Ep 426: Having a Miracle Mentality with Tim Storey
RV (00:02):
Well, you’re about to meet someone that I truly admire. His name is Tim Story. I admire him for several reasons. Uh, first of all, he’s the bestselling author of several books, most recently, the Miracle Mentality that was published by Harper Collins. Um, but Tim is super influential behind the scenes with lots of the world’s, uh, famous people, high profile people. Um, now he’s been featured as a public guest on shows, you know, like Oprah Winfrey and interviewed by Steve Harvey in the Today Show in Good Morning America. He’s been featured in People Magazine. He’s also worked behind the scenes with people in their private lives. This is people like Charlie Sheen and Kanye West, and, uh, Charlton Hesston and Robert Downey, Jr. Jr. Like, um, this man is known for his heart and for his love and for his passion and his message. Um, and he also has become one of the biggest personal brands in the world.
RV (00:58):
He’s got millions of followers online. Uh, he speaks at several of the biggest events. He works with lots of the biggest companies in the world, and he’s an amazing humanitarian. He does all this humanitarian work, donates his books to refugees, um, and is just a really wonderful guy. And we’re actually just meeting for the first time. But he also is very, uh, you know, like me, he takes his faith as a very serious part of his life, uh, as a believer in God, thus the miracle mentality, which is why we had to have him here today. Tim story, welcome to the Influential Personal Brand podcast.
TS (01:35):
What a privilege, and thank you for that nice introduction,
RV (01:39):
TS (02:10):
As you know, a miracle is something extraordinary uncommon, not normal and not natural. And then the mentality, as you know, as well, is a state of mind. It’s a perspective, and it’s been set for probably a hundred years that your mindset is yours to set your mindset’s, yours to set. So growing up in Compton, California, we had seven people in a two bedroom apartment. Cramped. Crowded, okay. But one of the things that my mother had was a miracle mentality. Hmm. She always used to tell us things like this, like, we may be lower income, but we’re not lower class.
RV (02:51):
Amen. And
TS (02:52):
This is only temporary and we’re on our way somewhere. So she really created hope and expectation, even though we were in a cramped and crowded environment. So, as I got older and I got into church, into faith, I started hearing all these great stories about David and Goliath and Abraham having a, a baby with his wife, Sarah. And they were both very, very old. And it just began to build my faith and build my mentality into this miracle mentality. And I took it into deep, deep research and decided to write a book about it, and it’s working.
RV (03:31):
Mm-hmm.
TS (04:13):
Okay. So I think it’s, I think it’s two things, is that I believe that number one, the miracle mentality is innate. I believe that we’re we’re made in the image and likeness of God. And so inside of us, we believe in the miracle mentality. And I, and I know this for a fact ’cause I’ve been to 78 countries of the world.
RV (04:34):
Wow.
TS (04:35):
When I go to third world countries and I talk to little kids in Soweto, South Africa, and I say, what do you wanna be when you get older? And they’re five or six, they’ll say things like LeBron James or a little girl will say Beyonce. Mm-hmm. They never talk about they want to be something that’s less. They talk about miracle mentality, little girls. They may wanna have a party that includes unicorns, little boys. They wanna play with Superman, spider-Man, Ironman. They never wanna play with something ordinary. So I think number one, it’s innate. Secondly, it’s learned. I think the main reason that people lose the miracle mentality, Rory, is because of disappointment. Mm-hmm. They got disappointed. So they believed for something, they expected something, and it did not happen the way they thought it would. And the disappointment started to break down the miracle mentality.
RV (05:34):
So that’s a good question. Right. So how do you handle that? Right? I mean, I think that’s what, I think that’s what, when people hear about prayer, you know, they struggle with it. And, and you know, of course, like scripture and ancient scripture says like, you know, if you, you believe in me, ask whatever you wish, and it will be given to you. But then you pray for, you know, like I think of my wife aj. So my wife, who’s also my business partner, and she’s the c e o of brand builders group. You know, her mom got cancer when she was 15, and her mom prayed fervently, fervently for healing, had prayer chains, and yet her mom died. Right. Um, she, she lived longer than they expected, quite a lot longer, uh, like a year longer. Um, but it was, you know, that’s, that can be devastating to people’s faith. So how do you reconcile that? Right? How do you reconcile believing for the miracle, having the miracle mentality, but when the miracle doesn’t show up, this gap between those is disappointment.
TS (06:39):
Yes.
RV (06:40):
What’s the response there?
TS (06:41):
That’s a great question and something that a lot of people are that are watching right now, you feel, ’cause we’ve all been through different disappointments with belief, and then it didn’t happen. So I think that life is not black and white, that it’s most times gray. It’s like in the middle, like, why do bad things happen to good people? Or why do some people say they got healed to cancer and then someone else did not? So it’s, it, it’s not, it’s not black, it’s not white. It’s many times gray. But here’s what I believe. I think that even though the miracle did not happen the way we wanted it to, I think in the, in the form of healing, healing is a process. Some people are healed instantly, some are healed gradually. And in the Christian faith, we believe some people don’t get healed till they go to heaven, where there’s no more sickness, more tears, no more sorrow.
TS (07:42):
So, you know, we want the miracle on earth, but the, the miracle of everlasting life is still a miracle. But I, believe me, I want the miracle on earth. Hmm. So I would say to somebody as a spiritual leader and advisor, that that is frustrating, that is disappointing. But we still have to believe in miracles and believe that God is still able. And in the cases where it does not happen the way we want it to, we kind of just put that in a file that we say, at this point in my life, I don’t understand, but I still believe it’s almost like following your parents. There’s times that they gave you, um, guidelines or guidance or direction, and you didn’t understand it, but maybe at times you still followed, even though you didn’t completely understand. But I, I go through this thing where I say, you have to learn to believe in miracles and expect miracles and expectation is a very difficult thing for people. Again, because of the disappointment.
RV (08:59):
Yeah. So when you, when you say expectation Yes. What, what, what do you mean by that? And, and I do think the parallel, I, it helps me a lot. I, I feel like I’ve learned more about my faith walk than ever before by having children, because I understand like, sometimes they, they ask me for candy, sometimes I give it to ’em, sometimes I don’t. Sometimes it’s the right thing, and sometimes it would be damaging to them even though they don’t realize it. Right. Sometimes they want to tip back in their chair and they think that’s fun. But I I, I say, Hey, no, we’re not gonna do that because I’ve got, I’ve got a perspective that they don’t have. I’ve got a foresight that, that they don’t have. Yeah. And, and then, but then, you know, how do you continue to have that expectation where you ask, and maybe you’re let down and maybe that happens again and again. Or like you pursue your whole life pursuing a dream, and then you don’t get it. Right. You don’t get to the, you don’t get drafted in the M B A, you don’t get the call from the record label. How do we keep expecting then?
TS (09:59):
So I think the expectation has to be based on something. Okay. Okay. And so, like for instance, I was at a friend’s house and, um, I had forgotten something and he said, let’s just order it on Amazon Prime, then it will come the next day,
TS (11:11):
And so, uh, a fantasy is something that does not have substance to it. And so sometimes people are chasing fantasies and they think that’s faith. But I think that it has to be based on something, whether it’s a promise that God gave you or a scripture that God gave you, or a knowing as, or as o Oprah Winfrey says, uh, aha moment where you have a download. And I think you’ve had that in your life where sometimes all you had was like a word from God, and you moved on that word from God and it worked. And so you, you based it on something you felt like you heard from God and you stepped out in faith.
RV (11:59):
How do you know, how do you hear the difference between God’s prompting Christ, what Christians would call probably the whole, the Holy Spirit? How do you know the difference between that and like a crazy idea or a fantasy or just you, you know, like how do you discern, which it’s like the voices inside my head, right? How do I discern which voice is the voice I should be listening to? Which voice is which voice is the one that guides me towards the miracle?
TS (12:33):
Yeah. Phenomenal question. So in the eighties, I wrote a book called Good Idea versus the God idea. Hmm. Good. Or is it God
RV (12:46):
Yeah.
TS (12:47):
And Good can be good, but God could be better. So there’s a scripture that says, trust in the Lord with all your heart. Do not lean on your own understanding, but in all your ways, acknowledge him and he shall direct your path. Okay, how so? I teach a very simple thing. We need to stop, we need to look and we need to listen. And then the Bible says, my sheep, they know my voice. Hmm. Now, when your wife calls you, even if she had a cold, you could recognize her voice. Is that correct?
RV (13:26):
Yeah. Mm-hmm.
TS (13:27):
If she coughed in the middle of the sentence, you’d go, that’s her
RV (13:32):
Yeah. Uhhuh
TS (13:33):
So the more you have a connection with somebody you can understand and know their voice with more clarity. Hmm. And the way I teach people is we have to stop, meaning we become human doings rather than human beings. We need to look to God and have a lion alignment with him. And then we need to listen. And that listen is that quiet, whether it’s meditation, whether it’s prayer, driving in your car, in the shower, in the ice bucket, uh, in the mornings, however you do things. But really that quiet time. Think about this in your own personal life. I bet there’s some times where you’ve got some really cool downloads by just stopping looking and then listening. Mm-hmm.
RV (14:26):
TS (15:08):
Add, I like to add something to that because I think that one thing I think that you’ll enjoy about my type of teaching is that, uh, I don’t think everything is like, just an absolute. And I feel that stop, look and listen, that’s part of it. But also in the Bible it says there’s wisdom in the multitude of counselors. Mm-hmm.
RV (16:02):
TS (16:09):
I think that, uh, Oprah Winfrey, who’s become a phenomenal friend, like we’re real friends, we were sitting in her backyard one time and she said, at what point did you know you were Tim Story? And I said, at 10. And she got very emotional. She said, about the same age for me. And she said, what did that look like? Because you have to understand, we were lower income. My mother worked at Windshield’s Donut Shop, my father died when I was 10, but he was just a guy who went to 10th grade and worked at Bethlehem Steel. And someday I would go to 70 countries, speak to 85,000 people by the time I was 28 and get a doctorate in World Religion, a master’s in therapy. I mean, who would’ve thought that when I was this lower income kid at 10? But man, I just knew, I knew that. I knew that I knew. And I think that most of you guys that are watching right now, if we asked you at what age did you know you were supposed to do something fantastic or that was supernatural, it was supposed to happen, you could probably give me an age. So at 10 years of age, there was a knowing I didn’t know how I was gonna get there, and I didn’t know exactly what it was, but I knew I was gonna have big impact. I really did.
RV (17:36):
Mm-hmm.
TS (18:28):
Yes. So I think Dennis Waitley said it close to the way I say it in the eighties. So I always like to cite people, but I talk about how we learn through education, conversation, and observation. Hmm. And one of the things I do with inner city kids is I take ’em to places that they’ve never been before. So if they live, like in a inner city in la, I might drive them to Beverly Hills and let them see Rodeo Drive, because that’s an observation of something bigger than themselves. Hmm. Or will take groups of kids to Disneyland because they’ve never seen Tomorrow land, frontier land. They’ve never seen anything like this. Right. And so I think that if you don’t know what you’re supposed to do through education of even watching documentaries through conversations like the one we’re having right now together, and through observation, it will stir up that thing that’s already been there. ’cause I believe it’s already doggone inside you. Mm-hmm.
RV (19:57):
Mm-hmm.
RV (20:42):
And then when we sold our company in 2018, we moved to that exact area. And it’s like, the awareness of it is a lot. And it’s, it’s, it’s almost like seeing it, you know, seeing somebody else do it, it makes it so much more real, so much more possible. Like the, the belief barriers that we set in our own minds, the, the limits that we set are exploded by by things you can go witness. I mean, I’ve never really thought about the power of just go and be in the environment, but like, I have that a lot nowadays. Like, you know, like Ed Millet, we were talking about him before seeing the response that his audience had during his book launch. Like blew my mind. Right. I had just never seen anything. And to be on the inside of like, what that looked like, it just raised my belief level by simply being an observer and just being around what was going on.
TS (21:34):
100%. And, um, there’s so much power in the site and as you know, biblically it says seeing those things that are not yet as though they are already. And so when you begin to project and you begin to see by faith, uh, but again, I think you saw your life before it started to manifest and, um, that we get these glimpses of, of what we should be doing. And part of it, yours was seeing a speaker, but then other things, seeing a house, seeing a neighborhood. And, uh, I’ve been fortunate enough to be, uh, mentored by a man named Quincy Jones for the last 36 years. And to be around Quincy Jones is pretty cool because he worked with anywhere from Frank Sinatra to Michael Jackson. And, uh, they just celebrated his 90th birthday the other day, the Hollywood Bowl. But, you know, in seeing what this man has done from coming from where he came from, has helped me to see that if he could do it, I could do it. If he could do it, I could do it. If he could do it, I could do it. So that’s very, very helpful.
RV (22:54):
Mm-hmm.
TS (23:34):
I think, I think I wanna say that, um, if someone does not have a faith background, I could see your point. ’cause I think that a lot of the representatives, um, of faith have not always brought like, clear messages by who they are, how they talk, how they do business. So I don’t blame anybody, but I would say again, that the miracle mentality is innate. ’cause even if you don’t have faith, I still believe you’re made in the image of God. And there’s something inside you that says different, better, more magical. And that’s my, my famous story about Walt Disney. He walks into an amusement park in the 1930s and he said, someday I’m gonna build my own amusement park, but mine’s gonna be different, better, and more magical. I’m trying to tell you, every one of you that are watching right now, at one point in your life, you thought different, better, and more magical. Hmm. Whether that’s because of faith, religion, or just what’s in you innately. But I would, I would say to you, step out in who you’re supposed to be different, better, and more magical. And then if possible, open yourself up to the supernatural realm because it’s pretty powerful.
RV (24:52):
Yeah. I think that’s, I think that’s really, really beautiful. And it, when you, when you, if you grasp hold and you do kind of take ancient scripture that says that you’re created in God’s image, it certainly is a lot of, there’s a lot of power there. Uh, you know, at your access. You know, if, if there’s,
TS (25:09):
There’s no doubt about it. And the more, the more I like to study, like, um, all these documentaries, like I was watching one on David Bowie. I mean, I, I watched ones that my inner city friends were like, would be like, why did you watch that one
RV (25:22):
TS (25:23):
Interested in human beings? And this dude had like a miracle mentality and he wasn’t into like religion or like Jesus Christ, but he just knew he was David Bowie. But I, I personally believe, again, ’cause he is made in the image of God and that side of him was thinking different, better, more magical. I mean, little kids, man, they just, they wanna rise.
RV (25:53):
So another another thing that I think is pretty amazing about you. There’s, there’s so, so much in, in your, your life story, but, uh, you’ve done stuff with the Dalai Lama and you, you get into a lot of conversations and a lot of circles where it’s like normally you wouldn’t like maybe have a pastor there having that conversation. Um, how have you balanced, you know, like when it comes to like building your personal brand and your public profile and making money from speaking and writing books and those things, how do you balance this strong conviction of your, your strong personal conviction of faith and a source of truth with a respect of other people who maybe don’t believe what you believe and how are you bold, but you know, kind of compassionate and like, you know, not hiding or, you know, not apologizing for what you believe, but you, you know, like, talk to me about that balance.
TS (26:56):
Yeah, I think that in the Bible that says that you are like an epistle read by men. Like, so if you’re walking around and you’re a Christian, that where you go, it’s like people are reading you. Another way of saying it is that you can walk around like a billboard. So a lot of my strength is not in what I say, but the spirit in which I walk in. So your buddy, my buddy Lewis house. Yeah.
RV (27:30):
Uh,
TS (27:30):
He did a documentary and Thank you Lewis for putting me in that documentary so much. And Jay Shetty was there and some other people, and one of the big influencers was there. And he shook my hand and we know each other. And he, he told his friend, he goes, every time I get around Tim’s story, I feel like this weird supernatural piece come on me.
RV (28:24):
TS (28:27):
But I really believe that, number one, I’m a chill dude anyway, but he will keep you in perfect peace of your mind is state on him, meaning God. And so my strength, whether I’m around the Dalai Lama or P Diddy or Jay-Z or whoever is, I’m not always talking Bible stuff. I’m just owning the gift and the life that God gave me. Hmm. And I’ll tell you man, I work with as you know, so many celebrities that are so far from the things of God and then get so close to the things of God just by somebody breaking it down and making it realistic. Mm-hmm.
RV (29:11):
TS (29:28):
And thanks, I think old school, go to tim story.com. I like what my boy Derek did on our website, so tim story.com and then on Instagram. I’m Tim, story official.
RV (29:41):
Thank you. Yeah. That’s so great. Well, um, and then if somebody is listening right now Yeah. Who is struggling with an addiction mm-hmm.
TS (29:56):
RV (29:57):
Or is in that dark place going, going, struggling with, you know, a marital affair got laid off from their job. You know, if, if they’re not anywhere near this space and this supernatural peace that you’re talking about, but they’re instead overwhelmed with anxiety and depression and fear and worry, um, what, what would you, what would you leave that person with?
TS (30:27):
Yeah, I, I would say number one, don’t put yourself down. So, um, a lot of clients I work with are famously on T M Z and people will say, man, you, I know you work with that guy or that lady, she’s still not fixed. Uh, I don’t think we ever all get cheered. I think we get better. So don’t put yourself down to for where you’re at, but what needs to happen is somehow you need to become awake. These are the steps of a comeback. You have to become awake somehow. The second thing you have to take inventory, like, where is my life really? Like what is this addiction doing? Or what is this affair doing in my life? Or getting caught in the fair or not getting caught? Uh, so you have to become awake, you have to take inventory number three, you have to partner with the right people. Hmm. So that’s what you’re doing today on this podcast. You’re partnering with people who actually care and we’re giving some clear answers. So you partner with the right people, but then you need the right principles in your life. And so we’re talking a lot about principles and so become awake, take inventory, partner with Right people, get the right principles and it’ll get you right back on the right path.
RV (31:41):
Yeah, man, I love it. Well, thanks for the inspiration and the reminder of the supernatural and the divine that lives in all of us. And, um, just the confidence that the miracle mentality is something that is available to all of us at any moment and that that can be something that transforms our life. So we’ll be praying for you, my friend, and cheering you on, and, uh, we wish you the best.
TS (32:05):
What a privilege. Thank you.
Ep 424: How Digital Marketing Could be Destroying Your Business with Tom Schwab
AJV (00:02):
Hey, everybody. Welcome to another episode on the Influential Personal Brand. And y’all are in for a treat today. In fact, I am in for a treat today because I am getting to connect with an old friend Tom Schwab, and he just reminded me today that, Hey, do you remember that one time we were on a cruise together? And I was like, oh my gosh. I had so completely forgotten eight years ago that that happened. So this was also a treat for me today. But before I introduce Tom, I want to tell you why you wanna stick around for today’s episode. So ask yourself this question. Have you ever thought that digital marketing might actually be hurting your business? If you have ever asked that thought that, or wondered how could digital marketing help me? Or is it helping me at all? This is an episode for you.
AJV (00:56):
I would also encourage you to stick away. Stick around if you have ever ventured into the idea of, I think one day I’d like a podcast. You know, everyone has a podcast. Do I need one? And I know from talking to so many of you I hear one of three things. I hear one, oh man, I’d love to start a podcast one day. That’s number one. Number two is, oh, there’s too many podcasts out there that market’s already saturated. There’s no room for another one. I hear that a lot. And number three is, oh, I have a podcast. Now, how do I get people to listen to it?
AJV (01:41):
This is an episode that you want to listen to. So, well, let’s get into it. Let me introduce you to Tom Schwab. There’s a couple of things I wanna just kind of highlight. But one thing that I love is he, he is coming with a refreshing new take, a new view on digital marketing and how to use it or not. He’s got a new book that has just come out. It’s one Conversation Away. And it’s based on a data and experience and expertise of working with over six or 700 leading brands. He’s also the chief evangelist officer, love that title at Interview Valet. And so if you are interested in the podcasting world, you probably wanna learn about interview valet and what they do and how that works. And in general, it, this is also just super fun because you always wanna reconnect with people that you actually know and that know you, and that you have shared friends and shared clients, and you know that what they’re gonna talk about brings value. And that’s what we get to do today. So, Tom, welcome to the show. Aj.
TS (02:46):
I am thrilled to be here.
AJV (02:48):
Oh my gosh, I am so excited. And I’m honestly, I’m, I’m so excited because of this first topic that we’re gonna start with. And we had just a quick chat about this before I hit record. And I, this is pretty compelling and it’s pretty provocative, which is how digital marketing is destroying your business. That’s a pretty provocative statement in a world where everyone else is selling you of, like, digital marketing is the way to go. And if you’re not online, you’re dead. So to hear you say that is like, we’re gonna start right there. We’re, we’re gonna bring that to the front. I wanna know, is it, is it, is it destroying your business? What do you think? I,
TS (03:26):
I think for a lot of business, it’s hurting the brand, not helping the brand. Hmm. And you say all the people that are telling you more and more, more louder, louder, louder. Right? You need to break through the noise. Did you ever notice that all the people that are telling you to break through the noise are the ones that are selling the megaphones and getting us all to yell louder, louder and louder? We’re yelling, but we’re not being heard. Right? We’re getting more efficient at things that are getting less and less effective. Oh, that’s good. And, and, and with that, it’s like, we know in our hearts this isn’t working, and this rat race isn’t going in the right place. And I I learned so much from our clients. And I can remember one client came to me and I’m like, why do you wanna do podcast interviews?
TS (04:15):
And I loved his answer. A ha he said, ’cause I think most of social media is the digital equivalent of advertising above urinals,
TS (05:11):
Well, if your customers aren’t there, why should you be? And I, I, I think back when my daughter was in middle school, Instagram was taking off, and she said, dad, you need to be there because everyone’s there. And I’m like, define everyone. And she’s like, me and all my friends,
AJV (05:48):
Oh my gosh, I love that I wrote this down. It’s like, most people today suffer from digital fomo. They do. It’s like, oh, it’s like, if, you know, know, you know, I have to, this is so embarrassing, I can’t believe I’m gonna admit this, but just two weeks ago we had dinner with some of our friends and one of our friends is also on our, our data team at Brand Builders Group. And we’re sitting down and he had said something about threads, and he was talking to Rory, and, and I’m just sitting there and I was like, not really paying attention. And finally they kept talking about it, and Rory was talking about his content on threads. And I was like, what is threads? And they both looked at me eyes wide, and they’re like, did you just say what is threads?
AJV (06:32):
And I was like, I don’t wanna seem dumb here, but what is it
TS (07:31):
Well, I think everybody is online in some area, right? And I would say trying to figure out where your clients are. Ask them, right? It’s a great, great marketing research. Find out other people that you are similar to, right? And you can figure out where they are, right? And if they’re finding success in those audiences, you can also, you know, sort of lookalike audiences. And I gotta admit that, oh, when we first started out nine years ago, it was more podcast guessing than podcast guessing, right?
AJV (08:48):
Yeah. We use Spark Touro ourselves, and I agree. It’s amazing. And it frighteningly ama it’s frighteningly amazing because it’s like, oh, that’s so creepy. You have all this data, but I love that it’s just ask your clients. Right? And it’s like, if you, but I think that’s where a lot of people make the mistake, is instead of asking who, they ask what, like, where, what should I be doing and where should I be versus going, no, who, who’s my audience? And where are they?
TS (09:16):
And I’ve always said, as business owners, as consultants, we always have opinions, right? But the people that have the answers are the ones that are voting with their dollars. Right. Our customers will tell us what they love and what they loathe if we ask them, and then listen to what they say.
AJV (09:36):
Yeah. So, I, I love that. What, what would you say is, is the best way for the person who’s listening going? I agree. I do wanna ask, I have no idea. What’s the best way to ask? How should I do it? Should I just send them an email? Should I put together a survey? Like what’s the best way to do it?
TS (09:52):
Once again, at, at times we get more and more efficient at things that are less and less effective, right? So you could send out a survey to all of these people, but I think you’re much better off having quality conversations with your super consumers. There’s a great book called Super Consumer by a a gentleman by the name of Eddie Yoon. And Eddie wrote it with the Harvard Business Reviews, and he said, or H B R he said that you just wanna market to your super consumer, not to everyone, right? So one of the examples that he uses in there is American Girl Dolls, right? They market to the people that buy every one, right. And all the accessories that go with it, because if you market to them, you’ll get that next ring with it. Mm-Hmm. And often those super consumers are gonna be the people that see your content and repost it. So I would look on that, and I, I’d rather have answers from 10 of my super consumers, my best clients, the people that I know I can bring a lot of value to than a MailChimp survey from a thousand people. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (11:05):
TS (11:50):
Well, I think there’s this idea in marketing today that you are just one funnel away, right?
TS (12:47):
No. If they wanna talk to you, they, you know, they wanna talk with the wizard and take action on there. And I think there’s a misunderstanding that what works for transactional sales at the low level can just be scaled up to relationship scale sales. You know, if that was the case, Boeing and Airbus would be, would be selling, you know, billion dollar contracts off of Facebook’s and funnels. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (13:25):
Yeah. So, you know, and I love, and I love that ’cause I agree, it’s like there’s a time and a place for all the things, but you gotta know what you’re selling and who you’re selling to, right? So in your world, would you say, you know, with some just industry statistics or trends or even your personal insights of like, when does a funnel make really good sense? Like, when, when is doing, you know, some, you know, pay-per click ads and some funnels really makes sense for who you’re going after, versus you gotta know these defining lines between when you’re gonna need to build relationships and work through referrals and, and have real conversations versus trying to just make more transactions. Mm-Hmm.
TS (14:06):
AJV (15:11):
Yeah. And I love that too, because I think that, you know, to that point, it’s like the person who maybe buys the course today with enough, you know, relational, you know, kind of credibility over time might be a prospect for the higher ticket sale. That knowing the difference between, what am I trying to do, where it’s just high volume, low margin, versus no, somebody’s gonna wanna talk to me, they’re gonna want references. And if I’m spending six figures on something, I’m probably gonna want more than just clicking on something online. Right? Well,
TS (15:41):
Well, you, you’re a good businesswoman and you figured out what he’s trying to do, right? He’s got the low margin and then the high margin, and in the middle is the coaching with that too. And so that’s his idea to go out there, do the course, right. And there’s gonna be a lot of people that say, I understand the course, but I want some help with this. Maybe they can’t afford the six figures, but they can afford the coaching. So I think it’s more of a continuum. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (16:23):
Yeah. And I love that we talk about that in our own business, in our own household all the time. It’s just like, it’s basic rules of economics, supply and demand, right? It’s the greater the demand, you can charge more, the lower the supply, you can charge more, right? And it’s like, if you’re on a two year waiting list, there’s a not a lot of supply and a whole bunch of demand, so you get to charge more versus that, you know, high volume, lower fee funnels. But again, time and a place for all the things, it’s just knowing when, what and for who. And I love that. No, on that note, there is something that’s kind of in this realm of how do you start bringing people in and a, attracting them and building a relationship with them that has nothing to do per se with, you know, you know, ads or funnels. But it, I would say that podcasting kind of falls into this, you know, digital kind of marketing realm in some respect. And I know obviously you’re a big proponent and fan of podcasting, so I wanna hear your take on like, how do people use podcasting to build their brand, build their business?
TS (17:38):
Well, I’ll talk about my personal one, right? And here, here’s being honest. Now I’m an engineer at heart, right? People joke that English is my second language and they’re not sure what my first one is, is. So I’ve written a lot of blogs in my life, but every one of ’em was a homework assignment. Hmm. Right? So for me, it’s very easy to talk, right? We can have this conversation here, and there’s a lot of problems in the world today, but there’s no better time to be alive, right? Because we can take this discussion that we had, we can get the transcript, we can clean that up and turn it into blogs, into articles to repurpose it. So really look at what’s the easiest way for you to make the content, and then what ways can you repurpose it so that you can give it to your ideal customers in the way that they wanna consume it, right?
TS (18:30):
Because not everybody consumes the, the same way, right? 51% of the US population listens to podcasts, right? If your audience is hearing impaired, they’re not gonna listen to your podcast. But it doesn’t mean that you couldn’t write a blog or do captions or something like that in order to repurpose that. And the great part is, from a digital marketing standpoint, it doesn’t take any more of my time, right? It used to be you’d have to spend a lot of money to do that, you know, relatively. Now with ai, you can chop that up, you can make it so much easier to get a lot of content through there. So I, I don’t look at it as an either or as an engineer. I, I look at how do you get the most with putting the least amount in? And so if I’m gonna invest the time to do a 45 minute interview, how much content can I get out of that? Mm-Hmm.
AJV (19:25):
Yeah. So what would you tell somebody that’s got a podcast and you’re, you know, they’re going, oh, whoa, whoa, whoa, I have not been utilizing all of the assets of these interviews. Hold on. What would you say to go back and do?
TS (19:40):
I would start with your best podcast, right? Whatever your, your top four, top five are, and we used to go out, out and get a journalism intern, right? And say, Hey, here’s our interviews. Could you write some blogs out of here? Could you make some clips out of these? Right? That’s what they’re trained to do. Now with ai, you can also do other ones where ask chat g p t to pull out the best quotes from there. There’s different tools online, and I’m not gonna mention any, because by the time this goes out, they’re gonna be saying, oh, those got superseded by this. But just go out there and look, and you can see the ones that click clip the best portions from that. So don’t feel like you’ve always gotta do more, more and more, right? Do more with what you have.
TS (20:26):
Often we’ll have clients that come to us and I, I can think of one that wanted to do a hundred podcast interviews in the month, and I was like, why? She’s like, oh, that’ll be massive exposure. I’m like, it seems like a massive amount of work to me.
AJV (21:02):
Yeah. And I think that kind of comes back to that thing that we talked about earlier with, is digital marketing destroying your business as people think, oh, more, more, more is what we need to do. I need to post 15 times a day. I need to be on it all the time. And no, not necessarily. So when it comes to podcasting, do you have a recommendation on like, this is a good, you know, flow of how often you should be releasing a podcast if you have a podcast?
TS (21:31):
Well, I’ve got an opinion, but I’ve also got data behind that too. Okay, let’s
AJV (21:35):
Do, I’ll hear it.
TS (21:36):
So for a podcast itself, right? You don’t wanna do it less than two times a month, right? Ideally is typically about once a month, or I’m sorry, once a week. So it comes out weekly. And you think about it, we’re used to that with television, right? When, you know, Seinfeld came out once a week there. So that pace, people get used to it. If you start taking long times off, long time off of it, the idea that you’re gonna come back and they’re gonna find you and get back in that habit, it probably won’t hurt. Hmm. So consistency is so important. Whatever you start out with, make sure you can consistently deliver that. You know, there’s certain people that will start out with the daily podcast and then life gets in the way, right? And then they drop to two a week, and people’s first question is, well, why’d you quit?
TS (22:29):
Why are you giving up? Right?
AJV (23:41):
Hmm. I love that. So speaking of better, what would you, you say makes podcasts better? Like you do a lot, have one, I’m sure you interview a lot. What makes a great podcast?
TS (23:56):
Well, I don’t know that I will say podcasts are better, right? For me, they’re better For 51% of the US population, they’re better, right? On average, above average income, above average education, right? If you are in the academic world, in peer reviewed, you know, maybe that podcast isn’t the ideal one for you. Mm-Hmm.
TS (24:49):
G p t
AJV (25:44):
Yeah. I love, I love what you said about that. ’cause It’s so true. It’s reading something versus listening where you can hear the tonality and the context, and and especially if you’re watching right, then you get all the other components of it. If you’re watching it in video, because I do think it’s true, it’s like people fall in love with the conversation, but more so they fall in love with the people having the conversation. So how do you let your personality come out and doing it on audio? And then specifically video really helps people feel like they know you before they ever know you, right? That that’s,
TS (26:22):
Yeah. I don’t know if you’ve ever had this experience, but it’s, it, it’s freaky the first time it happens. I remember being at an airport one time and somebody came up and said, are you Tom Schwab? And my first answer was, are you a process server? Right?
AJV (27:01):
Yeah. That’s so cool. I love that. No another question I have on this topic, and I have one other topic to get to and I’m watching the clock, but I just, I love this concept of podcasts since we’re on one, and we both have one. And I’m a, I’m a huge proponent and a fan of it for lots of different reasons. But in your opinion, for those people who have a podcast who are listening to this today, and they’re struggling with knowing, how do I make it better? Like, how do I become a better interviewer? Or how do I become a better interviewee? Or what makes my podcast worth listening to, to the end? Or how do I get people to want to even check out my podcast? Any tips or ideas around that?
TS (27:48):
Very much so. And often people will come to us before they have a podcast and they wanna be a guest so that they can go out there and almost see behind the curtain how other people do it. And if you go out there as a guest, there’s less pressure. You also can practice on someone else’s stage and see how they do it. And it’s like, oh, I like how AJ does this, and I’m gonna work that into my podcast. And so it’s a great way to do that. Another way to grow the podcast cliff Ravenscraft, I, I don’t know if you know Cliff, he used to be called the Podcast Answer Band. And I remember him saying early on, the best place to follow or find podcasts listeners is listening to podcasts
TS (28:45):
Hmm. So going out on other podcasts with your ideal audience is a great way to talk about your podcast, get them back there and grow it. The final thing that I would say on that is watch the game film. And you think about what’s the difference between a professional and an amateur in sports. You know, the amateur goes out there and just loves playing the game, right? The professional plays the game and then they watch the game film. And it’s always different, right? You always learn something from it. So I, I listen to all of our clients’ first interviews to give ’em feedback, but I also recommend that they listen to their interviews because the way I hear this interview is gonna be different than when I replay it and it’s like, oh, I should have done this, or I didn’t answer that question completely. And it helps you get better. Hmm. You know, because no matter what you do, your worst interview will be your first interview. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (29:56):
So I gotta know, since you I think that’s awesome and so fascinating, what great market research that you listen to all of those podcasts. So what’s the number one piece of feedback that you give most often?
TS (30:09):
The biggest one I talk to ’em about is slowing down. Hmm. The studies say that 70% of podcasts are listened to sped up, and I’ll speak for myself. When I get excited, I talk faster and faster and faster,
TS (31:02):
So slow down. And we had a, a client early on Arthur, Joseph Arthur has been the speech coach for the N F L for over three decades. And he’s written most of the Hall of Fame speeches and coaches him. And I remember being at the end of a call one time with him, and it was like, okay, Arthur, you do this, I’ll do that. And as a true professional, he just leaned in and he goes, Tom, you have children, don’t you? I’m like, yeah, Arthur, I do. He’s like, oh, do they listen better when you speed up or you slow down? And I’ve always remembered that,
AJV (31:39):
Oh, I love that
TS (32:39):
When they’re nervous and you know, Chris Voss from Never Split the Difference you know, great, great marriage book, great business book, great parenting book about hostage negotiation, right? And I love how he talks about mirroring. So if you’ve got somebody that talks a little bit faster, you can talk a little bit faster. If they’re very slow, you better be slow because mm-hmm.
AJV (33:17):
Oh, that’s good. That’s a great tip for anyone who’s a guest on a podcast specifically. I love that. All right, last topic. Why leveraging other people’s platforms is better or more valuable, maybe not better, but more valuable than leveraging other people’s money?
TS (33:36):
I made this comment back when interest rates were what 2%. I still, I still believe it at the current interest rates. And let me give you an example. Alright. Sarah Blakely, who started Spanx, right? How did she launch Spanx? It was largely off the Oprah show. Right? Now, if Oprah would’ve said, I love this product, you know, Sarah, I’m gonna give you a million dollars interest free, just grow your business. I’m sure she wouldn’t have said no. Right? But if it was here, I’ll give you a million dollars interest free, pay it back whenever you want, or keep it right, or I’d like to bring you on mm-hmm.
TS (34:38):
I remember seeing Rory a couple years ago up in Columbus at Lewis House event, right? He realized that it was worth his time and investment to go up there and tap into somebody else’s audience. And I think especially today when it’s not, doesn’t mean that you’ve gotta jump on a plane and, and, and take time away. It’s really just, you know, 45 minutes for a podcast interview. I think a lot of people try too hard to build their audience instead of using other people’s audiences, especially at the beginning, like, what you guys always teach, and I love this, you’re doing the right things in the wrong order. Right? If I’ve got a huge following, then it makes sense to do this. And, you know, often people will say, should I be a guest or a host on a podcast? And I’m like, it’s not an either or mm-hmm.
AJV (36:05):
Yeah. No, I love that. And I completely agree. You know, it’s interesting, as you were talking, I was thinking about how many people in the Brand Builders group community come to us initially, and their, their goal is, Hey, I, I, I hear this all the time. I wanna make money while I sleep. I’m like, I think we all wanna do that. What, what, how exactly do you wanna do that? And they’re going, well, I wanna launch a course. And it’s like, okay do you have anyone to sell the course too? Well, I need to do that too. I’m like, okay, do you have content for the course? Well, that’s what I’m hiring you for. And it’s like, their very first thing is, I wanna make money while sleep, so I’m gonna build a course. And they don’t yet have a platform, and they don’t yet have the content thought out for it.
AJV (36:47):
And most importantly they forget that building a platform and launching a course takes a lot of time and a lot of money. And it’s like, back to that, you know, kind of concept of like, well, if you don’t have the platform, you’re going to need to borrow someone else’s. So who do you know who can cross promote this? Or what shows can you be on? What speaking engagements can you do? And don’t be expecting to be paid for them, right? And it’s, do you have the time, energy, resources, and money to wait that out while you do all these other things? And that’s what I, I love about this whole thing of other people’s platforms is, you know, you don’t have to have a huge platform to make a huge impact. It’s like you don’t have to recreate the wheel to make this whole make this whole car turn here.
AJV (37:32):
Other people have the wheels. You just, you kind of need to jump on and, and take it while you’re building yours. And Sarah Blakely is a great example. And even us at Brand Builders Group, it’s like, when we launched this company five years ago, we had no podcasts, no. So no social media, no email list. We didn’t even have a website when we launched, but we had a great relationship and a solid reputation with Lewis House. And Lewis had a huge platform, and that Lewis had a huge reach, and we launched our whole business on his podcast.
TS (38:11):
That is a testament, and I didn’t realize that the, the other thing I would say is you had a great reputation, right? And I think people forget about that and they’ll say, well, you know, Tony Robin sells this course. Brendan Bouchard sells this course. I I can use the same funnel, the same script, all the same hacks, right? And it’s like, but you’re not them. Yeah. Right? They’ve had those conversations, they’ve had that reputation for a long, long time. People will vouch for ’em, and after that, it all becomes easy. And once again, I, I love how you guys say doing the right things in the wrong order. And at the end of the day, we’re not optimizing for activity. Mm-Hmm. Right? We’re optimizing for the value we bring to the market, because when we bring value to the market, we also get profits. Right? Right. And what you were talking about, the conversations you have around home about supply and demand, I wish more people would have that. Right? I see. Optimizing for leads, optimizing for likes, right? That’s not what we’re optimizing for. We’re, we’re optimizing for demand to exceed supply. Yeah. Because economics in high school said that’s where profits are. And if you’re getting profits, you’re delivering value to the community.
AJV (39:27):
Yes. I mean, basic, basic law of economics applies to every single part of what we’re talking about here today. I have loved this conversation. I have one one last random pop question for you. Do you have a favorite podcast that you would like to recommend that you’re like, man, this is my go-to podcast. I learned so much from this podcast.
TS (39:53):
I, I can think of one, but I’ll say, because I listened to everybody’s podcast, their first one. I love it because, you know somebody asked me one time, what was the last podcast you listened to? I looked on my phone and I said, adoption now. And they’re like, huh? And I’m like, yeah, one of our clients were on it. It was really interesting. So I encourage people, just listen to random podcasts or listen to a podcast that you totally disagree with, with their premise, because you’ll learn something or at least appreciate them. I think my go-to one is follow your different with Christopher Lockhead. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (40:56):
Hmm. I love that. That’s so good. Y’all, if y’all have enjoyed this conversation, I would just encourage you to check Tom out, learn more about him, and also check out his new book One Conversation Away. We’ll put a link to that in the show notes, but you can go to interview valet.com/ipb for influential personal brand. Again, check it out, interview valet.com/ipv. And before I let you go, Tom can you give us just a 62nd rundown so everyone knows what is Interview Valet and what do you do?
TS (41:34):
Sure. Interview Valet is a podcast interview marketing agency. Our mission is to personally introduce inspiring thought leaders to millions of people they could serve for the betterment of all. So working with high level coaches, high level consultants, brands, nonfiction authors, to really help them get on podcasts, not just as an ego thing, but to drive real business results. So we’ve got a team of 30 in Europe and North America. My microphone makes me sound good. My team makes me look good,
AJV (42:09):
I love that. So y’all go check it out specifically if you’re trying to figure out this whole podcast game. How do you grow your podcast? Well, one way to do it is to be on others podcasts. Use that borrowed audience, and this is one way you could do that. So again, interview valet.com/ipv and stick around for the recap episode and I’ll see you next time.
Ep 422: How to Build a $300 Million Training Company with Scott Jeffrey Miller
RV (00:01):
It’s not that often that someone cold pitches us for our podcast, and then we agree to have them on. But Scott, Jeffrey Miller and his team, when they pitched us, I immediately was like, yeah, this is an easy yes. He was at 25 years, he had a career where he served as the chief marketing officer and the executive vice president for a little company you may have heard of, called Franklin Covey. He even still to this day, is the senior advisor on thought leadership, where he leads their strategy and development and the publication of their, you know, the firm’s bestselling books. He leads a host, their podcast, which is one of the biggest podcasts in the world on leadership. He personally has written seven books. He’s a Wall Street Journal, bestselling author himself. He’s got a new book coming out from Harper Collins called The Ultimate Mentoring Guide. And he also runs an agency, a speaking literary and talent agency called Gray and Miller. So I recognized all of his friends, all the work he’s done, and blown away by who this man knows how successful he’s been, what he’s been a part of. And so anyways, I was like, yes, I want to talk to Scott Jeffrey Miller, and here he is, Scott, Jeffrey Miller.
SJM (01:19):
Rory, thank you for the spotlight. Thank you for the platform. Looking forward to coming over and swimming in that pool behind you someday, but let’s get it on
RV (01:27):
SJM (01:42):
We get the name right. And Rory, it’s the Ultimate Guide to great mentorship. You, you keep condensing it. Oh,
RV (01:48):
Well, this is what I got from your team, buddy. So we might wanna,
SJM (01:51):
Oh, they’re gonna be in trouble. We
RV (01:53):
Might
SJM (01:55):
Need some inventory.
RV (01:57):
I’m reading it. Well, and here’s what I would love, in all seriousness, I would, I would love to almost treat this as if I were a mentor of yours because at Brand Builders Group my wife and I started a company that we grew to eight figures, and then we sold it. And in that company I was more kind of like the c e o and, and and she was more of the business facing kind of person. And our new company, she is the c e o and I’m more like the C M O. And I’m just totally fascinated and curious about what was Franklin Covey like 25 years ago when you started, what did, what are all the things you did? How did you do that? I mean, obviously you have seven habits of Highly Effective People sells, you know, 20 plus million copies or however many it is. Like 50, is it, is that, is it 50 million now? 55 million?
SJM (02:52):
Yeah, keep going.
RV (02:53):
I mean, what’s another 20 million? Yeah, I mean,
SJM (03:14):
Are not that much younger than me. I mean, come on, let’s go Now. Wait, are you mentoring me or am I mentoring
RV (03:19):
You? You’re mentoring me. Uhhuh
SJM (03:23):
Don’t flaunt. Don’t flaunt your good luck.
RV (03:25):
I’m just, I don’t know how old you are. You look very young, but you say 25.
SJM (03:28):
You’re I’m, I’m 43.
RV (03:30):
43, okay, great. Yeah, so you’re, anyways, you’re mentoring me. Yeah, you’re my senior.
SJM (03:34):
I’m actually 55, but let’s answer your
RV (03:36):
Question. Ah, okay. There. It’s okay.
SJM (03:38):
Let’s see. Born and raised in central Florida. Orlando worked for the Walt Disney Company for four years until they invited me to leave, which is kind of how it goes there. So,
SJM (04:29):
The E V P of thought leadership had an amazing journey. This is of course a public global leadership firm. The most trusted leadership firm we think in the world. Never expected to say 25 years, but it was a great culture. People ask me why did I stay? I say, because the c e o loved me. So my advice to your wife is people don’t quit. Leaders who love them. Mm-Hmm. The CEO liked me with nothing in common. Right. I’m a Catholic, he’s a Mormon. He is like a Kona iron Man. I like, I walk past the Peloton and say hi. He’s very reserved.
SJM (05:19):
I became very aware of the difference between being effective and being efficient. One is not better than the other, but they’re very different. And we sometimes irresponsibly use them interchangeably. Right. Having an efficient mindset is not the same as having an effective mindset under our team’s leadership. We, you know, launched 10 New York Times. We journal bestsellers, which became the lifeblood of a company that really is at its heart, a leadership development firm. Wow. Books represent about 5% of the company’s revenue, if even that. And so books were the front of the spear, the tip of the spear, if you will. And so learned a lot, got humbled a few hundred times along the way, and had an amazing journey. Retired from the firm three years ago. I think the thing that I’m most proud of is I’m still married to my wife after 14 years, and the chairman of the board and the c e o still speak to me and hire me, and I’m still in good standing, not as an employee. And I’m very proud of my association. Yeah,
RV (06:12):
That’s really cool. That’s really cool about that. You, you know, you retired and you’re still, you’re still there. So you, you mentioned the revenue. Okay. ’cause and, and Franklin Covey is a public publicly traded company. Yeah. So were you, you were there when it was a privately held company. Was
SJM (06:30):
I was, when,
RV (06:32):
When did that happen and what was that like going from We are a small private company to now we are an actual publicly traded company because there’s one of the things that we talk about you know, like we have a, we have a course called Eight Figure Entrepreneur that’s one of the like you know, sections of curriculum that we have. And we talk about how almost no personal brands get to eight figures. Like very rarely they get to seven figures, multi seven figures. We call it the swamp. Between one and 3 million. They get stuck. Very few get to, you know, 10 you know, $10 million or eight figures. But then what you’re talking about are Franklin Covey is way past that. You’re in like Dave Ramsey land and like only a few companies that have ever gotten Yes. Into the nine figure territory. So like, how and why did you guys get there? Like how did you pull that off?
SJM (07:24):
Sure. It’s, it’s far, it’s a little bit complicated. You know, 300 plus million worldwide global company based here in Salt Lake City. I think I, I’m gonna answer your question two ways. One is, I think one of the reasons why these personality guru, you know, namesake companies don’t scale, is they become too contingent on the person. Mm-Hmm.
SJM (08:15):
A good friend of mine. And I don’t think Jim has made, in my opinion, all the right decisions on how to make sure his brand endures beyond his passing, like Stephen Covey did. So that idea of diversifying beyond you being the core brand, I think is important. To answer your bigger question, ours happened a little bit differently. So Covey Leadership Center was a private boutique leadership firm owned by Stephen Covey and Seven Investors. The Franklin Quest company, 30 miles North in Salt Lake City, was the planner company. Right. A much larger public company founded by Hiram Smith, but a public firm traded on the New York, New York Stock Exchange. They had a merger known as an acquisition. And so the public company, Franklin Quest, acquired the Covey Leadership Center and came to market as the Franklin Covey Company 25 years ago. Mm-Hmm.
SJM (09:13):
With revenue goals and cost of goods and margin and ebitda. So for 20, you know, six years we were consumed with ebitda. I think I was responsible for 100 quarters, quarter after quarter. You’re only as good as your EBITDA was this last quarter. That’s probably the biggest difference. The biggest challenge was as a private company, you could focus on top line growth and be a little less worried about ebitda. And as a public company, it was an all consuming passion because we had a fiduciary responsibility to not just individual investors, but to institutional investors that had put their, you know, their retirement funds and their, you know, their, their cash into our company. So we took it extremely seriously. And the stock at its low was, I think, under a dollar. We were threatened with de-listing, and I think a few months ago it hit 54. And so it’s been an amazing journey to be part of that wealth creation for millions of people, not to mention the hundreds of millions of people that access our content in their organizations.
RV (10:16):
Yeah. That is, that’s amazing. So it really happened then through the acquisition. So this, this company that did planners Yes. Saw the value of what Dr. Covey and the team was teaching, and then they basically acquired the IP and incorporated into their planners.
SJM (10:32):
That’s a great story. If that were, what happened, I think what really happened is you had kind of two arch rivals in the marketplace. Right? The Franklin Quest company was the world dominator in thought leadership around productivity and planning, planning tools, selling hundreds of millions of dollars of paper planners each year. They had hundreds of retail stores around the nation, but they didn’t have the, the organizational wide impact around leadership development and strategy execution. Franklin or the Covey Leadership Center also had a paper planner, had a few dozen retail stores, but that market was going to go away. The companies knew the future of productivity was not in a paper planner. We knew this, we’re often mocked about that, but I mean, we actually became the, the largest retailer of palm pilots in the world as we migrated from paper planning to digital planning. Although, you know, now paper planning is back with a resurgence. I don’t know anybody doesn’t use a paper planner tool, but it was the Covey Leadership Center that kind of came out on top because Dr. Covey’s brand was still peaking. And his book, the Seven Habits continues to sell, you know, a million copies a year, which is unheard of for a book published 29 plus 30 years ago. Right. Almost 40 years ago, actually.
RV (11:48):
Yeah, that is, that’s amazing. So if, so take so back in the days of Covey Leadership Center, like, like you said today, I guess you said 5% of revenue is books and I guess is that Well,
SJM (12:02):
Probably, probably 2%. I mean, books is about maybe three to $4 million a year of a $300 million company. It’s very small.
RV (12:10):
Okay. Is that what it was? So were you there when it was Covey Leadership Center? It was, I was, you were there. You were there before. Yeah. So what was
SJM (12:19):
The, I was there always
RV (12:21):
What was the business model back then prior to the acquisition? It
SJM (12:24):
Was still similar. I mean, the books were always meant to be marketing tools. Not now, not, you know, overtly. Right. I mean, you and I share some passions and some business competencies. I’m asked daily how to write a, how to get a bestselling book. And I say, write a great book,
RV (13:40):
Uhhuh. Whoa. Wait, say that last part about per the, the daily rate you’re talking
SJM (13:45):
About. Yeah. Dr. Covey was earning $150,000 a day after his book became this, you know, seminal leadership book, the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. So the book definitely Dro drove his personal income, right. Which was speaking, but it was mainly a marketing tool for organizations. ’cause What happened, Rory, is, you know, every year 5 million people read the seven Habits of Highly Affected People. And a million of them were leaders in organizations. And they said, oh my gosh, this book was personally transformative. I need my 30 team members to learn these principles. They would call us and spend $25,000 hiring someone from our company to come in for three days and train their staff. Or we had to train the trainer model. So we had, at any given time, you know, eight or 10,000 employees of other companies that were certified in our Train the trainer model. And that’s where the margin was. The margin wasn’t in flying a consultant around the nation. The margin was, you know, certifying 20 people at Toyota or 200 people to train our content and go train 30,000 people in the content where the margin on the workbook was 90%. Right. That was, that’s where the margin, that’s where half of the margin of the company was. And proba no half of the revenue, and probably 80% of the margin was in the train the trainer model.
RV (15:03):
And that’s because it was in the kits. ’cause You were shipping kit, you’re basically at that point just shipping kits. That’s right. All over the
SJM (15:09):
World. You’re, you’re taking orders all day long from 8,000 certified facilitators who don’t work for your company. They’re just your brand ambassador. They work for all these major Fortune 5,000 companies, and they’re in human resources and they’re training their people to be effective, and they’re training as many classes as possible so that they can create density in the organization to have a highly effective culture. So for us, it was a genius model where we’re selling world-class intellectual property in the form of a participant kit, digital or print. Now it’s mainly digital, then it was exclusively print. And now we’re growing across the world with 60 offices licensing people to represent us. And now you’ve got content translated into 25 languages. So when Exxon comes and they wanna have a true cultural transformation and train 80,000 employees across 40 countries, we can do it.
RV (16:01):
Mm-Hmm.
SJM (16:33):
It was actually exactly what you just described. First. It was the book. It was hundreds of thousands of people a month buying this book. And in it was a little paper card you could rip out and fill out and mail back to the company. I want more in, more information. I’m interested in attending a public program at a local hotel for my own personal development. I’m interested in becoming a certified facilitator. I’m interested in a keynote. I’m interested in bringing in a consultant. And thousands of these cars flowed back in the mail, like put a stamp on it and mail it back. Wow. Thousands a week came in.
RV (17:13):
Wow.
SJM (17:14):
And then you had Dr. Covey out speaking to every association, every board of directors, every conference out three and four times a day, gin up, you know, thousands and thousands of leads, and the phones were ringing off the hook like they used to do. So then you had to onboard salespeople to take all these thousands of inbound phone calls. There was no email. It was the phone in the mail, and you called people back and said, Rory, we got your inquiry card. Are you still interested? And we were just booking, you know, thousands of engagements every month, not to mention hundreds of open enrollment public programs. So there you, Dr. Covey couldn’t deliver all these, so you had to scale before you know it, you had two Coveys and then eight Coveys, and then 10 Coveys, and then 150 Coveys, meaning certified consultants that worked for our company that were out training our content. And then it just kept growing and growing and growing. And then we, you know, obviously built a massive marketing machine, and it really was based on the foundation of several books. It was the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. And then his son, Sean Covey, wrote the book, the Seven Habits of Highly Effective Teens. This book has sold 10 million copies, and now Franklin,
RV (18:23):
Like teenagers,
SJM (18:24):
Teenagers, it’s the most successful youth leadership book in history. Franklin Covey now has a $50 million education division where they just simply sell leadership training to K 12 schools to train students and faculty and staff $50 million in the K 12 business. And then his oldest son Steven, m r Covey wrote a book called The Speed of Trust that sold 3 million copies that then became a huge trust offering how to become a high trust leader. Then they wrote books on execution and sales. And everyone became a Wall Street Journal bestseller because we made it happen ethically by having, you know, just having a tenacious work ethic and writing great books. By the way, these books took like five and six years to write these books that did really well. They didn’t write these books in nine months like I do with my books. Right. My books sell, you know, six, eight, 10,000 copies a year. They sell 300,000 copies because they take, you know, a decade sometimes to write these books. Mm-Hmm.
RV (19:28):
SJM (19:34):
Well, it was private, so I don’t know their revenue. It was private. We probably had, you know, 40 salespeople. Now they have 250. And so I’m gonna guess it was probably 50 million or 30 million. I don’t know. I was 25 years old and it was 30 years ago. And it was a private company, so it wasn’t disclosed or discussed
RV (19:55):
Uhhuh
SJM (20:00):
Something like that. Yeah. Now there’s probably about 1200 around the world. And not to mention, you know, literally hundreds of thousands of ambassadors, because what happens is when Rory leaves Exxon and goes to Disney, he brings the content with them. And then when he goes to, you know Twitter or X, he, he go, takes it there too. They could use the content by the way. But it’s what, what Dr. Covey did was he very quickly checked his ego. Mm. And one of his best talents was he was a very humble man. He did not need to be the star of the company. He did not need to be on stage. And he realized if the mission was to impact billions of people, that in order to scale, he had to deputize people in his place. Same character, same competence, and sometimes better competence.
SJM (20:47):
I, I don’t think Dr. Covey was a great presenter. I think he was a great teacher. But I mean, there’s a hundred people that deliver the content better than Dr. Covey ever did, in my opinion. That has nothing to do with whether he wasn’t a, a person of enormous influence and character. He was. But he realized if I’m gonna change the world and I’m gonna grow this company into a juggernaut, I gotta step out of the way. I’ve gotta recruit talent. He was a, he was a college professor. He wasn’t, he didn’t know how to run a company. He did. And he, and he did it beautifully in the beginning, but what I think he did best was he stepped out of the way and hired operators and marketers and people understood process. And then he was the intellectual property genius, creating new content and connecting with audiences, and then stepped outta the way to scale it with great salespeople and great delivery consultants, presenters, keynote speakers. Mm-Hmm.
RV (21:41):
So when you think back over, like in the marketing role, c m o right? That’s a pretty big shift from 50 million to 300 million. That’s a long, that’s a lot of distance that you guys have covered. When you look at like, some of the big marketing initiatives that have, you know, made that effort. I mean, you talked about the pullout mailer card. Yes. Were there any other like really pivotal moments Yes. That you think back on
SJM (22:08):
One in particular, and it’s kind of a mantra at Franklin Covey where I no longer work or am an officer, but consult externally on a variety of things for the board and the chairman and the c e o and host two podcasts for them. The mantra is nothing sells Franklin Covey, like a Franklin Covey experience. Hmm. If you take Rory and you certify him as a bonafide Franklin Covey consultant, and you put Rory in, you know, a Western hotel room in Miami, and you get 70 chief learning officers, chief human resource officers, vice president of talent development in the room for three hours with Rory pro bono. Right. Serve a chicken lunch, no charge, get ’em in the room. Don’t try to sell anything to them. Just teach them the principles of engagement. Building a culture, how to be highly effective, how to build a high trust culture with where millennials come and stay.
SJM (23:06):
Eight of them will walk away and buy from you. 24, 22 won’t, but eight will and replicate that model. Get people to taste and feel the experience. It might be reading a book, it might be listening to an audio tape, it might be going to a three day public program at a Marriott with 40 people. You don’t know. It might be a marketing breakfast or a lunch might be a full day program where you invite, you know, CFOs to come and teach CFOs how to build an interpersonal culture where people choose to build their whole career under you. You’re gonna land 10 of them. And that’s what we did better than anybody in the world. Mm-Hmm.
RV (24:13):
Wow. And you were saying that those events might have like 30 people in ’em and typically something like that. They were small. It’s not like you’re packing out arenas, you’re just going No,
SJM (24:23):
Although we did, oh, we, we, we would have events at 200. But the magic model, honest to God, the magic model was, and this isn’t, you know, sales secret to Franklin Covey, but the magic model was curating the list very carefully, calling, inviting people to a non-sales event, underwriting it. Right. We’re not charging you for it. We’re gonna serve you lunch, you’re gonna be with your peers. There’ll be no sales pitch. We’re just gonna teach you X, Y, or Z. And, you know, you invite, you know, 200 and a hundred say yes. And then you vet ’em out and then 70 Promise they’re gonna come and 45 show up. So you set the room for 52, and then you’d give them just a quality experience where they can talk and you talk and they share, and you share and you share principles of effectiveness that they desperately need in their company.
SJM (25:13):
They desperately need people that have great skill sets around technical capabilities and hard skills, but most of them lack the soft skills now known as power skills. And you teach these power skills of interpersonal effectiveness. And we know to the precise algorithm who’s gonna buy, how long it will take and how much they will spend. And you get this formula, you tweak it, you tweak it, you massage it. What you do not do is you don’t shortcut it. You don’t invite ’em, pardon the phrase to a country. And in suites you don’t invite them to Ritz Carlton. You invite them to a, a a, an appropriate hotel that matches their culture and their comfortability. You put them in the right size room at the right time of the day for the right period of time, teach them great content, and then you follow up and you have a winning formula, of course, that, that, that contracted in the pandemic.
SJM (26:08):
Right. Everything became a podcast, a webinar, an email. And now I think they’re coming back to these live person events and they’re seeing enormous benefit because innately people are human creatures that crave connection and interpersonal relationships. And you get into a Franklin Covey room for even 90 minutes. Right. We have C-suite events that are just for the C-suite, 90 minutes. They’re usually breakfast seven to eight 30 ’cause a ’cause you know, a C-level person can do that. They can’t come to lunch, they can’t come to a three o’clock event or a 10 o’clock event. You’ll have an 80% no show rate. You’ll have a 90% show rate if you do a breakfast before the C-suite actually has to be in the office. Just kind of tweaking and playing.
RV (26:52):
Man, that is so awesome and simple and powerful, right. Of just, just adding value to people’s lives first and then letting it, letting it fall out from there. Yeah. You mentioned ego. I feel like the companies that get a chance to scale a a lot of times start to fall apart because of someone’s ego or a few people’s ego. And it’s interesting ’cause you wrote books while you were there, even though you’re retired now as your consultant. So you guys, you’ve mentioned even in the family, they had several personal brands, but also you had a personal brand that you were starting. What was the philosophy there? Because I feel like a lot of companies are not quick to embrace the idea of personal brands of the executives because there’s this fear of they’re gonna get too big for their britches and it causes conflict and jealousy and all these issues. But clearly you guys have done this. How have you balanced personal brands with the corporate brand
SJM (27:49):
Was not well received.
RV (27:50):
Ah,
SJM (27:51):
I was a pariah. The company’s culture, which by the way, I am an unabashed ambassador for Franklin Covey, if you want to change the culture of your company, Franklin Covey, in my opinion, is the most trustworthy, ethical provider of principles in the marketplace. I have nothing but a positive thing to say about this company, period. I’m an unabashed evangelist for them. They don’t pay me to do that. And at Franklin Covey, there was a philosophy that you can’t have a personal brand. It’s all about the company. It’s Franklin Covey. And I think it was a wrong decision. I think it was rooted in the culture of the dominant population in the state. You can read the lines there, but I think it was a dangerous misstep for the company because people don’t follow companies on Instagram. They follow people. People don’t follow people on LinkedIn.
SJM (28:48):
They follow people. And I think I was a pariah. I don’t think I was, I know for a fact I was a pariah for the last three years of my career there, where I started to write books. And my books did quite well because I marketed them and I built a brand with myself on YouTube and Instagram and LinkedIn and Facebook and you name it. I was very self-promotional. ’cause I knew that was the formula that was gonna take me. And I thought the company to the next level. I think the company is starting to really realize the benefit of raising up individual thought leaders in the organization. Not that are self-serving, but are in service to the brand, but can build a massive followership. People care more what Stephen, Mr. R Covey has to say about trust than they do what Franklin Covey has to say about trust. They care more about what Chris McChesney has to say about executing strategy. He’s the author of the Wall Street Journal, best history,
RV (29:49):
Foreign Disciplines of Execution. Yeah.
SJM (29:50):
Foreign disciplines. Right? Yeah. And so I think there’s a fine balance of not being a grandstander not being an opportunist while still building your brand. And so it wasn’t the case. I I I, there was a cross on the front yard with me and some flames on it for quite a while as I became the Johnny Apple seed of finding that delicate balance and tension of building your brand, not at the expense of, but in service with the overall all brand. And it’s, you know, not everybody gets it right. I didn’t always get it right. The c e o and I are very good friends to this day. He used to work for me, now I work for him. And so we talk a lot about that balance of not having your brand overshadow the company’s brand, but being able to each of you kind of ride each other’s waves in tandem for the service of the company, our clients and our shareholders. It, it’s a delicate balance.
RV (30:48):
Mm-Hmm.
SJM (31:52):
Over and over and over again. Franklin Covey was an interesting test because we were a public company. There’s very few public leadership development firms Yeah. That were, you know, eccentrically founded on a guy who passed 10 years ago. And the company has grown independent of his foundation. Interdependent. And, but at the same time, rising up thought leaders that may or may not stay. I mean, one of my biggest contributions to the firm has been to judiciously select authors that are employees of the company that aren’t gonna leave two years from now when the book’s been outta the marketplace for a year and have to rewrite the book or extract them from the book or whatever. So we take great care with the people that write our books. Sometimes they leave, sometimes they usually they stay, we’ve only had two leave and like 30 years of authors, maybe three.
SJM (32:42):
But they’re all in good standing. Right. it’s a precarious balance that takes a lot of care and commitment and non-disclosures and privacy agreements and high trust. At the end of the day, you know, anybody can violate a non-compete and not be sued. At the end of the day, it’s your character to say, I hope, like I have modeled, I wanna build my brand independent of Franklin Covey not on the heels of their brand and not at the expense of their brand and never in spite of their brand. And I always want that company to serve well. And I think it’s why I’m still able to consult with them and earn a nice living with them because they know that I’m not trying to diminish their brand and I care passionate about what they do and who they are. We don’t agree on all decisions, but as I mentioned earlier, I think it’s the thing I’m second most proud of in life is that I’m able to not just peacefully coexist, but work well interdependently with them in the marketplace.
SJM (33:39):
Mm-Hmm.
RV (34:16):
That’s really cool too. I mean, they, they, you know, to what you’re saying about Dr. Covey and his humility in the first place, that became a culture of philosophy, the whole company that definitely it is really wonderful that there’s never that they’ve been able to reach the size and the magnitude of the impact and not have a lot of those kind of, you know, things going on at, you know, in a public, in a public sense of scandals and all of that. So well, tell us, tell us quickly about the new book. Tell us what you’re up to these days and would love to just hear a a little bit about that before we wrap up.
SJM (34:49):
Thanks. the book I just released from Harper Collins is called The Ultimate Guide to Great Mentorship book. They actually approached me, they thought that the space needed a very practical book on mentorship and had written several books for them called Master Mentors that are books based on the podcast that I host for them on leadership with Scott Miller. And I’m very pleased with the success of the book out of the gates, including a a robust keynote roster that I have coming up, usually about three a week in person right now. So I’m on the road a lot, which is tough ’cause my wife and I have three young sons. I have a new book behind Me in yellow coming out in February called Career on Course from Baker Up in Michigan. It’s 10 strategies to take your career from accidental to intentional. I have two more books in the queue that are will be coming out in, in 2025. That’s
RV (35:39):
A lot of books, man. You’re cranking out some books.
SJM (35:41):
I like to write books and speak because as you mentioned, I’m a talent agent. I co-own a fast growing, speaking literary and talent agent. So I like to know what my clients are going through. I like to know how to make a bestseller, how to build a brand, how to build a website, how to build your social media, how to build a speaking career, how to productize and monetize your intellectual property in a book into courses and certifications. No one’s making money on books, but Donald Miller, he’s making some money. Amy Porterfield’s making some money. They
RV (36:13):
Sell a lot of books if you,
SJM (36:14):
What’s that? If
RV (36:15):
You sell enough books, right.
SJM (36:17):
Enough books. But yeah, the book business is really about influencing people and being able to monetize it in ways through speaking in courses and things like that. And I like to write books so that I am relevant to the clients I represent. Mm-Hmm.
RV (36:29):
Mm-Hmm.
SJM (36:35):
Champagne Region of France. We can link up and hook up down there in southern France. No you can visit Scott Jeffrey Miller dot com. I like a good glass of champagne, bro. You can visit great mentorship.com. Love to have you follow me on any social platform to my wife’s who I’m on them all multiple times a day.
RV (36:55):
Mm-Hmm.
SJM (37:33):
There’s no shortcuts. There’s no such thing as overnight success. Hmm. There is overnight fame and it’s usually Ill-gotten and fleeting. But you look at the consistency behind people like Seth Godin, Dan Pink, Liz Wiseman, Susan Kane, Kim Scott, Rachel Hollis, Lewis Howes, Donald Miller, Amy Porterfield, on, on and on. These people were not overnight sensations. I met Amy Porterfield four years ago. We were both speaking at Rachel Hollis and Dave Hollis’s Thrive Business event in Charleston. I didn’t even know who Amy Porterfield was. She obviously was a big name in the, you know, entrepreneurship email world. I didn’t even know who she was. Look at her today. Amy Porterfield owns America. It’s like amazing. This did not happen overnight. Look at Donald Miller’s influence, right? It’s just Rachel Hollis a good friend of mine. I think it took her six books. She wrote six books until her book was finally in a bookstore and became a bestseller.
SJM (38:37):
You never heard of Rachel Hollis’s first six books? You gotta build your brand consistently, carefully find who your niche audience is. I think Seth Golden is a genius. I’m honored to be friends with him and have him endorse my books. He talks about this idea of this smallest viable market. I think most of us that have been to business school, we think about the total addressable market or the largest market. Know what is your fa, smallest, viable market? How few people can you build your business around? What are their names? What are the things I like most about Rachel at her peak? And I still, like Rachel had a rough couple years, I see her back on the rise. I’m a big Rachel Hollis fan is she knew exactly who her customer was. She knew what her name was, her age, her fears, her passions, her talents, her weaknesses, her traumas, her dramas. She knew exactly who her customer was. Like no one I’d ever met in my life. Focus on your smallest viable market and take your time. Dr. Covey spent 10 years writing the Seven Habits of Highly Effective People. He was 54 when that book became a bestseller. Take your time. It’ll come.
RV (39:48):
Wow. I love that. What a word. What a word. Well, Scott, Jeffrey Miller, it’s great to meet you. I’m so glad your team cold pitched me such an impressive career, amazing story. And we’ll be following you closely, man, and wishing you the best. You
SJM (40:05):
And I gonna have lunch in Nashville. I’m treating
RV (40:07):
Sounds good. I’m in for it. I’ll see you then in touch.
SJM (40:10):
Thanks for the platform, Rory. Nice meeting you.
Ep 420: Rethink Your Business Development Strategy to Grow Sales with Nikki Nash
AJV (00:02):
Hey everybody. Welcome to the Influential Personal Brand podcast. This is AJ Baden, one of your co-hosts today, and today is super sweet and special ’cause I get to connect with an old friend Nikki Nash. And I have to tell you guys this very quick story of Nikki could have so easily reached out to me to schedule this awesome interview today. But she got randomly pitched to me by some podcast company, and they came in, they were, I’m like, Nikki Nash, I must, I must be talking about a different Nikki Nash. And then when it was the same Nikki, I was like, I just so you guys know, I know this woman and you should not get credit for this
AJV (00:50):
So I am so excited to have Nikki on the show. But before I give her a formal introduction, I want everyone to know what we’re talking about today and why you need to stick around. So this should be appealing to anyone and everyone who is listening. And this is not an episode you want to miss if you would like to grow your business, because today we’re gonna be talking about how do you double your business in the next 12 to 18 months. And if you are that visionary, c e o or small business owner, like what are the core things, the key things that you should be doing to double your business? And then what are the five top must haves that seven figure business owners need to do must do to double your business? So there’s a theme here, which is growing and scaling your business, and how do you do that in a way that works for you?
AJV (01:44):
So if you fit in that category, stick around. You don’t wanna leave early, it’s gonna be awesome. Now, with that said, I will give you a quick formal introduction of the one and oh, Nikki Nash, and then we’ll actually get to the interview. But Nikki is a Hay House author. She’s a bestselling author of the book Market, your Genius, which everyone should pick up and give a whirl. She’s also the host of a top rated podcast bearing the same name Market Your Genius. So by the book, listen to the podcast. She’s also a renowned expert in crafting marketing strategies with a unique focus on empowering fast growing coaching and online companies. Most of you are in that category, so that’s why I am having her on the show today. But she also has a real specialty in helping drive a sustainable growth, which is the most important thing.
AJV (02:37):
This isn’t a go hard, you know, like, do or die. We’re going to do it at all costs, and then you’re gonna burn out. So how do you do it in a way that works and that is sustainable for you? So without further ado, Nikki, welcome to our show. Oh my goodness, thank you so much for having me. Oh, I’m so excited for you to get to share your genius with our audience. And so, all right, let’s just let’s start with the most compelling of all of these topics that you and I kind of went through, because I think everyone would kind of like to know how do you double your business in 12 to 18 months? So tell us, what are the secrets that we’re all missing? How do we do this?
NN (03:19):
I mean, the, the super simple answer is to have a really crystal clear strategy and focus, but the reality is, is that there are a couple of ways to grow your business really quickly. And one of them is the obvious. It’s like, bring on a bunch of new clients. That’s what a lot of people think about. They’re like, oh, I gotta market and get new leads and get new clients. But people often forget about the magic of your existing clients and past clients. And that’s honestly the fastest way to go, because the probability of selling to an existing client is 60% higher than selling to a new client. So if you can think about your existing clients, and there are kind of like three ways that they can help you if they can buy more, right? Like if you, if they’re already in a program and you have them buy a v i p day or buy a, a additional course or a session or something, then that’s bringing in more money pretty quickly.
NN (04:13):
If you have them stay longer in your programming, then wow, okay, then that’s having them spend more money with you over their lifetime. And the other piece that a lot of people don’t think about is if they can get their current clients to refer them new clients, right? Because when they have clients coming in, it’s just known that the referred clients end up staying longer and spending more money than clients that just come to you not from a referral. And so those are kind of the, the existing client’s magic. And what I usually do when someone wants to double their business is we sit down, we do the math, and we look at, okay, which is most likely going to happen in that timeframe? Is it, oh, you know, just dump more money on ads
AJV (05:06):
And cheaper
NN (05:07):
And cheaper. Oh my gosh. It just makes the money that you do spend on the front end or the time you spend on the front end have much higher r o i because it’s like, oh, I brought this client in with my blood, sweat, tears and money, but it’s actually bringing in way more money than it did, you know, last year or last month when you, when you focus on really getting the most out of your existing clients. Yeah.
AJV (05:30):
So I’d love to talk about each of those because I think each of those categories are like standalone opportunities to really go. It’s like, man, you could double your business with any one of these three categories that you kind of mentioned. So let’s start with the first one with selling to your existing clients, right? Which means you have to have more than one product offering, one service offering. So for the people who are listening that are going I only offer this one thing
NN (06:19):
Yeah, I mean, the easiest thing for me is to ask yourself, what are your clients really, really needing right now? Hmm. Like, do you have a group of them that are all saying, man, you know, aj I love building out my my focus and my personal brand, but I really could use some help with this TED Talk or TEDx I have coming up and I’ve gotta talk. And you’re, you already have these offers, you’re like, ah, no worries. I’m gonna bring a group of people together and teach them how to craft their their talk. Right? That could be something that you just add on because, you know, you have a bunch of clients that are having a similar pain point or asking for a similar request, and you can bring them together and just say, Hey, on this day, come in person, come virtually.
NN (07:01):
I’m gonna show you how to do this thing. Right? That’s easy. If there’s something you know your clients are struggling with, that’s naturally easy for you and you could bang it out in a few minutes, do that. Right? Like, I’ll give you an example for my business. A lot of clients come to me and say, Nikki, I know that I wanna create content, but I just can’t come up with ideas. I sit there by myself and I’ve got nothing. I sit and listen to people talk for five minutes, and I have a million ideas for what content they should be posting online. And so I just literally offer time with clients to sit down and I interview them, kind of like how we’re doing right now, as if it were a podcast interview, ask them a ton of questions about their expertise, and I just let my brain go with ideas, and I write them all down, and then I give it to them in a nice templated document that’s personalized for them. Here are your content prompts and your content ideas, bam. That’s just something additional. So really think, what do you cl what do your clients need? And what can you deliver easily? Whether it’s in a group, small group setting a one-on-one setting, a done for you type of thing. That’s honestly the easiest way to just add another offer in without blowing up your business model.
AJV (08:15):
Yeah. And it’s, you know, it’s so funny that you bring this up. ’cause I think about so many of the clients that we get to interact with at Brand Builders Group, and then also just friends who are in the industry like you of going, I think most of the time as a, you know, small to medium sized business owner, we just over overcomplicated. We think, oh, well, we need this whole new course, or we need this you know, this new funnel to support. And it’s like, no, you need like A P D F, that’s all you need, right? You need like a P D F or you need an email that you can send to people saying, this is this one new thing that I’m offering. Would you like to participate? What, what would you say? Like, have you seen a lot of clients or even in yourself, like how much weight or how much value do you think it carries to actually just ask your clients? It’s like, Hey, I’m thinking about offering some new services. What would appeal to you?
NN (09:11):
Yeah, I think that’s brilliant and not enough people do it because I, and I get it, there’s oftentimes when you’re the business owner, this feeling or pressure that you have to have it together and know what you’re offering and have everything mapped out perfectly before you speak to anybody about it. And honestly, the whole idea of just coming up with content prompts and in an interview style happened because I sat down with a friend who was struggling with content. I said, I could help her in five seconds, not literally five seconds, but you get what I mean, I did it for her. And she kept talking about how it’s the most valuable thing she’s ever received and how she looks at this piece of paper almost every day. Mm-Hmm. And I’m sitting there like, really? And I just started asking people, Hey, if I did something like this, would this be of value to you? And the number of people that said yes, because I struggle with it. And oftentimes business owners don’t realize what a gift they have, because for me, coming up with content ideas and content prompts, I can do all day every day, probably while I’m sleeping. So in my mind, I’m like, everybody can do that, but it’s not even sort of true. And so really take the time, ask people what is it that they need? What would be of huge value to them? And you never know what’s what’s gonna come out of it.
AJV (10:31):
Yeah. It’s like that old saying, one man’s trash is is another man’s treasure. And it’s like one woman’s genius is another woman’s frustration. And it’s like we all have these unique geniuses within us that someone else is like, this is the best thing I’ve ever seen. Like, it took me literally 10 minutes. I can’t even believe I charged you for this. Right? And it’s like, so I, I love that of going, I mean, how many of us as business owners don’t even pay attention to those little comments of like, this one thing changed my life? Because you take it for granted how easy it was for you to do. So like a big takeaway I kind of just wrote down is just as you’re delivering your products and services, like pay attention to asking questions like, what was the most impactful thing that you received?
AJV (11:23):
Like, what did you love most about this program or this experience? And then try to duplicate that in a fashion for others. I love that. Absolutely. Yeah. Right. And it’s such a great reminder, ju, just because it’s easy for you does not mean it’s easy for anyone else. And there is likely many people out there who would pay you to do the thing that you take for granted that you do for yourself. I love that. That’s so good. All right, so the next category retention, right? Yes. So yes. So not having to replace your clients and not constantly find new ones has everything to do with can you keep the ones you have? Can you keep ’em? So what do we need to know when it comes to retaining our customers? What do we need to be paying attention to? Yeah,
NN (12:06):
I mean, the first thing that I would say is to realize that you can retain your clients. I remember for myself, and I, I laugh so hard when I look back and picture myself going through this, but I remember the, one of my first clients on a coaching call said to me, oh, Nikki, I know our sessions are coming to an end and I just wanted to have a conversation with you about how we can keep working together. And I sat there and I’m like, you know what? I would love to do that. Why don’t we schedule a separate call? Because then we can talk through what that would look like so that we don’t use up your coaching session. But absolutely, I have a system and for working with clients longer, I did not, but I was like, oh, absolutely. Like we can keep working together.
NN (12:50):
NN (13:41):
AJV (14:55):
Yeah. I love that. There’s so many comments I have on this. Like, our internal mantra at Brand Builders Group for our membership community is utilization equals retention. If you’re, if they’re not using it, at some point they’re gonna say, why am I paying for this? And it’s like, our number one job is to ensure that one, you use it and two, that you get results from using it. I e you’re loving it, but if you don’t use it, then at some point, like there’s, they’re not gonna pay for it anymore. But it’s, you know, we talk about this all day long, up, down, and all around about the importance of step one. They cannot enjoy what they do not use. So they have to use it. And then we have to ensure that they love it beyond imagination, right? It’s the goal. But you said something in there around just language, and it made me think about being, you know, a former coach and consultant prior to brand builders group.
AJV (15:52):
Like, one of the things that was so challenging for me is, you know, I did all my own lead generation and marketing and sales sales. Then you get the client and it’s like, okay, now I have to mentally transfer from business development mode to, you know, quality content, quality value delivery mode. And then it’s like, at some point you gotta be like, no, you can’t really leave the sales part over there. The sales has to come along with you. So that you’re always reiterating, hey, like this is part one of our time together and this is the initial terms of our agreement. And let’s talk about continuity plans and a maintenance strategy. And you know, all of those words that once you transition from business development mode into delivery, you forget to use. ’cause You’re now, you’re so focused on providing value, but what I hear you saying is like, no, we, we gotta have that part of this into every single conversation so that you’re priming people to be with you way beyond those initial terms.
NN (16:53):
Absolutely. And most people think even if they have somewhere in their presentations or their group program or whatever it is, that they’re delivering a conversation about the next level, oftentimes it’s either too late or not frequently enough. Mm-Hmm.
NN (17:41):
And I’m like, whoa. People decide it’s way too late. Really, I believe those conversations should start in marketing. Like before they even swipe their credit card or, you know, transfer money, you should be having conversations about staying with you throughout a, a long-term relationship. And so I think that’s number one, but number two, get comfortable with speaking about it often and using those language like continuing to work with you or after this, after you hit this milestone, here’s what’s next for us. And speaking about that all the time just helps people know that they’re, you’re both in it to win it. It’s kind of like dating, right? Like, if you’re dating someone and in your mind you’ve planned your wedding and they’re just like, ah, let’s have some fun. It’s probably not gonna go well. So you wanna clearly communicate your marriage plans early on and make sure they’re comfortable with it before you even get to the wedding. Maybe not exactly like dating, but
AJV (18:39):
Yeah, I, I totally agree with that. It’s, you know, but I think the part of it is most people bring it up too late. Yeah. Right? And it’s like, it’s very similar to dating. Like, I, I, I had this nickname can’t believe I’m sharing this, but in college, my nickname was the one date Wonder. And it’s like, because I was like, if I don’t think I’m gonna marry you, I don’t need to go on a second date with you,
AJV (19:23):
And I was like, well, this is our last date. And he goes, what do you mean this is our last date? And I’m like, well, you’re not the one. So this is our last date. And it’s a little bit like that. If you don’t have those conversations early, it’s too late. And it’s like now it feels like you’re back in a sales conversation. And on the client end it’s like, okay, well that’s weird because, you know, I’ve been working with you for six months and we have this relationship. Now I feel like you’re selling me again when all you had to do was tell me from the beginning, Hey, this initial, this initial six months, here’s what we’re gonna be working on, and then we’ll talk about the next six months. If you set those expectations early, it never feels like I’m reentering a sales conversation. It always feels like, oh yeah, you told me, you told me that every single time we talked, and now here we are. So it’s like the more you talk about it, the easier it is.
NN (20:11):
Yeah. For both people. For both people.
AJV (20:13):
Yeah. I love that. All right. Now, now referrals, which I think in my opinion, most people just don’t do why they don’t do it is beyond me. ’cause I do it all. I do it way too much. I’m on the other end of the spectrum, but it’s like, I think people don’t know how to do it. So what I would love for you is to like, what’s the best way for people to go about getting referrals from their clients? Because I think that everyone knows that in theory they should be doing it, and yet they don’t. Yeah.
NN (20:44):
I think part step one is to really just in your d n A and in the company’s d n a, be comfortable and set that expectation and almost that mindset that our clients are gonna love us so freaking much, they’re gonna refer other people. And that this is a community where people just wanna bring their folks into. And you have to start there because I think so often, you know, business owners, you have so much going on. I’ve had early in my business, I obviously forgot to even retain my clients, let alone I stopped marketing. And I’ve been in marketing for like decades, and I like forgot to market while I was delivering. I just stopped marketing. So when you just forget, things go out of your mind. And so you wanna just put it back in there and set it as an expectation. Like, we get client referrals, our clients refer us.
NN (21:30):
And again, that’s a conversation that you can honestly start in the marketing. Like you, you can say things like, we’re so ex we’re so excited for you to join this community, and we wanna make sure that it’s such an amazing experience that you’re bringing your friends in. We want this to feel like a family. We want this to feel like a community. We want the, like you just talk about it. Yeah. And so you set that expectation of referrals from the beginning so that when you talk to your clients about it, it’s not weird, right? Yeah. Like
NN (22:15):
Some people have Facebook groups. So you can say things like, Hey, who is somebody who, you know, would get a lot of value out of our programming? Invite them into the Facebook group. Hey, we’re doing a challenge. Who can you share this with? Oh, the challenge is over, but we have the replays on a page. Mm-Hmm.
NN (23:01):
I I, I was like, I don’t know what I do.
NN (23:45):
Like if you are I’m gonna just weight loss and
AJV (24:49):
Totally, totally agree. And I think if people would simplify it, they would have more confidence in asking. But I’m actually so glad you brought up B N I, I don’t even know if B N I still exists, but if it does y’all should look it up. I should look it up. But if it does, if you feel really uncomfortable with this part of your business, that is a great place to like force yourself to learn and practice because everyone is voluntarily signing up and paying to be a part of a group where we’re doing this together. And I remember I was a part of it a really long time, and it was like, it’s, it’s like Toastmasters to me where it’s like you go to Toastmasters, if you’ve ever heard of that, to practice public speaking in a safe environment, right? It’s like the circle of trust.
AJV (25:37):
You can be really bad at this in here so that you get better for out there. I feel like that’s how b n I is for asking for referrals. And it creates a, a forced environment where everyone has to stand up and you practice and then it gets a little easier and you practice them more and it gets a little easier because everyone is doing it together. So I don’t know if that still exists, but it was so good for me in my early business years to give me the accountability and a safe arena of going, I can suck at this. It’s okay, because everyone’s like, it’s okay. Just keep going
AJV (26:28):
And it’s, it’s like, I, I just remember I was doing a volunteer volunteer, but a complimentary like mastermind for my girlfriend who runs this sales mastermind, and she wanted me to come in and talk, talk about asking for referrals, and I was like, yeah, can do that. And a part of my surprise training is lots of role play. And it’s like, I can only teach you so much until we’re just gonna need to do it together. So this lady volunteered and she didn’t know she was volunteering for role play. And as you were talking, it made me think like this, my mind immediately went here is I said, all right, now I need you to ask me for a referral. So just do whatever you normally do. And she goes, well I am looking to talk to anyone who wants to experience I think she said rapid weight loss. I think it was rapid. And I paused and I said,
NN (27:18):
I
AJV (27:18):
Know lots of people like, who doesn’t wanna experience rapid weight loss? Like, and she was like, well, who are they? I’m like, but I don’t know which one is good for you. Like who? Exactly. It’s like my mind goes everywhere versus if you go, no, I’m looking for a woman in their forties to fifties who has struggled with you know, obesity for most of her adult life who’s tried every diet under the planet and cannot seem to lose the weight. Maybe there’s a medical issue maybe there’s a mental issue, but it is the person who has chronic obesity that does not know what to do. And they tried to solve this for decades, then I was like, I know two people, right? And it’s like, but that, that’s our work to do. That’s not our client’s job. That’s our job. So my question back to you is for everyone listening, what should people do to get that clear? Like what, what work or exercises do they need to do to go, all right, now I know who, so now I can go ask.
NN (28:18):
Yeah, I mean, if you already have clients, the first thing I would do is sit down and go, who are the clients that you love working with that are getting results? Like you’re actually helping them? And that if you could clone them, you would Right? And then get really clear on why, why is that person so clone? What were the qualities about them? Was it where they are before or where they were before they started working with you? Is it their age? Is it the size of their business? You know, what is it that made them so magical that you’d want to clone them? And if you are just getting started and you don’t have clients yet, the cool thing is, is that you’re kind of making it up. So it’s really a hypothesis. And you’re saying you wanna be really specific. Oftentimes when people are getting started, you’re like, oh, I just want people, so I’ll take anybody.
NN (29:07):
But the more specific you can be with your educated guess hypothesis where you’re like, who do you think you can help? If it’s someone who is just like you, then describe yourself before you solve the problem that you’re helping them solve, right? If it’s someone like a client that you had when you worked in another job and it’s similar, then describe that company or person, right? But you wanna come up with a hypothesis that’s really clear and detailed. You don’t need to know like that they’ve lived in a specific spot or, or certain things, unless you have a local business, but you want something so that someone can go, ah, I know exactly who you’re talking about, because I could picture that person in my mind.
AJV (29:47):
I love that. It’s so good. And again, it’s like, in my opinion, the key to growing your business or really scaling your business, not just growing it without adding expenses, is you gotta learn to be a master of getting referrals. Yes. I mean, that’s the cheapest, fastest, most awesome way to grow your business because it’s the quickest turnaround time and you’ve got internal advocates selling on your behalf, which are your existing clients. What better way to do that? Yeah. so all right, well I know that we’re
NN (30:58):
Yeah. So if you wanna double your business, the first thing that I would say that a visionary c e o needs to be focused on, and this is really whether you have a big team or a small team or no team, you have to be clear on where the business is going, right? Like we just listed out a ton of ideas in a ton of ways, right? Which are you going to focus on? Are you gonna focus on selling more to your existing clients? Are you gonna focus on client referrals? Are you gonna focus on you know, having clients stay longer and retaining them? Are you gonna focus on bringing in new clients? Because maybe you don’t have a large existing client pool, but you have to choose the path
NN (31:41):
And that level of clarity is so important for every person that touches your business. Even if it’s a volunteer, a va, you know, your child who’s helping you with social media or a big team. But you wanna have crystal clear clarity on where the business is going for the next 12, you know, or 18 months and the general pathway that you’re using to get there. Or if you have a a definite plan, then the plan to get there at knowing that it may have to shift and adjust as you’re implementing. But that’s number one, if you don’t have clarity on where you’re going and the direction that you’re going in, like how you’re getting there, you’ll end up just trying everything under the sun and not moving anywhere.
AJV (32:21):
Yeah, just even like with the three things we talked about, we started with like, those are three standalone components. It’s like, don’t do all of ’em at the same time. Pick like, what’s my strategy we’re going after? Have the plan, know what, you know, it’s like, what do they say? It’s like always start with the end in mind. Yes. It’s like you gotta know where you’re headed so you can figure out the path to get there. Not that
NN (32:45):
Sleeping cubbies habit number two, it’s my favorite one,
AJV (32:48):
NN (33:11):
So
NN (34:04):
And you may really need to sit down and go, okay, where is the biggest growth opportunity coming from? Right? Is it selling a $97 program where you might need to sell thousands or millions of them to double your business? Or do you have something that’s higher ticket that you need? Fewer people, but if you can get the right people, bam, you’re doubling your business. And so you need to know who the heck you’re selling to, right? So super clear offer, super clear person, target audience for that offer. And then you need to have a really clear message and positioning for that offer so that the person knows why they need it, especially if it’s a new offer for your existing clients or if they’re staying longer, why they need to stay longer in this thing, right? Or if it’s referral, why they need to refer other people to it, like what’s in it for them. But your messaging has to be clear. And I wanna like sit with that one for a second because I think so many people are like, my thing’s not selling my thing’s, not selling it must be the thing. And oftentimes it’s the person that you are selling to still has no idea what it is that you’re selling.
AJV (35:16):
I mean, I cannot second that enough. Like I second that 1000 times. And because we both live in this industry and the business of doing what we do, I cannot tell you how often when someone tries to explain to me what they do, I go, I don’t know what that is. I don’t know what that means. And I think one of the things that I have discovered from just doing this as long as I have, is that they actually don’t know either. They haven’t done the hard work to go, this is actually the problem that what I do solves and this is how it solves it. And so they struggle to articulate it because they think it solves 10 problems and you can’t explain 10. You have to explain one. And the other thing I’ve run to, I don’t know if you run into this, is people try to start being catchy and clever and you know, trendy and cheeky instead of just being clear.
NN (36:20):
And oftentimes it’s like, oh, that sounds cool, but I still don’t know what you do. Like you need to speak to people like they are five years old. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (37:31):
That’s good. Simplify. I love
NN (37:34):
It. Simplify
AJV (37:38):
I love
NN (37:39):
That. Yeah. And then the other thing that I would say tied to the tips just because this comes up often is sometimes people think they know who their target audience is because that’s either who’s purchased from them in the past or who they have a big audience of or who they want to help. But that doesn’t necessarily mean they’re the perfect person for their offer, right? Like I have a client who has an amazing dashboard for helping entrepreneurs truly know their numbers and make decisions based off of their numbers. That stuff is way too complicated for the people that she’s been selling it to. Like they get it when she’s, they’re in her program and she’s training and developing them, but when I was at that level, I didn’t have, and I mean I looked at numbers, but not like that. This is for someone who has alar like Team
NN (38:34):
And so, so even if you’ve had some success selling something to someone, it doesn’t mean they’re the perfect person for it. So you really need to hone in on like who is truly the perfect person for this offer, right? So the offer, the person, the message, and then you really, if you wanna double your business, you need a simple strategy. What’s the game plan? Keep it super, super simple,
NN (39:22):
And the the last piece really comes down to tracking everything and being flexible with how you go about things, right? So if you sell something, if you, I’m gonna just use the, have existing clients buy more strategy. If you have an offer that you’re putting in front of clients and not a lot of people buy it, then don’t be afraid to go back to your clients and ask them, Hey, you know, I noticed only a few of you took this, took me up on this offer. The ones who did ask them why they did, the ones who didn’t ask them why they didn’t, maybe it was that you didn’t market it well to the people that are in your program. Maybe they didn’t understand the value of it. Maybe it wasn’t exactly what they needed and what they needed was something else. Bam, then offer that next time, right? Like, I think too often people give up too soon. And so the fifth way, if you really wanna double your business, it’s, you just have to keep going and keep trying and keep tweaking what it is that you’re doing. And then you’ll figure out what the formula is. There’s no perfect formula that you can have on paper before you get started. It’s a building the machine while you’re on the machine riding the machine down the road type of thing. It’s like, oh my God, build the car,
AJV (40:40):
You know, it’s so true. It’s like, yeah, it’s, it reminds me of that analogy that someone’s like being an entrepreneur is like jumping off a cliff and trying to build an airplane on your way down, right? It’s like, it’s a little bit like that. But you know what I love about every one of these, and I’m just gonna recap these for everyone. It’s, you have to have clarity on your offer, clear on who the offer is for, you gotta have a clear message on that offer. You have to have a simple strategy that you can follow, and then a way to track report and get feedback to make sure it’s working. And what I love about all of that is it’s simple, right? It does not have to be complex. We’re not trying to make it complex. We’re trying to make it usable, doable and you need to do the same thing for your clients, which is know what your offer is, know who it’s for, make sure you have clarity on the message for it. Make sure you have a way to actually go after it. And then a way to track and get feedback. And it’s, it’s one of those things where it’s like the, it feels too easy to be true and most good things in life are and we as humans overcomplicate everything because we think that in order for it to be amazing and be smart, it has to be complex when the smartest things and the best things are usually the easiest, simplest things in the world.
NN (41:54):
Absolutely.
AJV (41:56):
Nikki, this has been awesome. I know that we are out of time and it’s like I could probably spend another hour just talking, just like random strategy with you. If people want to stay in touch with you, where should they go? Yeah,
NN (42:08):
I mean, the easiest place to go is to just go to nikki nash.co. That’s my website and it links to literally anything that is right for you at this moment, whether it’s getting access to my podcast or my book or, or working with me in one of my programs. So I highly recommend just go into the website, keep it simple.
AJV (42:28):
Yeah. So everyone, it’s Nikki Nash co. And she’s got an awesome offer on her website with a free masterclass. So we’ll put that link in the show notes. And Nikki, if they wanna follow you on social media, what’s your preferred platform?
NN (42:43):
Ooh, okay. I am currently getting really into LinkedIn, so I’m gonna say hit me up on LinkedIn. It’s really easy, like once you do the whole LinkedIn and the slash in
AJV (43:02):
I’ll, I’ll grab that specific link, throw it in the show notes so everyone can go connect with you on LinkedIn check out your content and then go to Nikki nash.co. Nikki, love you. So happy that you were on the show. Everybody else stick around for the recap and I will see you next time on the influential personal brand.
Ep 418: How to Negotiate with Narcissists with Rebecca Zung
RV (00:00):
RZ (01:33):
Thank you. I, you were actually one of my favorite people, is you are so brilliant. I’m really actually in awe of you, so thank you. Thank you for having me.
RV (01:43):
Yeah, well, thanks Fran. And I
RZ (01:45):
Don’t say that actually very easily. Let me just tell you that it’s, it’s, I, I don’t suffer fools very easily, so I have to tell you, I’m really, really impressed by you.
RV (01:57):
Well, thank you. Thank you. Well, and I genuinely am impressed by you. I mean 40 million plus views on YouTube, several hundred thousand followers on Instagram and social. You’ve built this, this massive email list, you know, well into the six figures and hundreds of thousands of followers on Facebook. You know, but you know, before all of that, you were a true expert. I mean, you’re just like the, the epitome of who we like to work with, that brand builders group, this, this person with deep expertise who really solves a problem in the world. And I have to tell you, and, and my very first question I want to ask you about is such a fundamental question, which is how do you define a narcissist? Because honestly, that term wasn’t even on my radar until I met you. And then, you know, I started following you and like seeing all the stuff and going, wow, so many people are resonating with your content. So apparently there’s a lot of narcissists out there in the world, and, you know, maybe my eyes are just being open to that. So can you like start there and, and tell us what that is?
RZ (03:04):
Yeah, I actually wouldn’t have been able to define it myself either, even though, you know, I probably came a across a lot of them in my practice and even in my personal life as well. So the way I like to define it is, is really in layman’s terms, and in my book, of course, I, I give the DSM five and all of that because I, I, you know, I felt like I needed to, which is what the professionals, the mental health professionals use. But I like to use layman terms because I think it’s easier for all of us to understand. And, and it is a, a spectrum. And, and so if you go all the way to the end of the spectrum, there is a legitimate personality disorder there sitting at the end of the spectrum, which is narcissistic personality disorder. But obviously as you get closer and closer toward the end of the spectrum, you’re gonna get closer and more and more and more of, of the characteristics, right?
RZ (04:00):
And all of us, of course, have some characteristics of being narcissistic at times, and there is a healthy version of narcissism, by the way, too. Interesting. Okay. Yes. Yeah. So, but what narcissism is, is a person who has no feeling of, of value, and I say they don’t feel valuable because obviously all human beings are inherently valuable, but they don’t feel any sense of internal value. And so what they do is they go around trying to get feelings of value from external sources. And so the way it’s described is narcissistic supply, and that’s the, what everybody call refers to it as is narcissistic supply. What I have done is actually tier that and, and, and tier it into diamond level supply and coal level supply. So they, they get this, you know, external diamond level supply from anything in, in how they look. So it could be big houses, impressive friends, lots of money, all the things that you think of as the best things of how they look to the world, you know, puffing themselves up by making themselves look good.
RZ (05:25):
And then there’s what I call the dark underbelly of narcissistic supply, which is put, you know, making themselves feel better by pushing other people down. Mm-Hmm. Which is degrading people, controlling people, manipulating people, making other people squirm. So that’s what I call coal level supply. But what they do is they, they suck you dry of energy because they’re trying to make themselves feel better, but it’s a black hole and it can never be filled. So you are left feeling totally and completely depleted, yet they’re still starving and, and it, they’re like desperate for air, gasping for breath, and it’s, it’s scarcity to the utmost extreme. And it can never be healed. And it can never be, you know you know, it’s like a salve that they’re trying to put on themselves and they can never get enough. And so you are there and, and, and feel totally compl depleted. They’re still starving, and, and there’s this black hole and it’s goes on and on and on and on. And, and that’s why they have no empathy. That’s why they have no empathy. It’s like they’re in pain all the time, and it’s deep shame.
RV (06:47):
Interesting. And so that’s, that’s part of the characteristic is no empathy for others because they’re just consumed with basically trying to satisfy this, this void, which is impossible for them to fill with external stuff, which is impossible for them to fill.
RZ (07:03):
Correct. Uhhuh
RV (07:05):
RZ (07:18):
Did she have the pink Cadillac?
RV (07:20):
She never got the pink Cadillac. She did have the, the red Grand Am for a minute, for like a hot minute. Oh, okay. So she did it more of like a side hustle than like a career, but I still learned a lot of like, personal development principles from sort of being around like the Mary Kay culture and the events and stuff that she had. But anyways, can you take, tell us, like, I’m curious, how did you become one of these top attorneys? And, and you know, you’ve been on Extra, and I know you’ve had like, some very high profile like divorce cases that you used to be involved in. And I know you’re, you’re, you’re still like a partner in your firm, but like, how did you, how did you get into all of this stuff? Like, tell us your personal story.
RZ (08:03):
Well, interestingly enough you know, I’m actually first generation Chinese on my dad’s side and second, second generation German on my mom’s, you know, I’m so half Chinese and half German. So I, I always joke that I have no fun genes whatsoever.
RV (08:56):
Devastated. I mean, nine, you dropped outta college, got married at 19 and had three kids, and you’re 22 years old. Mm-Hmm.
RZ (09:04):
RV (09:36):
Were on your own, you were an adult, you were out there on your own,
RZ (09:38):
You’re done, we’re done. You know, or no, I used say this was the nineties by this, this time, it was the nineties. And so they were like, okay, you know, you can do whatever you’re gonna do. And so I got divorced and went back to law school. This is definitely in the nineties already at this point. And I, I met my husband in law school, and we you know, still in my twenties at this point, right. And, and we have now been married for 23 years, and we have a 20, 21 year old daughter. And I, you know, at, but that point, I mean, I, I still made law review. I went to University of Miami Law School at night, and I mean, they don’t even have a night program anymore. I mean, so, you know, it was a crazy time in my life.
RZ (10:38):
It was crazy. And so we you know, I, I ended up starting at a law firm where the partners were, you know, top family law attorneys in the country. Okay. You know, my, my, they were both members of the academy, the international academy. My, one of the partners that I worked for she had been, you know, president of the American Bar Association for the, the country. And, you know, so I just, that’s where I started, you know, and, and high net worth family law is a very, very specialized area of the law. You have to know, you know, tax law, estate planning, law, business law, you know, trust law. I mean, there’s, it’s a very, very high you know, highly specialized area of the law. So that’s where I started right from the beginning. And I came up through, through that.
RZ (11:40):
They, they retired. I ended up starting my own practice and continued on, you know, I was in Naples, Florida, which is a very affluent area. At one point, when I had my daughter, I stopped and I ended up going to Morgan Stanley for a few years. I did wealth planning there for a little while, just like two years. And I had my series seven in 66 for a little while. And then I went back and, and had my own practice. And then just, you know, I wrote my first book in 2013. I had John Gray actually wrote the four, or he wrote an endorsement for me. And from there, I actually started to get some television work. I started doing, you know, T M Z, and, you know, some things like that. And that was when I started to think, you know, maybe I wanna do something a little bit more entrepreneurial.
RZ (12:36):
You know, it was like I didn’t have to even step outside my firm anymore to do any networking. You know, it was like hamster wheel, you know, from my practice. And I just started to feel like you know, let me do something else. So in 2017, I merged my practice with two other guys who were both members of the Academy of Matrimonial Lawyers, and my husband and I moved to Los Angeles, and I was going back and forth, and we started, I, that was when I started learning about funnels. And I just started like teaching myself some things. And I got involved with this other person at that time who turned out to be a narcissist. And that’s when I started to,
RV (13:25):
In the business
RZ (13:27):
Not, she wasn’t a, you know, it wasn’t a law firm. No. But it was an entrepreneurial endeavor that, you know,
RV (13:37):
And so that’s when you really started diving in specifically to negotiating with narcissists. ’cause I think as I think about the people listening to this show, I think you go, you know, you might be negotiating fees with clients, you could be negotiating customer service issues with like, people trying to like, cancel or get a refund. You could be negotiating something with a business partner, right. In terms of we hear a lot of those stories, right? A lot of our clients have had very tumultuous, tumultuous, we’ll say, separations from business partners and joint ventures and things like that.
RZ (14:19):
And yeah, well, I had, I ended up having that. I mean, I ended up having that, you know mm-hmm.
RV (14:59):
But you, basically, the short of it is you had this experience where suddenly you were tied up with a narcissist. And I guess ultimately what I, what I would, what I’d love to hear is how do, so how do you negotiate with the narcissist? Like yeah. Knowing, knowing now what some of their characteristics are and why, which is super helpful to understand the reason they are the way they are is because they’re starving. They’re searching for basically love and importance and to feel valued. And that’s a really scary place to go, oh, you know, nothing I can do is ever gonna make them feel that way. So they continue going, which means I’m gonna constantly feel drained. So, you know, I always feel like when I think about negotiation and the way that I approach negotiation, like, I don’t think of negotiation as a battle. I’ve always thought about negotiating. I think of negotiation as collaborating and going, how do I help you get what you want, and you help me get what we want? And we all, we all win together. But if somebody doesn’t have empathy, if they don’t care, they go, I have zero interest in helping you get what you want. That, you know, how do you, how do you negotiate with that person?
RZ (16:08):
Yeah. And therein lies your problem right there. So right behind me, I’ve got a book that I wrote called Negotiate Like You Matter. Robert Shapiro wrote the Fore. And, and in that book, I talk about how both sides wanna feel, seen, heard, and know that they matter. And if you don’t walk away with both sides getting some amount of value out of it, the deal’s gonna fall apart. And I have participated in thousands and thousands and thousands of negotiations, and I know what it takes to get a deal to stick. Okay? Here’s the problem, when you’re dealing with a narcissist, okay, let me explain something about how a narcissist ha was formed. And this is actually was, it blew my mind when I was doing the research for this book.
RZ (17:02):
How a narcissist was formed during childhood is actually a result of trauma to the brain. So when we are dealing with trauma as adults or as human beings, we are presented with when we’re, you know, feeling like we are under fire. We feel like we need to fight or, or flee, right? Fight or flight. And when that happens, our brains emit chemicals to allow us to prepare to be strong or to run faster. So it’s adrenaline or whatever it is. Right. You know, to, to be able to, you know, so it’s the sweat glands go and all of that. Mm-Hmm.
RV (17:52):
Cortisol, all that stuff.
RZ (17:53):
Yeah. Cortisol, all of that. Exactly. So when that happens on a continuous basis though, it actually can start to cause damage within the limbic system of the brain, especially for children. And it can actually cause arrested development to that area of the brain. And what that is called is called narcissistic injury. And when that happens for a narcissist as they grow, while the prefrontal cortex of the brain, which is the thinking area of the brain, can continue to develop that limbic system, part of the brain as it continues to, as they grow when they’re presented with situations where they feel like they need to be back in survival mode again. And it doesn’t mean it’s rational to you, it means it’s rational to them or reasonable. So it could be an eye roll, it could be a tone, it could be anything, anything where they feel slighted or they feel like they need to, to be back in there and they’re triggered, then that narcissistic injury is triggered, and that limbic system comes back into play and takes back over. And now you’re not dealing with rational, now you’re not dealing with reasonable anymore. You’re dealing with that limbic system, part of their brain. And what I learned in my research is that sometimes they don’t even remember what they have done during that period of time. And what happens is it’s actually called splitting, meaning
RV (19:47):
Phenomen, they don’t remember or what happened to ’em when they were young, or meaning they don’t remember the irrational stuff, what they’ve done, stuff they did to you,
RZ (19:53):
They’ve what they’ve done to you. Okay.
RV (19:55):
Wow. And
RZ (19:55):
Yeah. And it’s, it’s actually phenomenon called splitting. And so they actually, they actually will say, I didn’t do that. That didn’t happen. We didn’t have that conversation. That’s not how it went. And, and so, you know, you’re not dealing with rational, you’re not dealing with reasonable. And, and so here’s the other issue. Here’s the other issue with that. These narcissistic people, narcissists not, you know, they are, let me go back to this other conversation that we started with, which is the narcissistic supply conversation. Remember that conversation we had, right? Yep. We’re, okay. So when you were having this conversation about where do we wanna go with this? Most people think, well, narcissists just wanna win, right? They wanna win, they wanna look good, they wanna be come out the winner. That’s not necessarily true. That only takes into account one form of supply. And that’s diamond level supply.
RZ (21:06):
It totally discounts and forgets about coal level supply, which is manipulating you, seeing you squirm, making you sw sweat, controlling you. They love that too. They need that too. And so when you’re dealing with them in a negotiation, both things are at play constantly. And they don’t even realize that sometimes. Sometimes it’s, it’s actually subconscious on their part. And so you are sitting there going, well, how can we rationally and reasonably come to a conclusion here? How can we figure out a resolution? The, the very question that you asked at the outset of this is what a rational and reasonable person would ask. But that is not the question that they’re asking. So what your motivation is, and what their motivation is, is completely different. When you sit down at the table, totally different. Their motivation is, I, I wanna control you. I wanna see you squirm. I enjoy seeing you sweat. I enjoy manipulating you. And so they will gameplay, they’ll constantly move goalposts, they’ll change their own deal. You’ll come back and say, I accept every single one of your points. And they’ll say, oh, deal’s already switched. It’s already changed. ’cause You took too long because I don’t like your face anymore, because you parted your hair on a different side today.
RV (22:47):
Yeah. That’s so frustrating. I mean, it’s so frustrating. Like, and so, so you have this acronym slay, which is sort of like, okay, so if you’re in this situation, and that’s super insightful. I’ve been in this situation before to go, what they really wanna do is not only win, they want to bury you. They want to like, they want to hurt. You just
RZ (23:09):
Bury, you
RV (23:10):
Just play with you. Like, they just want thank you, you to, to feel, they want you to feel awful and horrible. And, you know, controlling is the word. Like, they’re able to to control you, so
RZ (23:21):
They’ll take themselves down to take you down.
RV (23:25):
Yeah. Yeah. Interesting. That’s fascinating. So then what do you do? Is that what Slay is about, is slay basically what, what you’re supposed to do to deal with all this. Yeah. ’cause This is very discouraging and very, like, what you’re describing is so real. It’s like, you know,
RZ (23:42):
That’s why what I do works, but that’s why what I do works. That’s why I literally have thousands of testimonials from people who said, I’ve saved their lives. That’s why what I do works. That’s why I have 40 million views on YouTube.
RV (23:58):
Yeah, yeah. Is
RZ (23:58):
What I, what I do works, because I understand this. And
RV (24:02):
So talk us through slay, like, walk us through that. Yeah.
RZ (24:05):
Yeah. So strategy, leverage, anticipate, and focus on you. So strategy is you have to have a vision. You have to understand where you’re gonna go. You have to have a G P S, you have to, you know, because you’re on the offensive, I mean, you’re on the defensive so much when you’re dealing with these people that you’re just like, oh my God, I I can’t think anymore. I’m paralyzed. I’m, I’m powerless. I can’t, I cannot think. And most of the time when people are at the other end of this, they have cognitive dissonance. They have C P t, SS d, they, you know, they can’t think straight anymore. So the first thing you gotta do is know where you’re gonna go and have a very specific vision about it. Right? You talk about so beautifully about, you know, having a, a, a thought conceive, believe, achieve, knowing where you wanna go, make it specific, same principle, right? Understanding where you’re gonna go, have a very specific vision. So that’s number one. Then creating that action plan, that’s all part of my strategy. Having an action plan, knowing exactly where you’re gonna go.
RV (25:07):
So, and does that mean knowing what you want? Is that what you mean by just being clear of like, this is what I want to have happen? Yeah. At the end of this?
RZ (25:15):
Yeah. I mean, so many times when I ask people what it is that you want, the first thing they’ll say is, I just want them to leave me alone. I just want it to stop. I just, that’s not a want. Mm-Hmm.
RV (25:26):
RZ (25:27):
You know
RV (25:28):
You’re saying like, specific outcomes that you document that you go, here’s what a win, here’s what a win in this scenario looks like for me. And just getting the first step is getting clear on that yourself,
RZ (25:41):
Getting clear on that yourself. At the end of this partnership, I wanna take over my company, I wanna buy them out. Here’s how much I think the company is worth, you know, whatever it is. Or I, I want them to buy me out, or I want, you know, the company needs to be sold, or, you know, what’s the specific outcome for you? Mm-Hmm.
RZ (26:27):
And many people wanna go straight to leverage. You can’t have leverage. You can’t get to that point unless you’ve developed a strategy first. Okay? You need to know what’s motivating these people. So here’s your, your diamond level supply versus your coal level supply. So, so diamond level supply, what’s most important to them, what is most important to them? And, and you know, how, as far as what they look like to the world, it’s gonna be different for every narcissist. But, you know, it’s basically every narcissist has something that, you know, is, you know, most important to them as far as how they look in the world. That’s gonna be the most important to them. And they will protect and defend that at any cost, at any cost. That diamond level supply, they will hang onto that more importantly and most preciously than anything. And that’s the thing that you have to threaten.
RZ (27:27):
You have to threaten a source of supply that’s more important for them to keep than the supply that they get from jerking you around and then, and then threaten that source of supply. But you can’t actually take away that source of supply, because if you do, then your leverage is gone, obviously. All right? And so, and then you’ve gotta come up with like 40 different ways that you kind of like have the guns pointing at it, you know, so what does that look like? Summary of their lies, an inconsistent statements, or, you know, potentially, you know, deposing, I call it deposed to expose, you know, so potentially deposing their new source of supply, you know, their new paramore maybe, or their new business partner, or all of the people in their new company, or, because, you know, when you, a lot of times you’re breaking up in a partnership, they go to take half the clients with them.
RZ (28:23):
So, you know, are you gonna go depose all the new clients? Are you gonna, what are you gonna do in order to potentially expose them and have this conversation? I call it ethically manipulating the manipulator. These are all very legal things that you can do. I’m not talking about blackmail, I’m talking about things that you can do. These aren’t, but, you know, these are offensive strategies. Most of the time when you’re on the other end of a narcissist, you’re a, you’re an empathic person. You’re a person that goes, ah, I don’t wanna have to do that. It seems cringey to you. You don’t wanna do that, then I hope you enjoy the, you know, being a, you know, on the other side of a steam roller, because that’s what’s gonna happen to you. You have to be offensive when you’re dealing with this, because, you know, they have to feel like the hammer is gonna get dropped on them, you know?
RZ (29:21):
And then a is anticipate, anticipate what the narcissist is gonna do, and be two steps ahead of them. What are they gonna do? Well, first of all, there’s three different types of narcissists that I like to, you know, sort of talk about, which is covert, overt, and malignant. They each act differently in negotiations. And in my book, I talk about how they act because they’re each different, which is, you know, we can’t really get into all of that right here as it’s kind of long. But, you know, they do act differently in negotiations. But the one thing I do wanna talk about here, just briefly, is that they are going to try to trigger you. They are going to try to get under your skin. So you have to stand firm, you have to stay calm, don’t take the bait, don’t go, don’t allow them to go fishing, and you end up with a hook in your mouth.
RZ (30:18):
You know, like, don’t defend yourself. Don’t explain, don’t justify. They’re gonna say stuff to you like, oh, you’re you know, like for you, Rory, you are a person who prides himself on being, you know, a person of integrity, a person who’s honest, a person who does what he says he’s gonna do when he says he’s gonna do it. So for you, what would be the first thing you’re gonna do? You are dishonest. Mm-Hmm.
RV (31:12):
And make you squirm. That’s the, like, what can I do to just like, control you and manipulate you and see you just be completely off kilter? Yeah. yeah. That’s amazing. And when you say, don’t, you know, like, don’t defend yourself. I mean, so this is, I’ll, I’ll share this. One, one of the very, like, the very first time that I was in like a real lawsuit, and this is like a piece of legal advice that, that I, I wish somebody would’ve told me, like, the one thing I wish somebody would’ve told me was don’t read their letters. Like, I read, I read their letters and it was like, this letter is outrageous. This is a flat out lie. This is un like, unbelievable. How are they even saying this? And it’s like, that’s the point of the letters. Yes.
RZ (32:18):
Go through this. And they always come at four o’clock on Fridays, by the way,
RV (32:22):
RZ (32:34):
Right. That’s why I say anticipate what they’re gonna do. Mm-Hmm. And, and don’t defend yourself. Never explain, never justify, you know,
RV (32:43):
Honestly,
RZ (32:43):
Pretend like you’re reporting in the news.
RV (32:46):
Yep. Once you ha, once you have the perspective, you go, oh my gosh, this is hilarious. Like, it’s such a predictable, immature, like what would somebody that just, just to, just for no other reason to try to hurt you, and you’re like, oh my gosh. Like, it’s yeah. So that’s interesting. And not justifying, like if you’re justifying you’re win, they are winning, you’re doing exactly what they want. If you’re defending yourself, you’re, you’re doing exactly what they want to do.
RZ (33:11):
Exactly.
RV (33:13):
Fascinating. Okay. So is that, so that’s anticipate, that’s
RZ (33:16):
A, yep. And then, and then y is the you. And so I, I split you into two sections, which is you staying on the offensive, which I, you know, just sort of addressed a moment ago. And then y the other part of why is a hundred percent of winning is, is your mindset. And, and you, and you alone define your value. And you know, I used to say 80% of winning was your, was your mindset. And then I interviewed Bob Proctor and he corrected me on my own podcast. I will have to tell you
RZ (34:17):
And then I decided, yeah, a friend of mine was leaving Naples and decided to give me her law practice. Basically. She was like, I have a, you know, about, I don’t know, it was like 15 clients or something. And she’s like, I have these clients. I’m gonna just basically dump ’em in your lap and you can, you know, start a law practice with them. And I was like, okay, nobody’s ever gonna be giving me a law practice ever. So I, this is my chance to start a practice. And so I did that, and I had a business coach at the time who’s still somebody I go back to often, and she’s one of my very best friends and one of the smartest people I know on the planet. And I said to her, I said, oh, I’m so worried that the people of Naples are gonna think that I’m such a flake that, you know, she was a lawyer first and now she’s back.
RZ (35:11):
She was a, a financial person and she’s back to being a lawyer. And I, I was so nervous that the people of Naples were gonna think I was such a flake. And she said, people will think what you tell them to think. She said, you can tell them to think that you’re a flake, or you can tell them to think that you are the only F law attorney in town that has, has a financial background, so therefore you are actually more qualified than any other family law attorney in town. Which story would you like to tell?
RV (35:49):
Hmm.
RZ (35:51):
And I said, oh, maybe I’ll tell that story
RV (36:59):
Mm-Hmm.
RZ (38:02):
Yeah, I have two answers for that. So one is, and that’s a great question by the way. I love that question. So I have a couple of different ways that I go into in the book for that. One is that I tell people that they can either and, and it kind of depends on what’s going on in their situation, but, so if there’s something that they want from them, for example, I, I tell them that they can use a tactic that I call fluff or favor vomit later
RZ (39:01):
You’re so much better at it than I am. And it’ll be done so much faster if you do it. You’re so much more efficient at it, you know, and, and you know, something like that. And, and, and you just, you make sure you don’t say anything good about yourself or anything like that. No tone. Because I always say narcissists hear tones, like dogs hear whistles. Like even if there’s no tone, they hear tone. So, you know and then, you know, I always say, if you have to go shower or vomit later, that’s fine, but, you know, get them to do something for you. So fluff or favor vomit later. So that’s one thing. The other thing is that I say you know to, to use, it’s wise to use the element of surprise. So, you know, never let on what it is that it, that you’re up to, what it is that your leverage is nothing.
RZ (39:58):
You know, I would act like they’re winning. I would act like you don’t know what’s going on. I mean, even till the very end, I mean, I would throw out decoys about what it is that you actually want in, in a, in, in, in a negotiation. Because if you tell them what you actually really want, then they’re gonna want make sure that you don’t get that thing, you know, because they don’t want you to win. They don’t want you to have that thing, you know? And at the very end, you know, at, if you end up with, you know, the thing that you wanted or the, the settlement that you wanted or whatever, I would act like, oh my God, they, they really got me, or whatever. You’ve gotta take your ego out of this thing because if, if they think that they got you or, or didn’t get you or whatever, it, it’s like, at the end of the day, if you can walk away from this thing and be done and you know, and, and, and, and have, you know, not have to look back and, and have them outta your life, that’s what you want.
RZ (41:10):
Because especially the more malignant that the narcissist that you’re dealing with, the worse it’s gonna be. I mean, you know, I know for me with my, my narcissistic business partner, I was just like, gray rock. So, you know, that’s another term that they have. And that was one of the other things I wanted to mention to you. The more you can just have no reaction to the types of things that they’re trying to do and that try to get a reaction out of you, the more you can just not take their bait, the better it’s gonna be for you, you know? Oh, that’s interesting. Oh, that’s, that’s really you know, great feedback. Thank you. Thanks for letting me know mm-hmm.
RZ (42:16):
Because, you know, I I, I mean, another phrase that I really like is I agree with you. You’re like, I agree with you. That’s what you think, you know, I agree with you that that’s your opinion. You know, I agree that I, you know, I heard that’s what you said, you know, I mean, you’ve agreed to nothing when you said that
RV (42:52):
Mm-Hmm.
RZ (43:15):
They can get [email protected] and it’s, you know, it’s, it’s available wherever books are sold, but slay the bully.com is the best place to go check it out and get all the bonuses that come along with it, which is, you know, a lot of really cool stuff, including, you know, access to my private launch team and bam. Yeah. And, you know, masterclass with me and, you know, early access to the manuscript, depending on, as you said when you’re hearing this and all kinds of really other cool stuff. So.
RV (43:48):
Yep. I love it. So we’ll link, we’ll link that up in the show notes and you can check that out. The last little question I’ve got for you, Rebecca, is just what advice would you give to somebody who’s really feeling discouraged right now? You know, like I said, I’ve, I’ve been in this spot before and you can, you can be acting like the Gray Rock. I think that’s really great advice. I wish I would’ve had that advice. You can be doing this stuff and in, in reality, deep down you can still feel quite a lot like crap. Like you are being manipulated, like you are dealing with someone who’s unreasonable, like you are losing, like you are, they’re getting their way with everything. And there is just, it’s just comp. You just feel like it’s completely unfair. And what would you, what would en encouragement would you give to somebody that is in that spot right now?
RZ (44:41):
First of all, I’m gonna tell you, they don’t attach themselves to you because you have so little value. They attach themselves to you because you have so much. Hmm.
RZ (44:50):
That’s one of the first things I tell you all the time. They don’t want the clearance rack item
RV (46:30):
Yeah, that’s great. Well, thank you so much for this. It feels empowering to have a, a little bit of insight to what’s going on and how to navigate away through this. And we’re so excited about the book and, and wishing you good luck with that. And we just wish you all the best, my friend.
RZ (46:46):
Thank you. You are the best too. You are the bomb.
Ep 416: Be Better at Instagram: 5 Things You Can Do Today with Chelsea Peitz
AJV (00:02):
Hey, welcome everybody. This is AJ Vaden, one of your co-hosts on the Influential Personal Brand podcast. Get excited. ’cause Today we’re gonna be talking about all the things that we actually need to know, that sometimes we get so annoyed that we have to know, which is social media and it’s a, it’s a love hate relationship for many of us with social media. But we’re gonna deep dive today into, in Instagram, and I will give a formal introduction of my awesome guest in just a minute. But Chelsea is here today to do a deep dive with us on Instagram. So let me tell you why you need to stick around for this episode Before I introduce Chelsea to you. Number one, if you are questioning whether or not you should be on social media, that’s probably a good episode for you.
AJV (00:51):
Specifically if you are an entrepreneur, small business owner, solopreneur, anyone who is a reputation based, word of mouth, highly referral based business. If you’re asking yourself, do I really need to, well, what if I hate it? Do I still have to? This is probably good, worthwhile content to help sway your decision one way or the other. The second is if your preferred platform of choice is Instagram, do not skip this episode. Do not fast forward. Do not stop early. This was curated and built because of the amount of inquiries and questions on video content, the algorithm. What do we need to know? What should we be doing? And quite honestly, a lot of these are tips and ideas that you probably have never thought of before. So first category, you’re not sure if you really wanna keep going down this path of social media.
AJV (01:45):
Yeah, you should listen. Number two, Instagram is your chosen platform. This was an episode specifically designed for you, so don’t skip ahead. So with that now I get to introduce a new friend of mine Chelsea Pietz. And she was referred to me from another guest that we had on the show. So if you haven’t checked out Phil Treadwell’s episode, go check that out. But this is also a really special thing because we actually have lots of friends in common that we didn’t even put together when I first got introduced to you. And then this is what I love about the world we live in, is that you know so many people that you don’t even know, you know, until you’re like, oh, wait, like I follow you. I was just watching your course, or I just heard this episode you were on, and it’s this really cool world that we get to live in, however frustrating it can be sometimes.
AJV (02:38):
So let me give all of you a quick formal introduction of Chelsea and then we’ll jump right in. So Chelsea is an influential figure in real estate marketing coaching. She’s has more than a decade of experience doing all kinds of awesome things in the real estate industry but specifically being a trailblazer when it comes to the real estate. And then anything to do with that mortgage. Just anything in that world when it comes to social me, social media, being on video, creating content for people in that industry. She’s also a keynote speaker. She’s also renowned in the neuroscience behind effective social media Video Connections, which is a lot of what we’re gonna talk about today. She has authored a book which is called talking in Pictures. She has one has her own awesome podcast episodes all over the place. That’s one of the things that got introduced to her as you sent me the episode that you were on for Social Media Marketing World, right? Yeah. And all of these podcasts. So she’s a podcast guest, all these amazing shows. And today she gets to be a guest on our show. So we’re so excited to have you with hands-on tactical experience. You’re doing it, you’re talking about it, you’re writing about it, and now you’re gonna talk to our audience. So Chelsea, welcome to the show.
CP (04:00):
Oh my gosh, I’m so excited. First of all, I need you to be my hype woman everywhere I go. That was like the most incredible podcast,
AJV (04:44):
You know, I love that and I’m so, so, so glad that you started with that because I think for most of us, the reason we have this love hate relationship with social media is one, social media has got a bad rap, right? And it’s like, it’s like everything else in the world, though. It can be used for good and it can be used for bad as is life. But if you choose to use it for good, and you choose to create valuable content for an audience that you feel really called to serve, like you can do so much good. Yeah, there’s a lot of bad, but there’s a lot of good. And today we’re gonna focus on the good parts. And you know, I I am one of those people who has a love-hate relationship with it because, because I think what happens is people get hit up all the time with this is how you make it successful, and this is how you go viral.
AJV (05:36):
And I just wanna put it out there. You do not have to go viral to make a difference, right? You do not have to have millions of followers to make life-changing impact. And I think that’s the exhausting part of, you know, you feel like you have to run this machine, and it’s like, no, you don’t. So I love you said, it’s like you get to make the rules for how you do it, and there are best practices and tips, but quite honestly, pick what works for you, use that, but it doesn’t matter if you’ve got one follower or a million, like you’re doing this because you feel like you have content that can be helpful. And if we stay focused on that, the rest takes care of itself. Right?
CP (06:14):
I love that. I, I I feel like that is the entire theme and message of this entire podcast. Say it louder for the people in the back, aj. Absolutely. There is a massive difference between someone who is an influencer and someone who is influential. Ah-Huh. And I always talk about views versus value. Views do not equal value. And there’s so many meaningful metrics that we will never, ever be able to measure. I know that the people who are listening to you will have an aha moment listening to one of your podcasts. Are you able to measure that? Well, not unless they actually tell you about it. So there’s a lot of things that are immeasurable, which I also call the humanness of social media. And that’s what I’m really passionate about because I’m sort of a, I didn’t realize I was a rule breaker because I, I consider myself a rule follower. I’m like a high D rule follower. But it just wasn’t working for me. And I found it really wasn’t working for a lot of other people too. And I felt boxed in. I didn’t feel like it was sustainable. To your point, you read a blog, you go to a conference, you watch a YouTube video, and every single person is telling you something different. Well, which one is it? What do we do post every day? Post once a week? And so it becomes very overwhelming very quickly. Yeah.
AJV (07:27):
And I think the other thing that’s so overwhelming is then you do all of the things that are recommended or taught and then the algorithm changes and PO there goes all that work you did
CP (08:14):
That is
AJV (08:15):
Constantly untrackable. You’re
CP (08:17):
Right. It’s untrackable constantly changing, but we’re gonna talk about it today and I’m, I’m going to bring some clarity and simplification so that you can actually apply this and understand that it’s not working against you. And in fact, if you do the right things, it’s going to be working for you. And one of the things I remember from almost 24 years ago now, I became a, a real estate agent 23 years ago. My broker would always ask me the same question when I came into the office every day. And the question was, how many people did you talk to today,
CP (09:00):
And you also had to have someone’s phone number. You had to have their email, they had to answer their phone. You had to mail them something or go see them in person. And now the beauty of social media is you still can create those real human connections. You just can happen to share your story and your expertise and your thought leadership at scale while you’re sleeping. And so one of the things that I love to demystify is the algorithm. And yes, the algorithm is a little bit different on every single platform, but by and large, it is about the same specifically on Instagram. So we’ll talk about that one today. Believe it or not, there are actually separate algorithms for separate formats. And we’re not going to confuse anyone. There’s no need to even know about that. I just wanna let you know that there is a separate algorithm for stories.
CP (09:46):
There’s a separate algorithm for reels and everything else. What you do need to know is what is the platform looking for? And the good news, it’s the same thing your community of humans is looking for. And I call it simply less contenting, more commenting, having more meaningful conversations with people with intention and thoughtfulness. These would be people that you’ve worked with before and perhaps you want to continue working with them in the future. It could be a referral partner, it could be another small business in your particular area or hometown, anyone that you want to build brand awareness with. And that you can see a benefit that if you continue to create video content or written content, that that content could help a stranger feel like they already know you before they meet you. And so the algorithm is heavily driven by your conversations, your comments, your direct messages.
CP (10:48):
Direct messages are huge on Instagram and they have been for a while. So here’s the great thing. Who you talk to matters. And if you ask me, and I’m actually a full-time content creator, I would prefer to talk to people versus creating videos all day. I love talking to people and I love having those connections. And I love doing it specifically through Instagram stories because you’re getting this peek into someone’s life where I call it their sacred spaces. You are in my home, you’re in my office. You might be on a vacation with me. And you also see my co-stars, my dogs, my kiddo, my husband
CP (11:41):
And here’s what happens When I send you a direct message, aj, the algorithm wakes up and it takes notice because the algorithm is just a a, a data set, it’s just a software. And the ultimate goal of any platform is to keep you on it. Mm-Hmm.
CP (12:38):
If I go in there and it’s not with an intention, I am down the rabbit hole. Uhhuh
AJV (13:58):
I mean, that last line, you need to like have that on a poster somewhere where it’s like, it’s like, just like in real offline life,
CP (14:40):
Yeah. And you don’t have to make content all the time. So that content stress, and I know we’re gonna talk about content overwhelm today. How many of you would rather talk to someone that you enjoy speaking to or potentially making their day and having them feel seen and remembered and thought of? And you can do that while you’re having your coffee or your tea in the morning from bed because you don’t even have to make a video in order to send someone a direct message. You can even send them a voice message so they can hear the tonality in your voice if you’re wishing them a great day or a happy birthday or congratulations or whatever the message may be. And that is so much easier than having to drive and go see people. Yeah. I can talk to 30 people in less than 30 minutes if I want to on Instagram.
CP (15:22):
And because you’re a heavy engager, because you’re a good community member in the eyes of Instagram. And I’m also bringing people back because they have to open that notification. So I am bringing people back. And so what happens is this ecosystem where I don’t post every day. I never have. I post once a week in the feed. I know that’s gonna be shocking for a lot of people, but I’m a heavy engager and it fuels my community and it also brings me joy. And guess what? The algorithm is very happy with that. Because your most important content is your conversations.
AJV (16:00):
Hmm. Most important content conversations. Tweet that. Or it’s not even called that anymore. I forget,
CP (16:07):
Is it a something, an X, X,
AJV (16:09):
X X? No. Who knows what’s happening over there. We’re not talking about them today. It’s so helpful. That’s so insightful. I love that. Like, that is so simple. It may not be the answer everyone’s looking for. It’s like, oh, so that’s my problem. I only get on once once a month. Okay. but it’s, but it’s so simple, which, and that’s what we’re trying to do, is just go like, what are the simple things that you can do? What do you, what do you need to know so that you can time block it and put it in your schedule, just like you do with email and all the other, you know, communication formats we have. So, okay. So I love that. I love that. So now let’s talk about the next big topic, which, okay, knowing that we’ve got some, some sort of action plan to compliment the algorithm. The next big question we wanna tackle here is, well, what, what is the one thing or the one or two things that entrepreneurs should be doing today to help build their personal brands using Instagram specifically? So what do you got for us? What should we be doing?
CP (17:10):
Absolutely. This is something that may not seem as sexy as making a reel, but it’s so critically important because the foundation of how you show up your personal brand experience on Instagram matters. And one of the most important things that I always start with when I’m auditing a client’s profile or their account, is we don’t start with content. We start with the engagement, proactive engagement, which we just talked about. Then we move into, are you searchable? Can people find you? And when they find you, what do they see? What’s the experience they have of of you and your brand and what you do? Can they even tell what you do and how you can help them? And by the way, this happens in seconds if that. So we need to focus first on your profile. And I’m gonna give you some really tactical tips and some how to use some homework, if you will, for the listeners, because I bet there’s at least one thing, if not more, on this list that you haven’t done that will absolutely help you get found by the right audience, get followed by them on the first visit. So let’s dive into a little bit. I’m
AJV (18:24):
Pulling up my Instagram profile right now. This is like a, a mentoring session right now. It’s, I’m pulling up my profile. I’m gonna check my boxes. Okay, I’m ready.
CP (18:34):
Okay. So the very first thing that you need to know is how your profile actually works in your favor. A lot of people think it’s just a place that you can go and you can set up your information one time and that’s it. When in reality it’s just like a website that lives on the internet except it lives in Instagram. And we at a basic level understand how a website and how Google searches work, there is a website, it’s a place where people can find out information and how do we find them? You go to Google, you do a search, you ask it a question with some keywords, and then it says, Hey, these websites have similar keywords. This might be what you’re looking for, obviously an oversimplification. But just to keep it really, really, really basic like that. The same thing happens on Instagram.
CP (19:18):
Instagram is a search engine. Every social media platform is a search engine. Think YouTube. Mm-Hmm.
CP (20:21):
And underneath that is another field that’s called the name field. Let me go slowly through this. The fields of username and the one underneath your profile called name, those are the only searchable fields of your entire profile. So if you wanna get found, you need to make sure that you have optimized those two key areas. And I’ll give you a couple of tips on what you might wanna put in there. Well, first of all, you need your, your first and last name. That’s your personal brand. If this is representing a corporation or a company, then it would make sense to have your company or your brand’s name. If it is a solopreneur, an entrepreneur, a personal brand, it needs to have first and last, not just first, not just last. And it certainly doesn’t wanna be something obtuse like Jeep Lover 22, because then I definitely won’t find you when I’m typing in your name and your personal brand.
CP (21:21):
As you know, AJ is so critically important that we want people who are referring you. We want to easily find you. ’cause We’re not gonna stick around and keep searching. Mm-Hmm.
CP (22:16):
You might have author or whatever types of products that you want to be found for. So name or brand, name some kind of keyword that is going to tell people what you are offering or what you wanna be found for. If you’re location specific, I do recommend a city. And last but not least you know, you can also have some of those industry terms. And I wanna just take a moment to say, jargon is very challenging when it comes to those internal language that we often use. For example, if you’re a mortgage, you might call yourself a loan officer, but you shorten that to lo and no consumers are going to be searching for the the lo
CP (23:12):
There’s no rules of how you should craft this bio. It’s super short. So they make it brief. We love that. Get to the point, but be clear about who you help and how you help them so that when somebody lands here and skims mm-hmm.
CP (24:07):
Mm-Hmm.
AJV (25:22):
Yeah. I love that. And I think that, you know, it’s so similar to, like, we talked about this a lot with like LinkedIn, it’s no different here, right? It’s like all the
CP (25:29):
Same.
AJV (25:30):
It’s all the same, but you gotta know the little things. And so, so here I have a question. So what if you know, ’cause this kind of goes in with another question we were gonna talk about, which is, should you have your own personal account and then one for your business? Like, I mean, I wanna like, you know, you know, do all the fun vacation picks, but then I have all my business content. Like how do you manage those? And so before you answer that, because I am super curious to hear your thoughts, what if you are, you know, the, the face of a business per se? So like, I’ll use mug mine for example. So I’ve got my name. Would it also be good to put my business’s name next to my name? Mm-Hmm.
CP (26:12):
I would it without looking at it, I don’t have it in front of me, but I would have your username be your first and last name. Yep. And then in that name field you could have AJ and then like a little space and then Brand Builders group or whatever company or information you want in there. And then the bio itself, yes. You can also please insert keywords. It’s not going to be searchable by Instagram standards, but here’s the thing. Every ai, every software is looking at overarching themes. I think of it like a, ’cause I have a 10 year old who’s in fifth grade. So we do a lot of homework together. And I always tell ’em, you know, it’s okay if you just, you know, don’t s smash it on this, you know, spelling test. It’s not gonna ruin your whole grade for the year.
AJV (27:25):
Yeah. So my last question on this, so in your opinion, would it be better to put like AJ Vaden, you know, little Space Brand Builders Group or AJ Vaden Little Space helping entrepreneurs build personal brands?
CP (27:42):
Okay. I would put the, the message or what you’re doing in the actual bio one, because there’s probably not gonna be enough space for it. But also think about what people are searching, helping. Probably not a lot of people searching for helping, right? Yeah. That actual word. But if somebody refers me to Brand Builders Group, I’m searching for that direct. I know this because I did
AJV (28:21):
Yeah. So I think a lot of that too is, you know, one I love free coaching advice, but then also I think a lot of people, it’s like you, what I find all the time is that we have so many of our audience members at Brand Builders Group, they get caught up in being in the catchy word phrase, Hey, I want it to be like cutesy and I want it to be like this. And it’s like, no, be clear. Just be very clear. Right? But it’s like we get caught up in the marketing lingo Yes. Versus, you know, just what are people typing in? Right.
CP (28:52):
And I’m laughing because I’m not, I am one of those people. I’m very transparent. I love a good little rhyming marketing slogan. I understand that. And you are so right. It needs to be clear. It needs to be concise, and it needs to be succinct. Absolutely.
AJV (29:07):
Yeah. So good. This is great. Okay, so personal profile, business profile. Do we need two accounts? Like really? Okay,
CP (29:15):
This is a, this is a question I get every single time, every podcast, every webinar, every time I’m speaking. And I love this question because this question really aligns with, with my message, which is, you know, your human first and whatever you’re, you’re selling or service, you know, it is second. And at the end of the day, we are human beings behind the screen, right? So the reason that we got started on these two accounts, we can, we can thank Facebook for that because Facebook made us have these business pages. And so we all got business pages and now everybody has a business page. And guess what? The reach and engagement is abysmal unless you pay for it. Hmm. That might be why they’re keeping bus business pages around. And then invariably what happens is, every time I coach somebody that has two accounts, okay, they say, oh my gosh, I’ve got this one business account.
CP (30:04):
And so I put business stuff over there. I put my just listeds my just sold or my definitions of the day or anything that is professional and businessy, but it really doesn’t get much engagement and it’s kind of crickets over there. And so now I kind of resent it and I don’t even wanna post over there. So then I go to Canva, which I love and adore, and I just pull a template and I post it over there. And guess what? I’m in this vicious circle of not being able to get any engagement and then feeling the pressure of having to also post to that account. Now, there are many times where an individual may wanna keep something completely separate. You decide what works for you. If you have children that you don’t wanna share your children on social media, absolutely have a private account for family and friends.
CP (30:51):
Just know that I would recommend having a secondary account that is public because you do want people to find you, you do want to grow that way. And that is absolutely perfectly fine to have two, oftentimes I think two accounts is twice the work, depending on what your goals are. If you’re trying to grow. Two, it’s a lot of work. I also consider one human, one brand, one account. Mm-Hmm.
CP (31:40):
There’s a difference between personal and private. Private is whatever you decided to be. It could be the vacation pics. It could be showing your family but personal is your face, your voice, your perspective created from your lived experiences. And that is the only original content on the planet.
CP (32:36):
I usually just say, unless there’s extenuating circumstances, have one account and make your content a hundred percent human. There’s no 80 20 anymore. You can have a hundred percent business content and still humanize it. Or you could have no business content
AJV (33:27):
CP (33:29):
Yeah, absolutely. I
AJV (33:30):
Love that. But I think I love that. And I, I completely agree, like agree, we completely are on the same page here. The idea of trying to manage two accounts feels so much work. I mean, it feels like so much work because it is
CP (33:47):
Mm-Hmm.
AJV (33:50):
Really, I think more importantly, it’s like people don’t fall in love with businesses. They fall in love with people. They fall in love with founders. They fall in love with the person who had the idea for the business, and they fall in love with the story and what it’s about and who it’s for. But nobody falls in love with a logo. Right? They may fall in love with the products because the products serve a need that they have, right? And so totally agree with that, and I love that. So you, you actually just talked about this when you mentioned lurking with love. It’s like, if you’re scrolling quickly, like we’re making instantaneous judgment calls decisions on, is this the type of person I wanna follow content I wanna check out is it, is this someone that I want more of and more from?
AJV (34:34):
And a lot of that has to do with video content, right? And so one of the things that we had kinda outlined is something that we thought would be worthwhile for this conversation today is, well, if we know that it’s that important, and we know that the, you know, typically algorithm favors video, just generally speaking why do we have such a hard time with it? And I can just speak for the community that I get to serve at Brand Builders group and our own team. It’s like, I’ll be having a conversation with someone just like this, and it’s mind blowingly good. And I’m like, we gotta get that on camera. So I pause and I get my phone and I ask the question again, and then it’s like, deer in the headlights, crickets. And they’re like, wait, what, what were we saying?
AJV (35:17):
And it’s like all of their like personality and their amazing ideas just fluttered away into who knows where. And there’s this immense amount of video insecurity. It’s, I don’t like the way I look on video. They, they are not themselves, like their personality, their, even their words just fall apart as they look at this red dot, or in my case, a green dot and five computer. And so why does that happen and how can we overcome it? Like how do we get better at creating better video specifically for short form content, right? Because we’re not trying to put 30 minute videos up, or 10 minute or even five minutes, right? We’re talking about short short. So how do we get better at this? Oh,
CP (36:05):
Video insecurity is something that I know well and it, I know it well because it was me. I
CP (36:50):
Mm-Hmm. If I had kind of looked at some of the things. And so I’ve really, really honed in on what I call the the cringe factor or the ick, you know, why do we have the ick when we are watching our recorded selves? And what’s really interesting is that it comes down to a mismatch, right? It’s a misalignment of seeing the recorded self and, and who we are in, in the real life. And you just mentioned this, where we can be having a conversation and then all of a sudden the camera comes on and we feel as though we have to deliver a persona or a scripted performance or sound a certain way. And then when you add in that, oftentimes when you’re framing yourself in a small video like your phone, you’re not moving very much, right? And you’re not moving your hands or your body if you’re scripting, which by the way, I love scripting.
CP (37:42):
Not saying not to script, but I spend a lot of time working on making it sound human and making sure that the warmth cues in my face don’t dissipate. Hmm. And this is a lot of your beginning, I’m gonna give you a beginner’s tip, but some advanced tips is the reason that you don’t like what you’re seeing is that mismatch is because you don’t have any body movement. You’re probably not using your hands. You may have written down some scripts and your brain is trying to remember bullet point number three because you don’t wanna rerecord or you don’t wanna make a mistake, but your face and your mouth is on the intro. Yeah. And so all of a sudden
CP (38:26):
Yeah. It’s a very challenging to write in a conversational friendly tone. And what happens is we’re reading in our brains and our brain’s really focusing on one thing at a time. So if you’re reading your face is probably not emoting. And if you’ve ever memorized a speech, I know I have, I’m sure you have too. It’s the hardest thing. I do not recommend it. It’s really hard to be able to memorize something, read it in your mind, and e mote and move your body and all of those things at the same time. So those are some of the reasons for our video. Ick. The answer is one that’s very simple. Ask yourself this question. If you feel a limiting belief creep in. I don’t like how I look. I don’t like how I sound. I’m not hair and makeup ready. Oh, I don’t have time to write a script.
CP (39:17):
I just feel like I’m not very good at this. Whatever that limiting belief may be, because there is a long list, ask yourself this one question, what would you do in real life? And this is the, the question I ask almost everyone who is struggling with social media. And so it works in so many capacities. Like, okay, I can’t stand how I look. Okay, so imagine I’m going to visit a client and we’re at Starbucks and we’re having a coffee, and I’ve got my first p ss l of the season, and I’m so excited and they ask me a question and I know the answer. But instead, I dive under the table and I’ve left the lattes and my clients sitting there wondering if I’m okay bending over saying, are you okay down there? And I’m like, I’m totally fine. I just have this thing where I can’t look at people when I talk to them.
CP (40:04):
What would you do in real life? We would never do that. Right? And so when we ask ourselves this question, or, you know, people say, should I, should I dmm somebody a copy and paste sales script? Okay, well, what would you do in real life? You go to a wonderful conference, you’re meeting someone, would you throw your cards in their face and give them that exact word for word copy, paste message, and then leave and go home and say, I can’t believe it. I didn’t get any new business. And I even gave them my cards. Even the new ones with the new logo, I don’t understand it. Of course not, of course not even the private thing when people are like, well, I like to keep business and personal separate. Okay, but what would you do in real life? You meet a client. Do you talk about anything but business?
CP (40:49):
If they ask you, oh my gosh, do you have dogs? And your eyes glaze over and you’re giving them stats and data? Yeah. And they’re like, okay, no. ’cause, So it’s important to ask what would you do in real life? And that’s how you can kind of work through, through those, those limiting beliefs and, and say, okay, does this make sense? Would I do that? Probably not. Okay. And then we kind of peel back those limiting beliefs and then can get into sort of the tactics, which we’ll talk about of really, you know, now that you’re gonna get on video, what are some tactics you can do to make that video better so that you do feel better about the performance, about the finished product, and also get some engagement. ’cause There’s nothing worse than making content and keep being consistent, and you’re posting it and like nothing’s happening. Right? I understand it’s discouraging. So we’ll talk about those tips as
AJV (41:35):
Well. I love that. And I, as you were talking, I, I remember somebody giving me this tip one time, and it’s been a long time since I’ve used it, because I don’t have video in security. It’s probably, I probably need to have a little bit more video in security. I a little more
AJV (42:17):
So ask the person to step right above or right under the camera and talk to them, position the camera in a way that the person who you’re talking to, you’re talking to a person, not a camera. Now if you’re filming yourself, and we, this is something we talk a lot about, but hopefully you have an ideal, you know, customer avatar, right? You have this person that’s like, this is who I’m making this content for. So it’s, you know, whoever that person is, but have a picture of a person and cover it. Like, you can, like, just tape it on your computer screen right below where the little camera is. So you’re not looking at yourself, but you’re looking at a picture of the person, right? And it’s like, Google some images, give them a name like build out who they are. Like, but you gotta know that this, you’re talking to a real life human.
AJV (43:07):
Like, these are not mysterious accounts. These are people. And so talk to a person. And I remember that was years ago. I haven’t done it in a long time, but I may bring it back. I may bring it back because I, I think so much of what you said is like, what would you do in real life? In real life? You don’t talk to a camera, you talk to a person. Mm-Hmm.
CP (43:46):
Yes. Okay. I’m gonna give you a lot of tactics, but I, before I do, I just wanna say there are no rules. We are applauding you and cheering you on if you make any video at all.
CP (44:50):
Which means that they are pushing those videos to people who don’t know you. Mm-Hmm. Which is kind of awesome. If you wanna grow and you wanna share your message, you used to have to pay for ads for that, but now they’re looking at your topic, it, they’re serving this content to people that don’t know you. In fact, it’s 40 plus percent of the content you see in your feed and your home feed are from people you don’t follow. And that’s kind of new. So what happens is, you don’t have time. These people don’t know and love you. I kn I know and and love people that I follow, and I will sit through their intro because I love them, but not if I don’t know you. You’ve gotta get to the point. So the intro, sometimes we hear something like this, Hey everyone, it’s Chelsea Pipes, and today we’re talking about, and they won’t even last through the, Hey everyone, first of all, we wanna address the one human being that we’re talking to.
CP (45:42):
So we’re gonna use that word, you, not everyone, or hey all, or hey guys or whomever it is. But it’s how you start matters. So how do I recommend that you start a video? The simplest way is to ask a question and use the word you. So you’re gonna ask a question and use the word you. And you could call that a hook if you’re speaking in marketing terms. And there’s all kinds of hooks that you can use. You could even Google it. You could ask chat and g p t you could make it so that it’s specific to your industry, but simply asking a question. So here’s an example. Instead of me saying, Hey, everyone, it’s Chelsea, and today we’re gonna talk about three things you need to know for Instagram. Okay? I might say, do you wanna know the number one thing you’re doing wrong on Instagram?
CP (46:29):
I asked a question. I used the word you. And that person who doesn’t know me is like, oh, you’re talking to me because you used the word you and even invited me into a conversation by asking a question. Now, does every video you ever make have to have a hook? No. Does every video you ever make have to start with a question? No. But this is a best practice and it will improve your mindset when you’re creating video content to think about how can I stop the scroll? So that’s tip number one, is how you start your video matters. And I recommend having a hook, or it could just be simply a question and use the word you. Now, my second tip is my favorite. This is like my, my secret weapon. And when I realized this, I was like, where have I been? Where have I been this entire time?
CP (47:15):
If there’s anyone out there listening who thought I need to record this whole video in one clip, that was me. And then I thought, well, wait a minute. I don’t have to record this whole video in one fell swoop. I can actually record it in clips or little tiny itty bitty sentences I mentioned before. I love to script. I do a lot of educational content and I gotta be brief. So I like to write it out so I know what I’m gonna say. I don’t wanna memorize it because I still want it to feel like me. And that’s a lot of content stress. So I’m gonna do one sentence at a time. And if you’re in Instagram or TikTok, or if you are in Facebook and you’re creating a reel, all you have to do is press and hold record sentence number one, let go and reset.
CP (47:57):
Have a glass of water, look down at your notes. And when I started doing that, I was like, oh my gosh, I feel so much better. I don’t have to memorize all of this and I can record in clips. And with the beauty of how they set up these editing features, it just strings it all together. And so it’s a really simple way to not have to memorize, to be able to look down and feel confident. And also another pro tip, really high production value. I actually move my arm from here to here or just, you know, a few inches in between the clips. And I don’t even use a tripod, but I, I just move. And people say, why you change your angles? I go, because TV has a lot of cameras. They have camera one, camera two, we’re zooming in, we’re zooming out, and I hate editing and I don’t wanna edit. So all I do is my high production value of starting in one position and moving to the next when I’m recording clip number two. So recording in clips is absolutely going to help you. Ooh,
AJV (48:55):
Love that. So easy. And you know what the best part about that is? You don’t have to like get another, you know, editing app. You don’t have to like do this on your computer. You don’t have to do it outside of the, of the platform. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (49:18):
Yes. You gotta know what to do. I love that. And I love two simple tip of like, just move your arm, right?
CP (50:21):
Yeah. And, and you know, it’s funny because you can have really powerful text thought leadership content without any movement either. But you’re right, the, the stopping the scroll usually happens with some kind of, of movement. And that also brings in my, my really important last point for any video that you’re making. And this is one point that I see so many people missing almost a hundred percent of my audits. I will look through the content and this is not on it. And this will help you get more followers as well. So words text, right? Yeah. What is it? 80, 90% of people viewing videos have the sound off for a variety of reasons. Yeah. If it’s me, I’m in an airport somewhere, right? I’m getting on a flight to go somewhere. Maybe you’ve got a newborn and it’s 3:00 AM and you are not moving to wake that baby up.
CP (51:07):
But you are sitting there now and you’re gonna watch something, right? Maybe it’s like if your husband’s like mine and he watches like sci-fi and I don’t wanna watch that, but I don’t wanna be rude and have my phone on whatever reason it is. You’ve gotta give people different ways to consume the content. There is a massive audience of users who prefer sound off or need the closed captioning because they are hard of hearing or death. Yeah. So good. And so it’s critical that if you wanna engage people, they’re not gonna watch your mouth move for 30 seconds. They’re not even gonna watch your mouth move for three seconds if we can’t read it. So you need to add the closed captioning. It’s built right into the system. And the last thing that is the one that everyone, almost all, everyone misses, we’re going back to the profile where I’m scanning AJ’s profile, seeing what she’s all about.
CP (51:51):
If AJ doesn’t have a title on every single video, she does like a reel and there’s no title. I’m not gonna click on all 300 of her videos. I’m new here. I just wanna scan and see what she’s all about. So it’s so critical that on any short form, vertical video on any platform, you have a title that tells people what are they going to learn about? What are you talking about in the video? Because when somebody scrolls through mine and sees what I talk about, they’re like, oh, this person knows what they’re talking about. I’m gonna click follow. And so it’s really, really important to have those, what they call cover photos. Or just text on, on your video so that we know what it’s about.
AJV (52:34):
Oh, this is so good. And y’all, I cannot believe that we have already been talking for an hour. I told Chelsea it’s like 45 minutes and we’re gonna cover these things. And it’s like, whew. 60 minutes, just like flew by in a gif. And like we had a whole nother question that we were gonna spend time on. I, Chelsea, I’m gonna have to have you back at some point, but I don’t wanna leave everyone hanging. So the last question, and we’ll just do this super high level, and then we’ll tell people where to go to connect with you. Actually, I’ll go ahead and do that now. Y’all, if y’all wanna learn more about Instagram, then you should probably just follow Chelsea on Instagram, right? It’s like, if you want more of these tips you just go to, I think it, you said it’s, hold on, I’ve got this, I wrote it down so that I didn’t forget.
AJV (53:16):
It’s Chelsea dot pipes and it’s P E I T Z, Chelsea Pipes. That’s her handle. It’ll be in, in the show notes. So go follow her on Instagram and learn more about how to be better at Instagram. Now, last thing, content overwhelm. And we’ve kind of touched on this in a variety of different ways, but so many people want to, but they’re like, oh my gosh, I just don’t have time. Right? And I’m not a full-time digital marketer. I’m not a full-time content creator. I have a full-time business. How do I fit this all in
CP (54:03):
I think the easiest way to start thinking about content, and this is my personal strategy too, because I am in the overwhelmed category, I get so excited. I have too many things. I, I then I have no ideas. And what if I run out of ideas, which I guarantee will not happen, but I’m just letting you know, I also have that fear because I am human. And so I would recommend being more aware, and that’s the hardest part of content. So when I’m coaching people and creating like Instagram stories, they’re like, I don’t have anything to post. Like, I’m, you know, going to my law office and I’m, you know, doing paperwork that’s not exciting. Well, we have to start looking at everything as content. And I’m not saying to give all of those details away, but you can mess or you can give the message of, today I helped a client who was going through X, Y, and Z.
CP (54:50):
And you know, this is a really good lesson to learn about copyright law. So you can still let people know. So you have to start being aware of the content that’s around you. The best way that I personally do this is I put some time in my calendar, like three minutes max. I mean, if you wanna try it in one minute, go for it. I love that for you. But look through your text messages, look through your emails. Think about what meetings you had today. Mm-Hmm. And what were questions that came up? What were topics? What were the things that went sideways? Because you know, that’s definitely gonna be good content for you to say, here’s how to avoid this. And it’s being aware of the questions you’re being asked. And knowing that I am always asked this set of questions, Hmm, maybe I should make some content about it because if these people have questions about it, I guarantee that other people have questions about it.
CP (55:39):
And here’s my last tip on the content is, and this is a little bit harder, so maybe this is like the 2 0 2. I want you to start thinking about what are the questions people aren’t asking ’cause they don’t know to ask about. And that’s really where you can build that mind share and that thought leadership where people say, huh, I never thought about that. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (56:32):
I love that. And I just, I kind of wrote this down too. It’s, I, here’s my big takeaway from this. It’s like, content’s everywhere. You don’t have to come up with it. It’s everywhere. Like it’s, find one thing to talk about every day. So I love what you said, it’s like, what questions were you asked today? Or what questions did you ask today? Or what questions did you want to ask that you didn’t? You know, what experiences, like, did you run into an old friend? Did you did you have a client come back? It’s like, but what unique, something happened. Maybe it was a school event with your kids or a sporting event, but like, what was an experience you had? Where did you go? Who did you see? Were there any interesting moments? Was it like, you know, I have weird stuff happened to me every day.
AJV (57:15):
I don’t know if I attract it or what, but it’s like Rory is always like, babe, like, like, put that on Instagram. Like, you need to like talk about like this weird, like, yes, it’s just like that, but that’s life. Everyone has it. Yeah. It’s just, are you paying attention? Mm-Hmm.
AJV (58:17):
I’ll put it in the show notes, but then also stay tuned as I do the recap episode next.
Ep 414: How Personal Brands can Develop More Grit and Perseverance with Bianca Olthoff
RV (00:02):
Oh my gosh, Bianca Olthoff is fire. You are about to experience fire, and I’m so excited about it. So I met Bianca, honestly, we shared the stage together at this event called the Global Leadership Summit, which is probably the biggest speaking event in the world. And I saw her and I was like, gosh, she looks a lot like Jasmine Starr. And I was like, I swear they look a lot alike
RV (00:49):
And now I’m following Bianca. And I just, I love Bianca’s content. And she has a book coming out called Grit Don’t Quit. And we’re gonna talk about this today. This is the topic of perseverance. Now this is Bianca’s third traditionally published book. Her first two books have done great. And she is a bestselling author. She is also a lead pastor of a church. So we’re gonna hear probably a little bit about that, maybe a little bit about speaking in the kind of the Christian circuit and Christian conferences. But mostly I want her to talk about how do we persevere and how do we overcome when we wanna quit? And anyways, we just become friends and I feel like she’s family even though we’re really technically meeting for the first time. So, Bianca, welcome to the show.
BO (01:35):
I am so excited. And with that introduction, I mean, I’m ready to throw some fire here. I mean, en Fugo. All right, we’re gonna have some fun. I’m gonna light some stuff up.
RV (01:44):
So, all right. So tell me, let’s talk about perseverance and grit, I guess, and walk me through what, walk me through your definition of what is grit? Why are you writing this book? How did this all come about?
BO (02:01):
So let’s start from the nitty gritty, if you will. I think over the last couple years, I have seen so many friends and so many people that are in the same field or people of faith that have just given up. And it’s so easy in our culture and society right now to throw in the tell, if you will. And I didn’t realize how pervasive the message was until I came to some really hard blows the last couple years. And I was having a conversation with a friend and she was going through a divorce, and I’m looking at her and I’m wa we’re walking through this really dark valley, if you will. And sure. She looked at me from across the coffee table and she said, well, I’m just not like you. I go, what do you mean? She’s like, well, because of your life and your background, like you just were forced to be resilient.
BO (02:48):
Like, I’m not born like that. And then I was hit with the reality that I think people think that resilience and grit is something that you’re born with, not something that you build. Hmm. And so a little bit of context. I know that you’re a good friend with Jasmine, and you know a little bit about this, but for those that are listening to the podcast, and I am new to them, new friend my background is peppered. I am a daughter of immigrants, and we are a large Hispanic family on one income, a dire straits being raised in urban environments. I like to say like we put the urban in suburban and our family was raised in East Los Angeles. See, west LA is where all the fancy bougie people were. We’re in East la. So Jasmine and I, I don’t know if you even know this, but Jasmine and I struggled academically to read right and spell.
BO (03:36):
We were I litter at the age of 12. I th Oh, and couple this with being obese and homeschooled and people of faith living in a non-faith culture. Mm-Hmm.
BO (04:21):
And I’ve read so many books. I mean, Dr. Angela Duckworth’s book Grit was phenomenal. I loved it. It was amazing. Changed my life. It came out like 66, 7 years ago. But one of the things that when I closed the book, I realized, okay, so she defined grit, but she didn’t teach me necessarily how to build it. And she gave so many different examples of people that were like gritty. And she gave medical analysis and, and, and psychological understanding. But I left the book feeling very inspired, but I didn’t have practical handles. I’m the girl that likes to put the cookies on the lower shelf
RV (05:25):
Yeah. And and personal brands is something you, you, you understand, you know, this intersection, right? Like, talk to me about some of the endurance that you’ve had to have to build your personal brand. I mean, you’ve got so many file followers online. You’ve got this thriving church, this thriving community. You’ve got three books. You self-published a book and then, and then two books that you wrote, and now this is your third. Like, how do you think this applies specifically to the personal brand journey?
BO (06:03):
You know I never set out to try to build something, and the least of that was to build a brand for myself. However, I have a wonderful sister who was like, Bianca, it’s you. You are building something. You are building. I am a woman of faith. And so forever out there that may not share that I, I totally understand it, but this is my journey, so I’m gonna give you a little peek. So I started teaching bible studies and my sister was like, Bianca, I really do think that you need a website cuz you’re basically like that person that’s selling fake rolexes, like a fx in an alleyway out of the trunk of a car. Like you have to legitimize yourself. And that simple conversation really sent me on this journey to be like, you know what? I am very proud of the abilities and the skills that I’m cultivating been given and are wanting to increase and get better.
BO (06:49):
So like, why not put intention behind everything that goes out there? Not just my words, but also what’s associated with that. And so it’s been wildly, wildly important. I think for those that are not familiar with the faith space it’s been largely dominated by men and largely dominated by a certain type of men. And so for me to come in it, I, I kind of stick out like a sore thumb. But that’s actually worked in my favor now because in building a brand, I realize that not everyone likes vanilla ice cream. Not everyone likes chocolate ice cream. Some people like cookie crunch, malted cookie crunch, and some people like bubble gum ice cream. Some people like Get ready pistachio ice cream. I just realize that I might not be everyone’s flavor, but the people who are out there that like my favor, they will love this ice cream.
BO (07:31):
So I’m going to build a brand, whether that is in visual assets, digital assets, audio assets or, or biblical assets. I want it to reflect a person, the person who I am in the best form. And again, if I like putting things on the lower shelf, the cookies on the lower shelf I wanna make, whether it’s brand building or biblical principles as easy for people to understand. So I’m passionate about it, I love it. And also my background is in art. So when she started talking about brand building, I kind of viewed it as like painting a portrait. And any portrait that lasts is gonna have a je eso underneath that is like a primer. And I think that brand building needs to have that brand building is the primer. If you want something to last, you need a good primer. If you want your business to grow, you have to have a good brand. So I view it like that.
RV (08:14):
Yeah. Well, and I just, I think people don’t realize how much the road to building a personal brand is just littered with rejection and self-doubt and going, you know, you get turned down for this speaking gig and this, this literary agent tells you your idea will never sell. And this publisher says the book is no good. And you know, you do this email campaign and nobody buys and you, you know, spend your, all your money on a website and then like it doesn’t work. And there’s just, there’s just, to me, this is such a, such a walk of perseverance and grit just to even be in the game, right? Like just to, even to just to even have a chance. You, you, you have to go. So I, I know you talk a little bit about neuroscience specifically and the connection to grit. Can you take us, take us a little bit into that, cuz I kind of feel this as like, you, you mentioned Angela Duckworth as sort of like the handoff of going, you know, there’s this academic piece of grit and, and then, you know, we’re gonna talk about, I wanna talk about the three piece of perseverance and all that, but there’s sort of like this, this piece of neuroscience. And tell me about how the neuroscience of our brain connects into us being gritty.
BO (09:34):
Okay, so you said before we went live on this podcast, you said that you were a nerd and I am a nerd. So from one nerd to a nerd. Nice. We’re gonna nerd move about for a second.
RV (09:43):
Nice
BO (09:43):
Neuroscience in the study of the brain and neuropathy is something that’s becoming more on the forefront of everyday nomenclature, language vocabulary. Like we’re understanding it more. And so for those not familiar with it, the, the easiest way to kind of break it down is neuropathy is this study of like our, the brain grooves. The grain brain pathways. And so in taking a little bit of neuroscience background and applying it to the idea of grit is that no matter what failure comes our way, we get to determine what we tell ourselves about that failure is that, do we say our failure is final or failure is part of the process. And every time that we choose a different narrative, one that is life giving one that is believing that the best is yet to come, as cliche as that sounds, we’re actually building neuro pathways in our brain that can actually rewire our brain to have us view situations like perceived failure or maybe being dismissed by somebody or being rejected or not g getting the job.
BO (10:44):
We can rewire our brain with truth when we tell ourselves, this is not the end of me. Mm. When we tell ourselves that this is actually strengthening me. And when we do that, it’s not. And this is the difference between just so you know, like, oh, positive confession, I’m just gonna will myself to think this. It’s actually knowing that there is a purpose for this failure. I mean, this goes into, I think when we talk about perseverance, when we talk about grit, it feels very nebulous. Like what does that really even mean? And I love some science that’s coming out of Harvard right now. Actually it’s, it’s act probably about a decade old, but I think it’s just gaining popularity that when we try to talk about the word resilience, what are the components of resilience? You had mentioned the three Ps and we can talk about that in a second.
BO (11:30):
But I think that’s been really pivotal in like how I understand failure because it’s perspective, it’s the ability to pivot and then there’s the purpose component. That has been wildly just fascinating to me because it’s changing the way that I think. And by changing the way that I think it changes the way that I live by changing the way that I live, it changes how I lead. And so I think all of it is interconnected and it begins with this rewiring of the brain. And that’s been really fascinating to, to un uncover. And I go a little bit into it. It’s only one chapter that I talk about that I talk about it in the book, but I think it’s so important, the power of what we’re thinking, the power of what we’re saying, the power of what we’re believing about, what perceived failure actually means in our life.
RV (12:13):
Yeah. I think that and that it was empowering for me to sort of wake up and realize this idea that it is up to me to define the way I think about what has happened to me. Right? You don’t always get to cho choose what happens, but you get to choose how you respond to it. And, and more specifically how you process it, how you, the, the story you tell yourself about what happened. One alternative is, man, I’m a total failure
RV (13:20):
Like this is making me so resilient cuz there’s so much, so much rejection. So let’s do, let’s walk through the, the three piece cuz I know that there’s people out there, whether it’s an author, you know, who feels hopeless about how do I get this book out into the world or the attention of a publisher or an aspiring speaker or a lot of, you know, maybe it’s coaches going, how do I just, I I need more clients and I feel like I I I don’t know where they’re gonna come from. Or we also have, you know, a lot of professional service providers that are, you know, part of this community of lawyers and accountants and doctors and things where they might just be feeling burnt out. Right? I’m just going like, I don’t wanna keep going. Like I’m already, I’ve been going for so long and I’m burnt out. So walk us, walk us through the three P’s.
BO (14:08):
Okay. So before we dive into that, you had said something that was so impactful and I don’t want someone to miss this. It’s like the podcasters flipping it on the podcaster, but you said something so good that I think people need to hold onto. You had 20,000 doors that you knocked on and you had so many nos and so many slammed doors in your face. Uhhuh
RV (14:34):
I cried every freaking day, every day I cried
BO (14:54):
That resistance is the thing that builds resilience. And so I think that the door slammed in our faces mm-hmm.
BO (15:38):
And so again, cookies on the lower shelf friend, I made them all start with P because I was raised on Sesame Street and p is the letter for the day. Okay? So of the first P of resilience is the understanding of perspective. So perspective is, and this is where we get into like the neuro pathways and what so perspective would pause and say, okay, even though this is bad, whatever the bad is, you didn’t get the job, the pitch in the boardroom epically failed. The C-suite that you wanted was taken by someone who everyone thought was more qualified. Whatever your perceived failures, your perspective is like your per your chosen perspective. You can walk in and say though that it’s not now that doesn’t mean that it’s not e never your perspective will shift and say, what are areas of growth in my life that I maybe don’t see?
BO (16:24):
Your perspective would say, Hey, this is resurrecting something in me that I would like to work, work through with a trained professional. I’m gonna go see a therapist perspective is saying, what am I not saying? And then perspective allows you to pivot the who are, what’s the characteristics of people who are resilient. Not only do they have a healthy perspective of life and themselves, they have the wild ability to pivot to say though this is not working. I am going to turn and I’m gonna go in a different direction and I’m gonna make this work when life gives me lemonade. Life can me lemons. It’s not just for lemonade. It’s so that I could save the seeds and plant these seeds in the future for trees that will produce more lemons in my life. This is the ability to pivot. The French word is brico.
BO (17:03):
Most people are familiar with like collage, but brico is when we’re taking different strands of different things and we’re making something beautiful. This is the lemons to lemonade. Those resilient people will just, will have an ability not only to have clear perspective, but the ability to pivot. And then last and finally is an understanding of purpose. So if you’re familiar with the Austrian psychiatrist out of Auschwitz that survived the Holocaust, oh my gosh, why am I blanking on his name? Please help me. Rory. Do you know what I’m talking about? It’s brilliant.
RV (17:34):
Victor Frankl. Victor
BO (17:37):
Frankel. See, I knew what you came through. You are, come on homie. You are a homie. Who is
RV (17:40):
Vic? Who is Victor Frankel for 500. Yes.
BO (17:44):
Yes. Well done. You’ll win Jeopardy. You’ll be my phone a friend. Okay. So Vi Frankl really helped frame this understanding of acar pain having purpose. Nobody wants to say that. And again, it sounds so cliche, but what he did is he found that people that understood that their pain actually produced a purpose in their life. That they went on to live not only more fulfilled lives, but more successful lives. And I think wow, if we’re giving people handles on how to be resilient, it’s those that have a healthy, healthy perspective on self and life, have the ability to pivot and then can see a greater purpose beyond whatever trauma trial or tribulation has faced them. That’s what makes me passionate and that’s what makes me so excited. I’m like, wait, there’s actual he handles to build this for our lives.
RV (18:27):
Yeah. And these, these are so good because I you know, like with perspective, part of how I’ve always thought about it is like if you have a flat tire, that seems like an awful event. But one day when you go to heaven, if you real, if you learn back and you go, oh, that flat tire actually prevented you from a fatal car accident mm-hmm.
RV (19:03):
All that has changed is your perspective. Mm-Hmm.
BO (19:47):
Unan answer prayers
RV (19:48):
Thank you Jesus.
BO (20:08):
All things work together for good
RV (20:10):
In all things. Yeah. God wor things work together, together for good, for those who love God and called his purposes or something close to that. There’s is that you can choose to go, even though this awful thing has happened. Yeah. There’s gotta be some payoff as to why. And, and, and it is always the way, right? Like you can look back on things that happened 20 years and go, man, I actually am quite thankful that I got fired from that job. Like mm-hmm.
BO (20:51):
All, first of all, you are taking us to church today. Okay. I’m about to bring my podcast Oh yeah.
RV (21:24):
Oh, you’re talking to me? Yeah. Oh. Well, I, it’s funny. I would, my honest answer to that would be programming. It would be programming going back to the, to the, to the neuroscience neuro
BO (21:37):
Pathways.
RV (21:37):
Yeah. We, we, we used to, they, they taught us to say this, this phrase, the answers behind the next door, the answers behind the next door, the answers, the answer to every problem is behind the next door. And they like beat it into our heads. Whoa. And I, I actually would say it out loud between houses, the answers behind the next door, a always. And so I would say it was less of a feeling. I never felt like going to the next door. It was more of realizing, okay, my brain is a computer system, it’s going to do whatever it’s trained to do, and I need to program my brain that whenever something bad happens, the answer is behind the next door. So to just keep going. And, you know, I I would also say, you know, to that person that’s listening right now going, if, if they’re sitting there thinking, oh yeah, you know, this is all nice and tidy, wrapped up in a bow, like your pain turns into purpose and perspective, what I would say is just create an alternative version of how the story could end, right?
RV (22:38):
So if you’re sit, if you’re sitting on the corner with a flat tire right now, it, it, it, it feels awful, right? Like, I’m not telling people to fake their emotions. Like, it sucks when someone slams the door on your face. It sucks when you have a flat tire. It sucks when somebody dies. It sucks when you get fired. But, and this is part of where, for me, I think faith comes into it, which is in all things God works for the good of those who love him and who are called according to his purpose is to go. I am consciously choosing to believe that even though I can’t see it, even though I don’t understand it, even though I don’t feel it right now, what is a potential explanation for how this could be used for good? Or even just having the thought that it could somehow be used for good, I think gives you enough to go to, to go to the next door to go, yeah, I don’t understand it, but I’m just gonna keep going versus otherwise, I’m, I’m just searching for an explanation. And the explanation is, oh, I suck. I’m not worth it. I’ll never succeed. You know, I have bad luck. So I, I love what you’re saying there about perspective and purpose and I mean, those, those tie together really, really, really well. Well,
BO (23:50):
Thank you for knocking on the 20,000 doors because I think that what you’ve learned in that, in that season has equipped you to help so many other people in their season of not wanting to knock on the next door.
RV (24:02):
Well, thanks, Bianca. I mean, I think I, I think this is the not, I think I’m a hundred percent certain. I, you know, I’ve now interviewed thousands of people between my various podcasts over the years. This is a hundred percent the story of success there. I have not found one person who has been extremely successful who doesn’t have some version of that story. In fact, in your book you talk about Paul from the Bible, and this is, I know it’s a, I mean, hey, you’re a pastor, like, there’s gonna be a few biblical references. So
RV (25:04):
So can you like describe why you chose Paul as an example of this?
BO (25:09):
Well, I refer to Paul as my Bible boyfriend. I just feel like there is no one else and the page. And yes, my husband is aware that I have a crush on a
RV (26:07):
And before this, he’s a murderer. He’s a, he’s a, he is murdering Christians, persecuting them. Mm-Hmm.
BO (26:30):
So he’s the prosecutor and the prosecutor against people of the way as in those following Jesus. So he is on his way, he’s breathing hot threats down the neck of believers, and he’s stopped, he’s halted on the Damascus road in the desert, dusty, dirty road. And he has an encounter that really changes his life. And suffice it to say you can read his story all throughout the pages of scriptures, but the man goes on to Penn, two thirds of the noon testament, and the one who was a prosecutor and the prosecutor against the people that were people of faith. He becomes one of the, if not the chief crafter of our theology that we understand today. Now that sounds lovely. When we say theology, we think of like an ivory tower. No, this man was beaten. This man was stoned. This man was imprisoned multiple times.
BO (27:19):
This man had allegations come up against him. And there’s this one one specific account where he is just falsely charged. He’s put in a boat, he’s sent over on his way to Rome, their ship wrecked, their ship runs runs afloat against an an island called Malta. They finally make it through this storm that’s supposed to take their life. And as he’s there, they’re trying to drive themselves off and warm themselves off, and they build a fire. And as they’re building a fire, he picks up pieces of wood to start the fire. And then out comes a, a snake that bites him and everyone’s expecting him to die. And he doesn’t die. He doesn’t die. In fact, the hand that is bitten soon will be the hand that he lays on people that will experience supernatural miraculous healing. I mean, this man’s story is absolutely insane, and he has such a conviction about what he’s called to do, that it’s nothing can stop him.
BO (28:09):
I’m not saying that he walks, you know, skipping along and desires to eat bomb bonds on a beach. No, the man endures so much, and yet it did not stop him from doing what he was called to do. So the reason why so much of this book is framed upon the life, if, if there’s a through line in this book, it’s the life of Paul the Apostle where we are all gonna have this arresting moment. No, there’s not gonna be a, a light that shines down from heaven and a voice that’s like, why are you persecuting me? But there’s kind kinda a moment in our life and maybe even multiple times in our life where we’re stopped and we’re arrested and asked, what are we doing? And it’s those moments that I kinda wanted us to pause and take a take a a, a a, a pulse check, if you will.
BO (28:48):
What am I doing? What am I doing? Because there’s going to be resistance that comes along with the way when we are pursuing the call that’s upon our lives, whether that is sitting in a medical practice or whether that’s going to law school, or whether that is being a stay-at-home mom who is an entrepreneur running a business out of her kitchen. I, there’s going to be resistance. And the reason why I’m absolutely beaded with this man named Paul, is that nothing stopped him and thwarted him from not just pursuing the call upon his life, but encouraging others to do the same. So I look at Paul’s, which is the end of his life, he says, I poured myself out like a drink offering. Now this is very poetic. But he was also speaking to the philosophy during that time that during that time in ancient Greco-Roman culture, they would pour out their wine to the gods as a sacrifice. And he is saying, I am pouring myself out for the benefit and the sacrifice. Sacrifice unto the Lord, be benefit of you. And I wanna get to the end of my life and say, I have fought the good fight. I have poured myself out like a drink offering, not only pursuing the God call that he’s put on my life, but inspiring others to do the same no matter what comes my way.
RV (29:53):
Amen. I love it. Bianca, where should people go if they wanna learn about this book or connect with you, like see all the things that you are up to?
BO (30:03):
Absolutely. I’m so excited about the project and it launches August 28th. People can pre-order and get a bunch of amazing gifts and incentives and resources, not just stuff that’s gonna sit on a desk, but resources that will enable people to build resilience and grit and perseverance. So they can go to bianca ov.com/gdq for grit, don’t Quit, and also at Bianca ov on all social media platforms,
RV (30:27):
Grit, don’t quit, bianca ov.com/gdq. We’ll put a link to that in the bio as well. And I would encourage you to follow her online. I mean, I follow her on Instagram and I just, I love it. It’s just encouraging, encouraging words. So thank you for your encouragement, friend. Thank you for your example. Thank you. Thank you for boldly pursuing your calling and, and what you’re doing, and we just we’re praying for you and, and we are pulling for you. And we, we wish you the best. Thank
BO (30:55):
You. Appreciate you.
Ep 412: Leveraging Technology to Scale Your Business with Josh Hotsenpiller
AJV (00:02):
Hey everybody, and welcome to another episode on the Influential Personal Brand. It’s AJ Vaden here and super excited to have my friend Josh on the show today. And I will give him a formal formal bio, a formal overview in just a second. But this interview is super special to both me and Roy and all of B B G because this is kind of the introduction of one of our strategic partners to our community and very high level. I’ll give you this little bit of background and then I promise I’ll introduce Josh
AJV (01:11):
And so I spent the better part of eight months pretty much trying out every single free demo that was available out there. Went very far down the line with some platforms that are great if you’re looking for that type of thing with like passion.io was one we went mighty Networks Pro is another. We went far down the lines, but we did a lot. And it kind of got down to the wire when I was about to sign on the dotted line with Passion io. And they revealed to me on this final call that they couldn’t do this one thing in our community that was really, really, really, really important to us. And about that time, very serendipitously very divinely one of our teammates, Jeremy said, Hey, you should check out this company called Juno. And I was like, what’s Juno?
AJV (02:00):
Long story short, now almost eight months later, we are about to go live with our own brand builders group app, the B b G app that has been totally created with Josh’s company, Juno, and their awesome team. And so Juan, I’m just really excited to have this conversation because I also know what it’s like to intimately work with your team and know your product very well, and be someone who is paying for your services
AJV (03:13):
AJV (03:57):
Lots in the a virtual event space, which I think he should also share some of his background that
JH (04:56):
Goodness gracious. Thank you so much for having me. I’m excited to share time and ideas and talk about the power of community and people.
AJV (05:04):
Yes. And I know you’re probably like, that’s the longest intro ever. You could have cut off four minutes, however, think this is gonna be a great conversation. So I’m gonna start in reverse order Okay. Of all of these questions. But before we get into that, can you just give people a little bit of insight of all of this awesome stuff that you’ve been doing for personal brands and companies behind the scenes. It’s like that bio does not do you justice whatsoever in terms of all the things that you’ve actually done. So help our audience get to know you.
JH (05:35):
Yeah. You know, I my bio is kind of over the river and through the woods. You know, you, I I quick bio grew up, the son of a preacher man was in that world, didn’t really know what else to do. I went and got my divinity degree in New York, right outside of New York City. Started a church at 23, grew up to about a thousand people. Started to feel like, gosh, like there’s what is, what would I do if I wasn’t doing this? Mm-Hmm.
JH (06:25):
And for me, it was a similar thing. I, what would I do if I wasn’t a pastor? And, and maybe you can relate to this as a listener, you grew up with a family that was kind of doing a family business, if you will. Mm-Hmm. You know, maybe it was my dad was in lawn care, or an engineer, or what restaurant business, whatever it was. And then maybe you go, wait a minute, maybe that’s not my story. Mm-Hmm. And so me and a me and a buddy, when we were 27, 28 years old decided we wanted to mobilize people to change the world. I know that sounds kind of whatever but we didn’t even know there was a space out there called the corporate social responsibility space. And so right during the 2007, eight 2007 and eight housing mortgage crisis, we launched a do good platform called Profits for Purpose that helped mobilize employees to give back time and money.
JH (07:11):
And yeah, we grew it up. We had over a million global employees accessing the platform. Those, a lot of those brands you mentioned, GoPro, Estee Lauder, staples, N F L, all sorts of groups. I always just believe in the power of community. And so I begin to build bra products for brands all around mobilizing people to do something. Hmm. So whether it was gl hp, we built the global sales enablement tool that to this day they still license and use it from one of my companies, the un they have boots on the ground all over this world helping fight genocide, hunger, poverty, and they weren’t able to mobilize those people. So we built a platform to mobilize ’em. And ultimately, my vision has always been how do you mobilize people to do amazing things and whatever that might be. And that’s the power of community.
JH (07:59):
I mean, that really is what it is. And so to me, we always had that big vision of how do we mobilize people? Tech was just part of it, right? It was just a thing. We always say, we’re not a tech company, we’re a values company. Tech is just a, is a, is a tool that you use to enable a vision. I love that. Yeah. And I think when you think about it bigger than that, you kind of missed the point and you mission drift and you kind of forget why you’re doing what you’re doing. And so for me, it’s everybody listening has a vision, has a community, has a vertical they care about. And the question is, what are the tools that we need to create radical change? And so tech has been that tool for me over the last 12, 15 years.
JH (08:41):
It’s, I’ve traveled the world, literally worked with amazing global brands, worked with a lot of really neat individual people, some amazing people. Like maybe some of your listeners know Lisa Turkers. We built her app. She’s one of the most phenomenal leaders I’ve never been around. We built Catalyst was a big group we built for a ton of their people. So we were in a lot of those faith-based spaces fortune 100 spaces. We’ve done it all from soup to nuts. And we’ve learned a lot from folks that have said, Hey, I’ve got an audience of 2000. You know, when we launched Lisa’s a app, I’ll never forget it. We trended number one in the app store for three days, which is an incredible thing to do for downloads. And you think about, you hear these things, oh my gosh, we trended in the app store. We did put 2 million people, active users on that app. That’s
AJV (09:29):
Amazing.
JH (09:30):
So, which remind me to come back to that because I think that there’s a, there’s a, there’s a strategic message I want to share about how and why to use technology. And I’m gonna use, I’ll use that as a use case cause I think it’ll help everybody listening. But yeah, we, we found that technology was a great tool. It was a great utility, which we’ll talk about in a minute to execute a bigger purpose. So that’s kind of what’s brought me here. I’ve done TEDxs, I’m a US state department, global ambassador for entrepreneurship. Oh man, it’s just been a wild ride all from just being the son of a preacher man. So it’s been a fun time. Yeah. Know
AJV (10:02):
What, you should really set smaller goals, you know, it’s like
JH (10:56):
Right. Right.
AJV (10:56):
They’re tools. Right. And it’s like they can be used for good or bad. It just all has to do with the intention. So why don’t we just kind of start there. It’s like you said this, it’s come back to like how and why to use technology. And I think that’s a good general place to start.
JH (11:13):
Cool. You know what’s funny about my mom and, and, and dad, they’re getting into that fourth quarter stage of their life. And I, I have a, I have a ritual. My folks live in Anaheim Hills, orange County. And so I have a ritual that every night I’m there, I drink whiskey with dad. And every morning I take walk with mom mm-hmm.
JH (11:58):
It’s not going away. And so now the question is, and so I raised 13 million from Insights Partners. It’s the largest software only BC in the world. They have 200 billion under management. And I, through total random Niff God we raised from their co-founder, a guy named Jerry Murdoch, who Richard Branson officiated his wedding. If that puts any context into like, you know, I’m raising money from this guy that like literally chases where the snow is
JH (12:52):
Well, I use my app, my, my Maps app. In fact, now it’s to the point when when I get into my car, it tells me it, it goes, you’re either going to the Crosby Club, which is where I golf, you’re going to Church of rb. That’s where our family goes to church. You’re going to star it knows based on time where you’re, where it’s Spotify is like, Hey, it’s Friday. It’s your country mix. It’s been a long week. Like, here’s some new songs that we think you’re gonna, like, what’s happening. Technology is becau it’s a utility. It’s a tool to make something happen and make your life easier. And so when you think about technology, you think about it from a utility standpoint. How is this a utility to help my community do something they already wanna do better, faster, more efficiently? I want to drive to this location.
JH (13:44):
This map’s gonna say, this is how you should get there in the fastest way. I want to listen to music. This app’s gonna tell me the music I don’t even know existed. I’m gonna love that in the fastest way. That’s what tech is. It’s a utility. And so you think about your community and your audience. So Lisa Turkish has told you I was going to use her as an example. She had, she’s brilliant. She had this idea, she’s like, I wanna do the first five. I wanna own the first five minutes of all of my audience’s day. Mm-Hmm.
JH (14:28):
But it was, it’s the most utility, one of the most utility apps we’ve done. And it’s, it’s still to this day, I think averages a couple million people on it actively, which is phenomenal to think about. But you gotta look at your audience and go, what is it that you are trying to accomplish? And what is the, the hammer and the nails and the screwdriver and the wrench that you need to do that? Mm-Hmm.
AJV (15:06):
So good.
JH (15:07):
That’s the question you solve that maybe you need an app, maybe you need an airplane, maybe I don’t know what you need. But the problem is we always think technology is gonna solve the problem. Oh, the problem. We haven’t even defined
AJV (15:21):
JH (15:44):
And it’s just, and and all of a sudden we’re like, my app sucks. The app, the company sucks. And you’re like, do I suck? I mean, who knows? Every, maybe everybody does. Maybe nobody does. Maybe we just didn’t identify a problem. Yeah. I was, I’ll never forget, I was sitting in the CEO’s office of a, I don’t know, me, half a billion dollar company. It wasn’t huge, but you know, big enough. And I was sitting in his office and he goes, Hey, I’m, I’m looking at signing this contract for this app, but I’m staring at this proposal going, I would never use this. And I said, my God, I’d hope not. I’d hope you’re too busy to use this, this you are not our target audience.
AJV (16:20):
Yeah.
JH (16:22):
You know? And he goes, oh my gosh, I never even thought about that. The question is not would you use this? The question is, would your audience use this again, icp, you know, our ideal customer profile, who is this person? Would they use it? And so when we look at your community, we go, what does your community need? Some of it might need leadership coaching, some of it might need emotion. I was just got off this podcast, AJ in this group called Happy. It’s phenomenal. They all they are is a listening for hire company. They’re not trained psychologists. You literally, at scale, they’re creating listeners. I love
AJV (17:00):
This
JH (17:01):
Which I can, I can open this, I can open this up to our AI conversation in a minute. But I was just on this podcast, these guys out of Manhattan, and they asked me to come on as an exec. How do you listen as an executive? And they go, we we’re literally scaling listening. Hmm. And you, their audience just needs somebody to listen. So it determines the type of app you build, the utility that you use. Is it just audio streaming? Is it video? My audience needs to be heard. Yeah. Well, my audience needs to be leadership coached. My audience needs to understand you know new law term, whatever it is. You gotta start with that mm-hmm.
AJV (17:48):
Hmm. That’s so good. And you know, it’s we had at this conversation, a good friend of mine has a custom app creation company called App name’s Amanda Mariachi. She lives in Denver. And you know, I had her on the podcast, I don’t know, a while back. And one of the questions that, you know, she had said is, the problem with building custom apps is that at the end of the day, it’s always gonna be more expensive than what you wanted it to be. It’s never gonna have a hundred percent of the functionality that you want. Sure. And somehow it’s always my fault, right. As the developer, as the builder, and Yep. Said, the truth is, is an app only works if you know exactly what you want it to do. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (18:38):
It’s over time. And at the end of the day, we’re like, we gotta call it, and then we finish an incomplete project. And she goes, yep. That’s often what an app building experience looks like. And it’s why we say no. It’s like, if you don’t know exactly who your audience is, what your business model is, if you can’t tell us that in the beginning, then we won’t work with you. And it’s exactly what you just said. It’s, it’s not do I need an app? It’s, could an app solve a problem that my audience has, because I know what the problem is and I know who my audience is.
JH (19:07):
And that’s how you grow an audience. I mean, it really is. It’s how, you know, it’s like anything. I mean, let’s go back to this listening group. You know, they, one of the things they brought me on, you know, they’re like, Josh, how many times do your exec, you know, your, your people just, I just wanna be heard. I just, I just wanna be heard. And, and I’ll tell a great story when I was I remember as the rise of Millennialism comes into the marketplace, and as a, as an ex, you know, GenX guy I’m wired a little bit different than millennials, but I’ll never forget this one guy came into my office and he goes we’re talking, and, and he goes, oh, I gotta tell you about this new company. I started, one of my employees in the middle of the day,
AJV (19:52):
Yeah. Tell me, tell me
JH (19:54):
You, you started a company. And he goes, yeah. So he kind of tells him about it. And I go, when, when do you work on it? And he goes, no. All throughout the day, I’m like, so wait a minute, when I’m employing you
JH (20:45):
Like, we feel responsible, like, yeah, you are here because I’m a thought leader in a space and, and I am the one you need to listen to. And so I’m gonna make a bunch of crap up and hope it’s right and every, you know, whatever else, right? And like, wait a minute, the art of listening is going to educate you on how to lead. Remember, you’re being paid to lead not to talk. And so a huge part of what you can do in leading is listening so that you know how to lead mm-hmm.
AJV (21:33):
That. But I think that’s, you know, we can apply that same conversation, not just to technology or an app, but, and anything, right. It doesn’t, it’s like even starting out, it’s like, I was just, as you were thinking as you were talking, I was thinking about, you know, the journey that we take customers on and brand builders group, and it’s like what we call finding your brand d n a are these six components. It’s the foundation of your personal brand. And one of those six components is what’s your business model? And are other words, what’s your primary business model? How do you make money right now? And then what do you want it to be in the long term? And it’s so interesting that for most people, most of that decision happens in a very small group setting that involves none of their clients. Mm. Mm-Hmm.
JH (22:42):
I don’t know where that came from. I’m supposed to know when you’re supposed to listen. That’s what you’re supposed to do. That’s what you, that’s what you’re supposed to do. You’re not supposed to know. Mm-Hmm.
JH (23:33):
We could do online learning, credentialing, where we could do community. Could you create that? And I remember I went back to my, my guys, I was like, guys, the customers asking us to create an all OnOne solution, we should do it. Now we’re in conversations with a big partnership with the company, and I was talking to their cfo F and they’re, I don’t know, they’re probably a half a billion dollar company. They’re worth multiple billions of dollars. And, and I said to ’em, I said, you know, it’s interesting when we got into this, I knew virtual only was gonna commoditize and evaporate. And so we needed a, we needed a more holistic solution. And he sheepishly laughed and said, we bought a company that we watched evaporate from 21 million in revenue to zero. Think about that. 21 million in, in, in, in, in revenue to zero.
JH (24:19):
Wow. Was I some savant that knew that I know that. Or did I listen to that? Mm-Hmm.
AJV (25:02):
I love that. I think that’s such a good reminder. Like I said, this is not just for technology or apps. This is just building your business, growing your business, leading your team. Listening, listening matters. Surprise. Right.
JH (25:14):
I know. Shocking.
AJV (25:16):
Surprise. Now on that, I loved what you said earlier, and I wrote this down, is, you know, it’s like technology really at its best use is helping people do things more efficiently. Do them where it’s, you know, easier, faster, smarter. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (25:59):
We, we, it’s like, and I love, and I don’t remember who told us this, but this was some interview that we had with someone who is smarter than us who said technology is only scary when you don’t know how it applies to you. Mm-Hmm.
JH (26:43):
It’s, so let’s go back to what we said. It’s not going away. So you can get scared and you can throw your hands up. You can talk about living in an al you know, an alternate community that doesn’t do parallel communities. I hear people talk about this all the time and I’m like, you know, all, all the conservatives will live over here and everybody else will live over here. We’ll just live in parallel societies. You know, it’s not gonna happen. Mm-Hmm.
JH (27:27):
You could walk down an alley in the middle of the day, you don’t thinking of it because you can’t see where it’s going. And that’s where we’re right now with ai. We don’t know where it’s going. And instead of seeing the good of it, the brain is wired to protect itself. And so we are seeing all the bad, right? Mm-Hmm.
JH (28:11):
Gimme the other thing, and I’ve been saying this to my wife for years ago, Kim, our boys, I have two boys, crews and Crosby, they’re 1113. I said, they are gonna have EQs through the roof because that is that, or they’re gonna be plumbers because those are gonna be the two jobs the future is gonna have. It’s gonna be working class trade jobs because you can’t machine learn that or it’s gonna be soft skills. And my mind bent this morning, I didn’t even, I got asked to be on this executive that listened thing from a big c e outta of Manhattan. And so I was like, yeah, sure, I’ll do that Ben, no problem. I get on and all of a sudden this guy gets on, he’s a c e of happy, which is this listening thing. And I’m like, dude, I’ve been saying for years future jobs are gonna get professional huggers listeners.
JH (28:58):
Like, because you automate these tasks. Yeah. What’s left? It’s hu it’s human need. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (30:02):
Other things in life? Yeah.
JH (30:03):
It doesn’t go away. I mean, do you remember, I don’t remember. It wasn’t there, but when the TV came out, I remember my parents saying, and I don’t, I mean I was raised like very religious rights. I don’t know how many did folks listen in, have a religious background or not. But this was how, you know, Satan was finally giving able speak to the whole world and introduce the mark of the beast or whatever. But tv here’s how it was radio first, then tv, and then the internet. And you go, okay, we can doom and gloom till we’re dead in the face mm-hmm.
AJV (30:44):
Totally.
JH (30:45):
Or we can flip the light on and say it’s, it’s a hallway, it’s an hour. I mean
AJV (30:49):
Yeah. I liken that too. It’s like, it does not matter what it is in life. It can be used for good or bad relationship. It’ll be, are healthy and unhealthy. Food is good and not good. It’s real and artificial. It’s like we can make anything good, bad, and honestly we can make anything bad. Good. That’s right. Bad is where I just, I had this podcast interview earlier today with a gentleman named Damon West and I loved what he said. He goes, the future is defined in only one of two ways, fear or faith. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (31:47):
It was we needed to consolidate Yeah. All of the different platforms into one. And that was something that our community has been saying for years and it’s something our team has been saying for years is when do we have to stop logging into one more place? Yes. Yes. And it’s cause like we were scrappy when we were building this. We don’t have investors, we’ve been self-funded and it’s like, well it’s not the best but it works for now and we’ll upgrade when it’s time to upgrade. And so it was consolidation and then organization. Mm. It was consolidation and organization of, you know, we just believe like regardless if we’re right or wrong, this is our belief is that people don’t pay for information anymore. Hmm. No, it’s for free. They don’t but they do pay for organization.
JH (32:33):
Mm.
AJV (32:33):
And they pay for application. Yeah. But it’s like, we don’t pay for information. You can get that for free, but often you don’t get it in the right order. And so you’re trying to piecemeal it together and you can do the right things in the wrong order and it will blow up in your Sure.
JH (32:47):
No doubt.
AJV (32:48):
And so that was our whole thing is like we need to consolidate and organize and then our team is the one who helps to apply and it would like, and that was like, that is why we built this app. And you know, one of the reasons we chose Juno is because of some of the AI components. Yeah. That did not exist in the other platforms. And yeah, one of the things that our community wants is they want a little bit of this done for them. It’s like, I don’t want to have to tell your team who I want to be introduced to. I wanna log in and I want someone to tell me
JH (33:21):
Like exactly
AJV (33:22):
Based on your profile, here are the five other members that you should connect with in this community. That’s so
JH (33:28):
Cool. Yeah. And let me share with, with our listeners, like how I kind of architect that engineered it because it’s gonna go back to the utility. So I created this thing called human interest modeling and, and what it was when it said, when you onboard onto our platform, we want you to declare what you’re interested in. Mm-Hmm.
JH (34:19):
Next thing you know, we’re on a rabbit trail of a yacht and the next thing you know, it’s more yachts and it’s golf. And next thing you know, if you look at that now that’s a complete profile of what you’ve discovered that you’re interested in. Not declared mm-hmm.
JH (35:05):
So it’s like, oh, I think I could really help with public speaking with research papers. I’m just making stuff up. And then somebody else comes on and goes, gosh, I’m the worst at research. I need to try to, I need to try to learn that. And all of a sudden the system’s like, Hey gosh, and AJ you guys should connect cuz AJ’s awesome at public speaking and you wanna get good at it and you’re really good at research and Jill over here really wants to get good at it. And all of a sudden, what is that? That’s utility that’s valued. To your point, that’s organization, that’s ai. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (35:59):
Yeah. It is. Back to, it’s like, and under, in order to use it, you have to understand it. You don’t have to know all of it. But it’s, I know that there’s a million ways that I could be using AI right now. I’m using it in five different ways, but it’s changing my life. It is giving time, back, minutes back that I can reinvest in other things that are important. Saving us money. It’s like there’s so many things that, you know, just to that point of it’s, you know, you only fear what you don’t understand. Even if it’s at the micro level of like, okay, I understand how I can use it for this one thing. Somebody is Yeah. And it, it that’s very much, you know, this conversation around technology in general and the app. And before I forget, cause I know we’re almost outta time if you guys are listening and you’re like, okay, I like this technology conversation and I’m curious about this app and that is something that I, you know, I, I do wanna explore, I wanna tell you guys where to go to learn about Juno.
AJV (36:51):
So you can go to juno live.com, that’s their website. So juno live.com. When you’re talking to their team, tell ’em that you heard about it through this podcast. We’re trying to do a really good job of tracking how we connect people. Don’t be surprised if there’s an AI component to this podcast in the near future that will do that for you automatically. That this is this one way to get connected to Juno. But Josh, if they wanna connect with you and they just want to follow you and learn more about you and learn from you, where’s the best place for them to go?
JH (37:23):
Yeah. I mean obviously jump on Instagram or LinkedIn. I mean those are awesome places to hang out. I do a a weekly email called Monday Motivation through I think josh hoen piller.com. You can sign up for it. I think we still have landing page up. I have a few thousand people that get that weekly. And it’s just honestly just my musings on leadership and life and, and things I’m learning on, on how to be a better listener, how to be a better leader how to build more utility in everything that we do. So yeah, come hang out, let’s get to know each other.
AJV (37:55):
Yes, and I’ll put all of that in the show notes too. And there’s so much to Josh that we did not cover today. This was so much about technology, but he has this awesome mastermind. You’re doing coaching, you’re doing so many, you’re speaking like you do so much more than what we talked about today. So we’ll have to have you come on another time to talk about, you know, part two of all things Josh, and you know, I just so appreciate you coming on and talking about this and for you guys listening one I just encourage you to, to learn more if, like, if you are trying to explore how do I use technology or an app to deepen the, you know, relationships in my community and isn’t app the right thing that I could just personally say, we’re paying for Juno, we’re using Juno. Highly recommend it. Their team has been awesome to work with. So you just get major accolades from our team, you, but then more than that it’s just to explore how technology can help you be better at what you do. Yeah. And I think that’s a really important thing. So Josh, thank you. Thank you for your time today. Thanks for your wisdom. Loved having you on. Oh,
JH (38:56):
Thank you. Pleasure was mine. And love everything you guys are doing and can’t wait to get to know you even more.
AJV (39:01):
Likewise. And then everyone else who’s listening, stay tuned for the recap episode that will be popping up later this week. We’ll see you next night.
JH (39:10):
Talk to you soon.
Ep 410: Hugs Help: How to Support People Who Are Grieving with Randy Stocker
RV (00:02):
Hey, I am gonna introduce you to a new friend of mine. His name is Randy Stalker, and I am having Randy on the show because of a few reasons. So first of all, I met Randy at the National Speakers Association, which has been a big part of my life, all the way from back from the time when I was like 20 years old. We met at a recent meeting and I always, always love meeting fellow NS AERs. But specifically it’s because of Randy’s topic. Now his topic is not one that is so hyper specific to personal branding and, you know, the things that we often talk about. But, you know, occasionally on this show, I will share personal development content. I’ve talked about how and why I stopped drinking, and I’ve shared some spiritual episodes and things. I’ve also had a lot of my, my friends, ed, mylett, and Jamie Kern Lima, etc, talk just more about like entrepreneurial stories.
RV (00:55):
But Randy is someone who has an expertise on helping people to deal with grief and loss. And he is the survivor on of a a pretty massive tragedy. And we’re gonna hear the story of that. He lost some family members that he’s gonna, I’m gonna let him tell the story, but what he’s done is he has turned it into a personal brand and he’s turned it into a career and he’s turned it into a message and a mission to help people figure out how to overcome loss brief you know, survival and, and really just he’s helped start a number of bereavement groups and you know, he’s just a, a good listener and, and a support. And so that’s something that I always struggle with which we’ll talk about. But anyways, Randy, welcome to the show.
RS (01:52):
Thank you, Rory. I appreciate the opportunity. So,
RV (01:55):
So tell me the story your story. I’d love, I’d, I’d love to, I’d love to start there. I know it’s, it’s probably something you’ve shared many times and I’m sure it’s painful, but I I think it’s a pretty, a pretty key part of, of the jumping off point of all this.
RS (02:09):
Absolutely. So on July 22nd, 2003, my two daughters, Janelle, who’s age 19 and Amy age nine, went to visit their grandpa and Grandma Stalker in Gibson City, Illinois. They spent the time back to school shopping with grandma, called my wife Shar, and said how much fun they were having all the money grandma spent on them. And then they were driving back home when a guy driving a fully loaded semi-truck speeding and reading a book broadsided the car where Janelle and Amy were sitting killing all three immediately.
RV (02:50):
So you lost your two daughters and your, was it your mom and my
RS (02:54):
And my mother? Yes.
RV (02:56):
Wow. All in all in one moment. Just like that.
RS (02:59):
Yeah. Janelle had just finished her freshman year of college at Dur Dury University in Springfield, Missouri. She asked me if she could spend time with grandpa and grandma before she went back for her sophomore year, which I thought was wonderful. Her 19 year old girl to ask that. Unfortunately, Rory, I made our nine year old daughter Amy go with her. Huh? I thought it would be good quality time for the two. I knew grandpa and grandma would love seeing them both, and so I made Amy go, which I regret to this day. But I always asked myself the question, was it the right thing to do? And the answer always yes.
RV (03:37):
What makes you say that? Like, how do you, how do you, how have you come around to, to that viewpoint?
RS (03:49):
Well, it’s, it’s always good for kids to spend time with their grandparents. Number one, you don’t anticipate your daughters are gonna get killed by a semi-truck, or they’re making a, about a three hour trip to see grandpa and grandma. The girls needed to spend more time together cuz Janelle’s going back to college. So I just said, Amy, you need to go and it’ll be good for you,
RV (04:13):
Uhhuh,
RS (04:26):
There’s guilt for 19 years for doing that, but I always ask the same question, was it the right thing to do? And the answer’s always, yes, it was the right thing to do. Mm-Hmm.
RV (04:34):
RS (04:35):
So just because we do the right thing doesn’t mean we have the right results. And this was a terrible instance of that. So,
RV (04:44):
Yeah. So I thank you for sharing that. You know, I got two kids, I got two boys now, and it’s a different, you know, it’s a different way of seeing the world as a parent and I so I struggle with what to say, right? And, and I struggle with what to do. We had less than three miles from our house here where we live in Nashville just recently was a school shooting at the Covenant School. And we knew 11 children at that school two of which are our next door neighbors. One of ’em, which was in Bible study. Thankfully none of the kids we knew were kids that were injured. I mean, minor injuries, but no, no, no, no gunshot wounds. And, and nobody, no one that we knew died that day. But that was a massive, massive tragedy right down the street.
RV (05:47):
You know, I was in, I was in high school in Colorado the year that Columbine shooting happened. And you know, there there’s, there’s some of these just extraordinary tragedies, nine 11 tsunamis. And, and then there are the, the kind of more personal and private ones of, you know, I, I had a friend lose her husband unexpectedly a few weeks ago, and like a pretty good friend you know, people who lose a child and you just go like, I don’t know what to do. I don’t know what to say. I, I don’t want to say nothing, but I don’t, I really don’t wanna say the wrong thing. And so sometimes I say nothing like, can you help? Like what? Like what, what, what do we, what, what do we, what’s,
RS (06:36):
Yeah, what’s the you’re, you’re like most people and just like I was before I lost my daughter’s Roy. It’s not untypical. So lot of people start out by saying the wrong thing because we think, cuz we’ve heard it before, things like, I know exactly how you feel. You don’t wanna say that cuz you never know exactly how I feel or how that person’s feeling. You never say, call me if you need anything because I don’t, if I didn’t call you to mow my yard or shovel my snow beforehand, I’m not gonna call you now. So what you do say is, I miss him or her, him or her too. I cannot understand your pain. Just know that I am here for you. Or if you’ve experienced loss yourself having experienced loss, my self, my heart truly, truly goes out for you and your family. Always and your family in there. Okay. The simple, simple thing to say is, I am so, so sorry for your loss
RV (07:45):
And you don’t, I
RS (07:45):
Never tried to assume that you know what they’re going through because you don’t.
RV (07:51):
And do you not get, I mean the, you know, I’ve lost my grandparents never, like someone in my immediate family I mean, I’m a biological father died, but I, I didn’t really know him af I only knew him until I was like six months old. And so, like, I never really knew him. And like I have to think that you, you know, you have funerals and you’ve got insurance companies and you’ve got, you know, just so many things are going off it. And it’s, it is helpful to hear those things. I’m so, so sorry. Even though you hear it over and over from everybody else and it, it’s still just, that’s the, that’s still helpful to hear.
RS (08:37):
Yeah. Even better than that, don’t give the per person permission to grieve when you’re sitting down with somebody just to, just to talk to them doing a one-to-one. You only need to give them permission to grieve or to get mad to get with you. Huh? It helps ’em a lot cuz they’re trying to hold it in cuz they don’t wanna burst out and start crying in front of their good friend. Number two, shut up and let them talk.
RV (09:07):
Hmm.
RS (09:08):
Sometimes we try to solve problems, we try to find solutions. Guys, you can fix a broken arm or a cut finger. You can’t fix grief. You can’t cure grief When you lose somebody that you loved for a long time. It, it’s always gonna be right here. So the only thing that can cure that is that person comes back from the dead and that’s not gonna happen. So a lot of times we try to fix something that’s unfixable.
RV (09:41):
I mean I think that’s a good reminder of like, and I don’t know if that’s more of like a male brain issue or just everybody, but like, there’s a part of me that just wants to do something. It’s almost like I feel like if I were, if I were a good friend and if I cared, I would do something and I don’t know what to do. And so I try to like do something and say stupid stuff. And you’re, what I hear you saying is like listening is doing something and listening, giving them permission to listen or, or listening and giving them permission to experience whatever they need to experience is doing something.
RS (10:22):
Yeah. A lot of people walk away from this situation cuz they’re so uncomfortable with themselves.
RV (10:28):
Yeah.
RS (10:29):
Okay. My advice is to just be there. If it’s a good friend or a family member, you don’t have to say anything. Just sit beside ’em and hold their hand or give ’em a hug. Just being there means so much. Some of the cliches we heard and still hear, I’m heals all wounds. What the heck does that mean? Hear it all the time. They are in a better place. So many people said that to me and I said, you know, I’m sure heaven’s a lot better place than this stupid earth we live on, but my daughters are doing pretty good with us in Quincy, Illinois. But we also heard God never gives you more than you can than you can handle. And God really tested me by taking my mom and my two daughters at once. It’s a true saying, but did I wanna hear it? Absolutely not
RV (11:21):
Mm-Hmm.
RS (11:34):
Even
RV (11:34):
If it’s, even if it’s true, it’s not helpful. It’s
RS (11:37):
True and it’s hurtful.
RV (11:40):
Mm-Hmm.
RS (11:41):
RV (12:05):
Mm-Hmm.
RS (12:06):
Number one, please be patient and understanding with me.
RV (12:13):
Hmm.
RS (12:13):
Patient being a key word. Number two, please let me grieve in my own way and in my own time. Don’t tell me how to grieve. Don’t tell me when to grieve. Don’t tell me when to start grieving and stop grieving.
RV (12:29):
Hold on. And I wanna, so I wanna go back to the patient one for a second. So when you say, please be patient and understanding with me, that means like, don’t pressure me to do stuff. Be okay if I’m unresponsive for a while. Like if I disappear for if I disappear for a little bit, I’m not at the parties, I’m not whatever. I mean, I if if it’s an employee, it’s, I may be not coming back at work or colleague. I mean, is that, are those all the things when you say like, be patient with me? Yeah.
RS (12:58):
Be patient means I am not the same person I was yesterday. Okay. I mean, once my daughters were killed and my mom were killed, I, I changed from the Randy stalker that was fun-loving and happy and liked to drink a beer with the guys. I go to a bible studying or something to this angry, frustrated person that couldn’t understand why his daughters weren’t there. And every time he saw other girls their age got mad, got angry, got frustrated. So a a person who’s grieving is not the same buddy I had yesterday. So be patient with them because they will get to the point, maybe they’ll be close to that same person, but maybe not.
RV (13:48):
Yeah.
RS (13:48):
How about the things,
RV (13:50):
I can’t imagine what that would be like to see kids your same, that were the age of your kids.
RS (13:57):
Yeah. Please forgive me if I say something stupid insensitive. Okay. When you’re grieving your mind’s not the same. You say a lot of dumb things and I upset so many people, they were trying to comfort me. Oh, they were having fun with their kids and I would get mad. So I was just a totally different person. So you just gotta understand that
RV (14:20):
Is that, that’s number three you’re talking about there?
RS (14:24):
It’s number four. Yeah.
RV (14:24):
Number four. Yeah. And when you say let, let me grieve in my own way, like, you know, I just wanna spend like a minute on each one of these. Oh, you bet. And, and y’all, and I don’t, I didn’t mention this, but Randy has a book called Hugs Help. Our story of tragic loss, survival and helping others as you can tell, it’s, you know, it’s very practical. I mean emotional but very practical and like these things that we’re, we’re running through right now. And, and so grieving in my own way, I feel like that comes back to what you said a little bit earlier of the things not to say as like, oh, you should grieve like this, or I understand what it feels like, or God won’t give you more than you can handle or any, anything that sort of leads lets on in a presumptuous way that like, I know what you’re going through or I know what is best for you. It’s actually way better to just sit and go, I have nothing for you. Like, I don’t know what to do. I can’t imagine how you’re feeling. I be
RS (15:26):
Honest. Yes. I
RV (15:27):
Have no recommendation. I don’t even know what to say. I just want you to know that I care and I’m here, basically. Yeah.
RS (15:33):
Be a supporter of somebody who’s grieving. Don’t be a comforter, be a supporter.
RV (15:38):
What’s the
RS (15:38):
Difference? Wherever you can help them get around. Help ’em with their kids, mow their yard, whatever it takes. Just help take some of the additional stresses away so they can concentrate on their grief and surviving their grief and getting through their grief.
RV (15:55):
Ah, so when you say that really
RS (15:56):
On, on the fringes, help ’em on the fringes to take some of the stress away.
RV (16:00):
Yeah. So when you say be a supporter, you’re saying like, take care of the practical things. Don’t try to like do the emotional things.
RS (16:07):
Yes.
RV (16:09):
Yeah. That’s interesting. I feel that way about like having a baby like that, having, having kids rocked my world and I’m just like, I was just not prepared emotionally for what being a dad would be like and how difficult the whole thing was. Yeah. And like what helped so much was people bringing dinner, which it was like, never in my life could, I imagine for one moment that like bringing someone bringing dinner would make such a huge difference as when we had our first kid and, and our second kid of just like, there’s so much going on. Just getting dinner together is a massive feat. So that’s interesting. That’s the connection I make there. When you you’re, that’s like what you’re talking about.
RS (16:49):
Yeah. Tie that into a funeral though. In the funeral you have their visitation, you have people bringing all kinds of casseroles and food and drinks to your house once a funeral’s over the house is empty. I mean, we had hundreds of people, thousands to come to the visitation, hundreds come to the house and all of a sudden it was just haw and I and nothing left. That’s when you really need to step up as a friend. Okay. When it gets really quiet and don’t, don’t ever think you are bothering them cuz they’re thinking, why hasn’t Rory called me? Why hasn’t AJ stopped by my house? Don’t they like me anymore? That’s where I need to step up and start helping people.
RV (17:32):
Yeah. That and then I think it’s, it’s, it’s just, it’s just so ironic because it’s sort of like miscommunication. Like the definition of miscommunication where you go somebody is maybe not calling or not stopping by because they’re so afraid they’re gonna say the wrong thing or do the wrong thing. And yet you’re saying all you, all you have to do is be there and don’t do anything else or just be there and help with the basics. Like, and it’s so, it’s so simple. It’s just, you know,
RS (18:02):
We try to do more than we’re, than we should be doing.
RV (18:04):
Yeah, totally. Totally. so you said please forgive me if I’m, I’m you know, if I say something silly or insensitive what else, what, what are some of the others? These are so help, this is so helpful, Randy.
RS (18:18):
Yeah. The, the fifth one is a lot of people are scared to bring up the name of the deceased. They, they think it’s going to make us start crying or get angry. Like we’ve, for like, I’d forgotten my mom and my two daughters were killed.
RV (18:33):
Totally.
RS (18:33):
Okay. That is, that’s a fear we shouldn’t have because people who are grieving want to hear the names of their loved ones. They want to hear stories, really
RV (18:44):
Pictures.
RS (18:45):
Oh, absolutely. I run a big Facebook site and to a t people want to hear stories about their loved one because we never want them to ever be forgotten. Ever. So proactively say, bring up a story or show a picture. If you
RV (19:03):
Really not
RS (19:04):
Comfortable, if you’re not comfortable doing that, say, Hey, I remembered a great story about your dad. It made me laugh this morning. Can I share it with you? So ask for permission.
RV (19:17):
Okay. Yeah. That is, I am exactly the opposite of that. I feel, I feel like, oh my gosh, I just, I don’t want to tiptoe into anything that’s gonna make them sad. It’s really sad. I worry less about making ’em angry. I worry about going, here we are having a beautiful day and now I’m gonna bring up something. You know, like AJ’s mom died when she was 15 and sometimes I’m just like, I can’t imagine how sad to grow up and to get married and to have kids and not have your mom there. And so it’s like I sometimes am afraid to even say something about my mom because I’m so, I just feel like it’s gonna make her feel bad. You know? Like, so that’s super helpful. I would not have guessed that at all.
RS (20:01):
Roy, ask her, ask her to tell you a story about her mom when she was 12. Okay. Proactively ask her. I mean, she would love to talk about her mom, but she’s not gonna bring it up cuz you don’t bring it up. Okay. I, 19 years later, I still love hearing stories about mom and Janelle. Naomi don’t hear ’em very often. Sometimes it brings a tear to my eye. Nothing wrong with that. Same with you. For all the people you’ve lost or anybody’s lost out there who actively share a story with them.
RV (20:32):
Yeah. That’s powerful.
RS (20:35):
Okay. Number eight, never stop calling me. Sometimes we think, well we’re, we’re not gonna call today because all their other friends are calling. Well, all the friends are saying, well, we’re not gonna call today because all their friends are, are calling a graver is waiting in hope. And that phone rings for somebody just to say, Hey, I’m thinking about you today. Okay. So never stop that calling and it’s just not on the date of death. You gotta kick in mind the secondary losses. I didn’t just lose my mom and my two daughters. I had lost college graduations. I had lost walking my daughters down the aisle. Uhhuh
RV (21:27):
Yeah. I heard, and I once heard I had a good, I had a good friend who lost her dad. And I remember her telling me that the entire first year that somebody’s gone, every single holiday, every single annual event, whether it’s Valentine’s Day, Christmas, Halloween, summer vacation, their birthday, like, it’s like they experienced the grief over and over again. Like the whole year of, she used to call it, it was the, she called it the year of firsts. And she was like, when somebody dies, it’s like the, it’s not just the day. It’s like there’s this whole year of first and every time, it’s like the first Christmas with Adam, the first vacation with Adam, em, the first time at home with without em the first, the first the the, the first time we go back to the golf course that we used to go to. Like, and that really hit me of like, wow, that, that means you’re at least for a year, it’s like pretty intense. Not just, oh this happened. There’s a funeral and like we all are all moving on now.
RS (22:39):
Yeah. One thing to keep in mind too, it’s not just the actual day. Grief builds up, it builds up inside of a body. Okay. Father’s Day, I hate the most cause I don’t have two of my daughters or Father’s Day. So three or four or five days before Father’s Day, I can feel the grief starting on my gut and working its toy up. And this gotta to explode. So the best time to call people is two or three or four days before those key events say, Hey, I’m thinking about you, I’m praying for you. I’m here to help. Okay.
RV (23:15):
Is that, let’s
RS (23:15):
Say get to the actual day, it’s, the buildup is worse than the actual day.
RV (23:21):
Ah,
RS (23:22):
Today is another day in their life, but the buildup anticipating thickness is gonna be a terrible day is a lot worse than the actual day.
RV (23:30):
Wow. Yeah. That’s insightful to just go like, yeah. I mean I guess I imagine you never have another Father’s Day where you don’t, you just never have another Father’s Day where you don’t think about it. And so you’re leading up, up to that moment. Can can I ask you about like the you know, spiritually, so I I’m a hardcore Bible thumping Jesus freak. We, we are, we, we, we
RS (23:53):
Hardcore Bible thumping Jesus freak. Okay. Jesus
RV (23:56):
Freak. Yeah. So, you know, we’re, we’re Christians. We believe in heaven. In fact, in fact, I am, I haven’t shared this publicly anywhere, but for the last several months I’ve actually been working on something that I’m, I I’m, it’s a, it’s called Getting into Heaven. And it’s, it’s seven, it’s seven questions that I think every intelligent skeptic should ask about Jesus. And I’m not really doing it. The, the, the reason I’m putting it together is for my sons, for Jasper and Liam. It’s gonna be dedicated to them. And I want them to know, I want them to know why daddy believes in the logical reasons of miracles, a resurrection and Jesus. So that’s a very personal and powerful thing for me and our family. Separate if whether or not somebody is a Christian or believes in heaven or is an atheist or whatever, when somebody loses somebody, especially when you don’t know what their faith is like, it’s one thing if I go, I know you’re a Christian, we go to church, we have the same beliefs.
RV (25:10):
I, you know, I can send them a Bible verse, I can send ’em something. If there’s somebody who I don’t know if they’re a Christian or I know they’re of a different religious faith and I don’t know much about that faith or like, you know, whatever, like a, you know, it’s not, we don’t have a shared spiritual belief system. Or, or I know they actively don’t have a faith. Like how much does the, you know, does it help this, like you, you already said they’re in a better place. Like, that’s not a good thing to say. That doesn’t really, even if it’s true, it doesn’t help. Is there anything else around the spiritual conversation, you know, like, I’m praying for you as a good example too, cuz I go like, that’s gotta be another thing that everybody says. And, and first of all it’s like, are they really, you know, like, you know, so, so what are some things around that?
RS (26:04):
Okay. That that’s, that’s a fair question. Yeah. We are we’re good Catholics. Okay. We live in Quincy, Illinois. When this happened part of my presentation about everybody grieves differently. Okay. My wife and I had been married 21 years. When the girls were killed, she would be in church every single day. She felt more comfortable in church, closer to God and closer to her church friends. I tried, I would go to mass every single Sunday. I would sit about halfway through mass and I’d start crying and I’d cry because why am I worshiping this God that took my daughters up to heaven? Yeah, I know they’re in heaven. I know I’m gonna see them again, but why would God take them away from me? One day I left mass, I went out to the cemetery. I was yelling and kicking and screaming and crying.
RS (26:57):
Somebody walked up behind me, Roy and put their hands on my shoulders and he said, son, what’s, you know, what’s the matter? I explained that I was so frustrated with God for not protecting my family. My prayer every night is take care of my family, take care of my wife, my kids, and grandkids, yours, his well. And this guy explained free will to me. And he basically said that God gives us all the free will to make our own decisions good, bad, right or wrong. And God didn’t take my daughters to heaven. God gave this truck driver free will, like he gives it to you. And me and the truck driver made some stupid, stupid, stupid mistakes. So after, instead of blaming God or taking Janelle naming mom to heaven, I started thanking God Rory for the 19 years I had with Janelle. And for the nine years I had with Amy.
RS (27:55):
And that changed my life. So instead of hating God, which I hate you worse hate, but that’s how I felt for a long time. I started thanking him cuz I didn’t really have to have them, he didn’t have to give ’em to me at all. I had 19 years with one and nine with the other. As far as your question, I think you need to stick with your faith. Okay. If you’re talking to somebody that has different faith, doesn’t matter. Use what you want to say. It’s gotta come from the heart. And if it doesn’t come from the heart, it’s not near as meaningful. Mm-Hmm.
RV (28:43):
Yeah. That feels like your
RV (28:44):
Question. It’s, that feels totally, and that feels like a hopeful thing for, that feels like a hopeful thing, just no matter what the scenario is. Like I’ll get to see him again someday. Like that’s a Absolutely. That’s, that’s a very hopeful yeah, that’s a, that’s, that’s a really hopeful thing. So I want to, so that’s super helpful. So can we talk about the truck driver for a minute? Because on the one hand you have to, I mean, like, there’s so much, I mean, your story just makes me cry, Randy, because it’s just, it’s just, it’s just so, it makes me so sad. And I know there’s people listening that are going through it right now, right? Like they’re going through it right now and
RS (29:27):
Presentations bring out a lot of, lot of tears. Roy,
RV (29:30):
I, I’ve, I can’t imagine tears
RS (29:32):
Are okay. It means you care, it means you love somebody.
RV (29:35):
I c I can’t hardly talk, talk to you right now. They’re, but you know, it’s like, first of all, you have to reconcile the loss of somebody, then you have to reconcile your life without that person. Then you have to reconcile with God. And then in your case, you have to reconcile with this other person. Maybe not reconcile with them directly or, but like, there’s a, that doesn’t just go away, right? Like there’s, there are, there’s feelings and emotions around that person.
RS (30:13):
Yeah.
RV (30:14):
Can you like, talk through that a little bit?
RS (30:16):
I, I can. He was a truck driver. His name is ran my, my same name unfortunately. After the death, the state of Illinois charged him with involuntary manslaughter. We went to court in Bloomington, Illinois. The judge asked a few questions and then the judge asked me to stand up and he said, I’m sorry Mr. Stocker, but I cannot charge this guy with anything. He didn’t mean to kill your family. This is before distracted driving was the terminology it is now. But I think you’re getting to the point, did I forgive that driver or not? And I get this question asked pretty much every presentation I do. And I say, I, I forgive the driver. I know he didn’t kill them on purpose, but I have not yet forgiven his stupidity. Okay. It was stupid, stupid thing he did to read a book while driving a truck. So I forgive the driver, but not his stupidity. What are your thoughts there?
RV (31:28):
W well, I guess I just took
RS (31:29):
Me a while to get to that. So,
RV (31:30):
Yeah, I mean my, how long did it take to, to get to that point?
RS (31:35):
After that trial, I actually actually asked to speak to the truck driver and his wife. And they put us in a small room at the courthouse and she said they were so sorry and gave me a big hug, but he didn’t even get out of his truck to see if my family was alive or not. Roy, he sat in his cabin and called somebody didn’t even check. So that, that part really hurt me, him not even looking to see if they were alive or needed help or anything. So it took a long time, but probably two or three years after they were killed, they started answering that way. I forgive the driver, but not a stupidity.
RV (32:20):
Yeah. I mean,
RV (32:22):
What the, whatever the, there’s, there’s always a scenario around how it happened. You know, why it happened. I, I’m a big, I’m a, I’m, I’m a big believer that forgiveness is really, you know, it, it sets, it sets you free as the one who was harmed more, more than it has anything to do with setting them free. But anyways, it’s just, I I I, I I can’t imagine. So buddy, I, I, I want to point people towards the book Hugs help our story of tragic loss, survival and helping others. And then, you know, tell me about the hugs part of it. You know, where does the, where does the, the title come from? Because we haven’t, we haven’t talked about it, but as soon as, as soon as I saw it, I was like, man, I really even just love the title of this because it, it feels, I guess this whole, this whole topic of just death.
RV (33:23):
You know, and I, I firmly believe in heaven. Like I am absolutely convicted in, you know, what are my beliefs? And, and I’ve re researched them at length over the course of my life, both from a spiritual and emotional perspective, but especially from a logical and rational and archeological perspective. And no matter, no matter what, it still feels so hopeless. It still feels so desperate. Like, you know if I lost my kids or my wife, like, it’s like I just, I have no control over this. And, you know, this is going to happen in some way to one of us, some someday. And I think there’s so much about what you talk about Randy, that’s just tactical and practical and you know, the, the hug especially of everything somehow is ma is, it feels magical to me as like the thing. So can you just tell us like, where, where, where’s the fir first of all, tell us where, where do you want people to go to get the book or to connect with you or like learn about, you know, having you speak and then, and then I wanna hear the story of the, the title.
RS (34:34):
Okay, good. The book’s on amazon.com, just write in Hugs, help Randy Stalker. If you want to, a lot of people like autograph copy, so they can go to my website hugs help.org, and they can order an autograph copy and I’ll send it right from here. Venmo is the only way I take payment for that, but if they have Venmo does it that way. I’ve, I presented about 35 times my first year since the book has released mm-hmm.
RV (35:18):
Indeed.
RS (35:19):
Cuz we all need to understand grief. We need to understand how to help those that are grieving. So I’m looking for the opportunity to talk to as many people as I can. As you can tell, I’m very open with my presentation. Sometimes I shed a tear while I’m speaking. They need to understand that about half the time it’s
RV (35:40):
RS (35:43):
And then as far as the Hugs help, I, I wrote the book in eight months, during October. It was released May 23rd. Actually a year ago today it was released. Okay. It didn’t have a title. So I went to see my dad in Gibson City, Illinois. Had a nice couple days with him. He is a big brood of a guy, Uhhuh
RV (36:38):
Yeah.
RS (36:38):
That’s where it came from. I’m proud of the title. It’s getting a pretty good name out there. So
RV (36:44):
It is the, you know, the other, the other thing I love about hugs, I mean, it’s so helpful to know what, what, not to say, what to say and all this, you know, but I think, you know, one of the things that really sticks with me, I, from, from what you’ve said and talk about is just being there. Like, literally just being there. You don’t have to say anything. And in order to give a hug, you have to be there.
RS (37:13):
Yep.
RV (37:14):
Like, and that’s, I, that’s why I was like, man, this really is the perfect, the perfect title. It’s memorable, it’s clear, it’s what people want. It, it, it’s what the grieving person wants. And it’s also to me what the, what the people surrounding the situation want, which is a clear answer for how can I help, what can I do? And just knowing like it’s, you know, hugs is a great way to do it. You’re not, you’re just there. You’re not saying anything. You’re not fixing anything. You’re not coaching anybody on how they should feel.
RS (37:54):
Just there.
RV (37:55):
You’re just there and you’re just holding them. Yeah. And well, I’d
RS (37:59):
Like to share five takeaways with people. Do we have time for that? Sure. Okay. Number one, always remember that everybody grieves differently. My wife and I were night and day grieving. She didn’t cry for four months after our daughters were killed.
RV (38:14):
Wow.
RS (38:15):
Four months. And I was just a, just a ball baby every single day. So when you’re trying to help people understand that husband may grieve differently than the wife and the kids and everybody else, number two, you cannot grieve wrong. Don’t ever let anybody tell you how to grieve, when to grieve or when to stop grieving. If you feel like crying cry. If you feel like screaming scream, you cannot grieve wrong. Number three, always try to accept a griever for who they are. Now, I’m never gonna be the Randy stalker before July 22nd, 2003. He’s long gone. I’m a new person. Everybody that goes through tragedy is a new person, not a better person, not a worse person, just a different person. Number four, try to really hard to understand the grieving process. We share nine steps there with you. Just a lot of times people won’t say what’s on their mind. They can tell you how to help ’em, but they won’t. So if you understand what they’re going through, it will help them. And number five, what you just said, just be there for them. You can’t fix it. Nothing you can do to just be there. That’s what a graver needs And hugs do help Roy.
RV (39:41):
Yeah. Amen. Well, Randy, thank you for the courage and the boldness of sharing your story. I I’m convinced it’s gonna help a whole bunch, a whole bunch of people, and I’m, I’m very grateful to have met you and to have had this encounter and this opportunity to get this instruction from you. It gives me a lot more confidence in, you know, approaching this situation in a way of being able, being able to be helpful to, to people going through a hard time. And so again, you know, you guys can go to hu Hugs help dot org Right? Is the website. And you can, or you can grab the book Hugs, help on Amazon and walk you through this. Randy I really wish you the best man. I, I’m, I’m praying for your message to get out there to, to help a lot of people. I know there’s a lot of people who struggle with grief and struggle with how to support a griever. And there’s, you know, there’s a lot of, there’s a lot of death and tragedy and heartbreak going on in the world. And so I think this is a really, really needed message. So we love you. We’re cheering for you. We’re grateful for you. Keep on going, my friend.
RS (40:53):
Take care, Rory. Thank you. Okay.
Ep 408: So, You Want To Write A Book. Now What with Risha Grant
AJV (00:02):
Hey everybody, this is AJ Vaden, one of your co-hosts on the influential Personal brand. And I’m so excited to get to interview my friend Risha Grant today, because she’s awesome and y’all are gonna love her. But two, I just love getting to talk to first time authors who have done the incredibly hard work to dream up the idea of a book, work with a traditional publisher, write it, get it sold, and then to get to talk to them right before it goes live is like one of the best things in the whole world. So you’re gonna get to hear a little bit about that journey. And before I formally introduce you, Teisha I just wanna remind everyone why you need to stick around for this particular episode because I know so many of the people in our audience and in the Brand Builders Group community have so many questions about what it takes to write a book.
AJV (00:57):
Should I try to get a traditional publisher? Should I self-publish? Should I do some sort of hybrid publisher? Like so many people talk about writing the book, and so few talk about selling the book. ’cause The truth is, if you actually want anyone to read it, they have to buy it. And then they have to be motivated and motivated enough to start the book. And that is what we’re gonna talk about today, is the journey from idea to writing, to publishing, to selling, and to actually having this make an impactful change in the readers of your book. And so, Isha is gonna walk us through what that journey look like, looks like for a first time author. And that is why you want to stick around. So if you have a dream of writing a book, you’re in the middle of writing the book, or you’re about to launch a book, this is an episode that you want to listen to.
AJV (01:53):
So stick around and let me formally introduce the one and the only Reha Grant. So here’s just a high level. I, I personally know Reha. So I get to just speak volumes about who she is as a human being. But she is an incredibly sought after keynote speaker. She speaks on anything from culture and leadership and personal accountability as well as diversity, equi diversity, equity and inclusion. Like I’ve got tongue tied today,
RG (03:14):
Thanks for having me. I am super excited to be here. So let’s, let’s get to it. Let’s, let’s really talk about it. ’cause You’re so, right. It is writing it is one thing. Selling it is a completely different animal.
AJV (03:28):
Yeah. So I, I wanna kind of know, because I know that there’s, there’s many journeys when it comes to writing a book. And I wanna know, like, first things first. What made you go, this has to be a book, right? So for the people who are listening, who are going, and I think I wanna write a book, maybe they should hear this before they make that formal decision. So let’s talk about that first.
RG (03:53):
Well, it’s because all of the stages that I’ve been on, right? I get a chance to talk to so many people, and I consider that, you know, a huge blessing. And they have so many questions, you know, within the speech, I’m out of there, in and out of there in an hour, 45 minutes I’m speaking. And people have all of these questions and they wanna know more. And you can only give them little tidbits within that speech. And they want, they want to continue to learn. And so I’ve thought, you know what? My journey has been insane. You know, for so many reasons. You know, I could be looked at as someone who wasn’t supposed to do all the things that I’m doing. And I thought, let me put it in the book. ’cause If I can inspire or impact anyone’s life in a way that lets them know, it doesn’t matter where you come from, it doesn’t matter what you’ve been through. If you want to be better, do better go out there and crush goals. You can do that. You can make that decision. And this is how I did it. So I decided to put it in a book. And so it’s actually my second book. The first book was self-published, this second book, traditional publisher, completely different ballgame.
AJV (05:01):
Yeah. And I should have practiced that first time author with a traditional publisher. Yes,
RG (05:20):
Yeah, I probably should too, but
AJV (05:24):
So, so let’s talk about that, like the route to working with a traditional publisher and what is, what does it take and why, why did they decide to work with you? And I would be so curious to hear your experience and your take on that. ’cause I have my own stories of what it took us to get a publisher interested. So walk us through. It’s like, if you really wanna write a book, which I love that. And, you know, I would say I’ve been more reminded over the last two years of the power that books have. Like, I think I forgot that a book has the power to change your life. ’cause I had stopped reading during Covid for some reading for some Unbe un unbeknownst reason to me. And it’s like, they do, like, books are powerful and they take so much time and passion and energy to get it out there. But then to actually, you know, work with a traditional publisher who they’re not working with just anybody. Yeah. They’re working on kind of the, the sure win. Like, Hey, I, I, I’m not, they’re not in the gambling business. They’re like, Nope, I think this is gonna sell a lot of books,
RG (06:41):
I think, so for me, it was a long process that took a lot of patience. This second book has been six years in the making. But what happened is I went and spoke at a, at a conference that I did not wanna go and speak at, because it was one of those you pay for everything to come here, but the everybody in the audience, you know, is, is going to want to do business with you. And I was a little, you know, not, not that excited about it,
RG (07:24):
You need
RG (08:08):
One thing I will say about, about this whole process is they are focused on how many people are going to buy this book, right? You can have this idea, you think it’s great, which I did. I had a, I had a different idea that I thought was great. They were like, that’s great, but if we broaden this, you know, then we’re going to be able to sell it to more people. And so I found myself thinking about, well, you know, maybe it’s not for everybody. Maybe it’s for a certain, you know, certain smaller group of people that would really benefit from it. But they kept pushing me and kept pushing me. And so we got to this bigger book. My agent has been amazing. He was able to actually get my, my book in a bidding war with three, three different publishing companies.
RG (08:55):
And so we ended up going with Hay House because they just had an amazing offer. And I say this like it was nothing, but when I tell y’all it was
RG (09:37):
There’s, there’s a description for every chapter. There’s a sample chapter. There’s who are your competitors and why is your book different? Who’s gonna buy this book? What does your platform look like? Do you have enough people in social media to support this book? What does your email list look like? How are you gonna publicize it? Because they don’t really do any of that
AJV (10:16):
And actually, I’ll pause right here just for a second because I think a lot of people forget that if you really want to go big, and I would say this, even if you are considering doing a hybrid or a self-published book, doing the book proposal is the business plan. And I love the way that you said that. It is the architectural blueprint of how am I going to position this book? How am I gonna market this book? How am I gonna sell this book? What audiences do I have access to? And regardless of what way you decide to publish, this can be as robust as necessary. But it’s really important for you to actually think about these things. Because getting the book published, quite honestly, is like, at the very beginning stages of the journey. Like, that’s a part of the process that that’s not the end goal that is
RG (11:20):
So I started in August of 20. This would’ve been August of 2019, I believe. And so the book proposal itself I actually ended up going and getting help with that because it was so expansive. I mean, I had, my agent sent me all of these proposals to look at, and I was like, oh my gosh. You know, and, and even if you’ve tried to write a book, you know that the only way to write a book is to actually write a book. You have to sit down. You have to figure out what time works for you, when you’re gonna have the least amount of distraction when you can actually get this done. Well, I was speaking like 70 times a year.
AJV (12:12):
So let’s just talk about this just for a second. Like, I think the really unknown part of this for most people is the process of writing a book proposal. So can you just like, walk us through like, how long did that part take?
RG (12:29):
Months. It, it took months. Gosh, we probably allotted six months to write that proposal. Because it’s not, it’s not just a, here’s a couple of pages on what I think this book should be. There are, you have to do a chapter description for each chapter. You have to write a sample chapter. You have to then talk about marketing and how you plan to actually market this book, who your competitors are, and why your book is different from theirs. Then you have to do an overview even after you’ve done all of the, the chapter descriptions and the sample chapter. It is a living document that is really thick. You know it, so by the time you sit down and write the book, the great thing about it is, you know, all of the stuff you wanna talk about. We varied a little bit from that.
RG (13:16):
‘Cause We, we, when we presented it, we had 11 chapters and we ended up with nine because one of the things we noticed is that we didn’t have as much information for a couple of the chapters. They were gonna be a lot shorter than the other ones. So we were able to figure out a way to to just build those out, you know, by, by placing them into other chapters. So we were able to get it done. But it is a it’s just an incredibly long process, I think from, so from the time that you write the proposal, then they have to take it and sell it and see who’s interested in it. And so we had we had one, one group that we knew, one publishing company that we knew was interested in the book, but of course we wanted to get the best deal that we could get.
RG (13:58):
So it went to bid three, three publishing companies bid on it. And then once we got the deal, then we actually had to write the thing
AJV (14:48):
Yeah. And I just think that’s like so important. Like you said something there, which was, so I had to get this proposal and then they had to go sell it, right? And that’s just an important distinction of going, like, your book proposal is a sales tool. It’s a sales and marketing tool. And, you know, think about the amount of research that it takes to do that. And then you’ve gotta go to the sales process, then you’ve gotta go to write the book, and then it goes into editing and publishing. So we are in August of 2023. When did you start this process? Isha?
RG (15:22):
2019.
AJV (15:23):
RG (15:25):
2019. Yes. It was a really, really long process. And four years is really, you know, it’s good considering mm-hmm.
AJV (15:40):
I mean, the third book will just take two. You know? Yes,
RG (15:43):
Yes. I’m gonna keep getting better. I’m gonna keep getting better. But it is a it’s been a real process. ’cause I mean, you think getting the book done is the big deal, and you’re like, yes, I’ve done this. That’s, I mean, you gotta do that, but it’s this other part of actually selling the book. And that is the, that’s where I am now. That’s where I’ve been since February. I mean, we’re talking, working seven days a week. I’m talking 10 plus hour days, more like 15 plus hour days for a lot of this time since February. I have gone back to every client I’ve worked with, if I’ve consulted for you, spoken for you met you, you’ve heard from me at this point about buying this book. And that was not something that it’s Yeah. Yeah. And that, and that is not something that I could hand off to somebody else.
RG (16:35):
You know, I tried to delegate where possible. But what I’ve realized is if I want to hit the bestseller list, if I want to actually, ’cause let me say this, there are a lot of books out there. Mm-Hmm.
AJV (17:49):
Yeah. Good luck. Let us know how it goes.
RG (17:53):
Yes. They’re happy for everything you’re gonna do, but they wanna know what are you going to do? And that was what I think helped to sell the book. I mean, they were interested in the topic, but we had such a robust marketing plan in that thing that and, and I’ll be honest, my background is marketing and pr. So it was helpful that I was able to to really look at that and really see how we can push the book. And we have, we have done everything that, that we know to do. But it’s not a it’s not a, I wrote this and, you know, here it is, and now I’m gonna go sit down and watch all the great things happen. That is not it.
AJV (18:35):
That’s a real bummer.
RG (18:37):
Yeah. That is not it so far.
AJV (18:41):
I would, I would love to hear from you for everyone who’s listening, what would you say are the sales tactics and the sales strategies that you feel like are really working to move books?
RG (18:53):
You know, I don’t think people talk about this enough, but I think it’s relationship. It is, for me anyway. I’m not saying ’cause, you know, social media, that, that’s been helpful. Pr and the pr that’s really been helpful has been the pr where I’m writing op-ed pieces or I’m getting to write longer pieces for Fast Company or business Insider and those kinds of things. But it has been the relationships for me. I am I’m big on relationship building. I’ve, my, my entire career, I’ve been big on it because I know that when things go bad in business, and it will if things go bad in writing this book, and it will, you know, you need to be able to call on people and say, Hey, this is happening, and I’m not sure which way to go. Hmm. And so with the book I focused my sales campaign on my relationships.
RG (19:52):
Now I have been, I’ve owned my own business since I got outta college pretty much like a couple years out of college. So it’s been over 25 years. But those relationships, you know, I make sure that I am doing more. Like, what can I do for you, you know, as the client. It’s not just about what you can do for me, but how we can together make sure that we are able to help each other. Yeah. And so when it came to something like selling books, that’s what I’ve done. And, you know, whether it’s, whether it’s a speech or what, you know, whether it’s a a q and a or one-on-one consulting, I’m offering services that people usually pay a lot, a lot of money for. And it’s not like they’re not paying that for the books, but they’re getting a heck of a discount
AJV (21:02):
Wow. And I so, so appreciate you being transparent in that, because that was our experience too. It’s like we, you know, it’s like we had all these grandiose marketing plans and at the end of the day, 90% of our book sales came from us selling.
RG (21:18):
Yes. Yes. That is, that is it. There is no way around it. And if somebody finds out something else, let me know.
RG (21:28):
There is no, I think that’s just like a really important part. It’s like writing and getting your book out there is like, it’s like launching your own micro business.
RG (21:37):
Yes. And it’s like
AJV (21:40):
Business plan, content strategy, sales and marketing plan. It needs staff, it needs attention. And it’s like, you’re not ready to emotionally invest and then actually financially invest. Yeah. Then you’re not ready. Right. ’cause It’s gonna require all the above
RG (21:57):
Financial investment. Yes.
AJV (22:00):
It requires
RG (22:01):
That you not Yeah. I think you know, it’s a, it is a misnomer that you, you get a publisher and you don’t have to worry about money couldn’t be further from the truth. I mean, this is an investment. It’s a financial investment that is pretty substantial. Uhhuh
AJV (23:03):
It is. And, and then also back to that kind of sales piece for just a second, and I think this is a, a testament to, although I I love you, it wasn’t top of mind for me to proactively be like, oh, Isha, let me have you on the show because my brain is busy. Yes. But it’s like you did a call to action on an Instagram post, and then it, I think somebody had tagged me and it’s, I think it was Amy LaValley. Yes. Yes.
RG (24:02):
Yeah, it is. I mean, I’m doing the same thing. I probably have 5,000 contacts in my phone. I am one by one contacting these people. Some of these people I haven’t talked to since before the pandemic. And I’m saying, yes, it is me. I know we haven’t spoken in three years, but I’m shamelessly asking for your support. Just purchased one book. And so people are sending me screenshots back that they purchased the book I ran into. And anybody I’ve done business with, my, my makeup person that I use sometimes I run into her at the mall this weekend. She said, oh, you sent me a text. She was like, I gotta get it. I’m like, go ahead and get it now.
AJV (24:39):
Let me pull up the link for you right
RG (24:41):
Now. Yeah. You’re gonna go back to work in a second and you’re not gonna think about this. So it’s not like one time I have to send this and I mean one text message at a time. It is so time consuming. But I’ve gotta go back through those people and say, Hey, you know, I just wanna make sure you remember to purchase this book. It is an all day commitment. And so from the time I get up in the morning, I, I work out, you know, and then, then the rest of my day is, is pushing these books out. So, well,
AJV (25:07):
I know the amount of work that goes into this, and so I’m just so excited for you, I’m so proud of the work that you’re doing, because this is a book people need. And it’s like, I know this is like launching a business, having a baby. Like, it’s that level of intensity. And I’ve had done both. So I can say that
RG (26:09):
Radical acceptance. I work in the, the diversity, equity, and inclusion field, and I’ve been working in the field long before it was a hot topic. And what I’ve known is that there are so many people that feel excluded, ostracized, left out, and not just to a point of of isolating themselves, but to the point of taking their lives and not feeling like they matter. And you know, we have so many, so many things in this world that say, this is normal and this is who you have to be, you know? And if you’re not this person and you don’t fit into this perfect box, then you’re not worthy. Hmm. And people would come and talk to me about, they, they have so many stories. Maybe it was their race, maybe it was their sexual orientation, maybe it was their religion. Maybe it was just that they wanted to be a dancer and their parents wanted ’em to be a lawyer.
RG (27:04):
It doesn’t matter what it is. We’re not allowed to authentically show up as who we are. And it’s, and one thing that I never understood about it is we don’t have to agree on everything. You don’t have to like my lifestyle, but you do have to treat me with common courtesy, decency, and respect. And when I walk into work, it should at least be a place that mandates behavior that allows me to do my job in the way that that wins and is helping the company win and meet their goals and, and helping me to meet my goals. And so people are, environments are in environments where they’re, we’re in a complete suit of armor every day to just kind of deflect all of the BSS coming at them every day. And I thought, you know, what if we were just accepting of each other, and I’m not talking about, ’cause I know that can go a whole bunch of ways for a whole bunch of people, things that are just horrible things.
RG (27:57):
I’m not talking about those things. I’m talking about showing people that you see the humanity in them and allowing them to be who they are without your judgment. Hmm. That is, that is all I’m talking about. I know in the wellness world, radical acceptance is about taking, taking your pain and trying to avoid the pain that’s coming at you. The radical acceptance that I teach is about helping you not cause pain to yourself or to others. And so, it’s a thing that e even within myself, there are so many things about me that would be looked at as a negative. Like most people that I’ve come in contact with. And I, and it’s not missed on me that because I’m on this stage and because I’ve, I’ve been blessed to build this business that that everybody likes me. Well, if you didn’t know me in that realm, and you just knew, you know, you just knew Isha, here’s this, you know, I I, I always start every speech with, I’m a small town divorced ex preacher’s wife who comes from a loving but largely religious family.
RG (28:57):
Some describe me as this competitive relentless ex division one basketball player. But my friends as an extremely loyal but conditional extrovert. I also happen to be a bisexual black woman, a serial entrepreneur, and a Catholic middle school basketball coach who runs a diversity consulting and communications firm in one of the reddest states of the nation. When I say that, so many things within that Yeah. Are things that people frown upon. Mm. And they wouldn’t give me, you know, give me the chance to, to be me. And so I learned that if I would radically accept myself, you know, be willing to lose everything, to gain myself, then I could extend that love and acceptance toward other people, you know? And so it’s, it’s radical acceptance of yourself, of others and, and of the world. You know, are you willing to be wrong to get the company culture right.
RG (29:46):
Are you willing to lose judgment in the moment to win humanity in the end? And so that’s what took up all these years. That’s what made me say, you know what people need to know. They matter. You know, you may be, you may be the one person in someone’s day that smiles and treats them with kindness, one person that keeps them going. And we are so caught up in our own stuff that we don’t do that. So that’s why the book is called Be Better Than Your bss, because we all are carrying around and BSS stands for our biospheres, our Belief Systems, you know, the bias synapse in our brain that deals with unconscious bias. So I want people to know that people are people, you know, you can, you can mentally disagree with someone’s life, but still embrace the person that they are.
RG (30:39):
Mm-Hmm.
AJV (31:27):
Wow. I would say that’s worth four years of your life.
RG (32:05):
That’s exactly what the biosphere is. Yeah. It’s those five socializing agents that we all grow up in from our family and friends to peers and schools and religion and media. And we, we don’t really know what we think for ourselves because from the time we’re born, our family tell us what to think. And then as we go through life, you know, we, we don’t really take the time to research it for ourselves. And so are, we will really willing to unlearn all of the things that we’ve learned from the people that we love and the institutions that we trust.
AJV (32:34):
That’s so good. On that note, if there was one profile, if there was one person who is listening to the show today that you could identify and go, you, I wrote this book for you and you need to pick it up. Yeah. Can you tell us who that would be?
RG (32:51):
That would be the person that feels as though they don’t belong anywhere. They don’t fit anywhere. They’re the person who says, because I look like this or dress like this, or don’t fit into this box, you know, I’m not worthy. Mm-Hmm. It’s also for the company that says, you know what, we’re an imperfect company working with imperfect people, but together we can create the kind of company where people can thrive. It’s it’s for companies that, that understand that they may not have handled everything the best that they could in the past, but they can actually read this and work with their employees to build a better future.
AJV (33:33):
Yeah. I love that. Who wouldn’t want to pick up the book when you frame it that way? Right. Yeah. I think that’s a really, really important message. And, and I think one of the things that is important for everyone listening is going, if you aren’t willing to give up years of your life however many, because you believe in it that much, then it’s not the right topic. Yes. You shouldn’t, it shouldn’t be what you do because it’s, you’ve got to go, it’s worth it. Yes. It’s worth all of the money and the time and the investment because it needs to be said and it needs to be heard.
RG (34:10):
And that was what is going to carry you on those days where you’re like, why am I doing this? Am I crazy? This makes no sense. I’m spending money, I’m spending time. But when you know that the impact is greater and that the impact is, is going to change somebody’s life, that’s gonna carry you through those days for where you’re questioning your own sanity
AJV (34:31):
RG (35:14):
Oh, wow. That is a great question. I wish that I had followed my gut on, on some things that that I probably didn’t need to do that I was, that I was led to do. And I have the benefit of having been in business a long time, but, you know, when you’re embarking on something new and you have a lot of new people involved you wanna do all the things that they tell you that works. I would say always trust your gut. It, it is not gonna lead you astray. And not that because the things that I have learned and encountered, they’ve all been great. But just because there’s so much work and so much time, I wish I had just stayed in line with my gut and said, okay, that may, that may be great, but I’m still gonna go this direction because I know it works for me.
AJV (36:03):
I love that. Second question. What’s the number one thing you have learned through this process?
RG (36:13):
Patience, maybe
AJV (36:53):
I love that. And third question what would be the one piece of advice that you would give to someone who is going, I’ve got a topic, I’ve got a message that’s worth it for me. Right. The time, sweat, tears, money. It’s worth it to me. Yeah. What should I do first? What should I do first? Isha, what’s your one piece of advice?
RG (37:17):
I would run the, run the idea by a lot of different people to see what the interest is. Because some, sometimes things that are important to you may not be important to a massive group of people that that you need to buy this book and read this book. I know that we talk a lot about, well that’s important to you, but it’s
RG (38:00):
So you wanna make sure that there’s a beginning, a middle, and an end. And I think I think there are people out there who are willing to maybe look at your synopsis if you’ve put together a synopsis and, and tell you what they think. And I think you have to that’s where your gut comes in though, because sometimes those people are gonna be wrong, even though they they are people that you trust, admire, you know, believe in. You’ve seen them do it over and over. Sometimes, you know, people will look at something you have and say, it’s not gonna work, but in your gut, if you know it’s gonna work, you also need to need to run with it. So yeah, just, I, I believe in bouncing stuff off of people. I think that’s really, especially for something like a book, I mean, you want a lot of people to buy it, so make sure that it means something to other people besides yourself.
AJV (38:50):
It’s so good. You said something that made me think about this thing. So we read a lot in the Vaden household. It’s part of our jobs, but also part we love it. Like we love books we love reading. And we have this thing where if we read a book or listen to a book we’ll always ask you, how was it? And we have this saying in our house with my husband and I, and we’ll go I’ll always say, well, it should have been a blog. And he’s said, what do you mean? And I’m like, should have been a blog
RG (39:28):
Yes.
AJV (39:28):
And everything else just turned into stories and fluffy stuff because you had this amazing idea, but there wasn’t enough to make it a book. Right? It should have been a chapter of the book, not the book. And so we, now we now we have this saying is like, was it, you know, was it a book, a blog, or a podcast? Like what, what was it?
RG (39:48):
Yes.
AJV (39:49):
It’s like we get so excited, but we forget now. This has to go for a lot of pages, a lot of words. Yes. Is there enough depth into it or should it be a chapter? Should it be a blog or a podcast?
RG (40:01):
AJV (40:24):
So, so good. And Isha, if people want to read your book which is more than a blog, so please go read this book. It will be the whole book,
RG (40:37):
Go to Amazon. Be better than your bss. How Radical Acceptance empowers Authenticity and Creates a Workplace Culture of Inclusion.
AJV (40:46):
So y’all, you heard it here, go to Amazon, pick up the book better than your BS by Isha grant. And if you wanna just be extremely specific, just go to the show notes of this episode. I’ll have the exact Amazon link in there. Go buy a copy and help this woman hit the bestseller list. Isha, we are so excited for you. We love you so much, and everybody else, thank you. See you next time on the Influential Personal.