Category: Podcast

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.

Ep 76: Getting Your Slice of the Personal Brand Pie with Chris Harder

RV: (00:00) Man, I have to tell you that I have been so impressed with the man you’re about to meet, Chris Harder. And it’s the generosity of this guy’s heart that blows me away. I would say it’s his generosity and then it’s his humility in terms of how much he still to this day invests in his own personal development. I met him in a very high-level mastermind. He runs masterminds though. I mean, this is a great example of the guy that is usually teaching is still also always learning. And him and his wife, Lori, are just incredible individuals. We, we’ve gotten to spend some time with them. AJ adores them. And this is someone who’s just built a personal brand. Him and his wife both have monster personal brands. They built it from the ground up. They’ve done it right. RV: (00:47) And he offered to come on and, and, and share. I, and I asked him to come on and be like, Hey, can you share some of those secrets? So his podcast is called for the love of money. That is, you know, probably his, his biggest platform he’s got like a quarter million people on Instagram at the time of this recording as well as a lot of lot of people. And I think, you know, but beyond that, it’s just entrepreneurship and success in general and really more of the heart of, you know, what it takes to succeed as both a personal brain and an entrepreneur. So Chris, my brother, welcome to the show. CH: (01:23) Hey Rory. Heck of an introduction. Thank you for that. And let me just say I echo all of those kinds of thoughts right back to you and AJ and just think the world of you guys. RV: (01:32) Well, thanks brother. I yeah, it’s been, it’s been fun for us to kind of, as we’ve shifted more from like the corporate world into more of the entrepreneurial world the last couple years and then also starting my personal brand over, like really getting into the space and seeing what people have been doing. And you were one of the first people that kind of popped up on my radar and in my feet and I was seeing around. And I would love to just, so being that you are a money guy and you talk about money and gratitude and generosity and giving and accumulating and, and, and, and investing from a personal brand perspective, are you open to just share with us? Like how do you actually make money? Cause I think that’s just a question people still have. It’s just like there’s so many different ways to make money. What actually pays your bills every day, CH: (02:19) Every week. Yeah. What a great question. Okay. So this, and I love that you’re all about personal branding because what I’m about to share all comes from one central piece and that is the personal brand, right? So as of today, when we record this, we have sole ownership or partial ownership in seven, I’m sorry, eight different seven and eight figure businesses. So some of the obvious ones for us where the revenue streams come from is my brand with the podcast underneath that, I call that a coaching brand. So there’s a media brand or there’s a coaching brand, right? So even though the podcast is a form of media underneath that we monetize it through e-courses, through two different masterminds, through one on one coaching and through events that we throw. Then under Lori’s brand I would say is more of a media brand because she’s monetizing her podcast through sponsorships and affiliate deals and things that are a little bit more traditional. CH: (03:14) When you build up things with the intention of media behind it, and we can get into that later. The difference between a media brand and a personal brand, I mean that’s a great like and it’s important for people to understand that distinction because podcasting is one of those things that people go, well, my business model is podcasting. And it’s like, well no, podcasting for most people is a traffic source. Your real business model, like what you’re saying is courses, masterminds, coaching events. In the case of Laurie or Lewis house or you know, people like that, Jordan harbinger, their business model actually is podcasting cause they’re doing brand deals. They’re monetizing the podcast itself. That’s cool. That’s an important distinction. So I love that. Well, it’s a, it’s a very important distinction for this reason. When you’re building something, even though we’re all doing it, let’s say through a podcast, it really helps you decide, do I need to build a large enough podcast in order to sell the number of coaching programs I need, whatever fashion it is, or do I need to build this podcast to the size and attraction to sell brand sponsorship deals? CH: (04:17) And those are two very different sets of mechanics behind the scenes, right? So what we’ve done is we’ve built these personal brands and think top of funnel. So pop two large podcasts feeding into Instagrams and Facebooks and mailing lists. And then we’re able to leverage those large brands to do things like investor deals in outstanding foods and investor deals in a tech company and investor deals in a vegan what do you call it? Coffee creamer company. And we’re able to also leverage it into, we built a huge network marketing team because of it was easier with personal brands. We’re able to pivot into an alcohol company that Lori has started all because we have audience. And when you think personal brand worry, you really got to think constant audience acquisition and interaction because if you master that you can pivot and build whatever you want. CH: (05:14) Mm. And, and the, so which came first? Like did you have the audience first or did you build a business first and then you took that money and use it to build the personal brand? Like what was the sequencing of how, you know, and now it’s, it’s sort of like, you know, we talk about she has wall, I know you’ve heard us talk about that. Most of our paying clients will know what that is, is like you guys are on the other side of the wall. And, and I think of ’em, you know, you’re focused in terms of what you spend your time on, but when you move to investing, it’s different. You’re not spending your time on it as much. It’s more of just you’re putting your money there. So what was this one? Do you agree with that last part and is that how you think about it? CH: (05:54) And then what was the order of how it kind of happened? Yeah, that’s, that’s exactly how it happened is you need to really go deep and specific in one category first until you break through that she hands wall to use your example and then you’ve kind of earned the right to expand off of that. So where our first large audience came from was Lori’s fitness brand. It’s really funny that we’re recording this while we’re kind of facing this pandemic crisis economy because I was thrown into entrepreneurship, which by the way, I always wanted to be in any ways during the last financial crisis, 2000 interesting. I came from banking and of course that was a banking crisis and Lori and I were young and arrogant and ignorant. We thought that it was going to last forever. And so we did not take care of our money. CH: (06:38) And when the music stopped, Rory, we had to get rid of it. Everything. And I don’t mean like kind of getting rid of everything. I mean we had to short sell the home that we had just finished building. We had to get rid of the cars, the investment properties. And the most humiliating part was this. We had to put every possession on Craigslist and watch his car after car pulled up in front of the house and person after person walked into the home and they would bargain for the couch and bargain for the chairs and bargain for the TVs and the grills, whatever they wanted. And they would walk out while the neighbors looked on in judgment with our possessions. But do you know what that did? Worry that moment that felt so horrible while it was going on? I felt so humiliating while it was going on. CH: (07:26) That was the moment that actually allowed us to downsize into a tiny little 900 square foot apartment and decide again, choose again, pivot and reinvent again. And so without that back against the wall moment, we went to started building personal brands. Now here’s why I share that story. I don’t care where you’re starting from. What do you already have a brand or whether you feel like you are below zero right now? The very first thing we did was Laurie had a gym at the time and she really had no career up to this moment. She said, I’m never going to let this happen again. So that’s when Lori rolled up her sleeves. And so she had a small gym, one on one studio that we built out on the weekends on her own, and she created the beginning of a monthly plan and she started competing in fitness and build a Facebook following. CH: (08:15) Now keep in mind we’re talking 12, no, 2009. I mean this is before everyone’s doing it, right? Yeah. And the minute it caught fire her, her Facebook started to grow quickly. She made an effort to put herself in magazines and I’ll, I’ll, I tell you what that has to do with today’s brand building in a little bit here. She made an effort to get herself in magazines, which at that time drove her Facebook and driving that Facebook drove her online workout program, which they were not a dime a dozen back then, like they are now. Right. And it was building that very intentional building of a Facebook audience and building an online revenue stream in addition to that gym that made us really take off and realize that this is what we wanted to do from here on out. And at the time Roy, I was a partner in a mortgage bank. Yeah, you’re right. So I left the bank that laid me off and I took a partnership in a mortgage bank and I took for the wrong reasons. I took it cause I was scared and, and I didn’t have a lot of other options. But when I saw what Lori was doing, I sold out my partnership because I said that’s what I want to be doing. I came home and I helped her grow that brand and we’ve never looked back ever since. RV: (09:28) Wow. Interesting. Yes. So you mentioned something there about not everybody was doing it right. And so to that your back against the wall, that’s an, that’s a powerful story. Cause I know for sure there’s, there’s somebody is listening right now that’s going through something similar to what you went through. CH: (09:50) Do you think it’s too late RV: (09:52) To build the personal brand? Like, like you said, workout programs are a dime a dozen. You have Facebook? Yeah. Is, you know, now it’s really Instagram and it’s even Instagram is like on the later part of its maturity cycle. Yeah. Like what do you think? It’s too late, do you think? Is there, is there a next thing? Do you think it’s just the same old tools and just kind of starting from ground zero? Like what, what’s your opinion on the life cycle? CH: (10:17) Cool opportunity here. I’m so glad you asked this. It’s never too late. Number one opportunity never goes away. It just changes shape, form and location. So it might change from Facebook. Actually, let’s be honest, if I changed from my space to Facebook and Facebook to Instagram and Instagram to tick tock now and but it’s always just changing shape and location and it’s our job as we’re building personal brands to always be aware of looking for how it’s changing and where it’s changing into and to go that direction. And so if you’re just starting a brand right now, you can not have thoughts of it’s too saturated or everybody’s already doing it because you’re going to do it differently. You’re going to have a little different swagger, a little different spin, a little different set of beliefs, a little bit different energy behind what you teach. CH: (11:06) And so even if someone has already started a similar podcast, even if they started a similar brand, even if they started a similar membership or similar mastermind, yours is going to be different and it’s going to speak to the people that don’t yet resonate with the ones that are out there. And here’s the most important point. If people are afraid that it’s too saturated, all you have to do is reel yourself back in and say, what is my financial goal? Great. Let’s pretend it’s, you know, a million dollars. Okay, how many customers do I need at blank dollars to make a million dollars? So we’ll say your program was a thousand bucks. Okay, you need a thousand customers at a thousand dollars to make that million. Okay, great. How many months do I have to do that? 12 months, so what do I really need to go out and get out of that gigantic slice of pie of potential customers? CH: (11:56) It’s something that is so minuscule to meet your financial goal that even if other people are doing it, there’s still more than enough to go around and that should be what makes you excited to go out there and just carve out your tiny slice of the pie. Yeah, I mean if you get a hundred customers a month, that’d be 1200 a year, but if it was a hundred a month, that’s 25 a week. So do you get 25 people a week? That’s five a day. You get five, five people a day. You’ve made an at a thousand bucks, you’re making a million dollars. Yeah, and there’s some, if you do a 10th of that, like if you do a 10th of that, for many people, you’re probably still landing in an okay place. Exactly. Yeah. I don’t want people to get caught up in a million dollar example. CH: (12:38) You want to make a hundred grand, then it’s just a hundred customers at a thousand or maybe a thousand customers at a hundred dollars there’s so many different routes to your goal, but the point is this, there, the number of customers required. It’s such a tiny percentage out of the whole pie out there. Then even if you’re starting today, there’s still more than enough to go around. You’re going to find enough customers that will resonate with your style and your teaching. Yeah, I mean a thousand. Yeah. You’re talking about a thousand customers. There’s however many 8 billion people on the planet. Like you only need a thousand. Exactly. Exactly. The other thing that’s crazy is like your thousand or probably, you know they’re already, they already, even though they don’t know about you, they are all gathered somewhere. Right? They’re all following somebody that’s like you and that because of digital marketing, like you can actually go get in front of those people fairly directly. CH: (13:32) Yeah, and Roy, I’ll also add this, it’s not like all consumer only chooses one brand or one person and ignores all the other ones. I always say people are junkies and I don’t mean like drug junkies. I mean it in a fun, positive way. People are junky. So the same person that loves Lewis house also wants to consume Jay Shetty and they also want to consume Tom, bill you and they also want to consume, you know, just the list goes on and on. So they don’t stop at one person. They consume as much as they possibly can. That’s what I mean by they’re a junkie self-development. A junkie is going to go get all the self development they can and entrepreneurial junkie is going to go get all the entrepreneurial guidance they can. And so if you are starting today and you’re bringing a fresh voice and a fresh spin and a fresh facade, it’s actually, you’d be welcomed. CH: (14:21) Bye. Probably millions of people who are saying, boy, I wish somebody fresh would come onto the scene because I’m already, let’s say a use to following these, these individuals I’ve already found. So you used the term junkie. So I want to talk about that because one of the things that I think it’s interesting like that we have a family member who refers to what AIG and I do as a Hocus Pocus. That’s what it’s, it’s not like in a negative thing. It’s more, it’s not like a demeaning thing. It’s more of like a, I don’t understand it. It’s just like this Hocus Pocus. And I, you know, like personal development and like the idea of a junkie I think over years is like I had somewhat of a negative connotation, but as my life has gone on, I go, gosh, the only thing that’s really different from where I am today and where I started raised by a single mother is I am a total junkie. CH: (15:17) I am the self-help junkie. Like I am the conference junkie. I’m the coaching junkie. And I don’t know if you would agree with this, but one of the things I feel like you and I have in common is I think you are too. I think you’re a junkie for sure. I mean, listen, I wake up in the morning and I have a rule that I must consume a book or I must consume, not a whole book, but I must consume pages of a book or I must consume a podcast as the first in first experience in my day. Right, and it’s because during the day, every single one of us, we’re going to consume a ton of propaganda. Yeah, and a regular individual who’s not a self development junkie, they’re just going to consume whatever propaganda falls in their lap. And let’s be honest, there’s a lot of negativity out there at all times. CH: (16:05) What if you are a quote, self-development junkie? Then that means instead of consuming any propaganda that falls in your lap, you are selectively choosing and seeking what I call positive propaganda, podcasts, books, YouTube channels. I’ll make you better courses, whatever it might be, and that positive propaganda, when that outweighs the negative propaganda and you’re able to consume, consume, consume. What it does is a couple things. One, it kind of chooses what colored lenses you’re going to see the day through, right? Number two, it kicks you back in the game quicker. Okay. A bad circumstance happens during your day. You’re not going to unwrap it if you know what to turn to or if you just got off a great podcast or something motivating, you now have the tools to handle that rock circumstance in a better way. And that means the outcome turns out more in your favor. CH: (16:56) And so I will take the label of being assaulted, self-development junkie all day long because it’s better than just consuming what happens to fall in my lap by circumstance out there. [inaudible] Yeah, I love that. So I want to tie this back to network marketing and direct sales a little bit cause that’s another kind of thing that we have a shared background of it at different companies. But a lot of our clients, that brand builders group and I, and I know some of the people in your masterminds, our indirect sales, how, how does, how do you use social media and personal branding and digital marketing? How have you guys used that? Cause you still draw some fair, some fairly significant income, right? From a direct sales company that you earn a residual residual income of over seven figures of a team. We started building 10 years ago. Wow. Yeah. RV: (17:51) So how do you, do you still, do you still actively kind of promote that using the tools of digital or is it more just like the fact that you’re out there and you, people meet you and they ask and they’re looking for opportunity and it just kind of comes up in conversation? CH: (18:06) At this point? It just falls in our lap. You know, people just see us or hear of us and by proximity, a lot of times they’ll just go sign up on our team. So we’re not very active in it anymore. But we spent a lot of years being wildly active in it. And I’ll tell you what, one of my favorite things about network marketing is this, and I want to talk about a quick, it gets a bad neck, right? Right. So, and this is coming from somebody who, number one used to totally judge it. I thought I would never do that in my life. Number two, we have so many different types of companies and so many different arenas that I’m not sharing what I’m about to share from being. This is my number one income source. I’m sharing this from the standpoint of in all the samples I’ve been a part of, I really stand behind this one opportunity and here’s why. CH: (18:52) So in my opinion, it is the greatest set of training wheels in order for entrepreneurship that you could ever like earn your coupon that you could ever learn that. And here’s what I mean. The barrier of entry in almost any kind of company is always very low. It’s something you’re consuming anyways, something you’d spend money on anyways, right? But the upside is limitless. You know, I know probably at least 200 different people from different companies that have made over seven figures, some eight figures in network marketing, right? So the upside is limitless. The barrier of entry is very low. And the entire journey from start to finish is one of self-development. It’s one, I’m learning sales, it’s one of learning marketing, it’s one of learning brand building and how to leverage it. It’s one of learning team building and money management all slowly and all in a way that you really don’t have anything to risk other than a little bit of self esteem and a couple of friends sometimes because that is probably the highest the biggest cost of entry is a few people will judge you in the beginning and if you can let your ego go, it’s a great set of training wheels to truly learn real entrepreneurship. RV: (20:08) Man, I’ve never heard that quite like that and I totally believe in what you’re saying. And the, the other in terms of the training wheels, the part that’s so cool. And you know, at this point we made it, we were out of all direct sales because I speak to so many of the different companies that I, I, we actually got it had to kind of move, move out of that. But I still believe that my mom, we just actively helped get my mom back into a direct sales company and she was at Mary Kay years ago when I was younger. But the other thing is you don’t have to build the product. Like, and even in a personal brand, like half the battle CH: (20:48) Is creating an amazing product. The other half is making sure a whole bunch of people know about it. Like in network marketing or direct sales. A lot of times the products are awesome. Like a lot of times you, you have this great shake or oil or makeup or you know, whatever the thing is, your workout program and you don’t have to do any of the product development, you just gotta go tell a bunch of people about it. How’s this for a real life example? I was like to lift the curtain and use ourselves, right? So if I were to add up all the money, we’ve made a network marketing over the years, it’s over 10 million bucks. Wow. We started for probably $200 worth of shakes that we tried back when we were saying I would never do this now for comparison, this drink, this beverage company that Lori is starting, we have over a quarter million dollars into lawyers, IP formulations, sampling trademarks, you name it. CH: (21:40) And we don’t even have a run of product yet. So how was that for like a comparison of barrier of entry compared to payoff if you are just joining a network marketing team in a very safe way to learn entrepreneurship as opposed to what it really costs to develop and launch any other physical product? Yeah, and, and I think, you know, this isn’t meant to be a commercial for network marketing by any means, but I, the thing that to me speaks so consistently about your story is one of humility of being, of being willing to do the things you know, to take the stairs is the metaphor that we use all the time of doing the things that no one else wanted to do and not being afraid of judgment and having your back against the wall and selling all your stuff off and then doing direct sales. CH: (22:30) And then I know for sure because this is true about every personal brand that you started a podcast, nobody was freaking listening. You were doing Facebook. Nobody was there like it’s easier now because you know that you’re actually impacting lives. But when you first start it’s like, well this happened to me. I shared this with somebody this week, so I just relaunched. I had to start over and I have a brand new YouTube channel. My video from this week has three views. Oh my God. One of them is mine. I’m pretty sure the other one is like the person on my team who posted the video. I’ll go watch it. You’ll have four dice. Yes. and as you listen, but it’s you and I are willing to do that. We are willing to have zero followers. We are willing to have three views. We are willing to take the stairs. CH: (23:22) We are willing. Two how other people look and say, Oh boy that looks like it’s failing because we know that we are in it for the long game and I think that’s where people go wrong. Well and back to network marketing or whether it’s traditional business or any other form of business. People dip their toes in and when they don’t have a a quick hit right away they say, see it didn’t work. If you know that you are in it for the long game. And listen, I had to teach myself years ago when we were losing everything. That Eagle will cost you more than anything else in life. Right? I’ve got a saying. It’s ego is your greatest overhead because ego will will cost you by speaking up when you shouldn’t. It’ll also stop you from speaking up when you should because you’re afraid you might look dumb. CH: (24:08) Eagle will burn bridges, it’ll burn relationships, it’ll make you miss opportunities and ego will stop you from building that YouTube channel or that podcast or that Instagram or that tic TAC because you’re so afraid that people are going to look and see that you have three views, which is such a silly, a silly thing too. It’s like even if you have three views, it’s like you say you want to make a difference in someone’s life. There’s three people you know too. Not counting yourself even as like you’re making a difference. Like so, so I want to talk about the time, cause you bring up the time horizon and that’s good. I think that’s important for people to understand too. So realistically here, how long does this take take to start? Like, and let’s talk about the personal brand specifically, right? Like podcasting, putting content on social, like whatever you want to call it, blogging, doing videos on YouTube, whatever. CH: (25:06) Like how long does somebody have to be willing to do it for before they go, yeah, it’s not working. I should pull the cord on this thing. Or you know, like give us in today’s world, cause I know, I know you have a lot of your students are kind of like brand builders group. A lot of ours are kind of starting in there earlier in their journey. So I’ve got a two part answer to this. The first part is don’t start anything that you don’t see yourself still doing and enjoying in three years. So don’t start that podcast, not started that YouTube channel. Don’t start that Instagram account unless you see yourself enjoying it three years from now and continuing to build it. And then the second part of that answer is you can monetize a small audience very quickly, but you shouldn’t hang your hopes on monetizing it in a large way. CH: (25:57) Very quickly and saying, if it didn’t work at first, I’m out. Right? Is it possible? Yes. Should you quit? If you don’t do it right away, Nope. You gotta have that longterm commitment. So I’ll give the example. I’ve seen people with a very small following, find 10 clients at $10,000, whether it’s a coaching or a mastermind and make a hundred grand in their first few months of business. That’s a very realistic scenario. I’ve also seen people work five years before they hit six figures, and there’s a lot of factors that go into it. How much effort are you putting into it? Are you willing to reinvest your revenue into hypergrowth or are you starting to use it as a paycheck? Are you good at collaborating and mixing it up with other people out there that can point their audiences back to you? Or do you feel like you’re going at it solo? I mean, these are all very important things that will affect how quickly you get to grow and how quickly you get to monetize. RV: (26:55) Yeah. That’s so, so good. And is so, so important. I think yeah, I mean, you just, you, you nailed it. And that’s the thing too. It’s like, it’s not how long have you been doing it? It’s also how much have you been doing it, right? It’s like there’s plenty of people say I’ve been podcasting for a year and it’s like you’ve released six episodes. That’s not podcasting for a year. That’s podcasting for a week, spread out over a year. That’s exactly, that is exactly. It’s like, for example, Laurie’s show like caught fire and is X exponentially larger than mine right now? I could get jealous or I could say, huh, guess it’s not made for me. CH: (27:42) Or I could look at where her hockey stick moment happened and say, mine is right down the road. I just gotta stay the course until my hockey stick moment happens as well. Because if you continue to, and I love what you said, not just do it for a long time, but how often, how much do you put into it while you’re doing it? If you continue to say I’m committed to both of those components, your hockey stick moment will happen, right? It will shoot up at some point. You get the right break, you’ll get the right follow where you get the right share, you get the right you know, episode that goes viral. But don’t stop short of that hockey stick moment just because somebody else has gotten there as, and you haven’t reached yours yet. RV: (28:21) Yeah, that’s good. That comparison thing is a real, I mean, that’s a real, that’s a real struggle to like, it’s just you’re always looking at how many followers do they have and how many downloads do they have? And that’s, yeah, that can be a discouraging moment. Yeah, I think it’s important to, if you’re gonna play the game of comparison and say, look how good someone else is doing, then you need to play the full game of comparison CH: (28:44) And look the other direction and say, wow, look at all the people that wish that there where I’m at. And by the way, I’m not an advocate of playing the comparison game, stay far, far away from it. But if you’re going to play it, you need to play both sides of the field. RV: (28:56) If you’re gonna look at this end zone and say, CH: (28:58) Not fair, look what they’re doing, look where they are. Then you also have to look behind you at the other end zone and say, Oh wow, people wish that they were at the 40 yard line at the 50 yard line like I am right now. RV: (29:08) Yeah, I love that. And I would also, I would also say that too, to that point of the full comparison, it’s like you can’t look at where Laurie is at today and go, okay, where am I compared to her? You have to go, how many total hours has she put in? How much heartbreak has she had? What is everything that she has been? What is everything that she has been through? And it’s like, I’ve done six episodes so far. Right, and you don’t, you don’t factor in that because you don’t see that part. It’s but, but it’s like, again, if you’re going to play the comparison game, play the game CH: (29:42) And remind yourself like there’s a whole story here. You can’t compare their chapter 20 to your chapter one, you’re, you’re so spot on because if you’re going to do that, you must seek out all the facts. So if I was looking at Lori compared to me some additional facts or this, she had a great big Facebook following that she worked hard to build long before I decided I wanted to build a brand. And then she had been kicking out three episodes a week while I was only kicking out two. And when I went to three, she went to four. Right. So she has been doing more longer and that is why she has exponential more growth than me. I can’t look at a timeline and say, Oh boy, at the three year Mark, you know, she was higher than I was. That’s not fair. CH: (30:29) Yeah. That’s one reason why she’s doing better than you. The other reason is because you and I both share the same problem with our wives are actually better than us and we have more charisma. We just got you know, we just have to live, we have to live with that every day. But sugar mama. I mean, that’s all I’m saying. Sugar, sugar, mama. You know what’s really funny? I do want to talk about that. When you find the right partner, when you find that right ride or die, that lifts you up when you’re down and you lift them up when they’re down. When you guys have complimentary skillsets, right? So my strengths are her weaknesses, her weaknesses are, and I should say her strengths are my weaknesses. When you can decide to make that work, Oh look out, you can accomplish anything at any level that you want. CH: (31:18) Right? And by the way, if you don’t have a partner, this is not an excuse. This doesn’t mean, Oh, see, that’s why it’s working for, for Rory and Chris is because they found great partners. So I guess I’m screwed. No, that’s not what the message is. The message is by yourself. You could do absolutely extraordinary. And when you find that right partner have been, it’s just like everything you’re trying to do amplified. Yeah, it can. Yeah. It can be right. I mean when you’re by yourself. And this was something for me that, you know, it was like I worked till midnight when I was single every night, like all the time, other than Thursdays and Fridays, like when I was in college and you know, like Thursday and Friday nights and maybe Saturday nights, but it was like four nights a week I was working like crazy because I didn’t have a responsibility to somebody else. CH: (32:08) And then when you get a partner, you know that can work for, you can also work against you. You get the wrong partner, you get the wrong business partner, you get the wrong relational partner, you know, that can also, you get the wrong vendor. Partnerships can accelerate or decelerate, but you know, like what you said, you’ll know you have the right partner if they lift you up when you’re down and you can pick them up when they’re down. And when you decide to work together, it’s like one plus one can equal four. Absolutely. Without a doubt. It’s, it’s, it’s just such a magical thing to find. I love it. I love it. I love it. I love it. So Chris, buddy, where obviously you’ve got the podcast, if people aren’t listening for the love of money where else would you direct people if they want to kind of connect up with you and see more about what you’re, what you’re up to. Make sure you follow Chris, not Lori because he needs the followers. She does. CH: (33:04) Here’s two great places to find me. I’ll find all my [email protected] and Instagram is a platform that I hang out on the most right now and I’ve made a commitment to answer every single business question that comes in. And sometimes it’s a daunting task, but, but I stick to it. So go find me there at Chris w harder. Yeah. alright buddy. So last little thing here. Right. Do you think that generosity is a necessity for a successful personal brand or do you think it’s an act, an accessory? Do you think it’s a necessity or is it an accessory to the success of a personal brand? What a great question. Absolute necessity. Here’s why. When you are generous in your relationships, then they’re going to using law of reciprocity, give you things back that will help you grow your brand. When you’re generous to your customers, then law of reciprocity is going to kick in and they’re gonna be more loyal and give you things back that helped your business grow. CH: (34:09) When you are generous to strangers, when you’re generous with your time, when you’re generous with your knowledge. For example, if you create incredible opt-ins, you’re generous with your knowledge for free. If you do amazing webinars for no charge and you’re being generous with your knowledge and your time, then those have exponential returns on growing your business. And here’s a real live a example. I do live webinars right now while we’re going through this crazy economy. I wanted a platform for people to be able to ask questions about their pivots. Right now it costs me, in other words, I’m investing two hours a night, three nights a week, so six hours of my life. Wow. I mean, that’s big. At the time that we’re recording this, I charge $4,000 an hour for my coaching. So, I mean it’s a big commitment, but what happens every time I hang up, when I’m done serving, when I’m done adding value, when I’m done, I’m like answering the questions and I’m on that great high cause I just got to help people, their businesses. CH: (35:07) I open up my Instagram and there are always, you know, when you click on your notifications, there’s the mentions by the way, this is what everybody should always be. Measuring on their Instagram is shares and mentions, not likes and comments, but the thing that says, mentioned the caps out at 99, every single time I’m done with the webinar, it’s capped out at 99 mentions, right? Screenshot. Wow. I just learned that screenshot. Wow. He just said this. Then your followers grow exponentially faster, exponentially higher because of all those mentions. And so that is a perfect example of if you are generous with your knowledge, if you’re generous with your time, if you’re generous with everything that you can be, then law of reciprocity kicks in in a real tangible way. Gosh, I love that. The whole freaking personal brand business is built on the law of reciprocity. CH: (36:01) It’s like you can’t outgive people like you. You can’t, you can’t give away. Everyone’s like, well, I can’t give that away cause then what do I sell them? And it’s like, it’s not how it works. It’s like you, you, you just, you give it away and it always comes back. It’s the craziest thing. Like this whole, this whole space who is invented and built upon and thrives because of that one single law, Roy giving is the secret to everything you want in every aspect of life. And listen, it’s counterintuitive. People think if I want to make more money or if I want to accumulate money, I need to save. But the answer is giving is a secret to everything you want. And here’s how I learned that. I’ve always actually had a generous spirit ever since I was a kid. You know, my parents grew up teaching me how to tip extra as a kid and they let me figure out the tip and they’d explain why we tip extra because that’s someone who left their family to serve our family. CH: (36:55) And then at church they would give us boys, my brother and I, the money to put into the offering plate and explain, here’s why we put a little bit more in than other people that you might see. And we weren’t rich growing up. It was just they wanted to teach us generosity. So I always had the spirit. But here’s where it really hit home for me. About five years ago, I read 30 books in 30 days. Laurie was on a rocket ship. I was just treading water in the good, good land of good. And I wanted to catch up the Lord. So I’m like, you know what, I’m gonna read 30 books in 30 days and halfway through those books, and by the way, all the books had different agendas. They were spiritual books. They were seven steps to this. They were autobiographies is how to do this. Didn’t matter. Do you only agenda was it had to T improve me in some way and had to be less than 300 pages so I could finish it? CH: (37:46) Exactly. So at the two week Mark, I remember being in bed, finishing a book I rolled over to Lorina said maybe you’re not going to believe this, but two weeks in so far, 14 out of 14 books, no matter what they’re trying to sell me, giving is the common thread through these things like giving us the secret to what they’re trying to sell me. And then I watched for that common thread and it held true through all 30 out of 30 books and of all the gifts that I got from taking on that little personal challenge, the number one gift was confirmation of what I kind of had a hunch up. And that is the more you give law of reciprocity will kick in and the more wonderful blessings you’re going to get back in different ways in life. Wow. Wow. My friends Chris, harder. RV: (38:36) This is the story behind the story that you see. We’ll have to see if we can get Lori on here sometime to get her part of this. Without doubt. I mean this is a, it’s just so awesome brother and I, I appreciate you sharing so transparently. You know, your mistakes, the failures, your insecurities, like your journey and and just kind of be at being a champion in the world for believing in people and encourage them to be generous and, and just modeling that generosity over and over and over again. Man, we just, we, we pray for you guys and we wish you the best. Well, well, thank you so much. I know how much your audience means to you, and so I really appreciate you giving me this platform to share those stories and share those mistakes and share those insecurities like the more people that, that do, that it gives other people permission to take that first step. So thank you.

Ep 74: Responding Versus Reacting to Injustice with Anton Gunn

RV: (00:00) Hey there. Brand builder. Excited to bring you really a special edition here of the influential personal brand podcasts, a very unplanned, spontaneous we want to introduce you to a good friend of ours. I’m a client of ours, somebody who believes in us, somebody who we believe in tremendously. Somebody who we look up to. His name is Anton Gunn and he is a former senior advisor to president Barack Obama. And Anton is one of the world’s leading authorities on socially conscious leadership. So he has a master’s degree in social work from USC and was a resident fellow at Harvard. He is the bestselling author of the presidential principles and he’s been featured in time magazine, the wall street journal, BBC, NPR, and on good morning America. And as an international speaker and consultant, he’s worked with organizations like Microsoft, Sedexo, KPMG, Verizon, Aetna, Vanderbilt health and Boeing on and on and on. RV: (00:58) And so from playing sec football and being the first African American in history elected to the South Carolina legislature from his from his district early in his career to now working as a C level executive for an academic health system and serving on multiple boards. He has spent his life building or help helping people build diverse high performing teams and world-class leadership culture. And was this on our heart for you to hear from him about some of the things going on in the world and specifically how to use your personal brand to influence real change? And I’m going to let AJ say something cause she, I can, I can tell she’s bubbling. And you know, if you’ve listened to the show, you know that AJ does not often conduct the interviews. She does all the debriefs, AJV: (01:53) But since then RV: (01:54) This was, this one was right from AJs heart. So AJV: (01:57) Well they’ll say yes, Amazon has this really nice, fancy bio with all of this amazing accomplishments. But the real reason that I felt led to forced Anton to get on this call of us, which he was so happy to oblige so quickly, it’s honestly, he’s so representative of what we believe in as people and as a part of our, our community at brand builders group, we just believe like Anton comes from a place of real experience. So do you also comes from a place that he really believes in justice but also doing it in a way that actually creates change by using real influence because he’s doing things the right way. And that’s not easy. That’s actually really hard and it takes a lot of discipline to do things the the long way and that, but I just feel like you’re such a extension of what we believe in. And so thanks for, thanks for popping. AG: (02:53) Thank you for saying that. AIJ and I love you both. You are awesome. So happy to be a client. Happy to be your friend and happy to help you and all of your listeners and supporters understand that this is an important time for all of us to use our influence in authentic ways, in ways that we feel comfortable with, most importantly to help bend the arc of the moral universe more towards justice. And it already bends that way, but it requires each of us to do something in a way that helps to make things better. That’s what our responsibility to our leaders is to work, to make things right and every chance that we get. So I appreciate you creating the space for that and doing that and living up to who you are as individuals and as a business. RV: (03:39) Well, I love that Anton, and honestly we’ve struggled with what to say. I mean there’s a lot of things that I could say and kind of want to say, but don’t necessarily feel like they’re appropriate or you know, right on pace. I think that’s a lot of a lot of people. And, and, and like you said, as. AJV: (03:58) I feel like it’s so sensitive right now and being twisted and turned, and even with the best of intentions, it comes across as you’re ignorant. You don’t know anything. You don’t understand. Yeah, no, but that doesn’t mean we’re not trying. RV: (04:14) And, and I, I think, you know, when we reached out to you, we said, Hey, we don’t want to make this like a news media commentary on anything specific that’s happening in the news. But okay. You know, you’ve got a moral compass for fairness and justice. RV: (04:27) And I think one of the things that I struggle with, and I just wanted to ask you as your friend is, you know, there’s been a lot of stuff that says, Hey, you know, being silent as part of the problem, you know, silence, you know, basically if you’re silent, you’re racist. I don’t necessarily, that doesn’t necessarily connect with me. I don’t necessarily think that being silent means you’re racist any more than I think making a post will change the world. But what I am very interested in is what are the things productively that we can do? And that we should do like not just, not just using our voice, but what are the things that we can do. And you have such an interesting perspective from working in the white house to being, you know, a division one athlete to leading it in the healthcare world there. Yeah. AJV: (05:23) They’re all of these things, right? AG: (05:26) Yeah. So let me just say AG: (05:30) Know you gotta you gotta remember a leader’s responsibility is to respond and not react. And what do I mean by respond and not react? You know, whenever you’re in the heat of any kind of difficult circumstance, any kind of crisis, your emotions will get the best of you immediately. And what you see some people doing on social media are there emotional responses to what’s going on? And it’s not understandable for people to have an emotional response. Some people’s emotional response is to or emotional reaction is to lash out and scream at you for not saying anything. Cause if you’re not saying anything, then that means you must agree with the bad people who are doing bad things. Right. That’s a, that’s really a reaction. That’s not really a thoughtful prepared response. That’s a reaction. Some people’s reaction is because they’re so shocked by what they see. AG: (06:28) They freeze and they don’t want to say anything. I mean, we’ve all seen in circumstances you’re going to do three things. If you’re confronted in a crisis, you’re going to freeze, you’re going to fight, where are you going to flight any other direction? And I think what we have in the middle of any kind of crisis is that people freeze. Some people fight and others flight, and so I think the people who are fighting are the ones who are screaming out on social media. Some people are so distraught about what they see that they freeze and so that is sometimes silent. You’re when you freeze your assignment and some people could immediately assume because you’re not fighting like me. Oh, because you’re not running like me. Then that means you must agree with those who are doing bad things. That is not the case, but what you should do is be thoughtful about how you can have a positive point in the specs. AG: (07:23) How can you add to the construction of a solution and not to further destruction of the problem? And so what I tell people to do is first of all remain yeah. In your lane. And when I say remaining your lane is, you know, for the first 12 years of my career I actually was a community organizer. So I’ve organized protests, I’ve organized marches, I’ve done sit ins, I’ve actually hold politicians accountable for not doing the right thing. And that’s actually why I got into politics, because I got tired of politicians telling me one thing, but then doing the complete opposite. And I say, well, why am I asking you to do something that you clearly don’t have the capacity to do? Why don’t I just run for office and take your place? And literally that was my goal. But that’s not everybody. It’s not everybody’s name. AG: (08:15) Some people’s learning to say, Anton, you’re better to be out there on the front lines, but here’s what I can do. I have a hundred dollars and I’ll put it in a bail fund. So if you get arrested and go to jail, you can get out and go home to be with your family. Or maybe I’ll support your education campaign to teach people about what good policing policies are or what good environmental policy. So it doesn’t matter if it’s this current crisis or there’s other, some kind of injustice that exists. I will tell you this, we’ve had injustice in wrongdoing as long as we’ve had challenges in this country and around the world. I’ll give you an example of that is unfair and, but it’s something that everybody can relate to. The two of you decided to go out to dinner and you go to your favorite restaurant in Nashville and you’ve been waiting 90 minutes for a table and then my wife and I walk in five minutes in a manner of these sets us down at the best table in the house. AG: (09:16) But you’ve been waiting for 90 minutes now already. You know that that was wrong, that that was not right for me to be able to walk right in and sit down at a table where you’ve been waiting for 90 minutes. It doesn’t make you feel good. It doesn’t make you like the restaurant anymore because you felt that you were treated unfair. So the question is, what am I going to do if I learned that you’ve been waiting for 90 minutes, do I just keep my table and keep eating and say, you know what? Too bad, Roy and AGA, you had the weight, 90 minutes. What do I say to the maitre D? That’s wrong. I’m going to get up and I’m going to give them this table because they’ve been waiting for 90 minutes. And if you saw me sit down at a table, do you decide to storm out of the restaurant or do you just stand there and do nothing? AG: (10:05) You just accept that you know you lost the table. Or do you walk over to the maitre D and says, you know what? I don’t think it’s right. I don’t think it’s fair that we’ve been waiting for 90 minutes and we didn’t get the table that we asked for and you let somebody else have the table. Now the maitre D also has a choice and an option at that point. He can say, well, you’re just going to have to wait a little longer. Well, he can say, you know what, Roy J I’m sorry. As soon as our next table come available, I’m going to put you at the top of the list in all appetizers and a bottle of wine is on me. So in that situation, we all have the opportunity to respond or we could react, but the key is whatever it is, you want to be authentic to yourself. AG: (10:50) Where do you feel comfortable? And also when you have some expertise, because what I try to remind people is that we all have personal experiences in our lives that we can connect the dots to something else that’s going on. So you may not know what it’s like to be a black man living in America. I can count seven particular instances that I could have ended up like George Ford or Tamir rice or Eric Garner. All of them happened before the age of 27 Hmm. I did nothing wrong. I was a college athlete. I went to a gas station with my uncle to go in to just, he went to go get a bottle of Boone’s farm. Just tell you how long ago it was and I went in to play the lottery. You just connected with AGA. You might have more in common with Aja than you think. AG: (11:39) As it turns out, as it turns out you love boons Romney J yes, we all did. So we were leaving the gas station and out of nowhere, five police cars pulls up. They draw guns on us, they drag us out of the car, they throw us on the ground, he puts his knee in my back in accuses us of being a part of a game and doing a drive by shooting. We didn’t even live on that side of town, but my uncle worked at a restaurant over there and I caught the bus to his job. We got in his car and we’re driving home. We stopped by the gas station and this happened to me. So this is real for me, but it may not be real for you. You may never have experienced anything like that. But I would say you might know someone who has. AG: (12:28) And so in this time, I would say the first thing people can do if you’re trying to figure out how to use your influence, if you have people in your spear network, your friends with those people who you have in your cell phone, who you know might be feeling some kind of way about what’s going on, it’s okay to send them a text. We’ll make a phone call and say, Hey, listen, I don’t fully understand all of this going on. I don’t fully know what to do about any of this. But no, I’m thinking about you. And if you have people who follow you on social media, who you know fit that demographic, you can easily say, listen, Hey, I know you guys watch my pocket. You listen to my podcasts, you follow my feed. You’re on my list. I just want you to know for the interview who are affected by the current circumstances. I want you to know that I’m thinking about you. And I’m not sure what to do yet, but I’m trying to find out. [inaudible] AG: (13:19) We’re all going to be better because of this. And that’s the approach that you have to take is to say something, but you don’t have to have all of the answers because you don’t, you’re not an expert in that. This is about how to build a brand for a movement. Then they should definitely be talking to you, particularly if there’s a person leading the movement. But if this is just unrest or this is just community up uptick and outrage about things, you don’t necessarily have the lead dog role in this, but you can play a role. But first empathizing with people who might be experiencing it. And that’s what we all want. We all want someone to understand our pain, to understand what we’re going through. And you guys have done that just by creating the space and the opportunity. Second thing I was telling people, you are good at something. AG: (14:06) So some of us are great writers, some of us are great speakers, some of us are great at teaching people how to manage and deal with stress. So there are ways you can say, Hey, in the middle of the most stressful time that we might’ve seen in our lifetimes, here are three things. Things that you can do to lower your stress. That message becomes universal. No matter what your race, gender background is, that’s a universal way that you can help him make it. You provide people a way to say, listen, I want to create an outlet for people to be able to express themselves and let me provide feedback on how I can help you to channel that into something positive. Those are simple things or you can really start to do a little bit of research and say, who is working to make sure that injustice and unfairness no longer exists and how can I offer some free advice or some free counsel or free coaching session to help them through it. AG: (15:02) Now, that doesn’t have to be public at all. That can be very private, but it’s something that you can do too to add value and to be comfortable in your space. But speak to the times that we’re in because I do think Roy, there is a fear about the silence if, if it’s, if the silence goes on too long and people will assume silence is complicity. And so I don’t expect anybody in a emotional moment to react in aggressiveness or to jump right out and be a part of anything. Cause that’s what I’m not doing. I haven’t left my house. I still remember that we’re in the middle of a pandemic. And so I’m concerned about my health and my family’s health. So as bad as I might want to go out and Mmm, be a participant in some civil disobedience, I’m not doing it because one, that’s not my role right now. Number two, I don’t think it would be in my best interest for my health and my wife’s health and my daughter’s health. So I’m going to stay home. But what I am doing is reading everything that I could get my hands on about who’s trying to find a solution and rather than be a part of the problem and what can I offer in terms of expertise and support and help to do that. RV: (16:16) So can I, I have a question too. You should have scheduled your own interview, Anton. We need to have you. We’re going to do multiple. That’s right. All right. This is, AJV: (16:26) So what other questions I have, because I think this is just really pertinent and I think it’s a part of your expertise is there just seems to be a lack of leadership and all of this and a lack of a real coherent and consistent message of what do we want to see happen. And you know what’s like w where does that leave everybody? If there isn’t true leadership and there isn’t a true cause and a true message of like, let’s make this clear. AG: (16:54) Yes. AJV: (16:55) What needs to happen. So, RV: (16:56) Right. Like lighting a church on fire doesn’t signal a real clear message about what we want to see happen. In fact, it’s a very conflicting message to respond to violence with violence. At least that’s how it feels to me. AG: (17:09) Yes. So you’re exactly right. So I literally did a Facebook live about this last night for about an hour. And I hearkened back onto successful change efforts in America. I mean, you can go as far back from women’s sufferage to the civil rights movement. We’ve had a lot of successful change efforts in all of those efforts. You have to know what you want. Yeah. And not only know what you want, be able to clearly articulated in a way that everybody presents. You know, when you talk about building a brand, you gotta have clarity, right? You’re on problem and clear on the solution. AG: (17:51) Exactly. You have to be clear on a problem and clear on the solution. And the problem that we have in this current environment is there, there’s no clarity about this. There’s zero clarity from my vantage point around what do we want? I know what I want, but the solution to that is not clear because again, if you’ve got, you know, multiple things happening in multiple cities, the problem in Charleston, South Carolina is completely different than the problem in Nashville, which is completely different than the problem in Minnesota, which is completely different than the problem in New York city. And so because those problems looks similar on the surface, people are trying to apply a solution to fix all problems and there’s not one solution. This is a, a local by local problem and solution framework. And so when you, when you don’t have good leadership, the problem stays. AG: (18:49) I, I, I give people this kind of advice and I’ve given it to president Obama. So I just tell you anything I’m saying here is stuff that I say all the time to leaders at every level, from the dog catcher to the mayor, to even the president of United States. And the first is whenever you had a crisis, the first thing you must do is remain calm. The second thing you must do is you got to tell the truth. And when I say tell the truth, you have to be honest with people about where you sit and where things are cause people in a time of uncertainty, in a time of fear in a time of the unknown, people are looking for a beacon of hope. And so you got to tell them the truth and you got to tell them the truth, even when the truth is unpleasant. The thing with so many people forget. AG: (19:35) They want to tell you the rosy truth and they want to tell you the happy true. But they don’t want to tell you the unpleasant truth. So the unpleasant tree is difficult, but it’s grounding. And I, and I say this all the time, the truth doesn’t hurt. It heals. So if we can begin to say, AJ, you are a Rory, you have skin cancer. So I can lie to you and say, Oh, you just got a blemish on your face and telling you you have a blemish on your face is cool and nice and, and you, you don’t feel bad about it. But if you find out that that blemishes cancer, then you can begin to do something about it. Because some people may say, Oh, I got a blemish. I’m just going to accept the blemish and be okay with it. But if you know a skin cancer, then you have to respond. AG: (20:20) So we got to tell people the truth and we got to tell it to them in a heartfelt way. You don’t need to be angry with the truth. You don’t have to be screaming about the truth. You can empathize with people and be heartfelt about telling the truth. But then the third step after that to me is you got to seek out expertise who can help you to find a solution. Yeah, that’s the problem is that we, Einstein said this one time, that many spend 95% of their time trying to solve the problem but only spent 5% understanding the problem. Well, we need to spend 95% understanding the problem and 5% of the time on the solution and you got to have experts to help you to solve the problem. And that’s what leadership does, is that they remain calm. They tell the truth, they tell it in a heartfelt way, and then they find experts to help them to solve the problem. And that’s what we don’t have in this kind of environment. The people who I know have expertise on not being sought out, they’re being questioned, they’re being antagonized, they’re actually being accused of being complicit in the problem when they actually have real ideas around a solution. RV: (21:32) Well, that’s an you know, that’s something that I’ve struggled with with this personally. You know, you talk about leaders, just leadership in general. You respond, you don’t react. You know, I’m seeing a lot of message and I’ve had some people messaged me about like, Hey, why haven’t you shared? Or why don’t you share something? And as a leader, my, one of my first thing is I’ve been afraid to say this, one of my very first things is I need to find the facts in any situation. It’s like as a leader, not civil rights, just leadership training is going, I need to understand the facts. And there are, as you said, and I, I love that you pointed out, I believe that it’s different in every city too. And I believe that every instance of this is different. RV: (22:17) Any type of silence is not condoning something. It’s going, I don’t have the full context of what happened in Minneapolis or in Atlanta or like, and, and until, I know I’m afraid to come out and judge anybody in any, you know, cause I just, I just don’t know. But I think it’s, it almost becomes popular that people want you to just lash out and rage. They want you to just throw fire. They be because they want you to be mad. And it’s like I am mad. Like I’m, I’m heartbroken. And there are, there are parts of these things that you go, they’re undisputable, they’re worth being mad about just like looking at it. But then there’s, there’s context around every situation, every social interaction, every communication with a spouse, a child, a teacher, a colleague. And that context really matters. And it, and it shapes a lot. And I’ve been actually afraid to say that cause I’m afraid of people just being pissed off at me for not being pissed off right away. Like, like you know, publicly. AG: (23:19) Yeah. So, so I will tell you this, and this is one of the things that I, I’ve gotten very comfortable and as a leader is recognizing that somebody is always going to be pissed off at you. And if, if nobody’s pissed off at you, then you’re doing it wrong. That’s the main point. And I know as an influencer you want to grow your brand and you want everybody to like you and everybody to on your team. But you know what? The happiest thing that I get every day in my inbox is the number of people who unsubscribed from my list. You know what? I’m happy about that. Yeah. Because I know what I’m offering is not for you, you, you, you’re not invested in what I’m invested in and, and you don’t like it. And that’s okay because I want the people who do like it, the people who do get the value, the people who do want to build, adjust organization. AG: (24:14) An organization full of ethical, inspiring and empowering leaders who worked in the unfairness in the workplace. That’s who I want to talk to you. Okay? I don’t want to talk to the people who want to carry it on or the people who are indifferent to it. And I think the thing that a lot of people are probably most frustrated with but people that don’t speak out is the indifference. And so my context would be you want to have the facts, you definitely want to have the facts. But for many of us, particularly me, that what happened in Minnesota is not the straw that broke the camel’s back. My back was broken on March 3rd, 1991 when I saw Rodney King get beat 56 times by LA police officers and they all got off Scott free. So for me it was a a moment as a teenager that said that I thought this was over. AG: (25:09) I thought this happened, you know, during the civil rights movement. I thought this happened in the 18 hundreds where you know, you could get pulled over and never be seen again. But here I am in the midst of getting ready to go to college and this is what’s happening. So some people would say, we’ve known this all along. There’s no additional facts for you to gather in this situation. But I think the, the burning and the riots and in the burning down buildings and kicking in Apple stores and all these other kinds of things, this is what I also have learned doing this work. Everybody who is with you is not for you. Your body does for you is not going to be with you. And there are some agent provocateurs who are using this yeah. Crisis or this opportunity to advance an agenda that has absolutely nothing to do with justice in equity and fairness in the right thing. They have some of them. RV: (26:09) Yeah. And Anton, I just wanted to make sure that you said everyone who is with you is not for you and everyone who is for you is not with you. AG: (26:17) That is correct. Everyone who is with you is not for you. And everyone who is for you is now with you. So let me break it down. So you understand when I say everyone that is with you is not for you. There are people who are showing up and turning peaceful protest into violent protest, right? There are people who will show up at your events that are not really there to support your business there to copy and steal what you do. So everyone that is with you is not for you. The people who follow you on social media, they might be your followers, but they’re not for you. They’re for themselves. And we all have to understand that that’s always been the case. And secondarily, the people who are with you, sometimes they can’t be there for you. They’re with you in spirit. They may be with you in dollars, they may be with you in some other kind of way, but they’re not always going to be there side by side with you. AG: (27:16) So I’m with a lot of people that I can’t be side by side because I want to be here longterm. I want to be a person who lives a long time. And so for me, knowing that I work in healthcare, 90%, knowing that we’re still in the middle of a pandemic, I know it’s not cool to go back out and socialize right now. I get reports on how many new positive coded cases are showing up every day and we’re not in a clear, so I’m with a lot of people for a lot of people, but I’m not going to be there all the time. So you got to understand that you gotta be able to figure out who is with you and who is for you and what are they doing to help you and who are those that are not really for you. AG: (27:59) And again, I go back to some years of go work when I was being trained into the seat. So to be honest with you, I was trained at a place called Highlander in Tennessee. Tennessee’s where actually Dr. Martin Luther King jr and Rosa parks, all of them got their training on community organizing. Like some people thought Rosa parks sitting down on a bus and refusing to go to the back was a spur of the moment off the cuff event. It wasn’t not, they plan this for months in advance and they have five different people and Rosa parks actually was the one that was chosen to stay on the front of the bus. So most people think this is big civil rights broke protests started with a seminal event of someone just deciding not to get up anymore when she was a trained, a prepared leader who knew what to do and when to do it. AG: (28:54) So in my training, I learned then whenever we do things like this, there are people who are not really with us who are going to see what we’re doing and want to jump in. We got to control that because they could destroy the message, they could cloudy the message that we’re trying to send here. Then it can turn into something that is not. And that’s what I think we, we are seeing right now that there’s some people who are clouding the message that is not really about, you know, police violence. It’s about anarchy or it’s about I hate the government or it’s about, I hate rich people. It’s about I hate America. Because I do believe there’s some form foreign people who are involved in some of these efforts. And so we don’t know which is which at this point. We don’t know the enemy, our friend, because we haven’t taken a time to, to develop the right structure and strategy to move for change. AG: (29:51) And, and to give a quick plug to my former boss Barack Obama, his foundation has been trying to do his best job of this stealing information around what’s a right way for you to get involved. He posted the article on medium recently about, I know everybody’s upset. Protest is a part of, of making change. And we’ve always used protest in America from the Boston tea party onto present day. So he’s not saying not to protest, but he’s saying is getting involved in a way that can make sure that the positive change is lasting and that we actually do the right thing. And so he provided resources at the Obama foundation website. And so I would encourage people to figure out what you can do. But I think the main thing is we got to separate the wheat from the shaft and know that everybody that is with you is not for you and everybody that is for you. Sometimes it’s not with, AJV: (30:45) That’s so wise. That’s so good. One of the, one of the interviews that I saw online here recently was the son of an Atlanta, a city police officer. I’m a black man and he was, he did this really great speech, super emotional, but the thing that has stuck with me and I can’t get out of my head, he said, you don’t fight the enemy by burning down your own house. AG: (31:08) Correct. AJV: (31:08) And you said people were burning down our own house. Wait, that doesn’t work. AG: (31:14) It’s not smart. And that was killer Mike. He’s a hip hop artist, activist. I’m one degree separated and kill Mike because one of my mentees actually used to make beads for him. And I’m trying to get him to be a brand builder client too, by the way. So so yeah, I was willing to help, but that’s a point that, that everybody should understand that if you’re trying to solve a problem, go to where the problem is. Don’t go to where the problems now. So here’s how I explained it to him, the friends of mine and a conference call. If, if I have a nail in my foot five a nail in my foot, it doesn’t make sense for you to put a bandaid on my shoulder. Yeah, that doesn’t, that’s not solving the problem. Why don’t you haven’t taken the nail out of my foot and you haven’t stopped the bleeding on my foot. And so if the nail is in Minneapolis, well, if the nail is in Louisville, Kentucky, why are you burning down in Atlanta, Georgia, right? While you’re riding in Charleston, South Carolina. And again, my point is there are problems in every one of those cities. Atlanta is not perfect. Nashville’s not perfect Charleston, that there’s no perfect utopian city in the United States of America. But those problems require a specific and clear solution to those problems. AG: (32:37) If there’s a nail in your foot, it doesn’t mean there’s RV: (32:40) A nail in every foot. Like the problem isn’t even as a city necessarily. It is a person, a few people, a set of people. And if you can understand who it is, you can proactively handle the problem, which is the truth about any problem in business or our personal life or anything. You can’t. But if you’re blinded by just rage, it’s like you can’t see the problem. All you know is you’re in pain and so you start bandaging yourself and shooting other people and it’s like, Hey, there’s a nail in your foot. Get the nail out. AG: (33:14) Yes. And that’s exactly right. And in problems have levels to them. So, so I, I, you know, my training is social work. When I got my MSW was understanding systems in organizations where you have individual problems, you have group problems, you have family problems, you have organizational problems. And so like when I work with a healthcare organization, I want to understand the problem across the organization. You might have a problem in this department or you might have a problem with this person, right? But is it representative of a systemic problem of how you hire people and who you hire and how you train them and what you allow them to do and what don’t you allow them to do? And what I find more times than not is that people want to solve problems, but they feel paralyzed because they’re going to be punished by a largest system for trying to solve the problem. AG: (34:09) So it requires us to have some level of depth and understanding around what problems are, what our role is, and to solving those problems and going right to the source. As I told my group last night, I said, listen, Mmm. If, if you have police officers who are committing bad acts, okay. Then RDC that the person who can specifically do something about that problem is the police chief that hired them. And if the police chief doesn’t see the problem and doesn’t understand the problem where there’s a specific person who can do something about that person. And that’s the mayor of city manager that hired a police chief. Yeah. And if the mayor and the police chief doesn’t see that problem and doesn’t understand that problem, there’s a specific group of people who can do something about the mayor. And those are the voters who live in that city. AG: (35:07) But if you don’t live in that city, you don’t have the ability to get rid of the mayor. You don’t have the ability to affect the chief of police and you don’t have the ability to affect those officers. Now you can contribute in ways to influence their problems. So going back to the word influence, there are a few things that each of us can control. There are other things that we can influence if we can’t control and if we can’t control it or influence it, our responsibility is to lead. And we, we, we lead by being the example of what we want to see in the world. So if there’s injustice be just, if there’s unfairness, be more fair, if there’s inequity being more equitable. So it’s about what you can control, what you can influence it, where you can leave, but you got to understand the problem. AG: (35:56) And I think so many people haven’t taken the time in this situation to just understand the problem from a societal problem of law enforcement, police and communities, particularly communities of color, two. Our response to when those things happen because I think the main thing, and I’ll say this last point about what happened in, in any of these specific events, it’s not just that we see a bad cop do a bad thing because in every industry there is a bad person that does a bad thing. So you got a bad doctor who does a bad thing. You might have a bad hairdresser that does a bad thing, bad speakers, every industry you can’t fix bad things that individuals do. We can’t control in police individual behavior. The question is when that individual does a bad thing, is there any accountability for that individual? And I think what people are so outraged by is the continued bad things done by certain officers. AG: (37:06) And they rarely get in trouble. They rarely go to jail. The worst thing that happens to them is they lose their job. I mean, think about it. If you murdered somebody and the worst thing that happened to you is that you lost your job. Yep. That’s where is w where the outrage reviews until the conflict. How do we make sure that when bad things happen that we improve the process so they don’t ever have to happen again? Like if you take the airline industry, I’ll give you this, this example. Mmm. We rarely have plane crashes in the United States of America now 35 40 years ago we had a lot of plane crashes, but every time a plane crashes, the entire airline industry works like crazy to find out what happened, to make sure that it never happens again. Like we have four hijackers who crashed planes into buildings, into the Pentagon and nine 11 and there was nobody that was a Homeland security expert on September 10 2011 there was no Homeland security experts, not one. AG: (38:16) But after that day, the entire country, the entire government, every single person began to find a way to make sure this would never happen again. It doesn’t matter why it happened, how we let it happen, we want to investigate that and understand the facts of what led to it. But we’re going to do everything in our power and spend ungodly amounts of money and ungodly amounts of training and hiring new people and changing our processes so that it never happens again. And if we’re going to be good at solving problems when bad things happen or bad people happen, we got to figure out how do we prevent them from ever happening again. And when we don’t see that happening, that speaks to a larger challenge. RV: (39:03) I love that. That, and so, and I need to ask you this question specifically that that parallel is so good. Anton and I, I certainly, you know, even though I’m saying like, Hey, we got to find the facts and things are different in every city, I also very much empathize with when you see Rodney King all the way to where we are now and you see example after example, it’s like, Hey there, there certainly is evidence that there is, there are some systemic problems that need to be dealt with and people need to rally. But even to just know what you shared here of like go to the police chief, go to the mayor and also, you know what I’ve never seen as an article that recounts all of these instances. Yeah. What were the facts afterwards and then what happened to all the officers? RV: (39:50) Right. Like all in one place. You know, I’m thinking to myself like maybe that’s an article I should write is to go show people because once the facts have been revealed, justice should be served and it should be clear and Swift. But, but so anyways, that was so awesome. So much. This is so good. But hold on. I got it. Okay. So I have to ask you this question specifically as it relates to our audience and this, the theme of this podcast being personal branding. You, you’ve mentioned several times, examples of staying in your lane. You spent a part of your life as, as an activist and organizer and being on the streets. But now you’re saying you’re making an intentional choice to stay at home because of various, you know, considerations. Mmm. Do you feel like personal brands should be using their platform? RV: (40:42) Like if I teach yoga, should I be telling them, should I be taking my audience and telling them why racism is wrong? Should I be connecting? It should buy, should I be saying, Hey, that doesn’t, that’s not what my expertise is about. Like how do you balance? Yeah, because a platform is a sacred thing and audience is a sacred thing and the audience that you have didn’t necessarily show up for your opinion on everything that you’re not an expert on. But at the same time, we’re all people, we all have beliefs and as humans we are all in this together. And this, you know, Martin Luther King’s in an injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere, which I fully believe and support. Well, finding that balance between, so do you go, yeah. Tell people what you believe and even if it’s outside of your lane, but you’ve used that term stay in your lane. How do you, how do you find the line? AG: (41:33) Yeah, so, so I think the, the, the summary of how I would explain it and when, I mean stay in your lane is that Mmm, the best brands, the best personal brands are the people who are the most authentic that people connect to intimately. They just don’t know, Oh, what you want to teach them. They know who you are. Like I know who you two are. Okay, I don’t, you might teach me everything I want to know about being a personal brand, but I know who you are. I know how you met and how your relationship started and what you did before you were building a personal brand and your, your, your life story so to speak. So you can’t divorce yourself from who you are if you’re really building a strong personal brand. So my point is staying in your lane, if it’s something that is connected to who you are and what you do, then they find a way to connect it to what’s relevant. AG: (42:26) Because I think one of the things that you teach in personal branding is how do you, how do you take what you do as a personal brand and connected to what’s going on in the world and what people need. And so if you teach yoga, you don’t necessarily have to say racism is bad and that, you know, you know, police brutality is bad. You can say, I know everybody is stressed out right now and the world is stressed and we’re seeing bad things happen all around us. But yoga is a solution to get personal alignment in yourself so you can help get personal alignment in the work. So again, you’ve given some money to say, you know what, I never done yoga in my life, but if something can help me to get this tightness out of my neck because I’m angry at what happened in Minnesota or I’m angry about what happened last month and what happened last year, maybe this is a way that I should try that I haven’t tried before. So if I’m a yoga teacher, that might work, but not, maybe I don’t do anything related to yoga or I don’t run a fitness gym or maybe I teach karate or RV: (43:36) So, but to stick with the, to stick with the yoga thing, if I’m going to follow a yoga instructor. Do you think it’s important that the yoga instructor I’m following is sharing their personal viewpoints on abortion, women’s rights, politics, racism AJV: (43:52) For both of you here, like this is actually something we teach. We say once you know what your problem is, you answered all of the things, all of the questions that are happening in the world through the lens of the problem that you solved. AG: (44:04) Yes. AJV: (44:05) What is your unique lens on whatever the problem is that you saw? Like for me, my personal brain problem is irrelevant, right? I don’t speak on racism or discrimination. I don’t speak on gender equality. I don’t speak on those. But that doesn’t mean that my problem of irrelevance, it can’t be seen through the lens of all these things happening. Not to go out and say, here’s my opinions for the world to hear. But that doesn’t mean it’s not connected to who I am as a human being. Because the problem that I solve is connected to all of these things. It’s just how do you take what’s happening through the lens in which you see things as a personal brand. AG: (44:45) Yeah. So, so you agent you hit is something, and definitely Roy, I’m going to connect to that point. If you’re, if the problem you solve is irrelevance. There’s a lot of people who are feeling very irrelevant right now. Okay? Mmm. Women in the workplace feel irrelevant every day. So, so there, and that’s a problem. And so you can find a way to connect to it. But to Roy’s point about my views on abortion are my views on, you know, X, Y, and Z. My opinion is you don’t have to go there to go there. So like if, if I’m living my truth, if I’m being completely authentic, then it only takes one word or two words in Google, Google, gun and Obama. So you’d Google my name of Barack Obama’s name, then you know my position on healthcare issues, you know my position, well healthcare reform, you might know my position on how do we rebuild the economy, but you don’t know where I stand on abortion. AG: (45:47) You don’t know where I stand on gay marriage, you know where I stand on any of these issues. And those things are personal to me, but they haven’t been the full scope and scale of what I’ve done in my life. But again, if it’s connected to what you’ve done. So if you’re a yoga instructor who had an abortion and it caused you to go down this spiral dark hole in your life and the only thing that pulled you out was that you learned how to do yoga, then maybe it’s okay to connect the dots in that way. But that doesn’t mean you showing up at every abortion rally and trying to give keynote speeches around abortion in America because that’s not your lane. Your lane is yoga. Okay? But your personal story gives you a way to connect to what’s real. So I tell people to be authentic. AG: (46:39) And then the last piece of every influencer that if you got 50,000 Instagram followers or 150,000 or 5 million Instagram followers, I’m pretty sure your local elected official knows who you are. And if they don’t, they should know who you are. So if nothing else, you use your influence to say, Hey listen, I would like to meet with the mayor to understand what’s going on in our community and how it’s similar or different than what’s going on in another community. And so if you can get an education, just say, you know what, we haven’t had a case of police brutality in this city since the mid 1980s well that’s a good thing to say. You know what, this is happening in America and is wrong. But I’m very proud of my city because it’s not happening here. But you should never make that statement unless you know, never, ever, ever talk about what you don’t know because it will make people ask you questions that you can’t answer beyond the surface level. AG: (47:47) So to your point, Rory, doing some research around, you know, the last 25 years or 30 years of police encounters that ended in a death of a person of color and understanding how many it is because it’s, it’s much more than we got on video. I will tell you that much cause I’ve done that level of research. So, but no the answer and then say, Hey, this statistically is a problem and we should be doing something about it and I can’t fix the whole world. I can solve every other problem, but I can talk to the mayor of Nashville. Well I can talk to my city council member or my state legislator and understand what are we doing to prevent this from happening here? And if they give you an answer, be happy and be proud about that. That’s the main point. AJV: (48:36) Yeah. I so agree. And what are the, there was two things that happened over the weekend that prompted me to bring up this interview with Rory cause I really, I really like, I prayed about it hard because we had both been kind of like, okay, yep. What’s our role? Like what’s our role in this? And there was two things that happened over the weekend that I just felt like I thought literally was like, and this is the path for you [inaudible] stuff. The first thing was Whitney Hawthorne, who’s one of our brand builders clients, right? She’s awesome. She’s amazing. And she recently had her son, her second son. And you know, we have two boys and there really close in age. Like our boys are only a few months apart. Both of them. Yeah. [inaudible] She posted something really simple on social media about this newborn baby and however she drafted it, it made me think I will never [inaudible] [inaudible] the fear because she has, AG: (49:36) Do you want I just lost it. Yeah. I saw that post too. And know I think God every day that I had a daughter and a son, and it’s hard to, to, to fathom that to say, you know, you know, God gives you to get the children you want, whatever God gives you. Right. But when I had a daughter, there was an extra sense of relief in me that I didn’t have a son because I know what me and my brothers have gone through with our encounters with law enforcement. And I know that even as a 40 something year old man who’s lives in a suburban nice neighborhood, you know, professional got multiple degrees, I got a great career. Everything is going the way that I wanted to go. The moment I get in my car and just drive to the grocery store, if a cop pulls behind me, my entire physiology changes. AG: (50:44) I break out on a full sweat. I wonder, do I have my driver’s license? I wonder where’s my driver’s license? I don’t put it in my glove compartment. I literally keep it on the visor above my head because I don’t want to reach down or reach into the console and make it think that I’m doing something. I’ll throw my phone on the passenger seat because I don’t want him to think that I have anything in my hands. And so I don’t want to teach my daughter those kinds of things. Yeah. But unfortunately, there’ve been enough cases with women that I’m also having to teach my daughter because it’s happened to black girls too. It happened to Sandra bland. And so, so I don’t want any of this. And I know that there are a lot of people who will never understand this. And, and I, and I’ve been selling into a lot of my friends who I’m not black and no share my experience. AG: (51:36) I’ve been getting text messages from them and they literally have been, Mmm. I don’t know what to say. I want to help. I just want you to know I’m thinking about you and my response to them is that I appreciate you think it about me. I appreciate you caring about me and I appreciate you empathizing with my situation and [inaudible] and that’s all that I can ask you to do. And then if they ask me further, what is there anything I can do to help? I said that the one thing that I believe that you can do to help is you can talk about this because, and talk about this in a way that is, talk about this in places that I can’t go to talk about it. Okay. Mmm. You know, my pastor, I go to an a interracial church and my pastor is white and he is the founder of the church, is a massive church with more than 25,000 members. AG: (52:30) And when he was retiring and handing over the ministry to his son, he says, I’m going to spend the rest of my life in ministry, tearing down the walls of race in America, and particularly in church because Sunday is the most segregated day in America. And so I’m going to use my platform. I’m going to use my influence. I’m going to use my brand power to make sure that we tat on a Rosa wall’s race. And that didn’t mean doing anything visceral and violent. You know what that meant? That meant every time we invited a guest speaker to church, it was a speaker of color. And, and let them come in and preach to the congregation. It means standing up a diversity group and asking Anton to chair to diversity group, it meant going down to the city and asking the mayor, what are you doing to bring people together of color? AG: (53:23) And the mayor is going to respond to him because he’s the of a church with 25,000 people. So again, he didn’t step outside of his lane. He just started asking questions and talking about this in places that I couldn’t talk about it to people who wouldn’t give me the audience to talk about. So it doesn’t have to be big. It could just really be a conversation. No, to be clear, there’s some of us that got to give beyond the conversation because you can talk to somebody and they can continue to do the same behaviors over and over again. And then that means you got to move to the next level of how we change. And, and I think that is warranted where we are right now. But again, there’s so many people who are not talking about it. As I, as I teach the people who live in oblivion. AG: (54:06) Mmm. You know, I, I teach that in the social conscious construct, you got about half of people who are living in oblivion that they didn’t see anything that you saw that pricked your heart and mind and want to have this conversation. They never got a text or a message from their friends saying, why you aren’t saying anything. They just kind of, you know, a happy go lucky move in. And leave it to Beaver land or whatever, and they don’t see anything that’s 50% okay. Yeah. The 35% of them who sees something’s wrong, but they either don’t know what to say or they thank you, somebody else to this problem to solve or they say, little low me can’t do anything about it. And that’s understandable for time, but because you know better, you should know that there’s always something that you can do. The small baby steps lead to the bigger steps, but then there’s a smaller group of people about 10% who literally believe that they benefit emotionally, morally economically, politically from being, staying the way they are. AG: (55:17) Yeah. And we have to find a way to deal with those people, but those people are in the minority. Right. I listened to your podcast religiously, and so when you did the interview with Andy Andrews, and he talked a little bit about his book, how do you kill 11 million people? He pointed out in the book that at the height of the Nazi party, they were only eight and a half million of them when there were 80 million people in Germany. So you had this 10% minority that had control of an 80 million minority. So we got to stop the 10% wherever they are in business, in the world and wherever. But it’s so many more of us on the other side who can do the right thing, it should do the right thing. And that’s what I’m trying to teach is how to become a 5% leader. AG: (56:13) The admired leader who stands up for justice and there’s a laundry list of people, Dr. King Nelson Mandela, Margaret Thatcher, mother. These are people who says, you know what? I’m going to figure out what this problem is and I’m going to use my pulpit, my brand, my platform to figure out what I can do and what mother Teresa could do is not what Dr. King could do. So we’re all different. Well we got to stay in our lane and figure out what we can do to make a difference. And that’s what building the best brand is all about. RV: (56:46) Well you are a 5% leader and this has probably been one of the most enlightening conversations that I’ve had. Amen. And a really, really long that, and it’s just so helpful. I mean, just as a, as a friend Anton, to just hear your voice and hear your perspective on it. And I think it’s such a, a balance of what’s right and not who’s right and just doing what you can and not overstepping your bounds but standing for what is right. I’m just really, really graceful. We love you. We believe in you. Where should people go if they want to connect with you? I mean your, your brand is about leadership and like you, your, your voice man, like this is, this is why you’ve been through everything you’ve been through is like this time in the world right now I think lends itself to somebody just like you at just this moment. AG: (57:42) Well I really appreciate it and I agree. And if people want to connect with me, you can go to Anton Gunn. Com. That’s the home for all things. Anton, I’m on all social media platforms. I love Instagram, but LinkedIn is where I do the most dialogue around helping leaders be better leaders. So please follow and connect with me on LinkedIn, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter. But this is a time for all of us to learn how to grow as a leader and to have a greater impact and be the person who is the difference maker that makes the biggest difference. That’s what we all can do. RV: (58:17) Thank you, Anton. Thanks, buddy. Thank you.

Ep 72: Truly Connecting with and Growing Your Social Media Audience with Sazan and Stevie Hendrix

Speaker 1: (00:00) Welcome to the influential personal brand podcast. This is the place where you’ll learn cutting edge personal brand strategies from today’s most recognizable influencers. We’re going to teach you how to build a rock solid reputation and then how to turn that reputation into revenue. [inaudible]. I’m your lead host, Rory Vaden builder’s group, hall of fame speaker and New York times bestselling author of take the stairs. Speaker 3: (00:36) Hi, it’s Rory Vaden, and thanks for listening to the influential personal brand podcast. Did you know that the ideas we share on the show are things we actually specialize in helping you implement? If you want to raise your public profile and turn your reputation into revenue, please visit free. Call that brain builders group.com to sign up for a free brand strategy call with one of our personal brand strategist. Again, that’s free. Call dot brand builders group.com to sign up for your free call. Talk to you RV: (01:21) Oh my gosh, you are so lucky to be listening to this podcast today. Let me tell you why you’re about to meet one of the coolest couples ever, Suzanne in Stevie Hendrix. These guys have become friends of ours, their clients, a brand builders group. I consider them mentors like I’m learning so much from watching what they do. They have built a following of millions and millions of people on social media. Their podcast has over 9 million downloads. They get 15 million monthly impressions. They have hundreds of thousands of YouTube subscribers. Design has over a million Instagram followers. Stevie’s got hundreds of thousands of followers. They’re the coolest people ever. Suzanne is just fashionable and Stevie is so funny and I’m a little bit jealous of how young they are and you’re like the cool kids that I always wanted to be friends with that I wasn’t cool enough to be friends with and anyways, thanks for being here guys. Speaker 4: (02:19) That’s like the best intro I think we’ve ever received. Thank you. We take that soundbite from this show and just put it on our website. We’re going to transcribe that on our content diamond, their content diamond, your words. That was, that was amazing. We’re so stoked to be here. Obviously we had you on our show as well and I mean those two shows were packed full of great information. So we’re happy to be here. We consider you a friend and a mentor and a leader for us in an answer prayer. So thanks for having us party. So Speaker 2: (02:54) I mean this seriously, like I am one of those people that I’d like, I feel like I don’t really get social media still. Like obviously we use it for business and stuff, but like I’ve just not been naturally good at it and I’m not super like social anyways. And you guys have built this monster following. How did that happen? Like how did it start? Which platform? How did it grow? How long did it take? Right. Like some people right now are just starting out and they’re going like, okay, like millions of people seems like so far away. Yeah. And just kind of give us a little bit of the journey piece. Speaker 5: (03:26) Yeah. You know, this journey started for me back in 2010 2011 when I was in college and at the time Instagram had been around. And what’s really interesting about Instagram was that, you know, we were studying radio, television, film, and I remember in our news department, one of the producer girls there, her sister or her cousin was dating at that time, the cofounder of Instagram. His name was Mike Krieger. And I remember because we were doing, we had a little commercial talk show that we did that she produced. She was like, I’m going to get him on as a guest. And I hosted this show and I just at the time probably had a thousand followers on Instagram at that time. I mean that was kind of like, I was like, okay, great. But he came onto our show at that time and I’m in just in college and I got to interview him about this platform that really hadn’t taken off. Speaker 5: (04:20) This is when those filters, all you had that was really available to you, where like the Calvin filter and all of those little filters and that was it with the borders and people were just sharing pictures of their dog, their food. It wasn’t really seen as a space where brands were tapping into marketing agencies were looking at, and I just got to ask him some questions. And I think from that interview there was something in me that was really intrigued by social media and I decided to just kind of keep an on with like Instagram. I didn’t know exactly what my brand was per se, but I was just so fascinated by this new way of connecting with people through social media. And I just saw a little bit of that. And so I had a blog at the time, it was a very small blog, but it was my website and I started just practicing some of my copy on there, talking about the trends in beauty and the things that I was passionate about. Speaker 5: (05:16) And then when you fast forward to, you know, after I graduated college and you to Stevie, we decided to move to LA. And that’s where I really realized the potential and the power of social media because I met a lot of local bloggers in LA, which I did not really have that in Dallas and in LA man. I realized these girls are actually making these little side jobs and hustled and it was like a side hustle business and then I got really fascinated by it all and thought if I can start figuring out ways to monetize my blog, this really could become my own virtual business. I just didn’t know the model. I didn’t know how to do it, but I just saw the resources in front of me, which were social media did have an Instagram page that was growing pretty quickly at that time because there wasn’t the algorithm and all of that you see today on Instagram and so I think a lot of it was the timing, you know, being on that platform at the right time, having my blog to actually push some credibility out to like check out my trends, things like that. Speaker 5: (06:18) People started latching on to it and the rest is history. We started our YouTube channel shortly after that and YouTube was really great because I love creating or Instagram. Yeah, it started after my blog and after Instagram. And so I just fell in love with YouTube because we both knew how to edit video. We both knew how to shoot video and the framing when we learned that in college, that’s what we were studying. So I thought, let me take a lot of that knowledge and put it into what I’m trying to create online instead of waiting around for like the NBC to come and hire me to work for them and their company and their platform. And so I just saw that there was this potential, but I just knew I couldn’t do it alone. So Stevie is where, you know, that was kind of the turning point was when like Stevie came on board and we both realized, Hey, if we take this seriously, this could really be our full time job Speaker 4: (07:12) to give you the credit. Because I didn’t take it seriously at first. I remember I was working, I was doing a marketing job where I was kind of traveling the West part of the United States and I was trying to do the acting thing in Los Angeles. And I remember she called me one day and this is in 2014 and she said, Hey, you know, at this point I think you had maybe 150 maybe 200,000 followers on Instagram. And you said, Hey, some of the girls that you know, I’ve met in the blogging space. She said, you know, they’re starting to make real money. And I was like, what are you talking about? She’s like, they are making money, you know, from linking outfits from posting brands X, Y, Z. She said, and they’re making a lot of money. I said, Speaker 5: (07:49) yeah, I remember that. She said, Speaker 4: (07:51) girls are making tens of thousand a month. I said, no, they’re not. She said, yeah, they are. Speaker 5: (07:56) I even told him, I said, there’s one girl making $50,000 a month off of her. At the time it was like, Whoa. I mean, that’s a lot of money. Speaker 4: (08:06) Pool of bloggers who were linking and linking a ton, right? So if you think about how many girls were just going clicking on their links, it makes a lot of sense. But you know, she convinced me, basically you should come back, help me run this social media business full time and let’s see what we can do with this thing. And I have to give her credit because of her foresight, because now the landscape has changed. I mean tech talk is here and people are ready. They are, they have been waiting for that new platform to arise before the algorithm gets super complex and it’s hard to get your face out in front of millions of people. You know, Instagram was a place where people didn’t expect it to have that much power. I think there were a select few and they’ve capitalized early, but even forces on, you know, she had the foresight to realize she needed to continue building her brand and growing these numbers even when we didn’t see any monetary value in it yet. And you know, when I came on and started managing her and helping her with her social media, you know, little jobs began to trickle in, you know, like $300 from target, $500 from so-and-so. And then it started to grow from there. And that’s how it all started. And then we obviously you started Speaker 5: (09:13) and then I will never forget Rory, when Stevie and I, we created our own little tiered package that we would go and target little mom and pop shops on Etsy because at the time these small brands wanted social media exposure and a lot of the times just some high res images of their products. And so we created this little business model, you know, where it was like, Hey, we can offer you the platinum package, the silver package, the gold package, which you’re going to get all of these assets if you do that. And I remember the most expensive one, we were charging like $500 and we thought, Oh my God, no one’s gonna like buy that. And we were thinking, Oh my God, that is so expensive. Like let’s just hope and pray. And all these brands just kept coming back. We’ll do the $500 we’ll do the $500. So we were constantly readjusting our rates and learning as we grew and as we sharpened up our skills. So that’s where it all started. Yeah. And it’s just evolved and changed so much. Speaker 2: (10:10) So right there. And I love that. You know, that’s so similar. Like people ask me about my speaking fee these days, right. And like, you know, it’s tens of thousands of dollars. It’s, it’s up there. But like my first gig was 50 bucks, my second was 500 and it was like, you just get so good at what you’re doing and it starts small. And what I love is, you know, like people always talk about charge what you’re worth. And I always tell them, don’t charge what you’re worth. Charge what you can get and like charge something that’s such a no brainer for people to buy from you. And then as the demand increases, then you can raise just like let the price raise itself. And I didn’t realize that part of your story. That is so, so cool. We had people literally Speaker 4: (10:51) that would, you know, email us because when I came on board, you know, it was like size had four hands basically. And another, another mind on her working on her business. So, you know, I was now the gateway between her and the brands. I was emailing the brands back. I had no idea what I was doing, but I was like, I’m going to manage her. And I said, how much should I charge? You know? And literally I had to figure this thing out from scratch. You know, I started emailing brands back and like you said, trying not to be greedy or pushy and you know what I mean, but also standing firm and what we felt like our value was based off of the demand. Right? So it’s like so-and-so gave us a thousand dollars to do the same thing. You know, and you’re asking for just as much or more. Speaker 4: (11:28) So you know, that’s fair. And I would have brands that would email me six months later and be like, want to work with SAS again at the same rate? And I go, she has 150,000 more followers now than she did then. And it’s different because, you know, I remember talking to a friend who was a mentor at the time and has a really great mind for business and managing clients and he said, you’re not charging for your time. You’re charging for your audience. He said, and so it doesn’t matter how much it takes you. You said how many more followers do you have now? And you need to based on that information, the engagement, et cetera. Speaker 2: (12:00) Yeah, so I love that. I mean that’s like the super bowl commercial, right? It’s 30 seconds, but you paid 5 million bucks because you’re in front of such a huge number. I love that. So how do you get a lot of followers, right? Like I know that’s just such an obscure question, but like you guys have done it consistently. You got 9 million podcast downloads, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook now tick talk, which I want to talk about here in a little bit, but like you’re doing it so consistently across all these platforms. Why do you think that is? Like there’s millions of people they could be following. Why are they following you? No offense. Speaker 4: (12:41) We both have our own angle to answer that question. And I actually want to talk about this earlier, so I’m glad you brought it up. So right now, and I know we want to talk about tech talk, I’m just gonna bring the tech talk is here, right? Tech talk is happening right now and it has been happening for awhile now. I remember somebody told me about it a year and a half ago on a trip in Europe we were at, she was like, you know she’s a foreign girl. She’s like, you should try the cheek talk. It’s very good. Not a lot of Americans doing it, but they’re paying lots of people on the platform. You need to try. And I was like, thank you. What’s your accent? I can’t remember where it was from. But anyways, I remember at the time thinking, what is this tick tock jibberish she’s talking about, I wish I had listened and you who are listening now listen to this, jump on this platform now. Speaker 4: (13:22) And I want to say that because to gain followers, and I told this, this is on the tech talk platform is very young. I think there’s a lot of 18 year olds on there who are, you know, even from our age being just 30 they think so differently than we do. Her little brother’s 19 they just think they react differently to humor and things like that. But I said to Sam, I said, we need to get on this platform. And I said, and we need to follow the trends. And we didn’t really do this on Instagram. I think Instagram was a lot of vulnerability, blood, sweat and tears, effort, effort, effort. I said with tech talk, I said, this platform is so young, it’s so fun. It’s so trendy. And so it kind of goes against the idea of like staying true 100% to your brand. Speaker 4: (14:10) And I told, as I said, I said, I think what we need to do is both, I said, we need to follow the trends, but we also need to present like our brand and our mission statements people, right? So it’s like we’ll have a video where people would do a ton of dances on tech talk, we’ll do dances or we’ll do you know, members, women, you know, common things that one person is going to see and be like, I relate with that 10 people are going see to be like, I relate with that a hundred people. Everyone relates with that. So do common things. I would say if you want to start growing things that people can commonly relate to, don’t be a hipster. Don’t be somebody who’s like, I have my own way of thinking because people, me too hear common languages common, you know what I mean? Speaker 4: (14:52) Things they can understand. Because if you are too, too niche or, or the way in which you present things is too outside the box and not easy to digest. I don’t think you’re going to gain a lot of followers. You might gain it a niche of strong followers, but in some ways you have to water down, right? Like even if it’s comedy is your thing. Make your comedy digestible for everyone in middle America because then you will start to gain followers. But like you say, Rory, you know the she hands wall, it’s like you’re going to gain gain, gain followers. Once you get them to love you in a sense on social media, then you present your mission, what you’re really about. And I think you do it along the way. I think people will pick up, Hey, he’s a pretty nice person. Like he’s talked about this or that or I know they do a lot of humor, but there’s something sweet and down to earth about them. Right? Once you get them to love you, you gain a bunch of followers. You present them like Speaker 5: (15:45) and was like, this is what you need now. Like I’m going to deliver you something that you need that you didn’t realize that you needed. You know? And that’s where social media can be a really powerful tool. I’m just gonna piggyback off of everything you’re saying cause I completely agree. I think part of it is timing, but the other part of consistently growing with your audience is the consistency of what you’re putting out there. And a lot of people have that instant rise, right? With social media. And Instagram and we see them grow really fast at the beginning and then it goes down like this because they’re not able to keep their audience and that’s what’s tough too is sometimes when you grow so quickly you will reach a point where you’re just like, okay, I’m plateauing. It’s like I need to keep this audience and that’s really when it becomes a priority to center everything that you do really around what your audience does need and catering to their needs. Speaker 5: (16:40) Because for us, we say that everything that we do, we do it because we love connecting with people and that all the things that we put out, we try to put it out with purpose. Even a silly video that we do, we put it out in hopes that yeah, we hope that it brightened up your day a little more. We hope that it made you laugh. We hope that this video was a sweet escape from maybe your harsh reality you’re in and all of that to say we constantly think about something we learned in college, which is the idea of like what’s in it for them. Everything we put out, we have to think about that. It’s not about us. Even though we’re on the social media stage, you, if you can always point back to your audience and make them feel a part of the community, you’re going to continue to grow. And it may not be as fast once you reach a really increased pace, but then it’s about keeping that audience that you have built. And I think that’s the age that we’re living in right now in social media. It’s not about how quickly can I hit a million followers. It’s about how can I engage the community that I already have and keep that community. And then over time you will see growth. Speaker 4: (17:44) And I just want to add one final point, like to that connectivity that you talked about, you know, really with your audience, you know, it’s so important, but also, Oh gosh, I just lost it. Wow. I just lost it. I had a really good, Speaker 2: (17:57) that’s all right. It’ll come back. It will come. It’ll come back to me. Yeah. That’s an interesting concept there about like, you know, get the followers first, you know, kind of have a broader net to get them Pharrell and then you know, kind of work into telling them more about what you do. That’s just a really high level strategy is, is super interesting. So I want to talk about video for a second specifically because I mean at this point hopefully everybody knows like video is pretty much the thing that matters. It’s like where the whole internet is going. Everything is video, video, video, video. And we did an interview with Michael Stelsner, the founder of social media examiner and he just totally hammered on all the data and trends pointing so aggressively and heavily towards video. And y’all edit your own videos still, right? Speaker 4: (18:49) Yeah. Yes. Okay. That actually kind of goes back. That reminds me, what I was going to say is that connectivity is so important connecting with people. But I think also people really recognize service like when you’re doing a service or when you are serving or when you were putting effort in. So one part of that is connecting. It’s the effort that you put into connect with people, right? But a lot of the times like you’ll see people that bust through because they just put the effort in the work into putting up their videos. There’s guys who have millions of followers on Instagram and tick tock who are not funny at all. They’re not funny at all. But guess what? They edit three videos a day and they make it very simple and very common and they’re getting comments and they’re getting shared and they are pumping out content and they are serving and people see their effort. Speaker 4: (19:42) And like I said, it’s digestible, it’s simple. It relates to the every person, every man, every woman, and they’re getting tons of followers. Whereas the person who’s putting in mediocre effort, mediocre service and a little bit of connectivity, they’re not going as far. And so you really, I think when it comes to editing your videos to breeze in it, we still edit our own videos is because there’s an understanding that we have of our content that no one else you can quite get except for us. And we can train somebody to get it close. But there is something when you edit your own video, the timing, the understanding of the content and how it should splice together, that is so important. It’s almost like a comedic actor. You can have a great, if you’ve ever been on set or if you’ve ever been, you know in the movie business you can do a really funny scene, but the editor is the one who decides which cut he’s going to take and how he’s going to cut it and the timing of that. And that has so much to do with how funny that scene is. Right? And so that’s why we edit our own videos because we know like we’re going to maximize our connectivity by editing our own videos. Yeah. So, and I want to hear about that. Like what does the video editing process like? What do you think is the key to a good video? You know, like what are just some of the more fundamental things I guess that Speaker 4: (20:57) people need to know. Like you know when you’re putting together your plan, you need to make sure these five things are in place. Speaker 5: (21:05) Yeah, I think the first thing we can do this together. I think the first thing is know the platform that you’re posting it on. You know, this is similar to even your content diamond. You know that a YouTube video is going to be different than a quick one minute video you’re creating for the Instagram audience, which attention spans even shorter than the YouTube audience. We already know that the internet in general is going to be a very distracted community because even on YouTube, that person watching you, they may have five tabs open already on their computer. So you have to even think about how am I going to grasp their attention on this platform? And then on the other platforms you have to run that same question through your mind. Tic talk is even quicker than Instagram for that generation who just graphs that information super quickly and they want it sliced and diced a certain way. But you can take one video and you can do all of those different effects but for catered for that specific platform? Speaker 4: (22:07) No, I agree 100% I think it totally depends because you know obviously you have one minute videos on Instagram and TechTalk and then you have TV and then you also have you know YouTube which can go as long as you want it to go. But even on YouTube, I mean specifically YouTube is a platform that I really feel like is for somebody who is, they feel a little bit old for social media maybe, but they still want to tap into it. YouTube I feel like is still a great place to tap into the social media market and a place I think you still can grow. Like I said, tech talk as well. Obviously it’s a very young platform but YouTube I think because it’s the number two search engine behind Google. So when people are searching for things, they’re searching for expertise. How to YouTube is so popular and also too YouTube still rewards people who post consistently. Speaker 4: (22:56) So if you are posting consistently, you know, two videos a week is kind of the recommended. If you want to grow, you need to be posting two videos a week. You can still grow on YouTube. So I think you know, when you’re editing for YouTube, what I would recommend is three to eight minutes, maybe 10 at the max. There’s a creator named David doebrick and he does a ton of videos blogs and he is huge, but his videos are all very, very short. And I think what he’s done is just hack the algorithm as far as I’m going to put up videos that are short, people are going to watch the full thing. I’m going to be rewarded on YouTube behind the scenes because it’s going to show that my watch time is a hundred percent right. And then they’re just going to roll onto my next video. So you could be creating a three part video, you know where it’s two minute, two minute, two minute, and they’re just rolling one video to the next. And YouTube is seeing, Oh my gosh, they put up three videos and they have a hundred percent watch time on all of them. Speaker 5: (23:50) Yeah. We just actually went on, we went on my YouTube analytics, which that wasn’t around like you know, several years ago when I started, but YouTube has built this back end page for creators to really see how their videos are performing on various levels from at what point do people click out of your video, a specific video they left at this marker and I look at that and like, yeah, I started going off on a tangent there. I mean they really do help you refine and kind of figure out what that perfect video is for your audience on the platform. But something that I saw recently was the people that are coming to my YouTube channel, the number one place that they’re coming from is Google. They are actually finding my content and discovering me from Google now Instagram and miscellaneous is what they call it, which is usually social media. Speaker 5: (24:39) That was like number six or seven and I push a lot of my content on Instagram and drive it to YouTube a lot thinking that that’s where I’m getting a lot of that attraction. But the truth is, is when you upload a video on YouTube from your title to the description, you treat that as if it’s a blog post, because those key words are going to be transferred and related onto the Google platform for SEO. And so when you create a content, a video like for me how to do makeup for beginners, there’s actually a site that I use. I go on trends.google.com I can specifically search what people are looking for on YouTube. I type in the keyword makeup and I can now see across the world people are Googling makeup for beginners. So all of a sudden I just got a really great video idea. Speaker 5: (25:28) I’ve been doing this for the past year, working closely with the trends as well as the content I want to create, but I package it in a very SEO friendly way and I have seen incredible results and it’s no wonder why number one is coming from this outside world and they’re now discovering who says on is and now they’re following my Instagram and they’re following our podcast, but they came from Google, which is an unknown platform for us that we don’t always tap into, but this new audience is now coming from YouTube. So YouTube, like Stevie said, is definitely powerful. Speaker 4: (26:03) Well also too, don’t be afraid, and this is a big thing that we’re still trying to learn how to get over. Don’t be afraid to repackage content because just like she said, beginner makeup on YouTube, it has been at the top of the trend search. It just sits there. It stays there, but it stays there. All of your videos have performed super well and you’re like, should I do another beginner’s makeup? The answer is yes, because guess what? You’re getting a ton of views on it. Speaker 5: (26:31) People want to learn on YouTube, they want how to, yes, Speaker 4: (26:34) easy makeup, beginner’s makeup, simple glam, like just continue to do some of that content that does super well, that evergreen stuff. Just repackage it, retool it a little bit and represent it in a different way. And don’t be scared to do that. Be thinking I have to come up with something super unique every time when if it’s working for you and the algorithm is rewarding you for it. I would say keep going with it. Speaker 2: (26:58) Yeah, and I think that’s an interesting thing about Google and search engine optimization in general is it’s like what usually performs well is the really simple concept. The really simple question. It’s like what you were saying earlier, Stevie about it’s the thing that everybody is searching for and it’s like, it’s not rocket science stuff. It’s like the common everyday person. So I want to talk about hashtags for a second because I never have really understood hashtags. And then I accidentally said this to somebody a couple of days ago and I was like, actually I think maybe that’s it, but I don’t know cause I don’t, I don’t actually follow them closely enough. As I said, hashtags are to social media. What key words are to search engine optimization. Do you agree with that? Do you not agree with that? And then just like how in the heck do we use hashtags? Like without Ben an hours and hours? Like figuring them out? Speaker 5: (27:56) Yeah, that’s a great question. I think, yeah, like you said, hashtags are the key words I think on every platform. You know YouTube, they call it something different like alternate tags. But YouTube has a tic talk has it, Instagram has it and it’s a great way to get your content exposed to a particular audience. It’s more niche. So you have to be kind of specific and selective with your hashtags. I’ve learned that more is not more, in fact, you should just do less is more. But just be very specific with it. And also when you’re looking at the hashtags, see how that hashtag in itself is performing. So if I know that there’s a better hashtag I could be using, Speaker 2: (28:36) how do you know how it’s performing? Speaker 5: (28:38) So like for example on tick-tock, if me and Stevie did a video cooking and I’m beginning to type in the hashtag and I type in hashtag healthy when you click healthy it’s going to pop up immediately. It’s going to have a drop down box of all of the hashtags right now that are trending with the word healthy in it. And so some of them don’t make sense. Like let’s say it was like healthy body or let’s say it was like, and our specific thing was a recipe and it said like healthy dog, like that wouldn’t make sense but it’s healthy recipes is getting 250 million people under that hashtag. Then I’m like for sure let’s go with that one. So tick talk that’s, Speaker 2: (29:16) so this is just the search tool, like whatever the basic search tool is natively in the platform, type in whatever you kind of think and then just pay attention. It’s like typing into Google search bar, how it makes suggested like search terms based on volume, Speaker 4: (29:33) right? What I’ve heard with tech talk so far is that tech talk is a little bit different than Instagram to where if you hashtag your hashtags will directly Speaker 2: (29:42) put you into a pool, a select pool of say like 150 people, right? So you post a video, you have 10 followers on tech talk, right? You post a video. Well, I have 52 followers on [inaudible] and they’re Hendricks is our one of my tick-tock followers. So yeah, no, I, dude, Hey, when I said to you, I didn’t mean to you, I was talking to you, not you Speaker 4: (30:08) followers on tick-tock, right? And you have a hilarious video with your daughter. You’re not going to hashtag basketball, you’re going to hashtag daddy daughter another one that’s popular or maybe even a trending hashtag. There’s trending hashtags on tech talk that you can see. But basically maybe you could say cute girl or something or cute baby and you put that out there, right? And people that are interested in cute babies on tick tock, 150 of them are going to see it. And then if those 150 it performs well out of them, it’s going to send that to a larger pool. And if it performs there, it’ll send that to a larger pool. Speaker 5: (30:41) And it all depends on what that person was already interested in. So tick tock has, you know its own and Instagram had their own algorithms, like if my homepage is going to look different than yours on Instagram because maybe on mine I’ve just been engaging with tons of recipe accounts. So Instagram automatically is going to try to appeal those specific accounts to me and take talk is doing the same thing. So if you’re engaging in liking funny videos right now, they’re going to bring you more and put you in those specific pools. And then if you’re the creator, they see how well you do in that pool. And if you do well you go to a bigger pool and a bigger pool and a bigger pool. So the hashtags are actually very important. I wouldn’t overlook them. I would definitely utilize them for each platform. Speaker 4: (31:25) I want to go make a point, worry about kind of what we talked about on our podcast earlier with you about procrastination. I think a lot of people, they neglect social media. Just, it’s almost kind of like they procrastinate on social media. We all know that we could be using social media, whether you get a thousand followers or you get 10 million followers. I just told my parents, you know, they started their Instagram, I don’t know, six months ago and it’s been performing really, really well. They’re getting good engagement now and I told them years ago to start it Speaker 5: (31:53) and they have a flooring store. It’s a foreign store. Yeah, right, right Speaker 4: (31:56) there in round rock, Texas and they have a flooring store and they were like, we don’t need that. That’s, Oh yeah. And I said, you need to start one. I said, it’s important. Even if it doesn’t bring you new business, it can basically for you where people can go on your Instagram and go, wow, they have really good taste. Actually we want to work with them. And maybe they found you another way. I said, but it is such an important tool. So whether you have 500 or 5 million, it doesn’t matter. I think it’s so important to start, you know, the biggest advice we can give to people who are sitting here like, Oh my gosh, how am I going to do all this and all these hashtags and all of this kind of stuff. Get content up. Don’t worry about how funny. I mean you would be surprised how many low, I would say more quality videos go viral than high quality videos. Speaker 4: (32:42) I mean, have you ever noticed how many terrible quality videos from webcams and stuff like that go viral? I mean it’s, it’s amazing. So I just want to encourage anyone out there who’s like, okay, I need to get on this social media thing. It’s almost like what you talked about with procrastination. That’s fear, right? That fear is actually the thing that keeps us from starting. And that’s the same for so many of us. And I’m, I’m even talking to myself because years ago when the algorithm for Instagram was favorable, when I had maybe a couple thousand followers, aye, you started posting a couple videos that Sal’s encouraged me to do. She was like, you need to post more funny videos. I posted these videos and one of them has like 500 comments. If I got 500 comments now and I have about 128,000 followers back then, I probably didn’t even have 10,000 if I get 500 comments down, I’m like, Oh my gosh, that was my best video ever. Speaker 4: (33:35) You see what I’m saying? And so the point I’m trying to make is that if I could go back to earlier, you are, the less good you have to be is kind of like what it feels like a hundred percent because the platform is so fresh. It’s so new. People are excited. They’re ready to just discover and be a part of it and they’re excited about that. Whereas now, you know with Instagram it’s like when Instagram started it was like beautiful coffee photos, photos of where I am. You know, full little photos and now it’s like what is that? Speaker 5: (34:05) Right? I think nowadays people are also really hard on themselves. Everybody thinks they need to figure out like their personal brand and aesthetic before they start in sign up on a social media platform. But the goal should be not that you have to know exactly what content you’re posting and how you’re going to do it, but the goal should be, I’m on social media and the purpose is because I need to connect with people. I need to grow an audience because I ultimately want to cater to that audience with this genius product that I want to develop or whatever. The goal is to get people connected to you, to get them in front of you and however you have to do that in the beginning, I guarantee you no matter what, that’s going to change and evolve as your audience grows and changes and evolves. Speaker 5: (34:51) So even if you think you have it all figured out and you start out and you’re like, I’m just going to do this Monday, Tuesday, Wednesdays, I’m putting out this content that no matter what, I’ll tell you right now, social media, every day it grows and it changes and you got to kind of jump with the next wave. Not to let that scare you, but for that to encourage you that you don’t need to have all the answers, whether you’re an expert or not at social media, you just need to be on it and you need to be present and your goal should be, I just need an audience to connect with because then I can actually sell to them. Ultimately, whatever it is you’re trying to package and sell. So that’s the thing with social media that’s different than a lot of other traditional things where yeah, you could do a speaking engagement, you could go do something, a keynote somewhere, and now you’re on a stage, hundreds of people listening to you. Speaker 5: (35:39) But that’s a different audience. The social media world, their attention spans, they’re already doing a bunch of things. You just need to get them to do this. Like you need to get them to stop and just notice you however that needs to be. Let it be authentic to who you are. Don’t try to do comedy if that’s really not your thing, but just get their attention and once you get that attention going, man, then you can start getting more strategic as time goes on and really cater and package to them. You know, whatever you’re trying to sell. Speaker 2: (36:09) I love it. There’s so much here. I think it’s just awesome to kind of get behind the scenes of the way that y’all, you just even how you think about it and approach. It is so cool and insightful. I do have one more question for you before that. Where do you want people to go if they want to connect with the is, see how you do your thing and learn about your family. Of course, you know, says like Stevie, your videos are hilarious as you’ve got all sorts of lifestyle, makeup and fashion and you know stuff. Where would you point them? Speaker 5: (36:42) Well, we’re currently working on our joint website, which we’re really excited about. sun.com you know, we’re working on that, creating that Hendrix home online, but in the meantime you can obviously go to our Instagram pages. Like if you go to my Instagram at Suzanne, you’re going to see in my bio pretty much our whole life spilled out. In a nutshell, you’re going to see our podcast, you’re going to see a link to my YouTube channel. You’re going to see a link to his page on Instagram as well as our family page. So Instagram is probably a good place to start. And then we’ll let you kind of branch out depending on whatever you guys like to go listen to our podcast or go on my YouTube channel for tips and all of that. But Speaker 2: (37:18) I always call it tell people, I say, go to Suzanne’s Instagram, you’ll see everything there. Even me, I’ll be tagged in many ways. Speaker 5: (37:24) Yes. And then our, our newest platform that we just dipped into, which we’ve been talking a lot about is tick-tock. So if you want to check that out, that’s our joint page. We’re just doing one page and it’s been really fun. So that’s our family account at the Hendrix’s and you can check that out. But brace yourself cause this guy here does some hilarious, crazy videos. Speaker 2: (37:43) The best thing the has brought is a time to do. Speaker 5: (37:47) It’s in us. Yeah. Speaker 2: (37:49) So my last little question for you is just where do you see all this going? What are the trends you’re paying attention to? I mean obviously we’ve talked a lot about Tech-Talk that’s like our chance to get in right now while it’s still relatively early. But in general, are there any other like major trends you would highlight and you know, do you think social media is always going to be here? Do you think Facebook’s going to disappear one day? Do you think like it’s only going to be videos and images will disappear or like anything at all? Like just in your head space, like you guys are in this all the time. What are you thinking about and paying attention to related to the future of social media? Personally, I feel like just just as humans, I mean even in, you know, go back through the history, we’ve Speaker 4: (38:35) gone through so many ups and downs and so many different trends and styles and lifestyle types that I think that all things have a place and just in different time, you know, whereas images now are less sacred than they used to be. In my opinion. Images used to be so much more sacred, you know, powerful pictures. You know, you go on Instagram now and the beautiful thing about Instagram is that it empowered everyone to become their own photographer and to do their best and to put it out there for the world to see, which at the same time kind of devalued. You know what I mean? Truly beautiful pictures. Even though there are those that stand, I think in the upper echelon, you know, that’s really hard to reach. At the same time, we’ve been numb to that, you know? But I believe that at some point the beauty of photography and the appreciation for true great photography will come back. Speaker 4: (39:24) But I don’t know when. My thought right now though with TechTalk, you know, is that you’re connecting with a super young audience who is super fun and they want to laugh. You know what I mean? They want those quick, gratifying giggles, you know what I mean? And so what we’re doing is we’re jumping on the platform and we are riding that way. And you even said to me the other day, baby, you said, you know, this just makes me feel really young. And I think what people love about social media and like tech talk right now, is that everyone around the world has the same feeling about it without even talking to each other. There’s this buzz, there’s this fun, there’s this hype of like there’s a new platform. Everyone’s jumping on. We’re figuring it out. There’s this buzz around it right now, but I believe that social media in some way will always continue because of the connectivity to that brings the world. Speaker 5: (40:15) Yeah. We’ve seen that during this time right now with the Corona and the crisis, you know, social media is the one place that’s bringing people together. In a sense it has become home for a lot of people who weren’t even active on social media prior to this crisis. But people are looking for connection and now is the time to really rise and to use your voice and your platforms in any way that you can. And like with anything in life, you don’t know what the future holds. You only know who holds the future. And I just believe that social media is a space where I feel like God has allowed us to not only share our life and the beautiful photos that we take of our daughter and our of our content, but it’s also been a stage for us where we can actually share our voice. Speaker 5: (41:05) And I don’t think social media is going to ever just disappear. It’s going to continue to grow and evolve, but so are we as humans. And I think we’re going to be able to handle that change when it comes. So I’m excited for the future of social media, but I’m also excited for our future to not only be on rented real estate, Rory as you’ve trained us and to actually build the Stevens is on home that we are right now virtually and to actually bring our online into this virtual home and we’re doing it alongside brand builders group, which has been awesome and we just can’t wait to see what that future holds. Speaker 4: (41:42) One quick point babe, that I do want to say is that we have seen this on Instagram, right? It’s the only thing you can really compare to tech talk the audience and what they want will mature. So right now it’s super young, super funny, super goofy, right? Instagram is not what it was before. So what people want and what they’re looking for will mature. Just like the age, the average age of a tech talker, right? Say if it’s like 19 years old, five years from now, their desires at 25 year old is looking for is different than a 19 year old what they’re looking for. So if you’re somebody who’s like, I’m too old for this. If you gather 15,000 followers and you have a thousand followers that are super loyal to you in five years from now, they’re going to be 25 30 years old, what are they going to be looking for that you can provide them at that time? And so that’s why it’s important. Speaker 2: (42:36) I love that. Well you guys, you are so awesome. As I say, it’s like I feel honored to work with you and to be your friends and to be a part of what you guys are doing. I think God has a huge plan for your life and already making such an impact. And I love how you’re using these tools to bring the good life, which is the name of the podcast and you know, to people and, and really use it for encouragement and stuff. And so anyways, we just want to encourage you and thank you and we wish you all the best. Speaker 5: (43:05) Thanks Rory. Tell AIG we said hi. Speaker 2: (43:09) That’s all we’ve got for this episode of the influential personal brand podcast. But here’s some great news, one of the most valuable things you can do to help us. And other new potential listeners to find. Our show is for you to both rate this show and leave a review. So as a special bonus for you, if you leave us a comment in iTunes, Stitcher, or wherever you listen, take a screenshot of your review and email it to [email protected]. We will give you free lifetime access to 25 of our most popular interviews on video in your own private members only area. Speaker 4: (43:49) So go right now, rate us, review us, and then send a screenshot of it into [email protected] and we will get you set up with free lifetime access to our most popular video interviews all in one place. Also, please just share, share, share this podcast with anyone who you think might enjoy it. And until next time, remember that building a business isn’t nearly as valuable as building a reputation

Ep 70: Putting the ‘Real’ Back into Reality TV with Mike Johnson

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) Well, if you’re like me, reality TV is a little bit of a black box. You wonder sometimes how does it work and what does it take to be on the show. And, and you know what goes on behind the scenes and we’re so excited to introduce to you a friend of ours, a new friend of ours, one of our brand Mueller’s group clients, Mike Johnson, who you may recognize from the 2019 the 15th season of the bachelorette and also bachelor in paradise. He is super popular on the show. America’s sweetheart with the big smile, which you may not know about Mike, is that he is a former air force vet, he has a sister who’s in the service, has been to 30 countries and is really building out his personal brand in a variety of different ways. One of the things that we’ve had lots of chats with him is about this direction he’s working on related to intimacy and self love and relationships. And so we’ve been working on some of that, but we thought it would be fun for you to hear from a real life reality TV star about how the heck it happened and, and what does it mean and what does it take. So anyways, Mike, welcome to the show. Thank you guys for having me. It’s so weird when someone says a reality TV star. RV: (02:19) Yeah, I remember I was at that event with you for Elizabeth from our team and it was like, man, we couldn’t even have a conversation as fan girls fanning on you like crazy. And I’m just sitting there like, don’t mind me. I’m, I’m just here to carry Mike’s bags. I’m here to, to fold his socks and, and do whatever he needs. AJV: (02:40) How so? We want to like help everyone get to know you a little bit pre reality TV. So what, what on God’s green earth, possessed you from going from the air force to this financial world that you were living in? You were on this fast tracked career path going, you know what? I think I’m gonna be a reality TV star. I think I’m going to put myself on the bachelor. How does that happen? MJ: (03:08) Well, you know, they say success is never a straight line. It’s a bunch of squiggly lines all over the place. Right. That’s definitely the truth with me as well. Never did I ever think in a million years. I would be on reality TV. Never care to do it, quite honestly. And that’s no disrespect to the ones that do care to do that. Mmm. I just had some pretty good friends in my life that thought I would be a good candidate for it. And they, one lady, she said I would be the bachelor one day, even before I even watched the show. And then a friend of mine after me bloviating to him about how much I wanted to be in a relationship and get married after him laughing. He said, Hey, you should try out for this show. And I was off work one day and well, it’s like, why not? RV: (03:53) So, so, so what, so what happened? Did you see an ad? Did you go Google it or like, like what, what does that mean? Like how do you try out for the show even? MJ: (04:03) It’s like well some of my castmates from Hannah Brown season of the bachelorette, they were handpicked, you know, they live in like certain Chicago, LA, New York, Miami, taboo areas, me down here in San Antonio. We don’t get those opportunities. But they’re still blessings all around it. The way I did it was a friend of mine, he just DMD me on Facebook, a casting call link. Then I was off work. And so that’s the only reason I did it. And as a financial advisor, I got to wear a suit cause I’m, you want me to have mindset? Hey wears a suit and no one else was in a suit that day. AJV: (04:44) Stuck out, MJ: (04:45) Stuck out. I even got on the news that day. It was kind of funny. RV: (04:48) So you went to a live in person casting call and you’re standing in line with what, a hundred couple hundred people MJ: (04:55) About? I’ll say about probably eight to 1000 people. Whoa. I would say 10% were guys. So I could have found out like that day to be off. And I was just myself. I had how to win friends and influence people. I have that book of me cause I thought it would be a really long line. So I was just reading my book in my suit and making people laugh and being joking and talking to people, making people smile. They liked me. I don’t know how I’d be a, I was so comfortable. It was, it’s kinda when I tell people how comfortable I was and just being authentically myself and just not caring, but just being myself. That really resonated with the casting directors after that. And so I did altogether, it was probably seven months of interviews, personal interviews, to been flying me to LA to me going down to Dallas, which is a big hub for, that’s the hub for Texas. You know, the phone calls, background checks, everything. It was like I have a top secret security clearance. It was like that all over again. AJV: (06:11) Just making sure you weren’t a stalker. MJ: (06:13) Very true. Very true. Not a stalker. AJV: (06:16) Well that’s crazy. So then you get on the show. So what do people need to know about what it’s really like on the show? MJ: (06:26) Well, long hours. Oh gosh. Such long hours. People would think so. I think it’s a, it’s like a hundred hours of filming for an episode. Wow. Two hour, a 90 minute episode with commercials. Right. So there’s so much filming. You’re up all hours of the night. And so for those that watched it, again, I was pretty authentic. I mean, I was wearing my doo rag on this show because I felt that if we weren’t reality TV, it should be reality. There was no need for me to, AJV: (06:59) Hmm, MJ: (07:00) Look perfect for the camera. I felt that nothing, that’s why the audience resonated with me so much because I was just who I am. The same person, whether it’s on TV or not. MJ: (07:10) Okay. My mom heard me curse for the first time. That wasn’t, sorry mom. Sorry about that. Sorry. I was definitely a embarrassed about that at first. But then the beautiful thing about the show is that it helps break you out of that shell from, for me, I don’t want to speak to no one else. I have subgroups of friends and like I have my extremely professional group. I have my extremely my day one friends that may not be as successful as I am now. And I’ve in the past acted different towards each group. They’re still a part of who I am. But when you’re on TV, you’re gonna, they’re going to see all of who you are authentically. Right. And people that have had a bad experience on TV or a good experience on TV, I think it boils down to that person hasn’t been able to see themselves fully. And so when you’re on reality TV and they’re doing so many, so much filming and so many different scenarios, they produce your way, produce your way. Your natural reaction is how you are truthfully. AJV: (08:16) Okay. MJ: (08:16) Right. And so when people say they didn’t have a good experience, I think that they just haven’t seen themselves before in different situations. AJV: (08:23) Do you think it’s hard to be authentic on reality TV? MJ: (08:28) I think when you realize and understand that people like you more for being yourself because what you’re actually doing is helping them grow. I think once you’ve realized that, it becomes quite honestly easy. I literally forgot cameras were around me. AJV: (08:48) How is that even possible? Yeah, MJ: (08:50) I know, right? It’s like I’m kissing a girl right here on my couch and there’s like 20 right there, fill me guys that I just forgot there was cameras. I was just, one of my goals for this decade is to be in the moment, no be present. Focusing exactly on what’s happening right then and there and that’s what I did on the show. And by doing those things, you, you embrace it so much more, you feel it so much more. And that’s, that’s my advice for how to forget that there’s cameras around. RV: (09:18) So how do you balance the, like I’m, I’m trying to win a show with, I’m also trying to be myself and like, you know, this need to, you know, kind of edit your behavior too to make good TV or whatever. Like how do you reconcile all that or do you really just not pay attention to it and just do what you would do if nobody was there? MJ: (09:39) Good question, Rory. I honestly feel that I had an advantage because I never really watched this show. And so I was not scared at all. And to me it wasn’t about winning. This is a show about love. And I took it as we’re dating each other seriously. You know, and let’s say that I don’t want to use AJ for example, but let’s say there was a young lady that we found each other attractive. I’m not sure. Speaker 5: (10:05) Yeah, don’t use AJ positive tape. You’re outta here outta here. Vaden, out of here. MJ: (10:17) So not if there was a young lady that I found attractive, just because we find each other drag, it doesn’t mean that we’re compatible. And just because she’s in a position of power, it doesn’t mean that I don’t have a say so on who my heart desires. Right. And so that’s how it took the show. It wasn’t about winning. He was all about finding a connection. And I think that’s what propelled me to being one of America’s sweethearts from that season. RV: (10:44) And you think you can find real love on a, on a, you know, manufactured show in a manufactured environment with, you know, handpicked people. MJ: (10:53) I think it’s hard. But I think dating in 2020 is hard in and of itself. I think that, well, I know for a fact I’ve met a few of the couples that are now married from the show and I’ve spoken to others that are, are married from the show as well. I’ve been married for years and so I think one of the biggest things when it comes to being on a show that’s about love is having the real conversations. Like, okay, you live in Kentucky, I live in Texas. How are we going to make this one right? Or you’re a dentist and you have a very successful career in Kentucky. I’m a financial advisor and LA, no, what are we going to do? And it’s comes to having effective communication and learning how to compromise. You know, when it comes to, when it comes to love, it’s the same thing to me as being out in the real world. The only difference would be I get to see who you kiss. That’s not me. When if I was dating a in the real world, she may go on dates with other individuals. AJV: (11:56) I just don’t have to see that. And that is such a good parallel that I have honestly never thought about until this moment and a confession. I have never watched the bachelor or the bachelorette, so I’m kind of a novice in this world and so when all these people were fan girling you, I was like, I guess it’s that popular show I all my friends are like, are you kidding me? It’s so popular. But like the way that you just described that as like match.com E harmony, Bumble, Tinder all got together, had a baby and then put it on reality TV. And it really is the reality of how baiting is today in terms of, yeah, I’m going to check out all these people profiles. I’m going to see what they’re like. I’m going to look at their picture, I’m going to chat them up, I’m going to meet with them. I’m going to meet with 20 of them. I’m going to narrow it down to the three I like the most and I’m going to do it on all these different sites. I was gonna say, the only difference is that producers are the ones putting the collection together, curses the whole app. It’s a really interesting parallel that I’ve never thought about before. RV: (13:01) The other thing that’s hitting me too is like you go, well reality TV isn’t real. Those are totally fake. But you go, well no, that is exactly how it is in real life. You’re all fake. Like you all pretend on your first date, you all put on a show, you all put on a performance and it’s really like, I think that’s going to be such a beautiful part of your story is as, as we build out, like can see your personal brand unfold of like, that’s what intimacy is all about is getting beyond the camera, getting beyond the fakeness, beyond the pretense. Pretend and just AJV: (13:36) being you’re awesome self RV: (13:36) Being a real connection. Yeah. AJV: (13:38) Okay. So all right, so I know everyone who watches the bachelor, other than me apparently, already knows who you are. So what has it been like after the show? So what have been some of the, the huge benefits of how this is propelled your notoriety and your online influence? I mean, you’ve got a huge social following. You’re doing all this cool stuff, you’ve got all these brand deals. So clearly there’s been some good, even though you didn’t in front of your mother, cussed in front of your mom. Well I would imagine she’s also probably never seen you make out with girls before. But I would imagine that is equal to the benefits. There’s plenty of pitfalls. Yeah, absolutely. Tell us about that post show. What’s it been like? MJ: (14:29) Post show is crazy because you have, you know, if you, if people like you, whether they like you for whatever reason, good or bad and they like you and they follow you on your social platforms. You now art influence area and AJV: (14:47) Yeah, MJ: (14:47) But that’s what it is. And so I have everyone from RV: (14:51) Middle-Schoolers to MJ: (14:53) Senior citizens following me on my social platforms. And one of the pitfalls is that I think lady Gaga said it best and she said it’s so succinct. Fame is fame could be perceived as prison because for example, we’re in self quarantined time right now. This is real world real time right now. And I had some friends less than 10 cause that’s in Texas. That’s the rule at my home. I was helping a small local businessman and we were doing all the proper precautions. But I had people saying a bunch of negative things towards me saying that I’m not being safe, I’m not quarantining, I’m being such a bad example. And I wanted to say one, I have less than two people, 10 people in my home, don’t you think I care about my safety? And then too, people always will have something to say no matter what the case is. MJ: (15:44) No people told me to not get more tattoos and I should no get tattoo removal. But I’m being praised and I’m an inc magazine, the only bachelor to ever be an inc magazine. And so I look at it as being authentically true to you. It’s just amazing. I can connect with them people on such a deeper level. People, the beautiful thing of being on reality TV is that whether you did good or bad, people resonate with you more and people appreciate you for being you. People are appreciating me for telling my struggle. My ex and I had a miscarriage. People appreciate it. Hey, the male side of that, right? People appreciate the fact that I will say exactly how I feel and not care and people appreciate. The bad side of that is that certain people feel that I should watch my words, certain people feel that I should, should not do certain things. MJ: (16:45) But then if I fall to that, I’m not being authentic to myself no longer. And so for the longest time post show, it’s been about trying to have a balancing act, right? What I’ve learned and what my mom has always told me and what our moms have always told all of us, it’s just, you know, be yourself just to be yourself. And I think that’s the most beautiful thing that is, I’ve already known, but it’s truly hit home post show. Cause I, at the end of the day, I’m a beautiful human being and I can’t help everyone, but those that I can help, I want to help them even more. So I think that’s what it is. AJV: (17:20) So it’s interesting because yeah, I remember as a kid, my mom’s saying, be yourself and I’m sure you’re, I mean I tell my sons that it’s like, I want you to be yourself and we’ve got this little mantra right now. My oldest just turned three and he’s into this word weird. And so every day I help him say, I weird, I weird, weird daddy. Mommy, you’re weird. I’m like, yeah, weird. So it’s like got this mantra, I weird. But I would love to know like what’s one tip that you would say like how do you be you like how do you be yourself, RV: (17:58) particularly when you have the [inaudible] yeah, like because you have the pressure of a camera and you have the pressure of the world watching. Like when you’re most, you’re most incentivized to do something that’s not you to be like a polished version of yourself. Like even post show, just people are now watching because they’re watching you, they’re following on social media. AJV: (18:19) How do you do it? MJ: (18:21) I think it’s even bigger post show because during the show you can’t see the comments, right? Post shows. When you see the comments, that’s when people respond to you. And I think to answer your question it’s like one of my models or it’s not my model. I’ve stolen, I mean it’s been said hundreds of times before, but the thing that gives you the most butterflies do that. And so what has always given me the butterflies post show was just, I used to get so nervous and try to Polish myself and I would get so many butterflies, but the way an antidote to those butterflies, it’s just again, embracing your uniqueness and knowing that you’re not going to be able to make every single individual fall in love with you. But the individuals that do fall in love with you are true fans of yours because of how authentic you are. MJ: (19:12) It’s just like a dating. I can’t make a hundred girls like me, but for the 20 that like me, for me, those 20 will really, really ride with me and that’s what most important is. And I can pick a one out of that 20 because if I like the rock, he’s the most famous person on all social media, not just to include Instagram, but Facebook, all different forms. He curses, he’s really big in the gym. He is, he focuses on embracing the pain, being authentic. And so I think that to be succinct when we can be introspective and do exactly what we feel, but of course being a good human being, that’s how you win. That’s how you connect with people and that’s how you can propel your career. Whether you’re like me, a reality TV star or like my former self, a financial advisor or someone that is a wife or husband. MJ: (20:09) Like yesterday, for example, I did an IgE lie and one of my insecurities as I’m growing aging man at 32 years old, my hairline is starting to go back and a lot of my fans are 21 right? And so I’m thinking, man, there I’m competing with like a 22 year old guy, 21 year old guy. Well, in all actuality, my fans like me because the strength that I have and so I make fun of it. The my, my love language in one way is just to laugh, right? And smile. And so I was, I went like this on camera. I said, Hey, does anyone know about some, some medicine that I can use or some nutrients I can use to help me with my, my insecurity of losing my hairline. Right? And someone said Biosyn. And so I think that’s what makes people resonate with you so much more. AJV: (20:57) Okay. No, I think that’s, that’s so good. And it’s so true to this whole concept of building your personal brand. RV: (21:05) Yeah. And the intimacy in the honor, I think just the honesty with yourself. I mean, if you’re building any personal brand, you know, being honest about who you are and what you’re truly passionate about, people see that and they are attracted to it or they see you being fake and they’re repelled from it. So. Mmm. Well, one last question before we let you go though. Mike, where should people go if they want to connect with you and kind of follow your journey and then kind of see what’s, what, see what’s going to happen from here. MJ: (21:33) Absolutely. Mike Johnson, one underscore that’s going to be on Twitter, on Instagram, on Facebook. I dunno how people find me, but just Mike Johnson, I don’t know how they find it. And my johnson.com is coming soon. What domain you’re, you AJV: (21:52) We can’t wait to continue to watch you on your brand journey. We have some insider info on all of the amazing stuff that’s in store for you. We’re not going to share your secrets. Everyone’s going to have to stay tuned. Follow Mike, stay in touch with us and we’ll see you again on the influential personal brand podcast. MJ: (22:11) Awesome. Awesome. Last time, last words, I would just say, make sure we all keep our mental health up and make each other laugh during these quarantine times.

Ep 68: Getting to Grips with the Fundamentals of SEO with Rick Steele

RV: (00:00) Okay. So you are about to meet one of the, the world’s most interesting men. Okay. So Rick Steele I want to let you know upfront, he’s a little bit different from the kind of people that we would normally have on this who are sort of like personal brand experts. You know, they’ve built a personal brand. Here’s what Rick has done. He’s the founder of multiple, multiple billion with a B billion dollar businesses. He’s a celebrated philanthropist. He’s a bestselling author, but he’s really an ambassador of effective altruist. So he has been twice featured on the inc 500, not 5,000, inc 500 list. He was named humanitarian of the year by Harvard business school. He’s been listed among fast company’s, most innovative companies and he has been helping growth minded entrepreneurs create more social impact. And that whole movement has gotten him featured in the Washington post, Forbes entrepreneur, ESPN HuffPo and Fox news. RV: (01:05) And right now he is kind of, you know, he is, he is the founder of select blinds, which we will talk about. That is like his current main business that he is, is operating. And but you know, like he, he really is organizing a movement of high net worth business leaders to bring them together to solve immediate humanitarian and environmental concerns by not only lending their talents, but contributing a significant part of their estate to kind of nonprofit causes. So he is sitting in his garage right now, his, his car dirt with his car collection. And if you’re watching this on video, he also has his gym upstairs. And that is because he has also a 13 time iron man. And the reason we are what we’re talking about on this, cause he’s done a lot, but we’re going to be talking about paid traffic acquisition, search engine optimization, pay-per-click strategies, which is what he, he’s also one of our brand builders group clients. RV: (02:06) And so we’ve had the opportunity to get to know him and he has this ridiculous level of expertise that nobody has. And we’re going to talk about that. But he also just completed in his spare time something that he called the world marathon challenge. He did not kidding. Listen to this. Seven marathons in seven consecutive days in on seven different continents, seven marathons in seven consecutive days on seven continents. And when we started working with him yeah, he was actually one of our private clients. He came to Vaden Villa. He worked with us at the house and he was planning this. And I was like, bro, this seems like a little bit of a logistical challenge, like even, and so we haven’t really talked, so I need to hear just like for a minute, how in the hell did you do seven marathons on seven continents in seven days? That’s insane. RS: (03:07) Well, you, you know, you first have a really really good travel person and the guy that put this together for us, a guy by the name of Richard Donovan done this a few times for small groups. I think you can only do it with a small group because it was chaos, you know, getting, you know, we still had to go through security and had to go through customs at every continent and, you know, make planes and all that stuff. But you know, it, it, it’s a logistical nightmare. Yes. But it’s a, the idea of, you know, picking up and training in the training for it was, was really, I think, harder than the marathons itself. Once we got on, you know, you’re thrust into this group of, there was 35 of us, you’re thrusting this group of people that like 34 of your friends now are not going to let you not do this. RS: (03:54) Right. So you are doing this. And the first one is, Aaron has got a big smile on their face and by the third or fourth, you know, everybody has blisters and shaping and hurting somewhere and you know, so you, but you have, you know, you can go far by yourself. You know, you’ve heard this before, but you can go a lot further with the team. And you know, we had a team of people we didn’t know the minute before we met him and it was a brotherhood, sisterhood. I mean, it was, it was amazing. A group of people that just helped everybody get through this thing. We started in Cape town, we went to Antarctica, almost died in Antarctica. I mean, we literally were in a hundred mile an hour winds in Antarctica. We got delayed there and it came back and went to Australia, Dubai, Madrid for, to Liza Brazil and in Miami where we were met by all of our family members friends or a few hundred people there. It was just, it was amazing, RV: (04:47) Man, bro. Like, we’re going to have to do a separate podcast for, for my, like our leadership podcast of just the mindset and the mentality of training for that, because that is just, well, congratulations like ed to the whole crew. I mean, you’re also depending that nobody in the 35 gets seriously injured and sick and you know, like, RS: (05:10) Yeah, that it was incredible. You know, Kobe had just started in China and in fact there were six members that couldn’t make the trip because they were flying from Beijing and all the flights have been shut down. So they couldn’t participate in it because we had, you know, this was just the beginning. You know, time where the world started shutting down and really China shut down at this point. When we got back, we were about two weeks away from, you know, what we’re going through now, which is kind of a U S shutdown starting in Washington. And you know, it was I believe it was just incredible that we were able to pull it off. It was just the timing of doing it. You know, had we been a few weeks later, it wouldn’t have happened, which would have been okay too. You know, we live in a different world today, so we just have to and get used to what’s happening. RV: (05:59) Yeah. Well I think that gives good backdrop for people a little bit, just kind of about your mindset and your mentality. Mmm. You’re also a nine figure entrepreneur. You’ve built companies that do over a hundred million dollars in revenue a year. Mmm. And you know, there’s just so many amazing things that you have done that has been inspired me. But you and I started geeking out about some stuff and I was like, wow, Rick really knows this stuff. So can you just tell everybody a little bit about select blinds specifically and what you do and how you and your team, I know you have an amazing team. How have you guys built it and kind of what makes select blinds different, you know, from like most blind shops, so to speak. RS: (06:51) Yeah. You know, w we started blinds in Oh three, you know, before that I was doing mortgage, how had an internet mortgage company that we exited and blinds was a, you know, I didn’t want to create something so new, I had to go create an audience for it. So the idea of going into blinds was what can we sell differentiate ourselves a little bit from the market. But w you, you know, basically sell online in a marketplace that already has traffic. The traffic’s there, there’s already intent based buyers typing searches in. All we have to do is find a better way and sell them a better product. And it was easy for us to do back in 2003, you know, this whole I was reading an article the other day, talked about, you know, Warby Parker, you know, kind of pioneered this space of DTC in 2010 and I was like, wait a minute. No, no, me and my buddies, we were all doing this in 2003 it but it’s a RV: (07:48) In DTC, just clarify DTC, RS: (07:51) See direct to consumer, meaning that you are selling only your brand, right? And you are sending it right to the consumer. There’s no store, there’s no middleman, there’s no wholesale. It is drop ship right from you to the consumer. Which allows you to have an intimate relationship conversation, narrative with the customer. It’s so hard to do when you add one component in there. When you start adding that component in, now you’re forcing a sales person, distributor, somebody to share your message with the consumer. So DTC just means I have a direct line right to the customer. They get to know exactly what I’m about. So we had done that mortgage. We’d had that relationship. So we, we didn’t, you know, we weren’t no Nostradamus Domus or anything, but we did kind of see that there was some silly stuff going on in mortgage. RS: (08:37) Pretty much everybody could get approved for a loan. We decided to say, listen, let’s insulate ourselves from, you know, we didn’t know anything about mortgage backed securities or what was going to happen, but we just knew that the fact that home values continue to go up, everybody could get approved for a loan that wasn’t right. So we wanted to insulate ourselves, our team, our company from that impending crash. So the idea was what could we sell? Like what is something we can do that’s fundamentally different than taking a lead online and that was sell a product. And if we sell a product direct to consumer, we can have a little bit more of the control. So that was 2003 we started that thing in our bedroom. And you know, really started building the site, not knowing exactly what products we were going to sell and not knowing all the details about how we were going to sell it but just with enough passion to go out and figure it out over the course of like the next 30 days. RV: (09:28) And this is, this is select blinds that you’re talking about. So, but, but in some ways this is insane. Like you chose blinds to sell on the internet. Like there couldn’t be a more necessary like come into your home, measure it and if anyone’s ever installed blinds, like it’s a, there’s a lot to it. It’s not the, the, the simplest process and there’s lots of different tastes and styles. But to me the, the probably the first major lesson that you’ve already shared here is you went and saw intent-based traffic. Like you made a decision, a business decision based upon there is an existing audience who is looking for something and rather than, rather than starting and saying, I have something and I want to sell it, you said, what is there a market for? How do you do, like how would you do that today? Or like how does somebody determine that, what, what the, the appetite is or what intent there is out there in the market? RS: (10:39) I mean, it’s real simple in Google ad words. I mean, you can go set up a Google ad words account, put no money on it and Google gives you a keyword tool that lets you basically go in and in any region S only worldwide, you know, somewhere in between start inputting keywords. And for instance, if I wanted to start a blinds company today, I would go tell Google, show me how many people are Googling the word blinds. And Google will show me how many words how many keywords there are, what the cost per click would be if I were in the number one position. But then also start recommending a lot of other words that are also pretty accurate. You know, this wasn’t the case five years ago, but today, but man, they have nailed it with the AI. I mean, they know what I’m bidding on, they know what my competitors are bidding on. RS: (11:22) So therefore when somebody new comes in and says, Hey, show me blinds, they can pretty much tell you what the bucket of keywords are to about 99% accuracy from there. You know, really, you just, you gotta become a mathematician, you gotta start working the numbers. You’ve got to start making some assumptions on what the average order value would be. You know, you can get pretty close to that. What’s your expected click through rate would be and what your conversion rate would be. And when you can figure those things out, you can very quickly come up with, it’s a little bit of a guesstimate, but you can come up with what your average cost per order would be to actually close the sale, close an order. So much of that though gets refined when you get into the battle. A lot of it is just, it’s inspiration enough to know. RS: (12:07) For me it would be to say, listen, there’s a market here, and I don’t know exactly how big, but I know it’s a big market. It’s a mantra market. There’s a million words a month for the word blinds. I’m just making stuff up here. There’s a million intentions every month. Somebody type in the word blinds in, I’m going to go figure this out. And then it’s just get on the battlefield and figure it out. Right. Start taking people’s guns, start figuring out where to fire, you know, start figuring out where you need to hide. When your competitors have launched missile attacks at you start, you know, when those missiles miss and you know, they don’t blow up, you go pick one up and keep it for yourself. I mean, it is truly a battle that you have to figure out. But you know, for me, I’ve got so many friends in this in this space where they go out and create audiences like on Facebook and they create new demand for them. RV: (12:59) Yes. And I want to talk about that. Like, can you, can you, can you delineate here like what is the biggest difference between Facebook ads and let’s just say Google. I mean, you really, it’s, it’s really Facebook and Instagram and then it’s really Google and YouTube. So what’s the, what is the thing that separates those two categories? RS: (13:21) I think when somebody comes to Google, they have said inherently when they’re searching for a product, and that’s what we’ll, we’ll, we’ll relate this to when they’re searching for a product. They are saying, I am ready to buy for product based. You know, sometimes that is, I’m ready to just do some window shopping and research, but most of the times it’s, I’m ready to buy on Facebook as an example with running ad campaigns and setting demographics, you know, not talking about retargeting, but in Facebook it’s more I’m going to go put an advertisement in front of somebody that is likely to buy this product. They’re not right now in the market for blinds, but you know, I know them to be a homeowner. They just bought a new home. You know, there’s a lot of different, you know, kind of triggers I can put in Facebook ads that would say get me in front of an audience that is ripe for, for new blinds. Google is these people type the word blinds in. I mean it is somebody literally just walked through the threshold of a store and stood there and said, you know, I’m here to buy. Sure, put me in the right direction. RV: (14:23) Nobody is searching blinds for fun. They are searching, RS: (14:27) They don’t want to see pictures of blinds. Right. I mean say there’s a small small piece that would, you know, be looking for some inspiration because I think they can do it themselves or whatever it is. But dying, you know somebody types in guns and roses t-shirt like their, their intent right now is to buy a guns and roses T shirt right now. RV: (14:47) And that is what we so so the phrase you dropped it in earlier and I don’t think is aware of it would be intent based search. Right. And that’s kind of the, that’s kind of the technical term is they’re typing in something because they are hot, ready to buy or ready to look. You know, they’re seriously interested. And that is the power of what happens with Google. What would you call it on Facebook? Is that just like an awareness campaign? Is that like, is there a term you would use for the, that kind of, RS: (15:18) It would be awareness. I mean we, we run the retargeting and we run retargeting campaigns on Facebook, meaning somebody, RV: (15:24) So hold on on retargeting, let’s talk, let’s, I don’t want to get, I don’t want to get everybody lost on the retargeting just yet. But, but not counting retargeting. Facebook is just like, it’s just kind of like a general marketing campaign. Like if it’s like just kind of a broadcast campaign of awareness, the difference is that you’re able to really narrow down the who versus just buying a billboard on the interstate. You’re able to say, I’m going to show it to certain types of people. RS: (15:54) Correct. And, and, and even with a billboard on the interstate, there’s, there’s some targeting, right? Cause you’re choosing where you want to put your ad on what, but Facebook is a is a is it, it’s a, an exploded view of that. So let’s, you be very specific about who you want that ad to go in front of. I don’t, I have friends have such success with this. I don’t know how they get it to work. It feels like so much effort to me. I’d rather I’d rather work backwards and say, you know, put me where there’s a bunch of intent, a bunch of people looking to buy a bunch of things already saying it and then let me figure out the product. Let me figure out how to improve the experience, improve the product and and be a better company for the customers that on that landscape today. RV: (16:41) And I think, and that’s one of the reasons why I wanted to have you on is because I think that the personal brand influencer market has just, you know, completely crushed Facebook ads. And it’s not that they don’t work, they do work, but I think that the intent based search for the most part in the personal brand world, nobody is doing it. And they, they, they, they don’t know how, and they don’t understand it because they don’t, people use Facebook as a user. The average person has never used ad words or done keyword research. And I think there’s a huge frontier here, particularly with Google and YouTube that I think personal brands are sort of missing, missing the boat on. So so you’ve got intent-based search happening. I want to back up a little bit. You threw out some terms about the, the average order value you threw out, like click through rate, cost per order. These are important terms that somebody, somebody needs to understand. So how do you, how do you make a prediction, like RS: (17:50) You’re saying effectively you look for, there’s a lot of demand here and then you’re going to use these kind of key terms to go, how do I make a prediction, an estimated guess of what I think I could, how I could turn that search into money and how much it would be worth it to me. So can you kind of like slow walk us through that, that, that thinking, let’s use, let’s use like the guns and roses t-shirt as an example of that. Let me do some simple math, right? So let’s say it’s a $50, and this is a, this will be a millennial hipster guns and roses t-shirt, right? Probably the guy wearing it doesn’t even know who guns and roses is, right? RS: (18:30) I love giving millennials shit. But they, so it’s a $50 t-shirt. It’s a Mmm. And you understand that you can buy that t-shirt for 25 bucks. So I own the tee shirt for 25. I’m selling it for 50. I’ve got 25 bucks in margin. That’s what I’m going to make, right? And we’re going to start talking about shipping or I’m going to make $25. So now I get to go to Google and say, how many people are typing in guns and roses t-shirts? They’re going to give me a number. And that number comes with a couple of figures. They’re going to say 300,000 people per month. Type this term in, in the average number one position is a dollar 40, which means you would need to spend a dollar 40 to get someone to your site. If you wanted to own the first spot in Google, Google estimates this, but it’s pretty close. RS: (19:17) You would pay less if you want to own the second, third, fourth spot, right? So let’s talk about the number one spot. I want to own it and it costs me a dollar 40 so when I get somebody to the site at a dollar 40 I’ve got two I estimate some conversion rate. I’ve got to be able to know that I have to close. Well, let’s see if I close 5% that’s one in 20 that would cost me $28 it would cost me, so for 20 clicks it would cost me $28 that’s 5% closing, right? Okay. So you’re saying a dollar 40 a click dollar 40 a click, 20 clicks are going to cost me $28 now I need to close more than one per 20 clicks. Right? 5% to get that as those numbers to work out just mathematically based on what the, you know what the profit margin is on the tee shirt I’m selling. RS: (20:09) So let’s let’s say 10 let’s say 10% and that’s, that’s a high conversion rate, but it’s not unheard of with really good skew based products that are quick to buy. You can get in and out of the cart quickly. So let’s say 10% conversion rate at a dollar 40 meaning that it costs me $14 to get 10 people to the site. Once I had the 10 people, there are one person purchased, so I made $25 so my costs per click was was $14 for the 10 people. One person purchased, I made 25 bucks, my profit margin was $9 right on my $50 products. Let me just make sure I got it. So there’s a, RV: (20:47) There is a $50 t-shirt sale, you got $25 wrapped up in your cost of goods to buy the tee shirt that or make the tee shirt that you’re selling to the person and then you just paid an additional $14 to get 10 clicks on that term of which one of those people bought. So you got, you’ve got $25 in the cost of the shirt, $14 in the advertising cost to get the customer and so that leaves you a net profit on a $50 sale of nine bucks. RS: (21:19) Sure. And then you’ve got some fixed costs, you know, your rent, your employees. Like of course you know you have all that stuff you have to fig, you have to factor in. And that’s why it’s good to just kind of get a spreadsheet out and start factoring this in. These numbers start becoming pretty easy to figure out if you’ve got a big enough market to go after. So if I, if I went to, if I typed in Joe Jones yet, right? Let’s say I only wanted to sell Joan Jett merchandise, well I need to first understand is there a market, like is there a big enough market for me to start my own Joan jet website? Right. Very quickly. If I go to Google and Google tells me there are 580 searches every month for Joan Jett t-shirts, I can pretty quickly say that’s not a big enough market for me to start a company on this, but let me look at starting a rock concert t-shirt or you know, picking the top 20 whatever RV: (22:07) Broaden. So basically like if there’s not enough search volume on it on a narrow term, you’d have to broaden it in order to accomplish the same thing. RS: (22:15) Correct. You know, I have two rules. You got to make sure there’s a big enough market and understand that there’s a big enough market for you to make a dent in where you can you can have success whether there’s competition or not. Meaning that if there’s six or seven competitors, you’re just going to make each other better. It’s gotta to be big enough that you can have that success. The second thing I think is just as important, maybe more important, but it’s definitely just as important is you cannot be a product that you’re competing with if you just can’t compete with Amazon. Like, if you are trying to sell something that Amazon is shipping to customers in 20 of their warehouses, same day, good luck. I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s almost impossible. I don’t like to tell people you can’t do that or it’s impossible because I don’t believe really anything’s impossible. But RV: (23:06) You also have been kind of the guy who ran seven marathons in seven, seven days. You have to know what you’re up to, RS: (23:11) Right? So it would, you know, it would be silly to go out and try to build a model on competing, and I’ve done this before. We own mean we own a company called betting.com we sold sheets, comforters, blankets. We owned the number one domain name in that space. So how could it not work? I mean, how could we not crush it? And we failed because we started selling products that we were drop shipping. We own an inventory, but we were drop shipping from the vendors and they were getting there. You know, we would have to tell people three to five days, sometimes seven days shipping in Amazon. Zappos, a lot of our competitors have these products in stock. They were shipping same day. Amazon had some of the products they were shipping two hour delivery. So it’s like, how do you compete with that? So you’ve got to, you know, you gotta know what you’re up against and you also got to no, that if you are on a level playing field on shipping, how do you differentiate yourself? How do you make, how do you create a better product RV: (24:07) Now? And, and, and this is part of what I wanted. And just for those of you listening, like most of our audience is not in true e-commerce where it is products and logistics and drop shipping and vendors. Most of our, most of our product base you know, personal brands are selling informational type of products, membership sites, video courses, these things that don’t have the costs. But [inaudible] you need to apply the same type of rigor and thinking it’s all the same concepts that would apply here is to still go figure out what are people searching for. What is there a market for that I’m well suited to serve? I mean, would you agree with that? The same rigor could apply here RS: (24:50) A hundred percent and I think also, you know, when I, when I saw your company out Rory, I didn’t Google Rory Vaden, I Googled a term, I’m trying to remember what it would have been, but I’m pretty sure I was searching for the number one, like who would I work with when I want to work with, with my personal brand that’s going to crush it for me, that’s going to help me crush it. So my search term was probably, you know personal branding, a mastermind or something, right. There was some search, and I don’t know if you know, I found you guys via a paid ad, but I would say what you can do, no matter what you’re selling, even if it’s just informational and you’re using Facebook ads, you know, what is w what are the physical products that you that somebody could search on Google that are somewhat relevant to what you’re also selling in your informational business coaching, whatever it may be that are relatable to, you know, to, to that product. Because then if you can buy those clicks and you can sell a product cheap, you know, that’s a, that’s an easy and cheap way to list build too, right? So you can then sell them a product you make a little money on. Maybe it’s a loss leader. RV: (25:58) Well, that’s what a lot of people do with the book. That’s what the free plus, the free plus shipping model is with the book. But you know, so here’s what’s interesting. We are number one for the term personal branding, but it’s not our website. It was, I was interviewed on social media examiner, which is a monster website, but they did an interview with me and that it, the interview did so well. Plus their audience is so big in general and there’s such a high authority site that when you search personal branding, at least at the time of this interview that comes up. And so I think that’s probably what happened. Cause I know you found like you, you listen to that podcast with Michael Stelzner and then, and then we meet you. But, but okay. Yeah. So, so, so basically you’re going to make a prediction here, right? RV: (26:48) You’re going to, you’re going to have some forecast, you’re gonna throw out some numbers. You’re going to look at go, where’s the demand? How much is it going to cost for the click? That’s a good tidbit. I didn’t realize that the number that Google publishes is the number is the number one position for the click. So what about, so at that point then, basically you just start putting some money into the machine. You’re driving people to a website and you start monitoring how many people visit that page versus how many buy is that basically it, RS: (27:20) Yes. I mean you, you know, you want to make sure you’re setting yourself up for success and having, you know, when somebody lands the page has got to be good, right? You got a good product that’s got an easy way to check out. You know, I’ll equate this to, you know, our first product, full wood blinds there, which are fake wood, you know, they’re like a poly blind. We had this product live the very first day we turned it on to pay-per-click. I mean we probably put 50 bucks in there or something. And we said at an immature, it was like a dollar per click that at that time, you know, bring people to this page for full wood blinds. And we just, we watched it, you know, we sat there, this is before Google analytics, but Google and there was a, there was a competing product before Google analytics where we’ve been watching the traffic. We would see what they were doing. W how much time and RV: (28:11) Okay, so, so what, let me just make sure, so you’re saying that when you first started that it was like a page for pho blinds and you just basically threw 50 bucks in there to sort of test it. Like is that basically what you were doing was to watch to see what happened? RS: (28:26) Sure. You know, we said let’s put 50 bucks on and that’ll give us 50 people to the site. Let’s see if anybody buys. And if somebody does, it’s going to be amazing. We’re all going to jump up and down and cheers that we actually have something that will, you know, that works. And they did. We actually sold to a couple of customers, I’ll never forget it because it was a it was this moment where it was just like this. We knew it was going to work, but we didn’t, we didn’t know conversion rates. We didn’t know, you know, how much it was going to take. We didn’t know what we would need to adjust pricing to be, you know, because you know, you, you could only, you know, if we sold one out of 50 people and that’s a 2% conversion rate. If we sell two out of 50 people, it’s a 4% conversion rate. So we’re able to make better economics at 4% conversion rate of course. But a lot of it was just, you know, today the capabilities are just, I mean, I can’t even imagine having these capabilities 15 year, 18 years ago, whatever it’s been in looking at Google analytics and watching customers come to a page, see how they interact. How long do they stay? What buttons are they clicking, where are they hung up? I mean, you can physically see their mouse scrolls and you can see, you know, kind of RV: (29:36) Google analytics show you hate map. Does it show you heat mapping? RS: (29:40) They don’t. They’re, they’re heat mapping tools RV: (29:42) That you can add in, which is, which we have in and there’s several of them out there right now, like crazy egg. And we use a company called FullStory. Fullstory. Just watch, let’s you literally watch via like a video recording session, the customer’s journey. So you can see like if they’re on their phone, they’re scrolling, pinching and zooming where they pick up on something. It’s so you can really understand their interactions beyond a click or beyond a patient. Wow. That is incredible. I’ve never heard of that RS: (30:14) In this. I liken this to if, if you were a store, like best buy and you had a bunch of people come through the front door and then a lot of people go to, let’s say the TV aisle and then everybody just stood there and looked at this one TV but then walked away and didn’t buy. You would want to know specifically what’s wrong with this one TV and why they didn’t buy. So you can start asking questions. You could start, you know, really looking at that page and saying, what’s wrong with this? And almost always you will find an error on the page. You’ll, it’s priced too high. It’s like, you know, you’re saying something that doesn’t really give them the information they need. So, you know, these tools are truly just unfair competition to like traditional retail. I mean traditional retail really, unless we live in, in like this minority report world where you see where Tom cruise walks in and they start, you know, doing the eyeball tracking and identifying stuff. We are like dozens of years away from that. This is the world we get to live in, in e-commerce when using tools like Google analytics and crazy egg and full story to see a customer’s intentions and behaviors. RV: (31:20) Wow. So, so then basically, I mean, at a high level you’re going to do a little research to figure out what is their intent for. Then you’re going to look at some numbers, you’re going to make some hypotheses about how much it’s going to cost. Then you’re going to build a page and you know, a product and you’re going to put a little money into the machine and then you’re going to watch how it performs. And then after that, it’s basically just this perpetual tweaking and updating and optimizing. I guess would be would be the word. And and then is that, is that more or less what it is just and it’s just that over and over again. RS: (31:57) It is. I mean, and then in one day, you know, you find yourself spending a hundred thousand dollars a day on Google and managing tens of thousands of keywords and you know a lot of time a lot of growth. But that’s it’s, it’s exactly what it is. I mean it is, you know, the direct to consumer brand with millions of customers. Like we are had to start with a couple of people in one sale and then you know, evolve to a dozen sales and then hundreds of sales. RV: (32:22) Can you share how much you’ve spent on Google or like give us like any sort of idea of like how like just how much has your, have you spent on like pumped money into the app? The Google ad machine, me and my, RS: (32:34) Me and my Google, I spoke, I spoke at Google about this a couple of years ago and it’s funny, they asked me to talk about, you know, why we, how we have such good conversion rates and what are we doing? Like what is the thing that gets us to, to move the needle. And I kind of put a joke on my PowerPoint, which was the formula. It’s a three step formula. Formula one is I give Google my credit card, step two is Google charges my credit card. And then step three is I find a way to make all that work as a marker. But my rep and I, every now and then we will w well I will do a screenshot on the account and I think the last time we screenshotted it between our two accounts were just under a hundred million. Right now, $9 million in spend. RS: (33:13) Yeah, $94 million. $4 million. But it is, I mean, every single dollar has been worth it because they have all, you know, it has all been intent-based traffic. I mean, so it is a, I mean, it feels unfair, but I mean, this is where, when you look at Google, I mean these, this multiple, almost trillion dollar company gets almost all of its revenue, right? So just let that sink in for a second. All of its revenue from pay-per-click ads and those pay-per-click ads are dominantly intent-based. You know, customers, I’m looking for this right now. Sell this to me. So it is a you know, it doesn’t have to be blind. I mean, it could be duct tape, it could be a variant of a new product that’s out there. You know, Shopify, some of these platforms give you the ability to spin up a site and have tools that are really even greater than what we architect with. RS: (34:14) I’m so much greater than what, how, what we built in the early days from day one for like 30 bucks a month. It’s, it’s truly insane. The platforms that are out there and that’ll let you spin up a, a really good eCommerce platform. And so does this also, is everything that we’re talking about with Google, does this also apply to YouTube? It does. You know, we do, we do some advertising on YouTube with video ads that are both intent based video ads and then also, you know, retargeting video ads as well. So we have a, a couple of really good high production videos we’ve done that are commercial quality where somebody, when they come into our site, they leave. I mean the best use of YouTube is, is a being there in a retargeting narrative that shares a little different message than what you were sharing on the front end. RS: (35:04) So, you know, if somebody came to your site and they left and didn’t buy your, your ads probably didn’t work. I mean, that’s kind of what the assumption should be is my ad was wrong. So I need to deliver a different narrative, different story on the on the back end. And so it’s the retargeting on YouTube. We get the opportunity to do that in those, you know, if you’ve seen the ads that are, you know, they make you play for five seconds and then skip. Yep. There’s, there’s ways to gain that. Just make sure you get verbally your name and audibly audible, your name and digitally your name in the first five seconds so they hear your brand’s name and, and see your logo in the first five seconds. And if somebody does skip, you actually get that brand impression for free because Google doesn’t charge you for it. So and a lot of people skip, a lot of people get through these and it is, again, it feels like cheating the system, but it’s, it’s best practices with what we get to do. And I’m delivering an impression to somebody that’s not watching the full 32nd ad. RV: (36:00) Yeah. And you’re saying you only pay if they watch more than five seconds? RS: (36:04) Yeah, I think we, we start paying, there’s some level that we start paying at. But, and they don’t have to watch the whole video, but if they skip at the five second Mark, we don’t pay. RV: (36:14) Yeah. And so then you’re literally telling people about what you do for free. Like the Google machine is pushing you out there. RS: (36:24) I mean the first five seconds of our ads has select blinds verbally in it. I mean our logos in the bottom right of the screen, it is you, you will have known what that commercial was about if you skip it. RV: (36:36) Yeah. Well I mean this is so fun. Like we didn’t even get into retargeting like there’s so much here. And it just for everyone to know transparently, I, when I was polishing up our, we have our, you know, we have our, our nine different events. When I was working on our phase three high traffic strategies event, I called Rick because I was like, Hey, I want to bounce a couple ideas off you, make sure I got this right. Like and it’s just, you know, like you were someone that I tapped personally to go help me try to get my mind wrapped around this. And it’s in some ways it’s really complex, but mostly it’s very logical. It’s very systematic. I do have one more question for you, but before that, where, where should people go? You know, Rick, if, if they, if they want to, they want to connect with you and follow you. RV: (37:27) I know your, your personal brand and just so everyone knows, like Rick is not in the business of teaching people this, his personal brand is really about effective altruism. He’s, he’s really driven by making a dent in the world in a positive way. And you know, building a, a network of you know, more or less high net worth individuals who, who have a real desire for humanitarian and environmental concern and help. So if you’re one of those people, I’m sure he’d love to connect with you, but just in general, people want to like follow up and know who you are. Like, where would you direct them? RS: (38:02) Yeah, I would say, you know, best channel is Instagram and that’s a Rick Steele official on Instagram. You know, you’re going to see you know, a brand there that if you hold my Instagram up to select blinds, you’re going to say, wow, this guy’s crushing it and blinds. Where’s this guy going with this personal brand? What’s a personal brand? Right, exactly. I feel, you know, the game of building a personal brand. That’s why we need really great leaders like you and helping us out with this because this is, for me, it feels very hard. I mean, it feels very hard. The, the game of e-commerce direct to consumer, it feels easy, right? Maybe it’s because I’ve been doing that longer and I’ve been immersed in that game for some time, but yeah, Rick still official will be the place to go see, you know, just a guy that I think is, you know, I’m living a hard charging life, trying to be a good dad, good husband, good business guy and and good athlete all at the same time. RV: (38:58) Yeah. And you’ve got a very entertaining, you’ve got tens of thousands of followers, a hundred, hundred over a hundred thousand followers. So you got, you got some good stuff going. And you’re just like, yeah. And like most interesting man in the world, maybe it’s the most interesting man in the digital world. Like it’s, it’s, it’s, it’s pretty incredible. So here’s our last little question for you. Where do you think the future is going as it relates to paid traffic acquisition into and intent based search? RS: (39:32) Listen, if you would have asked me four weeks ago, I would’ve, I would’ve given you the same answer, but with maybe a little bit less enthusiasm. You know, I feel very lucky to be in this game of direct to consumer where somebody orders online. Listen, I don’t know about you Rory, but I’m doing stuff around my house now that I didn’t think I would ever do. Like again, maybe which is, you know, landscaping my entire house. Not that I’m bored, but I just like, you know, I’ve got some extra time. I’m doing some stuff around the house. I would say if you’ve thought about building a DTC direct to consumer e-commerce, this is the time is now, you know, this, this Corona virus coven 19 has, I believe is going to leave a generational Dennis and, and I think it’s gonna be positive. RS: (40:21) I do, but I believe that we are going to be more grateful when we do get to spend time with people that is going to be more quality time. But I also believe on the flip side of that, people are going to be doing more of their own stuff, buying and securing, procuring their things. We’ve already seen this as an immediate pop in direct to consumer and just online search in general across everything. I’ve got friends in different, you know, spaces online. All their searches are up. I think people, this, this has given people the ability to have a little bit of empowerment and say, Hey, maybe this is something I can do myself now and, or, or by myself and have shipped to me. So, yeah, I don’t, you know, I’m a, I’m a small business too, so I still, for me, I want to support small business as much as possible, but I also believe that we’re living in we’re going to come out of this with a little bit different behavioral change then when we came into it with, and a lot of that is do I need to walk into a store? RS: (41:21) Do I need to have a sales person in my home? I mean, there’s just a, it’s a, it’s a real interesting time we’re living in now. So I think the you know, with enthusiasm for me and, and the type of business that ran, love it, but it’s still yet to be seen. I believe the behavioral changes is going to be here to last. I don’t believe this is a, you know, something that we forget very soon. So, RV: (41:44) Yeah. Well, RS: (41:45) If we ever get out of quarantine, if we ever get, I’m in my garage right now. I mean, this is where I’m doing all my stuff is in my garage, so, but I like it. RV: (41:55) I love it. I love it. Well doing business from home, it’s it’s, it’s I think it’s a trend that, you know, clearly was a trend that was happening. I think this has accelerated it. It’s only accelerated it. And given that that’s the case, the insight and the wisdom and the experience that you have just so generously shared with us is, is truly priceless. I think that understanding these basic concepts can literally be worth millions of dollars. They have been to us just understanding intent based search and you know, where is demand and getting in front of it and hypothesizing with some basic ratios and then testing and optimizing like this is, it’s, it’s interesting to see at your scale that, that that’s how you get there. It’s this, it’s the same process. So brother just thank you so much and we wish you the best. I know, you know, some, some of us will get a chance to meet you at one of our brand builders group events in person when we resume our in person events, maybe virtually for the time being. So all the best man. RS: (43:02) Yeah. Thank you. Really appreciate it. Thanks.

Ep 66: Gratitude with John O’Leary

Speaker 1: (00:06) [Inaudible] 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) Hey, you’re about to meet one of my very dear friends and a man that I absolutely love. His name is John O’Leary, and he’s also one of the busiest professional speakers you know, in the world today. Although the world of professional speaking is changing dynamically, which we’ll talk some about, but if you don’t know John, he was in a very serious explosion with a five gallon gas tank when he was nine years old and he was burned on a hundred percent of his body. Over 80% of those burns were third degree. And now he is one of the most booked inspirational keynote speakers in the world. He’s the bestselling author of a book called on fire, seven choices to ignite a radically inspired life. He has a new book that is called in awe, which is a followup to that. And we just were sitting around chatting and it was like, man, we gotta get you back on the show to some talk, some shop and talk through a building a keynote business. So John, welcome to the influential personal brand. JO: (02:11) Rory Vaden. Thanks for being my friend. And on most podcasts when I hit record, we started going right away. You and I had 49 minutes before we hit record just to talk. So we really are friends first and foremost. But I’m glad to be on the podcast. RV: (02:26) Yeah, well that that is for sure. And you know this, cause I sent you the video that Jasper has been learning all about fire and every night he’s like I watched John, I watched John and so your, your, your story’s inspiring. Even to our little three year old man and just helping him, you know, learn about fire and gratitude and all that. So I, you know, I love you man. JO: (02:49) Well I love him. He’s a cute little guy and I think you learn about fire, you learn me something, you stay away from when you’re a kid, but as you get older you got to figure out how to harness fire. And that’s what I’m excited about talking with you during this podcast. Like how do you go from being repulsed by something or being driven by fear to being inspired and motivated to do something bigger in your life. And that’s everyone of your listeners. That’s what they’re striving to do in their own words. RV: (03:18) Yeah. Well, and so tell me about your, tell me about the, your, your keynote career. Like how did you go from, okay, so this burns happens when you’re a kid and a lot of people that are listening, you know, they, they, they want, you know, that that’s part of what they aspire to is go and, Hey, I want to stand on stages and, and inspire people. And so you’re, you’re one of those stories that just, you have an incredible story and You know, tell us how did you kind of move officially into professional speaking JO: (03:54) Haltingly awkwardly and painstakingly slowly. So that’s the truth. And I think it’s most of our truth for those of us who had at some point or another, made it in front of the stadiums and the auditoriums and the Rotarian clubs. It takes a while to elevate from where you are to where you want to go next. But what you need to know is it’s possible. It is absolutely utterly possible. There’s been many who’ve done it. So the best way to achieve success is to follow those who’ve done it before you. And for me, Rory, I got burned at age nine. The great goal of my life was not to be an international speaker, but to be ordinary. So my desire from age nine until about 28 was to fit in, which meant at age 11 I was playing soccer at age 16 I was trying to find a six pack of beer to split it with my friends. JO: (04:44) I was trying to be funny, I was trying to be cool. I was trying to fit in like everybody else, which meant also I was trying to be who I really wasn’t. And I did that for the majority of my young life. And then at age 28 a third grade girl scout asked, mr John. That’s me. If I would speak to her troop and man I, I’d never spoken before publicly, I had never told anybody how I got burned. I had no idea how to string a couple of sentences together or how to build a database of potential clients. This was not the goal, but in life, when an opportunity knocks, I’ve always said yes, whatever that thing is. Even if it’s helping a friend move on a weekend, my answer is yes. I just try to live in yes. And so I said yes to this little girl. I planned this talk for probably, I’m not exaggerating, 40 hours to deliver a talk to three third grade girl Scouts. JO: (05:40) And when I delivered, I bet you will be so underwhelmed by this. I looked down at several note cards. I never looked up and that’s my first talk. One of the fathers in the room was a Rotarian. He asked if I would speak to his group and I said yes. And then one of the members from that group was a Kiwanis club. So in year one I spoke a grand total of three times was not even paid with a box of Samoa. So I got no cash. You know. You did get some MOAs or no, I got nothing. No Do-sey Doe’s no Thin Mints, nothing. I got maybe a free lunch at a rotary club and then year two happened. I spoken maybe eight times, Nope, no cash, maybe a gift card to a shell gas station when I was still open. And then year three, it started to become a business. JO: (06:29) It always had been mission led. It had always been yes, led, but it all of a sudden began to take on the underpinnings of an actual business. I hired my first employee, I borrowed against our home actually to pay her salary. And this woman named Deanna and I started building this thing up from the ground floor and we delivered 60 keynotes in year three in the 14 years that have followed. I’ve spoken two thousand times, 50 States, a couple dozen countries, a couple of million people live. And a couple of cool things have grown out of that. But it has been a wild whirlwind of just saying yes to the next audience in front of you and showing up with everything that we had to inspire the people in the room, not to realize how great I am. Cause there’ll be bored by that, that message, but by how great they are. JO: (07:20) So how did you go and I wanna I want to talk about covert and how that’s affected your business and the like what your mindset is going in into some of this and a little bit but, but I mean to go from eight to 60, that’s a lot in that was really like your first year going after this. So, so what did you guys do then and how much were you charging and like how did that, like that, that, that, that was a real business, which you took a real risk. You took the loan, you got a heat lock. It sounds like you got all he lock and started the business. A hired your first person. Was she just out there emailing people and calling them or what was happening? Yes, to both. So I brought her on after already probably booked about 20 that year, add about averaging $1,500 a keynote or something like that. JO: (08:16) And so there was a little bit of cash coming in the door, but she was asking for more than I’d booked in the entire year. And by the way, I’m married, I have a mortgage, I have one child and another one on the way. And so this is not like, well, it was my part time gig and I was independently wealthy. Neither of those things were true. I had to make this thing work, which is also one of the reasons I think, in fact, it did work. We had to make a go of this thing. We better figure this thing out. And we were motivated not only to stay out of the broke house, but to keep people alive, keep people moving forward, make them recognize how beautiful their life is and their calling to do more for others. So we started off speaking for free. JO: (08:56) I’m begging you guys, if you’re just beginning and you’re just listening to Rory Vaden today for the first time and you’re thinking you want to deliver a message on a platform someday, don’t be so arrogant enough to think that you’re, you need to be paid right off the bat. There is a benefit to going into school houses and synagogues and churches and rotary clubs and serving. Many of these people that you serve on the front side will become your advocates downstream. And so even when we were just kind of showing up to love, I’d still walk out with everybody’s business card in the room and I would still Rory Vaden following your, your process man, I would still follow up with emails. We would still begin sending out a monthly at that time newsletter to encourage them to keep moving forward, but also to remind them that there’s a guy named John O’Leary who alive and well and ready to serve when they are ready. JO: (09:40) So even in the early stages of this business, when there was not a business model, so to speak, there was the beginning of a database, there was the beginning of a followup and there was the beginning of a long term dream of what it could look like. RV: (09:54) And, and, and is that, I mean, over the next 14 years, has that changed much? I mean does it basically just the same thing, build a database, go out and speak, contact people get like what? How has that change and were there any big breaks? Like were there any big moments where you said, Oh, when this happened. That really catapulted my career. RV: (10:16) So it’s a great question because you live this every day, your life. What I’ve always found at least in the first 15 years maybe I’ll find something very different than the next 15 is that the idea of big breaks is, is sometimes exaggerated. I’ll book a huge event in front of tens and tens of thousands of people and the right people in that room thinking now I’ve made it and the following day I wake up and I’m really not that changed. I’ll book a huge huge radio show or television show or podcast boom baby now we got it. I’ll create a book that is worthy enough to be a New York times bestseller, becomes a number one New York times bestseller and still I haven’t made it. And so you have a beautiful quote about when the rent is due. It’s like it’s due everyday man, get up and pay it again cause it is due every single day. We’ve had a lot of breaks but but none of them that have actually made us overnight successes. What have made us in quotes, overnight successes is showing up and going to work the following day. JO: (11:18) And so some of the things that have grown in the last 1415 years is the database. When you collect information over the course of years, we now have a couple of hundred thousand people that we we’ll get to love on every single week. Another thing that has happened is we started getting into social media. So now we have I think 300,000 or so followers online and then you ask yourself, well how can I serve them better? What if they had a really cool life giving book? And so I wrote a book called on fire. It became a number one national bestseller. It’s still selling now four years after it’s released at a high level because it’s about reminding people not only that they matter, but here are the next steps that you can take to impact. Even more lives through yours. After that release, we said, how do you touch more lives? JO: (12:02) We created the live inspire podcast. Rory Vaden has been a guest on this thing. We have a hundred thousand plus listeners every single month that checked out the millions of downloads. Now 2 million over 2 million downloads of a million downloads, and it’s awesome. It’s a cool way to get in front of people, not only the mass audiences, but it allows you to reconnect with a guy like Rory Vaden or a guy like John Gordon or a lady like Renee Brown or you. You name the person and now you get to meet these people one-to-one here, their stories. But my kids and I, cool story. We were watching Apollo 13 and they wanted to know when the guy died. This guy played by Tom Hanks when he died at the movies in the sixties so when did he die? It turns out commander Jim Lavelle lives in Chicago. JO: (12:45) He’s 94 years old. He’s been married for 70 years. He’s the world’s greatest failure just about everything he did in life. He failed except for the fact that he kept moving forward. And so he even failed to go into the moon except for the fact that they figured out how to Slingshot around the moon and come back safely. So one of the great stories I think of our society bringing this guy back with technology foreign figure to a cell phone and yet commander Jim Lavelle is alive and well in Chicago today through the efforts, not only of him and his two person crew, but through what we were doing in Houston. Yes, they had a problem with they redeem the problem. RV: (13:23) That’s amazing. That’s such a cool, that’s such a cool story. And I, I I mean one of the things that has always just blown me away, and this is, I guess part of what I would hope for people to capture from you is just like, you have such a genuine heart to serve. And we were, we were talking about some of the Covid stuff going on and how it’s affected your business and you were just, you were telling me that, you know, I don’t want to have the big high price thing because like my guy is the ups guy and the nurse and the teacher and the stay at home mom. Like your, your, your people are the people like just the, the, the people and how have you always had that heart to serve? Cause I have no doubt whatsoever that that is a huge reason why you have built such a successful keynote career. But I just, I guess I have a hard time understanding how do you go from almost dying just trying to just barely survive and just be normal yourself. Right. How do you go from that to where it’s like I can barely live. I don’t, you know, you lost, you know, a big portion of your hands. Right? And to, all I do in life is care about other people. Like that’s a big leap. JO: (14:39) So let me begin answer the question by starting with the end in mind. For the listeners that just want to grow their business. I can’t tell you how many speeches that have been referred to me through the AV guys. These are the folks who wear black shirts and black pants in the back of the room. That big time speakers like myself ignore because they’re unimportant. They’re only there to get the video up on the screen and the sound of the room, and besides that, they’re useless except for the fact I really love these guys. I like, I love them. And so I hang out with them. I’ll launch with them, I’ll hug them on the front side, hug them afterwards, thank them for their work. Stay in touch longterm, they refer me speeches because I don’t do this on purpose, but those guys then go on to the next venue the following day and if someone sinks, they’re like, by the way, you should meet a guy named John O’Leary. JO: (15:26) Mike, he’s so genuine. He blows away the audience. He gave me his card. In fact, I was texting them last time. Here’s this, here’s the number. And so we get, we get referrals all the time from AV guys. I received three referrals from guys driving town cars. These are the guys like why would you ever talk to a guy driving you, cause they’re completely unimportant except for the fact that I believe in the dignity of human life. And I see the guy in front of me having a far better story than the one I’m going to share from a stage later on. And so I’ve heard so many amazing stories, exchange cell phone numbers with these guys and then have been referred to future clients because of the chauffeur. And so is there an ROI in love? Yes. Okay. Yes. But your real question is why, why do you like people? JO: (16:10) Number one is I recognize that my life is a miracle and that’s not because I got burned and survived the unsurvivable, the likelihood of us being in the room, if you just look at the biology and we’ll have an after hours with Rory Vaden and chattel there if you want to get into the functioning of how we were reproduced into this position. But here’s, here’s the biology man. When you add up your mom and your dad and the likelihood of their DNA becoming one turn into Rory Vaden, the math is less than one in 400 trillion. So the very fact that Rory Vaden is in the room is one in 400 trillion just from mom and dad coming together. We were miracles and we get, we get bored by life and we act like COVID. 19 will be the end of us or recession’s going to break our back or losing a third of our portfolio has ruined what we wanted to do later on in life. JO: (17:01) And what I need you guys to do, listening, ladies listening, is to recognize that you’re made for so much more than this. Like you are a gift. You are miracle. You need to act like it. And once you can act like you can also recognize that the dignity of those around you. So Rory, I’m here because a whole lot of people showed up for me, but maybe the most important person in my story was the janitor. And this is the guy who came into my room as a kid when I was nine. He did his job, he did it for about minimum wage, and he did his job for the next five and a half months while I was treated in burn care. And if he had not done his job at a high level, there’s a high likelihood that I get some small little infection. JO: (17:43) COVID 19 as a reminder, it doesn’t need to be a missile that claims your life. It can be something you can barely see under a microscope that can claim your life. This guy’s job is to protect a little boy from that. His name was Lavelle. I believe he saved my life in the hospital. And I’ve never forgotten the fact that there’s no such thing as little jobs like that. They all matter and an epidemic. And now a pandemic like COVID 19 reminds us of the profound value of grocery store workers and truck drivers and nurses and custodians like their work matters. We just for too long have overlooked it. JO: (18:20) Wow. what a perspective. So, so what is going on with your business? How has [inaudible] affected you and what are you doing about it? And how are you thinking about it? Awesome. Gosh, there’s a lot of questions right there. So from a societal aspect, it’s breaking my heart because I recognize that people’s portfolios have been wiped out to a degree that many of us have become unemployed, that many of us have lost their lives and lost lost loved ones. And that help. The healthcare system itself is incredibly taxed during this time. So just as a citizen of the world I ache, I really hate it. It makes me sad thinking about it. But I also remember a conversation that I had with my grandfather, and this will get me emotional too, cause he’s my hero. My grandfather served in world war II. He was in the Navy for three years, came all married sweetheart, built an incredible life. JO: (19:19) And after September 11th we had lunch together on the 17th and I’m writing this story about this right now. So in September 17th grandpa and I met at a little pasta place down the street from his office. He’s near the end of his life. He’s certainly near the end of his working life. And I learned over lunch that he had just invested a large chunk of his savings into American airlines and United airlines, right as the market has come back online. And everyone who’s got any savvy at all knows what’s going to happen to the airlines after the bell rings and we get to sell or by no one’s going to be buying these two airlines. They’re the ones that collided into buildings and into th th th they’re gonna fall dramatically. And grandpa Bobby bought them heavily. So I say grandma, grandpa, I think he kind of made a mistake man. JO: (20:11) And he took a bite of his pasta then a sip of his tea in front of them and he said, John, do you know that they refer to our generation as the greatest generation? I just said, yeah, I’ve read that book Gramps. And he said, you know why? I’m like, tell me. He goes, it’s not because we survived the great depression and it’s not because we went off and we fought in world war II. And it’s not because we were the most productive group of all time for humanity. They built the nations. He’s like, let me tell you what it was. We never forgot the lessons that we learned along the way. And I think that’s really important to remember during this COVID 19 pandemic. What made the greatest generation, the greatest generation, I think back then and still today, is not what they did. JO: (20:53) It’s that they were made better because of what they endured. They were made better because of the depression. They were made better because of world war II. They were made better because of their great productivity. And so when this crisis happened on nine 11 six days later, when the markets reopened, he’d still remembered what his, what he’d lost, but also was taught during the depression, during the war and during the decades that followed. And so it’s why my grandfather, as a citizen was making an investment into organizations that he wanted to be around longterm. So what am I thinking about right now during COVID 19 I’m thinking about the lessons that I can learn right now that we can apply longterm. I don’t want to forget man, what I know to be true, Rory, this too shall pass. I don’t know if it’s next month or in 16 months, but sometime the pandemic passes, sometimes we’re back at work sometime the markets return and my, my great concern is we’re going to forget what we’re learning right now and I want to be like my grandpa. JO: (21:48) I want to be part of the next greatest generation that did not forget the lessons being taught during COVID 19 so what I’m remembering right now is I’ve had 41 dinners at home with my wife. That’s never happened since we’ve been married ever. Wow. 41 nights in a row, tucking my, my, my little girl, my three boys. And it never happened. Since I’ve been born, I’ve had 41 lunches. When you and I finished this podcast, I’m going to hang up race home and make them lunch again. 41 peanut butter jellies in a row, man, 42 tomorrow. But man, rather than cursing the fact that I can’t get on flights, personally, I’m extraordinarily grateful for this season because I know it will pass. I know it will pass. So that’s what I’m doing personally, professionally, I’m trying to pivot into the storm. I’m trying to raise the sail high and figure out what we can do digitally through the profound blessing, the technology to influence clients and influence last longterm starting today. And so this big ship of ours here at live inspired are pivoting into what we can become. And by the way, we would not have done this had everything in life gone perfectly the way we planned, but, but now we have this beautiful opportunity to become so much more significant and life giving than what we would’ve done if John O’Leary was on a plane today speaking to only a couple hundred or only a couple thousand. Now we believe we can influence millions of lives starting right now. Why wait? RV: (23:16) I love it man. I absolutely love it. Well John, where do you want people to go if they want to connect with you more and just kind of follow your journey and see what you’re up to. Of course, in all that book, that book is out like you all. Can you, can he, you can just feel this man’s heart and it comes through in his writing and so excited for y’all to get your hands on this new book. But where else did you direct people, John to connect with you? JO: (23:43) So thank you for your compliment. Like it is all hard. I haven’t been through media training. I probably said the wrong thing all the time, but it is heartled man. So where they can go to learn more about the book and about who John is as good a readinawe.com. So that’s read in awe.com you’ll learn about the book, you’ll learn about John, you’ll have the links to social media and the podcast. But the reason really I’m driving folks there is when this whole thing broke out, we recognize that there would be some collateral damage. And last year, Rory, 1.5 million Americans attempted suicide. And this was one life was awesome. You got nothing to complain about, no pandemics, no reset, nothing man. One and a half million. So on the front side of this, our team got together and said, how do we invest in people? And so we built a 21 day campaign. So just love them and encourage them and to remind them that they’re not alone and that there is a next step. So there’s a cool 21 day challenge somewhere on that website. sign up for it. You’ll benefit from it. You’ll realize you’re not alone. And you’ll also realize your best days remain in front of you. RV: (24:54) Yeah. John, buddy, I just, I can’t thank you enough for your, your attitude and your mindset and your heart. I mean, I’m sitting here almost in tears myself, just like being encouraged, being reminded of the importance of gratitude and then also just experiencing you living it through your life and through your lens. It’s, it’s so impactful to me and to, to everybody. So thank you for what you’re doing. I hope you are relishing the time with the family and you know, the world is, the world is still very much, very much a need of John O’Leary. So I hope you keep, keep inspiring virtually and digitally through this time. And we just love you and we wish you the best. JO: (25:43) Let me say one thing, man. I twice now, the publisher of my books have sent me back the first edition with my picture on the front of it and what I’ve always sent back to them as a reminder, read the book and then redo the artwork of the, of the book because that’s not it. And so on the first one on fire, there’s mirrored letters of flames that if you look at it just right, you actually see your picture of Rory Vaden and whoever else is reading on fire. They’re going to see their little image in the letters. And if you read on in awe, there’s this big brilliant blue sky with clouds floating past with a red kite flying high, reminding us what it was like once when we were kids and how we can return to that to day to day. And so you said the world needs more John O’Leary? I don’t. Thank you. I think the world needs more people who are fully alive. And do your exhibit a of that. So Rory Vaden keeps shining the light, keep living it out. And thanks for being my friend. Of course, brother, much love God bless you. Feel likewise. God bless. See you buddy.

Ep 64: Everything You Need to Know to Make Brilliant Online Courses with D’Arcy Benincosa

RV: (00:00) 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) Oh my gosh, I love D’Arcy Benincosa. You’re gonna love this woman. She is so fun and so cool and so intelligent and a true professional. So she is, has been, I think one of the most sought after destination luxury wedding photographers in the world. But out of that, she’s also become a very well renowned business coach, specifically for creatives. And that’s part of why we brought her on here today. So she and I met through a mastermind that she was involved with and then she became a client of brand builders group and I’m always kind of like, why are you a client? You’re so amazing. But she’s so humble and she’s such a student that way. And then she was in one of our events and everyone started asking her all these questions and it was like, Oh my gosh, we have to just get D’Arcy in front of all of you so that you can learn because she’s done a ton. RV: (02:00) Okay. So she’s as a photographer, I mean, she’s been featured in so many different things and as, and as kind of a a business coach or teacher she’s been featured in HuffPo, ABC, NBC, the view, Upworthy, I mean, her photography has been in every major wedding publication like Martha Stewart. And Harper’s Bazaar and style me pretty like so she’s got a master’s degree, so she has that interesting balance of like classic education. Like me, I have a master’s degree but also really am more of an entrepreneur. And anyways, I’m just excited for you to, to meet the energy that is D’Arcy, Benincosa. So welcome to the show. Oh my gosh. It’s such a privilege to be here. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for that introduction. I’ve done a lot in 40 years. Well you don’t look forward to at all. RV: (02:57) And so I guess there’s so many things I want to ask you about, but I, I think that the place that we should start just to like get right to what is probably most relevant for our audiences is I think that of all of our clients, you’re one of the people that is really well experienced with video courses, creating them, pricing them, launching them, promoting them. And so like, I think maybe we just dive in with that. So, so how many courses, like is it w give me an idea of what percentage of your business come from courses and how many courses do you have? And like just give us like the overview of what courses mean in D’Arcy’s world. DB: (03:41) Yeah. So for a long time I was just shooting weddings. I think a lot of us just offer a service, right? I was out shooting weddings, doing brand shoots. I was so good at storytelling. And of course is always happens when you get really good at some thing. People who want to be good at it start inquiring, Hey, can you teach me how to do that? Can you teach me how to do that? And I realized as a business person, yes I was tied to photography, but I knew I didn’t want to be shooting weddings when I was 70 so I thought this is a great new Avenue of another client I can serve. So I started creating the education and creating ways of helping photographers, book clients. So at first it was about 0%. Then I would say the year I finally decided to launch a course, it became a third. DB: (04:37) I launched a course audience. If I had a six figure launch my first time launching something because I really didn’t launch until I had served my audience for a couple of years. And that launch was huge for me. I didn’t do any paid advertising either. That was my mind. So all my clients were just ready to buy what I had to offer because I had been serving them. And I think making sure you don’t launch too soon before you’ve served them enough before they want, you know, there’s so many laws to marketing. Talked about the law of reciprocity is a big one. Make sure you’ve given so much to them, but that by the time you launch something, they are just ready to buy from you because you’ve served them so well. And I think that’s what happened with my first course. And then I got really zealous and right after that I created another one. And I think I did that a little too soon. But then I started listening to what they were asking and I, I started creating things that I did really well that I didn’t realize people would pay me to learn. Like I thought, Oh this isn’t a big deal. And then it turned out to be something everybody needed help with. So I have a lot of courses, I’ll be honest, I have probably more than a lot of people recommend, but they do really well. RV: (06:04) Interesting. Okay. So so that when people hear course like how many videos, I know this is such a basic question, but like how many videos are in a course, how long do they have to be? How professional? Like how professionally shot do they have to be like, you know, do you have to rent a studio and go do it with like full lighting? Can you do it on your phone? Like just give us a sense of of that. And maybe maybe correlated with price points. Cause I’m sure it’s like the answer is, it depends. It can be all those different things. But just since you’ve actually had so much different experience, like how would you kind of price, you know, different modalities and volumes and that kind of thing. DB: (06:50) So let me tell you my lowest price course than my highest price course. So my lowest price is $49. It includes 15 videos that are each about six to 12 minutes long. RV: (07:03) Say that again. How many DB: (07:04) 15 videos that are each six to 12 minutes long. Okay. And it’s a very niche course. It’s teaching photographers how to shoot a meter film. Do you remember film? RV: (07:19) I do remember film, but I don’t know what meaner film is. Is that like filming? DB: (07:24) Yeah, most people shoot digital, but film is making a comeback, especially with hipsters. I’ve always, I’ve always shot it. So I’m teaching people how to meet her light for their camera to shoot film. Okay. I do it really quickly, really succinctly. And it’s a $49 course. I put it cheaper because it’s really easy. It’s quick to get through and I wanted them to have an experience with me so they could see how I was as a teacher. And that one, I just have one video from the course on YouTube. It’s the most searched YouTube term by photographers. You guys might not get it so don’t get lost in the language but it just says how to shoot a meter film and that’s exactly what they type into the search bar and I don’t know RV: (08:14) The title of your video. Okay. DB: (08:16) That’s the title of one of the videos in the in the course that I put on YouTube and then I have a link to buy the $50 course and that, and I sell a couple of those a week. They’ve paid for my groceries. That course has paid for my groceries since I put it up in 2017 and the awesome thing about that content is it never changes. Shooting film is a thing that is always the same. How to do it is always the same, which is awesome to have as a course. RV: (08:46) So your whole funnel, there is one of the videos in the course you made publicly available and then you have a link in the description and like a card that comes that slides out. DB: (09:00) If you want to learn more in depth, this is what I cover. Click here to buy the course because there are a lot of other videos on YouTube like that, but mine is the best. I’m a really good teacher and I did my research well and I made sure I was very clear. And and so it’s a, it’s a 12 minute video. It has almost a hundred thousand views and people are watching it every single day and it, it goes. Yeah. And that’s one of the, RV: (09:29) One of the funnels. And so it’s not even like, it’s not even really a marketing, it’s the actual video in the course itself. And then if you want more boom and you click and you go to a sales page that tells what’s in the course or do you go straight to your shopping cart? DB: (09:42) Yeah, pretty much too. I think a landing page, it could Jobie that then tells what’s in the course and they can just buy it. RV: (09:49) Got it. And did you shoot it on your iPhone or, I mean you’re a photographer so you have a little bit of an advantage with the production quality. DB: (09:59) So I used to make a ton of YouTube videos and I would rent out a studio for like 300 bucks and pay my friend 300 bucks and he would come in and we would shoot all day long, 12 hours a day. We were in a studio that had light and then he would go and edit all of the, all the videos. So I created that course in about two hours. I just wrote down everything people need to learn. I got up, I taught it. I didn’t need a lot of cue cards for that one. I had my meter, I had my camera and that one was really easy and I could run paid ads to that if I wanted. I just have other things that I run ads to. So that one I had just, I love seeing how it performs on YouTube. RV: (10:43) Interesting. Interesting. Okay. So what’s your most expensive one? So my most DB: (10:47) Expensive one is a, the one without me. So I do coaching with me, but without me, it’s 1495. It’s 1,495 it’s called the marketing map. And it’s basically how to market yourself as a creative with really tried and true services. If you are just a service because so many of these things that teach you are like, you have to have a product or a course or anything like this. And this is basically like I have a service if I was a photographer, you know, so these are photographers, different kinds of creatives that have one service to offer. How do you market them? And it goes through very in depth how to market that. And that I launched I did RV: (11:30) So hold on. So one thing just for y’all listening, cause this is interesting because in our phase one event, we talk about five ways to monetize a personal brand and we call them the paids PA IDs. But then you know, the S is services and we talk about how the fastest path to cash is a service is your time for money, but it’s the least scalable. And I think that’s really, really unique because you’re right, everyone teaches you how to sell one of the other ones, but to actually get more gigs if you’re a senior or get more bookings if you’re a photographer. So that’s really specific. So how many, so what’s, what, how many videos are in it and how long is it and all that. DB: (12:10) Yeah, and I will say really quickly, most people come to me with only knowing how to sell their services. And what I teach in the marketing map is, yes, here’s how to sell your service. But then I also give them a lot of ideas for how to eventually bring in passive income. Because the way I serve my clients is let’s monetize your service. Let’s get you making six figures at least because everybody’s working way too hard to not least be making six figures. And then let’s open up your mind and let that creative genius flow for how you can eventually change your business model to not be so service-based so you can not work so hard and you know, but a lot of people at the beginning of their businesses service-based. I think that’s where we all kind of start. And then we learn what our gifts are. So that one is six maps. So it’s six, I call them maps instead of modules cause I’m a destination wedding photographer, travel all of that stuff through it’s six maps. And in each map there are four videos. And then I update that with very good masterclasses about every quarter. So I have genius SEO people come in genius, you know, Google analytics, people come in, blogging people things like that where I’m always serving that audience by, by recording new masterclasses as well. RV: (13:33) Oh, okay. So that’s kind of you, you include them in like a growing archive of just specialty classes. How many, so, but, but then the set part of it is for, you said it’s six modules or videos. So it’s 24 videos. How long are they? DB: (13:52) You know, I know most people say only do like 10 minute videos. I think you need to know how compelling you are. And I happened to be a really good storyteller so some of my videos are up to 25 minutes long, maybe 30 I didn’t plan them that way, I just had so much to share on that. But I try not to overwhelm. So they’re very well organized. They’re very much by topic and they very much lead on a journey. Now I could have included another 40 videos of content, but you want to make sure you don’t overwhelm your audience. And one thing you really want to make sure with courses is that people can finish it because they feel successful when they finish it. And I have a very big mission to help people finish their courses with me because how many of us buy a million courses and don’t finish them? I have been guilty of that. And so I like to make my clients feel very successful. So very much like I led them on a very targeted journey that all over the place. RV: (14:53) Well. Well I think the thing that’s interesting to me as you go that one is 24 videos, right? Your other one, the $49 one is 15 videos. So it’s not really about, it’s not really about the quantity of videos, it’s more is it’s priced more upon the value of the information to the person about what, how, how translatable this information is into helping someone make money from what you’re teaching them. DB: (15:20) Yeah, I think so. Cause with the, how does she meet her film? I’m TA, I’m teaching them one basic skill. That skill could or could not bring them in, come into their business. It’s more like this could be a hobby, this could be something. I just want to learn for fun. The marketing map, if they follow what’s in there that teaches them how to have a half a million dollar photography business, which is, and, and they could scale it to even more. But that’s basically where I’m coming at it from because you can’t make more than half a million if you, if you only offer services. That’s my opinion in photography because you’d be shooting all the time and you wouldn’t have enough time to edit and all of these things. So it’s basically how to scale to that with the idea of, Hey, if you want to, then after the services bring in passive income and stuff, it hints at that, but it doesn’t niche to that. RV: (16:13) Okay. So then the, so the four, so for this one, let’s talk about the marketing map or just the one that’s 1497. So how do you market it? And you said you had a six figure launch, your first launch, like, so part of this, I guess as you go, okay, what, what skill set do I have that I can teach people your outline, the course. I mean, this is what we do in captivating content, right? In our event, we’re kind of like, okay, let’s outline it. Let’s block it all out. Then you come into a studio, you’re going to shoot, you’re going to shoot it, you’re going to have to edit the videos and eventually you’re gonna have to upload them somewhere, whether it’s Kajabi or Thinkific or it could be YouTube, unlisted if even if it was like your first, your very first course. But like once you have the course done, how do you sell the actual course? Like what are all the things that you, well, let’s talk about what you did in that first one and then what you do now because you didn’t do any paid acquisition before. DB: (17:10) And I will say in the marketing map, you only see me during the welcome video. The rest of the time it’s PowerPoint presentations with my voice because I created it all at home and my neighbor’s dog barks a lot. So I had to create these videos at like 1:00 AM so I was in my room, which hoarding with my voice, I would mess up. So if with ScreenFlow you can record your whole screen, I would have a PowerPoint. If I didn’t like how something sounded, I’d stop, rerecord it. And then you can edit everything out, you can edit out your ums, your mistakes, you know, you get really close to a microphone. Suddenly every breath you intake sounds so loud so you can edit all of that stuff out. So the way that I did it is I did webinar, a webinar funnel first, and I had read everything, Jeff Walker’s launch book, everything that said like do a 10 day, 14 day launch. And I just knew that wasn’t enough time for my audience. So I actually launched for six weeks and every week I would teach a live webinar because I’m really good live and I wanted to serve them out, answer all their questions. And so I would Mark it the live webinar on Instagram, which is where most of my following is. And to my email list. And every week I got on and did a live webinar and I closed some of those webinars at $40,000 at the end of it with people buying the product. RV: (18:40) And so that was it. That was, you’re saying that’s the same webinar repeated six times or six different? Yeah. DB: (18:47) Okay. Nope. Same webinar and I just got people on there live. And here’s the crazy thing, you guys, I didn’t have the course created at the time I started selling it because I think all of us have a course or something inside of us, but it is always takes the back the back, you know, we just always put it off in terms of other work and I knew if I had sold it, I would make it. So I not only sold the course for six weeks, it, I took six weeks to make it. RV: (19:20) Oh, so you were making it during that time that you were selling it? Yeah. DB: (19:22) Yeah. And I got their questions like I had it outlined, I knew what I was doing, but with more of their questions, I was like, Oh, I should add that in. Oh, that needs to be added in. And then I would just create videos and content every night. Like it was crazy. It was crazy. RV: (19:36) And your webinar. Okay, so your, so your webinar, so this is like classics and this is classic phase two brand builder stuff too, right? It’s like we’re all about the webinar funnel. You’ve got some traffic sources, you drive them to a webinar, you rock their world, like give, give, give, and then you tell them what you have available. Like it’s not rocket science. If you know something and you serve people and you create reciprocity, like you’re going to sell some of these. If you, if, if you’re, if you’re teaching on something that you should be teaching on, like something that you know something about, but the webinar itself, did you create like fancy slides for it and all of that stuff? Did you, so you take the time to create like a nice webinar slide deck. DB: (20:23) Yeah. Here’s the thing about photographers and knowing your audience is so helpful. Photographers are very much about aesthetic, so I don’t do like these masculine click funnel type things. Mine are very beautiful. They’re very much photography heavy. They all have a strong brand. From the way I present my fonts, like I feel like the visual identity of my brand is of the top that I have seen and it’s very consistent. So my slides are gorgeous and they show compelling images. I talk about, you know, how I took these images, you know, working with Harper’s Bazaar and Thailand and all of these things that people, you know, not to brag but to show this is what you can do when you build your business in this way. So yes, I had beautiful slides and I really taught something in the webinar that wasn’t in the course but very much served them and made them want more. And it really gave them the experience of, Oh my gosh, if I just got this much information off of D’Arcy off 60 minutes, what could I get from an entire course? And that’s the way I’ve always wanted my run my webinars is I want people to feel like what they got off my webinar. They would have literally paid at least $300 of information for RV: (21:45) Yeah, that we feel the same way. Like it’s, our philosophy has never been teased them, don’t give them anything and make them buy. It’s the inverse. It’s, it’s like over-deliver. And in fact, we, you know, for us, you know, grant Cardone has his 10 X rule for us, the 10 X rule that I think about is deliver 10 times the amount of value in advance of what you’re asking them to pay. And then, you know, it’s like exactly what you’re saying when they’re gone, man, I’ve gotten so much already. Like how could I, how could I not buy from this person? So, so I love that. But that, that was it. It wasn’t, there weren’t Facebook ads. Like in your case, you had an organic audience between Instagram and email that you had built up and you just said, Hey, come check this out. So you, the, the, the only thing you really designed was like that first slide deck. And then you had the outline of the course clearly. But, and then you were designing the course on the fly as you went along. DB: (22:43) And I think, I use my sense of humor in Instagram stories. So I called it magic marketing and I photo-shopped myself in the pitcher of magic mic, which, right. We did not know this movie, but I know that with a lot of my, I was, I was almost cast for it as I could see that they weren’t willing to pay me enough money for my abs. So I was like, so I think I use my hands humor, I use my, my compelling newness. You know, I, I went online and invited people there, made sure that they won’t want to miss it. And that’s the one thing about my audience. You know, everybody can create a course, but I think once you sell a course and people do not give good feedback and you kind of missed your boat or you didn’t know over-deliver or you sold the course, you had no business teaching and you didn’t have enough experience. DB: (23:34) There are a lot of people in the industry and when people buy from you, they’re like, Oh I’ve been burned before. You know, and I, I really think having a high standard, if you’re going to become, like you said, your reputation. So I make sure every course, I don’t make sure it’s perfect cause then I never put it out. But I make sure that like it is what I know. I can teach that I’m very good at it. I’m organized. Organizing the information is huge for people as you teach. And I’ve learned from you making sure you have organized information that is easily obtained, you know, and ingested by people so they can take it away and change a behavior that I learned that changed behavior from you at your captivating content. I have been doing it. I just didn’t realize I was changing a behavior. And that’s really key for courses. You want people to come away transformed. RV: (24:30) Yeah, I love that. I mean it’s, it’s kind of like the best marketing ever is when your students actually change their, their actual behavior because then they’re thinking about you and they’re doing things in there telling people. So I really, really love that. So, so, so that was how you launched the first one. Now what happens after that? Like how do you, how often have you launched, do you, you know, do you do paid traffic now? And I mean, yeah, I mean 1500 bucks. Like you don’t have to sell too many of those things, you know, most people to in order to quit their job kind of a thing. You, you could, if you’re good at building an audience and doing it consistently, like so, so what happens after that first launch? DB: (25:15) Yeah, so I think what’s really important after that first launch is to understand your content calendar. So at the beginning of each year, I map out my exact sell dates, like what am I selling so that I can preplan the content that I’m putting out that goes along with it. So for example, my next big course that I’m launching, it’s a new course. I’m launching it in may. That means everything from March and April is content that helps people see, Oh my gosh, I will eventually need this course. So I think planning out your content, selling three to four times a year, not being afraid to sell. I was on a coaching call with actually some people that we know about courses and somebody said I don’t want to be annoying when I sell. And you know, women are the only ones who asked me that question. DB: (26:10) No man is ever like, I don’t want to be annoying when I sell. And I think, you know, if you’re really offering a service then selling is part of that. So I make sure I sell about four times a year and a mistake that I made was trying to sell too many things at once. I remember I had a course, I was launching a group coaching program I was launching and an in person retreat and I needed to sell them all at the same time. That was a horrible thing. It was really hard to sell any of them. Well, and I did that last year. I was like, Oh my gosh, we plan too many launches at once. So this year we’re very careful. I have exactly the dates where I’m selling things. So from that you can keep selling one signature course if you want. DB: (26:58) Like Marie Forleo’s model, she sells B school every March. She then does live calls with it for six weeks and the rest of the year she’s putting out free content that drives people to trust her to then join B school. I love teaching, so I have a lot of courses. I put out one that was cheaper. It was one 49 and it answered a very niche question. It was how to prepare proposals. I do custom proposals for all my luxury clients, how to prepare those to make sure that you book that client, how to give them like you call a compelling offer to make sure you book that client and how to make sure that proposal speaks to them. And that course has been really, really powerful. And so yeah. RV: (27:52) Okay. Are most of your courses towards that lower or are most of your courses like South of a couple of hundred bucks or is it just kind of like all over the place? DB: (28:00) Yeah, I have. So with my product value ladder, which is how do your courses rank? I have one 49 I have two one 40 nines and then I have the 1400 so now I’m creating the four 97 and I think a four 97 course is a really sweet spot because people, we’ll be willing to spend that much. It’s not a thousand, right? So many people talk them selves out of selling a thousand. But it is enough that you can make a really good launch out of it. And those are, that’s the one I’m putting a lot of paid ads. I haven’t put paid ads behind the 49 and I haven’t put paid ads behind the one 49 when we relaunched the marketing map, I had hands-off did nothing. One funnel with Facebook ads and launched it again, RV: (28:50) The 40 this is the 1497 one you’re talking about. So and then give us a sense of that. Right. So, so yeah, and one reason, you know, like we would tell people it’s, it’s kinda hard to run like an evergreen paid ad campaign on a course that’s South of maybe 200 bucks because the cost per acquisition, the price is so low. You know, it’s hard to break even now when you look at the lifetime value of that customer, if you’ve got that kind of sophisticated tracking on the back end, it could still make sense cause you’ll escalate them over time. But just on that one funnel alone, which is really what we want to do with paid paid acquisition is if we can at least make money on that very first buy, then everything from that point in the future is gravy. And and you know, it’s like you can spend as much you as fast as you can to acquire new email addresses and stuff. So, but the 1497 one, that one is super valuable. You’ve proven that you’ve got a webinar that will sell that. So give us an idea of like, what do you expect from like a closing percentage? Like, how many people register form one of these webinars? How many show up, how many actually buy, how long does it take? And then, you know, like at the end of the day, what percentage of people might actually buy something at that price point? DB: (30:15) Yeah. So the rule of thumb is that you will sell from eight to 12% of the people who are on the webinar. I, I remember, I think it was Russell Brunson said if you sell over 12%, email me right away cause I need to know what you’re doing. And he sells a lot of things. So I have a really high close rate. So I have had a few webinars. I know why when I do live I sell better. That’s why I like to do six, five or six lives because then I choose the one where I really nailed it. And that’s the one I put for the replay. So when we relaunched the marketing map a year later, well actually we did it six months later. I think we needed to do a year because my audience hadn’t grown enough. But we relaunched it for 10 days and it made 60 K in 10 days and I only put a thousand dollars behind the ads. DB: (31:07) So that’s not too bad. That was like, you know, a nice 10 day thing and I did nothing for that one. But I closed it about 12% I would say I’ve had one webinar and I CA, I think it was just a really engaged audience where I closed at 15 and then I had one webinar where I closed I think it eight and that felt like the biggest failure. It’s really hard to feel like you know how to pick yourself back up after a webinar because you do put so much into it. So you have to give yourself RV: (31:41) Now was this eight out of a hundred people or is this 80 out of a thousand people? DB: (31:46) Yeah, I usually have about 500 people on the webinars. RV: (31:49) So that means like a thousand of registering. DB: (31:52) Yeah. Yeah. I thought I was going to 1400 and then they’ll, and then they’ll rewatch about about 20% rewatch, maybe 15. Not rewatch, but watch it. They don’t come on live, you know, they, I don’t sell as well on the replays. Because you know, you want to give those bonuses live. So when they’re watching it live or the first time they see it, give them access to bonuses. And I’ve heard that the bonuses are almost as important as the course. So making sure you have bonuses that truly are what your absolute ideal client wants and cannot say no to. RV: (32:38) Yeah, for sure. And I think yeah, so just so you have like 1400 register, 500 show up, and then so 10% would be 50 people. So you might sign up somewhere around 50 people out of that live. Then you’ll have another 20%, so maybe another 200 people watched the replay and then you’ll get like some smaller, DB: (33:01) Like 10% of them as well. Yeah, eight to 10. Yeah. RV: (33:06) And then did that, and these aren’t evergreen, so these aren’t always running. You’ve always done like a couple of launches a year and you’ve done like a launch model. DB: (33:16) Yeah, the profitable portfolio, which I’m creating now, that one will be my first evergreen because it’s the perfect formula for evergreen. It doesn’t need a big emotional hit to buy. It’s a very tech technique based course. And I think sometimes we have these technique based courses that sell really easily. Like I’m teaching editing, I’m teaching this. Whereas some people try and sell mindset or grand ideas or these bigger kind of things and that I think you really do need that one to one connection with your client. So the profitable portfolio, you could know me or not know my reputation and still understand the value that’s being led here. Just from seeing my work and my accolades. You know, my list of publications already show this woman is qualified to teach this. When you get up into 1500, 2000 my group coaching is 4,500 a person. They really need to have that experience with you. And most of my coaching clients have been following me for a while and really know and trust me. RV: (34:24) Yeah. and then Facebook ads and stuff. So are you doing a lot of that now or is that more like you’re learning, you’re learning that space in terms of driving? DB: (34:33) Yeah, I’m really good at Facebook ads. I know when to launch them. I haven’t run them full time, but we did recently starting in January start a lead magnet that’s really great. It’s for teaching people how to have an Epic website, 10 things to have 10 things not to get rid of immediately. And that’s my website. I relaunch it every single year. It’s a launch that, you know, having launches in your business that people look forward to I think is something that can really build your brand and get people who may not have bought from you previously to buy from you because they get really drawn into the story of your business and how it serves them. So we do that as a lead magnet that we’ve started since January. And and then with the profitable portfolio, I have a budget usually around three to five grand a month for where my business is and how I want to scale it that I’ll be doing ads for. And this one, I’m going to do the launch and everything straight off the bat with ads. RV: (35:35) And that’ll be so like for six weeks, just like three to five grand over the course of six weeks maybe. I would say three to five grand a month. Yeah. So if I go into six weeks, I was planning on doing it for a month and then I’m taking it into the, into the evergreen funnel and see how that does. Gotcha. yeah. Well I know I’m excited. Cause you haven’t been through our phase three event yet. I don’t think I need to sign up for that one. That’s the one. That’s the one where we get into all of Facebook ads and Google and.

Ep 62: Putting A Stake Through The Sacred Cows of Your Industry with Mike Dillard

RV: (00:00) 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) Well, I’m excited to introduce you to somebody that I’ve known about for years, but it’s been some of those like at a distance, at a distance. And then finally we had a close friend that we both share a mutual friend connect us and be like, you two got to know each other. And I have to say as I’ve gotten to know more and more about Mike Dillard and has spent some time really learning about him online and I was, had a chance to be on his show. And I just really, really love this guy and I love what he’s about and I love in many ways the diversity of his knowledge, but also his central thesis thesis of being focused on helping entrepreneurs succeed, which is a story that he has lived several times, which you all know is of highest value and importance to me. RV: (01:48) Somebody teaching what they’ve actually done. And that is who we bring to you. So, as a personal brand though, so he’s had several successful companies and he started in network marketing. He’s done investing, he’s done online marketing all sorts of different membership and kind of training programs. He has a thing called ever grow, which I really, really love. We’ll probably talk about that. But in terms of a personal brand, you know, he’s had over 5 million downloads of his podcasts. His books have sold hundreds of thousands of copies, hundreds of thousands of you know, online followers. And anyways, he’s, he’s gonna [inaudible] tell us how he did all that in 20 minutes. Appreciate it. Yeah, man, I I was so excited. So I wanted to start with the network marketing thing because I started in network marketing. My mom was a network marketing. I was raised by a single mom who sold Mary Kay. And so, now. I consider that, you know, an important part of my journey. And then I got into network marketing. So was it, it was in, you were at Texas a and. M, what was it? What company was a MD: (03:00) One of a dozen. Okay. You did a bunch of them. Well, you know, you, I’m in, I’m in college. It’s 1996 to 2000. So it’s a web 1.0 days where there was no social media. It was crazy to see a video online back then. Yeah. I knew I wanted to be an entrepreneur and really the only option at that time it was network marketing. If you want to start an entrepreneur and start a business and become an entrepreneur for, you know, two or 300 bucks, which is all I could afford as a college student. That was basically the only gig in town. And so that’s where I got my start. Unfortunately, I failed at it miserably for five years. I jumped from business to business to business trying to figure out, figure out what I was doing wrong never succeeded in tell a very smart mentor of mine. MD: (03:44) Finally kind of slap me across the head, if you will, and gave me a piece of advice that changed my life. And he said, Hey man, this hasn’t been working for you for 12 different companies over five years now and do you want to know why? And I said, absolutely. He said, because if you want to get [inaudible], Hey, you’d like a professional like myself. And he was making about 50 grand a month at the time, which for me it was just [inaudible] this massive lifelong goal [inaudible] you have to become a professional. And for me, I hadn’t done that. I just gone from opportunity to opportunity thinking that that’s what was going to allow me to achieve success and make money. And that was a life changing light bulb moment for me where I was like, okay, yeah, everybody who’s walking across the stage and getting a check has mastered a specific skill when it comes to this industry and they are a true professional with that they have value to offer. MD: (04:31) I was like, I don’t have any of that. All I have is an opportunity that 20 other distributors have in the same company. Okay. And so at that point I dove in, forgot about the business and just started honing my craft, which specifically became copywriting and essentially salesmanship in print. I was the worst salesman on the planet. So I needed to figure out how to sell something without actually talking to people. I was super shy at that point in my life. And so I spent about a year and a half reading every book I could on copywriting and ended up learning how to essentially apply attraction marketing to the network marketing industry. I ended up writing a book called magnetic sponsoring that transformed that world. I became a public hero in a public villain overnight. Half the industry loved me and half the industry hated me because I was challenging an old paradigm. Right? Nonetheless, I became one of the biggest personal brands in that industry. I put attraction marketing on the map. I introduced that world to internet marketing and within 18 months I went from waiting tables to making my first million dollars at the age of 27 built a list of, you know, hundreds of thousands of email subscribers that turned into a multiple eight figure company and then left that business about four years later. Wow. Are you well able to share the company or no, it’s called magnetic. Yeah. RV: (05:58) Oh, okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Today. So that wasn’t it. It was an education company that served the network marketing or the direct sales like industry. And I taught myself MD: (06:07) How to generate leads and how to sell my business through a sales page and a capture page and emails. I ended up building the largest download in my next company. So I went from zero to the number one residual income or in that business I wrote magnetic sponsoring as the training manual for my team. It kinda got circulated around other groups and they’re like, Hey, can we thr [inaudible]? And I was like, yeah, let me make a generic version of it. So I started selling copies of that online for $39 a piece. And within, you know, two years I was selling $6 million worth of essentially marketing courses to that industry. Mmm. And then had the, the distributor ship and the primary company. And after doing that for about four years, I’d really accomplished everything that I [inaudible] could ever have, possibly imagined in that industry and kind of lost my excitement for it and decided to move on to a new challenge. RV: (07:00) Huh. So that skill set you know, writing copy, yeah. As you described it, basically, you know, selling on paper. Is it still as relevant today as ever or less relevant or MD: (07:16) More? For sure. I mean, you know, if you think about it, everything we do is basically online today. And so we’re, we’re not communicating one-on-one unless it’s a rare occasion like this when it’s live. But 99.9% of our communication is what we’re saying on Instagram or YouTube or a blog or email list. And so copywriting a to me is the language of the internet. And if your business is on the internet and you don’t understand copywriting, then you really don’t know how to talk to anybody in your audience. So if your message is getting ignored, if nobody’s buying your product, if nobody is paying attention to your calls to action, it’s because you have not learned how to communicate effectively through a one to many type of format. And that’s essentially what the skill of copywriting is. RV: (08:00) Interesting. So if you [inaudible], is there something, was there like a big light bulb? Like a, I love what you talked about. If you wanted to be paid like a professional, you need to act like one. Was there a big moment, like you had like that in your copywriting career as well, where it was like a big light bulb that said, Oh my gosh, this is the, this is the key to copywriting that I have missed, know well, over the years of learning this and doing it, MD: (08:26) If I could sum it up into one sentence, the one thing that when I first went down the copyrighting rabbit hole, that was just a massive light bulb and turning point for me. A lot of people have probably heard of this, but it was a quote that says, nobody wants to buy a drill because they want a drill. They buy a drill because they want a hole. And what I had always done is whenever I would try to sell something, I would sell it on, Hey, here’s how cool it is. Here’s the price or the discount or the features RV: (08:56) Or the, you know, whatever it may be. But at the end of the day, nobody’s ever buying your product cause they want that product. They’re buying your product because they want the result that is going to come from that product. And unfortunately, unless you’ve had this kind of training or epiphany, that’s counterintuitive. And so if you want to sell a drill to me, you’re talking about how easy it’s going to make your life, how fast it’s going to drill a hole, how much time it’s going to save you, how it’s going to save you from injury and all of these other things instead of, you know, talking about the drill itself. So that to me was the big was the really big light bulb. Yeah. [inaudible] well I love that. So, so now fast forward to here a little bit into entrepreneurship. So you know, brain builders, we have these phases, you know, phase one, phase two, phase three, phase four and our phase four section we call eight figure entrepreneurs. RV: (09:49) So it’s really about, yeah, phase one is brand identification and figuring out what your brand is all about. Phase two is creating all the assets. Phase three is optimizing and starting to run paid traffic and looking at data, et cetera. And then phase four is really scaling that, that, that brand to a real business, which is one of the things that I feel like you’ve done really well, that a lot of [inaudible] have it. And, and I think you’ve also had some failures along the way. So. Mmm. When you think about scaling, what do you think is the, is the, the difference between the personal brands that scale and you’ve done this with different brands, right? And the ones that don’t, which to me, it’s also, it’s not so much that they fail, like a lot of personal brands to me don’t, it’s like they fail and go bankrupt. RV: (10:39) It’s like they just get lost in this sea of noise. They, they can’t ever make it their main thing. They never get totally clear. So what do you think is the difference there going against the grain? Both of my most successful businesses were built on initial ideas or concepts is that when, again, the socially accepted norm. And so with magnetic sponsoring, one of the first headlines that I wrote for Google ads when I was promoting that and headlines on the product was only suckers buy leads. Okay. And if you were in the network marketing industry, you have to ways you build your business, you go to your warm market and then if you burn through that you buy leads. And so for me to come out and say, only soccer’s buy leads, Mmm. Planting a really firm flag in that ground, in that industry, that’s going to be quite controversial. And so my thing was, you’re a sucker if you’re buying leads, when, when you can attract them to you, when you can reposition yourself as the expert and as a value provider instead of running after people, chasing them, twisting their arm, trying to convince them to join your business, RV: (11:53) When instead MD: (11:54) You can provide value first, position yourself as an expert and just have the world’s come to your doorstep. And the challenge with that is that in that industry, things had been done the F the F previous way for 50 years. Oh. Like, yeah, longer. I mean that, that the direct sales industry and the, and the whole thing relied upon, do follow the follow the plan, like follow the system, do not buck the system. So I came out and I said there was no such thing as duplication and I, and I said, you’re an idiot if you go after your warm market. Like you want to go after people who are buying opportunities, you want to go after people and sponsor people who have already built a successful network marketing business. That’s how you would treat this as a real company. You’re not going to go after. Yeah. You know you know, vegans and try to sell a mistake and convince them that steak’s healthy for them, which is what a network marketer would typically do, you know, for three hours until the person capitulated or left. MD: (12:50) And so all of those were sacred cows, if you will, in Seth Goden words. Yeah. That I put a stake through and that’s what put me on the map. Robert Kiyosaki did this as well with real estate. That’s what put him on the map. Okay. When it came to my second business the elevation group, I launched that after the crash of 2008 I was fascinated by investing. I just watched everybody get burned in that crash and I was like, okay, I don’t know what to do with my money. I’m certainly not going to go do that and I’m not going to listen to those people, but what do I do? And so I was like, let me go interview and learn from successful entrepreneurs who’ve made tens, hundreds of millions of dollars that have also turned that into real wealth and passive income and who got rich during the last economic crashes. MD: (13:37) I’m going to go learn from those people, listen to those people. So that was the core concept behind that business. The tagline was learn how to invest like the rich, and this is after the crash of Oh eight. So you have to imagine where people’s heads, where they’d just gotten burned. They don’t know who to trust anymore. And for me, I went out and I bought and studied every existing financial education product out there. The Motley fools, the Agoras, the Stansberry research is all of them. And I basically said, I’m going to do the exact opposite of what they’re doing. So they’re all focused on stocks and they’re all in a written newsletter and they’re all using these technical, technical terms. I’m not going to talk about stocks at all. It’s not going to be a written those later. It’s all going to be in video and it’s all going to be using language that your next door neighbor would understand. So, so before you go on, are you going against the grain just because you think that’s a great way to attract a lot of attention or are you going against the grain because you feel like there is some real secret truth to doing that, that you know, if everyone’s going one direction, then there, there has to be an opportunity over here, both both of those businesses were inspired by my own personal problems that I could find a solution RV: (14:52) To [inaudible]. And so I’m like, Hey, the stuff that’s out here is not working. At least for me, I need to figure out a way to make this work for me. And that in involves some new ideas and new approaches that were counter intuitive to what you know, currently existed at the same time. Yeah. You have to think of ways to break through the noise and the best way to break through the noise is to go against what is typically held as a commonly held belief or what’s always been talked about as a given and go against that. And again, Kiyosaki’s just such a great, a great way to do that. Yeah, his friend [inaudible] and my buddy Tom real ride who does his tax stuff [inaudible] his book is tax free wealth. It’s a pretty interesting concept. Tim Ferriss, same thing. Put him on the map before our work week. RV: (15:47) Yeah. That goes against the grain, right? So these are all examples of challenging the conventionally held wisdom and by doing so, people just plant themselves on the map. To me that’s the ultimate nuclear bomb, if you will, if you want to build your personal brand is if you can find that counter intuitive approach at the right time. It’s a guaranteed just rocket ship. Yeah. It’s interesting. I remember with my Ted talk, you know everyone had been talking about managing time, managing time, managing time and [inaudible] we said, Hey, there’s a way to multiply time, which is to spend time on things today that create more time tomorrow. Yeah, it did play well. I mean it has done, it’s done really well. I mean the talk went viral, the book w we call them [inaudible] procrastinate on purpose, which unfortunately we should have called it multiply your time. RV: (16:36) But what came out at the time about the same time as my book was essential ism and the one thing and those books have done much better than procrastinating on purpose cause they’re even like a degree, like [inaudible]. I feel like multiplying time was more accelerating the direction people were going in versus the one thing in essential as, I’m like Wenthe opposite direction. They went the opposite direction. It wasn’t like accelerating productivity at the highest level. It was like do the opposite. Yeah, yeah. We’ll figure out condo. Right? Yeah. So Marie condo though the, the life changing magic of, of tidying up, tidying up [inaudible] so is that your stuff? Yeah. Yeah. You know, stop buying stuff, which is American typical American cheeseburger. It’s the opposite of that. And, and, and, and just to I, I’m not necessarily, I’m not, I’m not a I, I’ve, I don’t not like Robert Kiyosaki, but I don’t know his stuff that well. RV: (17:36) You know, I’ve read rich dad, poor dad, but I think that’s it. I have read tax free wealth interesting enough. And I thought in that book was really, really interesting. You’re saying he redefined the real estate space, how his, yeah, his original came out and he was, he was the first person to say, your house is not an asset. It’s a liability. Ah, yes. For sure. Yeah. Okay. That just got him vilified on every economic news show you could imagine, but it’s what put him on the map and it’s true. So for him to come out and challenge that status quo is what built his career. Yeah. Yeah. So that specific kind of concept. Yeah. That’s cause it doesn’t put cash in your pocket. It takes cash out of your pocket. So all right. I’m following you. I’m following you. So I’m interested in some of the investing stuff given the state of the world, but both before we go down that, that path, cause I also see an interesting connection between investing in entrepreneurship. RV: (18:29) I wanted to talk to you about reach a little bit for a second because one of the things that I, when I S as a, as someone who doesn’t know you all that well look back at your career, I go ah, you were ahead of the curve on copywriting and on web based business and then you were ahead of the curve on video courses and you were like one of the first, you have huge video courses and membership sites and then you are one of the early podcasters like [inaudible] some way you have been able to kind of like always be out there in the front. [inaudible] [inaudible] RV: (19:06) One of the things that has happened to me which I can’t go into too much, but I’m in a situation where I’m having to rebuild all of my social media from scratch, which is what a lot of our clients are doing. And I am going, wow, it is really different and much harder today because like when I did, when I did the first go round. So what are some of the things that you’re kind of looking at or seeing about the, I’m in the same boat. I’m in the same boat and that’s a big priority for me. But I let my, well, one, I’m an introvert so I’ve never really enjoyed social media or made that a priority for me too. I’ve always relied 100% on paid advertising to build all of my companies. Interesting. And I like that because I can control it and I can scale it. RV: (19:54) And I don’t, you know, I’m not at the mercy of Facebook or Google’s algorithms and I’ve always looked at building up the social media. If you are, in some ways whoever spends the most gets the most traffic. So that’s a simple, a very simple algorithm, but at least I have like there’s, I know, yeah, I made facetious cause it’s, it’s like you totally control the algorithm by how much money you’re putting in the machine. Yes. And so I’ve always avoided it, but now, now I don’t think you can’t avoid it anymore. I think you have to be on there. So now the question is, okay, how do you strategically grow it as quickly as possible? And so for me, this year I’m focused on, you know, really putting out a consistent, I think consistency is very important. A consistent amount of content on a weekly basis. My goal is three, you know, let’s just say 10 minute training videos a week with the pod, the podcast being MD: (20:48) At least one of those doing the podcast and everything else in video moving forward. Just finished a YouTube studio in the house and the house across from me last night. Oh. And then it’s just systematic distribution, right? So how do we take that 10 minute video, splice it up for all of the different platforms, format it, but the footers, the captions, the headlines, everything else, and just really systematize that process and just turn it into a machine. And luckily there’s a ton of great resources and companies and agencies that’ll do that for you quite easily. So that’s taken care of. And then at that point, I think it’s just a matter of time when you combine that with paid advertising and you can use retargeting to put a conversion based advertisement or offer in front of the people who are consuming your consuming your organic content, will then your cost to acquire that customer comes down dramatically. MD: (21:41) 80, 90%, versus going super wide with a broad message to a very broad audience. And so that’s the approach that I’m taking moving forward this year. And in many ways it’s, yeah, it’s, it’s catching back up to, you know, what’s been working. I’ve, I’ve been kind of working on the hydroponic system and some other big ventures over the last three to four years. So I’ve really been out of the spotlight for the past couple of years and, and now my goal this year is to kind of reestablish myself in the, in this space, if you will. So RV: (22:14) [Inaudible] yeah, that’s interesting. Yeah. For those of you listening so that, you know, we, we have a thing called a content diamond, which is our process for taking that content repurposing basically across all the platforms from that one video. And I think but one of the things that I think you do also Mike, that is rare because we know a lot of the big influencers and social influencers and a lot of them have, they have, they caught the early wave of organic reach. Hmm. But they don’t do the paid stuff. And over time it’s like you get in the habit of going, yeah, I don’t want to learn to do paid if I can’t do for free. But to what you’re saying, it’s like the, the, the key to predictable revenue is [inaudible] the paid version. So you’re marrying the two with basically like retargeting. So you’re just going to build custom audiences with free content and then come back and retarget those people on. Are you going to, and are you, are you focused more on like Facebook, Instagram or more like Google, YouTube or a little bit of both? MD: (23:19) Both. Yeah. Previously we’ve been Facebook and Instagram only for like the last seven years, eight years. But now we’re going to move to Google and YouTube cause Facebook just got too expensive two years ago. Like our cost to acquire a customer to use ago like tripled. And so, you know, a $300, we used to sell a $1,500 course so it would cost us three to $400 to acquire a customer. And then all the way it’s shot up to a thousand. MD: (23:42) And so the, the retargeting of the organic audience has been the solution to that problem, right? But at your organic content and build rapport, build a relationship. And the way I look at it is it takes about an hour. You have to spend about an hour with someone in any capacity. That can be a podcast, a video, Instagram feed, whatever it may be for them to feel safe enough to buy, I spend about a thousand dollars with you. So we often see that on a webinar. If I have a 90 minute webinar, I know that I can sell a $1,500 product. If I have a two hour webinar, I know I can sell a $2,000 product. And so let’s just equate an hour of quality time and content with an $1,000 purchase. Mmm. And so if you’re doing that 10 minutes at a time through YouTube videos, by the time you, you’re ready to make that offer, they know you, they like you, they trust you, they’re ready to buy. And so the sales pitch doesn’t require an hour and a half long webinar anymore. It just requires a 10 to 1520 minute video. Here’s what it is, you know here’s what it’s going to do for you. Here’s how to get it. And so the, the selling becomes much easier, frankly, once you put that process in place. RV: (24:56) Yeah. And that’s that, that, that is awesome. I’ve not thought about it so clearly. I like that. But you know, kind of our standard thing is we’re going to, we’re going to have everyone set up for each product one video funnel, which is going to be basically three short videos and then a sales video, right? So you add that time up, that’s going to be somewhere around 80 60 to 80 minutes or one long video webinar funnel, 60 to 90 minutes. And it’s like, you know, $2,000 would be the high end, but typically it’s like around a thousand dollars. But it’s interesting to think about breaking that up into 10 minutes chunks on social for an impression, which you could buy for much cheaper and then drive him. So are you thinking that [inaudible] are you going to focus on building that audience on social first before you move them over or are you going to try to move them directly into a, you know, it’s your environment. So it’s all [inaudible] MD: (25:51) Both. So the way that we’re going to do it is the cheapest paid to traffic you can get today is let’s just say Facebook and Instagram is views and engagement. So I’m going to set my ad, you know, campaigns to convert for views and engagement and I just want my content consumed. So we just put a brand new video out this week that’s kind of seven lessons that I’ve learned after going through economic crises like this, right? And so it’s about a 25 minute long video. It’s just value. There’s no, there’s nothing for sale in it. And I want that video consumed by as many people as possible. So we’re going to pay to get people to watch that video on Facebook and Instagram. Anybody who watches a certain amount of that video, let’s just say you know, half of it, 30% of that, and we’ll go and retarget with another content video. And then anybody who watches that will great. Now we’re going to put a call action ad that’s going to RV: (26:44) Send them to a capture page and a sales pitch. And so the only people who will ever see our offers are the ones who have gone through at least one or two levels of engagement, which also helps protect your offer from being, you know, from burning out, which is one of the biggest challenges that I’ve experienced or lessons learned that I’ve experienced. Cause I’ve had offers that have gone, let’s just say global, but offers that or I’m everywhere all over the internet and you know, we’re doing eight figures a year in sales of one single product and I’m being recognized everywhere I go. The more successful your offer is, the faster you’re going to burn through that target audience and then your cost to acquire goes up and eventually it’s not going to be profitable anymore. And I would say if your offer offers super, super just, it’s just taken off like a rocket. RV: (27:38) It’s shelf life is about 24 months at the most. And so, unfortunately a lot of people in the education space are having to reinvent and find a new offer to replace that every two years. And a lot of times you can’t find you want or come up with one that’s going to be just as successful as that lightning in a bottle offer that you previously had and then you’re in real trouble. And so a way to get around that is to just show content at the top. If I’m releasing three videos a week, I’ve got three brand new ads and brand new pieces of content that are, I’ve never been seen before to show my audience and to continue to build it. And then the product that I do have, I’m only showing it to the people who are really engaged. It’s never going to burn it through the marketplace. RV: (28:22) And so it really becomes a, a much longer shelf life at that point, which is you know, critical to building a business. I love it. That’s, I mean we’re spending more of our budget every month on just that top part of the funnel. Just getting the content out there and less on a percentage on a percentage basis must much less actually showing the offer to the people cause it’s a more, a more qualified group. One thing to share with everybody. You, you may already know this Mike, but we spent a couple thousand dollars boosting a video, a couple of series of videos on Facebook to build this audience. And I can’t remember if it was auto placement or I think it’s called extended network where we, we we ran it, the video to the extended network. I don’t think it’s auto-placement I think there’s something else. RV: (29:14) But anywheres it’s somewhere in were you in, where did the ad set where you’re determining who you’re going to show it to and it was just like a checkbox. It was like, okay, let’s do that. And it, it screwed up the whole strategy because on the extended network of Facebook, they can’t actually track how long people watch and so they don’t allow you to retarget that audience based on other percentage video views like you’re talking about. And I was just like, I mean it was literally like, it was basically like we took $2,000 and threw it away because then at that point it was just vanity views. We didn’t actually build the audience, which is the whole point is warm up an audience, basically build an audience of people to show an ad to. And anyways, that was a painful lesson. Just, you know, forever isn’t it? RV: (30:02) Yup. It’s crazy how one thing like that can be, can cost you a couple grand. Well at least it was only two grand and not 20. Right. You know? Yes. It’s all I found it and didn’t say, Oh my God, nothing’s working anymore and pivoted some way. You know, and then you don’t really know. Yeah. Why? Because, well, and, and the way we found it was, cause we were, we were, we were showing ads that were supposed to be to that audience and the cost for the per acquisition to that audience was, was showing less. It was, it was costing more money to convert them dent to convert a cold person. And it was like, something doesn’t make sense here. Yep. So anyways in the spirit of opportunity and challenging times and stuff, I, I don’t want to let you go without stealing some free investment advice for you. RV: (30:50) Given the state of the world as, as we’re recording this, you know, Corona virus is, is out there. I know you know a lot about investing [inaudible] Mmm. I’m interested to hear what you kind of think about investing, but the part that I really wanted to highlight is why do you, what do you think investing has to do with entrepreneurship in general? Like why is investing a skill? Because investing, if you’re a big company, you have a finance department and they’re investing in, they’re doing that stuff. But if you’re a small company, it’s like, I’m busy running my business all day. Why do I need to also be learning about investing and what do I need to be learning about investing in? So that [inaudible] is something, again, you seem to have always Ben passionate about and had an eye on and an affinity for. Yeah, he, I mean the, the, the affinity for that was you know, it was making millions of dollars in my late twenties and I was buying cars and houses and toys with it and frankly flushing it down the toilet. RV: (31:47) And I realized by the time I had 30, I was like, okay, I need to figure this out. And so yeah you know, it was a, it was kind of hitting that new chapter in life that really inspired me to to go down that rabbit hole. But yeah. There’s a couple of valuable lessons that I’ve learned and that is that the, the concepts of making money and keeping money or completely the opposite. Hmm. Personality traits that are going to allow you as an entrepreneur to make a bunch of money, are they complete? Are they, are the same personality traits that will have you blow all of that money when you try to invest it? Because we typically have high tolerance for risk. Entrepreneurs are very comfortable with risk and so we’re like, Oh, okay, I’ll put all those chips in there and yeah, if it doesn’t work out, I’ll just go make more money. Yeah. MD: (32:38) That work after a while. You know, I’ve, I’ve gone through that phase and it’s not very fine. And so for me, investing when it comes to entrepreneurs is MD: (32:49) Really learning about money management and becoming aware of your own personal personality traits and your emotions and how you’re wired to handle money. You know, for me, I noticed whenever I had a ton of money in the bank, I would immediately go find something to do with it. I’d invent a new product, I’d start a new company, I would invest it in a new and new place, but I would always deploy it somewhere. Sometimes that worked out a lot of times that didn’t. And so for me it’s been more of a journey or more of a, an emotional lesson than, than a financial lesson. Mmm. Yeah. So I think, I think that’s one of the biggest lessons that I’ve learned. Profit first, Mike McCalley was, his book is fantastic when it comes to this. This is a problem Ryan Deiss has talked about. Mike talks about, I talk about, and so it’s a very common issue with people with our personality types as far as investing goes. Now RV: (33:47) It’s one of the absolute, so hold, hold, hold on, hold on. On that part. So before you transitioned into that one, I think that’s super fascinating, but that sounds like a great book that’s in there. Sorta like the emotional, like almost like the person, you know, how there’s like the five love languages and you have like disc and stuff. It’d be like what are the personality types of money, you know, would be something like I’m seeing a quadrant and something that could be super duper powerful. The emotion Ambler. Yeah. Like personnel assessment and quiz and you know, $100 million business right there if you need it, if you need any other ideas. I think that’s really a cool concept. But Mmm. The other thing that I was going to say here is I just was curious. Okay. So it’s interesting. I’m a Dave Ramsey, not like Dave Ramsey. I came up with Dame JMZ also follow grant Cardone and I, I see them on like two ends of the, on the of the spectrum, right? Like absolutely no debt, you know, paid off home mortgage. Right. And then grant Cardone, like mortgage is the worst. You know, owning a house is the dumbest thing you could ever do. Have all of your money deployed rent where you live? RV: (35:05) Do you follow in the middle or do you like MD: (35:08) To understand why each of them are saying what they’re saying? And grant is saying that because that’s what his truth is and what works for him. So he’s trying to be an integrity and tell people, Hey, this is what works. Same thing with Kiyosaki. He says the same stuff. And then you’ve got Dave who probably understands that nine out of 10 people did not have the financial intelligence or emotional intelligence EEQ RV: (35:38) Okay to make investments like that and they will just end up losing everything. So Dave is like, no, we’re going to keep people out of trouble and just give them security and go that path. And so I see the benefits of both and it really just depends on on the audience member and which one they’re attracted to and what their education level is to what you were saying about emotion. But Dave Ramsey even says that like, I know it would make more sense to pay off your highest interest credit card first, mathematically or logically. The problem is we’re not logical, we’re emotional, right? And so we don’t pay off the highest interest rate. We pay off the lowest balance first so that we get momentum and feel like we’re winning. Which is, you know, in align with what you’re saying. So okay, well that’s just interesting. RV: (36:26) So, yeah. So before, before I let you run off, I’ve kept you, kept you way too long here, but the right now, you know, Corona virus at the time of this recording is like everywhere on the news, you know, in the house and, and, and all that sort of stuff. And do you know, do you have kind of any general sort of thoughts towards investing? Is it, is it one of those things where it’s like, you know, what, what is, what do you, what do you think about that? Yeah. entrepreneurs specifically. Well, I mean, I mean, I would say this to anyone. You know, be greedy when people are fearful. Okay. You know, I mean that’s, that’s it. And so for me, I have like been, I’ve been a big investor in crypto since 2013 I bought Bitcoin when it was $70. RV: (37:15) Right? So that’s a really high risk category. You know, it’s very speculative, but I put a small amount of money in that and every time there’s a huge dip in crypto, I buy more. Right? When it dropped down to $3,000 last year after hitting 20 K, I was telling my audience, Hey, if you’re in a crypto, he might want to buy some right now. I’m buying some right now. And then it went up to 12 grand again. Right? And so whether you’re in the stock market or real estate or whatever, we’re going to see and any and every kind of asset on sale now. And I think in that sales going to get even better here in the coming months. So this is the time to buy, whether it’s again, your, your, your favorite flavor of investment. If it’s on sale, buy it when it’s on sale. RV: (38:04) This will go away, this will pass. At some point, things will go back to normal there throwing literally trillions of dollars into the economy right now just like they did after Oh eight. And all that’s going to do is in flight. The stock market. Yeah. And everything else you know, it, the, the dollars devalued. So that’s my biggest piece of advice is get greedy when people are scared and people are scared right now. It’s time to get greedy. Yeah. It’s an interesting, interesting crazy times. Hopefully you can tell the, the both, the width, the breadth of Mike Dillard’s expertise here and experience as an entrepreneur from everything from the, the nitty gritty of copywriting and digital marketing to the high level concepts of investing and managing a business. That’s why we, we had them on Mike, where do you want people to go if they want to follow you connect up with you and see what you’re doing. RV: (38:55) You know, the best thing that I’d recommend right now is just Mike, excuse me, Mike Dillard to help.com and we threw this site up literally this morning and it’s just a little survey where people can go specifically during this time and answer a few questions so I know where you’re at and what your problems are, what you need help with, and then we’ll have some specific resources based on exactly where you’re at, whether it’s sales are going down because of the virus deal or [inaudible] you know, general preparedness or security, whatever it may be. We’ve got some great resources for everybody. So that would be it. Yeah. And not to mention a great course on, on actual physical preparedness that you did with a Navy seal, which is [inaudible] apropos timing for that. So we’ll put a link to Mike Dillard, health.com. Y’all can check that out. Mike, thanks for encouragement, man. RV: (39:42) You’re encouraging literally millions of entrepreneurs as you have, you know, did done all of these experiments and adventures in and out of different types of business models. And it’s, it’s like I’ve had so many people that are just like longtime friends come to me like, Hey man, I heard you on Dillard’s podcast. That’s pretty cool. And what was impressive to me was like the reverence in which they spoke about you as if they had known you and they had followed you for a long time and that they trusted you. And you know, that’s not the kind of thing that you build with an ad overnight. That’s the kind of thing that you build with a reputation over years. So that’s great to hear. Appreciate it man. And we wish you all the best. Thank you brother. Thanks for having me.

Ep 60: Deeper Audience Engagement through Unscripted Keynotes with Connie Podesta

RV: (00:00) 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@brandbuildersgroupdotcomslashsummitcallbrandbuildersgroup.com slash summit call to talk to you soon on with the show. You are honestly so lucky to be listening to this right now because you’re, you’re about to learn from one of the best keynote speakers in the world. RV: (01:12) And when I say that I really mean it. And here’s how you know, I mean it, Connie Podesta you know, she’s a hall of fame speaker. She’s written seven books. She’s been in the business for a long time, but she is one of the people that I actually refer to my speaking clients. So after someone has had me and you know, there’s a certain expectation level they have of what they’re going to experience it over time. It really becomes hard to find people well who you feel like, man, I really trust someone to come behind and do a great job for my clients. And that is Connie, she will make you laugh, your face off and then kick you in the pants. And you know, she’s spoken for all the, you know, the big companies, Microsoft, Harley Davidson, blue cross, blue shield, Cisco. She’s also something that I very much am not, she is a great MC and that’s something I tried to avoid at all costs. But she is just so anyways, so Connie thank you for making some time here and I’m just so excited to pick your brain a little bit about, you know, kind of the keynote speaking career. CP: (02:26) Yeah. Someone called me a legend a while back and I said, I think most legends are dead, but I’ll take it. I’ll take that. Cause I think I’ve been speaking longer than almost anybody still out in the circuit. So I do have tons of things and I always say that everything I’m going to tell you about speaking is totally true for me. Okay. Doesn’t mean it’s true for everybody else, but I will be very transparent and authentically honest about what over the past 30 years has worked for me to keep me in the game for 30 years. RV: (02:59) Yeah. And that’s what I want to hear. And I, and I hope you don’t mind me saying this. I mean, this is a compliment and not in a, not offensive in any way, but as a speaker, I view myself as pretty like normal, right? Like I didn’t win a Superbowl. I never climbed Mount Everest. I wasn’t a Navy seal. Like I’ve never been a CEO of a fortune. Yeah. Yeah. I mean it’s like, you know, I have stories of course, like my, you know, I have some parts of my life and things that I shared in that, but, but it’s, I’m not the guy that people go, Oh my gosh, she landed the airplane on the Hudson. I got to hear that story. And I feel like you’re kind of the same way. It’s, it’s really based on like thought leadership expertise, delivery on stage and not so much like your celebrity yet you’re, you’ve gotten to a place where you’re earning fee, you know, you’re in a in a higher, a very high fee range and have had those, a wonderful career. And so I think a lot of people listening, you know, I think that’s inspiring as much as it’s inspiring to hear those people as well. It’s kind of going, if you’re just sort of like a normal person, how do you be, how do you get to your level in this business without, you know, having one of those amazing stories? CP: (04:22) Well, first of all, I think that’s kind of one of the problems is the people for example, that come to me for just coaching. Not I don’t charge for coaching, but just comes to me for mentorship or coaching, you know, they’re always like, Oh, okay, I’m trying to figure out my story. And I go, well just stop. I’ve never had a story in my life. I’ve never done anything unbelievably outstanding, like you said, scaled a mountain or landed the plane. And, and the way I explained it to my clients, because I’m often up against a speaker who has this amazing [inaudible] RV: (04:53) Right in your fee range. CP: (04:56) Yes. And my fee range. And they’re trying to decide between the two. And the way I always explain it to both my mentorees and the people I’m talking to people now in your audience is, there’s two ways to look at this. One is you can have your story and, and it becomes mostly about you. You may kind of connect it to leadership or to sales, but you have done something so traumatic, so adversarial, so impressive that your goal is to tell that story. Hopefully that other people will be motivated. But I always tell my clients when I’m up against someone, well, what’s your end game? Do you want their story or do you want me and I will make it about your audience’s story. I have no story. So because I’m not focused on myself, it’s not about what I did great or horrible and I want them to learn. CP: (05:51) My entire focus is on the audience and my goal is to dig into their story and help them take that and add strategies and tools and all of this thing. And because I’m a psychology person, dig kinda deep inside their brain. So I really teach the speakers that come to me. Forget your story. Forget thinking. You have to have a story. Forget that you need a story. In fact, there’s it don’t even try because there’s people out there with stories far bigger Roy than you and I are ever, ever go. So for us to even try to do that, and instead just say, be honest, I don’t have a story. However, your audience has a story. So you can either get somebody with their own story or you can get someone that makes it about your audience. What would you like RV: (06:43) And would you, is kind of that like the positioning of that too is like, it’s not so much about me, it’s about what can I share that’s really useful for your audience and being direct direct to them. CP: (06:56) I just said yesterday too, where it was me and another type of speaker and I, and they said, well what would you say you’ve done? That’s really amazing. And I said, my goal is never been for an audience to think I’m amazing. My goal’s always been for them to leave that King, they’re amazing. And there’s two different, you know, that’s two different points of view. So do we make it about us or do we make it about the audience? And there’s no right or wrong. It’s great to have people up there that have a story. But I would like the people watching this to realize most of us don’t. But most of us can deliver the tools and strategies about sales or leadership or whatever it is that when they go, their brains are on fire. Like what am I going to do next? CP: (07:44) Where am I going to go? And I love it when my audiences, they leave and someone might say, what was the name of your speaker? And they go, I don’t remember. That’s okay. That’s fine with me because they’re leaving texting and if you ask them what they’re texting, like I’m texting my boss cause we have to have a meeting and I’m texting my wife cause it made me think of this discussion we had and I’m texting one of my other departments because I think I know how to close a deal. I don’t care if they remember my name. Okay. If they want to hire me, they’ll go get it off of Google. I want them brains to be so on fire with what they can do. What they can accomplish, what they can go back and change and behaviors and attitudes and mindsets that I’m irrelevant to them. I that’s fine if I’m irrelevant to them because watching them believe what their text and and calling people on the phone, that’s all the feedback I need. RV: (08:31) Like you’re irrelevant as a person. But it’s the information that has been super duper relevant to them, CP: (08:38) Not the information is so, and I do some things interactive that they will be talking about. I tell my clients, I said I’m going to do some things with them that will create an energy in your audience that will not stop. I mean it is going to change the next two or three days. How they approach every breakout, how they respond, how they react, whether they’re open and more engaged. So I don’t just see me as an opening keynote either. I see. And I tell my clients one of my goals and one of my responsibilities is to hand you back. And I’ve said this, people call me what they say an audience Turner. And what that means is not only am I delivering a presentation, but my endgame is to turn the minds and mindsets of the audience a bit to a place where I can hand my client back. CP: (09:32) And that’s what I say to them. I have the ability to hand you back an audience that’s not the same. And that’s why when people say, you know, we want you for a closing, I go, well what a waste. You know, mostly Chris wanted to be the closing cause they’re thinking of them. Most speakers are kind of thinking of them a lot. So if you’re thinking of yourself and marketing them, being a closing is great because everyone’s leaving with me on their mind. I don’t want to be at a closing, I don’t care about that. I want to be the one that starts it. And I want to be known for handing the client back an audience that will never be the same. So then every breakout, every session, every lunch, every networking opportunity has been altered for the better as a result of hearing me. And if you’re good at doing that, then they aren’t just talking about you. When they leave. They’re talking about you for three days and they’re talking about your material and they’re applying it and the event planners see them talking about it, applying it, using a calling, texting, raising their hand and breakout, asking questions. And by the end of three days, that’s the event planners fees, how valuable and viable all the things you offered were. Then it comes back to you. RV: (10:46) I love that. That’s a great, what a, what a great mindset to approach it. So I, I want to shift to you. You brought this up, the indirect Tivity because that’s another thing, you know, I think that you do so well. It’s like you don’t have the story, but you’re really, really dynamic on stage. And I kinda think of humor as a part of it. But another thing is the, is the interactivity. So can you talk to me about working the audience? Like how important is it to work with the audience? Cause it, it, it terrifies me. I personally have never done a lot of it, but it’s like, you know, you never know what’s going to happen. You kind of lose control of whether or not it’ll be funny or staying on task. But how important do you think it is to like interact with the audience? What do you do with the audience? How do you prepare for it? Like just talk a little bit about your strategy for like the actual interaction with the [inaudible]. CP: (11:48) In terms of how important I think next to being a professional person that does a good job, it is the absolute most important to, to see a speaker that’s not interacting with the audience. Absolutely drives me crazy. And I think it goes back to my background. You know, a lot of speakers started in corporate and training and HR and all that, but I didn’t, I w I taught high school and I taught behavior problem kids. And then I became a therapist because my students were so in trouble and well, to be honest, their parents were needed therapy a lot more than students. So taking this site ICology. And I’ve always been funny, thank goodness. I mean that just I was born with. And so when you look back on my training, you know, whether I had students in my class or I had clients in my therapy office, it could never be about me. CP: (12:42) The students don’t care about me. They don’t care about my life. They don’t care what I did. Amazing. And my clients don’t care if, if you came to me for marriage counseling, you don’t want to sit and hear my amazing signature story about my marriage and how we were down in the depths and went bankrupt. And now look at what all you want me all students want and all clients want in therapy. Is it to be 100% about them? But I also learned in teaching high school that I can’t lecture. I could not stand in front of the class for 45 minutes and write or use overheads or use slides and expect to keep the attention of a young person. So I learned early on that I hardly ever wrote anything or ever used back then overheads or slides. I just, I would talk and then I would go to a student and then I would bring them up in front of the class and then we would tell a story and then we would do a role play. CP: (13:37) And then we would add, I mean, I had to, in order to survive in a high school in South side of Chicago, I had to become full of change and full of variety. And I learned to act out different voices. And if I was teaching English or history, I would, I got them into acting things out. And so when I became a speaker and people started, you know, and I started speaking just to promote my private counseling practice, but I would do the same thing in the beginning days when you’re in the rotary club. I would bring guys up and I do this. And before you know it, everyone’s like, she’s amazing. And now, you know, if someone comes to me for coaching, I take away their slides and I take away their signature store and I take away their level or Mike and give him my hand till those are the three things I do. CP: (14:27) And I tell them, I’m not saying you can’t go back to your lava Leer slide show, you know, stand on stage and talk and don’t involve the audience. I want you to experience what it’s like to not do what all the other millions of speakers do. And it’s amazing worry because once they let go of the mind, the lava Lear, once they let go of all the slides, once they let go of just standing there and and vomiting information and you know, 67 steps, here’s what we do. Once they get into the audience and start bringing people up, it’s like now I say, okay, well now you can go back to your signal. Oh no, no. Oh my God, this is more fun than I’ve ever had in my whole life. And it’s one of the reasons why I don’t do slides because slides means that I’ve already decided months ago what I’m going to teach this audience. CP: (15:22) Okay. Or yesterday or two weeks, I never know in, you’re right. I love the fact that when I bring people on stage, I have no idea what they’re going to say. Most of my great material came from somebody on stage saying something so out of the blue that I never expected forcing me to have to think on my feet and improvise and come back. And then all of a sudden I’d leave and it’s like, that was amazing material. Oh my God, I can’t believe I’ve never done that. But I would never have thought of it had I not been pushed into being outside of my comfort zone and having to react in front of 2000 people. RV: (16:04) So how do you prepare for that? Like do you, and and like how much do you, but like do, you said you literally walk on stage with no plan of what I mean, surely you have a plan of some type. CP: (16:17) I do. I do a thing with personalities. I kind of know how I’m going to start. I kinda know how I’m going to end. Yes, I have a plan, but I’m not seeing what I didn’t like for me. And don’t get me wrong, all of you watching that use PowerPoint, bless your heart. There’s no good or right or wrong and speaking, it’s what works for you. So again, I’m just sharing what works for me. I used to have slides. RV: (16:41) Yeah. Cause I’m a, I’m a PowerPoint guy and I’m sitting here going, this is terrified. Like the idea of doing what you’re talking about to me is absolutely terrifying. I’m going to teach you how to do one role play. And you never ever teach me CP: (16:59) Slides. I had slides and I left them on the plane. This was like 20 years ago. Okay. When we had the slide deck, the carousel, that’s how old I am. And I get in front of 2000 people and here I am. I’m an actress, I’m a comedian, I know all this. But you know, slides were in and everyone had their slide deck and I announced the 2000 people. Oh by the way, I left my slides on the plane and they all just started cheering like yay. And I was like, wow, you know, I’ve never asked myself. I know I thought it was cool to have slides, but I never once asked my audience, what do you think about it? So now I’m getting the feedback and that was an amazing day. I had no slides, I didn’t have structure C PowerPoint to is like being in a cage because now I’m structured, I have to do this slide, next slide and this slide. CP: (17:55) And if you do go off track, God forbid now you have to click through five slides and say, Oh, I don’t have time for those with no slides and PowerPoint. You can be whoever you want. The audience can be whoever they are. And so I’m very in tune to the audience. So if I’m starting a path that I had outlined and planned in my mind and I can see the looks on their face and they’re not quite there yet, I just dig a little deeper. If I try something and I can tell by the looks on her face, they got it, it’s in there. I just skip it and I don’t do another story on it and I move on. So when you have no structure, you are forced to have to look at them and look at their eyes and see the looks on their face and read their interaction and read their feedback and you’re forced to go with the audience, let them direct you rather than you directing them. So it’s very much forces you to give up control. RV: (18:59) So totally. Yeah. And I see that so, so I see that on the macro level. And, and it’s like this fun thing and you’re reading the audience on a micro level. How do you interact with one person in a way that doesn’t become a waste of time for the other 2000 people? Like how do you, CP: (19:21) Because that for me is the structured part. I know exactly through trial and error because I had lots of things happen on stage that I was like, Ooh, I don’t need to ask that question that way. Because then, so now I know and it does come through practice. I know exactly how to word it and a couple of things. Number one, a lot of speakers to do role plays on stage. The audience is the one that looks foolish or silly or dumb or doesn’t, I don’t do that. I’m the one, they audience person is always the one in control. I set it up like that. Like Rory, you’re so and so you’re doing this. I am the employee. I came in late, I have no idea what I’m doing. Let’s take it from here. So that’s a really big key is to never make the audience look stupid or foolish. CP: (20:11) Always have it be me. I’m the one that came late. I ask questions very directly. Like if I were five minutes late and I didn’t even come to you and say anything and you came to my desk, what would you say? So you have to ask questions that are very narrowly focused. And I have people say things that I never expected and then I’ll turn to the audience and say, how many of you would have said that? None. Okay. Where did you get that from? And then it just takes off from there. And then we just, we explore that. But no, you’re right. I never know what anyone’s going to say. They absolutely love the fact that their peers are involved in something and engaged. I go into the audience, that’s why I use the handheld. I use a hand tote. I, when I see a speaker as a lavalier, I’m like, they’re not interacting at all because they can’t be having people talking into their chest. CP: (21:08) When I see a speaker with a lot with a handheld, I’m like, they’re going to do it because you never want to hand the microphone to a client. Never. You keep the microphone. So if I had brought you up on stage and I asked you a question, I would hold out my microphone and you answered, you start to answer in a way. I don’t want, I just take it back and go, Oh, no, no, no, no. I don’t buy that at all. So with a handheld, you keep control of what’s going on. But I would say they they are interacting about 80% of the time. RV: (21:39) So, so you know what questions you’re gonna ask a person, like you kind of know, okay, this is the point I want to talk. Let’s talk about how do we treat people who come to work late as a leadership principle. And so, you know, there’s some principle you want to draw out that’s related, CP: (21:57) But I do, I would bring you up on stage. I would say, Rory, you’re the boss. I’m the employee. I came in 35 minutes late. You have two choices and I always do that if you have kids. Okay? So we’ve learned as parents, right? You don’t say what you want for dinner, you say, or snack, you say, would you like an Apple with peanut butter or would you like we learned early on and that’s what I do with my audience when I’m asking for their feedback. They always have a couple of choices. RV: (22:27) Oh, are you going to finite? A finite list. A finite list of options. Yeah. CP: (22:32) So are you going to come up to me and talk about it or do you think you’re just going to ignore it? Because I’ve never been late before. And then you’ll answer one of those two. I know where to go no matter which of those two you answer. RV: (22:43) Yeah. So this is really a choose your own adventure game. This is really a choose your own adventure game. CP: (22:49) Yes. So I’m always asking questions where there’s a couple of answers. When they answer that, then I ask something else with a couple of answers. So I never know where there’s always a myriad of choices, but I’m in control and that’s what people, but you, if you’re going to interact well it has to appear that you’re not in control, but you are. RV: (23:14) Got it. Okay. So you have like almost like a decision tree. If you were going to be a nerd like me and map this out, it’s like a decision, right? CP: (23:21) Right, yes. RV: (23:23) Huh. But, and, and, and so, you know, and basically, you know, kind of like a Plinko board or something, you know, that all of those routes eventually lead back to the point that you want to make that’s related to your content. And then it’s just, it’s kind of like fun, CP: (23:38) Don’t, if they don’t lead, if they answer so weird or so strange. I just looked at the audience that go, do any of you even get this human being? And they’re like, no. And I, and I’ll say something silly like what? Birth order? And they’ll say a youngest and I go, what? Yeah, that’s what, RV: (23:54) Wow. CP: (23:57) Then mine, I’m also a therapist. I have all this psychology. So I also have the ability that if it’s not going bright to kind of bring it into psychology and why we do what we do. And the other thing it helps, Rory, is I am really funny and you know when you’re ready. RV: (24:13) Yeah. So, so I want CP: (24:16) You can get away with so much. RV: (24:18) I know. I know. And so I want to talk about that for a second. Cause that’s the other thing, right? Like people like me who are not naturally funny. The only way you are funny is when you have written jokes and you’ve got stories and slides that lead right into a, you know, a plan thing. CP: (24:34) Ever told a joke. RV: (24:36) How do you be funny in this like completely abstract like world, this is stressing me out. Speaker 4: (24:43) [Inaudible] CP: (24:43) Well that part is very structured. Like I do a part with personalities and I have this one group stand and I say, you know, let’s give him a hand. This is the absolutely psychologically the hardest working group right now in your company. Well, the people standing, I won’t even go into it, but no one in the audience is gonna think that. And so everyone’s kind of clapping and then I add according to them. RV: (25:15) Yeah. CP: (25:16) And then it’s, then it’s, then they’re all like, Oh yeah, okay, now. And I go, look, you all, you do work hard. But nobody knows it. You don’t tell anyone. You don’t share. If you don’t, you’re not great team players, you know? So if you’re going to work this hard, let’s get a little credit for. So those little one kind of liners like according to them, you know. But again that’s a funny line. According to them, everyone laughs. So it allows me to really get to the point that this group of people don’t share and they don’t open up and they’re sitting there nodding like you’re right, we don’t. But because I’m funny if that was somebody serious and they said, yeah this group thinks they work hard according to them. I mean they don’t do any, if you, if you were serious and no one was laughing, that could be very hurtful. RV: (26:12) [Inaudible] So that’s also kind of planned spontaneity though. Like just from experience and doing this and you kind of know like you have like a series, you have a series of little moments to pull from like this catalog in your head that you can draw on CP: (26:28) When the, when the slides and PowerPoint are gone. And the signature story of how you overcame amazing things is gone to me. And that’s why I do that with my speakers. At first I said, you can go back to it, but to, and this is just me, if you cannot engage an audience and get tons of word of mouth feedback without a signature story and without a PowerPoint presentation, then I think you haven’t truly come to grips with what your message really is. Because those two things, the signature story of what we did and the PowerPoint, which is all graphic and this and that, and those two things, I believe as a therapist is what keeps us from really being authentically who we are in front of an audience of people. If we strip away, that doesn’t mean you can’t come back to it, but I’d like to see my speakers, the old school standing with a handheld Mike, looking at a hundred or a hundred thousand people and having a conversation with them, not to them, with them watching their looks, watching their faces, walking into the audience, being accessible and, and again, for all of you watching, I’m not saying I hope, I hope to be honest, Rory, every other speaker uses slides. CP: (27:58) I hope every other speaker has a signature story. I hope every other speaker never wants to engage her. RV: (28:03) This is part of your uniqueness. CP: (28:07) Yes. I mean my number one selling book is how to stand out from the crowd. When my clients call me now, they start out with, first of all, they’re like, you called me back Connie. Yeah. I don’t have a gatekeeper. Don’t have an agent. Don’t have it. No one. RV: (28:22) Right. Can you talk to clients directly? CP: (28:25) You’re, you’re going to have my cell phone. Yeah. You and I are in a partnership. I’m not having somebody else out there but, but number two, you know, I, I, I want them to know that I want to model to the people in the audience how they want those people to be with their clients. How they want their salespeople to sell, how they want their leaders to lead and manage. So I have to model being accessible and being accountable and being in the present and being authentic. And so I’ve got to show them that it’s possible to strip away all of the stuff and just literally have a thousand people think that your just talking to them and when people call me they’re like are you the one that doesn’t have any slides or PowerPoint? I go, yeah, and they go, okay, you called me back. CP: (29:20) No slides. Our audience of sickest so I’m getting calls where that’s their first question. You are the one without any slides and when no one was using slides I use them because that’s how I could stand out. Now that everybody’s using slides I’ve stopped using because that’s now what makes me stand out and I do think one message, whether it’s slides or comedy or all of you watching have to be your own unique person, but I go to watch other speakers to learn what I should not copy or not do. I don’t go to watch them to learn what to do. And I think if we’re going to stand out now we have to look at what almost all speakers are doing, which means that’s what audiences are used to. And all I use is word of mouth. I’ve never made a cold call. I don’t ask for referrals. I don’t ask for testimonials. I don’t collect business cards. It’s totally word of mouth, which means that I’m left with that. What I do on stage is my only marketing. It’s my only business card. It’s my only cold call. Everything is that moment on stage. So it has to be different than anyone else or no one’s going to remember it. RV: (30:37) [Inaudible] Well that is, I mean that is, it’s very, it’s very incredible. And, and it’s, you know, this has been super interesting to me because I’m trying to go, you know, how do you, how could you duplicate it and, and what’s, you know, the science behind this play in spontaneity and still being able to like, you know, cause it’s planting [inaudible] native cause they’re, they’re still paying you to deliver a lesson and a message and you’ve gotta you’ve gotta make sure you, it’s not just going up there and Jim or John for an hour about nothing. CP: (31:07) It’s a lot of you know, one of the things I say to them and I say the speakers, I can you talk about this, you know, if your goal is to connect with the audience and create this relationship, one-on-one relationship, every time you use a slide, Roy, just think of this. They have to stop that connection with you and they have to turn and look and you have to stop your connection with them and to everyone’s now looking okay and no one can psychologically read and hear at the same time. It’s impossible for a brain to do so. They can’t hear what you’re saying. They’re just reading this slide and then when you want the slide to be done and come back, you have to reestablish that connection. It takes 1520 seconds to do that and so that’s the problem. RV: (31:50) Okay. See there’s one that’s one of your clients calling you right now, Connie, because they’re going to talk to you directly. Okay. CP: (31:57) You know they’re going to say, you said you were accessible and now you didn’t even ask. RV: (32:01) Yeah, CP: (32:02) But, but I do want us to end up with, I want ever, I don’t want you to get any emails like I think slides are great. I have a story. Here’s how I want to end. All I shared with you is what works for me and I want everyone watching. If slides work for you and you love it, use them. If a signature story works for you. Oh my God, lucky you because I don’t have one. So I just want everyone to listen to an alternative option. There are all sorts of ways to be successful in speaking. You and I have very different delivery styles and both of us are very successful and our audience was love, both of the things we do. RV: (32:42) But and you know, I, I think I do think that very much that it’s like I am very much a slide and a plan joke and story after, you know, like everything leads. But the reason for doing that is so that I know that so well that I can depart because what we both have in common, even though it’s like I do a lot of, and I do slides and I do stories well, we both have in common is an absolute focus on the audience, not on ourselves. And, and an absolute focus on creating a meaningful connection in the moment, not just powering through some like preplanned set of information. And I, and I think that you really do that brilliantly. And this has been really empowering for me because you and I’ve never talked about this is to go, I think I could do some things that would be be be more lively and engaging with the audience because knowing like, okay, if I set this up right, there can be some structure to it that still allows for a lot of fun, playfulness CP: (33:45) And, and I met her and you don’t need a mentor and my God, you’re super successful. But yes, if I had someone like you, I would not take away slides. Not that you’re, you’re doing great, you’re doing awesome. Word of mouth, you’re doing amazing. But if you came to me and said, Oh, I would like to just explore. RV: (34:04) Yeah, do something fresh, do something fun. CP: (34:07) And I’ve done it with a lot of speakers they don’t want, they love their slides, they love everything and that’s great. I always hate it when people start emailing me and defending why use it and I go, no one has the fence. I’m, I think every way is amazing. However, if there’s a little piece of you, Roy, that would just like to have a five minutes, just a little something different that you’ve never tried, then that’s where we would start. I would probably take one of your stories or one of the things that you do right now and you’ve always done it a certain way and show you how maybe going into the audience you could do that same content, that same material, but engage somebody in a way that would just be, you know, and just the fact that you might walk off the stage and talk to someone in the audience is a change of pace for you. And I think the more we can all change our pace, the more variety. We, one of the reasons why I use the handle is because I can talk really soft. I can do different voices. I mean the handheld gives you a lot of experiential advantage in terms of voices. RV: (35:17) The voice control. Yeah. The voice control component of a handheld is really, is really wonderful. CP: (35:22) Cause I do role-plays. They, they need to be heard and it’s not good. RV: (35:27) Yeah, for sure. But that holding you, holding you, holding the mic is, that’s a, that’s a super helpful tip is like you, you hold it out to them but still you still have it so that if you need to rein it back in then, CP: (35:42) Well, and I have lots of psychological sentences, things I do on stage when they’re going to end it. So I would say a sentence and not say the last line. And all I do is hold out my mic and the whole audience yells the word back. So the fact that I hold out my boss Mike, they know that’s there and they yell it out and they participate. So that’s participation too. Just having them be engaged. But I don’t do silly stuff. I mean they’re not dancing on stage. That’s one rule is if you’re going to participate with your audience, they have to look cool and professional. Cause I’m, I pull up a lot of leaders and these are their employees and they need to look really smart and really professional and really good. So we can’t ever use our interaction. Well sometimes I make fun of people, but that’s where the comedy, RV: (36:32) Well this is so helpful just to kind of get into the mind of, of how you’ve differentiated yourself and some of the things. And, and I, I really liked the way that you said that there’s a lot of things you’re talking about, which is an alternative view to maybe the things that you always hear about. And I think that’s super refreshing to be like, there’s multiple ways to make it in this business. CP: (36:55) I have so many speakers. No say, yeah, I don’t have a story so I can’t speak. Oh my God needed to do I or well, I just not comfortable with slide PowerPoint. Well that’s fine. I think speakers sometimes think that there’s a certain, RV: (37:10) It has to be a certain, yeah, CP: (37:12) No, here people, well, you have to like, I have never had a niche, every niche niche where there, I’ve never had one. I’ve never gone exclusive. You know, I don’t have an agent. I answer my own phone calls. I don’t Mark it. I mean, these are all things that the average person, you know, you have to stay on your lane. My lane is if they’re breathing and have my feet there, that’s my lane. Okay? RV: (37:34) Okay. CP: (37:35) I, I would never want to be in one industry, but that’s me. So I love taking what all the other people say speaker has to do. And this is my authoritarian rebellion authority issue person. I like listening to what other speakers say, you have to do this and then just do the opposite. I think that is so much fun. And it gets noticed. And thank God that there’s events time. There’s out there that are looking for the speaker that does it totally different. So for all of you listening that have that little rebellious streak, and you don’t want to just do it the way everyone tells you to, I just want you to know that’s okay. It’s fine. And there’s, there’s room for us in this crazy speaker world. RV: (38:23) Well, there it is. My friends. Connie, where do you want people to go? If they want to connect with you? We’ll put a link of course to Connie, pedesta.com and anything else you want CP: (38:31) Connie pedesta.com you’ll have mysel we’ll talk, we’ll become friends. The latte will speak. It’s no big deal. Just anything is fine. RV: (38:43) Well thank you for sharing your heart and I think given us permission to go an alternative route, giving us permission to ditch the things that are rigid, giving us permission to engage with people, focus on them, not ourselves. And just kind of the permission I think to have fun and, and also like as speakers to always be pushing ourselves outside of our comfort zone and not just telling everyone else to do that. So CP: (39:07) Hello. I also giving them permission that if rigid is comfortable and doing what they’ve always done feels right to them. That that’s okay too. Okay. RV: (39:19) Do your thing. [inaudible] CP: (39:21) Right. Do your thing. Do you be you? So RV: (39:24) I love it. All right. Thank you so much Connie. Always great to be with you and just awesome to get to get to a little bit of a look inside of your mind. So we appreciate it. And we’ll talk to you later. RV: (39:45) [Inaudible].