out in the middle of the pandemic is how was their service? How was their product more relevant than ever before? And one of the things I realized is that vision is crucial, especially in a crisis because you don’t, if you don’t have a North star, if you don’t have something that is guiding you, that you’re working toward, you’re just going to be lost and drifting on the sea. And one of the things I’ve noticed with my coaching clients is those that have a written vision script, which is what the book advocates are doing pretty well because vision doesn’t change, even in a pandemic strategy will change because there’s a major difference between strategy and vision, but the vision should remain the same and people need to hear it. Now your team needs to hear it now more than ever before. Yeah. RV: (06:50) I love that idea that that strategy will change in a pandemic, but vision will not. That’s a, that’s a really huge idea. You mentioned the vision script and I want to, I want to talk about that towards the end. I want to hear about the tool that y’all created, but so you, you, you lay out these kinds of different questions of, of, of what should be a great vision and what does it make a great vision? Can you just kinda like talk, talk us through some of the ones that you think are maybe the, not so obvious characteristics of what makes a great vision or even like some of your favorite characteristics? Cause you know, this, this is something that you’ve been around a long time. MH: (07:30) Well, let me, let me go ahead and define it, what I’m talking about. Cause I think that in a way kind of encapsulates the whole thing and then we can unpack it if you’d like. So when I talk about a vision script, I’m not talking about a vision statement. So I’m using that language very intentionally, but when people talk about a vision statement, they usually mean a short, pithy, almost a slogan that you could put on a coffee mug or slap on a tee shirt. The problem with that is it’s incredibly intimidating to come up with you think I’m not that clever. You know, I’m not that, that bright to reduce everything I want about the future in terms of a slogan. And I think most people aren’t, but even if you could do it, it wouldn’t be robust enough to really guide your organization into the future. MH: (08:13) So when I talk about a vision script, what I’m specifically talking about is a written document. That’s three to five pages in length. It outlines a clear, inspiring, practical and attractive picture of your organization’s future. This is key. It describes reality three to five years from now, as you see it and written in the present tense as though it’s already beginning to happen, that’s a vision script. And I find that when people get this on paper, you don’t have to be Hemingway. You don’t have to be a good writer, but when you start to disentangle your thoughts from just floating around in your brain, you start to achieve clarity about where you want to end up three to five years from now. And that’s kind of the key to leadership. If you don’t know where you’re going, if you don’t know where you’re taking people, you probably shouldn’t be leading them. So vision and leadership go hand in hand. RV: (09:11) Huh. And then, so, you know, if it’s three to five years out then like how often do you have to be updating it kind of every year? Is that the idea is like, you’re kind of always three to five ahead. MH: (09:22) Definitely not a one and done kind of thing. It’s definitely easier to do much easier to do after the first time you do it. It’s that, you know, initial draft, like you’re a writer, you know, write a book. It in that initial draft is tough. Same thing for a vision script. The hardest work you do is at the beginning, I’ve tried to make it as easy as possible, almost paint by number with the book division driven leader, but thereafter you’re going to revisit it every year. Now I’ll tell you that the way that I recommend organizations do that is as the first part of their strategic planning process. So every year at Michael Hyden company, and I did this when I was at Thomas Nelson publishers, is that we would do a strategic planning week where we would look at things like our vision, look at a sort of a SWOT analysis. MH: (10:08) You know, our strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats out of that came our strategic priorities. And then we began to set goals and then we began to chunk that down into, you know, sort of what our quarterly objectives were and then even down to, you know, our weekly outcomes and daily tasks, but it all begins with that vision. And so every year you’ve got a chance to look at it and go, okay, we’ve got a little bit more clarity where you’re closer to where we thought we were going to be three to five years out where you’re closer. Do we see anything differently with more clarity, with more precision? And if you do that, you’ve got a chance to tweak it. And like you said, it is a moving target. Cause it always needs to be something that’s always three to five years out. RV: (10:49) Yeah. I mean that concept in and of itself is I think powerful, like the classic business school vision statement is like, Hey, we like put a paragraph down and everyone threw it in their drawer and never looked at it again. Nobody knows what it is, but you’re, this is a, this is more like a constitution or something, you know, something that’s being updated or it’s I guess constitution is not a great example. It’s not updated very often, but you know, it can be it’s amended and, and it’s, it’s a, it’s a, it’s an ongoing development part of the process here. So what do you think that people do wrong with the vision and, and leaders? And it’s like what do you think are some of the common mistakes or the things that aren’t going that are, are, you know, like an entrepreneur or even a corporate level leader kind of person they’re not doing, or they don’t either in the way the vision is written or in how they reference it or refer to it as part of their normal operation. MH: (11:49) I would say that the first mistake that entrepreneurs or business leaders is they don’t have a written vision. Like in our survey, we less than 1% of the business owners that we surveyed had a written vision statement or script of any kind. Wow. So they may have had something rattling around in their head, but they didn’t have anything on paper. And when you don’t have it on paper, first of all, you’re probably not clear because when it’s in your brain, it’s ambiguous, it’s kind of, you know, just vague. It’s not specific, it’s not concrete. You’d probably don’t have the clarity that you need, but you also have a difficult time communicating that vision. And certainly you’re going to have a difficult time ensuring quality control so that the people who are under you are the people that are working with, you can also continue to, you know, express that vision should their teammates as well. MH: (12:38) So not having a vision script is the biggest single biggest mistake that people make. I couldn’t find a single course in any college curriculum or university curriculum that taught on vision. I could only find a few books that were written about vision and actually too, as a matter of fact, and one of them kind of confused vision and mission and strategy, and they just didn’t take time to define the terms. And I’m very clear on all those terms and that I find many of them in the book, but a vision is a very specific thing about the future. RV: (13:08) Yeah. Can we talk about vision and mission? Cause I feel like those, that’s where the cloud is. Like, what’s the real difference here. Yeah. And I remember going, I remember going through MBA school, coming out more confused about which each one was then going in. MH: (13:26) Yeah. So here’s what, here’s what I would say. Vision answers the question where, where are we going? And mission answers the question, what do we do and why do we do it? So vision is about the future mission is about now I’m working on my vision every day in the hopes that as I do that, I’m going to come closer and closer to that vision for the, for the future. Now strategy is an interesting question too, because that answers the question. How, how do I get from where I am to where I want to be, how am I going to get from our current situation to this envisioned situation that’s expressed in the vision script and just to round it out, then we have core values and values are really about who we are. And more importantly, who are becoming on this journey toward this vision. That makes sense. RV: (14:19) Yeah. So you got where vision is where mission is, why strategy is how and then values are just kind of like, are the who, okay, so who we are, who we’re becoming. Huh. Yeah. So I, I, I get that. And I think, you know, the whole, the concept of having it written down, I mean, clearly it, it makes it difficult to propagate something if it’s not documented somewhere, just that in and of itself. MH: (14:47) And I didn’t say before, but the vision script to Rory is into four parts because it’s not just like you’re thinking about the future is, you know, kind of this under differentiated hole, but I have it broken down into four sections. So if you use the vision script kind of format, it’s really about what’s the future of your team team is everything, the culture you’re building, the people that you’re recruiting, the people that you’re retaining, how you’re developing your team, because the team is the primary means by which you’re going to bring this vision into existence. So team is number one, product is number two. What is it that you produce and bring forth into the world? You know, maybe it’s a product, maybe it’s a service. Maybe it’s a combination of both, but the future of your product, then the future of your marketing and your sales. So how do you reach the market? How do you take your products or your service to market, and then finally the future of your impact that could be expressed in terms of, you know, what is your revenue size three to five years from now? What’s your profitability? What are your podcast downloads or your website visits or whatever metric you want to want to use. It are important to your particular business, but the, that vision script is expressed at each of those four sections. RV: (15:58) Yeah. So you mentioned the podcast downloads, can you apply this to me for personal brands specifically? Right. So like, you know, I think everyone goes, Oh, I’m a corporate leader. We should have a vision or even entrepreneurs like that. But if you’re a personal brand and you know, it’s like mostly built around you, do you still think you need to have one of these? MH: (16:17) Absolutely. I am a personal brand and RV: (16:22) That’s a big one. MH: (16:24) Well, and, and you know, so, so yeah, I started out as, as a solo.

Ep 92: The Three Components of Becoming a Highly Booked Speaker and Thought Leader with Josh Linkner

RV: (00:06) Hey brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for tuning in to listen to this interview. We are so excited to bring you this information and wanted to let you know that, Hey, there’s no sales pitch coming from anything that we do with this is all our value add to you and the community. However, if you are somebody who is looking for specific strategies on how to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and we offer a free call to everyone that’s interested in getting to know us and is willing to give us a chance to get to know them and share a little bit about what we do. So if you’re interested in taking us up on a free strategy call, you can do that at brand builders, group.com/summit call brand builders, group.com/summit. Call to talk to you soon on with the show. RV: (01:03) So you are about to learn how to book over a hundred keynotes a year in the next 20 minutes. So Josh Linkner, uh, is I think the epitome of just a thought leader and an expert. He’s really the world’s foremost expert on innovation, both in academic from an academic standpoint, but also from an experiential standpoint. So you know, that we’re all about practitioners. So first of all, he has had five he’s, a five-time tech entrepreneur. There’s a combined exit value of over $200 million. And he also won the Ernst and young entrepreneur of the year twice, which is insane. That’s like winning two Nobel prizes in the world of entrepreneurship. And then on the thought leader side, he speaks over a hundred, uh, for over a hundred paid engagements. Every single year he is doing, he’s got three books, he’s a New York times bestselling author of three books. RV: (02:03) He writes for Forbes and inc. And just like, literally, if someone is booking an innovation speaker, they will eventually book Josh. Like it’s just a matter of time. So he’s here to share all of his secrets for us and tell us how that works and how in the heck he pulls that off. So buddy, thank you for being here. Truly a pleasure and an honor to join. Thank you. So how do you book a hundred keynotes here? Like what is it, is it, do you think in all seriousness, do you think it is a, is it a combination of a thousand little things or is it a few big things? Yeah. Well, first of all, not everybody wants to do that and I think you are pursuing speaking, you know, there’s no right or wrong. My record, I would think we were chatting earlier as 163, but someone might not want to do that. So please don’t feel obligated anybody, but I’m happy to show what we do. You know, Roy, I think it’s a lot of little things we spent over a decade dissecting JL: (03:00) The speaking industry and understanding how do people set fee? How do you create demand? How do you interact with bureaus? And I wish I could say there was one silver bullet thing, but it’s, it’s the intersection of being a strong thought leader being good on stage, certainly, but also really developing your brand. And I know you guys are the world’s expert at that in a way that the market understands and is willing to buy. And one thing is funny, you know, in my previous business I had about 500 people and 100 of them were in sales. So we had a massive sales organization. We don’t, we’re not, there was a hunting business with hunting down clients and we were able to win 74 of the top 100 brands. The speaking industry, in my opinion, is a fishing business. So it’s more it’s I don’t think you’re going to get a lot of success getting on the phone and cold calling meeting planners. But if you have the right SEO strategy, your website’s gorgeous, your marketing is cohesive and understandable. Your value proposition is clear. It’s about casting, tons of lines in the water and making them irresistible. And ultimately you’re going to get, you know, plenty of activity, RV: (03:59) Man. I love that. That’s such a good distinction between kind of the two and that’s the world that we came from. Also, we used to our old business was training salespeople, how to sell, like training them, how to hunt and then brand builders is basically, you know, how to fish. It’s like how to, how to make people come to you. So, um, you know, and I like to, I like the way you’re talking and thinking about that between like being a thought leader, um, and being great on stage and then really developing your brand. So let’s tackle those. Uh, so let’s talk about the thought leader part first. One of the jokes that I have around brand builders group is I tell people, I say, hopefully at least half of what we teach you is real substance because I, you know, I really think, you know, there is a, it really should be thought. Leader has a lot of depth and it should be about experience and education, but fortunately, or unfortunately it does seem like marketing and perception matters a lot. So how do you think you really become a true thought leader and what is the balance between the like, you know, I actually am an expert and I’m marketing as an expert and I’m doing things to, to position myself as an expert. JL: (05:19) The way I think about it is I think that if you’re a speaker specifically, you’re really running three interchange, interconnected businesses at one time, and let’s think about them separately for a second. One is a thought leadership business where you are truly an expert in your field. The second is a brand marketing distribution business on how do you actually sell yourself as a speaker and a thought leader? And the third one is that of a performing artist, being a great storyteller, being terrific on stage, et cetera, you really need all three of those firing on all cylinders to be successful. You can only get so far if you only have a little bit in each of those categories. So the first thing I would do, Rory is dissect separate those two, marketing yourself as a thought leader is different than being a thought leader. So going deeper on being a thought leader world, as you likely know, craves deep expertise. JL: (06:08) In one thing, you know, I’ve had the chance I’ve hired 10,000 people over the last 30 years, I could, I’ve raised hundreds of millions of dollars of capital. So I could probably talk about hiring practices. I could probably talk about deployment of capital and financial rigor and a bunch of other stuff, but I don’t. I talk about one thing, which is my core passion for 40 plus years, which is the deployment of human creativity to drive productive outcomes, AK innovation. So if I tried to speak on a lot of things where even if I’m semi qualified in many of those, uh, my entire business would collapse. So the first thing I would recommend people do is get super, super deep in one thing and be known for it. If your one thing is customer service being the most profoundly expert world beater in that particular thing. JL: (06:53) So instead of being, you know, really wide and an inch deep go go seven miles deep and a, you know, a millimeter wide. And to do that, I think it’s all about, you know, constantly learning, constantly reading. You should know everything there is to know in your field, read every book there is on the topic, study the masters, watch every podcast, watch every Ted talk, follow every other thought leader, you know, really go deep as an expert in your field. And that again, when you think about these three concentric businesses that enter intersect, um, the first thing you gotta do is get really smart in your area of expertise. But beyond that, I think that, so that would be to be an extra. RV: (07:28) Okay. So hold on. Okay, go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead. JL: (07:30) One last point, first thing to do is be, be an expert, but to be a thought leader, then you have to have a point of view. You have to ideally reveal something surprising and different and show leadership in the field. Not only expertise, RV: (07:42) Love that. Okay. So almost everyone we talked to has that same advice. I mean our entire phase one event is all about helping people figure out what is their one thing like that entire experience is really just taking them through a series of exercises to help them figure that out. And I liked the, I liked the term that you used, that you are a semi qualified to teach a lot of things. Cause I think most of us are semi qualified to teach a lot of things. How do you, what is your advice to someone who is struggling between the, you know, four or five, uh, you know, different things? JL: (08:23) Well, ideally it’s the one that you feel you’re most passionate about that you have the deepest level of expertise in. And, um, the other thing that you want to look at is, is marketability. So if I was really, really passionate, which I am by the way about jazz guitar, that was a good example. Good example. I could talk about out of play jazz guitar, but there’s not a big market for that on main stage keynotes. Um, on the other hand, my, my core topic innovation is a much more marketable thing. So the first person you want to look at, you know, where where’s your passion, where’s your deep expertise today. And then where does that intersect with market opportunity? And, and once you identify a broader lane of market opportunity like leadership or innovation customer service, then you also have to say, what, where can I add my own unique twist or unique flavor? So instead of being the, you know, one of a thousand leadership speakers or 10,000 leadership speakers, why are you one of a kind and in your particular flavor of, of that broader topic? RV: (09:16) Got it. Yeah, I like that. So JL: (09:19) One, one person that we work with it, you know, he was a really smart guy, wrote a book. He spoke on leadership and his principles were awesome, but they were really generic. And as you know, generic doesn’t really sell. So we started working with them and learn that he also was really into comedy. He actually performed comedy at second city years ago. So we said, well, what’s the intersection of comedy and leadership. And we went through a lot of work. We teased out Saturday night live. So he then said, wow, what if I became the guy that showed leadership lessons from Saturday night live because it’s this awesome organization that reinvents itself every week and has got talent that it keeps developing a lot of really cool metaphors. So then he went super deep on the research on SNL. He interviewed cast members and studied and read everything there was about it. He became expert at the intersection of leadership and comedy Saturday night live. So in that case now we’ve found something deeply compelling and unique and can’t be ignored and doesn’t blend into everything else. RV: (10:13) Yeah. I mean, that’s, uh, almost like thinking about a painter, right? Where you like a painter pallet where you have like, okay leadership, but leadership with what else and mixing it together. It’s like the same color, but a new shade. Um, it’s kind of like, I think that’s really, really cool. And we talk about color and shade a lot, but we usually think about it more from a message perspective more than a topical area, but you’re kind of saying the same thing, which I’m really, really, I love that. I think that is that’s awesome. So, JL: (10:45) Um, can you talk about that? RV: (10:46) So the, the point of view part, I mean, that is kind of what you’re talking about here, but like how do you identify that, that unique point of view as you’re saying, or that unique perspective or that unique slant? So I guess in order to become an expert, I almost hear you saying, go read everything in my space, follow the stuff in my space, know it, and then it’s almost like I have to kind of add something on top of it. I need to add a layer to it. Or a uniqueness is the word that we would use from Larry Winget is a uniqueness, um, or this, you know, how do you identify the uniqueness? JL: (11:25) Well, eventually just like, so again, I should have said I’ve been playing jazz guitar for 40 years. I’m deeply passionate about the art form. And if you personally, you have to do, if you want to be a musician is you have to learn the craft, AKA build some expertise. So I have to have, what are the chords, what are the skills? How do you, how do you play a note, right? That’s the equivalent of basically being a, you know, an expert in your field, but then if all you do is play other people’s music, you’re a house band at the holiday Inn, you know, you’re, you’re not, you don’t have your own original voice or content. It’s those that take the expertise and then build upon it and develop their own message, their own voice. Those are the ones that, that, that, that become superstars. JL: (12:03) And so in our speaking world, if all you do is study other people and have no perspective of your own, that that’s going to be a limiting factor. Once you develop expertise, then the next step of saying, how do I interpret that in a unique and compelling way? What’s my individual point of view. Um, what I learned is that speakers who only recite cliches are gonna cap out at a certain level. But if you, if you’re the opposite, if you’re revealing surprising truths, if you’re sharing, uh, something to different than, or helping people see the world in a different and fresh way, that’s where the opportunity really lies. RV: (12:35) Um, I love that. Um, I think that that’s a great parallel of the it’s basically, are you playing cover tunes at the holiday Inn or are you packing out arenas? Like no one goes to a Garth Brooks concert to watch him play the Eagles. Like they go to watch him play his stuff. Um, that’s a really practical, practical parallel. So I love that. So that first business is the expertise. The second business is, um, the brand distribution. And so is that kind of like content distribution, like a media company? Is that it kind of the right vibe or what do you do? You know, explain what you mean by that second? JL: (13:15) Yeah. So the first business is thought leadership first, you know, part a building your expertise and then part B, having that in a unique point of view, second business that you’re running concurrently as is not immediate business. At least the way I would look at it. That’s, that’s sort of the business of being a speaker. It’s all the things that you do off stage such that you get onstage at higher volume and higher fee. So that’s your overall brand, which you guys help with. It’s your positioning. It’s how you interact with bureaus. It’s how you set your price point. It’s, it’s not the content, it’s not the delivery. It’s the business side of your teaching practice. RV: (13:49) So the, so the, the media component of that, like pushing out your content could, could maybe be part of, it’s kind of like a part of business. A speaking part thought leadership is like putting your, like you write for Ian. Can you write for Forbes and things like that, that you would, you would classify that as more of the thought leadership piece of your business. JL: (14:10) I would, you know, the lines start to blur, obviously, because when you put a piece out of content, which is thought leadership that obviously can drive activity, which is marketing, but I would look at the second component here of a speaking business. The business side of it is everything that you do to get on stage. So that’s, it could be paid marketing, it could be SEO, it could be Bureau relationships. It could be, um, content that’s driving activity. It could be social media marketing. So all the business side of your speaking practice, not the delivery, not the original content development, but the business side. And, uh, and that’s, that’s, um, I know you, you really help people with dramatically. Um, one thing, I don’t know if you’d like a tactic or not today, but we’ve developed a really simple formula of how to communicate your value to bureaus and planners. That seems to be working beautifully. Yeah. RV: (14:54) Uh, no, we, we don’t, we’re not interested in that. Let’s just skip past that. Cause we don’t want any tactic. No, of course he has share. We want to know. We want to know. JL: (15:03) Awesome. And so this has done through tons of mistakes, by the way, through ton. And then once we kind of figured this out, we field tested and on and on. So this is just, I know it’s a bit formulated, but if I were you as a, if someone wants to build their speaking business, communicate your, your elevator speech kind of like this, here’s the old way. What do you speak about answer? I speak about cybersecurity instead of just answering that question in terms of the, the, the general topic that you speak on. Here’s what we like. We like this, this three column approach. The first column is the burning problem that you solved. The second column is why you, why you’re the right person to solve it. And the third column is the transformation that you create. How is that audience different once they’ve embraced your teachings? JL: (15:47) So again, burning problem, why you, your credibility essentially, and then the transformation that you create. So instead of Roy saying, Hey, I speak on cybersecurity. I would say something like this. Now I help organizations that are deeply concerned and overwhelmed with the threats of security, both internal and external, and they’re deeply, uh, uh, frustrated. They’re unable to devote enough resources to serve in clients and building their company because they’re constantly playing defense. I’m going to go to the second column as somebody who’s written five books on cybersecurity and work with 49 of the top 50 big brands around the world and has a proven methodology to protect and insulate against cyber threats. That was my second column. Third column is now the transformation that I create, I would continue and say, I work with organizations to give them the confidence and creative freedom that they know that they are, their security threats have been mitigated, such that they can get on with the hard work of growing their business. And that was sloppy. I’m not a cybersecurity expert, but the notion is say what you do in that format, the problem that you solve, why you and the transformation you create. RV: (16:51) I love it. I love it. So on the business side of speaking, JL: (16:56) You know, you’ve, you’ve, you’ve built these successful companies in lots of different industries. That’s one of the RV: (17:01) Things I think is a big problem. Speakers have is they don’t treat their business like a business. They don’t invest into it. They don’t run it like a business. They don’t keep financial statements. They don’t do marketing, they don’t do sales like JL: (17:11) They don’t. So would you say that a lot of the principles of running a, any great business apply to running a great speaking business? Or do you say no? No. The speaking business is totally different. There are some unique elements to the speaking business, but I would lean on the first one that you got to run it like a business. Imagine if you ran a law firm, you’re like, yeah, I don’t really know. I just, people show up and maybe I send them a bill. Maybe not. I mean, the sloppiness that some speakers embraces is troubling. I think you’re exactly right. You don’t be really deliberate. What percentage of your revenue do you reinvest in marketing? How do you track leads and inbound opportunities? We have detailed dashboards and analytical models. We have throughput. I mean, we, we at it with the rigor of a software company and that’s been very, very helpful. JL: (17:52) Uh, and I, I would recommend people know, take that same approach, treat it seriously. Cause cause there really is a, is a wonderful opportunity. One thing real quickly to just say is that our research has indicated that the industry itself is really big, bigger than most people think there’s actually $4 billion of speeches bought and sold every year in North America alone. So the reason I’m happy sharing what we do is I don’t think it’s going to hurt my business. There’s a massive opportunity out there now. It doesn’t mean you can be half ass about it. You have to be good. You have to treat your business seriously. But if people who really pursue this with vigor, I believe there’s profound opportunity. RV: (18:26) I love that. Yeah. Well we very much appreciate the abundance mentality. I mean, this has been super duper powerful. And on that note, uh, you know, there’s this whole third section you talk about was kind of like the performing artist. Um, we’re not going to have time to get into that today, but, uh, one of the things that you do is you offer events specifically for speakers and building their speaking business, right? So where do you want people to go if they want to learn more about that? JL: (18:53) Yeah, a few years back when I switched you over a decade ago, when I started speaking, there was no real solid high quality training programs to help you build a speaking business. And so as we gained some success, we wanted to give back to the industry that we love. So we created a company with a playful name called three ring circus, and we help either newer speakers that have substance and also existing speakers that want to take their game to the next level in terms of both fee and volume, really build and scale and launch their speaking practice. And we help people develop all three of those components. And if you want to learn more, the website is the number three ring R I N G circus.com because Hey, after all it’s a circus out there, RV: (19:30) [inaudible], there it is. There’s the elevator pitch for the three ring circus. I know several of you listening are our clients and prospects. Obviously speaking it speaking is a huge part of building a personal brand. And, uh, you know, I will say this while we share and teach a lot on it. I consistently hear amazing things about Josh’s team and what you guys are teaching and, and, um, just really, really good stuff. As you can tell here, clearly from a few minutes with this guy, he knows what he’s doing. He’s super intelligent. And I think, you know, I just really appreciate Josh, you being willing to share such a methodical approach. And so many of these insights just abundantly and with open arms, because there’s, there’s a lot of people listening right now that I know want to be out speaking and be speaking more speaking at higher fees. And, um, so any last thoughts for somebody who is sitting there right now with the dream, you know, maybe where you were all those years ago going, Hey, one day I want to be out on stage and, uh, you know, I, I share that same sentiment of it can feel hopeless. Like there’s not a plan or a path, cause it’s not like a common industry or a common trade. So what would you say to that, that person right now, JL: (20:45) First of all, as I mentioned earlier, a massive industry, it’s not going away. There’s plenty of room for us all. If you have something to say, um, second of all, it’s not all about raw talent. It’s not that you were either born really great as a speaker or not. I mean, these are skills that can be developed and learn. Uh, and there’s no question. Now there is a specific thoughtful game plan to, to build a speaking business. The only word of caution I would have is treat it seriously. You, you said this earlier, Rory, but like, you know, if you’re going to open a restaurant and you don’t just like paint your windows and you know, go get a picnic table, you know, you invest in your restaurant and you make sure it’s great and you really build your craft and same thing. There, there’s plenty of opportunity for those that treat it seriously, but you have to be willing to do what it takes to build all three of those concurrent businesses be a really thoughtful thought leader, be a really strong business person in the middle. And then, and then number three, be great onstage. And if you’re willing to do the work, the opportunity is there. I love it. Josh Linkner ladies and gentlemen, check him out and go take a peek at three ring circus. See what they’re up to. And uh, we’ll we’ll I’m sure we’ll hear from Josh again more. Hey Josh. Thank you for being here, buddy. We wish you the best. Thank you. And thanks for your leadership in this field too. I think you’re giving a great gift to your listeners. So I just really appreciate, thank you.

Ep 90: Using Data to Make More Money with AJ Yager and Meagan Connell

RV: (00:06) 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, nerds are going to take over the world. RV: (01:06) That’s what somebody told me when I was young. And I was like, hell yeah, I’m going to be a nerd. Who’s going to take over the world. And these two days, you’re about to meet. These are super sexy data nerds. They are a beautiful couple, extremely intelligent AJ Yager and Meaghan Connell. And they are close personal friends of ours. They’re clients of brand builders group. More importantly, we are clients of theirs and they are one of our most impactful vendors without a doubt. Their data dashboards have literally automated the work of what we’ve had, like two full time people doing. And so this is what we’re talking about. Okay. So they are a data driven power, couple. They are the cofounders of a company called Praxis metrics. So this is one of the fastest growing data dashboard companies in the world. And they’ve got a team of like 30 different, you know, 30 data scientists and engineers that, that provide like major company insights and tracking and reporting, but at a fraction of the cost. RV: (02:12) And one of the things that is very unique about them that you should know about is we have a hyper special arrangement with them where we have been working with them over a couple of years to build our, our personal brand dashboard. And we have it set up exactly how we want it and their team helps implement that for our clients. So they are amazing and they’re geniuses, and we’re going to talk about all things, data, and tracking, and dashboards, and it’s going to blow your mind, just watch. So anyways, friends, welcome to the show. MC: (02:48) Thank you for having us where you’re so excited to be here. AY: (02:51) Always a pleasure to hang out with. I hang out with you and sexy data nerds. That’s that’s pretty, that’s a nice compliment. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah. Well, and you know, data rich, you’re helping people. RV: (03:02) I mean, I guess, you know, when I think of describing you, I kinda think like, okay, this is data dashboards. You help us automate, tracking and reporting so that we know what marketing is working, how much we can afford to spend. What’s the lifetime value of our customers. Are those, how would you describe what y’all do to specifically? I know that you work with a lot of bigger companies too, but most of the people following us, right? Or like, you know, their speaker, author, personal brand types. So like, how would you describe what you do? MC: (03:36) I think the first distinction we want to make is, you know, data, most people, as soon as they hear it, they glaze over and, and data. Isn’t just ones and zeros. It’s not math and science it’s information, that’s all data is right. And if you were to think about your brand and another brand, and if one of you guys had more information than the other, who do you think would win? Naturally, whoever has more information, whoever has more knowledge about whether it’s their clientele, their target demographic about their area of expertise, right? Information has always been and will always be a competitive advantage to those who have it. And so what we do is we help individuals and companies become more informed about their own clientele and about all of the information that they can gather that will help them do better in life and do better in business. RV: (04:31) Yeah. So is that, is that the spot on? Yeah, so I love it. And for those of you that don’t know, like a data dashboard, this is like this, the coolest thing I wish I could show people this, like, if you’ve never seen one, it’s like, it’s just a website that you log into and it tracks you. It can, I mean, this tool, the way y’all set up, it can track everything, but it pulls like ours starts with front end traffic. So it pulls like we basically start with like our social media reach and what’s going on with social media and our engagement in our followers. And so were you guys pull in our data from Instagram and Facebook and LinkedIn and, and Google analytics. So then we go from social media to then like Google analytics, how much traffic are we getting to our site? RV: (05:23) And then we look at how many people from our site are getting into our funnels and like in our email list. And then you show us every single stage, what percentage of people opt in which people make to the percentage of the next checkpoint? What percentage of people buy, how long they stay in the program, what their average lifetime value is. Anyway, so there’s probably supposed to be a question in there somewhere, but I get so excited about this. So what do you think that personal brand specifically need to know and be thinking about when it comes data and how data can help them make more money? Yeah. MC: (06:02) And I think you hit the nail on the head. It’s the fact that they need to understand their entire customer journey, right? And the problem is you use 15 to 20 different technologies to, to gain customer awareness, to nurture your clients, to then convert them and then to fulfill your services. Right? And so with each of these different systems, it’s all tracking one individual piece of that customer’s journey. And so without the ability to aggregate that all together, to take all of these disparate pieces of information, like, Hey, this customer clicked here. And then they went and purchased here. If those all stay disparate, then you can’t understand what’s working and what’s not working. Right. And our goal is to help brands scale and to help individuals scale by understanding what’s working and not working. Because if you can eliminate areas of waste in your organization, that becomes a catalyst, right? Because a lot of people that we work with, they focus on optimizing, optimizing, optimizing. But if you’re also, you know, it’s kind of like the, if the front door is opening, you’re bringing in more leads and then the back door is also open and you’re losing a bunch, right. You’re never going to grow. You’re never going to scale. So our goal is first to eliminate areas of waste, whether it’s wasted time. Right. And how much time are you spending, looking up all of these things, how much money are you spending on this RV: (07:24) Excel spreadsheets galore? Like someone logging in going to Instagram, pull on analytics, putting on a spreadsheet, going into Google, going like every, like you’re saying, I mean, you just like that, was it 20 different systems to log in just to know what happened last week? Like, are we growing or are we shrinking? Are we reaching more people? Are there any of them paying attention or any of them engaging? Yeah, spreadsheet, hell, it’s a real thing. It really is spreadsheet. And you kind of do that. And that’s one of the things probably practically you do is it’s like you kind of eliminate spreadsheets and you like automate, you basically like make a spreadsheets where they automate themselves in a digital thing that updates every 60 seconds. Right? Right. AY: (08:13) Not to knock spreadsheets. It’s a part of the journey that you’ve got to go on. MC: (08:16) It’s an important stepping stone, right. In order to understand the value of data, you have to first manually aggregate it and be like, Oh wow. Knowing my conversion rates actually helps me make better decisions. Right. And it helps me understand where to spend it and where not to spend. So it’s important for you to start out as a business where, where you’re kind of going through these spreadsheets. Cause it, it makes you understand what KPIs are important, right? What are those things that are measures that will actually help you and will help you make better decisions? Okay. RV: (08:44) Would say before, that is what business questions need to be asked right now. What is most important? Right. Cause there’s a lot of things we could do, but it’s really, what should we do based on where we are in the business from a revenue standpoint, from a traffic, from a conversion standpoint, what’s working, what’s not, it’s a lot of like bringing the insights and the data into a point where that answers the business questions that are crucial to your goals right now. Yeah. Yeah. Just to get it for us. As a, as an example, you know, it’s interesting, my vision and passion has always been around like the marketing and tracking all of that. But we actually first engaged you to automate our commission statements and more of like our accounting. And I think that’s something that people don’t realize is like the power is, you know, we think like marketing and sales, like social media and Google analytics, but y’all automated our commission reports for our affiliates and for our salespeople. And like also our sales reporting of like just how long their people are in certain stages and all that kind of stuff. So there’s a lot you could do here. AY: (09:51) And then the sexy part is the sales and marketing. That’s usually the best place to start for ROI, but in your case, AJ and part of the team were probably ripping their hair out, trying to do all that stuff, which is, again, I didn’t find the waste and where can we automate things that people where people should not be doing. MC: (10:05) And honestly, that’s how we got into this business. We were a marketing agency and one of my top, most valued employees who was brilliant, he was reduced down to data entry. He was logging into 12 different systems, putting it all into a spreadsheet, just so that we can understand what split tests works, you know, where we were seeing the most traffic and what we should do for the next week. And when he was doing that, he was basically not doing his actual job and where his super power was. And so our house, AY: (10:35) Which was not only marketing, but looking at that data for each client, going through it, looking at the patterns, the trends and things that needed to be changed. So he would do the reports, maybe have a limited amount of time to kind of give a quick little insight and then moved on to the next one. Whereas if he had spent flip that on this other side, but able to deliver those insights with those clients, it could have been even more impactful. MC: (10:56) So that goes back to organizational waste. We were paying the salary of a top marketer to do something that literally, you know, coding could do. And that’s why we started this company was really because we were a small company and we didn’t have unlimited resources. And so we needed to pull as many levers as we could to automate and reduce the amount of waste in our organization. And that was the big thing was, you know, I was spending a lot of time doing financial like financials spreadsheets. He was doing the marketing spreadsheet. So looking at each area of the business, whether it’s fulfillment, marketing sales, and then saying, where, where can we reduce all of this human error or human effort? And then once that’s been reduced, right, you now have that person that their skill set can now be used. And they can now, like AJsaid, start analyzing, really start looking for these patterns and not just seeing what happened, but why it happened. MC: (11:53) And cause if you can understand the underlying levers, you know, and what, what really caused these outputs. And then you can start to move into a business model where now, you know, what happens and why it happens. And more importantly, how to make that happen in the future. And that’s where we’ve been able to help brands really shift from being on the treadmill and not understanding why they’re successful or how they’re successful to having a repeatable formula of success, an algorithm to scale. And then all it is is printing money because they know if I do X, Y, and Z, here’s the results I get every single time because I understand why it works. And then they can just go and repeat, repeat, repeat, and scale. RV: (12:36) Yeah. And not you, you know, you said that earlier, like we help brand scale. I really think that’s so compelling. And that is, that is part of as a clear part. I think you eliminate ways to reduce costs and you also help scale on the revenue side you know, in our MC: (12:55) Well, and on that note before we dive deeper, one thing that was an important delineation that I discovered in this journey as a business owner was the difference between growth and scale, because I was always focused on growth. How do we grow our top line revenue or our bottom line revenue, right? How do we grow, grow, grow that? And oftentimes growth needs you to spend more money. You need to hire more people. You need to spend more on systems. You need to increase your ad, spend, whatever it may be. Growth is not the end goal in order to scale, scale is a very different definition. Scale is when you can spend the exact same amount of revenue and increase your top line. So that’s where you get to increase your profit margin. That’s where you really get exponential growth is when the bottom line or when those expenses and cogs data saying. And so the difference between those two is, is my Newt, but it’s important because really as owners, we don’t want to be in a business where it’s just treadmill, treadmills, scraping a little bit off the top. We want to have that scale. And so, sorry, sorry to interrupt. RV: (14:00) Good. I think that’s a really cool distinction is that, you know, growth is, you know, growth is like you pump money into something and you make it grow scale is the idea that you, you streamline it. And so you squeeze more out of the money. You’re already spending data, allows you to do that. Not just the data like you’re saying data is the first part of it is like data collection, which I know we’ll talk about. Really what we’re trying to get to is like insights, right? From the data that we can apply. But, but you know one of our phase three events is called high traffic strategies. And that’s where we teach paid media. And we’re always telling our clients, don’t go to paid media so quickly. You’re wasting money because if you can’t track everything, Every single step of what happens After that click, you’re just wasting money. But once you that, like once you have the data, like you’re saying, you can just ramp the thing up because if, if I, I will put a million dollars in the front, as long as I can track and know for sure 2 million is coming out the back. And I feel like that is the thing that you guys do and that data data does. And your team specifically helps you do. And it’s almost like we can guarantee somebody’s brand to scale and to expand and to reach more people because we can, we can say we can afford to pay for it cause we know what it’s worth. Cause we’re, we’re tracking it. Is that feel right? Does that line up with what you would say and do? MC: (15:36) And a lot of our, a lot of clients that we work with are actually VC firms, right? So if anybody knows the value of numbers, it’s them, right? All they’re doing all day long is evaluating the potential success of a brand. And what they’re looking for are those specific levers. If I know without a shadow of a doubt that if I spend X and it produces, Y all I have to do is increase the money going into this company, and it’s going to, it’s going to expand. And so that’s what we’re doing is we’re really, we’re finding without a shadow of a doubt, what those KPIs are, what the levers are, what are the variables that impact it, and then presenting that, so that then you can take action and you can really make the make better decisions. RV: (16:19) Yeah. I mean, that, that kind of concept of like a predictable lever is just super, super duper powerful. So, alright. So I want to take it down a notch in terms a little bit more into the details. Okay. What is sort of like the first thing? All right. So if I’m sold, I’m like, okay, I see the vision here. Like now I understand why I should do this. And maybe it’s not me. Maybe it’s someone on my team, or maybe it’s a vendor like you, or whatever somebody is going to do this. How do I start? Right. Like if I’m not the Google analytics nerd, and I don’t understand tag manager, and, you know, I don’t know what all, what is the first thing I need to do or make sure my team does to like move in this direction. AY: (17:03) Well, first, before the doing part, I want to also speak to those out there who don’t want to become a data scientist, or don’t want to become a data engineer, but think they might need to, if you’re a founder or a team member, that’s not in the details and not somebody that’s maybe a savant with numbers, you don’t have to be that. That’s what we want to make sure there. The mindset is understanding that inside of data, there are answers there and that can really help you chart a path to success in your company, understanding how to work with the people. Well, first understanding that it’s really important to invest in your company and invest whatever kind of budget you may have at whatever level you’re at to getting clarity on your numbers and getting really good tracking in place and whatever reporting. Even if you’re in spreadsheet, hell right now that’s okay. At least you’re tracking certain things and reporting, but it’s, it’s okay. If, if you don’t have data background. And secondly, it’s also very difficult to maybe work with data scientists, or even understand how to hire one, which is why practice practice exists is we wanted to build that out for people and become an extension of their team. But it’s like, they know data is important. Know that you don’t have to be the, you know, don’t have to it’s if it’s to be it’s up to me type thing, but start asking the questions that we’re gonna go through here and start with tracking. MC: (18:13) Yeah. And yeah, we’re tracking. RV: (18:15) So before you get into tracking, just to, to Edify that, I would say, you know, this is something that, you know, cause AJ and I are, are all, you know, we’re very like, data-driven, this is one of the things that we want brand builders group to be the place where it’s like, we can prove, like we can show that this stuff works and we can track it and you can monitor and you can see it because so much of marketing and branding is like, yay, throw up a billboard, you know, like throw some money at it. And, and does it work? I don’t know, like, did it work or not? But yeah, so, so talk to me about, about tracking and again, specifically to personal brands, you know, like kind of keeping that context of what are some of the things that we should be doing, MC: (18:59) One of the foundational pieces for your tracking and Google analytics, it’s a free tool. It is something that is extremely powerful. We’ve got brands that are doing over 150 million in annual revenue, and they’re all using Google analytics, right? So it is an incredible tool that needs to be leveraged in your business. And like JJ said, if you’re not the one, if you’re the, you know, if you’re the thought leader or if you’re the face of the brand, it might not be you who needs to understand this, but you need to have somebody on your team. That’s owning this because it is the foundational aspect that can connect and collect all of the data around where your prospects came from, what they saw when they saw it, what they clicked and how they interacted with your brand before they decided to spend their first dollar. And all of that is a foundational piece to success. Yeah. AY: (19:46) I was just going to add to that as, as you also want to have that as a redundancy, because there’s other pieces of technology that we’re going to get into that are tracking data as well, but you have to find the source of truth. And by, by having Google analytics on everything that we can possibly and helps you without variability that gap analysis, right? So one is that Google analytics. And I want to be very specific in that, that doesn’t just mean having a coder, put the code on each page and be like, Oh yeah, I’m using Google analytics. That is not, I can’t accept that as a line that we had to raise the standard here. That means you’ve got to find a company or someone online that understands GA is certified in Google analytics and knows how to set up the advanced e-commerce tracking the triggers, the goals going inside of this engine and like building out everything that needs, that needs to be done for your, for your product or service, everything you’re doing for lead gen, all of that. So that’s one part of it. And then also using UTM. Yup. RV: (20:44) Alright. So fail. Everyone’s like okay. Messed that part up. But yeah, so, so, so it’s like version one point, I was like, get the code installed on your site, but you’re saying that you need to know, even if you don’t know how to do it, you need to know like there’s a lot more to it than that to really leverage the true power that’s available here. MC: (21:05) So, yeah. And here’s, here’s the reason why, okay, if you start a brand today and you don’t have this tracking setup, and then in two years, you’re at, you know, 5 million in annual revenue and you’re ready to hire a company like us to analyze your data. If you don’t have data, we can’t analyze it. If it has not been tracked, it does not exist. And so there are simple just buttons, like click buttons within Google analytics that aren’t defaulted as a selection. And if those aren’t collecting data, there’s no way for us to historically go back and find out who these customers were, where they came from and what their actions were. But if you, at this point, don’t have the revenue to go in and buy. AY: (21:48) Yeah, you got fun. And that got punched in can be very specifically, like if people go into their Google analytics and they’re looking at the channels, they’re like, well, 87% is indirect and then there’s like Facebook, and then there’s this. You’re like, Hmm, what’s that big bucket of direct well, that’s, that’s because the tool wasn’t set up to, to grab all these different streams and identify and label them separately so that you can be like, Oh, where do my best people come from? Does that make sense? MC: (22:14) So even if somebody’s not ready to go and analyze the data, just set up the system, right. In order to capture the data and two years in the future, you will thank yourself for having set that up properly. So that in the future, you’ve got two years of storytelling. Imagine not being able to understand or have information on what’s gotten you to this point and that’s all too often what we see. And so we’ll have to, no matter how big the brand is, we’ll start with companies doing 150 million. If they don’t have this tracking foundation in place, that’s where we start, go back to, we always go back to that. And we say, okay, you’re asking these questions. Where did the customers come from? How did they find me? AY: (22:57) What’s my true lifetime value? MC: (23:00) We can’t answer those without the foundational pieces being tracked. And so Google analytics, UTMs, if it’s something that you don’t already know how to do, or you don’t have somebody to do it, we have a couple different paths that we can take, right? We’ve got an educational piece where you don’t even have to work with us for data stuff. We have an educational course where people can go in and learn this stuff and go and turn it on without ever having to talk to a data scientist. And it’s just kind of the step by step educations that you can do yourself. Or you can hand off to somebody on your team to go and learn and implement so that you at least have that foundation for success. RV: (23:38) Yeah, Well it does. I don’t know how much the courses, but I’m, we’re going to buy it. We have, we are we’re we’re. So if you haven’t publicly announced that where you’re we will pay and be your first customer, because this is the, I think this is the future. I mean, this, how could this not be the future? Like at some point it’s going to come down to who can track where the clients are coming from and spend more money going to those places. Like, there’s just, now you threw out, you threw out a fancy, fancy word there. The UTMs. Okay. So what the heck is a UTM? Like what, why do we need to know it? And, and what, what do we need to know about a UTM? And then also I think my question specifically is how do I set one up? RV: (24:28) Like, where do I go to create one? And then I know we’re going to, we’re going to run out. We’re gonna run out of time, which. AY: (24:35) there’s so much more to talk about. I know there’s a lot here. Well, to be really tracking as the first piece of all of it, it’s like if we get a tracking, right, nothing else matters. AY: (24:44) And UTMs is a part of that. It really is. And it goes along with the whole Google analytics conversation and UTMs is urgent tracking mechanism. All it is, is a link specifically that is created for every single piece of marketing material that you do online, anything, blog posts, social posts, anything you’re doing needs to have a unique ID. And basically there’s little parameters in there. She can say, Oh, I sent it via an email. This was a subject line. This was the call to action button. You know, advertising ads, every single ad you run should have in unique UTM by tagging these individual things create that creates this big mapping, all these fishing lines out in the sea, where you can like, Oh, well this is where it came from. So you’re creating these identifiers that when you reel it into the dashboard, you’re like, Oh, well, 90% of my customers are coming from this 10% are over here. And they’re not even that great. I’m going to cut that and I can focus on this. So UTMs is simply it’s free, which is great news, easy to set up. And when I say easy, I mean, it is literally easy to set up. Cause you can do it through Google analytics. You can do it through our tools. MC: (25:45) It takes one minute to set up a UTM link. Like it is extremely basic. You just have to have the right structure to it, but in order to do it, it, it only takes a quick minute. So in the beginning you might take 30 minutes to an hour to understand why it works, how it works. And then subsequently every time you send out an email or a post or an ad, you just add that in. And it all gets tracked and aggregated through Google analytics and the easiest way for somebody to see the power of UTMs is go to your favorite brand, just like Google it. And then, you know, the ads that pop up at the top of Google, if you click on any of those, it doesn’t actually drive you to brand builders, group.com. It has 37 extra characters at the end with question marks and all these things go and look at it. And it actually says, source Google ads, medium this campaign for eCommerce brands, right? And you can actually look at other people’s UTM’s and how they’ve structured it, because all it’s doing is it’s saying where specifically, if I click on that link, where did I find it? How did I get there? RV: (26:52) And so basically a UTM is a longer URL that has parameters built into it that are set up uniquely to tell the story of where that person came from. Not just they came from Facebook, but they came from this Facebook post, not even a page, but this post or not from my ad campaign, from this ad, with this creative, like that kind of granular detail that you would know it was this ad with this picture is the one that people are clicking on. AY: (27:26) Exactly. Exactly. RV: (27:28) Wow. And so you, and then where you actually build that is either inside of like y’alls platform or inside a Google analytics. And you basically just kind of like, you’re saying, you have to have the right structure. Is it basically just source medium and campaign? Or is there like a whole bunch of them? AY: (27:44) There’s five. You don’t have to use all of them. I’m one of the last ones you don’t content or term you don’t have to use, but inside of Google analytics, it’s just a link creator. So they have a built one inside. We have one called track funnels.com, which helps you create them and organize them. So it’s free to do several different places. You just have to use that link On those specific. MC: (28:02) And the reason we said, there’s a specific structure, is it, there’s also naming conventions are extremely important because if you think about, RV: (28:11) Cause then you don’t remember, you can, you can have the data, but not know what it means. Cause you’ve got 75,000 links in there and going, I don’t, I don’t know what I have to be able to read the link. And it’s got to tell me the story. Yeah. MC: (28:23) Well even, even simple things like we’ll have clients come back to us and say, Hey, I’d like to understand how all of my top of funnel campaigns are doing with driving traffic and impressions, not conversions because we’re just generating awareness. And then we say, okay, great. How are you tracking that? And then say, Oh, we were not. Whereas other companies will say, well in every single ad that I’m running, that’s just an awareness campaign. It says T O F in there, top of funnel, right. Or we’ve got clients that say, I want to see how all of my emails are performing and how, how they’re generating revenue. And then when we go into the data, they’ve got email capital E lowercase mail, then they’ve got lower E capital M lowercase mail or E dash mail. And all of those will then be splintered as separate sources of data. Whereas if you just met with your team once and said, Hey, we’re just using it in this way. Everybody agree. It’s email all lowercase. We’re good to go. Then it creates clean data. So simple things like that can save you a lot of headaches down the road. And it’s, it’s a, it’s an internal conversation that takes 30 minutes to an hour. Everybody high fives, you have it documented in a Google sheet somewhere. And then anytime you create this in the future, you just refer back to it. Right. So simple principles that really Strong foundations of success in the future. RV: (29:45) Yeah. I mean, naming convention is something that we’re huge on for your marketing. We use it for our file structure, like where we save files. We use it for a marketing automation like infusion soft or whatever we use it for our Facebook ads. Unfortunately I don’t think we have a strong one in place yet, yet for our UTM. So that is going to be the next generation. So y’all, if you’re listening, here’s what I want you to do. Go to Praxis. PRA X I S Praxis dot brand builders, group.com Praxis stop brand builders, group.com. Y’all are hosting some free trainings that are a little bit longer than what we got time for here, about how to get this started specifically with the tracking analytics. At some point I want to have you guys back because I want it to, I want to know about tag manager and I want to know about after tracking and I want to know about interpreting the data and drawing insights. RV: (30:41) But I think the big idea for me today is that you got to get the tracking done, right? And if you’ve just, if that’s the one thing you get done today, then we have the rest of time to come back and figure everything else out. But if we don’t get that done today, like we’re hosed and, and we’re, we’re, we’re missing all this. So it’s the Praxis Praxis dot brand builders group.com. Guys, you freaking blow me away every time I talk to you. And I feel like, I feel like we have like a secret weapon, but by being friends with you, cause this is, this is, I’m just convinced this is the future. And I just really appreciate you guys and what you do. So thanks for being here. Thank you so much.

Ep 88: Building A Sustainable Speaking Business with David Avrin

RV: (00:06) 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: (01:02) So you have an opportunity. You’re about to learn from one of the first people and one of the most important mentors in my life. And certainly in the trajectory of my career, David Avrin has become one of my closest friends and he was one of the first people I met on my journey when I was just a young kid with a dream. And so technically, so here’s what David does today. He’s gonna talk, we’re gonna, I’m going to interview him to share with you his process. He has a very systematic process for acquiring keynotes and growing a keynote business. And we’ll talk about why that’s important, but as a speaker, he is one of the most in demand customer experience and marketing speakers in the world today. And he speaks all over the world, Singapore, Bangkok and tour bueno Situs, Srilanka Brisbane, Johannesburg, I mean, London, Barcelona, Dubai on and on and on. RV: (02:04) And he’s speaking for companies like Harley Davidson, Remax, PPG ups, and he’s the author of a couple of books. Okay. so it’s not who, you know, it’s who knows you visibility marketing and then his latest book, why customers leave and how to win them back, which was named by Forbes as one of the seven business books that entrepreneurs need to read. So he has done it and he has spent a lot of time teaching people like myself. And it, those of you that are members of ours, you know, when you go through our phase one experience and we talk about the brand DNA helix, and I talk about questions, like what have you earned the right to talk about? You’ll hear me quote, that that is directly from David Avrin. What problem do you solve? What do you do better than anyone else in the world? These are, these are things that I learned from this man. So brother, thank you for making some time to come on the show. DA: (03:01) Well, I am humbled. I am honored and, and isn’t it ironic over the years that when we look back to that was decades ago, when we all started our friendship, our relationship and how much we’ve learned from each other over the years, I, I loved the idea when the master becomes the student and the student becomes the master and you were a kid and you no longer now you have kids of your own. And and I love seeing where you are. I love being able to have these conversations and then letting other people listen into what it is that we talk about, but we continue to learn from each other because the world is changing. And so how we do what we do has to change as well. RV: (03:40) Yeah. Well, amen to that. And I think one of the things in recent years, and this is, this is where I kind of, you know, I definitely want to step into the student’s seat here again, because I’ve been so impressed. I mean, you, you kind of like, we’re a marketing consultant. And so you were advising companies on that, and then you were advising speakers on that, and then you kind of stepped into becoming a speaker and then you built this really fast speaking career. And one of the things that I love about how, how you’ve done it is, is, you know, too many people teach the business of speaking like, well, Hey, you throw up a website or you, you do a demo video and people just come or Hey, you write a book and people just come, but it’s not that way. It’s never been that way. And most people don’t have such a systematic process that they follow and, and watching you develop that I think has been inspiring for me because I think it’s something that is teachable and it’s scalable versus, Hey, you know, you gotta become famous. And then you’re a speaker. DA: (04:47) I think it’s the only thing that’s scalable. I mean, that’s, that’s the whole point of it. I think it’s, it’s, I think the tragedy of our profession, whether you are a professional speaker or you just speak as part of what you do to share your message and build your audience, whether it’s consulting or otherwise as well. I think the big tragedy of our profession is all of the false information of what it takes to be successful in doing this. And we have, and I think you’ll agree with this one. It always makes me smile a little bit that I think we’re the only profession for those of us who actually do this for a living where most people become speakers, because they’re encouraged to become speakers by people who have no idea what it’s like to be a speaker, right? It’s like, you have to tell that story. DA: (05:29) You got to go and inspire people. And all of those people say, listen, I just want to touch people’s lives. I want to, I want to share when to help inspire people and sheer joy, you know, it’s like, yeah, don’t quit your day job. I mean, it doesn’t mean that we can’t do that. It doesn’t mean we can’t inspire people, but the reality is this is a business and meeting planners. Aren’t going to pay you $10,000 for you to have a cathartic experience on stage. They’re going to pay you $8,500 for you to live your life’s dream, touching people’s lives. However, they will pay you to solve a problem of theirs now in doing so you can live your dream. You can, you can, you know, indulge your passion, but this is a business and speaking, isn’t speaking, isn’t a business. Getting the gig is the business. DA: (06:14) And that’s the key that most people don’t realize you and I both know that most people will enter and leave this profession within two years, because they’re literally starving because they took it. I took a class on storytelling or hand gestures, and why won’t my phone raise like pick up the freaking phone. And so what, what you talked about sort of very quickly, I don’t know that it was quickly. I’ve been doing this for over 20 years now. And I am a 20 year overnight success in that we spend a lot of time myself and my staff in learning what works and what doesn’t, and what doesn’t work is, is promoting your passion. And here’s what I, it it’s solving somebody’s problem. Now, if you can connect what you’re really good at and what you really love to do with a problem, somebody willing to pay to solve, you have magic. You have Nirvana, you have the chance of being successful in this business. RV: (07:08) I love that. I love that. What you said there about speaking, isn’t the business, getting the speaking gig is the business. And that’s like that one insight alone, I think, is just people overlooked DA: (07:25) Dramatically. We, we love inspiring people. We love teaching. We are by definition. I think all of your brand builders, of course, I’m part of your brand builders group as well. We’re all teachers, to an extent, aren’t we, we have something that we want to share with somebody. We believe something, we know something we’ve learned, and we want to impart that to others. And we can do it through consulting and online courses and books and everything else, but it’s not about us. And this is where this is where I will differ from some very big names who talk about it’s important that people buy your why. And I don’t think they buy your why. I think they buy their why. I think you have to be very clear on your why you have to know why you’re doing what you’re doing, but you have to connect it to their why, why are they buying? DA: (08:10) What is their problem? What is their challenge? What are they looking for? And not everybody has a problem. I mean, sometimes their problem. My problem is I just need a bigger flat screen TV than Phil does down the street. That’s an, that’s a, that’s a that’s my, my problem is I need a bigger snowblower than my, in my neighbors. But but speaking in general for no matter what you do, if speaking as a part of it, there is a process and the system. And, but don’t confuse that with automation. Cause I’m not an automation guy. I am everything for us. It’s very highly personalized. And I think part of our success in finding and converting paid speaking gigs is that we are very systematic in our approach, but very personalized in our outreach. Does that make sense? Say that again. You’re very say that again. DA: (08:57) We’re very, we’re very systematized in our approach. We have a process in this system that helps us be efficient with our time. It helps us to make sure that the activities that we’re engaged in are effective activities. They are strategic. We know why we’re doing what we’re doing and when we’re doing it, but how we’re doing it is not about how many can we do as quickly as we can. It’s very easy to get a list of associations, craft a general email and send it out to everybody in 45 seconds. And it’s the worst possible approach ever because you’re just going to be thrown in the bucket with everybody else who spams them with that information. So that’s super efficient, but it’s not effective. Part of what makes us very effective. And we are, is that we take the time to look up every prospect. DA: (09:52) That would be a good fit for what I do right now. I talk about customer experience as a meaningful, competitive advantage. I speak to corporate audiences and association audiences about how to achieve advantage over their competitors by being remarkably easy to do business with. And so as we call that list and go through and see which one would be an appropriate audience for me, like if somebody is in business and they’re in a competitive marketplace, it’s a great audience. So the national for the international glove manufacturers, which is a big deal, of course, during the Corona virus, it’s a thing I’ve spoken for them before. That’s a great audience for me, but the national society of operating room nurses, not a good audience for me. They’re not in business. They’re not competing against other amazing people, but not an approach for me. So strategically we would never pitch them because it’s wasting time. Cause they would never hire me. So we’re very selective in terms of we will buy lists or on the, on the association side, on the, on the government side, on the corporate side. RV: (10:58) So can we, can we, can we tell about that? I wanna, I wanna cause I wanna, I want to hit that part first. Cause I do think a lot of people miss that step and, and I think even that as a first step, there’s a lot of people that go, Oh my gosh, I didn’t know. You could do that. And then the ones that do it, they buy a list. They send a broadcast email to everybody, nobody buys and they say this to them. DA: (11:21) It didn’t work. Right. RV: (11:24) How do you get the list though? Let’s like, sure, do you, where do you go together? DA: (11:28) Let me back up. First of all, not only does it not work, but you’ve actually just poisoned the well for future outreach that you’re gonna do. So there’s listen. A lot of places. I will be honest. My staff does a lot of this. So I’ve got you know, Tiffany’s met with me for almost nine years. So there’s association list. You can look them online. A lot of them are free. The Hoover’s list, which is the Dunn and Bradstreet for of us who grew up in business dun and Bradstreet is probably the most current UpToDate corporate database of major associates or not association, corporate executives, personnel it’s updated constantly. And so the mailing list sort of part of that is called Hoovers. So if you look at Hoovers, it is not inexpensive. You know, it might be, I think as much as $3,000 or so for a year. DA: (12:21) But, but for many of us, that’s 15 minutes on stage with one gig, the advantage elite to sort of go through both of these. Cause I think this is really meaningful for those who are, who are listening the association side, they tend to pay a little bit less, but every association, every industry has an annual meeting or multiple meetings look around the room wherever you are right now, listening to this or watching this, everything you see in that room. Somebody makes that, and they have an annual meeting. So the lights and the switches and the, and the fixtures, everything you see there, a there an association and they meet every year, look them up. And here’s what we do. We go to one of the associations that we go through a little matrix. So with everyone we look up, we look up, when is their next meeting? DA: (13:06) We, we market in their, in, in our form. When was their last meeting, who were their speakers? So we’re you and I have been around the business for a long time. We know who’s basically making what, if you don’t know, just go online and look them up. You can get a general idea of what their fee is. So if I see some very big names, if I see a Rory Vaden or a Jay bear or a, or a Sally Hawk said, I have a pretty good idea of what they paid for that person. Last year, we look at when their, when their next meeting is coming up, coming up. So we get all that information phone numbers, everything else. And then that’s in our database and our CRM we’ll use that to craft a personalized pitch letter. Now we’re not writing them all from scratch. DA: (13:48) 95% of is done, but we will tailor their name, the name of their event. We’ll pitch me as a good prospect for it. And it’s about how many of those can we crank out, but they’re very personalized. They’re different one at a time and we’re sending them one at a time. But, but think about it this way. If you were able to do, maybe it takes you 20 minutes or so, and you could do maybe three an hour and you treated this like a job. Cause it’s a job that people sleep until noon. You know, I mean, success is being willing to do the things that other people aren’t willing to do. Where did I learn? Where did I learn that and take the stairs. And so if you treat this like a job and safe it four hours a day of just pitching and you could do three an hour. So that’s three times four that’s 12, a day, times, five days a week. That’s 60 organizations who now know who you are, who wouldn’t have known otherwise multiply that in a month. That’s 240 organizations. You’ve with a personalized, tailored pitch, which makes you stand out from others as well as somebody said to us, how are you converting such a big portion, big percentage of the pitches that you’re, that you’re sending out. I want to hear that quickly. And I, and I say, I don’t think we are, but RV: (15:09) Yeah. So, and I do want to hear about that process, but one of the things I think that stands out to me and what you described is there, isn’t a magic list. It’s not like there’s some secret list that you know about that no one else knows about it’s the same place you’d buy any lists, the business journal, you Google stuff like it’s, there’s not like a magic clean list that has it. And some of those lists are probably inaccurate and you’re sorting through some of that. And when you send the email, you get a bounce back and you got to call them DA: (15:38) While we do do some of the research, we look up something and think, well, that takes some time. Sure. And for what we get paid, we’re not selling widgets. You know, if you’re at, whether you’re at $7,500 or $15,000 for a keynote, we make a really good living for what it is that we do. It is worth that investment. If you’re doing that and you’re doing 12 a day or five a day, it’s more than you’re doing now. And you’ve got a hundred pitches. If you pull out three or four gigs in a month, that’s more than 99% of the people in the world will make, this is a job. You got to treat it like a job. And so, but you also have to be very strategic in how you pitch. When we craft our letters. For example, we give them an easy out at the end of the very first paragraph we say, I think David David ever would be a great fit for your, your event, blah, blah, blah. DA: (16:28) And this coming up on this date so that we know, they know we did some research. If you want to skip the rest of this letter, click on this link to watch his preview video. You’ll know in a few short minutes, why he’s one of the most popular customer experience speakers in the world today? We give them a digital link in an analog letter letter, essentially, right too. I’ll say that again, just because it kind of jumped down in case you want to take this quote, it’s a digital Lincoln, an analog letter that allows them to skip everything else to skip ahead. Cause everything we do is about getting them to watch my preview video. If they, that is our one key factor that is our leading indicator. People will watch my preview video, which is pretty good. It’s got me speaking around the world. DA: (17:13) If they watch that I’ve got a good shot of getting the gig. If they don’t watch it, I have zero chance. So there’s a whole bunch of other things that we don’t have time to go into in terms of what they need to make this successful. But in terms of our process, we will go through. Now, let me talk about the other side. So that’s the association site and it’s just it’s work. It’s being clear on who your audience is. Don’t pitch and waste time on ones that aren’t make sure it’s personalized. And your whole goal is one of two things. Either get them on the phone or get them to watch your video. And if you can get one of those two things, you got a good chance. Knowing the corporate side, they tend to have a bigger budget. The problem is, and this is the Hoover’s list and others is they don’t post anything in terms of their events because they’re not public. DA: (17:57) And so you’re kind of going in a little bit blind in terms of pitching a specific event, but we have a strategy for both of those. So our strategy is it’s timing, it’s followup. And I’m happy to give you some of what that is. I mean, there’s certain days that we pitch in certain days that we don’t write no pitching on Fridays. Cause even if somebody likes you, they’ll forget about you by Monday, it’s all trial and error. Friday is when we’re, we’re filling out RFPs, which is contrary once again to what most speakers will tell you don’t fill out RFPs. They’re just for breakouts. Nobody pays. I made six figures on RFPs last year, six figures, but we have a template. So we just cut and paste. Here’s our takeaways. Here’s the, you know, what are the three takeaways from session, outcomes, outcomes, all stuff. DA: (18:47) And so we just cut and paste and we’ve got it now. Cause we’ve done so many. If it’s a healthcare organization, if it’s retail or restaurant or, or financial services, which we do a lot of, we can cut and paste and get those in. Some of those have turned into keynotes, but what else are you doing on a Friday? Now, granted, there’s a lot in, in, through the brand builders group. Of course you, you teach a lot of great systems and processes, but the best way to get in front of people as you build your audience, as you build your visibility is to treat the speaking part as a business. And we do so, and we’ve had good success because of it. RV: (19:21) Yeah. You know, and I think that’s, it’s really interesting. I say this a lot to people as much as we’re virtual and you know, automated and scalable and all these things that we talk about, the there’s still, nothing does such an effective job as converting someone who is a complete stranger, never heard of you to an absolute lifelong raving fan in one hour as being in the same room, physically with you watching you do a P a well-polished crafted and delivered keynote, which there’s a lot to it, but that is the shortest distance between stranger and raving fan. Now we try to emulate that with a webinar experience online DA: (20:09) And you can to an extent, and I do that as well. We use all the vehicles in venues that we can, yeah, RV: (20:15) It does. It does to some, some, some fraction or percentage of that. But I think that the tricky thing about the speaking business, like what you’re saying that I really love is I go, it is a job. You have to treat it as a job. And the bomber is that it’s not super scalable. Like you have finite inventory. Now you could still make a couple million bucks. DA: (20:37) Maybe I can be a one stage at a time. I can be on one airplane at a time. But that said, the effectiveness during that interaction is, is Speaker 4: (20:48) Infinitely greater than the, you can, you can have 10,000 people on a call or you can have 500 people in an audience, but the impact you’re going to have on those people is going to be that much more so. And nobody knows that better. And I’ll brag for you for a minute. Then Rory Vaden, who at a very young age, as a young kid was top 10 in the world for world championship of public speakers. The next year, he was second in the world in the world, like 25,000 people started, but there’s something about charisma and there’s something about about communication and that, and yet you’re not equals. Here’s the other thing that that is so beneficial for what we do. When you have an opportunity to get that stage, you are not equals, you are not meeting Ida. You are elevated both figuratively. Speaker 4: (21:33) And literally they’re seeing somebody who is a passionate messenger for whatever it is that they’re espousing and you have a captive audience and they’re listening to you and if you are practicing and it doesn’t mean that you’re overly rehearsed, but you know what you’re saying, you’re teaching what you do. There is a power in that. And if you are, as we are generally, pardon the gender specific reference. If we’re the good guys and we’re teaching something that is important, that’s going to help them and benefit their lives. There is a power in that and it’s, and it’s, and it’s using that power for good, as opposed to using those super powers for evil. But in terms of galvanizing them as followers, as somebody who wants to know more, that’s why people line up for us afterwards to get a signed copy of our book and to take a picture with us. Speaker 4: (22:23) It’s surreal, right? It’s not real. Most people don’t have jobs where people clap for them. At the end of the day I come home and my, my beautiful wife is like, Hey, big deal, go take out the trash, like planting trees, my backyard yesterday. But that moment there is something surreal. There’s something powerful. And it certainly energizes us. And I am passionate about what I do, but this isn’t my passion. It’s my job. My passion is my children. I love what I do. I’m doing exactly what I should be doing, but my passion is my family. And so that, that part of, as sort of dovetail of what you were saying of being able to be on stage, it’s a really effective way to deliver your content in a way where everybody is touch. You, you can’t sit back in your office and throwing a tennis ball against the wall during a, you know, during a webinar. That doesn’t happen when we’re on stage. RV: (23:19) Yeah. And, and I, you know, I was processing it too, is like, I think speaking is the greatest job in a world, but it’s not a great business because it doesn’t actually scale beyond you, but it’s the best form of marketing for a business that ever could be it’s. So it’s like you have this great job on the front end and Speaker 4: (23:42) Treat it right. It feeds into whatever the, whatever RV: (23:46) The business is on the backend. That is the scalable, that is the scalable thing. But that front part of it, of just going, it starts, it starts with a list. It starts with figuring out who to reach out to, and then tell us about the followup process a little bit, Dave. So you have that first outreach, your first outreach, there is a, is a, is a tailored email. That’s what I hear you. Right? Speaker 4: (24:10) We actually have a schedule and I don’t mind sharing it with you. We have a video series that we weave to do a, a live bootcamp that we just don’t do any more than we recorded it. But here’s our basic process we pitch on on Tuesday and Wednesday. Sometimes on Thursday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday pitches might go out. It’s the first email. And as soon as we do in our CRM system, as soon as we send that first email, we set a task to follow up in two weeks with another one. If we get no response, we’ll follow up in two weeks, but here’s something different than we do. So on Friday we actually send a hard copy brochure letter, follow up saying, Hey, we sent you an email last week. We send them on Fridays for a reason, because it’s a hard snail mail. Speaker 4: (24:55) It’ll arrive on Tuesday or Wednesday of the next week. So now we’ve gotten two touches one week apart, one virtual, one physical. If we get no response from them in our CRM system, we’ll get a tickler two weeks later, that will say follow up with so and so, so we have a second email and here’s, what’s interesting. Our response for the second email is three times what it is for the first email, to an extent, I think people go, Oh gosh, I was going to get back to her or whatever, because we get, we all get overwhelmed every day. We try and work really hard to make sure it’s not spam, right? So the second one emails are very simple. One, Hey, sent you a pitch, but David ever would be a good fit. Let us know if there if we can find a time to talk and, and we’ll get response, it doesn’t mean they all say yes. Speaker 4: (25:42) Some say, Oh, I’m so sorry. We’re not meeting till whenever or something else. If they don’t respond to that, we do not reach out a fourth time. So it’s two virtual, one physical, and it’s all within a two week period. If we don’t hear back, we don’t reach out again. We just put them back in there and we set a responder for the following year. Now here’s the most important part, and this is our big secret that I’m going to give out to everybody and I’m not selling it. Oh. And, and this is people who paid thousands to come to our boot camp, which we don’t do anymore. It’s the win because our business tends to book eight to 18 months out in the U S overseas. They’ll do a shorter time period. When I’m, I was just in Mumbai India, we launched our book out there. Sometimes they’ll book six weeks out, but here we generally do that. So RV: (26:32) 17 to 18 months, that’s what he’s 18 months Speaker 4: (26:35) Sort of when the window book out. But here’s when they start the process. This is the important part. If we look up an organization and let’s just pretend people are listening to this right now, and it’s may, and their event is coming up in July, they’ve already got their suite. We’re not going to pitch them. Now if their event is in July or August, because don’t forget about us. So what we do is we always give them 60 days from their last event before we pitch this, honestly, for those of you listening, who will do something, this is worth a hundred, $200,000, just this tip of knowing when to pitch them. So if we reach somebody and their events coming up, we just put a tickler in the system for 60 days. From that date, it’ll pop up on our screen. We know into pitch them. Speaker 4: (27:21) If we pitched them too soon, they forget about us because they’re already in the throws of their event, scheduling take a monk off. And then they’ll start thinking about when to form their committee to work on the following year. And so it’s been very successful. We’ve learned it’s taken nine years to, to decipher this part of it. So whenever their event is 60 days from that is the day that we pitch where sometime within the next couple of months after, but never before that. And that alone gets us so many more responses. And everybody’s in the system. Our goal is to get them to click on my video. And then once, if they say within that two week period, if they come back with any kind of interest, this is about taking a contact and turning it into a lead and a lead into a prospect and a prospect into a paid speaking gig. Speaker 4: (28:11) And we know what influences each step of us. Initially, there were contacts or just somebody we have in the system. The minute we email them, they become a lead. And if they respond in any way, other than how did you get my information, please stop emailing me. They become a prospect. And so if they say, yeah, we’re interested, send us some information. We’ll then, then all the rains are offering and we love them up. We send them a signed copy of the book. We set up a I’ll do a virtual, a BombBomb video email message to them. We will send them a try and set up a followup conversation because here’s the reality. I can’t let everything be equal when I know I’m a finalist. I don’t cross my fingers because my competition is guys like Rory Vaden it’s it’s it’s women like Connie Podesta and Sally Hogshead and Peter sheen and just amazing speakers. Speaker 4: (29:07) I can’t let everything be equal because my competitors are phenomenal. So that’s when we really, when we know somebody has an interest, we send them information. I do a video email that tells me where I can talk to them specifically and tell them what I know about their industry. And when I do a BombBomb video email, for those of you understand where bomb bomb, it’s a horrible name for a company, but it’s a great service because we can track the email. We’re over 80% success in landing the gig. But at that point we’ve already know that they have an interest in me. You’re saying if they’re, if start opening your video RV: (29:42) Emails, then you’re like, you’re Speaker 4: (29:44) No, no. I’m saying those who I record a BombBomb video email and send it to a prospect, consort express, some interest, we convert over 80% into paid speaking gigs because I’m granted, they’re already interested. The point is we are methodical about our process. But we’re very personalized in how we do what we do. We just need to be efficient with our time, because most pitches I don’t get. But even when, even when I don’t and they said, we’re going to do you for next year. And my staff will, you know, cause to what extent their part of their compensation is, is a commission and they’re frustrated. It says, okay, I need to pay my mortgage next year too. We play the long game to create a sustainable business in this business is absolutely rare. But to do so and much of what I’ve learned from Marie and AIJ in terms of process, we have to, we treat this like a business and we get, I get up every morning and I look at my beautiful wife and my, my, my absurd house and my high-maintenance children and I get my butt. RV: (30:57) Oh my gosh. That’s so funny. Yeah, I mean, I think that’s probably the, the, the, the, it seems like the big, consistent part here is methodical about the process, but personalized about the pitch. And that is, that is so powerful. And then, like you’re saying playing the long game, I mean, the one thing that AIJ always says that I found to be so true, particularly in the speaking business, not just personal brand at large, but in the speaking business is like, if somebody engages with you, like if you get to that point that they’re engaging with you and you send them a book, if you just stay in touch with that person, they will eventually book you. It may not be this year. It may not be next year, but if they have engaged with you at all, it’s like, eventually that person is going to book you just because at some point it becomes easy for them to do it because they trust you just for the sake of the matter that you have been around forever. Speaker 4: (32:05) Right? Well, and sometimes those people book you and they no longer work for the same place that they worked before. You just rubber organization. And then they book you. RV: (32:16) Yes. When they book you and then they move and then they book you again for the exact same. Speaker 4: (32:21) We had a thing last January, not this January a year ago, January, I did. I had two gigs that Tiffany and my office had been working on for three years. And it was just, it was weird, but literally three years that she’d been working on both of them and two very big organizations, and it’s not like she was bugging them. It’s just, she pitched them. We didn’t get the gig and put them back in the system. We pitched them again the next year, sometimes it was a tweak or it was a new keynote tide or something else. And ultimately it booked and she made the point that she’s not like I’m going crazy. She’s like just, it comes up in my system. We do a crafted pitch and we don’t get it. We pitch them again next year because the organization isn’t going into wasn’t going away. Speaker 4: (33:03) So I get down to Phoenix. I’m, I’m speaking for this organization. I walk in the door and the guy says to me, he goes, your assistant is a pit bull. And I just, she has persistent. And of course it went great. And they booked me a second time since which is, which is wonderful. But I, and to be clear, I love what I do. You love what you do, but the only way I get to do it, as much as I want to do it is by treating it like a business. And so the delivery part of it is the part that we all love. Even when I, when I’m there and they’re asking me like, well, how much more for this? And Tiffany in my office, she tells client. She says, Oh, you’re just paying for him to leave his kids. He loves it. He’ll, he’ll do as much as you want while he’s there. You want him to facilitate your lunchtime panel discussion. You want to break out, even though he loves this, but, but the fee is for him to leave, to leave his family, but he loves doing this. So we very much treat like a business and have been able to grow and scale in terms of the the other offerings as well. RV: (34:08) I absolutely love that. So I got one more question for you before that. Where should people go if they, if they wanna learn about Dave Avar? And if you have a video, I mean, if you have a video course somewhere, we’ll put a link to that. Speaker 4: (34:22) Sure. Here, my speaking and consulting, look, we have a David [inaudible] dot com and it’s a V R I N. David alburn.com and my, my greatest initiative and part of what I learned from Rory Vaden, as well as I, every wonderful subscription model initiative that I’ve launched, I think is the most powerful work I’ve ever done. If you look at customer experience, advantage.com, you can see some samples, great URL, just customer experience, advantage.com take a look and and reach out. I’m not hard to find and look my name up online, and I’ve got videos and, and everything else, but I appreciate the opportunity with my, my little brother, my best buddy, for all these years. I’ve loved watching your success and in holding and squishing your babies. And I couldn’t be more impressed and proud with of what you’ve done and who you are. So there’s me sucking up to you a little bit, but how fun is this when you think about where we were 20 plus years ago? RV: (35:29) I mean, it’s, it’s crazy, Dave, and, and I’m so grateful for you. I mean, I, I literally just in so much of what teaching now is built upon the tenants and the principles and foundations that you shared with me that, you know, I paid you in chips and appetite, Speaker 4: (35:48) Nacho cheese. Yeah. I was to say, RV: (35:52) And that we now sell for thousands of dollars. Speaker 4: (35:58) We’re all helping each other, but isn’t that, isn’t that the best part about the brand builders group and everything else that you do is there is a, there’s a community of people who are learning and sharing best practices. And some of them will ultimately become best practices because they’re new practices. And until we realize what works and what doesn’t, but what a perfect time to get into this business, but what you do and what UNH and your team do is you help people slice 10 years off their learning curve and to be able to, to share their message and their, and their brand and build all of that and do it in a shorter period of time, it gets them to the port where they can do the work that is impactful much, much sooner. And and I applaud you for that. RV: (36:47) Well, thank you. And so here’s, my last little thought is if, if, if there were somebody listening right now, right? Think of me, think of me 20 years ago, or even yourself, you know, 20 years ago, in many ways it was like just stepping into the industry. Now they kind of, they have the dream, right? Like Speaker 4: (37:05) What, you know, what, what is the, RV: (37:08) What is the one thing that you feel like they, you know, they need to know, or they need to, they need to hear in terms of, you know, being able to go, this can become a sustainable way to feed your family and make a difference in the world. Speaker 4: (37:27) You know what I, I, and I, I want you to listen and take this in the right way, because it will make sense. It’s not about you, but it’s not in lieu of you. Does that make sense? So it is about them. It’s what can you do for them? But it’s what is special in you? What you’ve learned, what you can do, your unique gifts and how you can apply that to better somebody else’s life or their business. So I think the biggest mistake people make is they get so caught up in their own story and who they are that they forget. There’s an old exercise that says, take everything you’ve written about yourself and your sales sheets, your brochures, your website, and look at all the content and everything you say about yourself. You highlight in green and everything you say about your customers or clients or prospects and their life and their business. Speaker 4: (38:16) And when you highlight in yellow and they’re supposed to be more yellow than green, but there never is. Cause we do most of our time talking about ourselves. It has to be about them, but it’s not in lieu of you. So it’s not just what is there, what is your unique way of helping them, your unique that you can apply to better their situation or life. So they’re both very important. The challenge that most have is, are so focused on their passion. You, I just want to impact people. I just want to spread joy. People are going to pay for that, but they will. If you can do that in a way that helps them. So the advice I would give is, is, is uni clarity on the front end? What are you really good at? And how does that impact somebody else in a positive way? Speaker 4: (39:04) And that’s the key to the messaging is what do, it’s not what you do. It’s what they get and how you do it is important. And some people will be too, there’ll be too stringent in through this thing. It’s not about you. It’s all about them. It’s not all about them, but it is about them. But, but it’s, it’s what you can do. So don’t focus all on. You. Don’t focus on them, but it’s, it’s be clear on the front end and feel free to, to work with others in online chats, with your social group, your, your mastermind groups and others to try things out. But ultimately it has to be, what’s slipped down to what it is you provided. I love it. Well, thank you brother. We appreciate you. And I appreciate you as well to you and your family and your lovely, amazing kids and yours as well. My friend [inaudible].

Ep 86: Embracing Vulnerability as Your Superpower with Dave Hollis

What if you’d worked hard so hard to create a brand with all the right optics and suddenly, it all came crashing down? Dave Hollis, today’s guest, experienced this when his wife Rachel wrote her renowned book, Girl, Wash Your Face. Rather than having the devastating effects he feared, Dave instead witnessed more authentic connections […]

Ep 84: Using Elevated Realism to Build the Visual Identity of Your Brand with Nick Onken

RV: (00:01) You are about to meet one of my favorite friends, one of my most creative friends, and in, in in some ways one of my most famous friends, but I think it’s like he’s, he could, he’s like the,, the person that is still in some ways undiscovered outside of his trait, which he is a legend in a Nick Onken. And I just think Nick is the coolest guy, has the coolest brand. He’s a world renowned photographer, so that’s his trait and he is a legend in that space. He has photographed personalities like Justin Bieber and Tom Hanks and little John and Jessica Alba. He’s done shoots for global campaigns for international brands like Nike and Coca Cola and Adidas. His work’s been published in magazines like Conde Nast traveler. Cosmo Marie Claire. Like he’s also the host of NION radio podcast where he’s interviewed people like Usher and Scooter Braun and Donna Karan. RV: (01:06) He’s been featured in Fast Company, Huffington post, MTV, and literally his work has just been featured everywhere. He’s also traveled to over 60 countries, seven continents. He’s an author, he’s the author of the travel photography book called Photo Trekking. He is, you know, probably the primary, I guess I would say primary photographer for Lewis Howes, of course, a close friend of ours. And I think yeah, Nick’s just entire personal brand is devoted to inspiring the world to activate their creativity. And it’s like he’s just amazing and you’re about to, you’re about to meet him. So, Nick, welcome to the show. Thanks for having me. Nice to meet y’all. So buddy this is one of, one of the, one of the many reasons why I love you is I feel like you’re really good at something that I don’t consider myself naturally very good at, which is just the visual identity. RV: (02:03) You know, not even just photography, but the visual expression of a brand. And there’s a concept that you shared with us. Well with me about elevated realism. Can you talk about you know, and you know, we don’t have to just stay in the lane of photography, but I’m kinda thinking about just, you know, the, the people listening their, their personal brands and just like building their, their visual presence, whether it’s online or in print or everywhere. But I think one of your uniquenesses is this concept of elevated realism. Can you just explain what that is? Yeah. So, and this is great because I think this is kind of a concept that we, that I’ve used a lot in advertising for big brands for like Coca-Cola and you know, in that world it’s called lifestyle photography is certain to NO: (03:00) A certain extent where you’re kind of manufacturing this, this aspirational world, but lifestyle, like you’re still kind of doing everyday things. And then you combine that with celebrity portraiture in editorial and, and you kind of get this mix of like elevation. You get this mix of, of, you know, authentic realism. So I kind of translated that over to the personal brand from just from doing all this work and what I learned throughout working with all these people. And so, and these brands. And so elevator realism really is that creating an aspirational look which you’d find in a magazine or an ad but also feels real. It feels authentic because you know, as you know to be, to build your personal brand, you want to be guiding people through a process. You want to be seen as a guide and you know, you want, you don’t want to be too far out of reach, but you also want to be relatable. And so that’s kind of the idea of elevated realism is like you’re creating an aesthetic that’s aspirational but yet relatable at the same time. And you know, for me, I, I like, I create storytelling assets around this. So we build, it’s usually driven around a concept of who you are and your brand. So after they’ve worked with you to develop you know, to develop these, these ideas, these concepts of who this person, you know, who they are authentically, then we kind of, we come and create the the creative from that. So RV: (04:27) Interesting. Yeah. So do they come to you like, like one of the exercises we do with people in phase phase one of course you’ve been to our phase one event that we at the very end of phase one, like post that phase one event, we go through brand characteristics lists and we just kind of come up with like words that sort of capture the essence of a person. Is that kind of what you’re talking about here is like, like how do you capture, or what exercises do you go through or take someone through to kind of like clarify what, what energy or what emotion or what they’re trying to convey. And it sounds like you do that first and then you figure out how to stage the shoot. NO: (05:11) Yeah, absolutely. So I have a story diagnostic sheet that I start with, which is probably about 10 to 15. I think it’s 10 to 15 questions that the client fills out and it’s, it’s everything from around like what’s the, the message, the vision, the mission, the message, how do you help people. And it kind of gets people thinking within that. And a lot of times sometimes they’ll work with your team or you know, if they’re working with other people or they’ll just fill it out themselves. It kind of depends on who. But then some of the other questions that come into it are like, you know, what are your activities? Do you love? Like what what kind of locations, tell your story, what kind of props help tell your story, what kind of, you know, one of them is like, what’s your favorite emoji? Like just cause they get people thinking expression, you know, some things. And then we kind of take that sheet and we’d go over their answers and then we build a week, RV: (06:03) Build the creative of the shoot out of that. So say like, see, like I mean with Louis, with our, our last shoot was in Turkey. Yeah. With all the balloon, the hot air balloons and stuff like, and the HELOC was the helicopter helicopter. I mean y’alls freaking shoots are Epic dude that the Iceland shoot. I mean he still uses pictures from that Iceland shoot from a few years ago. And that the Turkey shoot with the hot air balloons was so NO: (06:30) Just like magnificent. Thank you. Thank you. And the whole idea behind that was like rising to your greatness. And I pitched him that kind of, you know, he was like, we’re going back and forth around it. And I was like, well what about the idea of shooting with you in capita, Nokia with all these hotter balloons in the background? Because the whole concept of rising to your greatness is really up yet obviously you know him. That’s like who he is, helps everyone rise to their greatness. So that’s, that’s the concept that we pulled out of that. And then, you know, we did some other Epic James Bond type of stuff with the helicopter and things like that. But then, you know, I had, you know Bo Easton? RV: (07:04) Yeah. NO: (07:04) So, yeah, he hired me to do a shoot and we did, you know, his whole football thing. But he’s also got as busy, you know, he’s more his business and like his, his thought leadership now. So one of the concepts that we created, cause like family is so big to him. Mmm. And so we were like, okay, well let’s shoot you with your family on a football field. So we’re not like saying, Oh, I’m like fuck totally football, where like hinting at that background, not story element, but we’re focusing on him with his family. And so we kind of, you know, and he was the hero of all the shots and in a certain sense in terms of like what the focus was and how we were, you know, composing the shots and how we were organizing and how I was directing everyone within the shots. And then, you know, so they’ve used a lot of those to kind of like show that family man concept that, that story that we’re telling. With that. So, you know, it really comes down to simple. RV: (07:58) It’s like as simple as that. Like you’re, I mean that, that’s just such a simple idea of just like you’re telling a story of who the person is or like what, like who either who they are, what they’re about, just sort of subtly like with the background or where the location is. And you know, like the kind of props maybe that show up in there. NO: (08:18) Yeah. So the, the location and the props are all kind of just hinted in the space in the background while the focus remains on the person because obviously like the person is the product and the hero. So we, we we focus on that, but we utilize the environment to tell that story. So say for instance, like Chris harder, he’s a super book nerd. He loves books. And so we had, I came up with this idea, it was like, let’s pull all the books off of like all of the shelves and put them in his, in the living room. And we just books all around him. And then we just had him sitting there reading reading books, reading one of his favorite books. But then, you know, I’d have him look up at, so it was like RV: (08:55) We had this like eye contact, but he’s surrounded by books. Right. So it’s still focused on him. And that’s one reason why Chris and I get along, we share that, we share that, that passion for learning and reading. I love, I love Chris. What a cool, that’s so cool. Yeah. So you know, and that’s kind of a big piece of, that’s the elevator realism that I’m talking about. It’s the, you know, the way that I shoot it also comes through in like the lighting that I use, the way that I direct, the way that I, you know, there’s all these little pieces to it that come together in the moment of the actual shoot. So you have the prep and then you have the actual shoot. I mean we’ve worked together so like you’ve been able to experience kind of the of bro and like, and this is crazy. RV: (09:37) Like, I mean, the photos you took of me, we’re so good. I mean, I, I, I don’t know why. Like, I don’t, I don’t have a trained enough eye to go like, Oh this is the difference between my shot with Nick and my shot with other photographers. But it was just like somehow you captured like my energy, my personality. And it was like businessy but, but, but conversational like it just just blew my mind. So talk about directing the shoot a little bit and you know, not everyone’s going to be able to work with you. So, so I mean if some of y’all are listening, if like if you can, if you can do it like just freaking hire Nick, it’s unbelievable. But the concepts here I think are also like you could shoot it with your own, you know, like some people are just starting out, they don’t have a ton of money or whatever. RV: (10:29) Like you have a process here that I think it’s cool about the story part. And then when you get to the direction, talk to us about the direction and, cause here’s one thing and I’ll share this tip with everybody. I mean I’ve done, I’ve probably done at least a few dozen photo shoots in my life. Maybe a hundred, you’re the first person ever that put music on during the photo shoot. And I re that stuck with me as such. A simple like that is such a simple, was such a simple part of directing where I was like, you are such a pro of just going like, what’s the music that captures the energy that you know, you’re, you’re wanting to like give off. So talk to us about direction a little bit. How do we do that for ourselves? Or how do we direct our photographer to do it? RV: (11:15) Or like what are just some of the things you think about? Yeah. Well, I mean that’s, that’s such an interesting question because there, I mean, it takes a long time to become, to understand how to direct and I’m still learning, I’m still getting better at it. But that’s one thing with, you know, hiring the right photographer, you’ve got to kind of see what, like their, you know, see their subjects in their work. I mean, as with anything to see what they’re pulling out of their subjects first. But when it gets into directing, you know, for me, I like energy. I like this, this constant flow of energy. That’s why I bring music into it because it loosens people up, it gets them moving and once they get moving, they start to get out NO: (11:54) Of their head. And then once they’re out of their head, then you know, then you can really kind of move. And the thing is, is everybody’s going to take a bad picture. You just shoot a lot more and then we just delete those. So, you know, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll a lot of times just get people moving, get people doing different things, even if it’s not a good shot. Because in, in that respect, if, if you’re moving, once you get people into that flow state of just being, getting used to being in front of the camera it gets, they get, they get, they’re able, they’re more comfortable able to, you know, feeling free enough to move. I also try to use a lot of positive reinforcement as I’m shooting as well. Yeah. And then, and then I also have to keep in mind what I’m trying to like, how to compose the shot, what lighting I’m trying to use and what the lighting’s doing. NO: (12:40) And so I have like a thousand things going on in my head as I’m clicking that camera. As I’m looking through that, the lens and thinking of like, okay, composition, motion, action. You know what, I don’t want this. What action do I want this person to do and do I want to look into the camera? You know? And so it’s like I’m constantly throwing different things out at PM. And that just takes practice. You know, for me it’s taken, I’ve been doing this for 15 years and I’ve worked in, everybody’s different, every subject is different, you know, different people have different energies. Some people just like walk on and they just like bring it and like bring all the energy. And I’m like, not even really doing much, but then there’s other people who are not as experienced. And so can we talk about that? NO: (13:20) I want to talk about that cause that, that fear of being in front of the camera, like that’s a real, that’s a real thing. And I don’t know why, but it’s like, why do we have such a fear of being in front of the camera and what can we do, whether it’s on a photo shoot or if it’s just like, you know, doing a video blog or, or, you know, shooting a selfie that we’re going to post on Instagram or something. Like what are, why do you think, why do we have that fear? And like, do you have any ideas for how to move us past that? Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest thing is the fear of being seen right? And the fear of being like almost in a vulnerable state. And especially because the camera captures who we are, right? And in this state. NO: (14:03) So I would say first thing is just like, you know, take care of yourself and you know, the camera’s going to, I typically add like a, like 10 pounds, a few pounds, I want to say 10 pounds. That’s a lot. But just the way he is. So that’s why you say like no baggy clothes because they look super baggy, you know? That’s what I’m saying. You know, it’s like if people don’t feel comfortable with the way they look, they either got it yet either just rock the way with confidence, the way that you look or do something about it. You know, I, I, you know, I can only do so much of capturing, you know, we can do stuff in posts, but then it gets, starts to get like inauthentic if you’re like heavily retouching things. So, you know, I think it’s just like thinking about what, you know, really getting down to what makes you fearful of being in front of the camera. NO: (14:48) And I think so pick it outfit. Just don’t pick your newest outfit necessarily. It’s like pick an outfit that you feel confident in and like pick an outfit that you like the way you look, like something as simple as that. Yeah, absolutely. And if you really want to go to the next level, hire a stylist to help you revamp your wardrobe. And if, you know, if, especially if you want to take your personal brand to the next level, it’s like you got to think about all these things because all the aesthetics say something about who you are. So if you’re just like schlep, you know, wearing sloppy stuff, you know, what is that going to say about you in the photos? You know, what is that going to say about you? I like the way that you’re, you make decisions the way that you care about yourself, the way that, you know, what are you preaching in comparison to that? NO: (15:31) So talk about that. Like the energy part. Yeah. Anyways, so just to, just to comment on that last thing that you said, I remember this blew my freaking mind when I don’t remember where we were. Somebody asked Louis this question, what is your number one secret to building a huge brand? And I was like, that’s an interesting question. I had never asked him that question. I was like, I wonder what he’s going to say right here. And I’m thinking, you know, like yeah, funnels or webinars or digital marketing or like networking. He said photography, he said photography is my number one secret of how I’ve built up a brand. And you know, it’s, it’s interesting cause I think of photos as like what you’re wearing and how you look. But the way that both you and him talk about it is it’s like, it’s more about the energy that you’re giving off that you’re capturing. NO: (16:32) Like it’s, it’s like it’s more about the energy than it is. I like the look. Yeah. Yeah. Because we all want to connect with somebody. Right. And photography connects you with that person. Like we look at, you look through magazines, right? And you see these celebrities that are, you know, they have like eight page editorials of them and you know, of photos like high, high end imagery of them, and then you feel more connected to them. I mean we see that everyday on Instagram. It’s like we get, we connect to people through photos of them. Right. And I think this is a very subconscious thing. And you know, the psychology of both, like graphic design and photography is, is huge as well. I was a graphic designer before I was a photographer and I went to school for visual branding and things like that. NO: (17:15) And you know, it’s the reason that we buy Coca Cola versus the, the the generic brand, you know, they might even be the same product, but branding different, different packaging. Well allow you, you know, make dif make the difference between the choice that you make. So photography plays a huge part of that. Graphic design plays a huge part of that. And when you project, you know, you’re basically creating the perception that you want people to see you as and you have that choice, right? If you’re not conscious to that creation of the brand and what you want people to perceive you as, then you’re not thinking about that stuff. That’s why photography, that’s why Lewis says photography is such a, one of the biggest key key things within his within his brand is that he’s creating this image that people want him to view him as. And so we create this higher level imagery. But like, he still feels super relatable. Like you would just, you know, it can be friends with them just from seeing them online. And so it’s, it is that elevated realism that really portrays him and like creates the elevation within, you know, and makes people want to follow him, makes people want to do, you know, have him as their guide kind of thing. RV: (18:30) Well, and it’s just like, it’s interesting to me because if somebody would have said like, if it, if it weren’t you and Louis, like if somebody said, I’m going to do a photo shoot with hot air balloons behind me, I’d be like, that’s the cheesiest idea that I have ever heard of. Okay. But the way you do it, it’s not that at all. And, and it’s, it’s almost like what you’re describing to me here, Nick, is like, that’s where the magic is, is it’s, it’s like do somehow tell your story if it’s authentic to you somehow you tell that story. Like how do you balance that? Like, Hey, there’s a place for creative genius here versus, no, that’s stupid. It’s cheesy. NO: (19:14) Yeah. I mean that all comes through the eye of the photographer. Right. So that’s the way that I see when I do photography. So every photographer has a different different point of view. But for me, like I’ve always seen things with this authenticity but also like this kind of cool, elevated edge. And so whenever I, when I’m out shooting, that’s the magic that happens within the moment is that like I can see from the lighting, the composition, the things that are happening within the frame that make it feel real and authentic and not cheesy. You know, that’s just the way that I’m built. That’s the way that I see. That’s the perspective that I take on photography. And that’s where the photographer actually really the vision of the photographer is, is what you’re also looking for. Cause it’s like somebody else could take, take these concepts and like shoot somebody with books and, and, and whatever. NO: (20:04) Totally. It’s in the moment. It comes down to the lighting, the photographer, you know, the, what they see, how they direct, how they envision it and how they pull out of pull, what they need out of the subject out of the the personality and the energy and all that stuff. And then, then it comes to post to like the coloring, the composition, you know, just in the backend, you know, creating an aesthetic look as well. So that’s, that’s kind of like the components, but that’s what it comes down to the photographer at the end of the day. So you want to hire the right photographer by looking at their portfolio and seeing like, Oh, do I see myself in their photos? Do I want the sustetic do I want, you know, am I, do I feel like I would be comfortable with them? RV: (20:48) Yeah, that’s a good question. Do I see myself in their photos like that? That feels somehow easier to me than do I like, cause like to me it’s like I can’t tell like I don’t, I don’t have like when you say how you see, when I see, it’s like I look at, I almost think I look at every photo I go, Ooh, that’s really good. Like that’s good. But then I see one of yours especially of me and me, like gosh that is so different somehow, but I don’t know why, but and do I see myself in their photos I think is super cool. I want to come back to what you were talking about a minute ago about you said something where you said that we connect to people through photos of them and that the more you see someone, the more you feel connected to them. RV: (21:38) And I’m having a light bulb moment here. I’ve always resisted posting pictures of myself on my social media feeds because not because I’m a F I’m self conscious of how I look because I’m self conscious of coming across as overly promotional or self centered or like arrogant of like, Oh Hey, here’s a giant feed of, you know, here’s a bunch of pictures of me. But the way that you said that was interesting where you’re like, no, it’s like, it helps the audience feel connected to you. It’s not about like promoting you. Have you ever heard anybody have that weird fear that I’m sharing and like what? Like what’s your initial thought on that? Cause that literally, I never realized that until you said that. And I was like, I hate posting photos of myself, but not for why most people do. Which is like, Oh, I think my, you know, I think I look silly. I don’t care. Like I’ve always been like, this is who I am, but NO: (22:41) I don’t want to be overly promotional. Yeah. Necessarily. Got a couple, like a couple things came to mind on that. RV: (22:48) A free coaching session between Rory Vaden and Nick on. Ken, if you’re just joining us, I’m getting free consulting advice here from Nick NO: (22:56) 105 so absolutely. So the first thing is, is this is kind of funny because like, so I was like four or five years ago I was at scooter’s wedding and we were all riding and Justin was there and Justin Bieber for that, for that. My friend Justin was there, so we were driving, we were riding around in the, in whatever his SUV and scooter pulls out as the scooters, like you’ll just need to follow Nick. And I was like, okay. I was like, sweet, awesome. And then Justin Luke pulls up my Instagram and he’s like, dude, why don’t you have any photos of you on there? And I was like, ah. I mean, I don’t know, I just like posting photos that I take. RV: (23:38) He still followed me for a couple of years, NO: (23:40) But that kind of stuck with me after a while. And this is kind of before really personal branding on Instagram was like kind of big, right? Like, this was just, this is kind of the earlier days of, of Instagram. And so I kind of started, you know, a few years ago, I’m just looking through analytics and things like that. I was looking at like the engagement of photos on my always highest on your personal photos. Yeah. People, you know, I get more likes on photos of me than photos that I take on my main account. And especially because it’s more like behind the scenes stuff or it’s conceptual stuff of me. And like they just kinda took me back to that moment of like, and then, you know, I was like, maybe he unfollowed me cause I was posting pictures of me. I don’t know. NO: (24:26) I mean he had followed everyone, but but you know, it’s, it’s, you know, you just got me thinking of like, okay, you know, people are following, like, especially with social media, people want to see what you’re up to. People want to connect with you as a human. I think that’s the biggest thing is they want to connect with you as a human to feel that human touch. And so I think that’s why photos of you putting foot posting photos of you on your feed really help people to connect with you. I think there’s also an element of like what story are you telling with that photo and how does it connect with that photo. So whenever I’m, I’m posting on Instagram a photo of myself, I kind of, I want to make the caption link to, you know, have some sort of context as to what the picture is. NO: (25:09) Hmm. And the story that I’m telling through that picture just to connect everything cause then you get into like the whole there’s, there’s a hashtag called girls without irrelevant captions and it’s like, it’s hilarious cause they’ll put you, it’s like, it’s unreal. They’ll post like a photo of them in a bikini by the pool and then have some sort of like really like esoteric, conscious, loving like quote. And it’s just, it’s just funny. It’s, it doesn’t make sense. It’s not congruent. It’s not. And then that just kind of like pulls away from authenticity of like, what are you talking about? Like you just want to show your, show your assets and get more validation through that versus like actually conceptualizing and telling a story through the photograph and aligning it with the caption. So I think that’s highly important. It’s like congruency and all the stories that you’re telling from your photography. NO: (26:02) Then stuff that you post online to the stuff that you post to the captions that you write. And I think, you know, when it comes to, you know, the imagery that I build with people is like the high level like website banner stuff and you know, stuff for press. Like people use, like Lewis is like put my, use my photos of him in like success magazine and like all these different magazines. So you have like an an arsenal of assets to use as like high level stuff, but you can also put them into your Instagram feed. Well, mixed with other things. Like your Instagram feed doesn’t have to be all photos of you, but I think if you pepper them throughout, you’re kind of still helping build that connection for people to you. RV: (26:45) Yeah. So how often this is, this is going to be like, like if you do like how many shoots a year, if somebody was really like doing this, you know like I get, I get the idea of going, Hey you need to do a shoot for your website. One of the things we’ve gotten clear with our process of helping people build their websites and do their overall brand strategy is we take them through phase one. Okay. Which you’ve been through, right. Finding your uniqueness and then what we realized is pretty much the next thing that needs to happen is photography because you need to be able, you know, photography and copy cause you need to get the pictures before you design the website cause you have to be able to design the website around the pictures. That was something we always screwed up, which I feel like we’ve gotten more clarity on is like go get the pictures. So anyways I realize now and go okay you know the importance of photography. Sure. With your website or a book, you know like a book launch or something. But other than that, if you’re just like looking to like create a connection with your audience and like pepper, your Instagram feed, how often should we be doing this? Like where we’re hiring somebody to [inaudible] photos of us. Yeah. I mean I think NO: (28:00) Couple of times a year. It kind of depends on like the packages that you’re getting, who you’re working with and all that. And like how many different final images that you can get out of a shoot. But probably two, I would say probably two to four a year. Okay. Just to kind of once a quarter fresh. Yeah. Once a quarter. Keep things fresh. You know, you can keep your, your high, your arking over your high level imagery like on your website and stuff consistent for like a year. But like when it comes to like more social media stuff, you can probably do two to like one a quarter, I would say. RV: (28:33) Interesting. Okay. Man, there’s so much, I can’t believe how fast this went by. Like there, there is so much here. And like I’m saying, you know, if you can hire Nick and have him come shoot you, there’s other photographers we have in our community as well that, that, that we liked. But it was, it was really wild to experience a shoot with you. And the, the difference of just, I mean, I, you know, I’m not going to post any of these pictures, but there was a time back when Rory was in his early twenties that I did some commercials than I did. I did some modeling shoots. I might’ve even had some abs that I was showing off back in those days. And you know, so I’ve, I’ve, I’ve worked on sets, I’ve, I’ve had photographers, but you know, the shot with the doing the shoot with you was truly different. So where should people go if they want to just follow your work or just connect with you or like see some of your photos what’s the best way to connect up with you? NO: (29:32) Yeah, I mean Instagram is kind of the, like at Nick honkin on Instagram is kind of the hub for everything. So you can get to my, like my website photography website, my hats, my, I have a photographs by Nick honkin Instagram account. It’s just photography. So everything stems from, from there. RV: (29:54) Huh. And what’s your photographs by Nick on kin? Is it, is it that long handle? NO: (30:00) Yeah, it’s, yeah, it’s photographed by Nick honkin.com at the Instagram handle as well. And that’s just strictly photography, like curated portfolio. RV: (30:10) That’s, it’s incredible. Y’all like go look at this stuff. I’m telling you. It’s really, really, really wonderful. Well Nick, I really appreciate you sharing some of your secrets and just like helping us find the right photographers, ask the right questions, you know, prepare ourselves for the shoe, what to be looking for. And then overall, I just think, you know, a big part of your uniqueness is just this elevated realism is just like bringing, bringing our best to a shoot and drawing the best out of your subjects. And I mean, you’re, you’re, you’re extremely talented, my friend. I used to have like a really rare gift and I just appreciate you sharing it with us. NO: (30:45) Thank you. Oh, and one other thing, I do have a free ebook on how to elevate your personal brand visually. It’s Nick honkin.com/personal brand and it’s a free ebook. Talks about a lot of the stuff that we talked about today and a lot of visual examples and, and all the goods. RV: (31:02) Nick anakin.com/personal brand. I’ve walked through that ebook. It’s awesome. Super tactical and and useful. So we’ll put links to that in the show notes. My brother, we wish you the best until I can get back with you and get a shoot going, NO: (31:19) You know, best. Until then. Let’s do it. Thanks.

Ep 82: Unlock Loyalty and Strengthen Your Network with John Ruhlin, the Guru of Giftology

RV: (00:01) John Ruhlin is one of my favorite dudes. He’s one of my favorite guys. I would like a real life friend. And there’s several things that I love about John, which I’ll tell you about. So I’ll give you the officials first. So he’s the founder and the author of Giftology. He’s been featured in tons of major news outlets, Fox news, Forbes, fast company, and he is also the, the number one performer historically all time out over one and a half million sales reps for one of the world’s most recognizable brands and direct sales companies. And you’ll hear, you’ll hear a little bit about that as we talk. And so he speaks at big corporate events really about customer loyalty, about referrals without asking about just kind of like creating connections and relationships and trust. And the reason I’ve asked him to come talk about it is one because his expertise is really brilliant and it’s unique and it’s very different from something you would hear someone talk about. But the other thing is homeboy drinks his own Koolaid and he has built a massive personal brand and continues to be like this rising star, I think among influencers because he does what he actually teaches people to do, which is always like my number one litmus test. And so anyways, John, welcome to the influential personal brand podcast. JR: (01:31) Rory, thanks for having me, man. I wish we were hanging out in your place in in Tennessee, but this is the second best right now. RV: (01:38) Totally, totally. So yeah, tell, tell me first of all, what is Giftology? All right, so let’s start, let’s start there with like your normal expertise and, and, and why does it matter? And, and then we’ll talk about how do we incorporate this as a part of our strategy to building, you know, an influential brand. JR: (01:58) Yeah. Well people necessarily care about gifting like nobody, like wakes up in the morning and says, man, I gotta become a better gift or, but everybody cares about relationships. Everybody, every business rises and falls. Every brand rises and falls on relationships with clients and employees, partners, joint venture event planners. You name it. And most people, if they’re honest with themselves, they suck at showing gratitude and appreciation and a very meaningful way to those important people, whether it’s at home to your significant other. Most people just aren’t very good at that. And so the core of Giftology is really just a systematic marketing process. Makes it sound very calculated. But there are, it’s a recipe on how to stand out, be memorable. So if you want to drive access with people, if you want to drive referrals, there is a formula to it that’s been really followed for thousands of years. And I think in our transactional Western culture, we forgot what those triggers are, what those things are. And, and you know, there’s been a lot of people that have done studies on it, Robert Cialdini with influence and we’re just tapping into the psychology of things and do it in a way that’s not manipulative that in a way that really honors relationships and plays relationships for everybody says they play the long game, but most people it’s days and we play the relationship game for decades. RV: (03:16) Yeah. And so just to jump right in on this, like to give people a real life example of how serious you are about this. Hopefully you don’t mind me sharing. And if you do, I’m going to share it anyways. You, you, you, you’re a brand builders group clients. So we’re, we’re, we’re, we’re proud to have had opportunity to team up with you cause we believe in you. But the thing that you did that nobody has ever done or asked to do since you was, you, you know, you came to our house, you were one of our early clients and you know, we are doing stuff here, you know, in the, in the, in the work room at Vaden Villa and you threw a party. You were like, Hey, can I throw a party while I’m at your house? And so you invited, you invited. RV: (04:00) So, so tell people about this party and tell like, I’m convinced that you spent, you had to have spent more on the party than you spent with us, or close like close to it for a one night party as you did on the actual strategy. And now what I realize is you weren’t really interested in our strategy. You were really just trying to rent our house. And I got two for one deal out of it, but now I understand. So like tell us, tell us like, just as that night as an example, you know, I was just, it was so powerful to me. JR: (04:36) Yeah, well I think that there’s so much noise right there and, and, and a lot of times people will, you know, they do the same dinners, ball games, rounds of golf, like everybody re builds relationships the same way. And for us, like I would rather do a once in a lifetime experience for a group of five people than to do a mediocre experience for 5,000 people. And that’s what most people do. But they, they, they’re like, Hey, we throw a big party. The more the merrier. And it’s like mid tier, you know, wine, mid tier alcohol, low tier food, you know, like trinkets and, you know, a low tier band. And, and so when I was, I was like, man, I’m going to be with you. There’s a lot of, you know, this is kind of like the Nashville mafia and your area, like all these great influencers and people that are either friends or people that I would love to hang out with. Not with an agenda just to hang out with. And even people outside, they’re just looking for an excuse to to hang out in Nashville. And I wanted to connect them to you cause I wanted to, RV: (05:32) Yeah, we got great relationships out of it. I mean there were really awesome people there. JR: (05:37) Yeah. So most people would have their dinner at Morton’s or someplace like that and you know, they’re like, Oh, $150 a ahead. And I’m like, what if I’m going to throw an event? I want it to be something that people are talking about a decade later. Cause now like the story starts to transfer. Like if you want to become known, you have to do a once in a lifetime or I call it like a love bomb. Like something that’s like, it has RV: (05:57) Love bomb. JR: (05:59) Yeah. Like most people that shoot bullets, like I want to shoot, I want to, I want it to be an atomic bomb. And, and I was like, you have a beautiful house. What can we do that would be amazing. I’m like, everybody loves wine. And one of my friends is the first master SAMO yay ever in the U S there’s only like 220 of these guys globally. And it’s harder to get this certification than it is to become a doctor and a lawyer together. [inaudible] It’s crazy. And so Eddie Australis teaches people how to use food and wine as a competitive advantage. He calls it power entertainer. That’s what his book is. And to get them to come in and speak normally, like American express will pay 25 grand for him to come in and orchestrate a food and wine experience. And then that’s on top of the wine that you need to have that’s unique and the food that needs to pair with it. JR: (06:42) And so I’m like, Eddie is a good friend. I’ve opened up a bunch of doors for him. He’s a client. And and so we flew Eddie out to your house. We coordinated with the top caterer. We had Eddie reach out to his wholesale wine relationships to get some wine that nobody else would have access to. And because of that, Tucker max and guys from Texas and other places said I want to, I’ll fly in just for 24 hours Mark Tim just to hang out and be a part of this, this gathering. And so rather than opening it up for 200 people and have it just be okay, it was like what 22 people you know in the house. Like it was a very small group of people. But I would rather my, here’s my thing, I’d rather spend 20,000 hours on one relationship that is like a Cameron Harold who you know is literally like hit the 20 grand I’ve invested in him, which sounds crazy. Over 10 years that’s not at one time has turned into seven figures. So it was a 50 X ROI. People are ER, like brag about their three X ROI on Facebook, which is fine on ads. But I’m like the return on relationship. If you’re willing to do it the right way, played the long game for decades and do it with no strings attached. So there’s no manipulation. Like Jeff [inaudible] asked me afterwards, he’s like, dude, RV: (07:53) You didn’t ask me. There’s no pitch. You just did that just because you didn’t, you didn’t haven’t said this. And I just want to make sure people don’t understand. So first of all, RV: (08:01) Okay, so is that our house, which you didn’t have to rent, but you did pay us, you know, our normal handsome fee for private strategy session. So again, it was either rental free and it was worth it. And you flew this us, this master Somali AAN from catwalk, California bought all this wine, which was crazy, like amazing wine paid for this, you know, incredible like caterer, like all this like great food renting ch tables and chairs, like renting all the stuff and people to come and clean up and all this. And you didn’t see, nobody got charged. You didn’t like this was just a handful of people that you invited and no, you didn’t ask anyone to share. There wasn’t like pass a basket. There wasn’t like, Hey, can you have me on my podcast? You’re just going like, when I want people to really grasp what’s here. RV: (08:55) Cause it was like 20 grand. Is that, I mean it was maybe 10 grand. I mean it was, it was probably, it was at least five grand, probably 10, maybe even more than that. It was more than half. Yeah. So Mmm. And, and it wasn’t like, Hey, who can I be on their podcast or how, it was just like dinner. It was a love bomb. There was not, there wasn’t even, people didn’t even know who you were. Like some of the people didn’t even know you were the one throwing the party. There were people I invited and they thought I threw the party, which was awesome. And I was like, yeah, we, we, we spent, we spent for you, but so it is the thing that blows my mind is to go like, it’s one thing to go, yeah, you should do this. But to witness it with my own eyes of like, you going, this is like a big swing for the fence, but yet you’re not actually swinging. There’s no ask. It was like, it wasn’t like, Hey, I’ve got a business opportunity for y’all. It was just loving and friends and people flew in for it. It was nuts. Yeah. That was how I met Tucker max. I never met him. I mean there were some people there that were incredible. JR: (10:05) Yeah, well I think that’s the thing. I think in general, everybody says their first class best in class, world-class. Everybody says they’re, you know, they’re a plus this or their, their, you know, their bestseller of that. And I think that, you know, look, look at your calendar and look at your pocketbook and they’ll tell you what your priorities are. And you know, for us, you know, we make it, you know, like if you’re a person of faith, you reinvest 10% you know, as a tied back into your faith, into the church because that’s what God has called us to do, to multiply and to trust him. And, and I think that for me, like you should be doing that with your relationship. You should be reinvesting a percentage of your profits because if you’re not, you’re not reinvesting back into the people that allowed you to have a business. JR: (10:46) We’re a opportunity anyway. And that’s just silly. Like why would you not take 10% of your profits to reinvest back into clients and employees and partners and to keep them as a relationship to grow them. And hopefully the secret sauce is, is that I’ve done this with enough people, people like John, how many sales reps do you have? And I’m like, I have thousands. And they’re like, how do you afford thousands of sales reps? And I’m like, well, I take a percentage of my profits. I reinvest them back into guys like you or Cameron Harold or other guys that I couldn’t, I couldn’t afford you as a sales rep for a million dollars. And yet with being strategic, with my generosity and my gratitude and being thoughtful with it and doing it the right way, I get a thousand X ROI over time on the backend because I have people like you and others that I could never afford advocating for me in the corners of the world I would never get access to. And that’s, you know, we’ve been doing that for 20 years. I started when I was 20, I just turned 40 last month. And the people like, where did you come from? Like your overnight success. And I’m like, dude, I’ve been, yeah, I’ve been modeling this for 20 years and now some of the seeds I planted a decade ago are fruit. RV: (11:54) Yeah. I mean you were just on this virtual summit with Sarah Blakely and Dean Grasiozi and Daymond John that Pete Vargas put on and it’s like your face is right there with like all of these incredible people and it’s just awesome. It’s that concept. Return on relationship is such a, it’s such a cool idea. But yeah, like talk to me about the manipulation factor cause it’s, it’s like I really liked the power of that, but it also, not to misconstrue what you’re saying, you’re not actually measuring it. You’re not actually tracking the referrals that come from somebody. You’re, you’re not, you know, it’s not like a Facebook ad where you’re actually going, yeah. How many leads came directly from this ad or that ad? This is like by faith. JR: (12:48) Yes. Yeah. Well there is strategy to it. What I would say is that I will you find out over time who’s a giver? Who’s a taker, who’s a Matrixx. So Adam Grant’s concept of there’s givers, takers and matchers. I tend to surround myself with guys like John Hall and you and John Rampton and Bob Glazer and Pete Vargas, guys that are givers. Because I don’t have to keep like those types of people. I call it the light, the out-give effect. Like everybody’s trying to one up each other. But with generosity and when you hang out and surround yourself with and pour most of your generosity into others that you know, or whether they pay it back to you or they pay it forward, you know, like there’s going to be a positive ripple effect from that. And so I do think that there are times where I’m like, you give a few times, you’re like, gosh, that person’s yeah taking and they’re not generous and they’re kind of a douchebag. I will pull back in certain areas because I’m not tracking referrals, but I’m seeing well who they are as a person. I’m seeing what they’re up to. I’m seeing how they’re resigned to people. And so it’s not that you’re just like shooting shotguns of Willy nilly. Like we invited, you know, 22 people to your house. RV: (14:00) Yeah. You’re not going to the bar and man like drinks for everybody. Hey, come on over you. JR: (14:05) You know, you’ve got a boss. So there is thought put into it. But the thing is is that you’re not like when you put strings attached or you have expectations after that that somebody better have you on the show or better do this or do that. Like I think Robert Cialdini has proven it with enough research over 30 years that if you do nice things for people, like God’s woven it into our DNA to want to reciprocate. Now sometimes that plays out. Now, sometimes they’re in a position of power or timing a decade from now and you don’t know how that’s gonna play out. My original mentor, Paul, who is like this Rainmaker of an attorney, he was incredible because he like, he did this for 40 years. I saw him when he was 60 and I’m like, I want to be him when I’m 60 and he just did things naturally because that’s who he was. JR: (14:49) And as a poor farm kid was like, I want to be Paul when I’m 60 and I’m 20 at the time. So I got 40 years to get there. And so there is strategy to it. It’s not, you know, their strategy on the amount. They’re reinvesting in their strategy and who you’re, you know, who you’re targeting. But the, the, the kicker, the most people ruined it is with expectation and trying to give and then get give and then immediately ask and Vaynerchuck’s talked about it for decades. You know, it’s, it’s jab, jab, jab, right hook. It’s not jab, right hook. It’s, it’s give over and over again. Maybe you earn the right to ask after you’ve done it over and over and over again. But most people, they, they, they shortchange themselves and ruin the relationship by asking too quickly or, or with expectations. RV: (15:38) I want to talk about time of when to give actually. Because I think this is one of the things that you know, like you’ve taken this concept and built a whole career out of it. The book is like the book, the concepts, your keynote is fantastic, right? You’re, you’re, I always joke on this show that you’re one of the people I actually referred it to to clients and stuff and tell people, Hey, you should, because it’s really, really quality. Like of just your story. One of the things that jumps out to me is the concept of when to gift. And you really opened my eyes to this. And so can you talk about like when’s the raw, I mean, call it the wrong time or just like when, when do you recommend gifting and when do you not? JR: (16:26) Yeah, so when we walk people through our process and step-by-step, most people want to start with what they’re giving. And that’s like the seventh step in the process. Timing. Timing is just as important, if not more important than what you’re giving. And so most people, their whole focus is on what’s cool and sexy. And why I tell people is, you know, the timing, it has to be no ABC gifting. So no anniversaries, no birthdays, no Christmas. And really what that means is you’re not giving gifts out of obligation or expectation. So if you take your wife, for example, if you only did gifts on AOL Valentine’s day anniversary, you know, birthday, Christmas, like those are table stakes. Like that’s just gets you an even. RV: (17:06) Yeah, that’s what you do to not get fired for your marriage. You’re not getting promoted. That’s what you’re doing to not get fired. Exactly. JR: (17:16) So with clients or referral centers or joint venture partners, like most people, it’s like, Hey, I have a, I have a launch coming up. I better send a gift a week before that’s, that’s a tit for tat. Oh, I just closed a big deal. I better give a gift. Well, they give you a million dollars, here’s your $250 Starbucks gift card. Like it feels very transactional. And most people, if they’re honest with themselves, they consider themselves a relationship person. Not a transactional person. But most of the gifting that they do is, it’s Christmas, I need to send a gift. So I tell people it should be planned. Randomness. You should send gifts for two reasons. One is just because in wa when you do that, you set, you pick a time like you know the middle of July and you send out gifts to your top, say 20 relationships or top 200 relationships because you didn’t tie it to any sort of transaction or deal or trigger. JR: (18:02) You send it just because the other person. That’s how people are like, Johnny, you send all these knives. How do people not like, how does it not get old? And I’m like, well, when I, our clients send out knives to people, it’s not tied to Christmas or holiday or birthday. It’s sent out. Hey, I was just thinking of you. We’d love to carve out some time to be with you, blah, blah blah. So the person who receives it, even though there might be 200 of the same gift that went out, the person who gets it, it’s like, I can’t believe Roy was thinking about me. And it’s so there’s a, the timing makes it a surprise and delight. And so we, when we walk people through our process and lay out a plan, a relationship plan, everybody has a financial plan, a marketing plan, a health plan, an eating plan, workout plan. JR: (18:40) Nobody has a relationship plan. One of the things is I’m like, here, you need to have one to four times a year that the other person you’re sending the gift to is never that expecting it. And you’re not asking them for anything. You’re just sending it out as just because the only other time I’ll say that a gift makes sense is that asset. And the commodity that we’ll never get back is when you take somebody’s time. Like that’s the most precious asset. And yet most people were like, I want to pick your brain. Hey, I want to do this. I wanna do that. It’s like you want to waste my time and I, and that could be worth hundreds or thousands of dollars an hour. So if somebody gives me five minutes of their time, I’ll send them sometimes a $500 gifts and the other person, even a billionaire, I’ve had billionaires reach back out and say, John, your note, your thoughtful note and your gift after you, I gave you five minutes was nicer than what some of my relationships that I do $10 million deals with has ever sent me. JR: (19:30) And now guess whose phone call they will take six months, six years from now? Mine because I appreciated their time, their most valuable asset that most people waste. So the timing of surprising and delighting people. Like when we did the thing at your house, it wasn’t Christmas, it wasn’t our anniversary, it was theirs. I’m in town, I’m with my buddy, Rory. Let’s do something fun. Like it wasn’t tied to anything other than let’s do something cool. Let’s be generous. I’m grateful that Roy is pouring into my team. We’re all together. Why? Why don’t we celebrate? And I think that’s where people are like, Hey, I gotta wait till a 50th anniversary before I throw a party, before I got to wait until somebody leaves my company after 20 years to throw a party. Think that’s so old school and idiotic. It makes no sense. Like let’s, let’s be more proactive and find reasons out of the blue to love on people. And that’s where people are like, I can’t believe you did that. Yeah. That is wild. That, that, that is, that that is the part. And it’s like the timing is a lot of times it’s like whether it’s a $5 gift or a $5,000 gift like Mary Kay used to have, you know, my mom sold Mary Kay and they used to have this saying they were like a $5 gift but a $50. And RV: (20:48) They would say that as just like, it was a $5 gas card, but they would present it in this bag with like glitter on it and stand in front of the room and it made people feel special. It was like, it’s all about making them feel appreciated. Like you’re saying. So how do you use this as like a business? Like you’re using this to get keynotes or only as thank you gifts, like in a business setting, what are you doing? You know? Yeah. Like how does this, how does this play out in a, like you’re trying to get clients or you know, when clients are JR: (21:24) Whatever. Yeah. So, so we have clients of all sizes and shapes and we have half a million dollar authors, you know, too fortune 500 companies. But at the end of the day, people, you know, when we spoke at Google, they’re like, John does this work in technology? And I laughed. I’m like, are there human beings here? And they’re like, well, yeah. And I’m like, well then it works. I don’t care if you’re a solopreneur that you did a hundred grand last year or whether you’re Google, like if it involves human beings, it works. So, so one of the things that we take all of our clients, whether it’s professional service firms, financial advisors, speakers, ma, you know, widget manufacturers, I’m like, let’s do a 360 degree view of all of your relationships, your suppliers, your clients, your joint venture partners, your investors, your mentors, your board of directors, anybody that has allows you to either have a business or that you need to build a relationship with in order to grow your business. JR: (22:16) So from a speaking perspective, most people when they get hired to do a keynote, you know, seven years ago I was begging to speak for free and we just did a deal in and Australia with books and travel was an 85,000 our keynote. So seven years, we went from free too with guys like you pouring into us and understanding things. But part of that reason that that happened was I built relationships and poured into I gift other speakers I love on other speakers and people like, aren’t those your competitors? I’m like, no. Those are other people that are interacting with amazing stages. And if I do a great job and I love on those people and they bring me up in conversation, they become a sales rep for me. They have their tight, tight relationship. The other people that we’ve done gifts for for a long time, most people are like all of the CEO of the company that I’m speaking for. I got to send him or her a gift and I spend as much, if not more on the assistant and the event planner. I call it the inner circle. Why? Because the event planner oftentimes gets only the accredit if the event goes bad, you know, it’s oftentimes a person who is working their butt off and yeah, RV: (23:22) Yeah. They’re the one doing all the work they’re actually doing. So, so JR: (23:27) The event I speak on, I do these I surprised the event planner with this thousand dollar mug, like a thousand dollars per mug. I’m like, it tells, it’s, it’s, it’s like tells a person’s whole life story. And I just gave one to a group called forum 400, which is like all these top insurance brokers and I gave it to the event planner. I’d never met her before, but I heard she was amazing person, person of faith, and did the research to find out about her. And from the stage I gave her this mug and her name is Amy and she came up, I ugly crying in front of everybody, gave me a hug and I didn’t realize she actually works for an association management company and they literally represent a thousand associations and she’s become my biggest cheerleader and advocate because she was so blown away by how I treat her now. JR: (24:10) I didn’t ask for anything. I didn’t even know she worked for an association management company. I just knew she was working her butt off for this group and I thought she was employed by the group. And so what I would say is that if you can take an inventory of all the people that are important to you and then go out another layer deeper into their inner circle, you know, I started out when I was in college investing $500 a month in gifting and that was a lot for a college kid at 20. That’s six grand a year. This year our gifting budget will approach 600,000 for the year personally, RV: (24:42) 80%. I think we should throw a half million dollar party at Vaden Villa. If that’s the budget. Do I have a half million dollar party at Vaden Villa? Just putting that out there. Rounding error leave a hundred grand. 500 grand for JR: (24:57) Yeah, we could do a, yeah, I mean we could do a heck of a bash there. RV: (25:00) We got to get past that JR: (25:01) [Inaudible] 19 though because we yeah, we got to have bunch of people. Yeah. I’m, I’m not, I’m not afraid to push the envelope there, but we, that’s another conversation. So, so, so what I’d say what I’d say is 80% of of your relationship building budget or your marketing budget, your business debt budget. Think about the people that are important to you through review though more important than what you’re giving. So identify those people and then who’s their spouse? Who’s their assistant or chief of staff? Who’s the event planner? Who are the kids who are pets? Yeah. That’s okay. That’s where when people are like, dude, you still send stupid knives. And I’m like, as last time I checked, most people are married or have a significant other. Most people have a kitchen. Most people are foodies or cook or entertain. We’re sending more knives than we ever have. JR: (25:42) Like when the New York times interviewed us, they thought I was joking when I said the knives are our number one gifts. And they’re like, that was your college thing, right? And I’m like, we sell millions of dollars knives, because people still crave that practical, unique out of the blue. Something that includes their family. And so what I would say is focus on the event planners. Focus on the people that are lower in stature because oftentimes they’re treated like crap. And if you can honor them and treat them with respect and treat them like a peer, that’s how we landed the Orlando magic is a big client was not because of the CEO. He made the decision to sign off on the first order, but it was the assistant Cheyenne who became my internal sales rep and helped us land our first six figure deal with an NBA team. It was not, it was the person below that. I love Don for years and not in a weird manipulative way. It was just honoring the relationship. And she went and became my internal sales advocate. So I would say, do you want to build a personal, realize that there’s the influencer CEO’s, those are great, but take care of the people around them in a way that’s not weird or manipulative. And if you can do that consistently over time, those people will start to look out for you and start to open doors that you can. RV: (26:58) I mean, and this is just, this is so, this is just so true because like if somebody is nice to AAJ like they’re in, they will like if they’re, if they’re mean to Aja or worse, if they don’t, it’s like, it’s worse to not acknowledge her. I mean, she’s the CEO of arc, like she’s the CEO of brand builders group, but it’s like she decides where we go, what we do, who we spend time with, where I go like [inaudible] and and she’s a softie. Right. So you’re, you’re just, that’s just so true. It’s like that is, I is, is taking, taking care of their inner circle makes them feel special and it’s also in a weird way like, you know, if it was like the CEO and assistant, I think it actually makes the CEO feel good that somebody else is loving on their person. JR: (27:49) It makes them feel like the hero. They’re the King, they’re the queen and because of their hard work, other people around them are benefiting. Like any leader loves to see the people that they care about. Yeah. Kids, their spouse. Because oftentimes you feel guilty when, you know, like I travel away from my family and I’m at like pebble beach drinking, no nice bottles of wine and my, my wife is taking care of our little ones and they like the flu and yeah, anytime somebody can honor my wife or my assistant or my team or my kids, like I win too. So it’s, it’s such a simple concept, but yeah, RV: (28:22) So again, if we got, we have, we have to wrap up here, but like this is, this has worked so well for you. Like even, and I’ve known you now for, I dunno how many years, but it’s been many years and to see how you’re like, this is, you know, advanced your own personal brand. Like you’ve always been great at business. You’ve always been moving tons of knives and like building relationships with people. But some years ago you were like, I’m going to become an author and like I’m going to become in this community. And like now here, here you are sharing the virtual stage with Daymond John and Sarah Blakely and you know, all these crazy people. Because of your relationship with Pete and how much Pete, you know, adores you and loves you. How much money, how do you figure out, like if you were going to it, you said it’s a system, which is one of the things I also liked that even though you’re not like measuring the ROI, there is a system here. So, you know, you mentioned you had a budget. How do you figure out what the budget should the, like is it roughly a percentage of profit or percentage of sales or like just just as a starting point? JR: (29:30) Yeah, so what I’d say is we’ve perfected it over almost 20 years now and it, you know, starting with the who, the relationships, the, when, the while that kind of stuff like you to map out and identify the pool of people first of who that is. And every business, some people, it’s 10 people, some people, 7,000 people. But it’s still just human beings. We charted a lot of money to walk people through that process. Cause that’s the, you don’t get the foundation right, of who you’re going after budgeting properly. Like what you’re going to send and all the other stuff like is meaningless. And so if your tribe wants to go download the entire process of what we charge thousands to do, if they, if we do it, walk them through it personally and then go to Giftology system.com and download our entire ecology system.com Giftology system.com. JR: (30:18) All one word, all one word Giftology system. But the budgeting question, every company is different as far as what their margins are in general. I don’t care what somebody’s revenue is, I care what profit is. And so, you know, sometimes these companies, mortgage companies where it was like, Oh, we did 40 billion in revenue last year, but we did 4 million in profit. I’m like, okay, let’s work with a $4 million number, not the $40 billion. And so for us it’s a percentage of net profit or a percentage of gross profit, but we’re in the 15 to 20% realm. I think a good baseline is 10% of whatever your, your net profit is. So if you make a thousand dollars on a relationship, you know, reinvesting a hundred dollars back into them to say, to show them near that, Hey, you know, you were thinking of them, obviously you’re never going to send something to somebody that’s a high level person that they couldn’t go buy for themselves. JR: (31:07) So it’s not about the item, it’s about the thoughtfulness that goes into it. That’s why the engraving of the personalization, that’s why the handwritten note, that’s why all the details around it. People will say, John, I’ve done Giftology and it doesn’t work. And I’m like, what did you follow the recipe? And they’re like, why kind of did? And I’m like, it’s like baking bread either. If you don’t put yeast in, you don’t get bread. And so people forget the little details around it and they think they’re doing what we’re doing. But really they’re sending stuff from Amazon with a type letter and they’re like, the person didn’t even respond. I’m like, well, do you think you can automate relationships? Do you think something showing up from Amazon is going to work like that feels different than if it came from one human sent to another human. JR: (31:46) So the budgeting, so that’s not in the plan. Don’t send it from Amazon, from Amazon, send it to your house and then package it and then send it. And people are like, well that’s a lot. I’m like, why? Why do you think our agency exists? Like if it was easy, everybody would do it. If it was like, yeah, they’re there. It’s not that people don’t know what to do when they hear the recipe, they’re like, that’s it. And I’m like, yeah, that’s, that’s all we do. Like we do this, this, this, and this was like, well that doesn’t sound that hard. And I’m like, if you do it for one human, it’s not, but if you want to do it for a dozen humans consistently or for two dozen, and so the budgeting, figuring that out and saying, Hey, I make a thousand dollars, I’m going to reinvest a hundred or 10% of net profit is a rough, like, yeah, you can go higher than that. JR: (32:32) Like some of our clients were like, John, I’ll invest 20% like I invest 18% in, in revenue and expenses. Like if I can invest a percentage of profit back into my relationships and turn them into a referral source. So like, you know, like these speakers are like, man, my, my average stages, you’ll $12,000 like I would gladly do a grand or two if it ain’t even turned into three years from now another speaking deal or another consulting deal or another whatever. And so I think that’s where people don’t understand is they, they want the immediate, I invest the dollar, I immediately have to make the money and they’re not willing to, to build the re, you know, they’re not willing to plant the acorn that becomes this massive Oak tree over the course of five or 10 or 15 or 20 years. Like they want to put the money in. JR: (33:18) And so the budgeting, I tell him like, you don’t have to spend all of your marketing dollars with gift allergy, but if you take your entire pool of money of what you spend on building your business, just take a sliver of it and redirect it towards coring back into all of your people and do it for three years and do it with following the recipe and come back to me and tell me it didn’t pay. The biggest dividends of anything that you’ve ever invested into is to me the relationships are where like, especially in a Valley, we find out who has our back. We find out when we’re backed into a corner, you know, I know when I went through 2008 and almost lost the business, it was a handful of people that allowed me to survive. And I think that people forget that. Like you don’t need a thousand. It’s like, you know, Tim Ferriss has concept like you don’t need 10 million people. You need a thousand true fans. And I think you even need less than that. Like if you need, if you have 10 or 20 or 30 people that are raving true fans, like actively loyal you get those kinds of people behind you. Like it’s amazing what we can accomplish with a small handful of of people that are in our army and really willing to go to bat for us. RV: (34:26) There you have it. Friends Giftology system.com. This is John Ruhlin, author of Giftology. You can check out the book, follow him online, or go to Giftology system.com. John, thank you for being here. Thank you for this fresh perspective. And thank you for making me feel like crap for how bad I am at gifting as always. See, yeah.

Ep 80: What Its Takes to Make It On Television with Kristin Giese

Speaker 1: (00:00) It is very, very rare that this happens. What you are about to experience, which is that we bring on a guest who is neither a client of ours, nor somebody from the industry that I know personally, but somebody who cold pitched us for our podcast. And I’ll explain why we accepted this person. You know, in our podcast power event, we talk about you being the host and we talk about pitching yourself to get on other shows. And we get pitched, I would say four to five times every single week from different PR firms. We turn almost every single person down, but there’s a couple of things that happened here that I want you to understand right up front as we dive into this. Okay? So first of all, you’re, you’re about to meet Kristin Giza who is becoming my new friend and you’re going to love her. Speaker 1: (00:53) But the reason I had her on the show is because of exactly what we talk about in podcast power. There’s, there’s two things. So first of all, what are your results, right? Like leading with the results. And here’s what Kristen has done. We’re going to talk about TV, we are going to talk about TV shows, how to get on them, how to pitch them, how does the world of TV work for personal brand specifically? And her team tailored their pitch specifically to our audience. They showed that they cared, that they knew what our audience was about and she was relevant because she speaks on something directly to y’all and you know, to why to why you’re here. So she is a talent manager and an executive producer herself. She’s worked with miss USA, the bachelor, the bachelorette, real Housewives chefs, hairstylists. So all these personal brands. She has sold shows, TV shows to NBC TLC in Bravo. She sold the talk show with Oprah. She has 79 times booked Oprah show bookings. And she has launched products that have been into target and HSN. And so this was a specific niche, a specific expertise that was relevant to our audience that their team TaylorMade and she had the results to back it up. And that is why Kristen Giza is here and I’m so excited for y’all to meet her. She’s great. So Kristen, welcome to the show. Speaker 2: (02:24) Thank you so much. You know what, I feel like hearing that intro, I feel a bit like, and when you parked too close to the car next to you at the mall and somehow you miraculously get the door open just enough to slide in and get behind the driver again. Cause it’s like you can’t, you can’t open the door wide enough and yet somehow you’re like, I’m going to fit in here. I’m going to get in this car and get out of this mall at Christmas time. I hate all these people. That’s what I feel like when you intro me that way, that some, Oh I opened it just enough to integrate in. So I appreciate it. We suck in and we slide into that door Speaker 1: (03:00) And then you get into the car and you’re so comfortable. So I want to talk about TV because one of the things that y’all, your team pitched me with, which I agree with, is that everybody wants to be on TV, but they have no idea what it actually takes and why they are not ready. So tell let, can you talk to me about that, right. Like everyone that’s listening here is a personal brand. They are somebody that is building an audience. They have an audience of some type. Why aren’t most people ready for TV and what does it, and now we’re not talking about actors, like most of our clients are not actors we’re talking about, you know, their dream is to, you know, to be like shark tank or profit or it’s reality TV of some type. Now we do have clients that have been on the bachelor and we have some reality TV shows, but, but what does it take to be on reality TV and what does a person need to know about? Like how do you get selected for that and what do you need to be if you want that to be you. Speaker 2: (04:00) Yeah, I think the interesting thing, first of all, I’d like to say right off the bat, television is not a vanity project. So people spend a lot of time ruminating on this high-minded desire of what they might like to do on television and how they’re going to change the world. By what they can bring to television and how they are so far evolved from anything that is on television. And when is the last time that you turned on television and thought this is so high minded and so such documentary dial level, like, you know, you’re watching like duck dynasty, you know, so it’s like you have to stop thinking about television as a vanity project for yourself and really think about what television means to the audience. You know, when you talk about those Oprah bookings and all those shows that I brushed up against with the Oprah Winfrey show the magic of Oprah being in Chicago was that she had an amazing crowdsourcing to what many people in the middle of America were wanting and tuning in for. Speaker 2: (05:00) And she was listening and then she was delivering upon the deal that she made. Excuse me. What the audience. Oh my goodness. And so if you’re not doing that, then you’re not going to find your way onto television. I like to say, you know, when you drive out into the desert or into the country, wherever you’re on a road trip, and they have a giant paper, Mashiach taco or dinosaur, like the one on Peewee Herman, like that big giant dinosaur that’s just in her middle of nowhere and everyone, it’s so kitschy and everyone gets in their car, especially nowadays, and they drive out there so they can take their Instagram pictures with the dinosaur and throw up their peace signs and they’re on this amazing road trip and it’s kind of tacky, but it’s kind of art. It’s kind of cool, but it’s kind of weird. Speaker 2: (05:55) That’s what television you need to think about in your brand. What is your big pink dinosaur that is out in the middle of the desert that would compel people to want to drive out and visit it? That’s what is a seed of an idea that will work for people then to tune into. And because you come up with your big giant dinosaur and it’s just tacky enough and it’s just spectical enough and it’s just interesting enough for people to engage in. That gives you permission then to have the cool town down the street that has the cool cafe and the cool art gallery and all the other elements of your brand that are a bit more of you and a bit more rooted in the core of your brand. But this is the spectacle part of your, Speaker 1: (06:44) So if I understand your metaphor there, you’re just saying like, Hey you, it’s, it’s sort of like where you have to, it’s almost like you have to play the game of what is in order to be able to have the benefits of, of, of, you know, the other ancillary benefits that would come to you. So you’re saying directly that Hey, yeah, television isn’t inherently to be high minded. It’s not to be like evolutionary, it’s not to be this like, you know, really profound level of thinking. So if it’s not that, what is it like you give us the sobering reality of like, this is what TV is specifically. I think we’re probably talking about reality TV because I think that’s what applies to our audience, right? We’re not actors, but we are, you know, Marcus Limonus like what happened with the prophet blew up his career. Speaker 1: (07:35) Mel Robbins has her talk show coming out right now. She’s somebody that a lot of us know. You’ve got you know, even though the talk show host, Oprah Winfrey would be a good example. What’s happened with the shark tanks. The people on the bachelor and some, you know, we have, we have one of the mega stars from the bachelor that’s in our roster. But then it’s also like, he’s trying to parlay that into a real sustainable career. So what is it, if it’s not high-minded, like profound thinking, what would you call it? Speaker 2: (08:06) Yeah, I mean, first of all, it’s entertainment first and foremost. And in any good entertainment, it touches us, moves us, or gives us some level of takeaway. And so of course there’s television, that timeline, they’re 60 minutes there, CBS Sunday morning, there’s documentaries on HBO. There’s all of that, and if that’s the space that you’re in, absolutely. If you are that, that next version of Anthony Bordain that somehow gets the golden ticket to sort of do something that feels really elevated, then keep striving for that. But largely television is built in ensembles. It’s normally not just a solo venture, so there’s a lot of shows where you’re going to be partnered with someone else. Most shows, with the exception of talk shows that you work on where it might be helmed by that person, which, which let’s be real. There is a very large graveyard of talk shows that fail. Speaker 2: (08:58) There are more dead bodies in that graveyard than there are success stories and it’s, it’s very, the air is very thin up there for the people that actually make it all the way down the line to get what it is to, to develop an actual talk ship where it’s solo led, like Oprah or Ellen or Ellen or something of that fact. And it normally for, for a studio you’re talking like they’re, they’re already like $40 million in when they’re trying to launch a new talk show. So the chances of someone unexpected getting a talk show, which we hear a lot in our, in our business, I’m the next Oprah and it’s like, I don’t know, I’m not so sure, but okay, if that’s true, you better recognize all the journey that it takes to get to that level. So talk shows are so challenging on so many levels, largely talking about reality. Unscripted. Speaker 1: (09:53) Yeah. So just to pause on that right now too, because it’s like, talk shows to me, it’s kind of like traditional book publishing. You go to them when you have a platform, like, like Kelly Clarkson is a new one, right? And it’s like, because she’s Kelly Clarkson, she’s already bringing the audience to the show. And even Mel Robbins, I think she would be kind of a lower level of that. But going, she built this monster social media empire. She’s not just some random person out of nowhere that’s going to show up and be the next Oprah. She spent decades building an audience that’s following her to talk TV. Right, right, right. Speaker 2: (10:31) 100%. Right. And so when you look then at scripted and at versus unscripted, which is a space that we’re talking about, a lot of unscripted television could work as scripted. You know, when you look at real Housewives, you can almost here the versions of desperate Housewives, which was on ABC that Martin Jerry created a decade ago. You can feel the nuances of character and content in an, in an ability for the audience to plug into those personality. So like anything that you’re developing in your own brand content is King, character is queen and forever shall they reign. If you have content but you don’t have the character, your personal brand on Instagram isn’t going to take off, let alone getting on television. It’s the same on television. You have to have the character and the ability to know who you are and be authentic and be heightened as well, to heighten your authenticity, to heighten your charisma, tightened your personality in these bolder ways. Speaker 2: (11:35) Just like the camera adds 10 pounds, the camera also diminishes personality unless you heighten it and ratchet it back up. Which is the large part because everything is edited down. So if you’re not high energy the whole time you’re doing it, the three things that they cut out of your and, and, and edit down, suddenly you’re like, you’re less energy because you didn’t sustain that high energy the whole time. You have to be thinking of all of those things from a character perspective and from a content perspective, just like anything you would do in your brand, you have to think about what is the audience getting in this bargain that we’re making with them? What is the takeaway? Is it just engagement? Is it or entertainment? Is there an emotional engagement? Is there an element of learning? And how then are we adding the lens of entertainment? So you have to think like a producer. I think that people think well that’s what a production company is for. They’re going to know what I should do. That never works. Just like when you want a client to pay you to put money in your pocket to hire you for your coaching or your personal chef duties. If you don’t tell them exactly what you should mean and why you should matter, they won’t know what to do with you, not even TV producers. Speaker 1: (12:59) So, okay, so that’s, that’s so good. Like the, the, the heightened authenticity. And we talk about that even with podcasting, that the, the energy transference through the microphone, there’s a drop of like 50%. So it’s like if you’re not bringing the heat on, your show’s gonna suck because it’s boring. Like and, and so the key, I want to talk about the character thing though because I love that phrase that you use heightened authenticity because it’s still authentic. Because at some point you’re going to burn out if you’re in authentic. But it’s also, it’s also amplified. How do you find that balance and how do you know what character you should be? Like you said, you said something about you have to realize the, the, what is the ability of the audience to see themselves in those characters? What does all that mean and how do you, how do you kind of go, Oh, this is the character I am like, this is, this is the character I should play. Speaker 2: (14:03) Yeah. Well, we, we fuel everything that we do through our three E’s. So every project that we touch, it needs to feel elevated. And I’m talking that that pink dinosaur in the desert can still feel elevated based on the experience that you give to people when they get there. So there needs to be an elevation to what you’re doing. The audience needs to feel empowered by what you’re doing and they need to feel emotionally connected to what you’re doing. And so even in that, I think this, to me, this applies to everything that you do. Whether you’re writing a book, whether you’re going on the today show, whether you’re going on a podcast, you are delivering on these three E’s consistently and in television you better deliver on these three E’s. You better find the way to elevate within you’re doing. So that way you can get noticed on camera. Speaker 2: (14:53) That way what you’re delivering within the exchange is important. That, that how you’re contributing to the cast feels of benefit. You know, there’s a difference between someone that can play well in a group of an ensemble and contribute in a way that furthers what’s happening. And then there are people that are just constantly trying to contribute and get in and get in and get in and they become a detractor. You’re ultimately going to get edited out because you’re just trying to get in on the goods as opposed to sort of being that really elevated heightened authenticity that you, Speaker 1: (15:26) You’re talking about like the bachelor there, like that kind of a thing of like, are you just trying to get into the camera? Right. So there’s a difference between I’m playing well with others and I’m a part of the scene and then I’m just trying to be in like I’m just trying to be famous and be in it versus someone who’s being heightened authentically. That it, it, it raises the whole, it moves the whole group forward. It moves the cast forward, it moves the show forward. Speaker 2: (15:53) Correct. And I think you can feel, I mean, one of the, one of the biggest deals I guess that we had that we should talk about is ego. And I don’t, I’ve never met a single person who has said the phrase, I think I want to be on television that does not have some level of ego invested in what that is. And so you have to find a way to harness that. So the ego, your ego isn’t what leads you into the room. Sometimes you will get casts because here you go leads you into the room. As a producer, we need people on camera whose ego is completely out of whack because that gives us drama. Speaker 1: (16:30) You need conflict. Yeah. Speaker 2: (16:33) And all of that is relevant and important and the audience needs it to further the story. You know, that is art and PS, anyone who’s been on television knows this. We’ve already identified and arc of where we think the characters will go within the episodes based on what we’re doing. So sometimes that is surprising and they go other ways and sometimes there’s mechanisms that encourage them to go certain ways. In reality television. So there’s that whole side too, depending on how you’re looking to join the game. You know, if you’re going to be cast on a show like bachelor, there’s definitely going to be mechanisms that are imposed upon you in order to create that drama. If you are going to be the next Martha Stewart and you are bringing about a heritage cooking show, it’s a different type of mechanism that you’re working with the producers to develop that, the stakes of what’s going to happen in that show. Speaker 2: (17:29) But there’s always going to be mechanisms in stakes that we’re creating as producers to bring that about. But you know, so you’re, to go back to your question, you know, you are looking at that heightened authenticity. You’re answering these things for yourself. You’re aware that you’re going to be edited in some capacity. You’re aware that you’re going to become a part of an ensemble and these other people are going to be pushing and pulling you in different that way. And so in every situation without it being obvious to the camera, because you’re still have to be present in, in it and participating, you have to find a way to, to deliver on those three E’s, to elevate and be of importance and, and to have, take up space in the best possible way. You have to find a way to emotionally connect. And that doesn’t just mean that you share something for the sh the sake of sharing it because you think this is my hook that’s going to get the audience. Speaker 2: (18:27) You are legitimately emotionally connecting to the situation. And then most important, almost everyone that you think about on television that you enjoy somehow empowers you or gives you something that you feel you’re invested in them and you’re giving yourself permission to be invested in them because of how they are changing you in some way. Oprah certainly did these three E’s exceptionally well. You know, we tuned in for that hour and there was a bargain we were going to show up as we were cooking dinner and we were going to have an experience on all these levels. And it’s the same for every show. It’s the same for bachelor. It’s just a different bargain. It’s just, we know that the exchange of currency is a bit more drama and a bit more salacious than if we’re tuning in for 60 minutes. But every show makes this bargain with the audience and it’s always about the audience. That’s the thing. Speaker 1: (19:35) Yeah. And that’s the same about speaking, which is I was my background. Like I am a, I’m a hall of fame speaker, so classically I, I am a stage performer. I know you did your first comedy set last year, which was, which was cool. I saw that. You know, I was, I was doing standup comedy in early two thousands when I was in grad school, not because I ever wanted to be a comedian, but because I wanted to be a, you know, a business speaker. And I knew I had to be funny, but that, so, so coming back to the character, you talk about Oprah, right? And just this concept of heightened authenticity, which I think is super, super powerful. How much of heightened authenticity is natural versus learned? Cause it’s not acting, but it’s a, it’s an intentional choice of like, Oh, I’m going to play this character, I’m going to play this role. Speaker 1: (20:31) Versus just like blind luck. Like, you know, like you talked about the ego person. I, you know, I’ve never been a producer of a show, but I have to think if I was going to produce the bachelor, I would be intentionally grabbing some of the most outlandish characters just because they’re completely self unaware of how insane they are because that creates the drama and the conflict for TV. Like nobody wants to watch grass grow, we need conflict like we have. And so I’m grabbing that person who’s like self unaware deliberately. So, but then you go, I don’t think, you know, like is Oprah playing a character? Is she just being herself? Like was a lot of that coached into her or was it just like that was just who she was coming out? Speaker 2: (21:13) No, I think the people, well who do, who are truly able to find to find that, well, when I say heightened authenticity, you’re tapping into that, you know where it is and you know where the on and off switches. It’s not a different room with a different light every time it’s the same room. You just know where all the switches are and you know how to temper it. So you know, you’re in charge of, of that muscle so to speak. Oprah is one of those. I mean, there is a lot of truth then don’t meet your heroes because like I could tell you stories of people that I’ve met along the way where you’re like, I am good at this or isn’t as not nice. They were so mean to that server and I loved them. And X movie, you know, and it, it just brings you to your knees. Speaker 2: (22:00) But Oprah is exactly who you need her to be, who you’ve always known her to be for you. That is who she is because she is my wife in real life. She is, she is one of those rare people that means so much. Open means to me is different than what she means to you is different than what she means to my aunt Susie. She has meant something and touched us again. And that emotional content connection and that empowerment connection, she has empowered him, fueled each one of us differently. So when we arrive in front of her, she rises up to that version of herself every single time. I’ve, I’ve rarely seen something like it and, but the thread of what that is, the talent that I’ve worked with the most that have meant the most to their audiences have always been the talent that have something special. Speaker 2: (22:55) And it’s, it’s almost unquantifiable. But when you stand before them and they look at you and they speak to you, you want to be the person that you think they see when they’re looking at you. And that’s a very powerful thing when you are speaking with someone that your belief when they’re looking at you is that they see something special in you that you feel more special because of their gaze. It’s so powerful. And Oprah has it other amazing celebrities that we all know and love. They have a way of just in their personal power to hold space with someone that’s more about the person that they’re holding space then about themselves. And that is a skill that you can actually build over time. It takes the requirement of moving your ego aside and picking up sort of an energy frequency with the people that you were with in the most powerful performers. I have ever met have the capability to do that. Speaker 1: (24:07) Yeah. And it’s, it’s like a, it’s, it’s a skill. It’s, it’s, it’s almost like developing a character trait. It’s selflessness of going like, okay I see something in units. You know, there’s a beautiful phrase, I don’t do hot yoga anymore, but I, there was a season in my life when I did Bikram yoga and they, they have this, Mmm, no, I’m a stay. Right. Which it means the highest in Macy’s, the highest in world. Correct. And that is like the essence of what we’re talking about here. Right. Which is ironic because what you’re saying about ego, there is the enemy where it’s like, I’m not trying to too, I’m not trying to be in the camera. For me, I’m trying to draw the best out of you, which is the audience is like, I’m trying to create the best experience for the audience, not for me, for the audience. Speaker 1: (24:59) Okay. Correct. So I, I love that. And I, and I, and I love that this applies, you know, you mentioned probably most of the, most of our are most of our people, our tribe, you know, we call a mission driven messengers. That’s, that’s who we serve. Most of them are probably more likely to just be a guest on a show, you know, like they have a book launch or something. And yeah, you got on Fox news or the today show or something like that. Mmm. More than just pitching a show and just cause that’s a smaller number of people. But like would you say those three ease and being that heightened authenticity, is that part of what makes you a great guest? A great pick to go? Yeah, we can have you on good morning America because you have something empowering. But we also, you also have to still keep in mind that a part of what I’m doing there is I’m entertaining people while I’m there. I’m not just let me tell you about my book. I’m entertainment. Speaker 2: (25:53) Correct. And I think that people forget that there’s a lot of publicists. And that’s, that’s where I cut my teeth. That’s the roots of where I, where I grew up in, in entertainment. And a lot of publicists will tell people right out of the gate, you gotta be working your points. You’ve got to get in that you’re there to promote your book. And as an audience member, when the first question is, so you’re here in New York and you’re a, we heard that you have new show that’s going out and tell us about it. And the person says, well, I told you all when I wrote my book that came out as an audience. You’re like, Oh, gropes you know, and as the producer, you’re like, I’m not booking this person because your goal here was to deliver upon what we’re doing here. And that is putting on this show that is about the broader engine of the show. Speaker 2: (26:43) So it requires you, if you’re going to deliver on these things, cause you’re doing it all the time, it requires to hone the skill of how to do it. You know, there’s an important state, I’m saying in a Gar, salesmen taught me this, that I don’t want to sell you a car. I want to make you want to buy a car from me. So I’m about the car. I’m telling you everything about the car and you now are invested in me and you are invested in the story. I’m telling you about the car. Now you want to buy the car that is different than me selling you the car. And if you’re going to go on, tell me and do these things. You want people to want to buy the car. You’re not trying to sell them the car. And that is such an important it’s like flipping the other side of the coin and in, you need to practice that skill of, of the coin flip in order to get it right every time. Speaker 2: (27:37) Cause it’s hard. It’s hard to be there to deliver upon what they want you to deliver upon. Instill, get your messaging in. And the thing that we is the cornerstone of, of how to do it well is that you are never, not for an instant have I ever sold products or properties. I have only only ever sold philosophy. So all the years of selling product lines into target, moving shows on to television, launching books and publishing books, I was never selling any of those things. I was only ever like the master of the ShamWow selling you, evangelizing you on the power of the words, of the philosophy, of the belief of how this will elevate, empower, and emotionally support you. And when you connect into those things, that is the Trojan horse to want to go buy the publishing, the property and the product. Speaker 2: (28:43) And if you can learn how to do that, well, there is not a single room that you can’t walk into and nail the pitch, get the property, sell the project. It’s, it’s just the cornerstone because you’re not, you’re never beginning a conversation, but it never begins with, I have this thing that I want to sell to you. It always begins and ends with, I have this thing that I want to share with you, and the selling becomes then the byproduct of that, and that’s where the power is. I think in anything that you’re going to do, whether you want a producer to buy into an editor to buy into you or whatever your mechanism is. To me that’s the power source. Speaker 1: (29:24) So yeah, I love this so much. The, the yeah, you mentioned ShamWow and I was laughing for a second. So Kevin Harrington is one of our, one of our clients who was like, [inaudible] works, Speaker 2: (29:42) You know, I’m just going to show you this thing over and over and you like me and now you like this thing and you’re debating 10 years later I’m like, maybe I should still buy that sham. Wow. You know, and I know the name that just shows you, it affects you on these different levels Speaker 1: (29:58) Now as the producer. Okay. So you’re, you’re, you’re a producer. Like I mean you’re an author, right? You, you do, you’re doing these things, you have your own personal brand and stuff, but, but your daily, your J day job right now is like you produce shows, you pitch ideas to networks and to production companies. And, and when you sell a show, a part of what your role as a producer is, is selecting the talent who comes on the show. Speaker 2: (30:25) Gosh. Oh we could, we could unpack this for another three hours. Speaker 1: (30:28) Well here’s my question. Here’s my, my big question is how do you spot it in someone and what do you look for, right? Like as the producer, cause you’re kind of like, you’re the director, you’re the orchestra, you’re like the conductor. You’re the one that’s like got to pull all the pieces together between the audience and the talent and the production company. Right? Like that’s what you’re doing. Speaker 2: (30:50) I don’t, I don’t spot it. I feel it. So every single person that calls me that wants to work with us as talent management or production and they’re telling me who they are, they better make me feel who they are. And for every time that you tell them, feel free to cut that as a tweet it that that is what it comes down to. I need to feel you in, in the way of of what it is that you are bringing into this unit versus, and I mean I’m talking you could be honey booboo and that’s okay. If I feel it, what it can be, then we’re going to the dance. If you sit in front of me and first of all, don’t come to me and try and just talk at me or tell me or or proselytize to me who you are. Listen a lot more than you speak and find the way to help navigate through what we are looking for to then tell, to encourage us to have that connection with you. Speaker 2: (31:57) So many people come and sit before us and they just start telling me all the things that they are and the whole time maybe I’m thinking I feel something else for them that could get them to the dance, but they’re so busy telling me that all they want is a talk show like Oprah. And I know that those are all on the decline and they’re so adamant about what it is that they’re want that they want, that it starts to feel a bit like an unreal hell that you’re trying to talk into doing their homework. It’s just a battle that you don’t want to have, so I find it’s sometimes much better to begin with the question, so to say, let’s talk about the things that I am bringing into the world and let’s have you tell me a bit about what does that mean for the world? Speaker 2: (32:45) Is there a place for that in the world? How does this apply to the world? There’s a conversation that we could be having that a lot of people skip right over that and go to, whether it’s their brand, whether it’s television or whatever it is, they make it a vanity project. They sit in front of you and tell you what it is exactly that they’re going to do, and that’s for your vision board. That’s for your book on your bedside table that you write down every day. I’m going to be a millionaire and I’m going to, I do it too. I’m right there with you. We can compare crib notes all day long. I got it. We’re all vision boarding. I’m in it, I’m in it deep. But there is also when you vibrate at a frequency of I am pulling people into me that are going to inform where I’m going next. You actually have to connect energetically, hear from them, learn from them, and then apply maybe. Okay, now we’re going to go down this path and people miss that beat altogether. Speaker 1: (33:41) I love that. I mean, and that, that don’t tell me who you are. Make me feel who you are. I mean that is gonna is such a such a capstone of this conversation. I love this so much. The, the, Mmm. So real quick, I know this is, this is like a little bit off topic. Like we’ve been going so deep into like the character and the role that you play. Can you just give us a broad and like, I can’t believe this has gone way over time. But this is so good and I think unique. I think you have, you have such a unique perspective of, of what, you know, I think of what people normally see Kristen of just like living in this world for your whole career. And so if you were going to pitch a show, what are like, just the mechanics of that? Speaker 1: (34:35) Like what, you know, like if you get a book, like if you want to get a traditional book deal, we have a whole, we have a whole event, we call it bestseller launch plan, which is all about like, here’s how it works. You create a book proposal, you have the book proposal, you have your plan and the book proposal. You go to a literary agent, the literary agent says yes, they shop you to a publisher, publisher signs a deal. You get a contract. You know, it’s like there’s a, there’s a process that more or less as generally fall, I followed, I feel like TV for most of us is this like mysterious black box of like, we just think of it as like this lucky break of like you’re walking in the mall and somebody goes, Hey, you’re the next Oprah. But there’s, there’s a process to all this and, and for, for people like you who’ve, like you spent your life doing it. It’s second hand nature, but just like, what’s the high level, Hey, I got an idea for a show. How does that, how does that materialize from there? First of all, Speaker 2: (35:30) There’s hardly any new ideas. So that’s the first thing. Production companies have a very hard time making money right now because it’s so hard to sell shit. There’s so many shows that don’t actually get to air. It used to be that they bought 10 episodes, now they buy eight, sometimes they buy less. I would say by one they tested, it takes a year, then it doesn’t get the ratings, so they don’t buy the rest of the show. It’s basically the smell of desperation. Fear and failure in entertainment is like be prepared. You know, I don’t know, I’ve never been in a morgue, but like get the menthol ready because it is not pretty. So be prepared for so many nos. Be prepared to be violently unrelenting in your desire to pursue it. If there’s any part of you that’s like, I’m just gonna see what happens and go from there, you are never going to make it off the ground level because it’s going to fail and fail some more and fail and fail again. Speaker 2: (36:32) That’s, that’s first rule. Second rule, you were the driver like anything in your life. Show them what you can mean already. Start collaborating with friends already start creating content on Instagram live already. Start creating. Even YouTube show you the people who make it the furthest are the ones who are already creating the content that gives the roadmap for how people would use you. So find friends to collaborate with. Start doing it. Start dreaming up. Start trying new things. Show people what you could mean on a larger scale. Become an expert at understanding what all’s happening on television and what networks are buying and what they aren’t buying, so you can actually have a conversation with producers because a lot of the shows that people come to me and say, Hey, this is a show that I want to do is actually only a seed of an idea that would be a segment on a TV show. Speaker 2: (37:23) You actually have to think about how does this sustain for one whole episode and for 10 whole episodes in a season and you don’t make any money in season one, so how’s it going to get to a season two? Where are you going to go in it? It’s all of those things that you should start thinking of so that way it can go beyond just that one small five minute. This is how I would do it on, on the Rachael ratio. It needs to actually feel expandable and like I said earlier, a lot of ideas that work that are successful in television. You can see a version of them as a documentary, like the tiger King that then can become a film that we would all watch and get invested in. That could also become a series of a show with these really great characters that could also be a reality show. It can it like any good idea, you can mold it and fit it for the different formats and platforms that exist out there. So think in those terms. If it’s something that only applies to you and only you could do it, you’re going to have such a hard time selling it. Think in terms of does this idea and contract and then write your pitch, build your deck, get a Canva account, make it look sexy. You got to do all the things to sell it. Speaker 1: (38:45) So, okay, so just real quick on that. Okay, so that was you hummed over that. So yeah, the, I mean obviously the psychology is way more important. Functionally speaking, you’re going to write a pitch, just like a book proposal or a speaking proposal or any other proposals like show me something in writing and with pictures that kind of gets, helps me understand and articulate the concept. Correct. And then who do you send that deck to? Do you send it to a producer, to a production company, to somebody else? Is it just like, I mean, I know it’s kind of like send it to Frick and everyone and anyone who will listen to you until you like find the right person, but is it, who’s the gatekeeper there? Speaker 2: (39:24) I mean there are so many gatekeepers. That’s part of the problem. So you’re building those connections and networking and having conversations. If it’s truly a seed of an idea that is stealable, which they kind of all are, you’re going to want to be careful about how you talk about the idea. You know, so that way you can kind of try and protect it. I mean, I can’t tell you the number of times that I’ve been told no on a show pitch. And then a year later I see the same production company that I was pitching out there with a similar show, you know, so, and who’s to say maybe they had the idea at the same time. Again, there are no new ideas, so it’s, it’s really about how you layered in, but everything comes down to relationships in any industry and television is the same. Speaker 2: (40:09) Every connection, every business card, the number one thing that I can say, whoever decided that no one should have business cards anymore should be interrogated beyond. Because the number of times that I have said to talent that I actually am curious about like, hi, I’m Kristen do you have a car? And they’re like, you can find me on Instagram. I know that when I DM you, you probably won’t see it in DME back and now I am a lost connection to you and you never know who someone is or how they’re going to help you. And if you don’t find a way to concretely connect with them, don’t make me search for you because that is how doors don’t open. So be prepared at every turn for actually how to get ahold of someone. Speaker 1: (40:52) Totally. Well, and I, I hope you don’t take this as a slight, but like, you know, if I go look at your social media right now, I wouldn’t see millions of followers. But if I was sitting next to you on an airplane and be like, Hey, this is someone who’s booked 70 people on Oprah, it might be worth the conversation. And you just, you just don’t know. You know, on social media, everyone’s like drawn to like, you know, all the people with lots of followers. But it’s like, usually those aren’t the people who open the doors. It’s their assistant, it’s their talent manager, it’s their agent. Like those are the people who control the doors. Speaker 2: (41:26) Correct. And when you delve deeper into someone’s following, and then you start to see, Oh, that’s the head of, of this, of HSN. Oh, ahead of target. Oh, that’s ahead of that. And then you’re like, you have no idea who those people are because when you go to their feet, it’s just them with their kids. You don’t know that the people in my orbit and you’ve already discounted for whatever reason and it’s like you just lost one of your greatest leads, you need to great at such a high frequency of I am compelling these people into my orbit and then actually be smart enough to take advantage of that. You know the number of times that I’ve sat next to someone on a plane and later someone would be like, how’d you sit next to the head of development for HBO? And it’s, how’d that happen? It’s like I made that happen. I vibrated at such a high energy all the time at every turn. In order to make that happen, you have to vibrate at that level too and be smart enough to take advantage of it when it happens. Speaker 1: (42:23) So. Okay. I have one other question before we let you go. Before I do that though, where should people go if they want to connect with you, Kristen? Like if they want to like, you know, learn more and all that kind of stuff and just kind of like get plugged into what you’re doing. Speaker 2: (42:38) Yeah. All Moxy on Instagram. A. L. L. M. O. X. I. E. Speaker 1: (42:43) Okay, very cool. I think we’ll probably have you back again at some point or maybe we’ll just do a training for our members on like specifically TV pitching and stuff. But this is so, so powerful. So my last question for you is, is TV dead or dying? Like should we all be going the heck with a production company? Take your show idea and fricking make it yourself and build it on YouTube. Because that’s sort of what I’m starting to think is going by the time I would build the relationships and get to the people and make the pilot and get the first episode. And did we get the rating? It’s almost like, should we be thinking more of just like just build it, build it on your own or, or do you go now, you know, you really need to, like it’s still, it’s still TV. I think it’s a bit of both. I mean if you build it, they will come, right? So if you start doing it on, you prove that you have traction, then it will open. It speeds it up Speaker 2: (43:42) In creativity. Just again, having clever, you know, the first thing that we do with clients is say your Instagram, your social media is your resume. So show people exactly the types of cleverness, content, creativity that you have. So by the time they come to your page, now the alarm bells are going off. Now we’re connecting the dots of how to use you. That is, you know, it’s a paint by number, right? You’re over here shading in the lower corner there somewhere you don’t know. And somewhere all of a sudden you both arrived at the same spot and it all clicks. It’s like, Oh, this was the missing piece to this butterfly painting that we were making of your brand. And it comes together and you eventually, for as much as you can say like television is changing. Is it dead? Absolutely not. It’s not anywhere we, especially now we are all working from home at home, our connection to entertainment, sharing and watching television together, it’s, it’s going to get stronger again. It’s just that now we have to find more clever ways for us to bridge together and come together in the middle. So it’s a bit of both. Speaker 1: (44:50) I like it. I like it. Such a fantastic educational, stimulated conversation. My friends, I don’t know, you know, where else you would find Kristin, and that’s why she immediately jumped out to me as someone you had to meet. And I think my instincts were fully justified because of her spirit. And this has been so generous, Kristin, and so informative and honest and empowering and I think just insightful and anyways, we’ll help to stay in touch with you. We wish you the best. And thank you so much. Speaker 2: (45:22) Thank you. And forgive my moving boxes. I’m just still getting settled. It’s not normally the shabby around here, I promise. Thank you so much for having me.

Ep 78: Going Pro with Digital Marketing with Angie Lee

RV: (00:00) I am so excited to introduce to you to someone who is a newer friend of mine who I really, really respect. Angie Lee is, she has millions of podcasts, downloads. She has one of the best personal develop events for female entrepreneurs. It’s called, pays to be brave. She’s releasing a book called ready as a lie. She’s built hundreds of thousands of followers on social media. And she is someone that was just told, Hey, you couldn’t do this. You shouldn’t do this. It’s not going to work. It’s a waste of time. You’re crazy. And yet here she is in her young years just crushing it. And I want, I wanted to invite her on to tell her, tell for her to tell us and tell you exactly how the heck that she does all that and give us all of her marketing secrets. So here she is, Angie Lee. AL: (00:51) I’m so excited to be here. Let’s do it. I love geeking out on all things, branding and marketing. So, RV: (00:57) Yeah. Well and I feel like you’re like one of the case studies of like, Hey, like you’re someone who’s just done it through. So, so tell us first of all, like how did you kind of get into building a personal brand and like how did all that, you know, how did you even start? And then we’ll talk about why you think it’s gone well and how to do it. AL: (01:17) Yeah. When I started this, I was 19 years old, 10 11 years ago, I didn’t know I was building a personal brand. I didn’t, I didn’t know what creating content was and I really was someone who just genuinely loved to share my life with people. I genuinely love to give tips. And at the time it was health and wellness. And so I was on campus in school and my first year of college and I hated college. I hated school. Typical entrepreneur selling lemonade on the corner since I was little and school was a cage for me, it was jail. So instead of going to class, what do you do? You start videoing yourself working out and you posted on my space and you share with your friends or you, you I was creating recipes and, and smoothie recipes and health tips and I went all in and I became obsessed with creating content. AL: (02:04) And what happened is through that I realized that there was this whole world of digital marketing and I became obsessed with how do I take this passion that I have for wellness online and get women to purchase eBooks or have ad space or do coaching programs. And so it kind of all evolved from me starting this blog. And then what started with three to four readers, one of them being my mom that eventually became women telling their friends and their friends’ friends. And I just stayed really consistent. And this is crazy to say, but I think in 10 years of creating content, I’ve maybe taken 10 to 20 days off in a sense of creating some sort of piece of content, whether that’s written, visual, auditory. I’ve just been obsessed with connecting with people every day and sharing with them. And then when I realized I could turn this into a business instead of becoming a dietician and making $20,000 a year working 80 hours a week in Buffalo, Idaho, which is what I was going to school to do, I realized that there was, there was something here, and I can still remember the day that a woman paid me $60 for a wellness ebook. AL: (03:05) And I remember thinking I was loaded. I was like, I’m rich. I have $60 I, I’ve made it mom, don’t worry about me. I’ve got it, I’m good. I got a woman paid me $60 from across the country for an ebook and then a day later this company paid me 40 bucks for ad space on the blog. And again, you know, I was 19 you’re broke, you’re broken college. A hundred dollars is like you are set for life. And so I remember being like, this is it. I’m going to make it. But I do remember that moment and I think every entrepreneur remembers their first digital sale because it’s such a beautiful moment of if I can get one stranger on the internet to find value in what I do, who lives all the way across the world or country, I can get thousands of people to do this. AL: (03:52) And once I realized that it’s been game over, and that’s what I’ve been committed to, showing up, creating content and finding all of these different ways to be, Hey, to be a coach, a teacher, an educator, influencer, and it’s evolved. You know what started as health and wellness then evolved into marketing coaching because women started to ask me, how did you turn this into a business? How have you made this a full time gig? And through that I found out, which probably isn’t one of your steps of your process, that my biggest passion really is, is marketing. I love marketing because as you know, marketing is communication. It’s the most beautiful form of communication. And I think if you understand humans and you love understanding humans, you can become a phenomenal marketer. So man was started as a blog about pushups is now this crazy career. RV: (04:36) Well, and I just, I love that idea that it’s like if you can just get one person, it’s like once you get that one person and you go, gosh, I can recreate this and I can scale this. One of the things that I love about your posts and Mmm, you know, I actually, I don’t follow a ton of people and I actually follow you a particular on Instagram is, is because you don’t sell the dream that it’s easy. You sell the dream that it’s possible and you talk about consistency and you lay out like you just did. Like it’s not the, Hey, I’m going to throw up a website and run some Facebook ads and be a millionaire overnight, which you see a lot of. And I’ve never figured out a way to do that. And none of our clients have ever figured out a way to do that. RV: (05:20) And none of my friends who are very successful, I figured out how to do that. I feel like it’s that true story of consistency. And so can you just help us understand like what was the timeline like how long from the time that you were like, ah, I’m a thrown up some weird blog. I’m just basically trying to avoid being in class in college too. When it was like, okay, I’m really going to do this seriously, and then what was the timeline between that moment and then the moment where it was like, Hey, I’m actually starting to make real money and then it’s like, Hey, this is full time and like, Hey, this is awesome and like, Oh my gosh, I can’t believe I’m being paid as much as I’m being paid do this. So like what’s that horizon look like? AL: (06:00) Yeah, I would say 19 to 2122 was, I have no idea really what I’m doing, but I’m going to keep showing up and making side money here and there and other jobs. Of course I was still in school until I dropped out because I hated college. But RV: (06:16) Years you worked. This was like a just a total like side hobby kind of a thing? AL: (06:21) Yeah, I would do it in between classes late at night instead of going to class. I remember being in chemistry tests, which are very intense. You guys are very dense answering to my blog readers because I was just obsessed. I was like, Oh my God, I need to talk to these people because they have questions and I didn’t really know yet if I could monetize it, but I won’t lie to people. I’ve always been a business woman. I’ve always seen the world through the lenses of a marketer and a business woman and I’m always thinking of ways to create something and sell something, share something. And so within about two years I started Googling what is digital marketing and sort of watching these corny videos from probably caught who was like the big digital marketer. Then I don’t remember who it was. I would watch these videos up late at night and I remember I would tell my roommate, Oh my God, look at this. AL: (07:05) You can set up a funnel and people will opt into it and then they’ll buy your shit. Like this is crazy. She’s like, okay, whatever. Just go get a job. That sounds really weird. People aren’t going to do that. Nobody’s going to pay for space on a blog. No one’s going to pay you to podcast like I don’t think you really should because this is right before social media really built. And it was almost as if I anticipated what was going to happen and this huge economic shift of the technological revolution as you call it. And so I started to get these ideas of like, no, this is how people are going to learn fitness and business and this is how people are going to buy stuff. So maybe I can position myself as someone who could teach fitness, but do it online so that I don’t have to work at a gym or go to go to a dietetics office, right. Or a hospital. And so it really became this obsession with digital marketing. But it did take probably two and a half, two, three years until I was making a part time income enough where I could actually see that this could be a real thing. Like wow, I have real steady clients. Whether it was group coaching, one on one coaching, ad space eBooks, downloads, that RV: (08:11) We were also doing it part time then as well, like it took, so it, it took you two and a half to three years to get there to a part time income. But you were also doing it part time as well. It wasn’t like you were doing it 80 hours a week and then it took three years. It was like you were kind of dabbling and doing different stuff, but like once you, once you said like, okay, so I’m going to go after this. So was that like right after basically you dropped out of school and said, okay, I’m going to do this as my job? AL: (08:42) [Inaudible] Yeah, that’s pretty much what happened. It was a burn the boat situation because I didn’t want to go work in corporate and whatever I did, I always felt like I was lost and I felt like I didn’t belong there and my ideas were too creative and I wanted to make own hours and I was getting clear signals from the universe and God that it was not meant to be an employee of a large company. And so that’s when I really doubled down. And you guys know listening when you are against the wall, that’s when you make it happen. And I think that’s what’s really beautiful about the time we’re in right now. I think when you know you have to do it, that’s when you do. And I realized, Hey, I’m a hundred thousand dollars in debt from college that I didn’t really go to. I’m passionate about digital marketing, digital marketing. I’ve made 30 to $40,000 here and there. If I can make that, I could go full blown and make this a full time business. And that’s what I became obsessed. Like I tell you with studying digital marketing and figuring out how do I take something I love and make money from it online and and I studied revenue streams and man, once you open up a business woman to digital marketing who wants to work from home and not have a boss, it’s game over. RV: (09:48) So how long did it take? So how long did it take then to go from, okay, first two or three years it’s like it’s, it’s a hobby and I’m making hobby income and then you go, okay, my back’s up against the wall. Either need to get a real job or I’m going to do this and say, okay, I’m going to do this. How long does it take to like make real money, make six figures, that kind of a thing. AL: (10:08) Yeah, I was 25 I would say when it became really real, so five years ago, so bright in the middle, five years, hardcore. That’s what I realized. Okay, six figures, multiple six figure launches really started to double down on my organic funnels, my marketing affiliate marketing. That’s when things started to get a little bit more smooth. But still ups and downs on every launch was amazing. And then 25 to 28 still flustering my ass. I mean, the whole process was busting my butt and it wasn’t actually until to answer your other question, it wasn’t until about a year and a half ago that I’ve had one of those moments of, Oh my gosh, I cannot believe that this is my job. I’m paid to speak on stages. I’m paid to host a party as you’d like to call it. I’m host to share about other people’s cool products and make multiple six figures from these launches. AL: (10:55) I mean, last year was insane to know that I was paid to be an affiliate marketer. Like it’s also really surreal to me, but it all comes back down to brand. It comes back down to that very first post I made when I was 19 years old and it was about burpees and pushups and green juice. Like that’s where it started if you think about it. But now eight, nine years later, I really feel like, Oh my gosh, I feel safe in this. I feel like I, for the rest of my life, I’ll have a personal brand and we’ll be able to play in a few different spaces. Jesus. But that was not a fun eight, nine years. A lot of it, you know, ups downs I had done in the beginning, I was confused. I didn’t have a lot of coaches. I should have hired more coaches. I kind of just Googled a lot. I Googled a lot of stuff because you know, I was nervous to invest in myself, which wasn’t always smart and now building a bigger team. And so it’s crazy that now I feel like it’s finally all in all came to fruition. RV: (11:46) Huh. So let’s talk about the digital marketing for for a second. What is, what are some of the things that you, you know now that are very clear that like you didn’t know then. So you know, you’re coming out of college and you’re kind of like, okay, I’m going to do this. And then you start Googling stuff and you go, dammit. Like, if this took me like I can think of in my life, I can think of, there’s like two or three lessons that were, they took me a few years to learn and it’s like I can teach them in five minutes, but it took me a few years. What are some of those big moments for you? It’s specifically like, I think a lot of people listening here, there’s probably less people listening that are, you know, in college going, Oh I want to do a side hustle. But a lot of people go on, Hey, I just got laid off from my job, or my income got cut, or my husband or my wife’s income got cut. Or you know, and it’s like, I need to like figure something out. And I don’t really know anything about digital marketing. So what are some of those big, big lessons do you think? AL: (12:42) Yeah, you guys are gonna love me and hate me for saying this, but there are rules, but there are no rules. And what I mean by that is AL: (12:52) Beating to my own drum is that the saying, beating my own drum, doing things a little bit different than most marketers do has actually been a benefit. And so in the beginning I tried to follow all the scripts, all the funnels, scripts, all the downloads, all the sales call scripts, and I think I was obsessed with following someone else’s blueprint and that actually hindered my authenticity. And as corny as it sounds, it’s, it’s the truth when it comes to building a personal brand. The more you are you, and maybe sometimes that’s weird, maybe that is your emails have some spelling errors. Maybe it’s you, you want to craft your email the way you want to craft it. You don’t want to follow the rules you learned in one specific webinar. I believe that that is going to shine and stand out more than anything. I think that the world right now is creating real and authentic and I wish I would’ve started being that way sooner because the moment I was authentic was the moment this brand built, this brand grew and I built super fans. AL: (13:45) Like I have fans that are not just, Oh I’ll buy from you there, I’ll buy from you for life and whatever it is. And the w the reason I was able to do that is because I woke up one day and realized I have to, I have to fully be me. And sometimes that’s imperfect and it’s weird and, and they’re noticing that when they read my emails where they consume my content, it’s a little bit different than what most girls in the space are doing and it’s one day cause I blinders on and two, it’s because I made the, I finally stopped doing what I did in the past, which was I don’t follow specific scripts. Even as an affiliate marketer, I don’t follow the copy swipes and you can, I’m not to say these things, not to say these things don’t work for some people, but I excelled as an affiliate marketer last year with a few different people in their launches and they all wanted to know what was the system, what was the strategy, what was the thing? AL: (14:28) I’m like, guys, there wasn’t a thing. The thing was I show up on video, I talked to my people like they’re my best friend. I give them value and they feel like they know me and they trust me. And that one, it wasn’t a specific email sequence. There wasn’t one swipe copy I sent and Ooh, it got them in. It’s just at the end of the day that stuff can work. But nothing can replace being a human and speaking to another human and just being real with them. And you know, as all of this is growing, consumers are becoming smarter. So they know when they see an ad, they know when they hear an ad, they know what you’re doing. So the more that you can be genuine and the more that you can integrate in your ads or your sale into what you’re doing, the better it. That’s been my saving grace. I tell women that all the time. I’m like, I, I haven’t been as scripted as most people and I think that’s actually been a benefit. So for you guys listening, follow your own damn rules. If it feels like the right thing to send or right thing to say. RV: (15:22) Oh, so that is awesome. I love that. So what you just said there is you said you know, if it feels like the right thing to send, that reminded me of something that emotionally there, you know, there’s a big fear here, particularly if there’s people who have been successful in something, but they’re newer to digital marketing and it’s like, Oh man. Or just marketing in general. And this is another thing that I really love that, cause you talk about it so much as I think some people have that psychological barrier too. I don’t want to be seen as a marketer. I don’t want to be seen as a spammer. How do you overcome some of those feelings of like, well, if I send emails to a bunch of people, doesn’t that make me a spammer? And like, you know, like the, the mindset I guess of the balance of serving the audience but also generating revenue to provide for yourself and your staff. AL: (16:21) Yeah, there’s longterm. And then there’s short term, right? And sometimes you have to do what you have to do for the short term. But I believe if you hold out a little bit in your patients and you focus on the long term of having a personal brand that can last you, I mean I’ll probably be doing this in my sixties you know, I’ll just be on those live videos, chatting with people, writing books, speaking on stages. I don’t know what I’ll be doing. I’ll be doing something fun. But I’m in this for the long haul and I’ve known that since the beginning when it started to get real as you asked, like when I really started to make money and realize this was a thing and starting to get people, we’ll say it, Oh my God, I love your work. And getting that first email back from the blog saying, Oh my gosh, I need to hear from you. When I realized it was real is when I realized that I have something valuable in front of me and if I am the asset of this company in this business, I cannot burn out and fizzle out AL: (17:09) Immediately. Or this is going to crash and burn. So I am very delicate of when do I directly sell and then when am I simply just brand, building or nurturing. So I do have a flow, I guess you could say that in the beginning it was more structured and now I organically can feel it and I feel like as a female and we’re very intuitive with a lot of the things we do in business. So I’ll feel out the push and the pole and that’s what marketing and sales is, right. Push and pull. And so I’ll feel out, okay, am I in a season of, I’m spending the next six to eight weeks of pure value of no pitch, no strings attached and just throwing value at them. And then am I or am I in a season of, okay, I’m making more asks, but when I’m delivering, so value for months on end or as a majority or for the majority of the time when I do make the ask, it’s not a big deal and they’re not weirded out by it. AL: (17:56) So I think one, it’s knowing what season are you in? And knowing their seasons of push and their seasons of pole and there needs to be that nice balance of you showing up for them with no strings attached. Like one of my best tips for people on Instagram stories is, you know, as someone who’s also an influencer and paid by ads to to do work, there’s a lot of times I’ll share a resource or content or books or podcasts that I have no affiliation to. There’s no dollar amount, I’m not connected to it. Maybe I wish I was a little bit, but I just share it to share it, to show, Hey, you guys are my friends and I’m going to share things when I’m not paid obviously. And by building that trust, then when I do make a sale, they know it’s genuine because it’s coming from a place of, listen, I’m not trying to always sell you. AL: (18:34) So I do think there is a delicate balance, but I also believe that’s again, you got, you have to be obsessed with what you’re selling. So for me, I won’t share something or create something that I don’t genuinely love from the face wash to a book, to a course, to an affiliate thing. I just, I can’t, it’s just not in me to not be genuine. And I believe that that genuineness is what leads to sales. And that genuine passion for something is what leads to sales. So I would really encourage you guys listening. You gotta love what you do. You’ve got to be obsessed with it because listen, if you’re not obsessed with the pencil, you can’t sell it to someone else. You know, I see women being like, buy this. It’s great. I’m like, you’re not excited. I’m excited. So I think it [inaudible] can go a long way, but it has to be genuine. RV: (19:17) Yeah, I think that’s awesome. And I think that’s a really cool illustrations you’re using there of like, make sure it’s not the only things you’re promoting are the things you’re getting paid to do. Like, make sure you’re promoting things that it’s like, Hey, this is what I actually use every day. I think that’s, I think that’s awesome. So I want to actually talk about Instagram cause you’re, you, you’ve, you’ve built a really wonderful Instagram following is super engaged. As I mentioned. I follow you personally. And Mmm. What do you, what do you think, what do you think creates growth on Instagram platform specifically? Mmm. And I’m also interested in what do you think creates growth on your podcast specifically and sort of like what’s the difference between kind of those two platforms in terms of like what types of content and frequency and that kind of stuff? AL: (20:07) Yeah. Whew. I’ll keep this as short as possible. So this isn’t a 10 hour webinar, but I geek out on this stuff so I could go forever. But growing, here’s the deal. You guys, Instagram is not SEO friendly growth platform. Youtube is, podcasts are a little bit more so because of keywords and search. Instagram is a nurture platform. It’s a place where you have already, yep. It’s a place where it’s a place where you’re nurturing your current people. And I’ll give you a hack on how you can grow on there. But it’s more of a place to nurture and go deep with your current people. And then places like YouTube or podcasts or more of the funnel to get to Instagram. I believe Instagram is your party. And then you know, to get to the party first have to hear about the party from YouTube, from YouTube or podcasts. AL: (20:51) So it’s really about those two places being more SEO friendly to drive the traffic then to Instagram. So when it comes to Instagram growth, shareable content is everything. And what I mean by this is a piece of content. An infographic and educational posts are really heartfelt. Post a funny video, something that someone else will read or consume and say, Oh my gosh, this is funny. Entertaining gave me some sort of value. I’m going to comment because you asked me to engage. It’s so valuable. I need to share this onto my wall. I’m going to tag three of my friends in this because this is so funny. Or this is so educational or this is so interesting. Or it’s a, it’s a belief system that I also share. So by me sharing it, I look smart because I shared the quote knowing human psychology and why people share things. AL: (21:38) It usually comes down to a few reasons. It was funny, it was interesting, it was valuable, or they have the same shared belief as you, so they felt the need to share it. So for me, I have this nice balance of what I call intimate content or storytelling. So I’ll just have a picture of me and then I’ll infuse the story. And then what I’m infusing a lot in 2020 is growth related content, which is shareable content. So today I’m doing an infographic and then another day, maybe I’ll do an IGTG ITT. These are great for growth right now because people reshare them or comments. So the best way to grow is to get someone to comment their friends in the comments or for them to share it onto their stories. And then people say, Oh my God, what’s that video? That video looks so interesting. Bob just gave the top five tips to blah, blah, blah. I should go check it out. I need to learn more about that. So that’s the only way to truly grow on Instagram as it’s a platform that doesn’t have SEO capabilities to it. Now RV: (22:28) Typically speaking there, just to, to pause on that for a second, cause you go like from a tactical standpoint, the best way to grow there is for someone to share your post to their story. They can’t share it to their feed, which is sometimes annoying, but they could share it to their story, which is going to be where their most engaged audiences. So now all of their most engaged people are going to see that. And or to actually physically get your followers to comment on your post and tag one of their friends or followers in that post. AL: (23:04) Yes, yes. So before I’ll post, I’ll know is this a nurture intimate storytelling piece of content or is this to bring in new people and it’s a growth piece of content. So I’ll do a nice 50 50 blend on there. And when I’m creating a growth piece of content, like a quote or an infographic or an interesting ID TV, I’m created with the intention of Susan commenting, Sarah and Becky. So then her friends see it and maybe they share with their friends. They share with their network marketing team and that’s how it’s grown organically. And that’s honestly how the podcast grew organically. Because I’m, I’m again a marketer, I don’t run ads. So for me I really have to focus on shareable content. What would be so good or so valuable that a girl would say, Oh my God, this is so sometimes it’s funny, I just like being weird. AL: (23:43) So I’ll say what’s so funny that she’s to tag her friend or what was so educational that she felt the need to share this with her network marketing team or her friends who are also entrepreneurs and business and small business owners. So for me it’s like education and humor. If I, if I constantly vacillate between those two, I’ve seen that my growth we’ll do really, really well. So again, it’s, it’s more about not creating always what I want to create, but what they would find interesting and then they would post. So that’s how you grow on a platform that’s not SEO friendly yet. I hope it is one day, but it’s really smart as well to have a podcast and a YouTube and mentioned Instagram in those two places. So you can then drive the traffic from those SEO friendly places back to the podcast, which is, or back to Instagram, which is your home to nurture them and really get to know people. Because as you know, stories is like such an awesome place to convert to the sales for a lot of people because it is so intimate. RV: (24:35) Yeah. So I will talk, I want to talk about stories in a second, but so I actually want to share. So this is one of my things that I struggle with. I feel cheap asking people to comment below. I so, so when I was in comedy training I was, one of the people that I was coach was a guy named Eddie Brill who was the talent Booker for the tonight show. And he used to call that pandering where comedians would be like, Hey, how’s everybody doing tonight? And it’s so weird because it was like I took this one class from this guy years and years ago and for some reason that’s like the one thing that sticks with me is like, and I feel like I’m pandering when I do that. Yet everybody that grows does this. I mean, Trent Shelton does it all the time. Jay Shetty does it all the time. Gary V does all the time. Grant Cardone, like these people, these monster followings that are not celebrities, but they’re like personal brands and they’ve kind of become celebrity personal brands. They’re always doing it. So do you, have you ever had that reluctance or like where do you, like what do you, what would you, is that just stupid? You just go, well, who cares? Like just do it anyways. Or like what, what would you coach coach me on this? AL: (25:46) Yeah, it does feel a little corny and weird because everyone’s doing it and it’s like, eh, comment below. So what I’ll do is I’ll say to myself, okay, I do need to ask them to engage because if I don’t ask them, they may not do it. So it is smart to tell you and train them, but I’ll, I’ll try to make it a more interesting question or something that I actually think is funny or, or, or quirky or weird or who would you choose? A or B or you know, make it something where it’s a little bit more interesting for me versus just comment because they’re like, what do you want me to say? I make it easier for them and say this is what you should comment. Like do you like this or that or do you, but you know what I’ve noticed if something’s good because this is how I am and I think, okay, if my girl is a lot like me on social, then she’ll do the same thing. If something is funny or interesting or educational or valuable, I will tag a friend because I want her to see it or I will or I will and or I will share it on my wall. So I actually don’t think you need to always ask them to. I think if it’s good shit it will spread. Like good shit always spread. So I think it’s really smart. You can be the signature. AL: (26:53) It just does. I’m so committed to creating such good content that Susan can’t not tell their friend, go check it out because she’s the only girl. I know. Teaching marketing like this, like that has been my commitment and my obsession. So when I create something and I’m like, I’m going to teach it in a way where this live IETV, which guys get on ITB, it’s so good for engagement right now. It’s amazing. It’s the favorite child of Instagram. I don’t even say comment in it. They’re just like, Oh my gosh, I shared this with my team. It was so good. So I think if you’re a smart content creator and if you’re someone who’s valuable and has value like you do, I think it’s easy for you to pump out things that people would say, Oh my goodness, this is good stuff. Like I needed that tip today. So guys would always go, it comes back to good quality content and giving away value or entertainment. So people want, you know, and so I do, I don’t like these super corny like, yeah, you could tell they just posted it. RV: (27:40) No, but that helps. Like Timmy, it’s to me different where it’s like tag, it’s different between just kind of going like tag a friend who needs to see this and more going like, who do you know that is struggling with this thing in your life? Shared this with that person. Like just like what would be interesting to me or, or, or to go, you know, who’s somebody, you know, that’s a leader, tag them so that they can see this like, or, or who is someone, you know, that’s really good at this versus just saying, Hey, tag a friend so that I get more, more views. Like making it more meaningful. That’s actually really helpful to me. I like that. AL: (28:14) Yeah. Being selfless with it will always pay off. You know, it might take a little bit longer, but it’s so worth it. RV: (28:20) Yeah, totally. So all right. So I do want to ask you about the stories, but before we do that, we’re running, run low on time. I knew we would go fast, which, which we have here, the where should people go if they want to learn more about Angie Lee and follow you. And also, you know, kind of who is, share a little bit about who your perfect person is so that they know they know who they’re going to, who you’re looking for. AL: (28:45) Yeah. I mostly help female small business owners, so online coaches, online network marketers, wellness coaches, life coaches, beauty coaches, fitness coaches, women who have a small DTC brand. So it’s women who essentially want to tap into the personal, the personal brand space. And you guys can check me [email protected] or listen to the Angie Lee show on iTunes and I’m hanging out a lot on IgE stories and on my podcast. RV: (29:10) Yeah, so actually, and I want to ask you about the podcast just really quickly too before stories, a top tip for growing the podcast. Just cause that’s been a monster for you. Like you have millions and millions of downloads of all your platforms. Like, if you look at web traffic, social, YouTube, blah, blah, blah, your podcast is really like the thing that feels like it’s jamming. What do you, what do you think that comes from? AL: (29:36) I love that. I don’t have like one strategic answer. So cause as you get it was intentional but not intentional. You know what I mean? And I think sometimes that’s the way it works when you really, really love it. But here’s what I’ve been good at. I’ve been good at creating hype and excitement around it. Going back to the passion or the obsession, I’ve been good at building sub-tribes in my community who cheer for me and tell their friends about me so that I don’t have to spread the word. And that’s the epitome of sub-tribes, right? Is creating your subculture in your personal brand. So your people are telling their people to go listen to you because Susan can tell her Becky’s to go listen to me better than I can tell the Becky’s because they’re two away from me. So two steps away from me. AL: (30:14) So the way that I’ve done it is one creating the sub-tribes and the excitement too. I’ve done a good job at teasing pre and post show, and I haven’t done this in the last year as much and I may start to do this again, but I treat each episode like an event. So for an example is I used to get on Facebook live and I would tease the topic and say, guys, if you want to hear the other three tips, you have to go listen to this episode. Go check it out on iTunes. And it was almost like I had a pre party or an after party to the show and then they wanted to go listen to the rest. So that has been a really awesome way for me to spread it. And then I treat it like I’m affiliate marketing in a sense where I find tribe leaders, so women who have a community or women who have a network marketing team and they share the podcast to their women. AL: (31:00) So for me it’s been interesting to see how it’s spread really through other people spreading it to their networks. Right. And as an organic marketer, literally, I don’t run ads. I’ve had to rely on almost my community being the outreach. So one, get your people to cheer you guys on more than anyone to create hype and excitement around it. Whether this is getting online or stories, pretty graphics and exciting things to get people excited to listen. And I think making sure the topic and the name is niche specific. In the beginning, you know now it’s my name, but I think in the beginning, let’s say you guys have a show on beauty or wellness. I think having it be something specific so people know what it’s going to be about and you teach on this definitely down getting focused on something, becoming the best at something. It’s like Dave Ramsey, the reason his show blows up is because people were searching for the word finances or debt. So have a searchable term, know what the problem is you solve, create a show around that and then as your brand grows, you can teach on whatever you want and have a little bit more flexibility. But I think it’s really important in the beginning to have it be a niche specific show. So then there is more searchability to it on, on iTunes. I mean it’s all good. RV: (32:01) Well sure. I mean it all. Is it all? Is that something that you do? Alright, so one last one last thing. I’m going to steal one more tip. Using IgG stories to promote. How important is it? What do you do? How do they fit in or why are they so critical to the overall like monetization strategy? AL: (32:22) Yeah, to give you guys some real life data here, I used IgE stories, which is a completely free platform and obviously I was very consistent on it. They’re on there for a few years, as soon as it came out, but I used it to sell out my last live event of 1500 women, zero paid ads. That was all I did. I a bunch of ID stories everyday just talking about how exciting it’s going to be, how amazing it’s going to be. You need to be there. We had affiliates sharing it on their ID story. So in addition to my stories, they were sharing it as well. We had a whole affiliate system of tried leaders and you guys, the power of video is irreplaceable. The way that someone can feel within 15 to 30 seconds of seeing you on video, just speaking from your heart saying, Hey, go check this out, or you need to be there. AL: (33:03) It’s irreplaceable. You know what I mean? You can have the most beautiful sales page in the world, but if people have not seen your face, your mannerisms, or heard your voice, I don’t feel like they’re as pulled to buy or to work with you cause they don’t know you yet. People need to hear you and or see you. It’s just so important for the sales process. So for me, I’m all about the intimacy game. My question isn’t how can I sell more? It’s how can I get more intimate with my people, which maybe sounds creepy, but I’m always asking myself, how could I be a little more intimate? How could I be more intimate and vulnerable and authentic? Well, how could I be more intimate, vulnerable and authentic and especially serving women. The more I focus on that, the more my business lows up, which just shows they wanted to get to know me and trust me before they made the decision to buy for me. AL: (33:42) And there’s no better way to do that than video and guys, 15 second video that keeps you engaged. There’s engagement features, there’s music, just weird stuff. I mean game over, it’s like YouTube but you don’t have to do all the crazy editing. So man, it’s my favorite thing. I think it’s the most fun and it’s a nice way where you can have this, it’s a place where you could have this beautiful blend of teacher and friend, friend, Hey this is my life. I’m farting around and being weird. This is my dog, this is my cat, whatever. And then I can also show that I’m an expert and have a level of expertise and say, Hey, this is what I also know and then here’s what I’m going to teach you. And I think that that blend does really, really well on ID stories of friend and teacher. RV: (34:20) I love it. Angie Lee, my friends, check her out, check out her podcast. We’ll put links to that in the show notes. Angie, thanks for your consistency. Thanks for your honesty. And I think it’s just inspiring to me and empowering to hear you not selling that the dream is easy, but selling that the dream is possible. So we wish you the best. AL: (34:43) Oh, I think, sorry. This is amazing.