Ep 38: The Professional Noticer with Andy Andrews
RV: (00:07)
Hey brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview. As always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders, group.com/pod call. We hope to talk to you soon.
RV: (00:55)
I continue to just be honored at how people that I’ve admired and been mentored by, you know, over years ended up becoming my colleagues and then friends. And I think that’s one of the most amazing things about this business. And building a personal brand is like if you are first to student, then you just end up finding new ways to meet amazing people. And that’s, you know who Andy Andrews is. To me, I was first a student of his Andy is incredible. So he has been on national television more than 200 times. He has 25 books that have been translated into 40 different languages. His, the, probably the two most biggest best-sellers, one is called the Traveler’s gift. One’s called the noticer. Traveler’s gift is my favorite. AJ loves the noticer. A J also loves the heart mender, which is one that you may don’t hear as much, just really, really good. But Andy as a speaker has spoken for four U S presidents. Uhe has coached the special operations command for our country. He’s been part of nine consecutive national football,ucollege national football championship teams in a row. Uhe’s been married for over 30 years. And I just, you know, as I think about the people that we wanted on this faculty that you could learn from and go, man, this is somebody who’s impacted millions and millions of people. Andy wasn’t an obvious choice to have. He also has a new book out. It’s just worth mentioning. It’s called the bottom of the pool and that just came out in June, 2019, which shares some of his biggest business secrets that he actually was under contract to not share here into recently. So, Andy, thanks for being here, man.
AA: (02:37)
Hey buddy. I’m honored to be here and I could grieve. I may seem uncomfortable to sit and listen to somebody say those nice things about you, but I appreciate it and I’m, I’m honored to be here with you. Okay.
RV: (02:51)
Well, and I just I guess I get that, you know, it is kind of always weird to hear someone, but it’s also like, wow, you’ve done so
AA: (03:01)
The, it’s been a long climb to the middle for me. I hear all these things, you know what I mean? Like Rory, dude, will you call my wife,
RV: (03:08)
Tell him, tell her somebody say, well, I I remember watching you speak, I saw you twice when I was a kid. I, my teens and then early twenties once was at the national speakers association. And I remember just being like, man, this guy is amazing. And you are there. You’re there. That, yeah, I was there like as a young, like at first, like one of my first or second NSA conferences,
AA: (03:35)
The only, only one I’ve ever done. So I know which one you’re talking about.
RV: (03:38)
Yeah. Yeah. So I was there and and I think, you know, for, I imagine that a lot of the people watching now, you know, they may not, some of them are very established, a lot of them are established. They might be a doctor or a lawyer or a, you know, fitness, you know, celebrity or whatever. But in the world of speaking, most of them are watching cause they’re like, I want to speak, I want to stand up, I want to be on those big platforms. Inspiring millions of people. But like, I guess my, my first question is, what do you think is the, what does it really take to make it in the industry is, let’s talk about speaking first and then we’ll talk about writing and all of that. But, you know, you’ve been around for years speaking, you know, dozens of times every year, some of the world’s biggest stages for some of the biggest companies national football teams. Why do you think you’ve been able to get to that level and stay at that level for such a long time?
AA: (04:35)
That’s a great question. And even even the speakers Bureau said to me one time, they said, you know, most speakers have arcs, you know, they land the plane on the Hudson and then there they speak for three years. But you know, that story has been told or they have a, a specific thing and that, that once you cover everybody and then cover everybody twice, it’s hard to keep booking you. And, and and they said that I was one of the very few that ever experienced it, didn’t have an arc and you know, or a career arc. And, and they, and I told him, I said, well, the reason is because I’m a nobody. You know, I’ve a, I, it’s easy to have an arc if you have done something like I have five Superbowl rings or something, you know, but I don’t have any Superbowl rings.
AA: (05:30)
I don’t have you know, I have any gold medals. I wasn’t the hero of some national disaster. I’d never been the CEO of some major company or I don’t have a radio show and I’ll have a television show. I’m, I’m a dad and I’m a husband and I’m, I’m a friend and I’m, you know, concerned citizen. I’m a buddy and, and I have a, I have developed an expertise over time at at noticing things that are valuable to people. And so, so there are two answers to your question. One, one is you say, how do you, how do you do that and, and continue to climb and over time and remain relevant that that is a key to remain relevant. We all have authors that we don’t read anymore. You’re right, right. I mean, we have conversations. Sometimes we go, yeah, you know, I used [inaudible] do you read so-and-so?
AA: (06:34)
Yeah, yeah. I used to read those books a lot. Oh, you don’t? No, no, no. Why not? Well, you know, just kind of, it got to be the same thing. Oh, okay. And so, you know, a lot of authors and speakers will hit on something and maybe it’s because they are a massive expert in something. Okay. and I have never been a massive expert at anything, but I am hugely dedicated to learning details that are valuable to other people that most people never see. You, you, and I know I have a background in comedy and you know, what a comedian does is to notice things that nobody else notices. And then when you bring them up, everybody goes, Oh my gosh, we all do that, don’t we? And I mean, that’s part of what a comedian does. And so to take that same thought process and put it into creating value for, for clients and for people and for families and for organizations and for CEOs and for churches and for communities. And so to, to create, to have inside yourself a passion for a passion, for learning things that are valuable to others.
RV: (08:05)
Yeah, that’s, that’s like such a great [inaudible], you know, type it into here. My own notes on how it’s just like, that is such a great tweetable moment of it is so simple. Like so is the noticer, you know, that, that the notice are such incredible book. Do you think that that book and what ended up being sort of like foreshadowing of your career was just like this, you know, the guy who, the guy who sees, who sees things that everybody sees but like turns them into lessons and, and that
AA: (08:36)
To, to a great degree, I mean, you know, and, and you know, I even have a, a thing I do now called the professional noticer and it is like my own thing, you know, and, and but that was, it was a foreshadowing because Jones that, Oh man, that came into my life years ago when I was living under a pier and in and out of people’s garages. You know, this old man, he, he, that’s what he called himself. He said, I’m a noticer. And when God was passing out talents, I didn’t get the cool ones. I can’t run fast, I can’t sing great. But I notice little things that make a difference to other people. And, and, and I’ve obviously, I’ve thought about that for years and years and years,
RV: (09:23)
Decades now. Well, and the thing I love about it is just there, there’s, there’s such an inherent service of that it’s like, it’s in the personal brand. You know, I think this is one of the things that’s so frustrating to me is that the personal brand is not about the person. It’s about the value they provide to other people. Like even what you’re saying is noticing things that are valuable or valued.
AA: (09:50)
Two, two
RV: (09:50)
Others and just like paying attention to that. And that is an expertise. So I’ve never, I’ve never thought about that with you before, of like, what is Andy Anders and expert on? But like that is your thing. Like that is what you do so very, very well. So can we talk about the books for a second? Cause so, so 25 this is your 25th bottom of the pool’s your 25th book
AA: (10:12)
If you say so. I have no idea. I’m sure somebody tells you that but I honestly don’t know. How do you, how do you,
RV: (10:20)
Right, so many but like books, like I once heard somebody say, you know the first book is easy. The first book is easy to write. It’s the second book. That’s hard cause it’s like the first book is like your life stories. But then after that is,
AA: (10:33)
Yeah, it’s like a, it’s like a comedian’s, a body of work. If you, if you want to find the funniest albums in a comedian’s body of work, go for the first and the third. Skip the second one because you know, the comedian has spent his entire life with the material that became that 45 minutes or an hour for that first thing that got him noticed or got her notice and, and that first hour and people ate it up and then all the money people came in and said, man, come on. Come on. We’ve gotta have something to follow up. We ain’t got one album out there. Come on. We’ve got to have something to follow it up. And so, you know, spent a whole lifetime gathering the material that everybody loved and six months gathering the material that was not as, not as funny as you know, but, but, but the people who last learn their lesson quickly now, you know if you, I, I haven’t been, I have not been smart in a bunch of ways as a, as a writer and, and I’ll tell you what those are.
AA: (11:50)
Because if you, if you want to, if you want to just make a ton of money and that’s all you want to do, there’s a lot of people that can tell you how to make a ton of money. And, and a lot of that has to do with what you have to do and what you have to be on a daily and monthly and yearly basis. And, and I was told right at the beginning of, you know, when the Traveler’s gift hit you know, that was my first novel and that was my first book with a major publisher. And I was told right off the bat, you know, okay, we got it. You know, they, I was signed to a three book deal you know, a book a year and, and I quickly realized, how do you do it? I do book a year, I don’t, I don’t know how to do a book a year.
AA: (12:44)
And, and the thing that I didn’t understand at the time, but I began to understand and it kinda got me, I say in trouble, not in trouble, but they were, they were disappointed in me because I was obviously not going to be one of these guys that, that pumped out book after book, after book, year after year, after year after year and built themselves into this this thing where there is a core group of, you know, I don’t know if I’ve a hundred thousand or million people that just buy everything. But for the most part, you know, when you step back and look at it a lot, and I, this is not everybody, this is, and this is more me I’m telling you about what I sure figured out I had to do. I did not want to become derivative and I did not want to, I did not.
AA: (13:40)
What does that mean? I didn’t want to to have somebody go, wow, you know, I’m four books in to Andy Andrews stuff now and it’s kind of the same story. And as Canada, the same message just like over and over again. And, and so I realized, I would tell him, I said, I have to learn. I got to abuse my kids. I get to be with my family. I’ve got to, I gotta walk around out there. I, I’m a relatively young person. I don’t know enough to write a book a year unless I continue to do the same thing and put it in a different way. Okay. Do you want to, you want to persist? Let’s persist. Okay. The next book is about perseverance and the next book is about staying in the game. And it’s like, come on really. I mean cause at some point the audience or your readers at some point people go, it was kind of same thing. And so I said [inaudible] and so it was to detriment of my career to, to not do that. I just, because I thought I’m not here just for this one time, these books that I write
Speaker 4: (14:59)
[Inaudible]
AA: (14:59)
I want to write books that lasts a hundred years. I don’t want to write books that in three years you read the book and go, well I know when that was written or that was written before the internet boy that was written when Brittany Spears was huge boy that was written when general hospital was on the air. I mean I don’t want to write books like that. I wanna write books that your grandchildren can, can pick it up. And then, unless they look at the date, they don’t really know. No, when was this? And so, so it has taken me a long time. My, my writing for years lagged way or let’s put it this way. My, my writing was trailing my learning and I, and, and so because I only learned so much and so fast and was determined not to lap that I did not want to get my writing ahead of my learning that it has taken me a while to get to where I really can put out some books now because I’m, I, I’m making, I’m connecting dots for people faster than I’m able to put a book out. And I’m so that, that’s, that’s [inaudible] the other part of it is just being, you know, a detriment to my career I’m sure was that I want I S and I still,
AA: (16:42)
I want to do something that’s valuable for you. Okay. You know, you and I, Rory have been around enough people in our lives that are enamored with what they do and, and, and, you know, and it’s hard not to be in this business cause you know, people, if people are coming up to y’all all the time, when is your orange juice? Okay, great. Excellent.
RV: (17:13)
That was something I was, I wanted to, I was going to ask you about too is like the whole being committed of service to others when you know some people are drawn to this cause you have the stage and the lights and you know, you, if you do a great job, if you do an incredible job, you know you make an impact and people are so grateful and gracious is, is, is the humor, is the humility. So just before we move into that, cause I do think that’s interesting on this last little part you were saying, what it sounds like to me is like you have to be a great read or before you can be a great writer. Like you have to be a good learner before you’re good teacher and you have your entire career. Like you, you chose at some point to slow down the release of books so that the learning could be out in front so that you were always, you know, and that’s where you, that’s where you were saying when the writing is lagging behind, it’s like it’s lagging behind your learning.
AA: (18:07)
Why am I, how am I learning? Yeah, I love that. Cause we just, we have to, because ultimately in the end, the whole, the book, the bottom of the pool, it’s all about the thought process. You know, at the bottom of the pool was not a book where you go, okay, these are the seven things you’ve got to do. And then you’re successful where you know, okay there’s the four things you do and then you’re all of a sudden, yeah, it’s not that. I told my son the other day, my 19 year old, I said, buddy, I said, I wrote this book for you and your younger brother because one day, I mean, you know, when I’m gone, the world is obviously changing all the time. Technology changes everything. And I said, so people will always tell you this is how you have to do it now or this is the industry standard.
AA: (18:59)
Well, you know, look at best practices. Well I said, there are always people to tell you how to do whatever. And, and I said all they’re doing, it may even be a great average, but they’re contributing to the average. Instead, at some point you are going to have to learn how to think to a different conclusion then everybody else has come to and [inaudible] you know, that is the only way. And if you look at the, you know, the, the quotes on the book, you know I spent a number of years now working with specific, some specific companies and specific teams and so to create results that are just ridiculous. And so if you’re really, if you’re a multibillion dollar company and you want to double in a year, well can you find some other multibillion dollar company in the mortgage industry like you are, that has doubled ever in a year, ever. Okay. Well if you keep thinking like they think you didn’t even get a chance [inaudible]
RV: (20:22)
Like you have to elevate your thinking and, and I w so one of the books or in this metaphor deepen your thing to the bottom of the pool, cause that that name, that name does sound like a horror movie, doesn’t it? The bottom of the book, but it’s beyond your boundaries and, and break through some of the stuff to a deeper understanding. I remember one of the other books that you wrote, which a short read, but it was at the time, I have to say, it wasn’t like, it wasn’t my favorite. I was like, Oh, and, and ever, but since I’ve been like, man, this book had a huge impact on my life was you wrote a book on how do you kill 11 million people? You know, was about the Jews and the Nazis and like, you know, all this stuff that was happening and you go through the whole book and then it’s like, how do you kill 11 million people?
RV: (21:13)
How do you kill 11 million people? You lie to them. And I was, that was so simple and I’ve been like, wow, people will lie. Like people will lie, governments will lie. Ceos will lie. Like people will lie. And until you learn to think for yourself I mean, that had such a profound impact. And I think for a personal brand, right? Like you are the noticer, you are the conduit of great ideas. We have to be the ones that are deepening our thinking that are not just kind of going with the flow. And so I think, you know, to hear you talk about how you’ve systematically kinda kind of done that and that. So, so that’s what every, every book is like that. It’s a deeper level of thinking. It’s a new thing that you notice. I think you used the phrase connect the dots. It’s like you see us a pattern or a theme and then you kind of come in and you’re like, okay, there’s enough enough instances of this that I’m going to just kind of connect the dots. And that’s a book,
AA: (22:13)
Right? And it’s, it’s, it’s curious because that’s the other thing I was going to say, that it’s probably hurt my career is I don’t, you can’t find all my books in one place in the bookstore. I wish they would put all the books in the Andy Andrews place or whatever place that is, but you can’t find them there. Because I, I’ve I’ve, I’ve had you know, nonfiction fiction, children’s current events, those different lists
RV: (22:46)
I’ve had business you’ve even had like spiritual, like yeah, you’ve been all over.
AA: (22:51)
And so it’s, it’s one of those kinds of things where you know, if you stick to what you do, okay, well I figured out something pretty valuable with that. How to kill 11 million people thing. I figured out something that that there, there is something beyond what is true and the scholar the truth, if you go beyond what is true all the way to the bottom of the pool, you can often find the truth and the problem in business and in our personal lives is most of us stopped with what is what is true and why wouldn’t you? It’s true. It’s the answer. It’s, it’s obvious it, that’s the right answer. It’s true but, and it produces results and you can be in first or second place and still be only dealing with what is true. But if you want to double or triple your results, if you want to get to a different of thing, you got to go find what is the truth.
AA: (23:49)
Now, a quick example is like if you took a blind person and put them in, you know, in a room and said, we’ve got an animal here. You never heard of it. It’s called an elephant. Gonna give you a few minutes with it. Want you to tell us what it’s like and tell us you know, how we could use it in society. And after 10 minutes, you know, the blind person may say, excuse me, the blind person might say, well an elephant is very wide, very tall, flat. He used them for a gate, several of them for a wall. See, that’s true. All that’s true. It’s not the truth because until you got to the bottom of the pool about an elephant, you would never have a complete picture of what an elephant’s really like or having any idea of the many ways it could be used.
AA: (24:44)
And so with the idea that the Nazis lied. Yeah, well that’s true. And everybody knows it’s true. Yeah. White man, they killed, they killed 11 million people. They you know, they create a world war for everybody. They were liars. They were deceivers. Everybody knows it’s true. Okay. But the thing that kept bugging me, the thing I kept trying to go to the bottom of Hill on that would have application for us today with our dealing with our, our families in the organizations and dealing with our own governments. The thing that had application to me was, and it kept bothering me about the Holocaust. It’s like, how do you kill 11 people now I’m not saying how do you do it? Like what weapons? Weapons. And I’m not saying like, how crazy do you have to be to do it? Okay. What I’m saying is we’ve all seen the pictures of the people at the railway stations, thousands of them loading themselves onto cattle cars.
AA: (25:55)
And there was a, a Nazi soldier here with a machine gun and 10 yards down there was another one. Machine gun G, why? What’s going on? How do you get these people to load themselves peacefully onto cattle cars week after week, month after month, after month until 11 million market acquire. They run it. Why don’t they fight? Why don’t they rush the guards? What are they high? What’s going on? How do you kill 11 million people? And when I found the answer, just like I was so stunned, I could not believe it. And that is you only tool. You create a policy of lies and they had four and he can get the book, I’m going to tell you the whole thing, but it had four different directors that were policies about what they would say, how they would lead them into the trap of believing them.
AA: (26:44)
You know how they would go and, and, and negotiate with them and they would take their money and then give them food and say, you’re fine. You’re, everything’s good. And the people are thinking, if they were going to kill us, they would just kill us. They wouldn’t take our money and give us food and exchange so they’re not going to kill us. Okay. And you know, you lead them to the point where you’re going, Hey, we got to get outta here today. We’ve got to get outta here because the Russian troops are coming over the Hill and we’ve got a place down here where we’ve got skills, factory jobs for all the men. The women will stay at home, the kids are skills. And so just if your father’s board, your people on the trains, please get them on. And peacefully they did. It was you lie.
RV: (27:31)
Yeah. So I think that that, that was profound and even though you’re not an expert per se on anything, it’s like your super power is noticing things like that, bringing through it, thinking through it, thinking through it. It’s like we have to advance the level of thinking that has been done for people. And it seems like that, you know, that that is a big part of your, of what your super powers. I so I know we’re, I know we’re running short on time there. There’s another little element that I want to just kind of ask you. It’s kind of like a little bit of a curve ball, but you, you brought up comedy and I, I wasn’t planning on talking about this, but you know, I never really noticed the parallel because between what you, what you do like your super power and, and comedy, but they are the same thing.
RV: (28:21)
It’s, it’s noticing the thing that most people don’t pay attention to but it like happens to everybody is, is you’re also hilarious on stage and you’ve always been so, so funny and you know, it’s like, it helps a lot to be funny in the speaking world. So like if, if you had to teach comedy or if there was something where it’s like somebody was not funny D like, do you feel like you were just born with it or is there something that you have learned in a way that’s like, you know, practical that anyone could take to, to become funnier in their writing and in their speaking?
AA: (28:58)
I think, I think you can learn to do it. I think now as far as the speaking goes, there are so many things that are skillsets. Okay. Within that. But there is one, there’s kind of a talent thing too as far as, but that basic talent, just being able to talk, just being able to to talk is, is that talent okay? But everything after that is a skill that you add onto it. And the, the funny part is, is not to tell jokes. You know, comedians don’t tell jokes, you know, you do material, you, you come up with observations. And so, so if you, if you narrow it down and look at where are these things are coming from, they’re coming from who is aggravated by this what have we missed? What is the exaggeration of this? And what if I dialed in really closely on this basically four different things.
AA: (30:06)
There are some offshoots from those, but you know, I mean, you don’t, you don’t talk about it, the exaggerations, you know, you don’t talk about a guy who’s six foot five, you know, you walked into the gym and I’m playing basketball against a guy who’s bigger than Sasquatch. This guy is like 11 feet tall. It’s a funnier story and everybody knows he’s not 11 feet tall, but it’s a funny, don’t worry ago. It’s exaggeration, you know? And then the you know, there, there’s so many ideas of, you know, of what, what have we missed? Okay. You and I, I used to do a bit about you know, when he and I would get into it, I’ve given to it by saying something about, wow, did you hear there in Texas? They did another like execution there and the prison systems and they, you know how they do it in Texas, don’t you? They do it with a lethal injection, which is a shot, basically what it is. I mean, you grew up, you’re terrified of shots and now they’re executing with, but I always wonder, you know, when, when you execute somebody with a shot, do they still rub the out go home?
AA: (31:34)
Like we don’t want to infect you want to kill you? Oh my gosh. No. It’s just a thought process of an observation and daily news. Just something that everybody is seeing. But in another way, Rory too, is what is the opposite of this? What is the opposite of this? So,
RV: (31:59)
So those are, so those are just, so basically if you just kinda like okay, notice the things that frustrate you and then kind of exam, you know, like just, you kind of work on that a little bit or, right.
AA: (32:13)
Cause you think, you think about, think about this. Am I the only one? Am I the only one? CNS? And then you know, and then you’re telling if people go, yeah, yeah, yeah, I did it. How many of those are there? Right.
RV: (32:28)
Well, I never made that connection, but that makes so much. That’s makes so much sense. It’s just like you’re, you are, you’re a noticer. Like as it turns out, like what I think Andy Andrews, part of, part of your superpower, which makes you funny and profound and insightful and intelligent, is you notice things that are of value to other people and that are entertaining too.
AA: (32:53)
Other people. So you gotta be a little entertaining. So they will listen long enough to figure out what’s valuable.
RV: (33:00)
Yeah. But maybe, maybe there’s not as much randomness as one might think on the surface to, to all the various things that you’ve talked about. There’s, right.
AA: (33:09)
And here’s a, here’s a great, I mean, you didn’t ask this, but this is one of the best things I ever took from comedy and taking it into a speaking career. And that is, yeah, people will look at comedians they love and go, it just came out of nowhere. Man, this is so spontaneous. It’s just unbelievable. You know, people used to say that about Robin Williams, and Robin did have a lot of spontaneity, but that was only because he was allowed it. But it wasn’t, I mean, in a, in a typical performance, it might be, I don’t know, eight or nine or 10%, maybe spontaneous, but it’s like, this is not spontaneous, you know, on the tonight show, we saw him do this five nights in a row at the comedy store before he did it on the tonight show. And, and so what you’re wanting to create is the illusion of spontaneity.
AA: (34:12)
You want to create the illusion of it. And so, and I, I use this in my speaking a lot because I tell people, you know, we’re just having a conversation here and, and I don’t know, not really doing a speech, we’re just kind of, cause if I was doing a speech man, I’d have to be nervous because demanding that I be incredible. I already know that I’m not. And so, you know, let’s just kind of have a conversation and, and in fact we’ll just, we’ll just pretend we’re a big living room and having a conversation and I’ll go first dude, this guy thing. But what I’m saying about creating the illusion of spontaneity that I use a lot in speaking is I will create a situation. I know where I’m going now. The more it looks like, and you know, you’ve seen me, Rory, on stage.
AA: (35:11)
People go, he’s kind of nuts. I mean, it’s like this is the add poster child. I mean, and I know that. I understand, but I want him to think that because why do people go to bull riding? Why do people go to NASCAR? Just like you can’t take your eyes off it. There might be a wreck here any moment. Okay. And how many speakers have you listened to is like, there’s Bora, their minds, the information may be incredible, but if you’re, if you haven’t got something, and so what I want to do is I want to create something where the audience is involved with it. I know where I’m going. Give you an example. I used to do a routine, in fact, I heard it the other day on Sirius XM, so I haven’t been booked as a comedian for years. And every day I’m on six Sirius XM comedy channels. But I heard this one on Sirius XM the other day and I was like, wow. I, I used to do this routine about Lassie, about rumor that, and you’re so young.
AA: (36:21)
Yeah. But so Lassie and Timmy and, and I used to do this bit about Lassie, but rather than saying like, most people would go, Hey, do you remember Lassie? You remember Lassie from television. You know, wonder if funny how Lassie would do that. I mean that’s what a lot of people would do. Okay. But what I want to do is, I want to say, and is there a memory, we’re talking about television or something or some comment about television and go, man, when I grew up, we had great television shows. I mean I don’t, I wonder, we had animal shows, animal shows you what do they have animal shows now I don’t even know if they ha we, you remember him hearing you get my age. We had like a gentle Ben and flipper and Rin tin tin and a fury the horse and, and invariably someone’s going to go Lassie, Lassie. Remember Lassie? Never hell as you would. Here’s your cup of cars. Yeah. Let’s see. I do my bit. And the audience is going, dang man, somebody just said Lassie and the dude does four minutes on it. Unbelievable. It’s the illusion of spontaneity.
RV: (37:41)
Well, you’ve gone, you’ve gone far with this. The simple skill and, and trait of noticing. And I think that’s been super insightful for me. Hopefully for the people watching is just like the power of tuning in to what are the things that other people aren’t seeing and then developing those, whether it’s for entertainment or is for insight. That’s, that’s a super powerful lesson and we just appreciate you so much and we wish you the best and hopefully we’ll see you. We’ll see you back here again sometime. And anytime you ask, I’m William, so Andy, where do you want people to go if they want to like learn more about you, stay connected with you and all, you know, all of the stuff that you’re up to. Thank you. Meet me at Publix. I shop at Publix grocery saying you find more about may of let’s, ah, I, you know, I have a podcast too is not, is not as big a deal as yours, but it’s called the professional noticer. And we
Speaker 5: (38:35)
Do it every week and we answer questions and laugh and I have great time, but the professional noticer is my podcast and then we’re also doing stuff with a wisdom Harbor and Andy andrews.com. So,
RV: (38:51)
Well that’s awesome. As it turns out, that’s a good title for your podcast is not as much randomness to Andy Andrews as one might think. And you are a professional noticer. Thank you for showing us what that looks like a little bit behind the scenes that keep, keep making us laugh, man. Keep, keep inspiring us. We love it and we appreciate you so much. Thank you buddy. Honored to be here.
Ep 36: The Marriage of Music and Business with Brett Kissel
RV: (01:04)
It is a wonderful honor to introduce you to one of my newer friends. Brett Kissel is an amazing young man. He actually was recently named male artist of the year by the Canadian country music awards. And he is in his twenties, in his late twenties and is just a rising superstar internationally. He actually won an award from the worldwide radio summit in Hollywood that named him international artist of the year, which was previously given to people like Adele and ed Sheeran and Drake. He has won two Junos. He’s won 12 CCMS Canadian country music awards. He’s got an honor from the from Canada’s walk of fame six times Western Canadian music awards and he’s just amazing. He’s toured with Garth Brooks. He’s the only Canadian to ever do that. He’s a fifth generation Albertan and he just is a total family guy, has built his following from nothing when he was a kid. And I thought it would just be awesome to kinda hear some of his stories and philosophies about how he’s done that. So Brett, welcome to the show.
BK: (02:16)
Well, thank you very much Rory for for having me. What a glowing introduction. I don’t think there’s any way I can actually live up to all that stuff because open the awards, well the circuit and the awards season, a lot of that even has to do with, you know, some, some luck and, and stuff like that. But I’m very thankful that I get an opportunity to chat with you and learn from.
RV: (02:41)
Yeah. Well I’d love to hear early on, how did you start? Like at what age did you start performing and start doing concerts and just I mean I think you’re still very, very much on the rise, but you are certainly have broken through the mainstream in Canada now moving into the U S you know, we met you live here in Nashville, we got a chance to work with you cause we do, you know, you some of your management team, but like you’ve been at this for a while and I would love for people just to kind of hear the story of how you got started doing music and, and you know more than that just building your fan base.
BK: (03:22)
Well, well yeah of course. I mean, my, my, my journey in, in country music I think is very similar to a lot of others, but I’ve always related my career to that of athletes and, and guys in sports. You know what, I, I got my guitar when I was young. It’s like a kid hockey stick or a baseball bat, you know, when you’re five or six years old and you really take a liking to it. I was playing hockey as a little kid up in Canada. Every idiot my grandmother, she said that she saw music in me and so she got me a guitar. That guitar was a big, big thing to get because I immediately stopped sports and I just focused on music and nobody else in my family ever played music. Nobody’s saying nobody did anything. So the fact that this was really unique, I think to my family and to my extended family too.
BK: (04:15)
So I had that great support system and it was a thing led to enough. I started playing around family and then, you know, one family member, maybe they know somebody who’s got a customer appreciation at the local Ford dealer in town. So I go and I sing a couple songs as a seven year old there. I mean I didn’t know what I was doing, I just didn’t ever have fear of the stage, I guess then you know, somebody’s need there and and says, why don’t you come and play this rodeo in the nearby town and play a couple songs there. So I’m nine years old and I’m playing songs there and now I’m 11 and people are skewed, make a recording because we buy it. So I made my first cassette tape locally with a guy who’s a producer and we made like 500 copies and my parents and I thought we will never be able to give away 500 copies and yellow eggs at them.
BK: (05:11)
So we sold them. I mean people were buying it cause I was a little kid, like every grandma and grandpa was supporting this little boy and a cowboy hat, but I’ve a hundred cassettes, new record. And then, and then before we knew it, we’re opening up a savings account and a checking account and a business account for me because I’m making 500 bucks, 1000 bucks. And, and, and from there, you know, I really just started to learn how to, how to save money and reinvest into myself. And at that time, I’m like 12 years old and I got nominated for a Canadian country music award. And that, that took me from kind of a regional act to an act. And to get that national exposure on TV up in Canada was very special. And from there into my teens, the minute I graduated high school, I knew this was all I’d ever wanted to do.
BK: (06:02)
And this is all I thought I ever really could do. And it’s all I needed to do. So I’m true. We built a business and weren’t necessarily country artists or performers, but were businessmen, business women who would teach me a lot of those great things. And so you know, I, this a a business music was my business and I’m very thankful that I was able to then take those lessons that I learned as a kid and as a teenage bring that energy down to Nashville, which I’ve done for the past 10 years or about eight years living in music city and it’s been a hell of awry.
RV: (06:41)
[Inaudible] Well, and so, so talk to me about like reputation in general and I’m just curious about what your thoughts are on, on the word reputation. Like what is your definition of it? What are your philosophies about one, why do you think it matters sort of in the music business and beyond that just sorta like how do you go about establishing one
BK: (07:05)
Man that, that is such a great question, Rory. And, and reputation is everything in business no matter what. And, and I’ve seen it firsthand for myself because I know I’m not the best singer on the best songwriter or guitar player or entertainer, but I try my very best to develop a brand that’s based on reputation, a good buy. And the thing about it is that people, the fans, and I’m one of them to first and foremost, I’m a fan of country music. I’m a fan of certain brands and if you’ve got a good reputation, you want to see those people or those brands when, now Garth Brooks for an example has won everything. Like Garth Brooks is like, Elvis is like the Beatles. It’s like, I mean he will go down in history as if people were, we’ll use them like, you know, talk about it like you talk about shed spear or Beethoven or for stuff like that.
BK: (08:02)
It because he’s got an incredible reputation whether you love it, go, not have his voice or not, you know, there is an amazing guy and you want to see guys like that win. And it’s interesting because as good of a reputation on can, one hopes to build, if you’ve got a bad reputation that that even spreads like wildfire even further. So it’s important thing that you, a bad rap because it’s so hard to come back from that. I don’t know. I don’t know. Some of these celebrities and their stories are as to why, you know, things went up for them. I’m not, I’m not here to judge. All I’m here is to state the facts that a celebrity with an incredible reputation is few and far between the, you know, to find but a celebrity with a bad reputation or bad press or bad things. I isn’t it crazy how we hear about those stories even more so, so, and they, if that said, protecting your reputation and working to make sure that you’ve got a good one and something that’s very solid so that people will continue to support you and want to see you win, that’s kind of the name of the game.
RV: (09:14)
[Inaudible] Yeah, I, well, I love that and I think Garth is a great example of that. Of course. Aja is a huge Garth fan. We got to see him about a year ago and that was, that was incredible. I think he lives up to all the things that you’re talking about. Now. I want to talk about social media for a second and, and just kind of nurturing a fan base. And how have you done that or are there, are there, are there things that you’ve done that you feel like have worked for building your reputation off the stage? Cause clearly it’s like, you know, performing when you’re on stage is what it’s all about. You’re an amazing singer, amazing songwriter. We’ve, we’ve had your music playing around the house a lot lately and just you know, that is certainly one part of it, right? Is, is the performance. But what are some of the things that you do behind the scenes that maybe people either don’t know about or don’t see or they sh they should be doing if they’re wanting to try to like build the kind of engaged fan base that you’ve been able to create?
BK: (10:23)
Well, you know what the, the first thing that I’ll say, Rory, is that everybody has a different perspective on social media. And you know what? Well, what works for me may work for a, I dunno, this artist or that person and what works for Gary V. May not work for Joe Rogan. What works for Joe doesn’t work for you. And we’ve all got our different paths. But for me, I’ve found great success in being very real in showing vulnerable parts of, of my life. And I’ve honestly found it to be therapeutic, to not have to put on a show for my fans or on in Facebook or Twitter. When people follow me, they’re truly getting a real life inside look at I am and what I’m doing. And if that’s interesting, if you don’t find it interesting, that’s fine. You don’t, you don’t need to engage or anything.
BK: (11:19)
But I’m really happy that I can be myself and that’s where I post happiness and social media because like I said, it can be therapeutic to, to vent and to get things out and maybe get some advice from other people or from others. But you know what, I’m, I’m a performer on the stage and that’s for 90 minutes of my day. The other 22 and a half hours. I’m a husband. I’ve got three beautiful kids, two daughters and a and a and a son, Mila. My oldest daughter, she’s three. Aria is next in line. She’s two. And then Leo, our son, he’s six months old. So we’re in the heart of the chaos. And I think it’s very relatable because I’m no, every other family who’s going through the ups and the downs of balancing career and life and the beautiful chaos that is being a father and a young parent.
BK: (12:15)
When I show that side, I mean, you know it to Rory. I mean, it’s like that’s, that’s real life and people, people want to see real life. So that’s where I get the most engagement is, you know what’s interesting is that my, my record label early on said, Hey, you know what? This is our strategy with you. And I said, okay, hit me. What is it? Think you don’t wear the wedding ring so you can look available. Let’s not talk about your family too much. You pop your 19. Everybody’s really trying to discover themselves in their twenties into their thirties. So let’s, let’s keep you that way so that you’re relatable. And honestly, I, from the, from the minute one ice and I, we said, and I’m going to swear here, but I said bullshit. Like no way. This is who I am. This is what I do. I’m proudly married and everything like that. And if you want to go on just analytics, I will get twice or three times the likes of a picture of me as a stressed out dad with pancake batter all over my tee shirt hanging upside down on my shoulders. Then I will in front of 30,000 people opening for Garth Brooks at a, at, at a festival. People are like, okay, that’s cool, but this is relatable. So that’s kind of my stance on how I do my socials.
RV: (13:32)
I love that. I think that’s that and that it’s very fitting with your brand. I mean you’re, you are just very relatable and real and, and, and real life. So one of the things that I think you’ve also done really well, and I think, you know, we have a brand builders group. We don’t work with a ton of musicians, but it seems like more and more we’re getting into the space and we really have a heart for musicians because it’s, it can, it can, it’s such a, can be such a tough road financially. And even when you make it, it’s like you’re gone all the time performing. And so we have a real passion to try to help musicians create some monetary streams that don’t require them to like be out on the road all the time. Right. And you guys have done a a good job of this and I know, I know you’re working on other, other revenue streams and things, but I think you guys are very forward thinking in terms of how you do it.
RV: (14:27)
And one of the things that I think you’ve done really well so far is just like these brand deals and you’ve been able to kind of get some brand deals. You’ve been able to create longterm relationships there. And I wondered if you could just share a little bit about how, what is like, what exactly is a brand deal? How do you get them? Like, how do you find people, how do you charge, you know, what do you do? What do you deliver? Like just all of that cause that, that feels like a very immediate, immediately monetized double stream, if you will, for, for musicians.
BK: (15:11)
Well, yeah, I mean [inaudible] it really is and it’s such a, an interesting world we live in right now where social media is the new King now. It’s been King for a while, but a lot of companies are really are really figuring that out and allocating their investment dollars, fitting in public lists, city influencers and people on social media as opposed to the return on TV, which is ever changing a radio, which in a lot of ways is you know, is, is a fat that’s, you know, trying real hard to rebrand. And it’s still very important in country music. But in some areas it’s, it’s dying. In print, we all know is dead. So with all people are living on their phones, okay, we know this. So what does that mean for me? I’m very passionate about a number of products. And I remember my wife and I, we sat down and we thought to ourselves, what kind of things do we use in our lives that make our lives easier?
BK: (16:06)
Is it this is it this? What, what, what do you like to drink? What do we like to eat? Where do we like to go? What do we like to wear? It’s all of these things. And we, we took an approach because she’s a, an influencer in her own right. And we took an approach about genuinely wanting to talk about brands that we love. That was, that was priority number one because there’s authenticity there. That I would say if I, if I stopped and this conversation ended right now, if you are associated with brands that you’re authentically connected to, that’s a win win for both. That’s where we can extract money as the influencer and as the spokespeople for that brand. And that’s where the brand is going to win because you talking about something that they’re not reading from a script and they’re able to craft a message that is unique and doesn’t look like a sales job because that’s today’s.
BK: (17:01)
You can see, of course we need hashtag ad on everything for, you know, the whatever, whatever rules we got to follow. But if I’m talking thing, I don’t know anything about people are going to see through that and it’s going to look bad. So authenticity is number one and when you’ve got something off authentic, you can take it to step two, which is truly try to monetize and extract as much value as you can from the company because we know that we’re going to be more effort and a bigger return on their investment of sponsorship into us. Everything that I do, Rory isn’t cut and paste. It, it’s, every company has different needs and different wants. Some of them are a lot more about social media, some of them a lot more about what I’m going to say from the stage.
BK: (17:52)
And some of them are a lot more about the return is what they’re going to get from clients and entertaining important customers. For example, it’s very difficult for me to craft a message for an oil company in Northern Alberta. You know, on social media, they’re, they don’t care about that. But what they do want to do is they want to wine and dine certain clients to get the next big project or, or something like that to, to come here. Sometimes they need to educate me on their big environmental you know, changes that they’re making and they need somebody like myself to craft a message because energy in Alberta is such a hot topic for the rest of the world. And then sometimes you’ve got a juice company, Oasis juice who just want to be associated with families and we’re a great growing family.
BK: (18:38)
Then you’ve got a company like Mark two or exclusively intrude other denim company there. You know, they’re like a, they’re a store of everything from boots. It’s an apparel company and they want somebody who grew up on a farm and somebody who’s a busy douse, we can wear these on stage. It all fits. So what I do for this company is different from what I do with the vehicle company. And you truly make it unique. It’s, and then you can kind of craft a dollar amount to get from them at that point once you have that meeting.
RV: (19:10)
And so do you, how do you, like what, okay, so I love that. So I’d love the authenticity element. I love the idea of, of promoting the stuff that you actually use every day and you can speak intelligently about, right. What do you, how do you get them? Do you just like email the company website or call them or like go to their headquarters and walk in the door? Like what, what do you do to kind of open that conversation? I mean, you’re, I guess, you know, your stage, your name carries a lot of weight and your reputation, particularly in like Canada in certain circles, but, but did they find, did they all reach out to you or do you find them,
BK: (19:54)
So there’s a bunch of different ways that, that this happens. You know, what before my name had had any relevance in Canada, it was cold call and it was a, it was a meeting. It’s all about connections. You try to find someone who knows somebody. It’s basic sales. I mean, you can watch that on, on YouTube. You can see a fit, you know, it’s literally, it’s just basic salesmanship. So when I was 16, I got my driver’s license in my home province and I felt that there was a market of new drivers like me that were going to be buying their first vehicle. So who were they going to buy it from? Were they going to get a used vehicle where they’re going to buy brand new? Well, I found a company that had ills and you, it was called driving and it was based in Edmonton.
BK: (20:50)
My, my, our Capitol city two hours away, so I’d cold called them. Oh, 16 years old, asked if I could speak with the CEO. He wasn’t available. So I spoke with the marketing director and I asked if I could have a meeting, went in with my dad. I drove to town or into the city. You know, the next week, and I had this, like this presentation lined up. I, I, I remember doing it in school. Figuring out how to do a presentation. It was like a special project. So a beautiful do a Tang and everything I was going to do. And I said, if you give me a deal on a vehicle, I’ll be able to take this to my network of friends and other people like me. This is in 2006. So this was before Facebook was big, but before anything, and I said, if, if, if you’ll do this, I will try my very best to give as many vehicles and at least give them make make driving force be their first call.
BK: (21:46)
And it’s up to your sales people to deliver. I cannot guarantee you I’m going to sell vehicles, but I will do my very best. Well, it may or something, but he’s like, I’ll tell you what Chad, we’re just going to give you a truck. Like, Oh my God. He’s like, you believe in me. This is great. If, and then you know, you’re an artist. So if you can do a couple of gigs for us a year, how much do you or do you charge for your gigs? I’m like, well, if it’s me and my guitar, it’s $2,500 if it’s me and my band, it’s 7,000 and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It’s like, well, I need three shows at 7,000 that’s $21,000 all ours. And then I wasn’t dollars back and value and basically then we’re going to give you this brand new 2006 GMC three quarter time. So I drove
BK: (22:37)
And now they send me into the city of Edmonton to meet with the mayor and as well as the CEO of the company to get higher releasing of, you know, 250 citywide vehicles. They’re the ones who send me up to Fort McMurray, Alberta to Suncor or this whatever oil company that need no 290 lease vehicles. So instead of the CEO brokering the deal, they send me in for, I don’t know, they call it razzle-dazzle. Like, seriously, I love that stuff. And now I’m a paid employee of the company and I’ve been with them. I’m 29. I’ve been with them for 13 years and I started as a phone call when you’re sick, who says you can’t do it? Blah, blah blah. Yeah, you can’t. Now my name carries weight. So now my manager or my assistant can just call up juice company and say, Hey, we’d like to make this work. Let’s sit down, let’s meet, you know, next time Brett’s in Montreal, we’re going to try and figure out a time to meet. So now it’s easier. But anybody says that it’s so tough. It is tough. I get it. But you can do it. I love that. Anyone who says it’s tough, it is tough but can do it. That’s a debt.
RV: (23:46)
That is so true. And so I want to hear about like so did you have a definitive moment where that, where that pivot happened? You know, we call it breaking through the wall or we have specifically she hands wall of where you’re like bouncing off the wall and being absorbed in the noise of the mainstream. But then you know, you sort of find your uniqueness and you create velocity and clarity and you, you break through the wall and then your life as a personal brand shifts from push to pull. And so now you know, like your story that you just shared a cold calling, that’s very much like a classic push story. Like you’re out there hustling, you know, networking cold call and talk in like doing whatever you’re doing, but then at some point it’s, it flips to pole, which is where it seems like you’re at now, right? Your manager or your assistant can kind of make the call. When did that moment happen for you? Or, or, or was there a specific moment or you know, like talk about that kind of like breakthrough point and you know, how did you notice it or how or, or, or, or when did you notice, or when did you notice it? Like I’d love to just kinda hear, like your perspective on that.
BK: (25:01)
Wilson and Rory at first, I honestly, I want to compliment you and to everybody who’s listening to this, I remember vividly one of my favorite parts of getting together with you to talk about the growth of my brand was when we talked about Shan’s wall, when we talked about that I was able to go back home and look, not physically look through my calendar, but remember important meetings and important times of my life where it was push, push, push and hustle and no return. And, and it was just, it was like I was beating my head up against the wall truly until you finally break through. And there were definitive moments. There wasn’t just one because there’s so many different aspects of my career. There’s even a way that you can put that into perspective for your own personal relationships where you’re working so hard to try and get something.
BK: (25:53)
But finally you make it through, you know, with your spouse or with your children. But when it comes to business and music, there were some really, really, really great times driving force. And that deal with me was a big moment on the entrepreneurial side for me and the sponsorships spoke to person side. I am kind of like the NASCAR guy of Canadian country music. I’ve got logos everywhere. I couldn’t be more proud of that. We know we can deliver, we know and we know the weekend we can give back to the communities and have so many things. It’s not conceded your worry. It’s not that like, Oh well I don’t want to pay for cowboy boots, let’s get them sponsor. It’s a lot deeper than that for me. But if you do want to think about it simply, well yeah, I mean why pay for this when someone can, you know, we can strike a deal.
BK: (26:45)
We can work together on this. So all I’m saying is that driving force moment was big for me on the spokesperson side. I realized I can do that at 16 and I’ve never stopped and I get turned down more times than people say yes. That’s the thing. You have a thick skin. Like I don’t care when people say no because I know I can go to somebody else. And somebody’s going to say yes one way or another real sudden. The spokesperson side that that breakthrough was in 2006 what May 27th I turned 16. I had a truck the first few, like literally five, six days later. So that was a big thing on the music side of things. It was the day that I finally got a legitimate manager in business. I was 20 years old and I’ve been doing everything locally by myself or it was me and my wife.
BK: (27:40)
We had local managers who were great. He didn’t have the connections nationally or internationally or specially in Nashville. I mean they could help book gigs for me, but that was just that the local rodeo in Calgary or Northern Alberta or Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, that wasn’t the NFR that I wanted to play. That wasn’t PBR, that wasn’t the big stuff. So I needed a real manager and I cold called a bunch of managers, but I called this one guy and I loved him the most based on seeing him at award shows. Louis O’Reilly was his, he was from Saskatchewan. He was a small town guy. He grew up on a farm. He was starting to work with a guy who was an agent named Jim Cressman, who is also a small town doc. Grew up on a farm. I’m like, these are my people. They’re going to get my story.
BK: (28:28)
And they’re building up their own businesses respectively and working with some of the biggest names in Canadian Adian country. So I cold called them, flew them out to a show. I saved up money so I could pay for their flights and even put them up first class and everything like that. Put them in the nicest hotel in town so I could really like wheel and deal them. And I got a great manager after that gig in Louie for agent, shortly after in Jim Cressman who you know. And those were the guys. Now my team went from one person to three and I’m talking three pitbulls and we could go and full world out to reviewers. We had a record deal, which was another big thing in Canada. Within a number of years we had awards, we had tours, we had everything. We stripped the team in place. So go, I’m sorry, I’m talking so, so much for right here. I’m just passionate about it. But I just love the path that I was able to,
RV: (29:26)
And I mean this is, this is great. This is exactly what I want. I wanted people to hear, because I think, you know, even like becoming an international music star is that for most people it’s like such a farfetched dream. They’re like, I don’t even know how to start. And you think, Oh well, you know, you come to Nashville and you play in the Bluebird cafe and you get discovered and then you’re Taylor Swift. And it’s like, that is such the wrong way to do it. Like, it’s like that maybe happens one in a million, but, but what I love is just your story of just relentless discipline, you know, taking the stairs to use our phrase from our first book and just doing the things that people weren’t willing to do and like, you know, playing the stages and doing the business side of it and then finding your way to the managers and, and, and that opening doors and just like one thing leading to the next, to the next to the next.
RV: (30:15)
And I love it right now because I think, you know, in the U S like you’re still breaking through and I think it’s, it’s, it’s going to be awesome, like 10 years from now for people to come back and listen to this interview and hear like your mentality and approach and you know, when you break through in the U S will be like, Whoa, where’d this guy come from? And yet it’s like you’ve been doing this since you’re 12 years old, like plan local car dealerships and rodeos and then kind of kind of working your way up. So one, one question. I do want to have, I, I got one last little question. In terms of music specifically, how important do you think it is for musicians to really build the business side of it and the business acumen? Like you know, you’ve been really focused on not only getting brand deals but also helping you, you know, you’re, even the way you talk, it’s like how can I get the most for my sponsors and how can I help them? Do you think that that’s, that’s like a necessary skill set for musicians to really make it this day or do you think you know, no, that’s more of just like an ancillary benefit that, you know, if you have it good. If not, it’s okay.
BK: (31:29)
Well, you know, it’s, it’s a very interesting thing because of course, I mean all I can really, you know, go on is my opinion on, on the matter in, for me, the business side, while you’re developing the artistic side, I believe it’s a very important marriage and it’s something that everybody needs to think about and work towards on a daily because you can’t have one without the other. If is there one that’s more important? I will say yes, it’s the art side. It’s that you can have marketing ideas in the world and try to reach out to for dealers that have $1 million sponsorship deal, it ain’t going to happen. If you’re not good or it ain’t gonna happen to hit song. So you need that side. But if you haven’t developed the business side to be ready for when the art happens in something, then truly you’re missing out on a great opportunity to have longevity in the business. And longevity comes from financial security on Jevity comes from a sponsorship and connections and you know, and, and great people that you can connect with around the world. So you got to develop your, that’s what matters. But I think it’s very, very important to have the beef side ready to go.
RV: (32:46)
[Inaudible] I love that. Well, and I know that’s why, you know, originally when Jim, cause we were working with Jim Cressman and he introduced this to you and like, even the fact that you’re working with us, it’s sort of like very much outside the norm of, of what musicians would would be doing. And it’s like, that’s why you’re doing it. It’s like you’re, you’re always forward thinking to, to be set up to sort of like to prepare yourself to receive, you know, as, as the future unfolds. And I just I really, really love that. Brett, where do you want people to go if they want to connect with you and learn more, either about your story or your music and just kinda like connect up with you?
BK: (33:26)
Well, thanks man. Well, I mean my favorite platform is, is Instagram. So you can just follow me, Brett Kissel. I can see if you want even a little bit more personal side of what life is really like following my wife to Cecelia. And then one of the greatest things is that, you know what, just come and see me at a show, visit my tour page on Brett kissel.com and I mean that’s kind of a really, really great way to see what I’m like on the stage. And then social media will show you exactly what I’m like off the stage. It’s a great life that we live traveling around playing music. And I, I feel very lucky to have the opportunity to have this conversation with you orient and not talk as much about music, but to talk truly about well the entrepreneurial spirit that us artists, a lot of us, so truly do have. So I thank you very much.
RV: (34:16)
Yeah. I mean this is, this has been wonderful man. I thank you so much for sharing your story. I just, I think it’s so inspiring as well as instructional and informative to hear. And I think the last thing I want to invite you to share with people’s, if there’s someone out there listening right now and let’s say that they, you know, they kind of have the big dream, whether it’s in music or not, but they are, they’re at that moment where they’re like hitting their head against the wall, kind of like you have been and they’re bumping up against that roadblock and they’re, you know, feeling like no one’s listening. No one’s paying attention. What would you, what would you say to that person right now?
BK: (34:58)
Well, I think the first thing is, is you got to look inside and you haven’t, if what you’re selling, what you’ve created, what you’re working towards and what you’re working on, whether that’s an invention, whether that’s your song writing, whether that’s you know, any type of entrepreneurial idea. Do you genuinely believe that it’s gonna that it’s gonna work? Cause if you do and you’ve got that heart and soul invested into it, well then that’s great. Then you can go to step two. Now you can always rework step one and make sure that what you’re doing is refined and unbeatable because then when you go out to step two, it’s just about continuing to work hard, hard work, pays off. It always has. It always will. You know what? Two of my biggest influences are people that I’ve never met, but I really hope to.
BK: (35:49)
One day one is dwarf Johnson with his drank and his perseverance, his incredible gratitude. But his work ethic and the other one is one of the softest entrepreneurs. She’s fierce and fiery, and that’s Dolly Parton who’s developed and built that in music and, and, and Edmond and parks. And so Dolly and, and the rock couldn’t be further from each other, like look at them. They couldn’t be further from each other. But do you know what they have in common? Work ethic? They are workers in the room. And I truly respect that because hard work pays off. And it’s something that you and I talked about, Rory, that has been neat for me out work, everyone. I know I’m not the most talented, but I know that I’ve got that farming background and it’s in my blood. The rock did it. Dolly Parton did it. I want to do it to outwork everybody. So that’s what everyone else needs to do. Well, someone else has been out or taken a bit of time off or a holiday or something like that. Work your way in and take that meeting and work till midnight. Do what you need to do out everybody if that.
RV: (37:08)
Well, there you have it. We’ll end on that note. Brett Kissel, ladies and gentlemen, go follow them on Instagram. We’ll put a link to his website, Brett kissel.com Brett, we wish you the very best my friend. We’re honored to be in your fan base and part of your truth. And we’re just, we’re committed to, to see you break through in here in the U S as you have in Canada and around the world. We know it’s coming brothers, so, so keep at it.
BK: (37:33)
Oh buddy. Thank you so much for this. I really appreciate it. Hi to your family. We’ll see you back in music city very soon.
Ep 34: A Posture of Gratitude with Christy Wright
RV: (00:06)
Hey Brand Builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview. As always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders group.com/pod call. We hope to talk to you soon.
RV: (00:55)
Christy is someone who’s been a friend now for like a couple of years. She is a number one national bestselling author of a book called business boutique. She hosts the business boutique podcast, which is a huge podcast. They have an annual event, which is also huge, and she is a certified business coach and she is one of the Ramsey personalities which we’re going to talk a lot about. So she has specifically a passion for flipping women with the knowledge and steps they need to successfully grow a business. So she joined Ramsey solutions in 2009. She’s spoken to tens of thousands of people across the country at their events, other events, national conferences, and they have built a huge, huge brand for her in, you know, very, very short order. And so we’re going to just talk to her about, you know, I think her path, which is very, very unique path and then also some of the lessons that she has learned and that she shares with her audience. So they’re going to love her if you don’t already know her. So Christie, welcome to the show.
CW: (01:56)
Rory, thanks so much for having me. You have been such a great friend to me and I will do anything for you. I’m just so grateful to be here. This is going to be fun.
RV: (02:03)
Yeah, totally. Well, I appreciate that. And you know, I’ve always been dear to you. I think you, you have such an endearing presence and such a you know, like a passion for serving. And I think to jump right into it, can you explain what it means to a Ramsey personality?
CW: (02:21)
Yes. Let’s start with that. That’s a good starting point.
RV: (02:27)
You know, either under don’t understand it and, and specifically I think, I think it’s a lot of people when they think of building their personal brand, the natural thing is I have to do this all on my own. I have to like control it. I have to own it, I have to do all of it. But there are other paths and other options and I think yours is kind of more of a nontraditional one. So just like give us the background.
CW: (02:51)
Yeah, for sure. Well, let me just start with kind of why this position even evolved because really I got the same question for my friends family when I announced to them, Oh, you know, I’m going to become a Ramsey personality. They’re like, awesome. What does that mean? I’m like, well, because this is all very new for us, but really where it started for us as a company, as an organization of now 800 people led by our CEO nationally syndicated radio show host, obviously multiple New York times bestselling author, Dave Ramsey, which many people know. He’s at the stage of life where he’s starting to look at this company and the hundreds of people. It was a little less when, when it started back in 2012 but he’s starting to look at the success and plan and say, okay, what is the future look like for this company that is completely built on one man?
CW: (03:38)
The entire brand was one man, the Dave Ramsey show, all of the books, everything was driven by Dave Ramsey, the personality, but it was also led by Dave Ramsey demand, the leader, the CEO. And so he started to realize, you know, if I’m going to have a transition plan for the future for these hundreds of team members, for the millions of people that we are helping them want to continue to help in the future, then we need to have a plan for that. And so over many, many years and lots of research and sitting with some of the most brilliant minds in the country, in the world of how they’ve made transitional movements through their company, whether it’s generational movements to, you know, passing down ownership to the kids or leadership transitions. And he really started to come up with a plan. And that plan is threefold. Obviously there’s going to be a handoff from him, him to his three kids and ownership.
CW: (04:26)
But then he created a board. He diversified as leaderships read it out where it used to be just three guys and a lot of bottlenecks. He now has an entire board that’s growing. But then he thought, how do I transition the brand? How do I transition the trust, the content, the life change and transformation that, you know, he’s built over 25, 30 years of doing this. And he said, you know, we need more people doing what I’m doing. And what he was doing and still is doing is writing and speaking and doing media and helping people as the personality and the face of this company. And and so they looked at creating a new position called the Ramsey personalities. And it’s a very unique role because you have to have someone that has something to say. They have great content that helps people and an area of their life, but they also have to have the heart of a servant where they’re not a diva, you know, thinking they’re going to roll into a speaking event and have only green M&Ms and white couches. You need to have someone that is teachable and coachable and not too far along where they’ve got their own thing going, where this isn’t a value to them because they’re a part of a bigger team and a bigger company. But that has the skills and the talent that can be cultivated. And so we formed the Ramsey personality back into, I guess it was 2012 but 2014 in that transition. And I’ve been a speaker for years. Huh.
RV: (05:47)
But that sounds about right. Cause I think the first time, you know, I, I met Ramsey really I was a fan and then there was an employee there who threw my name in the hat. I came to at Divo. Like I remember I was here, it was a while ago though. That was probably like when you first got there that it would’ve been like 2010. Yep. And I remember talking to Jeremy Breland and some of the people, cause I was really close with Zig Ziglar, Zig bee. I know Dave was close with him as well. Yeah. Interesting to see, you know, the Ziglar organization kind of like sort of stumble through in some ways. They didn’t, they didn’t have as much time to kind of plan. And I think that was just one of several things that kind of Dave was like, okay, right, we got to do this. But there was only 250 people there and now there’s 850 and correct me if I’m wrong, but I was just over there. I was just over there with you because one of our clients, Lewis house was your show and he was on Dave’s show. And I think I heard Dave say something like 15 million people a week are just his brand alone. Right.
CW: (06:57)
And just that’s just the radio show. That’s not any of the other books or platforms or social media. That’s just the radio show. It’s crazy. Yeah, know it’s a lot of responsibility, right? Like to carry this thing that he’s built. And and so I think that’s where, like you said, he started coming up with a plan, but then it, it was a gradual rollout. It wasn’t an overnight thing, but we had, we had formed the speaker’s group back in 2010 and that was really our response just to speaking needs because Dave at that time in 2010 was turning down 3000 requests a year for speaking that he couldn’t do. Those are just the ones that he couldn’t do. And he was speaking much more at that time. And I thought, you know what, we need more speakers. This was way before Ramsey personalities was even a thought on anybody’s radar.
CW: (07:42)
And so they formed the speakers group and it was five men and two women, Rachel Cruz and myself. And I kind of was slid into that group. I was a youth project coordinator, worry like I was doing products like piggy banks and kids’ books and Bible studies. But I hopped in there and filled in for Rachel on this particular conference, this one summer and I did a really good job. So that’s all. They kind of slid me in to this group. No audition, no application, no interview. It’s like, Oh, she did a good job. Like, we’re literally flying by the seat of our pants here at the staff. And because I tell people all the time, you know, in Sheryl Sandberg’s book, lean in, she says, some of the most amazing career opportunities are not positions that are posted but problems that you solve and that thing becomes your job.
CW: (08:23)
And that’s really what happened. They needed a speaker and I raised my hand and I was like, well, I’ll just, I’ll just do it. And they’re like, can you speak? I was like, I don’t know, think so. I never spoke to them all, but I’ll figure it out. And so that turned into the speaker’s group, which then evolved with more intention over time into the Ramsey personality. So we really are the message bearers for the future of this company in different areas. Anything from obviously money with Rachel Cruz and Chris Hogan. I’m Anthony O’Neil, but then even can Coleman as in the career space. And I really have been in the business space for women and also a little bit of personal development. So we’re trying to go into more markets, spread the message wider. Really just to help more people and go into the future.
RV: (09:03)
Yeah, it’s, it’s, it’s amazing. And everyone on the team there, I mean on top of just, you know, transforming our life personally, financially. Then getting to meet Dave, then meeting the team now seeing all of you, like we just think so, so highly of you all and you’re doing such great work. Mmm. So yeah, hopefully you don’t mind me asking this. No. I want to talk to you about the ego part of this. You know, Dave is, Dave is as big as it gets as a personal brand and you know, there has to be a little bit of feeling like, Oh we’re, we’re in Dave’s shadow also. You know, you look to other people going, okay, they’re building their own thing and it’s like they’re in full control. And how have you sort of reconciled, not caring about it being like all your thing and your ownership and how have you kind of moved beyond the light? I guess what I would assume is kind of a natural ego struggle to like want to be the main personality and the owner and the like.
CW: (10:07)
Yeah. Yeah. It’s a combination of things. I’ll tell you, people have asked me so many times like, you know, when you, when you, when I came out with my book, they’re like, Oh my gosh, is this just a dream come true? And I’m like, well, not technically because I never dreamt to write a book. And I know this sounds silly. Like, Oh, I’ve just woke up here. It’s not that. It’s not like I just woke up here because it was a lot of hard work and God opening doors. The thing is, has God opened doors? I didn’t know I wanted to walk through. I never had the dream to be a speaker, to be an author, to be a personality, a business coach. I never had those dreams story. Like I thought I was going to work at an advertising agency. And so I think for me, as God has opened doors and I have walked through those doors, I’m discovering things about myself.
CW: (10:50)
I didn’t know existed. And so every day to me is just incredibly grateful. Like I feel like I won the lottery, that I get to do this because it wasn’t even on my radar that I wanted to do this. There’s a quote that I love. It says, I didn’t know that I was a bell until someone picked me up and rang me. And that’s all I feel like I didn’t know I could write. And then I’ve had all these opportunities to write and Oh my gosh, turns out I could write and I really enjoy it. I’m fast and it’s good. And that’s a gift God has given me. I didn’t even know I had. And so I think it has created in me a very natural, very effortless posture of gratitude. But I just feel so grateful to get to do this because it doesn’t matter if I’m the greatest speaker in the world.
CW: (11:29)
If I’m the greatest you know, author in the world, greatest business coach, if no one knows about it, then I’m not able to help people. And so Dave Ramsey in this company took a chance on me, put me in a lot of money behind me on their platform. There’s a lot of trust there. I mean, he’s built this thing over 30 years and he said, Hey, I’m gonna hand you a piece of this and lets you run with it. So that’s one piece of it. I think just, I never sought this. And so I know I have a very natural posture of gratitude. Like, wow, this is so cool, I get to do this. But then on the other side of it, the nature of what I do I have been able to carve it out for myself within this platform. And so Dave is the first to recognize that my market is not his market.
CW: (12:11)
And there might be some overlap, but I mean, we’ll, we’ll go head to head and meetings where I will fight for things that he doesn’t agree with and there will always win. Sometimes I lose, but I will fight for things because I’m kind of in this sandbox where he’s like, I don’t know. It’s not how market, you know, I don’t use a planner, I don’t, I don’t do these things. I’m telling you my market does. This is what they need and here’s, here’s the approach at my event, we dance to shake it off. You’re never going to dance to check it off. Like he lets me kind of get away with stuff and I kind of love that. And so Dave is very entrepreneurial. Our culture is very entrepreneurial and I am very entrepreneurial. My mom and dad are both entrepreneurs and so I feel like I get to exercise all of the entrepreneurial skills, skills within this sandbox where I kind of get to break the rules and fly under the radar and they’re like, Oh, it’s Christie’s thing.
CW: (13:00)
Just let her go do whatever. And it’s not completely like that. Like there’s oversight, there’s approvals, there’s processes. We’re part of a bigger organization. But it’s amazing how much I feel like I get to exercise that. But then I get the benefit of I have an entire social media team. I have an entire video team, I have an entire content team that’s going to clean up my grammar. And so it’s like what I love about this from my perspective, that’s right for me, to your point, that’s not for everybody, but I get to do [inaudible] best dad. I get to do all the coaching, all the speaking and all the writing. And I’m not over here trying to figure out social media algorithms cause there’s somebody really smart doing that for me and I’m not creating graphics. There’s somebody really great at graphics that are creating that for my, and so to me it’s just a win win situation that again, I just feel so grateful for. So it’s interesting how I feel like the diva or the ego has been such a nonissue because I get to exercise that freedom and creativity in owning what I’ve created here with the team to support it and still be a part of the bigger picture of what we’re trying to do.
RV: (14:02)
Yeah, yeah. I love that. And I think the part about the team is powerful. It speaks to just the reality of it does, it takes a team I think. I think in a lot of ways brand builders group is becoming four people for individuals.
CW: (14:17)
That’s awesome. It’s needed. It’s a very, it’s a very big need.
RV: (14:21)
It’s hard to, it’s like, I mean there’s, so, there’s so many pieces of video editing and con like
CW: (14:26)
SEO, email marketing, all those pieces that if your speaker and author are trying to build a brand, you don’t, it’s not just that you don’t even know how to do it. Usually you don’t have the time to cause you need to be doing what you’re good at.
RV: (14:37)
Yeah. Yeah. And I love you know, thinking about that idea of just a natural posture of gratitude. What a great, eloquent phrase of just the [inaudible] regardless of, of what your personal brand is. I think one of the things that I kind of love about your situation is you stepped into it and I think for a brand, when they’re just by themselves, they have to get to the same place. But it’s usually along the road because they have to the, there is the option of the ego settling in. They own everything and they’re in control a hundred percent and they have to get past that mature to where they’re just serving their audience and they’re just grateful to be there.
CW: (15:21)
And to your point, you’ve gotta be like when you’re starting out, and, and I experienced this even before I became a Ramsey personality when I was doing some other stuff. You have to be scrappy. You got to elbow your way a little bit in there. You got to make sure you’re not taking advantage of where everyone wants you to speak for free. Like you still need to protect yourself. And it’s not an ego. It’s a balance there of like, I’m going to be wise and be smart and be scrappy to get going, but then maintain that posture of gratitude along the way. So it really is a, to your point, it’s about, I’ll tell you one of the things that I’ve noticed as a pattern, Marina, I was just talking about this the other day. So at my events or or any event, if you don’t have a book signing line and people are coming up to talk to me, I often have people tell me, and I’m sure you do too.
CW: (16:03)
Hey, I want to do what you do. I want to, I want to speak, I want to write how do I do what you do? And what’s amazing to me is I ask them one question every single time in response to that. I said, what do you want to say? And if they don’t have an answer about what they want to say or who they want to help or how they want to help them, it’s pretty indicative to me that they want the fame, they want the spotlight, they’re approaching this whole thing from what’s in it for me? What can I get? What can I get? Can I get likes? Can I get approval? Can I get high fives? Can I get money? Can I get opportunities? Can I get, you know, relationships with really important people? Can I get fame? And if you approach anything like that in life, whether it’s a relationship or a business or a platform, or even a stage talk, if you walk on stage as a keynote speaker thinking, how can I get last?
CW: (16:52)
How can I get a standing ovation? You’ve lost, you’ve lost, you’ve lost before. You’ve even begun because you think somehow it’s about you and it’s not. Business is not. Life is not a keynote. Presentation is not being an author is not. It’s not about what you can get. It’s about what you can give and if you approach your business or your platform or your brand or anything from the perspective and the posture of what can I give, how can I give value? How can I add life change? How can I provide information or inspiration or transformation? How can I give something? You’ll get all that in more. You’ll get the applause. You’ll get the legs, you’ll get the, you’ll get the standing ovation, but people can feel it, and I know you know this from being a speaker, like people think when they’re in the audience that they’re anonymous, like we can’t see them.
CW: (17:42)
I’m like, I think like we see you, but you could feel the energy in an audience and an audience can feel the energy from you. And if you walk on stage trying to be cute and be funny and, and somehow it’s all about you in the spotlight, they will feel that energy. And they also feel it when it’s the opposite. They feel it when you walk out there and you give it all you’ve got because you genuinely care about how they feel and what they need and adding value. And so I would just say my advice for anybody as they’re building a brand or a business, social media, apply it to anything. Don’t focus on what you can get focused on what you can give and you will get all that. But you have to have the right posture going into it at any stage of the game, whether you have one follower or 1 million, it doesn’t matter. That’s the posture you have to maintain.
RV: (18:28)
Hey men for reject girl, like rent a man. I love that. And it’s so, so powerful. Well, hearing that from someone like you who has great, it’s such a huge monster platform over the years. And, and just so you know, by the way, next time somebody comes up and says, I want to do what you do, if you say go talk to brand builders group and we will help you and we will send you a commission check. And then we will send them this interview and be like, do what Christie says
CW: (19:06)
It’s a win, win, win,
RV: (19:08)
Serve, serve, serve, serve. You know, I, I think, I feel like that’s also calling right there. There’s something in Proverbs. I don’t know the exact words, but it’s something about like a man creates plans, but the Lord determines his steps. And you are such a, you know, your story is like such a great example that you never asked to do this. You never saw this, but clearly like God had a plan to use you to reach all these people. And I just, I just, I think that’s, I think that’s really, really wonderful. Go ahead.
CW: (19:46)
I was just going to say one of the things that’s so amazing about what you just said is if you’re a believer and you remember that, then it really does take the pressure off. Now I’m not saying you don’t need to work hard or be excellent because I have put in lots of hard work and I’m the first person say it takes a lot of hard work. It’s a lot of daily grind. It’s a lot of speaking at Kentucky County libraries on a Friday night in high school, your evenings, which I have done plenty of times. It’s a lot of getting in. The reps I’m practicing preparing. It’s a lot of that. However, I still at times if I’m at a new event, it’s a big arena. It’s a larger crowd than I’ve ever spoken to or I feel out of my league in some way.
CW: (20:23)
I’m standing behind backstage waiting for them to call my name and I’ve got those jitters which still come up sometimes if something’s new and I just remind myself, God put me here. I did not put myself here. God put me here and if God put me here, he wants to use me in some way. He knows something I don’t know. So I don’t need to focus on all my limitations or flaws or what if I screw up or what if I’ll fall and my heels. I don’t need to focus on all that. All I need to think about is doing what I came here to do because God’s going to do the rest. And so it really does kind of take the pressure off that if God calls you to it, he’s going to bring you through it. The cliche thing we hear all the time, but it helps you remember if I got myself there then I’d be like, Oh gosh, I’m got to maintain this thing.
CW: (21:05)
It’s like I didn’t get myself there. Like God put me there because God wants to do something. And so I think that helps me. At any stage when there’s some fear that creeps up, it’s like, I love the verse actually from first Thessalonians five 24 it’s in the front of my book business boutique. It says, the one who calls you is baseball and he will do it. He will do it, not you. He will do it. He will be the one to pull this off. Now you’ve got to be excellent, do hard work, prepare all that. But he’s going to be the one to pull it off. He’s going to be the one to transform those lots in the audience or the readers of your book. And so man, it takes the pressure off when you, if you’re a believer then it really does take the pressure off when you realize you’re partnering with God and he brought you there and he’s got things he’s going to do through you. If you just get out of your own way.
RV: (21:48)
Yeah. Amen. I love it. Although I will say my only prayer is that hopefully he didn’t bring there. Bring me there to trip in my stilettos. So
CW: (21:58)
Crosses your mind a lot. It definitely does. So well Christie, I have one more question for you, but before that,
RV: (22:07)
Where should people go if they want to connect with you? If they want to check out business boutique? I mean your events have gotten so like spectacular.
CW: (22:14)
Oh well thank you. It’s been a lot of fun. It’s been fun to see it grow over the last five years or so. Business boutique.com you can find the book, the podcast, my coaching group, all that. And then on Instagram it’s Christy, right? Twitter’s the same. Facebook I think is Facebook I think is official Christie, right? [inaudible] Online business. Boutique.Com is probably the easiest.
RV: (22:34)
Yeah. So, so the last little thing I want to leave you with is, is let’s say that somebody, somebody out there is watching right now and I think there are a lot of people who we come in touch with it at brand builders who it’s like they’re the people who come up to you and say, you know, how do I do what you do? I want to be not there. I want to be a speaker, but I want you to talk to the person who is maybe watching or listening who didn’t have that clear path. It didn’t have that like clear vision that’s more like you, but now they somehow are feeling like this is coming up. Like there’s opportunities coming there. What advice would you give to someone who never thought they would actually be doing this? Yeah, planned to build a personal brand, but now they’re sort of sensing either their intuition or do they feel the spirit moving or the calling or what do you say? [inaudible] And maybe they’re a little resistant even. Yeah. Yeah. W what would you, what would you say to that person?
CW: (23:38)
Well, two things, and I’m sure you have run into this with sales, Rory, because you are just such a brilliant sales teacher. But I think think of sales as a personality style. It’s for the extrovert, it’s for the social, it’s for the, you know, I’m super energetic and competent people, but I want to tell people all the time is sales is not a personality style. It’s a skill and skills can be learned. And that’s true for authors and speakers as well. It’s not a personality style that you’re a certain type of speaker. You’re an extrovert, you’re social, you’re funny, you’re charismatic, it’s a skill and it’s a skill that can be learned. Regardless of your personality style. And I’ll give you a great example. I was on the propel women’s tour in the fall of 2017 and one of the speakers that I had the privilege of hearing that I’d never heard before is Sarah Jakes Roberts.
CW: (24:26)
And I’m sitting in the audience and she comes on stage and Rory, she is one of the most fantastic communicators I’ve ever heard. And I promise you, I have heard a lot of good speakers. She owned that crowd. She was hilarious. Her stories were amazing. Her points were amazing. Her story arc, her flow, the entire thing. Cause you know, as a speaker you can’t just sit there and consume speakers as speakers. You’re also like, Oh, I see what you did there. That was brilliant. She was absolutely brilliant. I mean sassy, all that. So we got back in the green room and I’m trying to find her because I want to go up to her and be like, Oh my gosh, you are amazing. Well done. You know, that kind of thing. I so enjoyed your session and I couldn’t find her. And eventually I found her and she’s over in the corner sitting in a high top table with one other person and kind of an intimate setting and conversation. And a little bit later when it seemed like there was a break in their conversation, I went up, I was like, Hey, I don’t want to bother you. I just wanted to say what a great job. Thank you. Thank you.
CW: (25:27)
She was the most soft spoken, quiet. Her natural personality is incredibly introverted and she would be quick to say that she’s very introverted, very quiet. She’d prefer to be one on one and be the center of a crowd like me or Christine Kane, you know, telling stories and holding court type of thing. And I just found that so fascinating that she was so brilliant. And I actually talked to her about that on my podcast when she was on my podcast and I said, tell me what that’s like. And she was like, God asked me to do it. He’s going to give me the ability to do what he’s asked me to do, even if it’s not in my comfort zone. And often if you look at scripture, that’s exactly what he does. He uses unlikely people to do unlikely things in unlikely places. And I’ll tell you a verse that God took me to it was the fall of 2015 when we were just, it was our very first business boutique event.
CW: (26:14)
So again, this is completely unknown. I’m writing a three day event, I’m a new personality. I felt this pressure to prove myself and like make sure Dave Ramsey doesn’t regret taking this chance on me. And I’m having this complete meltdown. It’s like the month before the event, I’m like, I can’t do it. I can’t do it. I can’t do it. I’m not the person they’ve got the wrong girl. Like, what am I doing? What am I doing? And I opened my Bible and it went to Exodus and it was the part where the Lord is telling Moses what to say. And Moses like, Oh, I can’t speak. I’m not eloquent of speech. I’m not, you know, I don’t know what to say. And God said, who gains man his mouth? Who tells him what to say or when to go? He said, go. And I will tell you what to say.
CW: (26:55)
I will teach you what to say. And it was the most perfectly timed messaged for me of like Christy who gave man or woman their mouth. I will teach you what to say. And so regardless of your personality style, just encourage you that if God is stirring something in you, it’s because he has plans for people and you’re going to be a vessel for that that he’s going to use. So get out of your own way and let him do what only he can do because I promise you, he will teach you what to say and he will show you where to go. He will give you the ability to do that thing even if it doesn’t feel comfortable for you. Oh wow. I got goosies. I absolutely, I love it.
RV: (27:35)
Well, Christy, thank you so much for just kind of the transparent conversation and a little bit of like behind the scenes, the walls. I think it’s just, I just wanted people to get to chance to hear your heart and like get a little insight into just your desire to serve and, and to be led to be. I think there’s no doubt that that’s why the work you’re doing is so impactful and you’re reaching so many people and we’re just, we’re fans and we’re cheering you on and you know that if there’s anything we can ever do for you, let us know. And we wish you all the best.
CW: (28:08)
Well, likewise. Thanks so much for, I’m grateful for your friendship. Grateful for what you’re doing. I’m so excited about this next chapter. So anything I can do to support you, I’m in [inaudible].
Ep 32: You Are Your Audience’s Fiduciary with Jordan Harbinger
RV: (00:06)
Hey Brand Builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview. As always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to see if we might be a fit.
So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brandbuildersgroup.com/podcall We hope to talk to you soon, called into personal favor to bring you guys.
Jordan Harbinger. Jordan is really become one of the podcasts celebrities of the day. And it’s been so inspiring to me because he has hosted a top 50 iTunes podcast for over 12 years, and he didn’t just do it once. He did it twice, he had a show then he switched and started over. And now he’s the host of the Jordan harbinger show, which gets 5 million downloads a month.
So, you know, he’s been a talk show host, he’s a former wall street lawyer and he’s just really an expert on social dynamics and just kind of communication in general. And I just, I am just amazed at what this guy does and he’s been a friend and a supporter of me over the year. I’ve learned a ton just from watching him. And so I called in a favor to see if he would share some of the secrets to just some of the truth about what it takes to build a monster podcast.
RV: (01:50) So Jordan, thanks for being here. Hey, thanks for having me on, man. I appreciate it. And I gotta say, I love that shirt. I’m going to forget one of those. Yeah. Well we’ll, we’ll see. This is, this is a dad shirt. I know you have baby coming here soon, so it’s perfect. I’m about to become a dad. Let me know where to sign up.
I call this the dad pocket cause this is like the pocket you never use until you become a dad and then all of a sudden like you use this pocket all the time for just like bottles and wipes and all sorts of stuff that you get to look forward to the pacifier pocket. Yeah, I’m in. So well you to me are just like one of the models and the great success stories I think of the age that we live in.
RV: (02:36)
And you know, seeing your rise in the podcast world, but especially what’s inspiring is seeing you rebuild. And that’s something that we know something about. We’re, we’re rebuilding Brand Builders Group is now, you know, really just hitting our first year and you know, so we’re in a reinvention stage ourself.
And one of the things that we learned is that building a reputation is more than building a business because you can rebuild quickly if you have reputation. And so I wanted to just hear, you know, since we study reputation, like what is your definition of reputation or when you think about reputation, like what are your philosophies about it? How do you build one
RV: (03:17)
What have you done to create just the overall reputation that Jordan harbinger has?
JH: (03:23)
So that’s a really good question because I never spent a ton of time consciously thinking about reputation. You know, I originally thought, well, I’m teaching people how to network. I should probably walk the walk because otherwise it’s disingenuous. And I also thought about, well it’s the internet and I’ve seen people who do shady things and word travels really fast. Or if you do something that’s not so good, but you’ve done a hundred things that are good, what do you get known for?
You know, you get known for the shady thing and especially if whatever it is that you’ve done that’s negative is in direct opposition to what you’ve been doing, that’s positive. It tends to massively override that stuff. We all know the story of like Tony Robbins bullied someone
JH: (04:15)
It’s like the overriding thing that you think of when and it’s what everyone talks about. So instead of just thinking, avoid doing bad things and stick to doing good things to build reputation, what you really need to do is start thinking about how do I best advocate for people around me and for me as a podcast or as an interviewer, that means be an advocate for the audience of the show. So it becomes really easy to turn down dirty money, so to speak from, let’s say there’s an advertiser that wants to come on the Jordan harbinger show and they want to do like gambling ads, right?
Or there’s a company that’s like, Hey, we sell these hair loss pills. We don’t have a clinical study, but we’re going to pay you 35 bucks CPM. You if you’re not, if you don’t have an overriding principle, you start going, Hmm, that’s, I could use that money.
JH: (05:02)
And then, but on the other hand, it looks like this, but on the other hand, it’s only a short run. But on the other hand, you know, you start doing that. But if you just think, what would I do if I had a fiduciary duty to my listener or my customer as I would if I was a lawyer, I have a client attorney, client relationship, you can’t go, well, I really need the money, so I’m going to advise my client to do something against their interest.
Did you can’t do that? So I just start thinking, what if I had, what if the listener was my brother or something like that. What if I had a fiduciary duty, which is literally what fiduciary means, you know it comes from, it’s probably a Latin thing there. What would you, how would you behave? So then it becomes really easy to turn down stupid stuff that’s shortsighted because you go, Oh well I would ruin that relationship if I did that. And that’s the most important thing in the business. So I just want to do that. So I love that.
RV: (05:49)
That’s a great, that’s such a powerful parallel. And con just you as the post, you literally view your role as a duty
JH: (05:58)
To the audience, not to the people you’re interviewing to the audience listening. That’s a huge difference. Actually. It’s funny cause I, I tried to make it more general for our conversation here, but I see this mistake happening a lot among among influencers, but especially among podcast interviewers because they go, Ooh, I want to be famous. That’s their number one sort of priority. So they start interviewing like boring you tubers that nobody cares about. A singer that was popular in the 90s that they’re not even interested in. They have this really sort of aha gee, that’s cool conversation.
And then they pushed it out to their list and they’re like, look, here’s me standing next to some TV star from the 90s and it’s like, look, I’m famous to it. It’s totally self serving. Your audience eventually get sick of that. Or you have someone on who is a celebrity and you start soft balling them because you’re like, Ooh, if I do a good enough job, soft balling them, then we’ll, I’ll be friends with this person and then they’ll connect me to their friends.
JH: (06:53)
Dot dot. Dot. I’ll become more well known in Hollywood. I don’t care about that stuff at all. It’s not that I don’t care. It’s not that I don’t care at all. I should take that back. I care this much, this tiny little piece. Sure. Everybody wants to be liked. Wouldn’t it be great if I became friends with Corey Booker or Howard shields or Elizabeth Warren or fair trade, whatever, or you know, you can put in any name of any celebrity or politician that you want. Wouldn’t it be great if they like me?
Yes. But what would be even better is if my audience still trusted me, so I have to again, take that fiduciary responsibility and if it’s a question of shoot, well, if I ask her about his DNA thing that she did that was really embarrassing, she’ll like me less, but the audience will respect it because they’re wondering the same thing.
JH: (07:41)
The calculation is really easy when you say, I have a fiduciary duty to the listener because otherwise you go, Hmm, they won’t like me as much. Do I want to do this? Well, if you only think about the listener and you forget the rest, then you actually create a better show. Your audience trusts you more and you know what people respect you when you ask them questions that they know you want to hear and that you don’t soft ball.
Then like, yeah, cool. If you’re interviewing Quintin Tarantino, he’s going to have a temper tantrum if you ask him about gun violence. But if you have on somebody who wants to generate trust with your audience as well, which is kind of the point of doing an interview, if you’re selling a book or running for office, then you should be welcoming tough questions and you have to do it in a way that’s fair.
JH: (08:21)
Of course you have to do in a way that’s well researched, but your responsibility is to the listener, not to yourself and becoming more well known online and not to the guest and trying to get them to like you. That’s short game. Let’s talk about that. So so in terms of being the host, right, cause that’s, I think one of the things, you know, one of the overriding questions is how do I get people to listen to my show? Yeah.
That starts with having a great show, which is a great host. And what do you think makes a great conversation? Okay. So we have the backdrop of fiduciary responsibility to your audience, but how do choose which questions to ask? How do you determine which guests come on when you’re just like in the heat of the moment doing the interview? Like is there anything in your brain internally, Jordan that that makes you go, Ooh, I want to, I want to know more about that or these are the questions I’m going to do or not do?
JH: (09:12)
Like can you, can you just walk us through like your mindset on that? Sure. So when I’m, when I’m looking at guests booking, I don’t look at which guest has a higher public profile. I mean there’s some of that for sure. But usually it’s like what book did I read that I’m interested in? And I try to pick things that I’m interested in because I know I’ll do a good interview based on that.
Then secondarily I look for things that the audience will be interested in. The reason that that’s secondary is because I can’t really fake being interested in something. Also trying to predict what your audience is going to be interested in is kind of like a dice roll. And so if I’m thinking, Oh, I really want to have on this pop star because they’re really hot right now, my audience will love that.
JH: (09:58)
They can definitely tell. I don’t care because I’m sort of, it’s hard. Again, it’s hard for me to fake enthusiasm and I think other people who do, they think they’re doing a great job, but the audience still can smell it. I mean humans are smart whether they’re listening or watching, and if I’m thinking about what I’m interested in, there’s always going to be some sort of decent overlap in what the audience is also interested in.
Right? Cause I’m, I’m more or less a geeky, normal guy and so if I interview somebody who got kidnapped by Al Qaeda in Syria, which is one of my recent episodes, there’s going to be like 70% of the audience that goes, all right, I’ll listen to this. Especially if they know that I only do really interesting stuff. Most of the time they’ll give it a shot. Even if they’re thinking photographer, that kid kidnapped by Al Qaeda, I’m not.
JH: (10:45)
Why? What do I care that doesn’t affect my life? People will go, well Jordan only interviews people that are interesting. So I’ll get that person on my enthusiasm then becomes contagious. The audience really gets involved in the story and then they like it after all. So I routine what you want and what I routinely shoot for is I’ll have, like I routinely had somebody on Chelsea handler, she’s kind of a very controversial comedian. Some people hated her and I thought she had an interesting backstory.
I don’t really care for her necessarily her current political views or whatever. But I, I liked her backstory cause she grew up in this very unique way and made something of herself really early on. She’s very driven. So I’m looking for the audience saying things like, and this is kind of a little goal saying things like, I don’t like her but I’m going to listen to this.
JH: (11:30)
And then after the show going, I still don’t really like her but great interview or I like her a lot more now than I did before because you want to make somebody appealing. And the way that you do that is by being interested. So you have to be interested in them first. You can’t predict where the audience is gonna go unless you’ve done some sort of crazy internet targeting, and again, you’re still going to be wrong.
You know, I just, people always go, how did you decide where to pivot and where to take your interviews? And the answer is my own curiosity within limitations. You know, if I could talk about North Korea all the time, I probably would do too many episodes on that and people would go, okay, this guy just talks about North Korea all the time. Who cares? So I have to have like some railings around the edges of the arena, if you will, some boundaries.
JH: (12:15)
But I’m not always trying to push the envelope on those things. Or I should, I, sorry. I am always trying to push the envelope on those things and do shows that might be a little bit outside my comfort zone or the audience’s comfort zone. But I’m not going for shock value. I’m not going for the Supreme amount of celebrity in limelight.
Because when you do that, especially if you have a new show, you’re commoditizing yourself. Like if you go, all right, I want to interview entrepreneurs, and then you interview all of the same people that every other host has had. You’re not interested. You just feel like you need to check them off your list. Your audience is going to cue your, you just phoning it in and you’ve become a commodity. You’re another podcast or another influencer, another interviewer that’s doing the same thing as everybody else.
JH: (13:00)
There’s no, there’s nothing about it that makes it more interesting, right? I’m not sure if you’re a comedian, you have your own brand of humor, but if you’re a journalist and you get, there’s a reason journalists always want to be first because as soon as somebody else gets a story, nobody really cares about the other.
The second and third version of the same thing. So you have to bring something unique to the table and usually that’s your personality, but when you’re first starting, I mean, I’ve been doing this for 12 years. For the first eight years, my personality was not that freaking interesting. All right. It’s still a work in progress. So like for the first few years when you’re learning to be a performer, if you’re, let’s say you’re a singer, you probably sound a lot like your voice teacher. You probably sound a lot like other people in the choir, you know, if you’re a guitarist, you asked that.
JH: (13:47)
So like how’d you get past that time? So time, just time, time and practice, right? Like, look, I’m sure there’s somebody like Jim Morrison who’s played the guitar and then for the first few years they sound like everyone else and then really quickly they branch off and they’re doing their own thing or like a David Bowie type figure.
But if you can really dig to the bottom of everyone’s talent, like any musician, just to relate it to that, there’s definitely a five to 10 year period for most musicians where they sound exactly like everyone else who plays the guitar because they’re learning the chords, they’re learning all the different techniques. They’re learning the notes, learning the risks, they’re learning how to play standing up, sitting down. They are singing along to their favorite songs. They’re not writing that much new stuff, man. You know, like it was a Vici who’s an electronic music artist that has since passed away.
JH: (14:32)
I don’t know if you’ve ever heard of him. Super well known electronic artists, his, and in the documentary they talk with him and they say, I mean, he says something along the lines of, yeah, I just spent years remaking other people’s music. I made a new track every day and I just remade all the stuff that I could.
And then when I was finished, I’d remade everything. Then I started making new stuff and I thought, that’s a really interesting creative process. And I bet you it’s not that far away from a kid who picks up a guitar at age 12, starts playing stairway to heaven and then graduates to whatever sort of new rock he’s playing. And then one day goes, what if there was a song like this and then starts playing? It’s like, I should write this down. But that’s like five to 10 years into the game.
JH: (15:15)
They don’t pick up a guitar and go, let me write a new song right now. They’re trying to figure out how to hold their hand this way and hold their other hand this way and not mess it all up. Well on one thing that even comes out of that, that that may be like obvious to you, but I actually think is not that obvious to people, is that you as the host are a performer. Like you are a part.
You’re not just, you’re not just ahead regurgitating questions like your personalities and active part of of it. And that’s what people are, even though it’s like you have guests every week, they, their listeners really become bonded to you more than anybody. They do. Yeah. Your Larry King told me, Hey man, don’t talk too much during your show because you’re there every week. So I went through this curve that was good and bad advice, right?
JH: (16:01)
Because of course, back in his day, he might’ve been one of the three interview shows that was on the radio. So of course, you know, let the guest have their moment in the sun and I still do that, you know, I still want them to do that. I think a lot of hosts, most hosts in fact talk too much, but you have to play a part in it because again, if you’re not preparing a lot and you don’t have a unique perspective, there is no reason for anyone to listen to you because you’re a commodity.
You’ve commoditized yourself. So me not being hilarious and funny or anything like that, me having a normal sort of no BS personality, I’ll crack a joke here and there, but I have to outwork everyone. That’s how I became a lawyer. I’m not talented or as any kind of genius.
JH: (16:43)
I had to outwork everyone and that’s what I do on the show. I’ll prepare 10 or 20 hours for an interview, sometimes 30 if it’s a really big guest that has a lot of material in a long career. Wow. In 10 to 38 hours doing the prep and people can’t even believe that, but it’s like, what other competitive advantage do I have? I don’t have a James Earl Jones voice. I’m not Conan O’Brien. Funny. I don’t have Howard Stern’s pull when it comes to guests and a huge audience and a staff of 20 people in the back room typing funny jokes to say to me that pop up on a monitor. Right. I don’t have that.
What I have is the, the work ethic that says, you know a Jordan, you got Daniel Goldman, you know the founder or the creator, the idea of emotional intelligence. He’s got three books, read those three books, read those three books and then when he shows up, I want him to say, wow, you know this stuff better than I do cause it’s been awhile and that’s exactly what happened.
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JH: (17:35)
You know, he goes, can we took a break? And he goes, I think you know my work better than I do. Cause it’s been so long now. Granted it’s been a decade of change since he wrote that. So you don’t expect him to remember it, but that’s what you want. You don’t want them going, well that’s really how this works. That’s not really how that works. Thanks for reading the Wikipedia and or the back of the book and then showing up. You want to show up with so many notes that are so well organized that you barely have to look at them and you want to tell them something.
Let me put it this way. I have a little checkbox in the back of my brain where I light up when the guest says, I’ve never thought about this that way, but now that you mention it, that’s a good point. I’m going to use that or some variation of that. I want to have this content down in my head so well that I’m plugging in something to something else that they have that they didn’t even see that connection. Or I use a metaphor that they’d never thought of
RV: (18:28)
And I love this cause that’s just like what you’re talking about, you know, to use the take the stairs metaphor. You know, that was my first book, which has been out a while now, but it’s like the real story of the work you’re doing behind the scenes that nobody sees. They just assume, Oh well I got on a podcast network or I had a bazillion Twitter followers or whatever. And it’s just like that right there is, is the difference. And nobody wants to hear it. But that is so I think that’s so powerful.
JH: (18:58)
Hey, you know it’s funny you said nobody wants to hear it. It’s so true. There was a eight year period. I’m a slow learner. There was an eight year period where, or seven I think where I didn’t read the book or do that amount of prep. And I remember my wife, she, my girlfriend at the time, she goes yeah, I mean are you prepared? Are you ready?
And I’m like, man, I’m fine. And then I had Robert Green who wrote the S the laws of human nature or 48 laws of power, like really, really prolific, amazing author wrote mastery. Just a really genius level creator. There aren’t that many authors like him now who write 800 page books and you know, you could read it, it could have been twice as long. And I had him coming on for the seventh anniversary episode of the show and I thought, okay, I better not screw this one up.
JH: (19:46)
He said, why did it take so long to schedule this? And I remember going, well, I thought it would be a waste of time for you. I wanted to do it really well. And he said, well, I’ve done a lot of media. This was really well prepared. You did a good job. And I was so lit up and stoked. I said, okay, what’s the difference between the way I did this one and the way I did the other ones? And the answer was, I read the book recently and I thought, okay, well I can’t just read the book for every interview. My wife goes, why not? And I go, well, it’s too much work.
And she goes, yeah, but you want the show to be really good. That’s like your number one priority. Why don’t you just figure out how to read the book? And I went, Oh yeah, I guess I should probably do that. So then I started figuring out ways to read faster, you know, get the Kindle and the highlighter. And then it was like audio books and then it was like the audio player. Get a customized one, it goes really fast and pause is real, you know, that kind of thing. So I have this whole system where I can read really, really fast and it’s not speed reading. It’s like audio listening. I just you, you have to work up to it and there’s all
RV: (20:42)
Or whatever. Yeah.
JH: (20:43)
Yeah. But like silences are removed by this other app that’s not the audible app cause the audible app can’t do that. And like it’s really, it’s like 1.9 X and not two cause two’s too fast. But 1.75 is too slow. There’s a whole thing that I got right that I do and it depends on the narrator and all this stuff. So I take the notes though on another device so I don’t have to pause. There’s all kinds of stuff that I’m doing so that I can do that work. But there’s just no shortcut for doing the work.
And I see other hosts and they’re like, Oh I don’t even read the book. I have my assistant read it and then they send me talking points and I’m like, they’re missing the good stuff because the good stuff is not summarized. Rorys book take the stairs, the good stuff is this little between the lines sometimes literally details that other people ignore.
JH: (21:27)
So one case in point, I read a book a long time ago, I can’t remember the author and she was like an infectious disease specialist and she was African American literally, you know, and she had been adopted from Africa but I didn’t know that. I just knew she was a specialist in this field of medicine.
I read the book and I’ve read, I’ve read the dedication and it says like to mom and dad, my life would’ve been the same. I’m like okay, nothing special there. And then the back, the epilogue, not even like the thing at the end that’s not even written by the author was like her bio and it was like her extended bio, sorry. It’s like she was born in Africa and then her family to give her up and then she worked at, she was at this icon convent. Then a white family came and brought her to Canada.
JH: (22:07)
And so she grew up with this really unique, multi-racial kind of background and is now an infectious disease doctor in Africa. And she’s like, but for this amazing opportunity, I wouldn’t have had the chance to like leave this place, go there, get a medical education, now I’m giving back. That’s the whole story. Not Ebola or whatever.
That’s a, that is a prop. The real story is her life leaving this, this place, going to the Western world, realizing how much she had and then giving back. That’s the story. But you don’t get that when you read frickin Blinkist and you get a five bullet point summary or you have your VA read it for 20 bucks and then send you a one sheet. You don’t get the story, you get the data. Let me ask you a practical question. So, so I, I love this. I love the work.
JH: (22:56)
I’m sure what people are going, it’s like, well if I spend all my time preparing for the interview, how do I make any money? Right? Like that’s a lot of time to prepare. If I do an interview every week or two a month or something. So, and I think that’s kind of a question Mark for people is how do you make like how do you actually make money?
Like yeah, so podcasting is not a good way to make money and when people try to like, I’m going to throw that out there, you know a lot of people will sell you the idea that all you have to do is start a podcast and watch the dollars roll in. And that was never the case. It’s not like, Oh you can’t do it now. It was never the case. And you can do that in addition to other personal branding things that you’re doing.
JH: (23:44)
Like I know you talk about like books, you talk about other methods of influence. Doing a podcast is a really tough way to make money. Let’s, can we talk like real numbers here? I’ll just do something that the average podcast has 149 downloads per episode. That’s a fat act from libs in which as a hosting company, you don’t have to write that number down because if you have 149 downloads, no advertiser will touch you. Let’s say that you are so good that you get 50 times 50 times.
That’s a huge multiple. You get 50 times the average audience. Now you’ve got 74 50 that’s probably backwards. Very one, you get 74 50 per episode. Okay, well you’re paid and CPM, which is dollars per thousand downloads. So let’s say you have two ads in a show and you’re getting a really good CPM of 25 bucks for each of those ads.
JH: (24:39)
That’s a pretty darn good CPM. So now you’re really getting 50 CPM again cause you’ve got two ads in your show. Congratulations. Let’s assume you sold those ads yourself cause otherwise you got to give your ad sales agent a cut, which could be up to 50% but let’s assume you use them yourself. You get 100% of that. Okay, great. So now you’re getting 50 times 7,450 so you’re really, let’s round up to 8,000 cause you’re so good. I’m going to be generous and that’s how many downloads an episode you’re getting. So you’re getting 8,000 so you’re getting eight times $50 per episode.
You’re getting 400 bucks per episode. That’s when you have 50 times plus maybe more like 55 times the average audience and you sold two ads yourself, add a generous CPM, you’re getting 400 bucks. That’s the high end of what you are going to get after doing a show for several years, most people will get less than half of that. What is that going to pay for if you don’t live in sub Saharan Africa and not a whole lot, right? You are not
RV: (25:38)
In a week. If at one a week at that level you’re talking about 1600 bucks a month, so you’re talking, you’re like, you’re not even at, it’s like 20 grand a year.
JH: (25:48)
Yeah, you’re paying your mortgage if you’re lucky and you don’t live in a big city and you don’t live on the coast. If you’re lucky, and that’s after year, you’re going to have to build up to that. You’re not going to launch with 74 50 you’re going to get that after maybe a couple of years or something like that.
RV: (26:04)
Now if you now on the flip side, like, like all media companies, it’s very scalable. So for you, if you get to, you know, if you’re getting 5 million downloads a month that you’re talking about a million downloads an episode it depends cause that’s historical. That’s right. That’s historical. But maybe a hundred, a couple hundred thousand downloads an episode, right?
JH: (26:29)
So, so if you’re to, again, to put numbers to it, if you are in the top 1% of all active podcasts in any, anywhere in podcast land, you have 35,000 per episode. That’s the top 1%. So think about that. Let’s say you got $35,000 per episode. Let’s say you still got two ads. You still sold them yourself.
You get to keep 100%, it’s 35 times 50 that’s 1750 per episode. And you do that times four, 7,000 bucks a month, that’s real money. But that’s after you get in the top 1% of all podcasts. You can’t really, you probably aren’t going to get rich on that either. Okay. So this takes me to my original question.
RV: (27:14)
Clearly advertising is not the fast path to cashier. So how do you make money doing this?
JH: (27:21)
So you end up with this interesting dichotomy, right? If you, or a sort of conundrum. Maybe if you don’t want add money, then you have to talk to a very specific audience. So let’s say you’re the guy, my friend Clint, he teaches dance studio owners, how to cleanse salt, salt, salt, salt to Saltzman. What is his last name? He’s from Australia.
RV: (27:45)
Australia. Yeah. Yeah. I know exactly what you’re talking about. Like, and it’s funny because even as you say it, I’m like, I know one guy that teaches dance studios, owners like how to get clients and it’s Clint and he’s from Australia, right?
JH: (27:56)
Yeah. And he’s like a super lovely guy. Okay. So he’s the right man for the job. So if you are that guy and you’re talking to dance studio owners, then cool, good. It looks like I’m out of focus here. Let me fix that. If possible. How do we fix that? So breaking bad is really weird. I’m just going to go ahead and ignore that and see if it fixes itself. So you’re, let’s say you’re that guy.
Now, your entire audience, maybe you’ve only got like 800 people listening to each episode of your show, but all 800 are dance studio owners somewhere in let’s say North America. Well, wherever globally that are on your email list, they’re interested in generating clients. Those people might pay $5,000 or $1,000 or $500 for your product. That’s a system of let’s say, generating leads for dance studios online. You know, you’ve got a customer base, so that’s a really good way to start making money. But you have to have a unique niche if you’re just, you know, this is driving me freaking Oh you got it.
JH: (28:58)
I think that was a little schmutz over the lens and I just wiped it. So if, if you are in, if you’re, if that’s your audience, then great, right? You’ve got to be the leader. But if you’re like, Oh, this guy Pat Flynn, who is a really good friend of mine, you probably know him too. If I’m like, Oh, this guy Pat Flynn teaches people how to make money online doing X, Y, Z, you’re not going to want to join that niche because it’s you and eight bajillion other people. And Pat’s going to like dominate that and you’re going to have a hard time collaborating with other people because you’re stepping on their toes and you have no experience. So you’ve got to find a unique niche. Talk to them in a way where they’d know, like, and trust you. And then you’ve got to have products and services to help them.
JH: (29:37)
But then podcasting’s not your business. It’s lead gen for your book. For me, podcasting is my business. I’m depending on scale, but I have a quarter million downloads per episode. That didn’t happen overnight. It happened and over 13 stinking years.
Okay. So like to get that level of advertising and then put four ads in each show, cause my show’s over an hour long and that’s, you can get away with that. And I do three a week now it’s a BI. Now it’s more than a full time job. It’s more than just me working here and the scale works. But generally it’s not going to happen. But here’s the, here’s the problem, here’s the conundrum. You can’t go, Oh well I’m going to talk to the specific dance studio owners or like landscapers for people that live near a forest like Rory, right in the background there, your jungle.
JH: (30:27)
Like if you want to talk to that audience, you’re not going to get a broad audience. That’s really huge because there’s one in a hundred or one in a thousand people care about that niche. One in a thousand people own a dance studio and want to get new clients or karate dojo and want to get new clients. That is not everyone.
So you can either appeal to a specific nation, create products and services for that niche or you can try to appeal to everyone. And do something that’s more general and is going to scale, but you’re never going to be in a situation where you appeal to gym owners in North America and everyone else. You’re not going to be able to do both. Well, so you have to choose because if you choose to scale, you got a long road ahead of you. If you choose products and services in a specific niche, you might get there faster, but you will never get to the point at which you are scaling. [inaudible]
RV: (31:20)
But that’s not your business. That’s a, it’s just a, it’s just a marketing medium, podcast marketing medium for the business, which is how that’s historically how we’ve, we have, we have used it.
JH: (31:32)
Correct. Yeah, that makes sense. And so people need to be aware of that. Like people don’t really seem to get that. They’re like, I want to make it huge. Why? Well, I want to get leads from my coaching business. Okay. Then those are two di almost diametrically opposing forces, right? Like, yes, you want to be recognizable all over the place. But also I want to appeal to pet store owners.
And the East coast like, whoa, whoa, who are you talking to? Because if you start talking to quote unquote everyone or like one of your episodes is generally interesting and then one of your other episodes each week is only in that niche, you’re just going to piss off everyone, right? Like the people who want to hear about comedy are going to get annoyed with the people who want to hear about how to make a pet profitable dance studio. So you have to choose. You cannot try to be both. And everybody that I know who starts to show that they’re consistently trying to do this and they’re failing.
RV: (32:21)
Well Jordan, thank you for the honesty and the transparency of just what this takes. I could talk to you forever, like there is so much here. Obviously people can, can find you on the show. Where Dell is there. Where do you want people to go to connect with you if they want to learn more and they want to hear about all your,
JH: (32:40)
Your wild and interesting guests that you have. Share Jordan harbinger.com. It’s the Jordan harbinger show. You can find it anywhere that you listen to podcasts. And of course I teach people networking. It’s not a business. It’s a free thing that I do cause I, most of my business that I get is corporate. I’m, I teach security personnel and special forces and stuff. I teach them like relationship development and nonverbal communication skills and spy stuff generally so that I give away some of that to [email protected] and you can see the course at the top there.
It’s all, everything I do is free for the end user. It’s, it’s, it’s an ad model, but I don’t put in too many ads cause I don’t have to anymore. But I look anybody who’s interested in topics that are going to affect your life in some way. I do worksheets for every episode because I want people to apply something from every show. So it’s not just like fluff, it’s like take this, plug it into your brain and use it. So hopefully people are interested in that. And I think your audience seems pretty smart, so I’m excited to hear from them. Yeah.
RV: (33:41)
Well, buddy, thank you so much. Thank you for being a fiduciary for your audience. I think that’s, that’s going to be like the big thing that resonates with me was just at the end of the day, it’s like there’s not a ton of money here for a long time, and there’s a lot of wrong ways to do it, and there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of ways to get absorbed into the crowd and into the noise, but if you do what is interesting and you do what serves your audience, it sounds like that’s, that’s your, your special formula. So I love it.
JH: (34:09)
Thank you very much, man. I really appreciate the opportunity.
Ep 30: The Most Important Relationship with Nick Santonastasso
RV: So I want to let you know right up front that you are meeting this next gentleman at the same time that I am Nick Santonastasso is who you’re about to hear from. And pretty much everyone else on this summit is someone I’ve known for years. We’ve helped them with book launches, we’ve helped them do podcast interviews, you know, they’ve helped me, whatever.
But Nick and I just crossed paths actually a few weeks ago and this guy is absolutely incredible. He’s just an amazing human with an amazing message. And he also has turned it into quite an amazing brand. So he was born with something called Hanhardt syndrome only at the time that he was born. I think only he was the 12th case of Hanhardt syndrome that was diagnosed in the world. And he’s really, I think only like one to four people with it that is living.
RV: And it basically is a rare birth defect that has left him with no legs and undeveloped right arm and a left arm with only one finger, but he was a wrestler in high school a singer. And musician. He’s been a bodybuilder. Like there’s pictures of him with the Rock. He speaks all over. I watched some of his videos. He was so inspiring. He actually has the word ‘inspired’, tattooed on his torso.
And I’ve just been blown away with this guy. And one of my friends, you know, one of our clients and friends, John Ruhlin introduced us. And then one of my other good friends, said that Nick is the most inspiring person he’s ever met. So Nick, thanks for making some time for us, man. Hey brother, I’m grateful for the opportunity and I’m glad we crossed paths and have a lot of mutual friends that are also really amazing people.
RV: So shout out to them. Yeah, yeah. Amen. Those are, those are really good people. And you know, I think Brand Builders Group is all about reputation, right? Like that’s what we study – reputation. We try to like understand what creates it. I think the people that you surround yourself is probably a, probably a part of that.
Just before we dive into like your personal story, I’m curious, when you hear the word reputation, what do you think about, like do you, what have been your philosophies on reputation? Why does it matter? Is there anything like in terms of how you would define it, like just what’s your, what’s your kind of free flow thought on, on what reputations? All of them.
NS: Yeah, that’s a great question. Reputation, what comes to mind is you know, how do people, how do people know how you show up or how do people view you or what is the first thing that comes to mind when they think of your name? Or is there a certain slogan or is there a certain picture that they get painted in their head for that reputation?
What I’ve realized is that, you know, one of my core values, not only in a personal life but in business life is his longevity. And so, you know, I think that a lot of people are trying to get quick fixes. And so it’s like, what can I get out of this collaboration? Or what can I get out of this person or what can I get at this post, whatever it may be. But for me, I am more interested in longevity relationships.
NS: So I’m here to continuously provide value to someone that I want to be in my inner circle. I continuously want to nurture that relationship. And so with reputation, it’s just like who do you, who do you show up as and do you show up at the same person each and every day or it, or is it not congruent? Is it not congruent to who you are behind the camper? I mean, you know, reputation to me is just like what do people think and what do people remember you when you showed up? Like who are you? And, and my thing is not really longevity, but authenticity and transparency.
You want to know how to build a brand. It’s being authentic and it’s being transparent, especially in a world where there’s not many authentic, transparent people nowadays, especially with social media. I mean we see highlights grow, we see, we see all the good stuff and you know, everybody’s just, you know, hosting or highlights. But how you build a real fan base and you know, a fan base that really cares for you is you open up about this, the stuff that you struggle with because we all struggle with something.
RV: So I wanted to talk to you about that. Cause you know, like you’ve been featured in all this major media, you’ve met celebrities, traveled the world, you speak. I mean some people might look at some of that as pretty glamorous, but I have to think that, you know, growing up and along the way, just having the condition that you have there had to have been some times that were pretty dark and pretty challenging.
And why did you choose to come become so public, you know, with something that was, you know, had to have a share of difficulties what caused you to like, just kinda like become such a public figure with that?
NS: Absolutely. So, yeah, it wasn’t always always like this. You know, in my middle school and high school days, I, I struggled, you know, I struggled with that victim mentality of the why me, you know, why do I have to be born like this? It pissed me off. I didn’t get it. I was always focused on all the negative, all the things. And you know, even with girls, I always tell people girls were my biggest suicidal trigger.
You know, as humans we crave energy, whether that’s masculine energy or whether that’s feminine energy. And for me, I didn’t get that feminine energy that I wanted or that I craved. And you know, there was, you know, comments that girl said to me that really stuck with me and just made me feel like I was just this disgusting person. Right? And so the one thing I realized is that man, you only get one body mic and you don’t like feeling this way.
NS: So what are you going to do to get out of that? You know, what are you going to do to, you know, get out of this slump you’re in. And I was, I’ve had suicidal thoughts, but I never followed through in them. I knew, you know, the negative, what a negative wave that would lead my parents and my family and everyone if I took my life. And so that was, it was, it was a thought, but it wasn’t something that I was going to do.
And so, you know, I was trying, I was working on building this person. I needed to start, you know, building my confidence. I needed to start building my mindset in the things that I thought about and focused on. Right? Like we’re focused those energy flows. And so, you know, when I got into high school, I was looking for a way out.
NS: I was looking for know, a coping mechanism per se or you know, a sport or an extracurricular activity. And that was when, you know, I got into bowling at first, one of my best friends, he wrestled his whole entire life, but he decided to bowl his freshman year and we’ll still, I just texted him like, we’re still best friends to this day. And I did bowling and I realized that it wasn’t for me and I wanted something that was going to push me physically, you know, much more physically and mentally.
And my older brother was a wrestler and you know, Dan went back to wrestling his sophomore year and all my best friends are wrestlers. And so I wanted to become a wrestler. And at the time, this arm, this right limb was about five inches longer than it is now. My bone was going faster than my skin, so it was like your finger, but super sensitive and I couldn’t really touch it on anything.
NS: And so, you know, I told my friends I can’t, I can’t lose my arm. You know, I can’t, if I hit my arm hard enough, my bone is going to come through my skin, you know, I can’t wrestle. And then you can always tell people we have ideas and sometimes we blow ideas off. And then we started marinating on those ideas, right? Like figuring out, you know, how am I gonna accomplish this?
You know, what’s in my way. And so, you know, I presented the, the decision to my parents. I said, you know, can we cut? Can we amputate my arm? Can we cut some of my arm off so I can rest wrestle? And you know, they were like, dude, are you serious? And I’m like, yeah, you know, this is something that I really want to do. It’s only going to better the quality of my life anyway.
NS: I’ll be able to do more physical activities with it. And so my sophomore year, my parents went ahead and scheduled my amputation to amputate my arm. And you know, that was just for a chance to Russel, it wasn’t even like a definite chance. That was just a chance to wrestle. So it was two things. It was to better the quality of my life, but to be, but to have the chance to becoming a wrestler.
And so, you know, the question that we can all self reflect on real quick and I’ll get more into it, is, you know, what, what are the things that we need to cut off, you know, to be successful. Hopefully it’s not a limb like me, but what are the limiting beliefs? What are the stories we replay ourselves? What are the things that we focused on that we need to cut off?
NS: What are the people we need to cut out of our life that are holding us back? And so that’s something that the viewers can, you know, self reflect on. But wrestling started my journey in the building who I am now and, and that built my confidence. You know, because I was a kid that thought you’re either born with confidence so you didn’t have it.
But I realized that confidence was a skill. And so, you know, how we build confidence is, is keeping our promise within ourselves. So every time that we commit to something, every time we commit to a goal or commit to something that we want to accomplish, and we don’t do it, we, we lower the wa, we lower our value, we lower our R, we diminish our self value, the way we view ourselves, the relationship we have within ourselves. Because we said we were going to do something and we didn’t do it.
NS: And so how to build confidence is simply making these little promises to yourself, making these little, these little micro challenges to yourself. And when you hit them, you’re not only physically applaud yourself but you mentally applaud yourself. And so when you continuously do that and you build that muscle up, you’re confident, you’re confident in your ability, you know when you say you’re going to do something, it gets done.
You know your work ethic, you know that your self integrity. And so wrestling from going from a JB wrestler to a varsity wrestler too, you know, beating two kids my my senior year from zero these are the things that started building my confidence and allowed me to put myself out on the internet.
RV: Yeah. That I loved that idea that I was just, I, I know we don’t have much time so I was trying to cover as much as no, that’s good. No, I mean we haven’t, we have, we have some time. We have a little bit of time, but I love what you were saying about the confidence piece of that, of that, you know, it’s just keeping comes from keeping promises to ourselves. And I don’t think, I mean I think people think of continence, like you said, as either something you have or you don’t.
And that’s such a great way to be able to, to develop it. So so why do you think you have such a great, like such an engaged following? And, and I mean, I, I mean clearly, you know, you look different from many people, but there’s, there’s a lot of people that have some type of, you know, something that they’re dealing with and people you know, support you and they cheer for you rabidly. You know, w what do you think it is about how you interact with people that’s kind of created that.
NS: So first and foremost, I want to thank you for that compliment because actually, you know, in my head I’m like, it’s not good enough. You know, like, my fan base isn’t good enough and they aren’t loyal enough and they’re not, you know, supporting me. Not in a bad way. I’m not saying this in a bad way, I’m just saying that I know like, and I want to be like, put this out there to be transparent in the way that I think, you know, I have, I have a friend, I’m a won’t mention her name.
I have a friend and she has like probably half of my following and her fan base is just like Colt man. Like she, anything she does, it sells out. Like, like I look up to her and so, you know so thank you for the compliment. But internally I’m like, man, it could be greater.
NS: It could be a greater bond. But I think that, you know, from early on how I started was doing zombie primes. Like, so when I was a senior in high school the app vine came out and everybody was like, dude, you know, vine is amazing. And I got to the point where I was like, man, I’m just going to put myself on the internet and you know, maybe I can make people laugh, but I want to inspire them to [inaudible] everything with my content is always, I have an intense, like I, I want to inspire people in a certain way.
I want to talk to them in a certain way or they a message in a certain way. And so I posted my first zombie prank where basically my goal was to just dress up as the zombies here, someone and then have someone look on the phone when they watched it and go, wow, look how comfortable Nick is in his body.
NS: Maybe I could be a little bit more comfortable mind and also take an approach that no one’s ever did before. No one’s ever done this zombie pranks like me. Right? And so I was the pioneer. And so when I did that, the [inaudible] like it blew up like it was, it was one of the biggest videos people I’ve ever seen on vine. I gained 50,000 followers in a day.
You know, over 80,000 likes and reposts on the video in under a day. Like it was crazy and it was the combination of using my, you know, my unique body, my unicorn body and doing something that has never been done but you know, in an inspiring way. And you know, I literally, it was, it was just crazy. I labeled the video just zombie prime. There was like, vine was just very like, just no descriptive, just Oh, zombie praying.
NS: And so I labeled it that and I caught on and I saw, you know how, how viral it went. But the one thing I want to touch on is it wasn’t all sunshine and rainbows. The majority of those, those comments were bad. Like they were negative. Like the, the, the demographic of vine was children.
And so me being a child myself, 18, 17 years old, you know, I had to build the muscle up of either not reading comments or not letting them affect me. And I hated when my parents read comments too because there were negative, there was so negative comments. And so, you know, the evolution of me, it was, you know, used to go back at these people, right? I used to focus on the negative and focus on the negative comments. And then I built, I built my social media in under a year I gained a million follower.
NS: I’m doing these cranks and that was at the same time where, you know, vine was going downhill and everyone was transferring the YouTube. And to be fully honest, I wasn’t ready to transfer to YouTube. Like I was just like, man, I’m good at posting six second videos. But then people started importing their vines and editing ’em and I was like, I can’t keep up with that. And so I kind of fell off the track.
And so, you know, after vine collapsed and after vine was no more I kind of was at a place in my life. I was like, okay, Nick, like, what’s next? You know, you can’t just, you know, you made this name for yourself and people love you for your pranks. Like, what are you going to do now? And you know, I made an announcement. I said, guys, guys and girls, that doesn’t fulfill me anymore.
NS: You know, doing the pranks, it doesn’t fulfill me anymore. I want to be fulfilled. You know, Tony Robbins says, success without fulfillment is the ultimate failure. Like you can have all the money in the world, but if we don’t do something that makes us feel good inside, it makes us feel fulfilled. What was the empty? And so I made the decision, you know, I, I took a step back from the pranking the industry because I also realized that people were just viewing me as a joke.
You know, like I didn’t just want to be viewed as like not serious, you know, I wanted something next level. And so I went to LA, I went broke in LA trying to do pranks and stuff, and I moved back home and I, and I was like, analyzing industries. I was like, all right, what’s next? And so I was analyzing industries and I looked at, I looked at the fitness industry and I said, well, there’s no guy with no legs and one arm a bodybuilder.
NS: You know, if I get in and I wasn’t in good shape, like that’s the thing I sold the vision way ahead. That’s what the one of my strengths is. Like I can paint a vision in my head and see it so clearly and people may not see it, but I’m like, I’ll get there. Like I’ll figure it out. Like these are the steps. And so, you know, I started, I told everyone, I said, I’m going to become a body builder.
I’m going to become a model and I’m going to become a keynote speaker and I don’t know how I’m going to do these things, but these are the things I’m going to set out to do. And so, you know, I started fitness videos and people to follow me and they were like, dude, you were like, what are you doing? Like how are you to become a bodybuilder?
NS: Like this is stupid, you know, we followed you for your pranks, all this stuff. But remember that it didn’t fulfill me. I was, I wanted to do something that fulfilled me. And so my knowledge and training got better. My knowledge of nutrition got better and my disease, those people go like, like that was like, cause that’s a pretty big, like some of our clients that we talked to are more in what we would call, like someone starting out, we call it brand identification, but then we have some clients that it’s brand reinvention. It’s more like they’re trying to make a pivot.
And that was a, that’s a pretty big pivot from zombie prankster to fitness model. And so you just like one day, like went cold Turkey and just started posted, posted fitness and health advice. Is that what happened? Yeah, so basically when I, I went to LA and I was I was supposed to be a prankster of a core cast show that they were coming out with.
NS: And I moved to LA and two weeks after I signed my lease, they canceled the show. So I went home in LA and so I moved home and it was kinda like, now I don’t view it as that, but it was like a failure for me. And so I came home and it was just like recalibrating. I was like, all right, what is something else that I can take over that people would take me a little bit more serious?
And I always end, I always looked up the people that were in shape. And so my thought process was, well, you can’t buy a fit body. You can’t, you can’t buy a fit body and you can’t wake up with it one day. So if people see, if I, if I commit so long to getting in good shape, people would be like, Oh my God.
NS: Like how, like I wanted to get to the point where I took my shirt off at the pool instead of feeling unconfident, people were like, how the hell does that kid look like that? You know? And you know, I pictured myself, I was like, man, you know, if I could be on a fitness magazine, how inspiring is that? If I can land covers and maybe I can land supplement sponsors and make money like that and do photo shoots, like that was my vision.
And I knew that it was more inspiring and it also went handed down with speaking. I was like, man, I can tie that into motivational speaking. But the speaking thing was even on my radar. And so, you know, I told my parents about that, that pivot and you know, like I said with fitness, like I can’t just be Jack one day or can’t just be stranded like one day it takes some time.
NS: And so I had to like fully commit and believe in myself and like really just like keep that vision in mind. And so, you know, I, I lost a lot of followers and I remember I was starting my Instagram off with 25,000 followers and I was posting these fitness videos and known people were like, dude, this is stupid. Like, I don’t like your fitness videos. Like, what are you doing? But I just kept going.
I was persistent and then, you know, maybe I finally got a video where it looked cool and I was lifting like good amount of weight. And so I would pay the biggest Instagram bodybuilding account, $400 a post. I didn’t have $400 to spend, but I was finding $400 to post. So people can, so I can get a bigger outreach. And so I was PR, I was paying these accounts to post me, I was gaining followers.
NS: And then it got to the point where I didn’t need them anymore because when I posted something, there was so many eyes that, you know, it would get shared and it would get shared all overnight, gain more followers. And maybe I had leverage with my followers to do cross collaborations where I didn’t have to pay as much anymore. And so I grinded my way up. Like I grinded my way up in the bodybuilding world. Like people aren’t following me. I paid for people to see me. I paid me for my videos again in front of people. Wow.
RV: So I appreciate you sharing. That’s very honest. Like you, I mean, I think there’s so many elements,
NS: But I paint. Yeah, I paint.
RV: Yeah, but just the exposure. You didn’t pay for fun. You didn’t buy followers, but you bought exposure. That’s something that we tell people don’t, you know, don’t buy followers, but by exposure, that’s what everybody does. And that’s what every media, movie, TV show, every Superbowl commercial. I mean, they’re, they, they’re paying for exposure. And how bold of you and I think it’s fascinating to me, Nick, of just how number one, you know, your whole philosophy is built on longevity.
Yet, you know, the, the, the health situation that you’ve been battling, like you’ve taken that and said, you know, like, screw that, I’m, I’m going to be about longevity. And then you also said, you know, I’m not fit like, but if I could do that, it’s like you took the thing that you should have been able to do and you went after that thing and said, because it’s the thing I’m not supposed to be able to do. I’m gonna make that my thing. And if I do, people will pay attention. And that’s inspiring and it fricking worked.
NS: Yeah. Well, like I said, I mean, you know,
NS: Even, even now, brother, I’m, I have a lot of plans. Like speaking isn’t just it, right? Like you’ll see here and you know, a couple of months, like I’m, I’m dabbling in different things because I look at the industry and I go, well, how can I bring my uniqueness to the industry? And for people to say, people probably listening like, Oh well it’s easy for him to say he has no legs of an arm. I mean he stands out. But like there is something in you that makes you stand out and that something and don’t, and don’t compare my story to your story. All of our stories are amazing.
The things that people need to realize that we all need to realize is like all the things that you don’t want to talk about on social media. You don’t want to shine the light on. When you do, when you open it up about those stories, that’s when you’ll get your people to connect with you on a deeper level because you’ve been through the same stuff that they’ve been through.
NS: You know, there’s so many people who are holding back and they don’t want to go through the things that they struggle with or their darkest demons. But when you open up in an authentic, transparent way and you show people what you’ve struggled with and how you come at that site, you build a following. And so for me, like now that the way that I view my life is like.
if I share this story or if I get on this podcast or if I get on this interview and share this and this and this has the ability to help someone, then I’m in because there’s going to be someone that resonates with that message. Someone that’s out there that never thought you went through some stuff and you open up about it and they’re like, man, I connect with the sign a totally deeper level where that girl and they trust you more and right. Building your brand is all about having people trust you. And how you get people to assess you is you need to show up authentic and transparent and people will call you out on your BS if you slip up.
RV: I think that that is so powerful and so true that the more that you open up about that, it’s, it’s like the more visceral the connection is between people. So I think if, if you, you know, looking back like you said, you know, you started your Instagram account with 25,000, is there anything that you would’ve done differently to grow your following either faster or differently or more engaged? Like, like going back and doing it over again?
NS: Yeah, I would, would’ve, I would’ve been more proactive on commenting back to every single person. I would’ve commented back to every single person. I’m more engaged in my DMS. So, you know, people don’t expect, you know, influencers or people to reply back. And so when you do, you’re not only standing apart, but that person will remember that. Like, whether you think it or not, like whether you don’t think you’re cool or not. Like when you reply to someone in the time and if something they remember that maybe they might go post it on their story or maybe it’s a hard post cause they’re just such a big fan of you.
But I would be more proactive in replying to everyone. Everyone’s the M and, and for the influence out there that may or may be on a bigger scale, maybe that’s something that you need to outsource or have people pick up on your lingo and start replying for you just so you’re more engaged with your followers because it gets to the point where there’s not enough time in the day.
NS: No way. There’s not enough time in the day, but you know, getting someone that knows how you talk that, you know, you only say a certain thing. So it’s not deviating from what you would say and making sure that you’re commenting back to everyone. Regardless of if the Tate or not like throw a little heart on a hate comment. Like who cares? You know, like and so just being more proactive on that and also just collaborating, you know, collaborating is still key.
You know, right now, I mean, I could be doing more collaborations and, you know, you can always be doing more collaborations and there’s always someone with less followers that’s inclined to more inclined to, you know, collaborate with you. And there’s someone that is, you know, maybe at the same level in a collaborate with you. And then there’s people that are higher up and maybe up to do a little bit more for that collaboration. But I’m always seeking out people in your industry or in your niche or whatever it may be that are congruent with what you put out and collaborate with people because everybody, everybody loves cross pollination of followers.
RV: And what, when you meet, collaborating, like, can you expand on that, on that, that
NS: I’m saying, Hey, you know, let’s do a video together or, you know, maybe I don’t, I don’t, I don’t do much of this, but Hey, like can you throw this up on your story and offer something up on my story? Or you know, shout, shout out for shout. I mean unbind it was, it was the evolution of, of vine for Irvine, right? So you can repose vine so someone repost your vine and you’d repost their vine.
On Instagram maybe it’s collaborating or also there’s engagement groups. So I engage in groups within you know, just reach out and see if those engraves engagement groups. So what that is is there’s group chats in DM, so when you post a piece, you put it in his group and you have a bunch of people commented on it right away because within the first 45 minutes of that post as much engagement as you get is going to spike the algorithm and get you to possibly the discovery page.
But within that first minute to 45 minutes, I think it’s very crucial that you apply to every comment that you’re super engaged and like in the engagement groups have, have other people comment on your stuff. But like, like I said, if I start all over, I would be more proactive in replying to all the comments. And I’m not only does that build a relationship with your supporters, but when people see that there’s 500 comments rather than two 50, because of your $5 to 50, it makes it look better.
RV: Yeah. Interesting. Commenting and collaborating. Those are, those are, those are, those are, those are pretty cool tips. So man, this has been inspiring to hear your story. Informative to like understand some of your process. Where do you want people to go if they want to, if they want to stay connected to you and like follow your journey and see how and even just watch like what you’re doing.
NS: Yeah. So my S I’m on Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, LinkedIn at Santa Ana Sasso. And then my website also is you know, book make santo.com you can go there or a, my mind of a victor.com. And so basically this is where people can follow me. But like I said, I’m, I’m the guy with the really long last name, not just in a leg. So,
RV: Well I think, you know, it’s one of the things I love about you is, is there, I feel like there’s been several reasons and several opportunities to disappear quietly and sort of like retreat back and you’ve done the opposite. You’ve come forward. Whether it’s as a public figure or sharing things, you know, if there’s somebody out there right now, Nick that’s watching this and you know, maybe they have, they have the desire, they have that dream too.
They want to impact millions of people and what they want to speak, they want to influence, but they’re dealing with some of those demons, you know, maybe they’re in kind of that stage that you were when you were in like high school. What would you, what would you say to that person now having been through what you’ve been through?
NS: Yeah. You know, so many people are trying to do seek validation or significance from other people, you know, other relationships or looking at other things. When the biggest relationship, the most important relationship we should be working on is within ourselves. And so that’s working on ourselves. That’s building confidence, that’s making promises with ourselves and following through on them. That’s bettering our foundation, which is our body, our health, you know, health as well. Health is number one. And you can’t build an empire.
You can’t build some amazing thing if you don’t have the health, if you don’t have the foundation. And so it’s working on yourself and once you feel confident enough to put yourself out there, then you, then you do it. But you know, share the things that you know, people don’t know or share the things that you’re comfortable with that you struggle with and how you overcame them because that’s how you’re going to connect to the audience
RV: Or whoever you’re speaking to. Because like I said, you know, in the world we live in nowadays, there are not many transparent, authentic people. And so if you can show up on social media, if you can show up on the videos and share, you know, authentically about what you’ve been through, that’s how you really connect with people. And those people will, will follow you and, and ride or die with you regardless of what you post.
They’ll just love you for you because you show up authentic and transparent. I love it. Man, thank you so much for your story and for your persistence and just your, just your perspective on everything we are. We’re cheering you on and we’re learning from you and following you and I hope, I hope we get a chance to meet in person sometime soon. Mr. Sounds good, brother. Grateful for the opportunity. Thanks for having me.
Ep 28: Expanding Your Brand Beyond Your Wildest Dreams with Michael Stelzner
RV: I am so excited to introduce to you someone that maybe you’ve been influenced by, but you may not realize it. Michael Stelzner is one of the biggest personal brands in the space, truly like one of the godfathers of this whole industry of, of influencers and social media and digital marketing. And it’s really interesting because we’ll talk about this. He always put the brand first of the, of, of the company. So social media examiner is the company. He’s the founder of it. They have a massive platform which we’re going to talk about. They run, well, one of the biggest, if not the biggest events in the space, social media marketing world. I’m actually going to be speaking at that. Next year in 2020.
So depending on when you hear this [inaudible] also, they have a tremendous podcast that he is hosted for 10 years. Again, one of, one of the first in the originals. And so this is somebody who has done it as scaled a company, has scaled a brand and I know you’re going to absolutely love him. If somebody that I’ve just gotten to know personally, he’s been a big help to me as an advisor and a friend and a mentor behind the scenes. And so it was like you guys, you’ve got, you’ve got to hear from Michael directly, so thanks for agreeing to come on the show.
MS: Hey, it’s my pleasure Rory.
RV: Yeah. So just can you give us an like a, a background on the platform of social media examiner? Like how big, I mean, cause you guys have huge blog, huge social, huge podcasts, huge events, a huge email list. Like how many people do you reach every month?
MS: Ah, well I can tell you that our social media examiner, the blog has been around for 10 years. We just had our 10 year birthday 85 million unique people. I’ve hit that blog since we launched it, that’s about 12 million probably in the last 12 months. And then the podcast is at 20 million downloads on it over seven years. And you know, the monthly metrics when you go beyond things that are easy to measure, like podcasting and blogging are a lot more fuzzy. Right.
We’ve got half a million fans on Facebook and a half a million fans on Twitter and nobody really knows what the reach metrics are. They’re not as good as they used to, but I would arguably say at least a million people a month, probably more for sure are consuming our stuff. And then we have 360,000 people that get emails from us three days a week. Linking out to our YouTube channel, our podcasts, our live show, our blog, and all the other crazy stuff we’ve got going on.
RV: Wow. That is just, that’s amazing. Thank you for being willing to share those numbers with us. I think, you know, a lot of the people here, you know, aspire to have a platform. I aspire to have a platform that’s that big for sure. And I think it also, it helps to have the perspective of time, like seven years, 20 million downloads, but it’s been seven years. Like it doesn’t happen. It doesn’t happen overnight. Like you’ve been at this a long time.
MS: Right? Yeah. And you know, that’s kind of the key I think for anyone who wants to be known is to be consistent and to be working it. Because there was a day when I started where I was a nobody. I didn’t know darn thing when I started, you know, I didn’t know anything about social media marketing when I started social media examiner. It was just relentless work, interviewing experts, bringing their knowledge to my tribe.
Then eventually people started looking to me as a leader and before you know, it all of a sudden they were calling me though leader. And it just took a lot of time. Along the way a lot of people dropped off, started focusing on other things and I just kept going and eventually you can say I became kind of the leader.
RV: Yeah. I mean that is interesting. You know you know, when I was on your podcast, we talk about she hands wall and the focus and breaking through and being known for one thing, like you have stayed really true to social media specifically. And, and you became, you know, like you said, I, that’s the way you just described that was perfect. It was like I went from interviewing leaders to a leader, to the leader. And so
MS: I suppose by the way, let’s just be clear, right? Because I don’t necessarily call myself that perception. I’m a marketer. Let’s be honest. Perception is reality in the eye of the beholder, right? So very important lesson that I’m,
RV: I would say that about you. Yeah,
MS: You said that and I appreciate that. And that’s all that really matters, right? In the end is what other people think. And
RV: Yes, what Rory Vaden says, that’s what matters in the end is what’s as, right. So one of the things that I have always loved about you because I, what you just said about perception is so true. Like it’s, you know, we have a joke around Brand Builders Groups that we say at least half of what we teach you is actual substance is about producing actual substance because there’s unfortunately or fortunately so much of it is perception driven, but you are data-driven. And over the years I’ve seen you, you know, put out like the social media, this annual report, the annual report that you do. It’s like people should pay $10,000 and you just give it away. It’s, it’s insane. You’re so data-driven and I, and I love that about you. Well, you always that way or like did you like
MS: Pretty much, I mean I have a master’s in communications. I publish stuff in journals. You know, like, ah, that was based on research studies and stuff. It’s just, I think, I think I’m one of those rare people that’s creative and analytical and there are some people that are super analytical and some people that are super creative. I’ve got this weird mix of both. And I think that’s what makes me kind of unique in my space because I can get super creative and I can get super and I can flop back and forth.
RV: Yeah. Well, so let’s talk about the analytical piece for a second. Just cause I know you’re like watching the trends, you’re watching the numbers. Is there, what are some of the most compelling statistics that you’ve seen maybe like in the last 12 months or so that you think people really need to know about where it’s like if you, if you don’t know this, like you’re in trouble because th there’s some, these are the data. This is a dumb data points that are like there.
MS: Yeah, I’ll tell you a qualitative and quantitatively. Okay, here’s the deal. Video is everything. Qualitatively, you all know this because Apple invested billions in launch and Apple plus Disney invent, invent invested billions in launching Disney. Plus there is a war going on in the video streaming war because everyone knows that what people watch video as their primary consumption vehicle now over anything else, they will bend watch hours and hours of video. They won’t necessarily do that with reading anymore. They’re just not reading.
People are not reading as much as they used to. They will listen for sure with podcasts and stuff, but the only do that typically when they’re in a in motion, you know, or they’re doing something, but when they’re home and they’ve got nothing to do, they’re going to be watching video. And that is a signal that’s qualitatively saying something. Now, when I, when I add that with the quantitative data, we have research from our industry report that people can find it.
MS: Social media examiner.com that shows that marketers are all in on video and video is becoming very, very important. Mark Zuckerberg a couple of years ago, predicted that video would be the primary vehicle of communication on the Facebook platform. We’re already seeing this happen on Instagram. Half a billion people are watching Instagram stories every single day. So when you have the 15 second vertical video on Instagram stories and you have live video and you have LinkedIn native video and dot, dot, dot, dot, dot. You just realize everything is moving towards video consumption. And if you want to influence people, you need to create video because that is a mega trend.
RV: It’s overwhelming to create video on all these PLA like it’s, it’s, it’s a little bit daunting to be like I gotta do a freaking Facebook live and a YouTube live and an Instagram story and I got to do it at LinkedIn and like they all are holding you hostage to like being on their actual platform doing it. Like is there any, anything that we can do to like just manage the, like the workflow and the production of all of that?
MS: Start somewhere first and just get started today or tomorrow and decide where it’s going to be. Maybe it should be Instagram if that’s where you know your audience is hanging out. Maybe it should be, LinkedIn does not need to be alive. I would start with stories because the easiest thing to start with, you pick your phone out of your pocket, you pull up Instagram stories. You don’t need to look pretty or well manicured. You just record something and you call it done and you see if you get a reaction and then if you get a reaction, you do it some more and you do it some more until it starts serving a purpose. And once you decide what that purpose is and you achieve that purpose, then you can start diversifying. Right?
So for example, at social media examiner, we do a million different things, but we’re a media company and we have tons of employees and we’re filming and creating content all over the place. But it took us years to get here. We started somewhere and then we eventually moved somewhere else by expansion and then move somewhere else and move somewhere else until you get to the point where it’s really obvious where you should be.
RV: Can you, are you comfortable sharing how many employees you have?
MS: Yeah, I have 20 full time employees. I have 39 contractors that are regular. And then I have another 30 seasonal contractors. And then I have 200 more volunteers that participate in social media marketing world that does not count vendors that are on location at our conference. And stuff, but it’s a pretty good sized team.
RV: Wow. yeah, so videos, everything is interesting. I remember seeing that coming, you know, you’ve been talking about this for a while. It wasn’t like it just came out this year, like you were way, way ahead. And one of the things that we did when we were looking through your, through the report was we moved to a full video profile on Instagram where even our quotes are videos, they come across as video texts because it’s plus, it’s just like nobody sees it if it’s not, like, if it’s not that, it’s like they’re not showing it to anybody.
MS: Well that’s thumb stopping, right? Because it’s moving instead of still. Right. And there’s just something special to video. But in particular story in video I think is the magical side of it really. If we’re intellectually honest, you don’t just use video for the sake of video, use it for the sake of telling some sort of a story.
RV: Yeah. well, so that’s good to know. I mean, it’s like you have to get on it. Like you just have to figure, I’ve noticed you’re coming more in front of the camera personally, which we’ll talk about probably here in a little bit too. So I want to pause the video piece. I want to come to the audio piece because the Social media marketing podcast UMaine it is like always like number three in all marketing podcast in iTunes.
Like you go in there, you see there’s all these huge podcasts and it’s like consistently right there in the top three. What do you think you do differently when it comes to podcasting that has, has caused it to have such like staying power?
MS: First of all, I vet my guests and I make sure that I don’t just let anybody on my podcast, I have a lot of friends that have a lot of books and they all want to be on my podcast. A lot of times I just tell them it’s not a fit because I’m curating for my audience. So the first thing is I want to make sure that I’m getting the right people on the show to maintain that level of quality. The second thing is I always have a half an hour pre-call, you know this Rory will meet with the guest and I will negotiate the topic.
That way when they show up for the interview, I know them better and we know exactly what we’re talking about. Even though it doesn’t sound like that at all. Like my daughter is like what? You know, like this stuff is not just coming off the cuff. I’m all, no it’s not. It’s prepared and that is what leads to a higher quality show. The last thing is I always put myself in the position of the listener and if they say something, the guest that’s like an acronym that nobody knows or they went by it really fast. I say what? Hold on a second and I don’t let them go. And you know this firsthand?
RV: Yeah, they really well like you stop and dig and halt and challenge and question.
MS: Yeah. And it’s not like I’m trying to challenge the question. I just want to understand. Right? Because I know that my audience wants to understand, and I’m doing both you, the gusta service and the audience a service because a lot of them tell me, you literally asked the question that I had in my brain.
And and that I think is part of what my audience really, really loves about the show and it’s just an interview show, but it’s very much focused on tactical, tactical stuff. And I think that’s just been my tried and true rested P from the beginning rather than just bringing a bunch of people on and shooting the crap. That’s just not how I roll. You know, we’re here to, to learn something. And I think that’s what people love about the show.
RV: Yeah. I mean, yeah, the, the, the prep that you do. I mean, I’ve done hundreds of podcast interviews and it’s just like between the prep that you do on the front end and then the, the way that you hold that line of quality and you know, both leading up to and during the episode is, it’s like there’s, there’s less than a handful of people that actually do that.
MS: Thank you. I think that’s probably why it’s survived as strong and as long as it has.
RV: Yeah. Well one of the things about you also, it’s interesting like usually when I interview somebody for our audience, I’m picking them because they do one thing really, really well. And that’s something that we teach people to do, right, is just like have focus, focus, focus. You know, you, you do podcasting while you social while you’re doing this reports really well, but your, your primary business model, like the way that you actually make money is mostly from the event, right?
MS: Correct. Okay. So like more than half is from the conference and the rest of it is from online training stuff that we do or our professional organization that people belong to.
RV: Gotcha. So social media marketing world is this event and, and y’all, if you’ve never been there, it’s, it’s amazing. Like there are so many people, there’s so much knowledge. Like it’s a buzz. It’s, it’s, it’s not even like a community. It’s, it’s like I dunno. It’s like an empire. And, and, and the, the, the thing that’s crazy too about your event is usually the people who are teaching are the ones like sitting in the audience. So, so a lot of the people, if you go to other events and it’s like you’ll see, you know, somebody teaching on this or that or whatever, those people are in the audience at your event. Which is
MS: And just period behind the curtain. Is that what you mean?
RV: Right, yeah. Like the speakers stay, they hang out, they’re there, they’re all networking. There’s all these like private meetups that are happening. And yeah,
MS: We designed it to be very social because obviously it’s called social media marketing world. And we knew that people that are in this space are by their very nature wanting to interact with each other. Cause they often sit behind the computer by themselves and they don’t get a chance to hang out with people that are like minded. And I had been going to other conferences and I just noticed this was missing.
The only thing they would do is they’d go into a club and that would be the only chance to get together and you couldn’t talk to anybody because the music was so darn loud. So I’m like, Hey, let’s build opportunities for people to connect and let’s build this in such a way that we highly encourage the speakers to hang out, you know?
And we don’t really have a green room like other events do, so the speakers can’t retreat to it. We engineered it that way. But what ends up happening is these speakers walk out into the hall afterwards and they’re, they’re surrounded by 30 people and they just go for another half an hour and they love it, you know? And it’s like the audience loves it. They love it because it’s accessible. They can get to people and it’s just something unusual. And I’m, I never could have imagined it could’ve gotten this big. It’s really, really kind of one of my big accomplishments.
RV: How many people are you expecting?
MS: Well, we had 4,700 people there last year.
RV: Wow. I think last time I was there it was like 2300 or something.
MS: So we don’t know exactly cause it’s still too early. We’re still a couple of months away, but we’ll probably be at least 4,000. I mean it could be more, you can never tell what the event space, you know. But we’ve always grown every year. So it’ll be at least 4,000, maybe 5,000. I honestly don’t know, but it sounds like a lot, but it is still got this intimate flair to it. So we try very hard to make sure even though it feels huge to not make it feel that way when you’re actually there.
RV: So when it comes to events, yeah, this is another thing. Our, our team knows this when we started this is our back with our, our former company. But you know, when I kind of started as a professional in this industry, we started by doing events. We were putting on public seminars and you know, we did that. We traveled to a new city every month, every four months for like five years.
And I got to the point where I was like so burnt out on hosting events and doing events and I call it name tags. It’s like anytime you got to print name tag it’s like, I don’t want to print name tags. Like but I feel like events are making you know, in some ways I’m a comeback or, or, or whatever. What do you think that people should know if they want to put on their own event? And you know, some of our clients do. Lewis puts on one big event every year. I feel like that’s kind of becoming more of a theme where it’s like there’s one big event. How do you make an event profitable? Cause you could spend a lot of money.
MS: It’s not easy to do. We spend many, many, many millions of dollars to put on our event. But the key to, first of all, you have to acknowledge and understand that people want experiences. It’s like the, the thing that everybody craves now because they’re all stuck on their devices. They want to be together. It’s, it’s especially in millennials, they pay a lot of money for an experience, you know, that’s, that’s like kind of the center of what they want.
So to put on a good event, you need to ask yourself, what can you model that has a really good experience. We modeled Disneyland and we look at the experience of the people at Disneyland and how there’s people greeting you and that everything is clean and taken care of and polished. So that’s what we do. But what, what somebody else needs to do is just ask themselves, okay, how can we create an experience that people will talk about?
MS: Take pictures, want to be part of next year? And as far as making it profitable one of the best ways to make an event profitable is to sell the recordings to the event. Because the actual event itself is, it’s very hard to be profitable. You need to have big scale for it to be profitable. But you could have an upsell on the recordings of the video or you could sell the recordings of the video to the people that couldn’t make it to the event. We have many, many thousands every year that buy the recordings from social media marketing world and that is a big source of profit for us.
RV: Gotcha. And how do you price it relative to the price of admission?
MS: The price. Okay. So the vert, we call it the virtual ticket and it sells between 300 and $700 depending on when they buy it. The physical ticket sells between a thousand and $1,600 when they buy it. So the idea is, you know, it should be a maybe 25% to 35% of the cost because the whole reason typically people go to events where there is teaching is for the content. Right?
But there is obviously that experience that they’re truly paying for, right? That chance to meet you face to face, all that kind of stuff. And if you do really good with the recordings, you can still get lots and lots of people. We do not broadcast it live. It’s just about 10 days after the event. We email everyone and all the recordings are available for them to watch.
RV: Yeah. I mean, you guys have so many breakout rooms and stuff. That’d be crazy to try it.
MS: I’m simultaneous things going on.
RV: Yeah. so that’s interesting. So promoting the event, right? So I think it was like if you have a video course or you have a membership program, it’s like, okay, you know, you’re going to do a podcast or you’re going to build a funnel. You know, people are going to be nurtured through a sequence and they’re going to buy. I don’t feel like you see that as much with events. Events are very hard to sell. So how do you, how do you sell an event particularly like you know, at this point your events are there. It’s not a cheap, it’s nothing to go
MS: Hotel and flights. You’re talking $3,000. Right? So the key thing is going to be to sell an event is to figure out a price point. And to figure out where your audience is. If it’s a local audience and it probably could be obviously a few hundred dollars, you know, if it’s a smaller event, you have to have enough, you have to charge enough to obviously cover, cover your expenses.
In an ideal world, an event you treat like a book, right, where you’re not going to make money on the event, but the event will lead to other opportunities. That’s how you have to think about it, right? Like a lot of things we’re going to make money on books either, right? But it leads to other opportunities. So I’m promoting the event is just all about getting the right people to the event. And w we do it for like six months straight, you know what I mean?
MS: So for us it’s a massive undertaking to promote it and we use all of our own media to promote it, but it’s the primary source of revenue for our company. I don’t think a lot of other people have that kind of opportunity. So you might want to just, you know, set your goals a little lower than what you think because it’s really, really hard.
So if you want a thousand, maybe go with 300 for the first one, and then if you need more and then you’re sold out and then boom, you’ve got a sold out event. But no matter what, it’s going to be harder than you realize to sell out an event because it’s really hard for people to commit cause it’s a complex sale. They got to, they got to check the dates, they gotta check the flights, they gotta check the hotels. There’s
RV: Just so much to it, you know this, right? Yeah. I mean it’s, it is, it is. So, I mean it’s, it’s crazy. So, and when you say promote it, okay, does that just mean you’re telling people, Hey, we have an event, here’s the website that you go to. I mean, what, what, what, what is it, what is that? What are the details of, you know, cause like one of the reasons I like things like courses or whatever, it’s like, okay, there’s a registration page and then there’s a, there’s a video and then there’s a sales page and you buy a, events are much more complex. Just like you said.
So I have five full time marketers on my team working for six months straight. Just to give you some perspective. Okay. They’re doing everything from email marketing and we probably send 50 to 100 emails. They’re doing Facebook advertising, they’re doing organic social media posts. They’re doing ads on our existing media properties that we have. They might be doing, bringing speakers on live video to
MS: Do stuff. I’m bringing on speakers that are going to be speaking at the event, you know, and I might plant in what are you gonna be talking about the event, like we integrate all the media into kind of the purpose of driving people to go to that event. And then we also have to get affiliates lined up and get them to promote the event and to get the fans excited about the events we have to do contest and promotions.
Like we just did share your story kind of thing where people created videos and it was my story from social media marketing world and then the winner got an all expenses paid trip. There’s stuff, I mean like I’m just scratching the surface man. It’s deep and it’s wide, but it’s our core business model.
RV: I mean that part is that, that last part is not one that I really have heard that much. So you did a, you did a deal where you invited people who were your last year’s attendees to walk? Walk me through that exactly
MS: Called, it was called my S M M w story. And it was a promotional contest that we encourage people to either in writing or in video create like a two minute video or a written thing that shared their story. And we were going to pick a grand prize winner, which was a give them a free ticket travel and hotel. We refund their ticket if they already bought one. And the second prize was just a ticket. And we w the grand winner was a guy named Roger who’s a plumber.
He told the story about how he came to social media marketing world and his business was about to go under and now he’s like the leading plumber in the world and he’s speaking on stages over the world about plumbing, you know, and and he met the people at my conference, like Daryl ease from YouTube and others and that led him down the path to YouTube. Now he’s got this huge following and it was really awesome. And it was, he had the hashtag on it, but the goal was to get people to talk about our event, use the hashtag so that it looked as if they were evangelizing for us, which they were, and then we were going to pick the best one and reward them with a prize.
RV: Well, I love that. Did you do that every year just to [inaudible]
MS: Oh, that’s a new idea this year. Did it work? Well it didn’t because we unfortunately promoted it the week of Thanksgiving. So an idea of where we would have gotten started a little earlier and we also found it was hard to get people to create videos. So we’ll probably give it a little more promotion earlier next year.
We had, we only had like four videos and two writtens and it costs us thousands. You can imagine just in prizes. So we didn’t actually see ROI on that. But we, interesting hermit, you try stuff and if it works you keep doing it. If it doesn’t, you try something different.
RV: So what, so what do you think really moves the needle? Like what actual like what
MS: Email? 70% 70% of all of our sales for the conference that we can track come from email. The rest is word of mouth, which is just good old fashioned people telling people.
RV: Now when you say email is that I’m sending you an email to say, Hey, there’s an event coming up. Click here to buy it. That’s it. Except we do it.
MS: Do you know 70 times and each one’s a little different. Like, like here at one email might be like, Hey, you know, you need to do more with Instagram marketing and here’s some interesting statistics and you know, the best way to learn about Instagram marketing is to go learn from the people that are doing it well, here’s who’s doing it. Come learn at their feet link. You know what I mean? That kind of stuff.
So we just come up with a thousand different angles and we write different messages. You know, another one might be a keynote announcement. Right? You get the idea. So the idea is any, anything that we can tell a story or talk about, that’s part of our sequence that happens every single week over the entire six month promotional campaign and multiple times a week sometimes.
RV: Yeah. So that’s, so that’s really powerful cause, so basically you’re just taking like one little sliver of what someone’s gonna learn and building one email around that. Yeah. Flushing some content around it and then leading, tying it towards buying the event. So you’re not like, you’re, you’re not just, you’re not just sending 50 emails that say, come to San Diego on these dates.
MS: Now they all kind of are part of a theme and build the story. And then the ones that really perform well, we turn them into Facebook ads or turn them into organic content that dah dah, dah, dah.
RV: And do you think like how is having the big name speakers, is that still like a pretty big part of why people are coming is like the big keynote speaker or whatever.
MS: It’s not the keynote speaker. Cause as you know, most of our speakers are keynoters, you know, like we had other events like yourself.
RV: Yeah, you got me, you got me, you got me stowed away in the breakout in the breakout room somewhere. I don’t want to workshop. We’re diving in.
MS: Yeah. So it is definitely the the key to it all really is my podcast because people listen to these people every week on my show and then they realize that they’re all there together. You know what I mean? So, and they realize, wow, I’ve actually sampled some of Rory and some of these other people. And it’s like, I want to learn more from them and this is their chance to come and learn from those people. So it’s all kind of intertwined.
RV: And then the ads that you’re running. Okay, so, so same thing as like, is it just an ad for [inaudible]?
MS: It’ll be more like a remarketing ad. Like, Hey, you need to convince your boss, we’ve written a letter for you. Go here. You know, so somebody who didn’t buy, we’ll send them an ad that says, here’s something we wrote to convince your boss, or we’ll send them another ad that says, not sure the content will be good. Go here and watch the sample.
RV: Interesting. And then those, you’re driving those back to your website just on like hidden yeah. Special pages. Yeah, exactly. Aha. So they’re not available. It’s like public pages
MS: Public. You just don’t, it’s not necessarily there. You know, the, the website is, you just got for the event, it’s got lots of pages, so they might’ve missed it.
RV: Yeah. interesting. And then you have a, and then and then affiliates. So you’ve got, you’ve got people out there send an email blast to their lists and stuff. A lot of them are the speakers to be honest
MS: With you. You know, they’re the ones that have the skin in the game and a lot of them just, you know, cause we do not pay our speakers. Which is another surprise surprise. But they come because they really do find a lot of value in what happened, what they get out of it. You know, they get, they get the right kind of audience out of this event that helps their business. So a lot of them choose to be affiliates and a lot of them let their list know about it on whatever method they choose to do it, like their podcast or whatever else.
RV: Oh, you’re not paying giving keynote speakers. Like even we’ve never paid a speaker ever. Really not even like the big headliner person. They’re coming because of the value.
MS: You’ve never paid guy Kawasaki, we’ve never paid, you know, all the big names that we’ve had. No, we’ll, we’ll, we’ll cover their flight. And their, their hotel and stuff. But we’ve never paid a speaking fee ever. And it’s really kind of our secret sauce because the moment we do it, we’ve got to pay everybody.
RV: Well yeah. And that’s, and that’s where it’s like, it really is hard to run the event and the, if the profit goes upside down is speakers
MS: And she can get away with that. It’s a lot harder when you’re a small event,
RV: Right? Yeah. Yeah. Right. Cause it’s like the reason the reason you come is because everyone’s going to be there and you know, when you’re smaller red, it’s just, it’s just really, really, really hard. But I think even before our former company, the way that I originally started was just doing a free, I just did a free training. I invited people to come and then it was just like in the knee, sell, sell, whatever you have to sell. Or
MS: There are, there are keynoters out there where their whole business model is just keynotes and that’s how they make money. And those keynoters like Sally Hogshead for example, will sometimes take one on paid gig a year, you know? Yeah.
RV: Or if that’s like me, that’s me. Yeah.
MS: Or you know, and, and it, but it’s gotta be really a perfect match for their business model. Right. So, so, and it’s really like you’ve got to have a good relationship with those people. Dot, dot, dot, dot, dot. But there are, there are bazillions of speakers out there whose business model is to get in front of crowds, are willing to do it for free because they make their money by selling consulting, you know? And that’s really where the bulk of the speakers come from, is that the ones that are, you’re getting a sample of their value and then the hope is that you become a customer.
RV: Yeah. Well I think that’s a good way, you know, for our audience listening is you gotta be thinking about what speakers would be interested in speaking to my audience because it’s a, it’s a win win. It’s a win, win, win for everybody.
MS: Gotta be a win win. If they don’t want to be there, you don’t want them. And that’s it. You know? And, and, and let me tell you the idea that a one speaker is going to make your event, it’s just not true. You know, even Gary Vaynerchuk who spoken at my event, who never does free events has done free events for me. You know, so, but, but the reality is even him alone, there are not, they’re not really have a material impact one way or the other on my business. And he is really the biggest guy in our world. Yeah.
RV: I mean, that’s interesting to hear. Like that’s just that, that, that, that name. Well, and in some ways it’s just [inaudible]
MS: No, as I’m a big event, if you’re a small event, it could be a huge thing for you. But if you’re a big event, you know, yeah, maybe a couple hundred people might come more, but that’s probably, it’s really hard to measure. You know, you can’t just pin it on one person and that’s where a lot of people get it wrong. They just say, if I could only have Seth Goden or if I only have Gary Vaynerchuk and it’s just not how it works.
RV: Yeah. Well that’s, I think that’s actually encouraging is just to go like create an experience. Right. You know, don’t build it, don’t build it just around one personality or speaker or whatever and pin all your hopes to that. Cause there’s a lot of people who do that. They’ll go pay 50 grand to get a speaker and then it’s like, crap, that didn’t help me sell more tickets at all and now I’m broke. You know, like I spent all my money on that, that, that thing for public of PR, particularly for public events. It’s like corporates, a little bit of it.
MS: That might be true with musicians and athletes and comedians and all that kind of stuff. But definitely not with your everyday kind of speaker, you know.
RV: So speaking about personalities, I want to talk about, open this conversation with you because you know, I think it’s like people heard of social media marketing world and social media examiner and social media marketing podcast, but it’s like the, you have your, you have your little icons and your graphics and your visual identity. None of it is built around Michael Stelzner his face.
You’re not even, I mean, you’re the voice of the podcast, but my face is not on the cover art. That’s true. Yeah. You’re, you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re, you’re, it’s, it wasn’t built around your face. Why did you do so? So why did you do that originally? And do you think that that has made your enterprise more valuable or less valuable? And do you plan to keep doing that in the future? Like that, that whole conversation is a big one.
MS: All right. First and foremost, I was very well known before I started social media examiner in the world of writing. And it was all about me and my name and my name was everywhere. This was before my face logically made sense because this is when blogging was around and people didn’t put their face. It was before social. And I had that fame and I decided I didn’t want any more of it.
So when I started social media examiner, I knew it was never intended to be about me. It was to create a movement. And you can’t create a movement with a face. You create a movement with a concept. Right? So the idea that social media that I could create a movement of people that wanted to understand how social media works was far more important than Michael Stelzner because people want to be part of a movement.
MS: They don’t want to be part of a person, you know? So I was creating something that transcended the individual. Now that did hurt me a little bit in the beginning after I got to a certain level of fame, because when I came out with my second book launch at first people were like, who the heck is Michael Stelzner?
They know social media examiner. But that turned out to not be a problem because my audience didn’t know who I was because my name was on every email that went out from the beginning. And but over time, you know, I just didn’t want to make it about me and I knew that if I made it about someone else, it would grow faster. So what was the second part of the question?
RV: Well, so that’s what you did early on. Has it helped you or hurt you and do you plan on doing it going forward? And why or why not?
MS: So. So at this point, about two years ago, I started putting my face out there a little bit more when I started a documentary called the journey, which has been retired. We did that for two seasons and it turned out people really actually liked hearing from me and seeing me and my quirky nature on camera. But I decided I’m done with that. My, I’m doing something brand new as of right.
Today I just launched something brand new, which you saw. I only put my face out there with an intent and with a purpose. So me, it’s like I don’t want to be more famous than I already am. I feel like I, I, I, that’s not going to service me. I’m not selling me. There’s nothing, there’s no advantage to the business to necessarily having my face out there more because we’re already so quite successful.
MS: But I’ve got something new that I’m going to be launching a course. So I strategically decided that I was going to create a series of videos to show the world that there’s some knowledge that I have that they may not be aware of. And I launched that very first video today and it was very well received. I was shocked actually. I published it on YouTube, Facebook and LinkedIn and the comments were like, Whoa.
And I’m getting text messages from friends and like it’s just a four minute video showcasing some of my knowledge and I’m going to be doing it for a couple of months here just to kind of set my audience, set the message to my audience that Hey, I have something to teach you and then when I’m ready to sell the course they will hopefully say, okay, I’ve learned so much from Mike for free. Maybe I’ll go check out his course.
RV: So how do you think, how do you, if somebody who’s just starting out, yeah, right. You know, you said there are certain advantages to building it around your face. That’s the thing about a face too, is it, it’s your face. It’s, it simplifies the sale cause it’s like if I like you, I buy from you. If I don’t like you, I don’t. But if it’s a company, it’s like there’s a little more exploration of like, do I really trust this brand? Right? But if somebody’s just starting out, how do they know if they should lead with their face or if they should build it around a brand?
MS: It depends on what you’re selling. If you’re selling your knowledge, lead with your face, if you’re selling a product, then you might want to go either way, right? So if you’re selling a widget, then you just have to ask yourself, do I want to build a brand that will help me accelerate the widget? Or do I want to build a personal brand that’ll accelerate through the widget?
Because maybe my story about the, you know, look at all the shark tank stories, right? It’s about the person, right? And some of those persons are naturals, right? Where it’s like, Hey, you need to come on QVC. You need to be the one to sell it. Right? But not everyone’s like that. So that’s Jeff. If you’re a natural communicator and you have that energy and you can bring that content and it comes naturally, then use your face. If it doesn’t, then create a brand that’s a brand that doesn’t involve your face.
RV: All right, so let me ask you if the entrepreneurial side, cause I was actually surprised to hear this really. So I was surprised. I was surprised to hear this. I want to from the entrepreneurial perspective, because even though I’m like a personal brand guy, I mean it’s our whole business, right? Is helping people build brands around their face. I’m also an entrepreneurial guy and so I’m interested in equity value. I’m interested in, in resellable value and I feel like, you know, there are things like trafficking conversion that were sold that have high values. To me, social media examiner has a lot of value because there’s less of a question about whether or not this enterprise will succeed without you, which means it’s a sellable asset versus if it’s built around your face.
MS: Well that’s a huge upside to having a brand that’s not your face. Absolutely. Yeah. So I, I just, so that was my intent in building the thing. I mean, honestly, I didn’t, first I didn’t feel comfortable cause they didn’t know what the heck I was talking about. And secondly, I thought I could build a brand and I could get out of it if I wanted to and it would still potentially live on.
RV: Right. And I feel that’s true, right? Like I think it’s, I mean if you, I mean other than a different voice on the podcast, I think it’s like somebody very much could by social media examiner and there’s like this machine that produces events
MS: Every year. We’re not for sale, but it’s true. That is a huge advantage. And you just have to ask yourself like, what do you, you can go either way. You can start with a personal brand and you can spin off a product which a lot of people have done, right. Lots of people have done that.
RV: Lots of people, celebrities do that all the time. I mean, that’s what [inaudible]
MS: They did. And that the advantage of the personal brand is it can be a huge accelerant because you become the influencer that builds that product. The flip side of it is you could be a company that spins off a personal brand. You see this with CEOs all the time, Richard Branson, right? And all these other CEOs, Steve jobs, formerly, you know, of Apple. And you know, the, the soak can go either direction. You could be, you could come out from behind the brand like I did or you could be the brand.
RV: Yeah. So, well that’s interesting cause that’s, that’s, that’s what we would say too is like, it all depends on what is your long term objective and you know, what are your, what are your strengths and your weaknesses and stuff. So it’s, it’s not a, it’s not a black and white answer for everybody. It totally depends on your situation. Okay. Well very cool.
So I have one more little question I want to ask you before I do that. Where should people go if they want to, you know, learn more about Mike Stelzner and you know, social media marketing world. And, and
MS: So first of all, if you have room for on your listening podcast for more podcasts, check out the social media marketing podcast. If you go to social media examiner.com you’ll find everything you’ll find social media marketing world, you’ll find our YouTube channel social media examiner.com. Okay. All right.
RV: We’ll put links to that. Of course I’ll go into the show notes and everything and I’ll be at the event which I’m excited aside about and looking forward to seeing you again in person, my friend. The coming back to the data. Yes. Okay. One of the things that’s painful for everybody is that the organic reaches is dying on social media. I feel, I mean, true, it is dying and it is really, really frustrating cause people have invested a lot of time and energy at the same time. It’s hard to complain. It’s like it’s free. What are the kind of big trends on the horizon that you think personal brands should be paying attention to in order to maximize their organic reach on social, you know, beyond video or is there anything else? Is it just like, you know, video is the answer.
MS: The idea of maximizing your organic reach is kind of a dead idea. So instead of what you need to do is you need to figure out on social, because it’s just, it’s gone and it’s not coming back. You can pay, which is if you’re willing to put a little bit of money behind some of those organic posts you can pay to get those in front of people, which might be smart depending on what your objective is. So do not be shy about putting money behind your organic posts and turning them into an ad. Beyond organic.
I really feel it’s important to diversify beyond social obvious social, like Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn into other platforms like podcasting, like YouTube, which a lot of people don’t think of when they think of social and also the written word. So there are still people that read email, there are still, and there’s a lot of people that just send emails like Chris Brogan’s a great example of that, right? He puts out a weekly email w w and he doesn’t publish that content anywhere else. So those are things that you can do to nurture and grow an audience that kind of are your own. So you don’t have to be at the mercy of an algorithm
RV: And you don’t think you, YouTube doesn’t count as social media because it’s not an algorithm. Meaning they’re, they’re going to show it, right?
MS: Can it have an algorithm? But most people don’t think of YouTube when they think of social. They think of YouTube as a distribution vehicle. Okay? So you can link to your YouTube videos through all these other mediums, right? So you can say, Hey, go watch the video here on YouTube.
And if you’re lucky, some of those videos will take off in search or suggested video. But I, in the same way, podcasts, you could argue, have a search function inside the Apple podcast directory. You got to promote the podcast, right? Everybody knows that who has a podcast, you’ve got to promote the podcast. You do the same thing with your YouTube videos. You treat it as a, as a source, you know, not at the destination. I don’t know how else to describe it. It’s just where the video lives is what I’m,
RV: But but, but basically like you post something on Facebook, less than 1% of whoever follows you is going to even that you post something on iTunes, a podcast, all of your subscribers get that. If they are subscribed, it shows up in their feed. And you’re saying YouTube is more like that and less like Facebook your subscribers,
MS: Right? But the key thing is to, yes, to grow the subscribers. But the difference between YouTube and podcasting is that not all of your subscribers will see the video. Youtube will reveal the video to your subscribers selectively. And then they’ll look at how many people click on it. And then what they do after they click on it. So what YouTube will do is if you can get them to click on it, which is a good thumbnail, and then they’ll watch it cause YouTube is looking for retention time, then they’ll show it to more of your subscribers and then they’ll show it to non-subscribers.
So there’s a huge distribution upside on YouTube that you do not have on any other platform. Also, remember YouTube videos can work for years. That does not happen on any other social platform. You’re lucky for 24 hours on everything else. So there is that big upside and you can email, you know, that link to YouTube in the same way you might tell everybody to go listen to your podcast with links to Apple and Google play and Spotify. So it’s just one of those things you got to promote.
But, but the upside to YouTube video can be huge because if you can get a video optimized, then it could deliver
RV: For years. I love it. Well there you have it. Some of the biggest ideas from one of the biggest brands in the space, Michael Stelzner, everybody check out social media marketing world. The event, I will be there. If you’re listening to this before that time for this year, and any year in the future, I can tell you for sure. It will be amazing. So follow Michael, check them out. This is one of the, the, the, the native sources that I learned from social media examiner. So, Michael, thanks so much for your friendship and your counsel and for all your wisdom and, and ideas today, my friend.
Ep 26: Capturing a State with Lewis Howes
RV: Hey Brand Builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview. As always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders group.com/pod call. We hope to talk to you soon.
RV: I am honored today to introduce you to someone who’s become a really close friend of mine over the last couple of years. We’ve now known each other for several years, which is wild to say. And surely if you’re watching this, then you’ve heard of Lewis house. He is the New York times bestselling author of school of greatness, the host of one of the top 50 podcasts in the world for iTunes on many weeks, usually almost always in the top hundred recently crossed over a hundred million downloads.
Lewis has been featured on Ellen, good morning America, the today show. And it was not that long ago when Lewis was broke living on his sister’s couch and he, you know, it’s something you should know is he almost never does interviews like this. He did this as a personal favor to me and I really wanted you all to get to hear this, the true behind the scenes story of how Louis got to be Louis. Because I know many of you, you know, dream of having to kind of influence some reach that he has. So Lewis, welcome brother. Thank you for making the time for us.
LH: Oh man, I’m pumped to be here. You know, the reason why I never do online summit interviews is because you had me go through on our coaching day, which I’ve done many with you on my own brand and personal brand. You had me create a list of yeses and nos of what brings me joy, what supports my business and brand and what doesn’t bring me joy doesn’t support my business brand and online summits for me cause I got requests to do so many of them for summer to somebody years. I did so many of them. They just always stress me out and they never brought any benefits to my brand or business. Once I crossed through a certain threshold of my brand, this is always a know automatically sense. So I had to make an exception on my yes, no list for you. So happy to be here man.
RV: Well thank you buddy. And, and you know, there’s a lot of surprising things about you. I think when people really get to know you that there’s a lot of like surprising things. And one of the things that always stuck out from me also is one of your students, not just your friend and not just an advisor to you at times, but as one of your students was, I remember hearing you speak one time and somebody asked you, I think there was an a Q and a and they said, you know, what’s the like, what’s the most important thing about your personal brand? And I was like, Oh, surely he’s going to say like networking or like consistency or advertising.
And you said photography. And that freaking blew my mind. I had never, I had never thought about that. So I guess my question for you, that was like three years ago, is that still one of the things you would say is the top thing, you know, but even if it’s not, why did you say that at that time? Or what do you feel like is the role of photography has played in building your personal brand? Because that’s, that was something not on my radar at all.
LH: Yeah. I’m just writing down the biggest things. And so yeah, so I would say photography is one I’m thinking of four or five key things that I think about all that. Just off the top of my head. Photography is always one of the top and it has, here’s the reason why when you’re in a store picking up groceries or at whole foods or CVS or wherever you’re going to, there’s always something you see right before you check out.
And this is a long row of magazines or there’s always a row of magazines almost at every grocery store or place that you go for. Sure. And the image is on the cover of those magazines, whether it’s GQ, Cosmo or, or some of the type of magazine life that for men and women, you know, in the more high end type of magazines or more classy style magazines, the photography always makes the people on the cover like elevated, right?
Their brand is elevated based on the photography. It’s not just like any random photo of them on the cover of a magazine. It’s always very intentional for the message they’re trying to put out there. Whether it’s this beauty and elegance or this passion and a lower, there’s always something or ministry. There’s always something that defines the human being on the cover of the magazine of these more well-known class years. Job magazines, same thing. True.
The same thing is true for the magazines that are the, you know, gossip related magazines where that’s like the big belly of the person on the beach or somebody that looks bad or that’s got a frumpy face. It’s like we remember the images that we see the most and they impact us emotionally and we associate the images we see of other people on magazines or on social media or on their websites.
LH: You know, it all kind of trickles down from there. We were member images at the highest level. We may not be able to recall like I remember this magazine seven years ago where so-and-so was on it, but the more you see the image of that person in that state, you think of them as that state. So for me, photography is always something that I just kind of felt like I needed to dive into. Probably like 70 years ago because I’d never had good photography. And I always see these other people that were more influential. Celebrities has great photography. So I started investing in that probably seven years ago and it’s something I do all the time. I’m really intentional about the photos that I post. And that is portrayed on my website and branding.
RV: See that’s really even, even that word that you used state is interesting. It’s like a captured, it’s not just an image of you. What I hear you saying is it’s like it’s a captured state, like a state of being.
LH: It’s an energy that reflects to the other person and you’re either attracted to it or you’re repelled to it by it or you’re neutral. You know it, whatever state it is, you, you’re putting that energy out in someone’s mind that is then a snapshot that they have and more. Yeah. The more of those, the more of those images, they get a view that is empowering, inspirational or wealthy or attractive or integrity, whatever it is, the branding you’re trying to portray. The more they see of that, that you, the more they just say this person is that I need to go, I need to send people that way if they want to learn that thing. And yeah.
RV: So let me ask you this, I’m just done. I want to hear some of your others for sure. But so is there anything that you do during the photo shoot or in terms of the photographer you select? I mean I know you use Nick on can a lock isn’t, is amazing and that’s, you know, one, one easier solution is to find someone amazing, invest the money because it’s worth it and do it. But like is there anything you do during the shoot to like,
LH: I mean it’s taken me a long time to get comfortable in front of a camera. The first three, four years I would say I was very awkward. It’s not like a natural thing for me to be like posing as a model or something or know what looks good. I would always just kind of stand with my like hands in my pockets in the first few years cause I had no clue what I was doing. So I actually study. I should probably go take like classes since I do more and more photography on just postures and poses that look inspiring and masculine and you know, trustworthy.
RV: My care personality has really come through like you do jumping, are you with your arms wide or like you’re, you’re actually going after this phone call to Turkey for four days to do a photo.
LH: Just going, I’m bringing a photographer, bring a videographer, flying them to Turkey. I’m renting a helicopter. I’m renting a driver all day to take us to the spots. We’ve been planning it for six weeks. I have outfits from a stylist for the last three weeks. I’ve been doing fittings once a week
RV: And these are just photos for like social media and whatever
LH: Book my,
RV: I’m redesigning my website so I want to have the most inspirational photos for my website. It’s for my website redesign, but it’s also like you gotta be from my summit of greatness. A program’s going to be for social media for the next six months. It’s going to be, I’ll save some just for book covers. I mean just for magazine covers because magazines were asked to do interviews and I’ll say, I’ve got the same age that I haven’t used yet.
It’s fricking Epic, you know, do you want to use this? So I’m trying to make it, I’m trying to portray the image that I want, that press and media are going to use for me as opposed to them taking photos of me. Here’s the image I want you to use. I want you to be intentional about it. So the state that I’ll think about is really now after many years of not being that good at it, it’s like passion and joy.
RV: I just think of passion and joy. How can I be joyful? How can I be passionate? I’ll do some like just GQ, like normal non-smiling photos as well to try to mix it up. But it’s really like how can I bring the passion? How can I bring the joy and just have fun? So I just try to play music. I try to just like crack jokes so I’m not nervous or thinking too much about how I look because I don’t want it to be me obsessing over the way I look and making sure like everything is perfect in my face. Yes, I want to look good, but I want to be organic and I want to follow and I want to have fun because when we have fun, we know people can feel that when it’s forced, people feel that. So I really just try to like shake it out a lot. Just have fun. Just like dance, move and get. Yeah. And so this is less of, this is less of like, Oh, I want to post a bunch of pictures of me and myself. He’s on Instagram because of how cool I am. And it’s more of, I’m trying to portray an energy and a lifestyle and a state of being. That is how I want other people to feel. I’m just trying to portray that.
LH: Yeah. What’s the energy you want people to feel [inaudible] feel attracted to, you know, without photography. How is someone to know who you are, you know they’re going to have, they’re going to make up their own image. So you might think of someone like some famous author, I’m trying to think of like a fiction writer that I don’t even know who they look like, but some big fiction writer. What’s like,
RV: Like Stephen King? Yeah. A lot of people don’t know what Stephen King even looks like.
LH: I don’t know. This guy looks like, so we are, his personal brand is like, okay, I don’t know, maybe like a professor looking or maybe some wild crazy artist or something. But yeah, unless we know an image of who it is, we make up our own image. And so I would rather just dictate the images. I want people to think about of me and make them positive.
RV: So, other than other than photography, what else do you have? Like cars and just so y’all that you are watching. We did, we did not script this at all, which is I did not want it. I wanted to hear like Lewis unprepared. Random. Like when you think of taking your brand to the next level, what’s on your mind?
LH: Yeah, I just wrote down five quick things. Photography has never won. I’ve got one more. Six. the second thing is branding and design. So design for me is huge and I’m very intentional about it. To where I’ll, this I kind of obsess over a little more because I think you can really study the science of design of what, and it’s just another layer of making you feel something. So what are the colors that make you feel that you want them to feel as well? Based on the photography you have, the colors, the style of the layout, all those things.
How the images are placed, you know, the, where the font is out on your website, all these different things. The graphics, the, is it updated looking, is it 1990s or 1980s looking like you want to make sure you’re forward-thinking and innovative with your, your, your design and branding or at least just a clean aesthetic like medium.com is minimalist, but it’s almost, it’s so minimal that it’s like, okay, I appreciate the design intentionality of a minimal site as well. So I’m not saying you need to have all these flashy colors and swoosh marks on your website or on your graphics when you’re posting something out there, but being intentional about what your design says about you, your message and your personal brand. So
RV: I’m always on that one. So for somebody, how do you know what is good design and what isn’t? Like, I think a lot of people are going, okay, I need to get a website, but, and I know you can spend 50 grand on a website, you can spend $50 on a website and I’ve seen people spend 20 grand and it looks like crap. And I’ve seen people spend five grand. It looks amazing. A lot of it is knowing and a lot of us don’t know. Like I think a lot of us underestimate the importance of this. But then even when we do it’s like, but I don’t, I don’t know what to look for. Or is there something that you
LH: Yeah, it’s an a for me it’s it’s a feeling. It all comes back to a feeling for me. It’s, I’m not a designer. I’m not, I’m not been trained in this or studied this. I know what looks good and feels good for me based on other designs from brands, sides, personalities that I like. And then I’ll just reflect on why do I like this, why does it feel good? And I’ll talk to a designer and say, here are three different sites or three different products that I like to have amazing branding. I don’t know why I like it, but I like it. Can you help me reflect on this? What is it about this, I don’t know with the color make me feel a certain way.
RV: When you, when you do that, is it like, cause other people do that too and they’re always like, okay, it’s, it’s Tesla and Virgin and Nike, right? Like everyone goes, you know, make me that. Is there, is it those same ones for you or is it like you go, no, there’s, there’s different ones that I have found.
LH: I try to, I try to look at music, fashion and sports brands and bring into my brand. So I don’t try to look with in the industry and copy Gary Vaynerchuk or copy, I don’t know, Richard Brown, whatever it is. Some other person in my space, Tim Ferris. I try to look at other influences in sports, fashion and music that I think are innovative, that are that bring out an energy. Cause these are a lot of like the, these create feelings for people. Fashion, music, sports. They’re like this, it’s like a religion for people. And so what’s the feeling that these create that make me feel so connected to a community, our tribe or a message or a mission that I want to create in my business as well. And my personal brand so that people feel like they’re a part of a mission that they want to support. So I’m just trying to find things like I’m doing like for the branding from a, my event, I really liked this campaign more than an athlete like LeBron James had it.
RV: This is the summit you’re talking about the summit of greatness for those people that don’t know you do once a year?
LH: Yeah, some of the greatest and so I’m like focusing on rebranding every year we kind of update the design and so I was doing an hour-long call with my designer and I was like, I really liked this more than an athlete energy and feeling of the branding of this like one campaign that LeBron James did and I really like just like the innovation of like air Jordan, all these new shoes that air Jordan has been doing. I was like here, like three different shoes that I really like. I don’t know why I like it, but they just make me feel like fresh, innovative and clean and air Jordan is just like this timeless brand. It’s been around for 20 or 30 years. It just continues to grow. And you know, I was like, I really like what Jay Baldwin is doing. He’s a middle lad pop world reg a tone. Like he’s always innovating and pushing the boundaries on his fashion. And I was just like, like something around these three things. What can we do?
RV: And so you don’t even know what it is. You just say there’s an energy about these. And do you just say do something with that? Like make me,
LH: Yeah. I mean listen, I’m not a designer so I’m working with a designer and I’m trying to be the creative director with that person to be like, okay,
RV: But you do all that. Yeah. Just have a creative, you don’t have a creative yeah, exactly. Yeah. I just don’t know how to execute it personally. So okay. What else that’s on your list? Cause I wanna make sure we at least hear him.
LH: So I put big moments, I feel like big moments. Define your personal brand. So when I decided to launch a book, I wrote a whole, I did like a year and a half of research on how to be a New York time bestseller cause I was like this is a big moment opportunity and it could define a whole leveling up for my brand if I reached the New York Times bestseller list.
RV: No, that’s what you and I met was I was on your podcast right after my first book hit New York times and we chatted after and I was like, well I’ll tell you everything I know and that I feel like is when you and I really bonded.
LH: That’s it. Yeah. That was like two one was that, I don’t know,
RV: Like 2014 or 13 yeah, while ago.
LH: So I think big moment opportunities every year, I try to do at least one big moment that is like, here’s a big announcement, here’s a big thing. People do this with like a big merger or they’ll buy a company and it’s like a big boom. We just bought this company, boom, we just sold this. It elevates your personal brand and your kind of energy. And image in the world. So I did that with my first book. I feel like I did that with my second book, masking masculinity. I did that with a live event when everyone was getting away from advance. I was like, I want to innovate the space with events. I did that with the first talk show on Facebook watch last year. Also. First talk show is like a big moment for a number of months. I just fell my first documentary, it’s not out yet, but I feel like that’ll be a big a moment to be like, Whoa, okay, he’s doing a movie now. Like I have to pay attention.
RV: It’s fricking awesome too. It’s free. I’ve seen it is freaking awesome. It’s so inspiring. Thank you. Thank you. Really well done.
LH: I feel like it’s investing in big moment opportunities that differentiate you from everyone else. As you know, our friend saw Sally Hogshead said different is better than better. And so I just think of what’s going to be different for me this year than last year and what’s going to be different from everyone else in my kind of space. So big moments, you know, my book, my VAT, my talk show, my documentary, it’s just like, okay, what are the things that we can do? Big moment opportunities. If you could do one every year, I think that’d be powerful for your personal brand to level it up. The press. So it would be the next thing. This will be the fourth thing is be pressed. One, two, three, four. Yeah. So when you have big moment opportunities, leveraging the press to get that. So my bookyou know, today America and LLN all these things, you use these big moments to then leverage it with press, mainstream press to support more attention and attraction to your personal brand.
LH: So press would be number four. I would say. The fifth one would probably be number three. Your messaging, you know, that would probably go to photography branding, design and messaging kind of in the first three. But the communication, how you communicate, whether you’re audio, video or written word, how are you communicating your message? What is the energy you’re going to share with your words no matter what format they’re in. So your messaging is important. And I think being intentional about your messaging and then one, two, three or four, five. So this would be the sixth thing would be your association with other people who you’re associated with, elevates your brand or brings it back. So, you know, I’ve been in the, for example, I’ve been in the internet marketing space for many, many years, but I, one of the reasons I said no to online marketing summits is that they’re all kind of like these internet marketing type of events typically.
LH: And I just said, I don’t want to be associated as an internet marketer anymore. I want to be, be associated more as a mainstream individual that can attract mainstream press and opportunities. And every time you do something that is with your few past identity, you stay in a past identity more or it’s harder to grow into the next identity. And so I’m always trying to associate with people that are out of my reach at the time. That’s why I have a podcast where I interview people and I have a wall of people that I’ve associated with who, who have all these people to come to my show. And each person is a representation of my brand as well.
So when I have someone on who’s maybe not credible or in a space that isn’t positive or was controversial, it also reflects to my personnel brand as well. Like I’ve had certain just individuals who are very controversial, people hate them or love them and then I get a lot of flack for that in a Hertz, my personal brand at times, if I did too much of that, people would be like, Oh, Louis just associates with all these people are controversial. So he’s controversial. But if I’m associating with billionaires and world-class athletes and leaders in the world, then it makes me more in association with that community. So
RV: I would, and I would say, you know, like I believe this is one of your superpowers. Like truly like you know, photography. You don’t take the pictures design, you don’t do it messaging. I feel like it’s one of the things you’ve come to us like at brand builders group, that’s one of the things big moments you do a great job of. I think press you do, you do a great job of, but like if I had to, it was like one of your pals go, what is one Louis the supers powers. It is, it is, it is networking and it is building meaningful relationships quickly with a lot of people and then connecting people and then all these like, like you said, getting in touch with people that are out of your reach.
Do you let me ask you an honest question about that. Because you’ve heard the phrase, social climber, like you know, some people will say that like, Oh well that, yeah, she’s a social primer. He just social climber and like, Oh well you’re too good to talk to. So and so. How do you reconcile like either a fear of, or do you not even put any value in that or like have you ever like,
LH: Yeah, I just think, I think now I’ve thought about a time from time to time cause I’m on, sometimes it’d be like, am I just going to this event to meet someone that I could like help me in the future? You know what I mean? It’s crossed my mind momentarily a few moments in the last 10 years. But it’s not like something I think about too often. Cause all I do is add value to people. All I do is I never asked for anything and I just say, how can I support and how can I promote what you care about the most? So if I was always meeting someone and saying, Hey, by the way, can you invest in this? Hey can you do this for me? Hey, you don’t want to show, I want to pitch you something. I hate when people do that to me. So I never do that to other people. Especially when people who are very influential are busy and have a lot going on. I just feel like it’s the wrong way to build a relationship.
RV: But, so that’s, that’s part of the difference as a social climber, as someone who’s trying to get, climb their way to the top so that they can take things from people versus someone who’s just giving to everybody.
LH: I think you make a big impact. You make a big you stand out when you just add a lot of value and you never asked for anything and you just try to be a good person. And that’s all I’ve tried to do for the last 10 years is meet people, find how I can add as much dye to their life as quickly as possible and not ask for anything until there’s a big moment. Like once a year, I might have a big thing that I might ask some of them to support with if it makes sense because I know it’s in their kind of realm, but not ever, I’m not asking people for stuff all the time. So it’s just trying to build quality relationships with quality people and helping people because I know it’ll come back around eventually somehow. And it feels good to help people, you know, I get validated when I help someone or solve a big problem who’s you know, got a lot of influence. It’s like, okay. Yeah, it feels good.
RV: Other things that I would share, you know, just from, for people that don’t know is, even though I do think you, you have a super power of like meeting new people that are, you know, at like a higher cache or profile or whatever you want to say in real life. When you meet, you’re one of the most approachable people in real life. Like, it’s never, Oh, he’s not good enough, or she’s not worth my time. Like you’re always like dishing out hugs and loving on people. And I’ve, I’ve, I’ve never gotten that sense at all about watching you with other people.
LH: Yeah, I think you know, it’s cause I remember being a nobody 10 years ago that no one knew who I was. I was broke and there were people that were willing to give me 10, 20 minutes from time to time just to be able to ask questions to or, or support me in different ways. And I think I brought value to them through bringing passion and curiosity and taking action on whatever they said quickly. So they saw that I was getting results and it was good for them as well. So I didn’t feel like I wasted people’s time. I was like committed to getting results and adding value even then and I go, I go back and forth cause I take a lot of meetings sometimes and I feel like sometimes I’m just wasting so much time just meeting people, meeting people. So it’s part of the super power I guess.
LH: But also it kind of holds me back when I’ll have six meetings in a day and I’m like, okay, I still have to start work at 7:00 PM cause I haven’t done anything today and the work needs to be done. So it’s a, it’s a constant battle of managing the energy of meeting people and making sure that when I’m with someone in PR present, I’d give them the time, but I don’t over commit on time later. So if I’m around someone in person, I will give them a moment. I will be present and I will, you know, be affectionate, loving, whatever it may be. But if they’re like, Oh, can you come on and do my podcast that I haven’t launched yet and I was zero following, I have to decline just to like save myself energy. Otherwise, if I said yes to everyone, I’d be suffocating as well.
RV: I know that’s a struggle for everybody. Like, and it’s hard to, as you develop more notoriety, you can’t help. But you know, some people are going to say certain things, but he’s like, you can’t take, take them all. So anyway, I have one, one last question for you before I do that. Is there anywhere where do you want people to go to, to connect with you and follow up and like, you know, tune in?
LH: Yeah. Lewis Howes.com or summitofgreatness podcast.
RV: [Inaudible] Check it out. And beyond tune, he’s got big moments come in. The documentary is one I know that’s coming, coming at some point here soon. Last thing for you Lewis. This, I think it’s been inspiring to watch how quickly you have risen through the ranks of all of these different things. And then, you know, I remember when you got on Ellen, you know that like, I, I’ve, I’ve been kind of with you for some of these big moments and just like hitting the New York times list that first time. And then I remember the shot of you in times square when your second book was amazing. And then being on Ellen and then getting the Facebook watch. If, if there’s one thing that you wish you could have known when you first started and if you could tell yourself like go back and you say, if I, I wish I would’ve known this, it would have helped me get there faster. When you very first started out or if there’s just one thing that you feel like you did latch onto that you feel like this, this really has made all the difference, what do you think that would be?
Speaker 3: I think building a team faster, you know, having the right people in my team to support me with things that were taking up too much time so that I can do the things that I did best early on in my career. That would have been probably more beneficial because I just spent a lot of time and energy doing everything as opposed to focusing on a few key things that I should be doing. So learning to say no to things that don’t need to do and hiring the people to do those things earlier would have been, would have been G I think.
RV: Yeah. Well, I love it, buddy. I appreciate so much that, that hopefully people see the intention of the energy and the emotion that you’re trying to create and put out there in the world through photography, design, messaging, moments, the press, your association. It’s all about inspiring people and helping them feel this, this energy, which is everything that is Lewis house. So
Speaker 3: People…what is the quote? People don’t remember what you say, but they’ll remember how you made them feel.
RV: Maya Angelou, that’s right, she said, that’s all right. Well, thanks buddy. You keep inspiring and we’ll keep following. We appreciate you.
Ep 24: Building a Brand That Lasts with Dennis Rodman
When you think about the most iconic basketball players ever, our guest today, Dennis Rodman makes the list every time. Not only was he an athlete extraordinaire, a five-time NBA champion, a two-time NBA All-Star, rebound league leader four different times, and an NBA Hall of Famer, he is also a New York Times best-selling […]
Ep 22: Understanding the Seasons of Business Models and Personal Brands with Michael Hyatt
ANNOUNCER: 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.
[0:00:27.2] RV: I’m your lead host Rory Vaden. Co-founder of Brand Builders Group, Hall of Fame speaker and New York Times bestselling author of Take the Stairs.
There are certain people in my life that I just feel honored to be associated with, just lucky to know. Michael Hyatt is certainly one of those people. I happened to speak at an event on a cruise ship and he was trapped there with me for six days and he couldn’t get away and I managed to get to know him and build a little relationship several years ago and I certainly consider him a mentor. If you haven’t heard of him, I don’t really know how you could be in the personal branding space and not know who he is.
But he is the former CEO of Thomas Nelson. He is the New York Times, Wall Street Journal, USA Today bestselling author of several books, one of which was Platform which made a huge personal impact in me and my direction. He’s written several others, Living Forward, Your Best Year Ever, Free to Focus, most recently.
He is both a tremendous personal brand, but also a real leader. He scaled a company, a 250-million-dollar publishing company with 700 employees, that’s Thomas Nelson. The Michael Hyatt team, like their company, now is on the Inc. 5,000 list. He’s a real leader, real CEO, real businessman, also real family man, he’s been married for over 40 years to Gale who – she’s awesome so it’s understandable.
He’s got five amazing daughters, nine grandchildren and he volunteered to come help me out as a personal favor. It’s not easy to get his time these days, he’s so busy so Michael, thank you for the honor of being here, my friend.
[0:02:09.6] MH: Absolutely Rory, thank you for those kind words, amazing.
[0:02:13.2] RV: You know, if you say publishing, it’s hard to create a list of people that would be more experienced in all different angles than you and I think so many of the people watching, I mean, I think almost every one of our clients like a book enters into the conversation at some point and so my first question for you, I figured was an easy one. Can you just tell us the secret of writing a bestselling book?
[0:02:40.6] MH: Well, take about 80% luck, and you know, have the right idea at the right time. No, seriously, I think part of it can certainly enhance your chances of writing a bestselling book but I think the most important thing on writing a bestselling book or creating a platform or a brand that has significance in the world is having something important and helpful to say.
I think you know, Zig Ziglar said, you know, if you help enough people, then you can get what you want and I think it’s the same thing with writing a book. Just write the most helpful, useful book you can. Be authentic, be transparent, be encouraging and that’s basically all I’ve tried to do and I’ve tried to find a topic that was hot and something that I could with integrity speak out of my experience but that’s pretty much what I’ve done.
[0:03:28.0] RV: Talk to me a little bit about the – you have the platform, like that’s – a part of the factor here is you have like the integrity of the idea but then you have the size of the author’s platform. Which one matters more? Do they matter the same? Can you do it with – do you have to have both, one not the other? What’s the balance there between platform and you know, premise.
[0:03:50.5] MH: Yeah, the way I say it is that content is king but platform is queen. It really takes both of those together, you know, if you want to create a kingdom and rule well. The reason I wrote the book Platform initially was because for years, in the publishing business, I had bene on the publishing side of turning away authors with great ideas, sometimes even fully written manuscripts that were fantastic but because they didn’t have a platform, there was very little for us as a publishing company to leverage.
But, when an author came to us with a great idea, great content, and they had some platform, didn’t have to be best but they had to at least proof of concept that there was an audience that was buying into their content and their framework and to whatever it is that they were selling, that was something we could leverage and kind of take to the next level. I think they’re equally important
[0:04:43.2] RV: Do you think that traditional publishing like, you know, that’s kind of the question today is years ago, was like traditional publishing was the way to go and then self-publishing and now I feel like it kind of teeters kind of back and forth.
A lot of our clients ask this question. How do I know if I should use a traditional publisher, you know? Do I really need one? Should I self-publish? Like what’s your take on that in the current day era?
[0:05:05.3] MH: Well, my opinion has vacillated over the years. In the initial – I mean, I was in the publishing business for 35 years. Initially, there was only traditional publishing, then there was self-publishing or we, you know, call it in those days, vanity publishing, which is kind of pejorative but that’s how we looked at it and it wasn’t very well respected because the books looked terrible. They usually weren’t well written or well edited and you could just tell it’s a self-published book. All that changed, started changing about 10 years ago and so self-publishing got more sophisticated, there were these hybrid publishers that would help you do some of it.
Now you’ve got all kinds of options out there but I’ve kind of come full circle. Here’s my theory right now. If you want to write a book, just the credential yourself and there’s no better way to credential yourself or to get authority in a space than to write a book. I personally think, it’s more important than a PHD, it’s more important than tons of experience. If you have a published book, that, in this culture, that kind of says you’ve arrived and you’re an expert in your category. If that’s all you’re trying to do then I think self-publishing is fine.
It becomes kind of a glorified, very nice business card that could pave the way as you go out and try to do other things whether it’s booking speaking or writing additional books or whatever.
If on the other hand you want to take a run at the bestseller list, and if publishing books is not your primary thing, like let’s just say that you’re primarily a speaker or you’re a consultant or you got some other gig that’s the main thing, your main revenue model, then I would absolutely use a traditional publisher because self-publishing is a ton, and I mean a ton, of work.
Now, Michael Hyatt and Company today, we do one traditional publishing published book every year, so I write one book every year but then we also do a couple of self-published books just for our tribe. I can tell you from looking on the inside in, having to do it on myself, it’s a ton of work.
If I didn’t have the platform I do that I could sell to, man, it would be – I don’t know that it would be worth it.
[0:07:14.6] RV: That’s super insightful. On the business model question, that’s a good one, that’s another thing I wanted to ask you about is, of all my friends and colleagues, I think you’ve tried more business models than anyone. I think, you know, you’ve done live events, you’ve done speaking, you’ve done consulting, you’ve done coaching, you’ve had memberships, you’ve done video courses, you’ve done affiliate launches like you’ve done online summits like this.
Is there a favorite business model that you have or you know, I think a lot of people kind of, it’s like, “Oh masterminds is the thing,” or, “No, a membership is the thing.” Or, “Really, it should be video courses are where it’s at.” Can you just give us just maybe some of the highs and lows of each of those and maybe like the ones you like or maybe what were some of the most surprising things you learned from the various different business models that you’ve tried?
[0:08:06.5] MH: Well, you know, I never really thought of myself as having tried so many but you’re right. Frankly, a lot of them haven’t worked. So I’ve done stuff that’s worked and stuff that hasn’t worked but one of the things I’ve always tried to cultivate is sort of an experimental mindset. Whenever I approach anything, a business launch or whatever. I approach it as an experiment, you know, “Hey, let’s just try it and see if it works.”
One of my colossal failures is that after we launched Best Year Ever, Five Days to Your Best Year Ever, that was a huge success, we had like 35,000 people go through that course over five years and it was a big revenue engine for our company.
We said, “Hey, let’s create Best Year Ever for leaders.” Because we thought, leaders are going to eat this up. I literally recorded all the videos and they were killer, you know? I was even impressed with them. These were amazing. We built a beautiful sales page and so we got all the emails written, everything. We launched it and it was crickets, we literally on the first 24 hours after the launch, we had one order. I was pulling my hair out.
I said to my team, “What’s wrong with the tech? This has got to be a technological failure. There’s no way that we could just get one order. We could have come up with that if we had a strategy.” Sure enough, that was it, nobody wanted the course.
So we try stuff and the stuff that that works you hear about, the stuff that doesn’t work, you know, we don’t typically publicize that. You don’t hear about that, but I would say that one business model that I’ve had that I’ve believed in for a long time is multiple streams of income.
You know, whatever horse you’re on right now, eventually probably is going to – you’re going to reach a saturation point or you’re going to – you’re going to get all the low hanging fruit and then it’s going to get more expensive and more difficult and so we’ve just tried to be in a lot of different things, kind of all in the same vertical space now and the goal setting and productivity space. But part of the reason, I’m kid of rambling here, so stop me.
But one of the things we’ve realized is that kind of when the market’s zigging, we want to zag. We got into online courses I think pretty early, we certainly weren’t the first but we were among the first people that got in to online courses and that was huge. It was ginormous margins. Then all of a sudden, people started doing courses on courses. How to create courses and then everybody and their brother created online courses and the market was very dense, very saturated.
We said, “We think that people are desperate for live experiences that even though they’ve got all this virtual capability, people want to be face to face and have real human encounters.” So we started our live events and that went crazy. Then we created our paper planners, the Full Focus Planner. That thing is –
[0:10:59.1] RV: I forgot about that one, I didn’t mention. There was that one and then also, you had the book, like the box, you were shipping boxes for a while.
[0:11:06.2] MH: Yeah. The planner business is actually our biggest business, that’s like, you know, almost an eight figure business now, all by itself. And the cool thing about that is it doesn’t really depend so much on my brand so it’s kind of got some autonomy and independence but again, you know, everybody was saying – in fact, people still say to me on Facebook, they say “Hey, we’ve got digital cast management, we got digital counters, why do we need a paper planner?”
As it turns out, people are very distracted in the digital environment, the thing that paper planner does is give them focus. Again,just kind of multiple streams of income and how can we best serve our audience? What does our audience need and how can we best serve them?
[0:11:48.2] RV: Year, I love that experimental approach and you certainly have to be like willing to lose some money here and there in the spirit of learning it out, lose some hours.
[0:12:00.5] MH: I’ll tell you the other thing too, you have to be willing to kill stuff when it needs to die. I mean, in my view, everything has a season but I’ll tell you a funny story. We had all these brands, you know, Best Year Ever, Free to Focus, Full Focus Planner, Leaderbox, all this stuff. Last December, we’re all sitting in a strategic planning and we brought in outside consultant.
He asked us this question that ultimately rocked our world. He said, could you explain to me the customer journey? Where do people start with you and then what’s the first step? Where do they go from there and how they go all the way through your product suite?
We kind of all looked at each other and we said, “We don’t know. We don’t have a clue. Here’s some ways you can get into it but we don’t really know.” We went through an unbelievable 24 hour periods where we killed or sunsetted Best Year Ever and Free to Focus and said, “They’re too confusing,” and so we mapped out a customer journey but we had to be willing to – it’s kind of like cleaning your closet. If you want new clothes, sometimes the first thing you have to do is get rid of the old clothes.
We had to clear out the old to make room for the new and that I think as a business owner, a lot of times it takes courage because those were – represented multimillion dollar businesses but we also realized that we couldn’t go to the next level unless we’re willing to kind of retire those and make room for the new things.
[0:13:24.2] RV: Yeah, it’s like killing the sacred cows kind of a thing. That’s not easy, especially like you have so much invested into those to just kind of go, “Okay, we’re done with that, we’re going to move on.” Like, not an easy decision I can imagine.
[0:13:39.0] MH: It’s not and it’s – I think one of the values of having a team is you know having other smart people in the room and people with wisdom that can kind of check and keep me from doing frankly as a business owner, something impulsive, but we can kind of check one another and ask if that’s the course in that kind of scenario play it and make sure it’s going to work.
[0:14:00.7] RV: All right, I apologize for bouncing around on all these different topics, although I’m not really sorry –
[0:14:06.8] MH: Sorry, not sorry.
[0:14:08.3] RV: One of the other things I wanted to ask you about is paid traffic versus organic traffic. You have built a huge platform and your community is so loyal. How much – should it be all organic? Is a real audience won that is built organic, you know? Is it paid, just like, “Hey, you got to pay the money to get in front of eye balls.” What’s the balance of paid versus organic?
[0:14:33.5] MH: If you had asked me about when Platform came out in 2012, if you’d asked me that question then, I would say, “I never pay for traffic.” Everything I had up until that point was organic. I built it from 2004 when I started to blog and I had about 100,000 unique visitors at that time on my blog and I thought, “You know, that’s enough,” you know?
It had a mailing list of about the same size of about 100,000, I thought that’s enough. Frankly, it would have been but in today’s environment, particularly when social media is really restricting the access that you get to for free, I don’t think it could be done without paid. Having said that, I think you got to have a very clear model of what you’re buying when you’re paying for traffic because I ultimately want to get them to the same place that I’m going to get organic traffic to and that is that I want it to be self-perpetuating, ongoing traffic that I can retain because they get exposed to the content and then they’re locked in because they enjoyed the content and feel like it’s helpful.
So, you know, I was telling you before we came on that last year, we spent about a million two on Facebook ads and believe me, we watched the return on investment like that, I wouldn’t be spending that kind of money if I wasn’t getting a huge return on that investment but it’s totally worth it. You just got to be smart about it.
[0:16:02.0] RV: Yeah, I feel like more and more, it’s like – it’s not necessarily the person with the best content that wins, but it’s the one with the most sophisticated systems of knowing what dollars they’re spending, what audiences they’re going after, what’s the lifetime, what are the conversions, the lifetime value of that customer. It’s interesting, one of my favorite interview questions I used to ask people was what is something you’ve changed your mind on recently and it seems like both this and the traditional self-publishing, it seems like you kind of have teetered a little bit so that’s interesting to see that perspective.
[0:16:36.1] MH: Yeah, I really believe in paid advertising now and just you know, to quickly kind of outline our strategy, I’m happy to share it. Typically, we run ads for free opt ins. You know, it’s usually an assessment or an ebook or a summit like this. Assessments have been very good for us because people seem to have unbelievable curiosity to find out more about themselves. It’s their favorite topic, right? We offer a lot of assessments and in those assessments, we typically try to convert them after the assessment to a webinar and a webinar is where I can begin to have a relationship with somebody but they get to kind of sample the brew. So for an hour on my webinars, I typically give them a good solid content and then I pivot. And it depends on the product. We are either pivoting trying to close to a discovery call like our high end coaching programs or actually trying to sell the product.
So we have done both of those very successfully. So that is how we think of paid advertising. We want to slowly escalate it where people get more involved with this after they tried that free thing and had a good experience.
[0:17:39.3] RV: Yeah and what would you consider, like on that kind of a thing, that kind of webinar, if it was a free call, what kind of percentages would somebody roughly estimate to go – if I am doing a good – if I have a great webinar and a good clear process for inviting a free call like 10%, 5%, 20%?
[0:17:59.9] MH: Yeah, I would say for us it usually runs – 10% would be on the low side especially for a free call but up to 35 sometimes 50%, but we usually offer something that we call a discovery call but people are wise to that. You know people don’t want to just call to get sold. So there has to be the promise of something else. So typically for us, I could tell you on our high end program business accelerator, which is like a coaching program, we do a discovery call there. But we invite them to take an assessment there.
We don’t usually use an assessment to get those people into the webinar but we use something called the Business Health Assessment. So we invite them to take the Business Health Assessment, get on the discovery call, and we will identify for them the three top priorities that as a business they need to focus on if they want to scale as rapidly as possible.
[0:18:48.4] RV: Got you, okay and then, you know if you are doing like a course, a thousand, two thousand dollars is more like if you can get five or 10% out of it then that’s pretty fine.
[0:18:56.4] MH: Yeah, totally.
[0:18:56.9] RV: Yeah, so on that note, again, this is like a bunch of pepper questions, automated webinars versus live webinars, is there a dramatic difference always to sometimes one you’d prefer more than the other?
[0:19:11.7] MH: I have done them both. I have to say that live webinars for us are always more effective and you know the biggest challenge today because there has been a proliferation of webinars too is to get for people to show up because the replays don’t convert like the live thing does even if it is on automated webinar. When they show up, they are much more likely to buy than if they’re just going to watch the replay. They have good intentions I mean I do it all the time myself.
You know to get somebody’s information, I sign up and then I get busy and I never go watch them. Yeah, I say you have to do both but I feel strongly about what am I about to say. I think you’ve got to be honest. I don’t think you have to trumpet the fact that it is an automated webinar, that it is not live, but I think you’ve got to be very careful with your language so that you don’t misrepresent it as live
And I remember several years ago, I stumbled upon some webinar software. I can mention the name but I won’t but that basically simulates a live webinar including feeding fake questions into the chat and to me that just lacks integrity and even if people don’t quite know what is going on they know something is off.
[0:20:23.5] RV: Yeah, I appreciate you saying that I agree a 100%. Do you think that a live webinar is going to covert twice as good as a recorded version of it or is it even less than that?
[0:20:35.3] MH: You know I don’t track that data in my role like I used to but all I can say is that I know it records – that it does better but here is the thing, there is no reason why you can’t do both. So do the live webinar and record it. Again, be careful with your language so that you are not implying that it is live. So when it is in the automated format, you don’t want to give the wrong impression but yeah, I mean that is what we do.
And a lot of times what we’ll do is that when we begin – like any kind of launch that we do, we’ll do live webinars for a week and I will typically do five, one day after another and – but we will also, and this is a good dress rehearsal for me, we’ll do the recorded one first and the great thing about that is putting in the recorded one in the can and having it almost perfect is then if there is a technical glitch in one of the live webinars, we’ve got that one that we can just shove in and run in its place and that’s happened to us before.
[0:21:31.9] RV: Oh wow that is interesting. Usually I only hear about the opposite like run it live several times and then take that but that is cool plus you get to have the practice run through with that like all of the live jitters and stuff. Okay, next one: email frequency. Too much versus too little. How much is too much and how little is too little? Is like the people that want to hear from you are going to stay tuned and you send them as much as you can? Do you have a thought on that? Has it changed over the years? I am very, very curious.
[0:22:08.0] MH: Let me just say I have overdone it. You know I have mailed way too much and of course, all the experts and I am not one, but all the experts would tell you that you can’t mail too much and the more you mail, the more people will buy, but I think at some point if you are not adding value I just think you got to listen to your audience and you’re going to get complacent. I mean if you mail it once a week there are going to be some people in your audience are going to think it’s too much, right?
[0:22:36.0] RV: That is a really good perspective. It doesn’t matter how much or how little you send like you are going to get complaints.
[0:22:42.0] MH: That is right but there is a point in which you reach critical mass where you are getting complaints from longtime customers and they saying, “Look, I love your stuff. I bought everything but you are killing me, you know, dial it back.” So I just subscribed to an email list about two weeks ago. The guy was literally mailing twice a day. Twice and sometimes three times a day and I just said, “Look, I love you but I don’t even see my kids three times a day” you know? So I don’t want to hear from you –
[0:23:10.8] RV: I’m sorry about all of those emails Michael. I didn’t realize there were three coming to you every day.
[0:23:18.1] MH: I just think if there is one guy that I never get tired of hearing from and maybe it is just me but it is Jeff Walker. Now Jeff mails a lot but he is so good with his copy that I almost always read them and I have never been tempted to unsubscribe but he is like the one exemption that probably proves the rule. You know unless you are super ninja copywriter, just be very careful
And I think one of the things that we’ve moved to in our business now is that we are sending out an email that has content that only appears in the newsletter but it is content driven not marketing driven and we feel like if we are adding value and I talk about this actually in my book Platform, I call it the 20 to one rule, which is pretty funny in retrospect because what I said is you got to make 20 deposits before you could make a withdrawal. Well today, I would probably say it is more like three to one. If you could make three deposits before you make an ask that is probably a good ratio but the point is you got to make more deposits than withdrawals otherwise, you over draw the account, does that make sense?
[0:24:21.8] RV: Yeah that is like the jab-jab-jab right hook, right? I guess that is like three to one but really it sounds like the rule is just listen to your audience and just respect the audience, listen, take their feedback. I mean that is another good one. That wasn’t on my list here to ask you but just like writing your own copy versus having someone else write your copy. When do you make that transition? How do you do that?
[0:24:48.6] MH: I think as a business owner or as a brand builder, you got to ask yourself what is the best and highest use of you? And so at the very beginning I did everything. You know, I wrote the sales pages, I edited the podcast, I posted it. I created all the content for the courses, everything, but at some point, I say, “Okay, what is the best and highest use of me?”
And in Free to Focus I talk about this being your desires on activities and the things that you are passionate about, things that you are particularly good at. So I don’t write any email copy. In fact this might be shocking but I don’t even review it today. What we have done is we trained a small group of writers to write in my voice, to kind of deconstruct how I speak. We literally have a written style guide on this, how I speak, things that I typically say, things I would never say, just the elements and style with regard to my voice and so yeah, where I spend my time these days is I am writing, every morning creating new content.
That is best and highest use of me. So at least for an hour a day I am writing 500 to 750 words a day and that becomes the pantry from which my team draws for all kinds of stuff, whether it be products or books or whatever.
[0:26:05.0] RV: How much do you read?
[0:26:07.0] MH: Less than I used to but still a fair amount. I read probably two or three books a month. The reason that I read less than I used to is because I listen to so many podcasts today and I find that unfortunately, this is the dirty little secret of publishing is that so many books should have been an essay and in order to give it enough bulk to be able to sell at retail they fill it up with a lot of filler.
And so the thing that I like about podcasts, not all podcasts, like some of the most popular podcast make me crazy because they take forever to get to the point. They just talk and talk and talk and they ramble and there is no takeaway but having said that, I generally can get out of a podcast content that really rocks my world much faster than I can most books. There is definitely some exemptions to that.
[0:27:00.2] RV: Okay, I know we are running up on our time here. I got one more question but before I do that, where should people go if they are not yet following you? If they want to follow you, htey want to catch up with Michael Hyatt and see how you’re doing, what you are doing in like the new era of the Michael Hyatt personal brand?
[0:27:18.6] MH: Yeah, well you can find everything at michaelhyatt.com. If you scroll all the way to the bottom of the page, you will find all of our other brands. So there is everything from our store there to the Full Focus Planner to the Business Accelerator Program, Leader Books which is our monthly book club for leaders. All of this stuff has links there and I would encourage people to listen to the podcast. That is still the thing that I think is the best effort that we make.
And in terms of branding and in terms of reach, I just think there is no return like what you get on the podcast and our podcast I do with my oldest daughter, Megan Hyatt-Miller who is our COO of our company and it is called Lead to Win. That is on iTunes or wherever you listen to podcasts but you can find the links on michaelhyatt.com.
[0:28:00.4] RV: Okay, so last one for you Michael. As you said, this is maybe going back to some of your earlier days certainly as a publisher, you had to turn down a lot of authors, you turned down a lot of dreamers. In recent years, it’s been more like you have been coaching them. And you have seen people trying to struggle and trying to battle the fight and then you comment to where today, it is like there is so much noise. There is a lot of competition in webinars and podcast and books and everything.
I think that there is a part of this these days that is just dealing with heartbreak and just dealing with some of that setback. What would be your advice is there is somebody out there that is just feeling like, “Oh my gosh, you know I can’t get a publisher. I can’t get an agent. No one is listening to my podcast. No one is reading my articles. No one is opening my emails.” What would you say to that person?
[0:28:50.5] MH: Congratulations, you’re normal. You know, I really think and I think this is important for people to hear. I think that’s in a way, God’s way of testing us to see if we are really committed to this thing that we said we are committed to. So my first book was rejected by 29 publishers before the 30th one said yes. I was ready to throw in the towel by my agent wouldn’t let me. My book Living Forward, which is about four books back was rejected by about the same number of publishers.
I already had a New York Times bestseller. I already had a huge platform and that book, nobody believed in it. Everybody rejected it. And now it’s gone on to sell about almost 200,000 copies. But nobody wanted to touch it for reasons I still don’t understand. I get that that gets discouraging and I almost gave up there too. I thought, “Geez, maybe there is a better use of my time, maybe God, the universe, whatever is trying to say something to me this isn’t the right timing or its the wrong message.”
And I think it is one of the most important books I have ever written, I am glad I persevered it. In fact, if it hadn’t been for Gail cheering me on I think I would have given up but I think that’s normal. And I think – I have bad days every week where I want to quit, you know? And for some reason, I just keep chugging along and trying to believe the best of what is happening but it is just normal. Rejection, the world doesn’t owe me a living and the marketplace doesn’t owe me anything.
And so it is up to me to create enough value that people can see it and want to participate in it. So I think the best advice I’ve ever gotten, the thing that I try to practice when I get discouraged is forget about the platform, forget about trying to write a bestseller, forget about trying to be famous. How can I help my clients? What are their needs? How can I encourage them? How can I be useful to them? And if you do that consistently enough I really think it would come back.
[0:30:50.8] RV: Amen. There you have words of wisdom from one of the most experienced people in several different aspects and components of the space. Michael, thank you so much for making time for all of us and for putting out as much amazing content as you do. I mean, your team is amazing, your family. We love you, we believe in you and we are honored to know you.
[0:31:13.4] MH: Thanks Rory, I appreciate you and AJ too.
[END OF INTERVIEW]
[0:31:15.8] RV: That’s all we’ve got for this episode of the Influential Personal Brand Podcast but here is 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].
Ep 20: How To Produce A Winning Infomercial with Kevin Harrington
Speaker 1: (00:01)
I am so excited to introduce you to this is one of those people where it’s like if you ever sat next to him on the airplane, you would have hit the Jackpot and the lottery and you, you might not realize you were sitting next to. But Kevin Harrington is a man that people literally try to strategize how they can get close to, um, he has become a celebrity in the world of entrepreneurs and inventors. You probably recognize him. He was one of the original sharks, the original shark, the first shark. Uh, I believe that was selected to shark tank, which has now been super successful. He is also one of the founders of, of infomercials and as seen on TV, like he’s one of the pioneers of that whole movement. He actually is the cofounder of entrepreneurs organization, which my wife and I are members of.
Speaker 1: (00:50)
I’ve spoken at several of their events, um, around the, uh, around the globe, around the country in my case. But it’s an international organization. And, uh, he has seen over 50,000 pitches, um, launched more than 500 products, generating $5 billion in sales. Um, he also is the creator of the secrets of closing the sale masterclass, which is inspired by Zig Ziglar. So He, uh, Zig Ziglar wrote a book, secrets of closing the sale. It’s just been rereleased with him and Kevin Harrington. Um, obviously zig has been passed away for seven, eight years now, but a was a mentor to me personally and also, um, to Kevin. So Kevin, thanks for being here. Uh, thanks for making time, Rory. Thank you. Great. Great to be here and thanks. It was a very nice introduction. I appreciate that. Thank you. What man? Like, you know, it’s one thing to talk about personal branding and brand builders group.
Speaker 1: (01:46)
That’s what we do, right? We help people build and monetize their personal brand. But really what we study is reputation and reputation as is. How do you build a reputation, how do you become trusted? And of all the people that I know that know the most people, I think you’re near the top, like of, of every like super influential person that I know you already know them and I know that your Rolodex goes far, far beyond that. So, and yet, you know, you’ve been in the world of sales and marketing for years and years and years and sometimes reputations go south in those industries. Uh, when you’re an investor and an entrepreneur, you know, those, sometimes those deals go south. There’s a lot of conflict and there’s fallout and you know, when you get to be your level of celebrity and notoriety, I know that, you know, people sue you for no reason and you know, so what is your philosophy on reputation in general? Like if we just start there, like you have been able to keep such a solid reputation over the years, how do you think you’ve been able to do that? I appreciate that. I think, and I’m going to go all the way back to the beginning because
Speaker 2: (02:59)
I think you need a foundation of, um, of, first of all, I think my foundation that I built my business on is, is respect for entrepreneurs, number one. And so, um, when you watch shark tank, there’s Mr. Wonderful. Uh, and, and I, and I always ask people, do you know why he calls himself Mr Wonderful? Because nobody else will. Okay. He calls himself that because nobody else feels that he may be. Mr. Wonderful. And actually I joke this, this is all kind of joking about O’Leary, Kevin O’Leary, but we used to on the show, we’d say he was the bad Kevin. I’m the good Kevin now. Like why, you know, I’ll take that they, you know, I wasn’t the one that came up with that the rest of the sharks were and, and it’s because when somebody would come out and make a pit, I wasn’t there to tear them down and rip them apart and tell them how stupid their idea was.
Speaker 2: (04:02)
I wanted to empower them even if I wasn’t going to invest. Because entrepreneurs are in a delicate situation. They, they’re fighting against coming home to their family, to their wives, to friends and talking about how they’re giving up their job. They’re investing their life savings into their idea. This is not an easy task. This is, this is a tough situation and you know, to, to have a full time job but be spending money on patents and on this and on that and going on shark tank to try to get, you know, an investment from a shark. This is what it’s all about. And I think today there’s more places to go to get funding. You can do crowd funding and yeah, you can go on shark tank, but that’s very difficult to get on. But I think going back to day one, when I got started, I was knocking on doors when I was 15 years old driving a bicycle cause I didn’t even have a drivers license getting the door slammed in my face.
Speaker 2: (05:01)
And, and so I learned the hard way. I learned my father was a bartender, saved up enough money to open up his first bar, Harrington’s Irish pub. And I started working in his bars and restaurants when I was 11 years old, 40 hours a week. So I, I, you know, worked hard, had to prove myself, had to pay my own way through high school, through college. So I looked at entrepreneurs as people like myself. I was in the trenches building and hustling to become successful. So when they come to me now asking for help and advice, I put myself on their level saying, what would I have to do if I were in their shoes pitching me now the investor that is risen above the, the, the ashes sometimes because that’s, you know, in the 500 products plus that I’ve done more than 300 of them bombed and they lost all my money. So, uh, you know, it’s, it’s not so easy every day. And I, and I say Winston Churchill had, it’s a great Chang success is being able to go from failure to failure without the loss of enthusiasm. Okay. So, uh, you know, it took me awhile to figure out, hey, I just failed. I’ve got to learn from that and, and, and go to the next step. But that’s what I do.
Speaker 1: (06:28)
I’ve gotten to know you. Uh, you know, we spent a bit of time together here the last couple of years, which has been awesome. And I think when I look at you as an investor, as a shark, I remember thinking after the first time I spent, you know, like a full day with you, it occurred to me, yet you’re not a, you’re not a shark at all. I remember you saying that you, you don’t even try to negotiate for a good deal. You negotiate for a deal that’s good for you and for your other partner because your, I remember you saying that, you know, your philosophy was not, where can I get the best deal? It’s one where everybody has a fair deal and everyone is motivated, um, you know, to, to, to win. And that spoke a lot to me. It was a very profound thing where I was like, wow, what, what a different way to approach negotiating. And I think, you know, in terms of your reputation and you know, over time, I think that’s what people are probably drawn to because they know that you’re, you’re fair. You, you’re, you’re fair.
Speaker 2: (07:29)
And I think I appreciate that. I think, um, when I go back to the early days, I met a gentleman named Arnold Morris. At the Philadelphia home show and he was slicing through Coca-Cola cans with the Ginsu knife and mufflers and things. And I cut a deal with him and put him on TV. Now Arnold said to me, Kevin, um, and he had his signed contract for the good shoe and the, and the knife sales, but he said, I’ve got other people that this is amazing what we’re doing. If I bring you other deals, can I get compensated? I said, absolutely. We put an addendum to the contract. He brought Billy Mays and he brought Sandy Mason and Wally Nash of some of those you may recognize and some you might not, but we did hundreds of millions and billions in sales that came from these projects that Arnold Morris brought. But he got compensated on all of it.
Speaker 2: (08:23)
And so on his, literally his deathbed, the week that he was passing away, he kind of knew it was coming close and he reached out and his wife said, Arnold needs to talk to you. And I said, oh my God. And she says, Yap, he’s getting very close. She’s, he had a stroke and this and that. And she’s, and I said, well, what does he want to talk to me about? And I’m absolutely, I’d love to talk to him. She said, he’s got a deal. He wants to pitch you. Okay. I’m like, you know, here is, I mean this amazing because he had to get this last feel out of his system before he could pass. I mean it was unbelievable that the, the way it went down, but you know, Arnold was an amazing man, did great things for many people, but these insults, so people say to me, you know, how do you keep getting all these new products?
Speaker 2: (09:18)
I said, I’m getting these products from people I’ve been dealing with for 30 35 years in 2025 years, 10 and 15 years. And people I dealt with two months ago. So it’s, it’s the roll of decks factor. As you mentioned, Rory, this is what creates a lot of magic for all of us. As you know, I call it the Golden Rolodex. And this is part of becoming, you know, it as you’re branding yourself and you know, get back to the concept of personal branding and things. Creating a golden Rolodex is, is, is an important step in that process.
Speaker 1: (09:52)
Yeah. Well, and, and so one of the other things I wanted to ask you about just, you know, as I think about what can I ask Kevin that I can’t ask anyone else is you’ve sold more on TV than anybody. I mean, I don’t know anyone. It would be only a few people in the world that you could even say has been involved with selling as much on TV. So I’m interested
Speaker 2: (10:14)
a couple that are up there in the same ranks, but I, I know, I never want to say I’m the top guy because there’s some pretty successful guys out there, but I’m right there in the top five for sure on a global basis.
Speaker 1: (10:28)
Moved a lot of product on TV. So one, I’m interested in understanding TV, like in terms of, you know, a lot of people that are building a personal brand. TV is like this holy grail of like, oh my gosh, if I could get on TV, it’s like Tony Robbins is on TV and Dean Grasiozi is on TV. You know, like you said, like Billy Mays and, and all of these like people who become these celebrity workout people, they, they do infomercials. So one is how does that business work? Like how does that happen? How does someone get their clothing line on QVC? Or how do they get their, you know, Dean Grasiozi has a book, right? He does an infomart. Like how would a person go about doing that if they said, you know what, I think I’ve got a program I could sell on TV. Like how do you do that?
Speaker 2: (11:17)
So, so let’s, let’s, I’ll step back a second. Cause it, it’s there, there’s a couple of different angles there. You said, how do you get on QVC? How do you get on TV like infomercial? So two different scenarios. But the bottom line is this TV has been very powerful for many, many years. For me. I started back in the early eighties when I was watching a just got cable TV and I’m watching discovery channel. It was actually channel 30 of the 30 channel package. And so I went to all the channels, ESPN and 24 hours sports and movies and HBO and MTV Music. I got to ESPN sports, I think I mentioned. Um, I got to discovery channel and there was nothing on the channel. There was actually just bars on the screen. So I called the cable company and they said, we as a cable company delivered to you what we get from discovery and they only deliver us an 18 hour a day block.
Speaker 2: (12:17)
Six hours a day is nothing cause they’re a startup channel. They can’t program 24 hours a day. So I went down how to deal bought that six hour block from discovery, not only locally, but I did an international deal. And so for a number of years I had exclusive rights to discovery channel a six hours a day. Okay. Now I was putting in my, I was putting Tony Little Jacqueline Lane, George Foreman, you know, all these different types of products, fitness juicers, you know, kitchen gadgets, whatever, right? And so we had an amazing success for many years putting people on TV. But the way it works is this, there’s all this sort of like downtime with all the TV networks and cable networks. There’s only a handful of places that won’t sell infomercial time, CNN, and, and I think, let’s see, CNN and ESPN, those are the two that you will never see a 30 minute infomercial on.
Speaker 2: (13:20)
But Discovery Channel lifetime, all the other channels of Bravo, we buy tons of time from all of them. So what you do is you buy a block, a 30 minutes slot, maybe you pay 5,000 for it, two thousand ten thousand whatever the number is. In the early days I watched it isn’t maybe 2000 to 10,000 is that a reasonable number for, that’s for cable broadcast. You can buy, for example, in Nashville, Tennessee, you could buy 30 minutes on broadcast television. On Saturday morning, we’ll probably gave $100, right? 30 minutes on Nash on, on, uh, that would hit all of Nashville. Okay. I’m in Tampa, Florida. I can buy time here for as little as $500 for 30 minutes slot. And, and you can even go to cable. The cable guys have some of their own local cable options for even less, maybe $200. So, so now you, by that time you produce the video that sells the product and now that when that airs, it’s, it’s got to generate more than the cost of the time in sales to make money, obviously.
Speaker 2: (14:36)
So you mentioned Dean Grasiozi, he goes, he goes into Tampa, Florida and says to his media buyers buy $20,000 worth of ads. And he’s expecting, now he’s selling his book, but he’s also driving people to a seminar. So his is a little bit different. Hey, buy my book, come to the seminar there. You know, his liquidation comes when people show up at the seminar and he sees how much, you know, sales he’s making from there. But that’s, that is his model is buy infomercial time, drive people to a seminar, upsell them into masterminds. But the fitness people that you see, like the Tony Little’s, when we’re selling the gazelle, for example, we spend 10,000 and media, we want to sell 20 to $30,000 worth of puzzles during that slot. That’s, that’s how it works. You look for at least a two time multiple of sales to the cost of the media. So if you spend 10 grand the media, you want to see 20 plus thousand in sales coming from that time. By
Speaker 1: (15:48)
amazing though, I am all over the country. Now. When you say the media, is that like buying the commercials to promote the show or that’s just buying like the 30 minutes?
Speaker 2: (15:57)
That’s just fine. The 30 minute block, you don’t need commercials to promote an infomercial. It’s a standalone sales piece. So yeah. So Saturday morning, let’s say we, we bought that $800 slot in Nashville on a broadcast station on Saturday morning. People are up there just going from channel to channel to channel on their cable box or the TV and they, oh, wait a minute, let me see what this guy, Dean Grasiozi Phil was talking about. Oh yeah. Well that’s pretty interesting. So they tune in, they get hooked, and this is why you need a good pitch or you need a good presentation in that infomercial because you’ve got to be able to hook them, grab them, and now they’re listening and now they’re going to take action. Hopefully. So you bought that time for $800 in Nashville. You’re hoping to get 1600 to $2,400 in credit card orders from that time. Bye.
Speaker 1: (16:53)
That is so amazing. I mean, it’s so interesting to me because it’s like this is the original webinar funnel. It’s just like buy traffic, drive people to a a one hour Webinar, do a presentation, deliver some value, make an offer, get it to buy. It also blows my mind where he’d go, why are infomercials always late at night? The reason infomercials are always late at night is because one night Kevin Harrington was sitting in his hotel looking at the discovery channel and found out that there were six hours in the middle of the night that nobody else bought and you went and bought it and that that became the homicide. That was the downtime. So can you talk about the, the, um, talk about the pitch a little bit for like, because you know what, there’s, there’s a difference between like selling to a person. You know, in our former life that was something that we used to do.
Speaker 1: (17:44)
We used to teach people to, you know, our, the, our former company used to do like one-on-one sales coaching. That’s very different than selling on a Webinar or selling from a stage or selling on an infomercial where you’re selling one to many. Um, so what do you think are some of the key principles there? Because the other thing, particularly with TV is I have to think like people are flipping their coming and going, so they may not be sitting watching the 30 minute block. They may only be there for like two or three or five minutes. I mean so exactly how do you construct that? Like what? Let’s say you went and bought the $800 cause that’s reasonable. Yeah. So now I have $800 how much do I need to spend on producing the show? Like the 30 minutes and, and what, what I put in that 30 minutes that I can use to like, you know, market my, my book or my Info, my video course or my seminar.
Speaker 2: (18:41)
So great question. Now you have to understand that you’re, you’re, when we talk about producing the show, you’re not producing it just for that $800 by you’re producing it to build a media schedule that might be two three, 400,000 a week in media. That’s generating. See that’s if you’re, let’s say you’re spending 200,000 a week on $800 time slots like Nashville time slot, right? So now you’re, you’re running hundreds of spots that each one is monitored and needs to perform at a two to three to one ratio, sales to media costs. Okay. So, so you say upfront, Dean, I talked to Dean about his show that he did with Larry King for example. I said to Dean, how long did it take you to shoot that show? And he said, Kevin, he said, you won’t believe this, but I shot that show live in 30 minutes.
Speaker 2: (19:44)
And I said, what do you mean? He said, well, I sat down, I, you know, I, I, Larry King is a professional, he’s been doing interviews all his life. I’m a professional. We talked a little bit first before we rolled the whole day. I gave him a couple of questions if he wanted to ask, but we just went live and boom, we got it. He said, we did some more footage just to have some more, but I mean that was sort of a live to tape. Turn the cameras on and film it now he had to do editing because he had testimonials. So he had the one day shoot filming with Larry. Then he had testimonials, then he had editing, but then he also had one other big costs. What was it? A fee? The Larry King. Okay. So Larry King, he’s probably, and this isn’t coming from Dean, so I don’t want to make, I don’t want to say, oh, Dean told me this, but if I had to guess, Larry probably gets anywhere from 75,000 to 100 grand to shoot that show.
Speaker 2: (20:44)
Plus he gets a percentage of you show. So what do you note now? What did Dean’s spend? He shot one day at Larry’s office. He shot a dozen testimonials. He shot, he had to do the editing. You have to pay Larry some money. He probably spent all in somewhere between 150 and $200,000 to shoot that infomercial. And that was a pretty easy one to shoot. So, uh, but he, he knows that the credible Biddle credibility of Larry is going to take this thing to a pretty good point. And, and so he’s now crushing it. He’s, I mean, I’ve seen his schedules in my local market where he’s running on three simultaneously at the same time, at two o’clock in the morning. Now let’s see, what am I doing watching it two o’clock in the morning. I as a business, I’m in the business I have to tune in.
Speaker 2: (21:44)
But I get logs from monitoring services of when these are errands. So I don’t have to actually be there live at 2:00 AM. But I get along from a company that says, okay, dean ran his show 122 times last week and here’s where it ran. I can get that information so I know where he’s running about how much he’s spending. Cause I know what those slots are worth. So if I can do a report and say, okay, Dean ran 122 times, he spent 350,000 in media last week. Okay. I mean that tells sophisticated the industry is and, and by the way, this is how people then decide whether they’re going to knock somebody off. Okay. They, they cheat somebody out there running a lot of media. They know what’s working because it’s bringing in, nobody’s running 350,000 in media. If it isn’t bringing back a return on investment, you don’t mean you find out on 10,080 or whether it’s working, you don’t roll it out to three 50 unless you’re getting that return on investment. Uh Huh.
Speaker 1: (22:51)
So, and, and, and this is like, who are you? Oh, you said you’re, you’re either calling a media buyer and you know, at that scale, but if you’re doing local, you’re just going to go to your like local cable channel or like you just,
Speaker 2: (23:04)
yes. Yeah. I mean, so like it, it’s, it’s no problem. Me Or you like I could call my local Tampa TV stations, you can call your local national stations, whatever. Um, you know, we can, we can all make a couple of phone calls. It’s on the rollout when like when I said Dean’s doing three 50 a week. When we did the Gazelle with Tony Little, that was a over a million a week in media span, generating over 2 million in sales a week. But that was hundreds and hundreds of slots. If you’re spending $1 million at 8,000 for some 800 for others, somebody has to monitor that and they have to buy it. Then there’s a traffic department that it goes through because you’ve got to, you buy it, then you send the tape, you’ve got to have an 800 number that’s tagged to that specific station so that when the sales come in, you know what 800 numbers tracked to that station. There’s all kinds of things happening behind the scenes, so there are media agencies that are in the business of buying media to the tune of if it’s 300,000 a week, 500,000 a week, $1 million a week, whatever it may be. Right? So that’s the important thing.
Speaker 1: (24:24)
The essence is really fascinating. I, I’ve never understood like the monetary, but even even going, okay at two to one ad spend, basically on revenue. You could do the same thing with Google ads or Facebook ads and you know, whatever is say, okay if I’m going to, I’m going to put $50 in in terms of Facebook ads, I need to make sure that $100 comes out before I go and spend 10 grand on Facebook ads. And so you’re looking for a two to one to three to one ratio. Um, so what about the content itself? Okay, so what needs to happen in that 30 minutes? Because again, I don’t the medium of that different, I mean it did TV. Yeah, maybe it’s not TV, maybe it’s a Webinar, maybe it’s on stage, but like what goes into the content?
Speaker 2: (25:08)
So, so now in the old days, and I, and I, cause there have been a few changes in the industry for 35 years. Infomercials worked pretty well, but there’s been a little bit of a disruption because there’s a lot of people that have cut the cord from cable and aren’t, you know, aren’t watching TV. There’s been a decline in DVD viewership has been pretty substantial. It’s a 50% decline in TV viewership in the last 10 years. And so the question is, where did these viewers go? Well, you just mentioned it. Facebook, Instagram, they’re, they’d gone to digital outlets, right? Google, youtube, et cetera. So, so now [inaudible] and there’s also another issue. 30 minutes is, is a long time. And let me explain the structure of a 30 minute show. There’s three 10 minute pods in a 30 minute show. Each one of the pods has a three step selling system that I’m going to call the teas, the please and the seeds all within each 10 minutes he’s police sees he’s police sees these please seat you, tease them with an attention getting problem. You please them with solutions to the problem, benefits to the product or service, magical transformations, some kind of demonstration maybe. But magical transformation is a very powerful please. You see a before and an after, right? And then you see like by having a irresistible offer, so t’s with attention getting problem please by solving the problem with magical transformations and cs creating an irresistible offer. And you do that three times in each 10 minute segment of the 30 minute show. So that’s kind of the blueprint for producing an infomercial.
Speaker 1: (27:07)
Wow, I love that. And so it’s really just a 10 minute it really, all you’re doing is creating a 10 minute and then you’re just repeating
Speaker 2: (27:14)
the same. You don’t actually, you, there are some people that actually just do one 10 minute repeated three times. I don’t like to do that because if people sense that, but the formula, yeah, so I mean what we’ll do is you can tease please and seeds, but you just use different testimonials and you know, it might be the, it’s going to be the same seeds, the same irresistible offer in all three closes, but you don’t necessarily have the same content teasing and pleasing along the way.
Speaker 1: (27:49)
Wow. That is so interesting. I mean, that’s such a simple process, but it also very sophisticated in terms of knowing the, knowing the dollars in which markets are producing. And, and it just, it blows my mind though, how like this is, even though people might not say it, this was the genesis of webinar funnels a and video. Any, you know, any, any modality of selling on camera? Like this was where that started.
Speaker 2: (28:16)
I’m going to give you a good example of something that we learned quite a bit on. Uh, a guy came in my office one day to do a, he had a fishing lure and he’d been watching Tony Little and George Foreman and Jacqueline Lane and all these great things we’re doing. And he, he puts this lawyer in front of me. He says, Hey, this is the most amazing lure you’re gonna want to do this. And I said, why is it so amazing? And he said, I have a pad and said, all the words hit the water drop straight down. Mine hits the water and it’s reverse rig to swim away like a wounded fish. And so I said, I’d love to see that in operation. We went out and showed how it was swimming away and fish were attacking this floor. We had this big hog draw, 20 foot long fish paint that we cast the lure in and saw some amazing demonstrations, catching fish that lures, we’re going straight down regular lawyers dish when just watching them drop, the flying lore went in and they’re chasing it around and biting it and catching fish.
Speaker 2: (29:14)
So, um, when we first tested the show, we ran on a lot of cable networks and the media buyers called back and said, the show didn’t work. I don’t think fishing’s going to be a good category. Um, it’s not successful. And I said, let me get some demographics. I want to see where the orders came from. You know, fishing is, you know, may be, it’s not some universal, we found La and New York, it didn’t have any traction, but in Missouri, in Ohio and Michigan and various areas where there was lakes, it was crushing it. So people aren’t in New York City going out and fishing every weekend. But in Kansas City, they would love to go fishing on the weekends, the lakes and places around. So now we stopped running cable. We went back in. So our cable for, you know, 10 grand in media is generating 5,000 in sales.
Speaker 2: (30:09)
But when we went and targeted local markets like Nashville, Cincinnati, Duluth, Minnesota, we were doing five to one on our buys because we were crushing it in these local markets. So we decided we’ve got to stay away from the coastal communities. This is not fishing lore because first of all, this young lords are generally kind of fresh water and, and, and in the, in, in New York and La, they’re on the ocean. We don’t even have a product yet for that. But in the central parts of the United States, we crushed it. This product went on to do 500 million lures at a dollar a piece, 20 to a pack, 20 bucks for 20 lures, $500 million in sales because we tracked it and focused on buying time where it works.
Speaker 1: (31:02)
Wow. Um, Kevin, I could talk to you all day about lots of stuff. Uh, we are out of time. Uh, where did, should people go? I know you have, you know, the secrets of closing the sale book was Zig Ziglar just came out. Uh, you have your secrets of closing the sale master class, which, you know, maybe we’ll put a link to or we’ll, you know, we’ll audience when you open that class up where else, but where should people go to connect with you and you know, if they want to stay in touch.
Speaker 2: (31:28)
Yeah. My, my website’s a great place because we have some free reports and some free books and chapters and things. It’s Kevin Harrington. Dot. TV and Harrington spelled h a. R. R. I. N. G. T. O. N. So Kevin Harrington. Dot. TV is my website and I’m got a lot of good content there and you can see some videos and see some things we’ve done over the years. But we also, I’m actively still looking for great products, great relationships. I sit on several, uh, board of directors of public companies and, um, I love doing that and, and helping, uh, you know, I invest money, I help raise money. Definitely am available for, for entrepreneurs looking to take their business, their idea, their service to the next level. It’s a good place to start. Kevin Harrington. Dot. TV.
Speaker 1: (32:20)
I love it. So last little thing. At some point in your journey, uh, you must’ve bumped up against some walls. I, I know that it’s been several times, right? Uh, and it’s, uh, it’s a long way between the guy who was on shark tank and you know, that kid that was knocking on doors and there were gotta be several setbacks. And, and my guess is there’s somebody listening
Speaker 2: (32:40)
right now who is trying to build a reputation either as an entrepreneur or an influencer, and they’re probably in one of those darker times. What would you, what would you say to that person right now? So it’s a great question. 25 years ago, I was sitting with $100 million business. We’re doing 2 million a week in sales. We had 10 products. And one day I was thought I was on top of the world, walked into my office on a Monday morning and my CFO said, I got terrible news. The bank just grabbed $2 million out of our account to apply as a reserve against future returns and chargebacks. Um, and, and I said they allowed to do that and said in the contract they have every right to increase the reserve and just grabbed the money out of our account. Okay. I’m like, wow, I can’t believe that actually signed that.
Speaker 2: (33:33)
But when you get those big thick documents, when you get a merchant account somewhere in there, it, you know, they basically tell you no more and grab the monies that are coming through for processing. And so we were technically out of business at that point. I went from, you know, being the king of, of infomercials, you know, to potentially being at the bottom of the barrel. And because that 2 million was my working capital, I didn’t have 10 million sitting in the bank. Okay. I was a young entrepreneur. I had, that was my cashflow. That was my payroll. That was my media dollars, my inventory dollars. Basically, we couldn’t make payroll that week then. And the bank, you know, whether they knew what they were doing or not, they didn’t care at the time. Now we figured out a way to get around some of this. We, we, we, we, we, we pulled a lot of great advisors to the table because they technically put us out of business and it was a very demoralizing time of my life and we had to do some massive things, you know, to make that all happen and save the company.
Speaker 2: (34:39)
But we ended up pulling out of it, coming out smelling like a rose. But the only thing I can say is this, is that I all my life, um, have looked to mentors and folks to be part of my team. And because in the early, early days, I tried to do it all myself. I realized I can’t do it all with Michelle. I, I’m not the operations guy, the finance guy, the guru of finance. But I brought in Gurus of finance. So, um, one of my guys went up against the bank and knew how to kind of get them to come to the table. We ended up getting 1.6 million of that 2 million back. So we did give him 400,000 but we saved the day, got some money back. We’re eight, but took 30 days to pull all this off. So, uh, the bottom line is, is that this is kind of what I do now for entrepreneurs.
Speaker 2: (35:37)
I’m a mentor, I’m a coach, I’m a consultant, I’m an advisor, I joined boards, I joined advisory boards that the right kind of opportunities. I’m out there looking for great companies to be an advisor to because sometimes I’ve seen people make the same mistakes with things that I was confronted with in the past. And I can show people, entrepreneurs how to deal with these things without letting it take you down. So bottom line is you, you’re not, you know, Kinda need to know that there’s a good group of people out there that may be available for you to be mentors in your business. And I, you know, just like I started off talking about how Zig Ziglar was a mentor to you, Rory, to me. Um, absolutely. I’ve had Richard Branson helped me with some digital things. At one point, I went to Necker island, hung out with him for a couple of days. My father mentored me. Mark Burnett mentors me. Yes, I’m, I’m a successful entrepreneur. I’m an original shark from shark tank, but I’m a product of many other mentors that have helped me become what I am. And I think that’s, uh, I’m the first to say that I couldn’t have done it all my on my own. And I, and I, I look to outside resources to help me manage my entities and my businesses and hopefully folks that are out there can, can learn from that too.
Speaker 1: (37:03)
I love that. That is so cool. I think, uh, that’s been the big surprise for a j and I with brand builders group. It’s turned into such a community of people supporting each other and getting to learn from people like you. It’s just incredible. So thank you for your inspiration and your story and your friendship and, uh, we wish you the best.
Speaker 2: (37:23)
You Bet. Take care of buddy. Good being here today. Thanks.