Ep 316: Be a Better Negotiator with Mori Taheripour
AJV (00:00:02):
Hey everybody. And welcome to another episode on the influential personal brand. So excited to have a fellow what I’m gonna say, learner teacher, student coach speaker consultant, author on the show today Mori was referred to me by a super good friend of mine. And although Mori and I are relatively new friends, we’ve got a really awesome friends in common. And I’m, it got introduced to her. And then I was so privileged to get a copy of her book that I’ve started reading. I think I’m on, like, I don’t know, maybe a third of the way through also holding it upside down right now. I am. There you go.
AJV (00:00:44):
And just love this. I’m so excited to get to talk about the book today, but to give you a little bit of a professional highlights of ma and her background, I’m here to some things credential that maybe you would wanna know. I think these are really cool things. But here’s like, I would say generally speaking, we’re gonna talk a lot about today. A lot about negotiation today and Mori is a negotiation expert and she has worked with some of the most iconic sports leagues, fortune 100 corporations. But she’s also a teacher at the Wharton school of a business. She’s also been on some major media outlets, including ESPN forms, Inc money NPR. Like I could go on and on with professional accomplishments, but we were just having this conversation about how our bios are such a teeny tiny part of who we are, and they really don’t give the full spectrum of who we are as individuals.
AJV (00:01:43):
Just some professional accomplishments along the way. And so two quick things, one Mori, welcome to the show and two I’m, this is my chance to let you introduce yourself and who you really are by helping our audience get to know you. And so here’s my first question for you. So here’s your introduction to the show and our audience. And here’s what we wanna know. We wanna know, how did you go from, let’s just say college graduate to all of these amazing things that you’ve done to most recently launching this awesome book about negotiation. So we wanna know how’d you do it
MT (00:02:27):
Well, first of all, let me just say J thank you for having me on the show, whatever it is you drink in the morning, I’ll have even half of it, even half of it would probably help. So your en your energy is awesome. Thank you for having me here. So I don’t really wanna go into like the really lengthy explanation of it, because I feel like there’s chapters of my life. I would say the first one is really all the way through college. And probably a few years thereafter the daughter of Iranian immigrants much like all the other sort of immigrants, immigrant stories, your parents have all these dreams and ambitions for you. They want the very best life for you. They take all those risks and they leave behind what they know to promote for the hope and promise of a better life for you.
MT (00:03:18):
And so, especially sort of this, what I call Iranian guilt, you know, we sort of carried this weight with us, knowing all that’s been sacrificed for you. And that sort of followed me from college. My father wanted me to be a doctor the youngest of three kids and the first two did not go that route. So I was like the last promise. Right. And, and so almost like living my life in a pre-programmed kind of a way I, I really didn’t even question it. And I went through college. All I knew was that I was not very good at the very thing I was supposed to be doing. Right. So it was, the sciences were always so hard, you know, kind of forced my interest in a lot of them, but it was like, don’t look right. Don’t look left, just look straight ahead.
MT (00:04:02):
This is what you’re supposed to do. And, you know, when I, when I graduated college and took the MCATs twice, by the way I was like, alright, wait a minute. This is not a, I’m not good at this. And two, I, I B I don’t even know if this is something that I enjoy all that much. What I did enjoy was helping people. What I did enjoy through all the, sort of the, the jobs that I’d had through like work study in college and the working in different doctor’s offices. And then really my last job was at St. Louis hospital in New York and Harlem, and working in the sickle cell unit and, you know, sort of really understanding in some ways that it was public health that I really enjoyed. And that was sort of like helping people at a macro level, not a micro level.
MT (00:04:47):
And so, you know, there was some of that in my spirit. I just knew that being a doctor wasn’t it. And so went through a lot of difference where I volunteered at a amazing organizations organization working with really high risk individuals drug users sex workers, and were, I did basically HIV test counseling. So I was the person that spoke to them beforehand to get them tested. And I spoke to them afterwards to get them their results. Wow. Was right.
MT (00:05:42):
And I enjoyed that very much. So, so fast forward that I continued to work in public health for several years, moved on to the public health department. And after a few years had the great privilege of starting this program that, that helped pregnant women who were at risk for HIV aids. And this is I’m kind of going down this route because it is important. But this program that I started kind of took off and it was, you know, the, the, the weight was fashioned was that it was basically supposed to sort of democratize access to HIV testing for people, for pregnant women, no matter if their race, religion, color, whatever it was. And only to be able to understand that they were HIV positive so that they can take the medications to help prevent the transmission of HIV from mother to child.
MT (00:06:33):
And it was extraordinary, right? Again, like this was the first big breakthrough we had had in HIV aids. And again, you feel like you’re doing something that’s meaningful that you could be proud of. It sort of set my soul in its own way. State of California came to me and I said, the great program. We’d like to do this statewide. And here’s like a bunch money for you to do it. And but we want you to do it. So, and I just applied to business school after like all that, the understanding that I was not gonna go to med school, that I sort of found my niche, I was ready to go to business school. And then I get this opportunity and I thought business school can wait. Here’s an opportunity to do something on my own. And so I left the public health department and launched my company at that point as sort of my first sort of entrepreneurial venture. And, and what we did was basically a lot of education and social marketing campaigns, a really big level for like the CDC and others. And so I was like that entrepreneur that got handed money and I was like, wow, this was easy. Like, you know, this is
AJV (00:07:41):
Like, what’s
MT (00:07:42):
So hard about this
AJV (00:07:45):
Bunch of babies.
MT (00:07:46):
Exactly. But I do remember the conversation with my mom because my mom said, okay, you didn’t go to med school. You know, now you’re, you got into business school now you’re gonna do this. And yeah, there was, there was quite a bit of disappointment in that conversation, but I remember telling her that I’m not afraid. I mean, what’s the worst that could happen. Mom, I’ll be like the most educated waitress on the face of planet. Right. Like that’s what I would go to. Right. Because I realized that I really wasn’t afraid, like there was no fear in making that decision at that point. And maybe it’s because I had sort of taken care of myself always, but I thought what’s the worst that could happen. And that was sort of the beginning of this entrepreneurial journey. Now my career’s gone completely a different way, but I think it’s not having fear at that outset that has sort of that’s, that’s the one thing that sort of stayed with me all throughout my life. It was the whole notion of what’s the worst that could happen. Just do
AJV (00:08:41):
It. I wanna pause and talk about that a minute, because I really believe that fear ultimately is what holds most of us back from living out our, our calling and our purpose. Right. It’s like, we get so comfortable where we are that we don’t take the risk because we’re, we’re afraid. Like what if it doesn’t go well? And what, whatever. So I’m so curious, like where did that come from? How did you cultivate that? I mean, is that something you were born with? Like, where did this unabashed lack of fear come from that allows you to do things that others don’t?
MT (00:09:20):
I think a couple of things, the first was sort of like, it was that big fear of having that conversation with my parents to begin with that said, Hey, I don’t wanna be a doctor. I think I feared that for so long that once I had the conversation and I sort of set myself free, then it was like, I don’t know if there was anything else that I feared more than disappointing them, if that makes any sense. So everything else sort of pales to comparison in some way, I thought, I thought, oh my God, I feared that for so long. And all right, what happened? Yes, they’re disappointed, but you know, I’m still time standing. Right. And I’m now able to maybe pursue what I really wanna pursue. So the freedom from that, despite the, all the disappointment, I think if I, if I really had to think about it was the, the one thing that said, look, it all kind of works out.
MT (00:10:07):
Maybe it’s not perfect. Maybe it’s not exactly what you want it to be, but it works out because you have the wherewithal to sort of get through the lowest of the low. The other part of it is like having money or not having it or losing it never really scared me. I kind of felt like it was something that you just sort of could make up for. And I was very serious. I, I had waitress through college, one of the best jobs I ever had. I was like, if that’s what it takes, if all hell all else goes to, to hell in a hand basket, that’s what I’m gonna do. And I was, I think it was some level of sort of humility or maybe survival mechanisms. I don’t know, but that kicked in really early. And I think actually not putting so much emphasis on the, where am I gonna get money? Where am I, how am I gonna survive? Not really thinking about that, but in some, maybe it was some naive way thinking it’s, it’s gonna work out some way that sort of freed me up. I think one of the bigger, bigger, or hurdles that a lot of entrepreneurs, particularly, I think people who have a family to take care of, right. That they have other responsibilities. It was me. And so that, that, you know, maybe was an unfair advantage that I had as well. I just really had myself to sort of take care of,
AJV (00:11:23):
You know, it’s interesting in our last conversation, you said something that really resonated with me because it’s a core belief. Like one of the things that, you know, is kind of like one of my life mantras is that people care much more about who you are than what you do. And one of the things that I asked you on our first conversation was, you know, what’s, what’s something that you wish people knew about you. And I had written this down from my notes in our last call and you wrote down, I want them to know that I am not my work, but I am not my work. And I’m just curious, like how much of this lack of fear really comes from you have a really clear disassociation from your self worth and how that’s connected to your profession.
MT (00:12:08):
It’s not been easy. I’ve learned a lot of my lessons, the really hard way as evidenced by all the stories I tell of my book, I mean, lots of scars and lots of bruises. There’s been some really low lows. And you know, in, in my company, for example we, we, we have sort of, I’ve never lived through this before, as none of us have really a pandemic, but we had, you know, shortly after the, well, whoa, this was really easy. Was the.com crash. I was like, oh no, no, it really wasn’t. And then, you know, then we had the great recession of 2007, 2009, and being an entrepreneur, having to lay people off wor worried about, are you gonna get another contract? You know? So all of that, the really low lows of sort of that economic downturn, you know, I’ve, I’ve gone through that.
MT (00:12:58):
And so there were on those occasions, you know, again, the disappointment of sort of family, right. And, and I always knowing that I didn’t never want to go back and say you were right. I should have never done this. I never wanted to regret that. And so maybe it was the fear of, of failure that drove me in some ways, but with every one of those, those challenges and some I got through and, and it was okay. And some I got through and, you know, heart heartache and breaking up with a, a business partner who had been a friend for so long. And, you know, I would say I’ve never been married, but that was a really bad divorce. And you know, what I realized is that if I continued to sort of tie who I was with, what I did as a profession, then I would’ve been broken.
MT (00:13:51):
Yeah. Right. Or, or that got me kind of emotional. I would’ve broken a whole lot through my life and that was not an option. And the fact that I, I got through it and I didn’t allow myself to be defined by those struggles though, a lot easier said than said now, but it took a lot of sort of self love and, and, and changing my own narrative, you know? So I don’t want anybody to think this is easy. It’s, it’s a life lifelong struggle, honestly. But the more, as strange as it sounds, the more scars I got, the more bruises I got, the more hits that came my way. And I just kept getting up. Mm-Hmm
AJV (00:15:18):
I think that is such a instrumental and fun, a fundamentally necessary just awareness that we have to have is human beings, much less entrepreneurs or anyone who’s out there it’s like building a personal brand. It’s like, you know, I think the beautiful thing about building a personal brand is it really is about your message, not what you do, it’s about what you believe and right. Who you are and what you stand for. Not about, you know, and that’s why I said, it’s like, you know, we both kind of have this distaste for bios. Right. And I think that’s that, it’s like, what does that have to do with like who I am?
MT (00:15:56):
Exactly.
AJV (00:15:58):
And it’s so funny it’s I was at a recent conference with my husband and at this conference, they were handing out these what do you call ’em lanyards, right. And the lanyards have your name on them. And so my husband gets this lanyard and it says, Rory Vaden, CS, PSA.
AJV (00:16:23):
And it was like, like three other letters. And I was like, what are all of these letters? And it’s like, I took this lanyard and I like marked through all of them and just wrote D a D
AJV (00:17:07):
And it’s like, that’s gonna stick with me and to be a constant reminder of like, work, like the work we do is hard. Right. It’s like, you’re, you’re in the public face. It’s like, and you you’re laying it out. Like, you know, it’s like holding MA’s book. It’s like, you’re putting it out there. Right. You’re, you’re wearing your heart and your life on your sleeve when we, we dedicate our message to sharing it with the world. And so, you know, one of the things that I hadn’t read down, and I’m so curious, and I’m always fascinated to hear this because if you’re listening and you’ve ever wondered, you know, what would it take for me to write a book or, you know, should I do it? It’s like, I think it’s really important to know. It’s like, it’s hard work and it is long tedious. It’s gonna suck the resources. And a lot of times the money right out of underneath you. And so here’s my first question for you. It’s like, at what point in your journey, right. Professionally and personally, did you figure out that you wanted to write a book? Like how did you know that? Like, and then why did you do it?
MT (00:18:10):
So we have to backtrack a little bit after that whole sort of the thing with my company. And I, I did eventually go back to business school anyway after five years of, of being in, in my company. And, and when I was getting ready to graduate, my, one of my professors who taught negotiations and was the chairman of that, the legal studies department at the time said I think you should teach. And I thought he had lost his mind.
MT (00:18:56):
And I, I said, all right, finally, I’ll give this a shot. Right. He said, just be my TA. And that’s how it all sort of started just to see what you think being on the other side of the classroom and not a student that was nearly 18 years ago. I’m, I’m still teaching at Wharton. Wow. But, but I say that to say that then sort of, I talked about my life in chapters, that next chapter was sort of teaching career began. I never imagined it. I had never, never, even in my wildest dreams thought I could do it or was capable of doing it. And it was because somebody saw something in me. I didn’t see in myself. And I always say that to entrepreneurs, especially because I feel like, you know, we’re not risk averse right. To begin with. And, and in a lot of ways obviously not taking ridiculous risks because I think a lot of entrepreneurs take quite calculated risks, but, but in terms of the pursuit of something that drives you that beyond which you have serving in your daily life, right.
MT (00:19:59):
That, that, that goal, that purpose, whatever it is, I think entrepreneurs are incredible in doing that. Right. They sort of jump off that cliff that many people would never dream of doing. For me teaching was that right. I, somebody else saw it and I was like, you know what, I’m gonna give this a shot. What’s the worst that could happen. Right. And it, it was that what sort of drew me obviously to even the subject of negotiations and when I sort of trusted myself, which took about three years to stand in front of a classroom and teach it my way, like teach it the way I saw negotiations, teach it from my perspective and that sort of opens up everything. I won my first teaching award, I would say the first year that I actually kind of ripped up my syllabus and started teaching it exactly the way I wanted to teach it.
MT (00:20:50):
And that sort of made all the difference in the world. So you start trusting yourself and then, and then kind of magic happens. The book so years after I started teaching, I got the opportunity to teach for Goldman Sachs and their 10,000 women’s program which is working with female entrepreneurs globally. It’s not Nashville program. And I helped launch the program in the American university, in Cairo, Egypt, and was there for like the first three cohorts, life changing, amazing female entrepreneurs, guts, conviction, all the, all of it. Right. And one of the people sort of high level at Goldman Sachs was sort of seen sort of the outcomes of that program. And, and was that actually for the first graduation of these women came to me after several years of me being in that program and then actually teaching in the 10,000 school business program, which is where I went to next, after that said, whatever it is you do in my classroom, I’m not really sure what it is, cause I haven’t sat in it, but something magical happens and something really special happens. Look at the way they respond to you, capture it in a book.
MT (00:22:03):
So here’s somebody else who says, you know, they see something in you. And I was never fancied myself to be an author. Didn’t even like writing. The best part of being premed was that I took tests. I didn’t have to write anything. Right. And so I was like, there’s just no way. And, and moreover, there’s like a billion negotiations books out there. What do I have to contribute? Yeah. And so I fought it again. Right. I didn’t trust it. And, and, and yet he sort of planted the seed and kept coming back to me about it. And it took first, it took about 10 years to get the book out, but that’s only because the first four years I negotiated against myself I was like, there’s no place for you that you don’t want a redundancy. You don’t wanna do something that’s already out there.
MT (00:22:48):
But then when I was like, wait a minute, but what these books say is so different than what you deliver. Mm-Hmm,
AJV (00:24:07):
You know, it’s interesting. I think there’s like a couple of things I wanna kind of like circle around is one I did, this is a really great reminder to everyone who’s listening. Like writing a book does not happen in a year. It just doesn’t you, you said this was like a 10 year process, the first four years of negotiating against yourself. But then like, y’all like take note, like this does not happen in a year. And if it doesn’t or two years, that doesn’t mean it’s not going to, but this was a very multi-year process. Right? It was
MT (00:24:40):
Mm-Hmm
AJV (00:24:42):
So you’re kinda saying like, once you knew, like there is a message that I have, that’s kind of like unique and different. I think this is, I think this is equally as important because I think so many people struggle with, well, everything has already been said, I have nothing else to add. So what advice would you give to someone who’s talking them at themselves out of their own dream?
MT (00:25:04):
It’s like, no, honestly, I think especially for entrepreneurs, it’s no different than that product that you know, that there’s nothing else in the market for it, or, you know, whatever niche that you create or, you know, writing a book. I think that so much of it has to be your own belief in it, because again, there are no guarantees right there there’s zero guarantees. So at the end of the day, can you do something that you’re a proud of, but B that could have been, and would’ve been, and should have been like those types of regrets that come from not having taken that risk, not, not living up to the promise of what you had imagined for yourself and instead sort of backing off because you didn’t believe in the fact that you could actually pull it off. I think those missed opportunities to me are far scarier.
MT (00:25:58):
Like they, that, that notion of the, what if regret is so much more difficult to live with because you will spend the rest of your life thinking about it, as opposed to doing it and maybe failing and you learn, and then you move on, but at least you can never look back and say, what if I had and I think so much as we can control when we get to that intersection so much as we can control taking that turn and moving towards something and saying, what’s the worst that can happen. Right. I, I, I think that’s really important. And once you believe then it’ll work or it won’t, but you won’t ever have to spend all those time, you know, moments thinking, you know, I, I let it flip by.
AJV (00:26:43):
Mm that’s so good. I love that. I love too. It’s like the, the fear of not going for it is like greater than the fear of going for it. I think so good. And I wanna, I wanna get to the book in just a second, because I, I really wanna learn like your insights and perspective around negotiation, cuz I know they’re really unique and I think a lot of people don’t consider themselves good salespeople or good negotiators. We’re gonna change their mind on that today. But from a place of being on the other side, you know, we celebrated 10 years of our first book coming out. This year’s unbelievable. It’s been out for 10 years, but our publishing story was very different than yours. We basically prospected agents for like two years. We were borderline stalking these people until they finally were like, oh my gosh, we’ll just, we’ll read the proposal.
AJV (00:27:32):
So you go away. Luckily it all turned out in our favor, but from, you know, one publishing story to another, because they’re all very different. I would love for you to kind of share, like what has your journey been? And like a real life perspective for the listener out there. Who’s going, I do feel that calling on my heart, I do have that message that I know it’s, it’s unique and different and my audience needs to hear it. And I don’t know how to go about doing this. Like what do you mean you just called a publisher or what, what did you do? Right. So kinda give us like your, your perspective. I mean, this is, this is somewhat fresh, right? Mm-Hmm
MT (00:28:25):
I got an agent before I even knew I was gonna write a book, right. We, I had this for a good fortune of meeting this person and as friends and, and really sort of relied on him all along the way, especially in those four years. And he understood where I was coming from because he, he respected the fact that I didn’t just wanna write another book then, and didn’t have sort of something that was different and fresh and knew cause he would have to stand by it. And so I think that was crucial. One in getting me to focus in a way that could bring this book sort of to market successfully and would be something that people would wanna buy from testing who my audience would be to all of that, right. Something that that’s what agents, they all agents, they, they are great at something, right.
MT (00:29:16):
That it could be lawyers. They could be whatever it is that work on your behalf. In this case, he was somebody that knew the publishing world and had a great eye for these things. So I relied on him to, to sort of take me through that early those early stages. And then it was, I think his relationship with the publishing world that got me, honestly, the type of an advance that was huge. I, I mean there was a, a sort of, they did an auction basically over my book, right? Like who would’ve ever imagined that there was like more than one person who wanted to get behind this book and it was a proposal at that point. And so it was, they believed. And I think that the, the reason why that worked is because relationships have existed, right. There was a tremendous amount of respect between all these publishing houses and my agent.
MT (00:30:12):
He led me to a place that I could proudly stand behind something and sell it. Mm-Hmm
AJV (00:30:54):
Yeah. I think that’s really important. And you know, it’s like, it’s same. It’s like we knew that we had to get an agent. If we wanted to do the traditional publishing route. We knew that. And that’s why we spent two years
AJV (00:31:40):
And that’s not how you do it. Mm-Hmm
MT (00:32:22):
Completely? I mean, it’s, it’s ludicrous to think that, that, you know, your book, it looks like the other way around, you know, you’re putting the car before the horse. I think, you know, looking at your example and hearing what you all did, you had your content as well, right? It actually, the story is all that different, right. Because you knew you wanted the book, whereas me, I, to talk myself into that, but once you have those parts connect, then it’s you go? And the reason why it’s not painstaking is because we had all the content. Yeah. Right. So the book becomes the packaging of that or the making it almost accessible. Mm-Hmm
MT (00:33:32):
Right. It’s the accessibility of that, that I think the book becomes as opposed to, to your point, the other way around.
AJV (00:33:38):
I totally agree. It’s like one of the things that we, you know, we, we get a profile at the time, like, well, when are you guys gonna write your book on personal branding? And you know, our message for the last four years has been, it’s like our, our philosophy is the book is the final product, not the first product, right? It’s like, we’ve been fine tuning our methodologies and our processes and tweaking it. And it’s like, when the book comes, you’ll know that everything is just where we think it should be. It’s the final product, not the first product. Right. I think there a trend right now is that people create a book to then sell their services. And we’re kind of like, now you need to go sell the services.
MT (00:34:19):
AJV (00:34:20):
Go speak on this, train on this, consult on this. You need to like be doing it, living it, then go write the book.
MT (00:34:28):
Absolutely.
AJV (00:34:28):
Which is what you’ve done. And to me, that, to me, that is what makes me wanna read a book like this is because it’s not your first rodeo. This is like your 1000th rodeo. So let’s talk about, bring yourself I wanna talk about this. It’s how to harness the power of negotiation to negotiate fearlessly. So what is negotiation? Because I think that’s like one of those terms that people use that can kind of be frightening. So for all of our listeners who are like, oh man, I, I can’t negotiate. I’m not a negotiator. Right? What is your definition of negotiation?
MT (00:35:05):
So it’s something we do all the time. Like literally from the moment you get up in the morning to the moment you go to sleep at night, you know, that’s your parent. But even, you know, regardless of that, every time you make a decision, every with yourself, even, you know, I always say pros and conflicts are, you know, a masterful negotiations, right? Because you’re thinking all the reasons why not and all the reasons why and so debate, that’s going to inner debate that’s going on. But you know, everything from family conversations, kids, business partners, vendors, I mean, you name it. It’s all in negotiation. So literally people hear the word and they’re so anxious and they think they’re bad at it. And I’m like, how could you possibly be bad at it? You, you do this all day long every day. And it’s literally those, those transferable skills that we use that I teach in class that is no different than everything else that you use every day that makes negotiations what it is.
MT (00:36:04):
Right. So it’s not meant to be scary. It’s not conflict ridden necessarily those such a small slice of that pie. Yes. There are difficult conversations. Yes. There are bad deals, that’s life. But the majority, again, if you think about it in the context of, if this is like the soundtrack of our lives, how could it all be conflict? It’s not, the majority are problem solving and, and collaboration and they build relationships, not break them up. And, and so it’s life. It, it literally is every part of our life. And so important as a result.
AJV (00:36:43):
So what would you say makes someone a good negotiator?
MT (00:36:52):
So I should probably sort of public service announcement. This is, this is I take a very different perspective than a lot of perspectives that we see sort of in TV or things that we’ve heard all our lives about. That great negotiator is sort of in your face, combative, you know, goal driven to the point that they’re not even considering anybody else. And you know, that, that real sort of almost like masculine inequalities and I don’t mean masculine male, female. I just mean that sort of the bra that mm-hmm,
AJV (00:38:37):
Clearly we’re gonna need to cut this. It’s like roughly at minute 42 the question I will restart with is what makes a good negotiator. And then we’ll, re-pick it up. So I’ll wait here patiently until she comes back
Speaker 3 (00:40:08):
Okay. So that was really scary. That was literally never happened. It was like an outage, like, oh,
AJV (00:40:15):
That’s weird.
Speaker 3 (00:40:15):
Everything flickered and it just went out. So I’m sorry about that.
AJV (00:40:19):
No, that’s okay. I actually, I captured the minute wrote down the question, so we’re just gonna start over with what makes a good negotiator. Okay. And I already noted the minute we’ll cut it out. It’s not a big deal. I captured all of it really quick.
Speaker 3 (00:40:31):
Are you okay with me actually getting rid of the
AJV (00:40:34):
Yes, totally. Okay. Okay. All so made all the verbal notes for the editor.
Speaker 3 (00:40:41):
Do you want me to start from the beginning?
AJV (00:40:43):
Yeah. So I’m just gonna re-ask question and then that’ll be a good kind of like segue. So okay. So here’s, here’s the next question then? What makes a good negotiator
Speaker 3 (00:40:54):
What makes a good negotiator? So I think that we’ve seen a lot of movies and sort of public profiles that show sort of these really brash negotiators in your face, sort of combated, very aggressive mm-hmm
Speaker 3 (00:41:53):
I think the great negotiator is the person who’s their, their authentic self and understands that this is a skill that is learned, right? We’re not born great negotiators and the more you do it, the better you become. But I think a really big part of that is the level of authenticity and believing that that person that’s coming to the table, that, you know, how you show up that gives you the confidence to be a great negotiator. And then all the other things I could tell you like the characteristics, I believe that the best negotiators are incredibly curious that they use negotiations, not an O as an opportunity to be so self-assured that they think they have nothing else to learn, but they come to the table curious with sort of that, that blend of confidence and humility that says I’m confident with who I am and what I bring here, but I’m humble enough to know that there’s a lot to learn always.
Speaker 3 (00:42:47):
And so the open mind, the open heart empathy, you know, where, again, it’s that level of curiosity about the person you’re negotiating with to understand their journey, how they’ve gotten here so that you can appeal to their sense of values and order. And, and, you know, I think those are the things that we don’t often see celebrated because again, that character that we see in our heads about the movies that we watch, the great negotiators are never seen as like the real kind, respectful, you know, empathetic person it’s so wrong. Because I think there’s a place for everybody, but in my mind, in my heart, I just believe that the, the great negotiators are those that make room for other people. And, and, and trust that, that conversation and that, that, that approach where it considers both sides is really the best one.
AJV (00:43:38):
Mm. I think that’s really good. I actually have a really difficult conversation coming up. Later this week, that’s gonna require some financial negotiation and that’s a really great reminder for me right now is like, I need to come to this quote, unquote, negotiation table, really seeking to understand, like, where are you coming from? Why do you feel this way? Like really seek to understand the other person in order for me to even have a fighting chance at finding a happy medium win-win situation.
Speaker 3 (00:44:12):
Yeah. Because I mean, first of all, knowing all that you’re bringing to a table, right. That’s sort of the most important part, right? The, the reason why my book is called bringing yourself is because I believe the hardest part of all this is to really understand their own value. Right? And that, that conversation you have to have with yourself at first, right? Who you are, what you stand for, what your values are, what your conviction is, the things that are sort of the non-negotiables, which have literally nothing to do with money, by the way, it’s what you stand for. Right? And, and once that’s sort of understood, and you could speak, you can be your own sort of best advocate. Then I feel like everything else sort of falls into place, right. Because everything else becomes some kind of tactic or strategy. But the hardest part is that breaking through those really negative things that we say you just said fighting chance which I would never see somebody like you who’s accomplished all that. You’ve accomplished. Even think that that’s how they should think about this. Of course you have a fighting chance of, I mean, are you crazy
AJV (00:45:18):
Reminder talk matters,
Speaker 3 (00:45:21):
Right? But it’s like, no. I mean, the minute you think that, that you have to sort of even fight to have the chance, like I would, I would abolish all of that. I would, I would put that away because you know, the truth is it will not take you that long to understand why you’re supposed to be there in the first place and ask for what you’re worth. Right. That, that should not take very long. But the other part of that is that, you know, negotiations is all about influencing somebody. Mm-Hmm
AJV (00:46:20):
Oh yes. Let’s have another coaching session. This is podcast coaching session for AJ. But I think that’s really important cuz it’s like you do like even subconsciously start to think about negotiation in a way of like win or lose. That’s not a real thing. Like we, no one has to lose, no one has to lose in this. And I do think there’s so much negative connotation around the idea of negotiation. So I’m curious, like where do you think that comes from? Like even in my subconscious where I’m an extraordinarily unusually confident human being, but for me to even like subconsciously think fighting chance, like when it comes to negotiation, like where do you think that comes from?
Speaker 3 (00:47:02):
I think society in a lot of ways, right? Again, like what’s what we see in movies, what we see on TV, what we read. And I think that maybe just maybe the more sort of other examples that we see of really sort of these successful negotiators women who, you know, are, are tremendous at this, by the way, talk about sort of the bad stories, but you know, the more examples we have of people who don’t espouse those other sort of characteristic and, and when we can actually change the paradigm of how we, we see negotiations, we reimagine it. And it becomes something that we all understand that we’re so capable and confident of doing, but, but, you know, use it in a way that speaks to you, right? Make it your voice that matters, not what you are told that you should say or how you should pretend to be.
Speaker 3 (00:48:00):
I mean, there’s more pretense in what people are taught, right? There’s more, you know, negotiations is not like baking a cake. I, who am I to tell you, if you say this word and that word, and if you do this and you act like this, you’re gonna succeed, first of all, that’s not true.
AJV (00:48:56):
Mm. I love that, you know, and you said something earlier that, you know, really resonated with me, but then also with so many of, you know, the people that I, I get to interact with on a daily basis, both personally and professionally and it’s setting up non-negotiables right. And I think that’s a huge, a huge part of negotiation, but also of confidence of knowing it’s like, there’s wiggle room, but then I have my non-negotiables and there’s no wiggle room there. And so I’ve heard you say, and maybe it was our conversation, maybe it was in the book. I don’t remember at this point, but it’s like, and that negotiation is not an issue of skill. It’s more to do with self-worth and confidence. Can we talk about that for just a minute? Yeah. Like to hear that negotiation is not a skill thing, it’s a belief thing. I mean, that’s really different because it’s like every other negotiation training book seminar that I’ve ever been to are very, very sales oriented, very skills oriented it’s words to use body language, tone of voice, you know, you know, all the things, right. So to hear, it’s not a skill issue, it’s a self worth, it’s a confidence issue. Really puts it in a different place of perspective. And so just, I wanna hear your thoughts on that.
Speaker 3 (00:50:21):
I’ll probably be best at describing that if I give you an example, but before I go there, I, I, I think that, again, the hardest part is that get knowing yourself, knowing your self worth. And this is after thousands of people that I’ve taught, it could be CEOs of major corporations. It could be professional athlete, people who you would never imagine have, you know, issues with sort of self-worth or, you know, imposter syndrome as we imagine it, but they do right. And so time and time again, it goes back to this issue of knowing your value, right. And not just knowing it, but being able to courageously and fearlessly advocate for it. And so I feel like if, if you can do that, then I don’t teach rocket science. Anybody who tells you that they’re, you know, you have to learn all of these skills before you can negotiate successfully is, is just not being honest because the, the fact is that those are, and those are first of all, really easy, right?
Speaker 3 (00:51:18):
Learning how to prepare for negotiations is not rocket science, right? Learning, you know, what kinds of things you should consider in preparation, not rocket science. You know, what’s rocket science. What’s really hard is knowing your self worth because only then, right? Can you actually set goals that are aspirational and worthy of you? And then once you set those goals, then you can actually go to the table and, and ask for those things. And then once you can ask for those things, then you actually get it right. But if that first piece is not done, then all the skills in the world are not gonna get you through that journey without you folding. Right. So, so grounding yourself and knowing yourself is really important. You talked about non-negotiables non-negotiables are generally things that are like our values. Yeah. Right? Our convictions, things that if you give them away, you are no longer whole, no matter how success we’ll be, outcome of the negotiations is right.
Speaker 3 (00:52:15):
It’s the stuff we can’t live with ourselves. If we put those, you know, whether it’s lying, whether whatever it is. Right? So even those things have nothing necessarily to do with financials or the sort of the, the tangibles, it’s the intangibles that matter right now, the example that, that I was gonna give you is this, that, that the best negotiators, right. If, if you’ve gone through 65 trainings, read every book, listen to the podcast, you know, I’m so ready. Right. I’ve watched every movie I’m, I’ve got it. Right. But what you really struggle with is sort of fear and anxiety, or even like, maybe even lack of self-belief. Right. And you know, there’s all these studies that are done. Say like we have somewhere between 12,000 to 60 thoughts, 60,000 thoughts, a day of those thoughts, 80% of them are negative, right? So the minute you go down that rabbit hole and you fall back into that one behavior, you have not chosen to address, which is the fear, the anxiety, the stories that you tell yourself, right? And this, this, you just go in a tail spin. You will not remember what it said on page 37 of that book. Right.
AJV (00:53:31):
That’s not true. That’s so true.
Speaker 3 (00:53:35):
Mirroring. You can hardly see the person sitting across from you straight because right. Because cognitively your fear is blocked you from doing that. So you’re in your head, you can’t be present. You’re fearful that now affects every little, everything big or small that you’ve learned. And you’ve been told to do. And now you’re sitting there in a, in a, you know, pile of fear. Mm-Hmm
AJV (00:54:51):
Yeah. Oh, I love this. And you know, this is, it just brings up, you know, a fear that I often hear from people who are working on their personal brand or who want to become more well known for something, but what their real fear is, is, do I really have anything to add to the conversation? And I love this so much because being in a world of sales for a very long time, there’s a lot of talk on negotiation. I have literally probably read a dozen books, been to twice as many conferences or seminars heard speakers on these attended webinars. And I have never heard negotiation discussed the way that you’re discussing it today. And if we would just lean more into the uniqueness that is just naturally within us as like, I wish this was the conversation that was had with me when I was starting out at 22 and 23, like how much further ahead I would be if it was not about reading body language and, you know, say these words and do it at this time.
AJV (00:55:55):
And, but it was more about like, do you know what you’re going in for? Right. Do you know what you really want? Do you know what the outcome is that you wish, you know, to have? It’s like, do you know your non-negotiables like, do you know your own self worth? Like, do you even know what you’re negotiating for? Right. It’s like, how often are we just, you know, and in my perspective, it’s to my comment I made earlier, it’s like, sometimes it’s just a, it’s, it’s a battle. It’s like, well, I’m just going into win. Right. Right. And it’s like, well, right. Is what’s that old saying, you can win the battle and still lose the war. Right. Right. It’s like, do we even know what we’re, we’re going into conversate with? I think this is such a great reminder to anyone who is listening. It’s like, regardless of what you feel called to talk about, I assure you the way you’re gonna talk about it is different than how anyone else is going to talk about it because they’re not you, I, this is a great example of that in this conversation.
Speaker 3 (00:56:50):
And I should have probably added before, as I’m thinking, as you’re saying, this is like another really great attribute of, of, of negotiators, great negotiators is that they’re storytellers really, really great storytellers. And that’s how we move people. Right. That’s how we influence people. That’s how we persuade people. And it’s the story you tell yourself. Right. But it’s also the stories that you can share with other people, the, the opening up the vulnerability, the, the letting people in. But we’ve been told that you should not, and I’m not saying, you know, be vulnerable in every negotiations, but just even vulnerable to yourself. Right. And, and that sort of deep understanding of yourself, but learning to tell your story, you know, it’s the brand builder’s way, right? Yeah. But it’s, but it’s knowing, knowing how to do that fearlessly. And knowing that that’s how you change people’s minds and hearts, I guess you know, the, the great quote of, of this notion of, you know, people may forget what you said, and they may forget what you did, but they’ll never forget how you made them feel. How do we make people feel some way mm-hmm,
AJV (00:58:11):
Oh, I love this. I could continue this conversation for another hour and still have more questions. But I wanna make sure people know where to go to check out this book, bring yourself so more where should go to learn more about you and learn more about becoming that great negotiator that is already within
Speaker 3 (00:58:34):
Well, they can, so everything’s on my website. So if they go to more report.com the information about the book I’ve got a newsletter they can sign up for everything’s there. I’m on social media, the book itself, you can find it, any outlet that sells books. So Amazon and hang on random house. It’s actually the publisher Barnes and Nobles all it. So not too hard to find it is out there.
AJV (00:58:58):
All right. Well, I will make sure to put your website link in the show notes, everyone spells it correctly. You can go to Amazon type in, bring yourself, I’ll put all your social handles in the show notes. And before we sign off, I have one last question for you that has nothing to do with negotiation or publishing or teaching or anything. But since it came up today this is help me and help our audience get to know you. What would you say are three non-negotiables in your life that you’re like, these are three non-negotiables for me.
Speaker 3 (00:59:32):
I don’t lie.
AJV (00:59:34):
It’s a good one.
Speaker 3 (00:59:36):
I’m horrible at it. That’s probably one of the reasons why, like, I can’t keep up with a, with a, with a lie to save my life. And so I just feel like the reputational risk is so worth so huge and so damaging. Yeah. That, you know, I, I just, I’ve, I’ve learned from mistakes and not even like business mistakes, but like mom and asking me 30 questions and I’m like, I lost you at eight. Right. So can’t do that.
AJV (01:00:05):
That’s a good, I love that. Okay. That’s good.
Speaker 3 (01:00:09):
Not having the really hard conversations. I, I, I wanna just, if it’s there, let’s just talk, talk about it, right. Because I’ve, I’ve, that’s another thing I’ve learned. I carried the burden of those difficult conversations for a really long time. I, I, I, I lived with Ms. I was diagnosed with Ms in 2010, the burden of stress and all the rest of it had, hasn’t gotten the best of me, but it definitely has taught me that, that the minute you can release that stress and, and the stress of sort of holding back things that are important to you or things that, that need to get cleared away, then, you know, it’s, it’s just so much healthier for your mind, your body, your spirit, all of it.
AJV (01:00:53):
Hmm. Love that.
Speaker 3 (01:00:55):
My non-negotiable, I don’t, I don’t want to be in any kind of relationship business or otherwise with people who have little thought for others that have no empathy, that, that just don’t care. Here I go getting emotional again. I don’t even understand it, but, but I feel like I see so much of that. We see so much of that in our world, and it honestly breaks my heart. And I know that I can’t control all that happens, but I can certainly control those people who I wanna associate with. Amen. And I feel like that we owe the world. We owe everybody better than that. More than that. So that’s really important for me is for people to, to just care about others.
AJV (01:01:48):
Yeah. I love that. Those are so good. I think this is a good practice for all of us, right? Leaving this show. It’s like, if nothing else, it’s like spend some time thinking about what are the non-negotiables in your life. And I love those more. I think those are so good. I have so enjoyed having on the show, getting to know you more, getting to learn from you and also getting a mini coaching session. So lots of, for me y’all stay tuned. I’m gonna record our recap episode. That’ll be live next. Make sure you check out the book, bring yourself and make sure you come back for another episode on the influential personal brand. We’ll see you next time. Thank you.
Ep 310: The Fastest Way to Become a Paid Professional Speaker with Kindra Hall
RV (00:02):
Kindra hall is one of our dear real life friends, and she is a delight and she is one of the best female speakers in the world. One of the, the highest grossing, you know, highest revenue, grossing, keynote speakers, that’s out there. And Kindra and AJ and I like we’ve, we’ve known each other for years at this point. And it’s been really great to see how fast Kindra has launched her career. Specifically as a speaker. I, I remember meeting her earlier in her career where she’s like early on in her journey. She’s like, I’m gonna speak everywhere. And then it was like, within a matter of a couple years, she really freaking was everywhere.
KH (01:11):
Thank you for having me Rory so glad to be here,
RV (01:14):
Buddy. You are awesome. And I, I really mean that, you know, like we, of all the people who come up, you know, to me, and, and say, I wanna be a speaker, like of the people who have actually built like a really true, you know, career. I think you’re probably the fastest that I’ve ever seen that happen to where it was like, I have a dream to speak to. I mean, you and I are gonna be sharing the stage at MDRT together here in, at, in Sydney, Australia in a few months. That’s, you know, a lot of people say, that’s, that’s the biggest, one of the biggest stages in the world. So how did you do that?
KH (01:52):
Now I’m not to make me nervous. All of a sudden I’m like, wait, that’s a big stage. I didn’t think left that part out.
RV (01:58):
It’s a big, old deal. You should be totally nervous. You should be freaking out. It’s a big, it’s a big deal.
KH (02:04):
My, my heart rate just, just went up significantly. I’m starting to sweat a thing. You can’t smell me through here. You know, I, it, how did I do that? It’s a good question. I think I really was someone who I would see and I saw you speak for the very first time. Gosh, it would’ve been in like 2006 when 2007,
RV (02:26):
Was it that DSA convict with direct selling association? Yeah, that wasn’t, I had a, I had like a eight minute part of a showcase. Yeah. And you were, you were there
KH (02:36):
RV (03:04):
The pieces together. You’re like, okay, if they’re paying this guy to do it, then I think there’s a career for me.
KH (03:09):
Like, that was terrible. No, I’m just kidding. I’m kidding. But, but you know, you don’t really know what is possible until you see it. And I kind of put together that I, I had a topic or a thing that I was, that I knew a lot about that actually came later that I realized that that was important. I knew that I could be on stage. I’d been on the speech team as a kid through high school and college. And then it was kind of a whim. I got this whim, I wrote a little mini article in success, magazine. It like, like, it was a little insert, like a little paragraph and somebody saw it, you know how sometimes these things just happen. Somebody saw it and called like found me and said, will you be your keynote? Will you be one of our keynote speakers?
KH (04:00):
What do you charge? And I had no idea. I didn’t know what to do. I remember I gave a 90 minute presentation, no slides. I like it was the first time I put a message together in that way. And it wasn’t great looking back, but it was enough for me to go back to my hotel room. I’ll never forget it was in Las Vegas, but like not on the strip, like that one, that’s like south of the strip
RV (04:54):
Mm-Hmm
KH (05:38):
But that, I think that was more for me that was more a fluke. So I would say that at the be now, yes, people hire me because they’ve read my book. They’ve seen me on Instagram. They saw me at another event, someone they work with saw me at an event. So now it’s definitely word of mouth. Of course, I work with some incredible bureaus, so my agents are great. They’re, they’re great. They represent me well to their clients, but at the beginning, that one little article I feel like was a, a fluke. It was that obsession that hit me that day after I finished. And what happened next? And if I’ll share it with you,
RV (06:19):
Tell me, yeah, we wanna know, I wanna hear the, the
KH (06:22):
Actual story. This is the very specific thing that I did. So there was another guy at that conference who said, oh yeah, I speak all the time. He was being like, he was definitely bragging about it. And I was like, he knows something. I don’t like, how do I, so I offered the next day to buy him a coffee. And we sat down in the Vegas, whatever coffee shop. And he was like, well, you know, you just gotta reach out to people and see if they need a speaker. And I was like, but, but who, who do I reach out to? And he’s like, I don’t know, convention and visitors bureaus. And I was like, okay, I have a start. So I went home and I set a goal to reach out to 100 organizations or events a week for six weeks. Wow. Which would equal 600. And I started with convention and visitors bureaus. Now I will say, I never heard back from a CVB. Nobody ever that
RV (07:11):
Is not, I’ve never booked one of them. That was, I don’t think that was good advice. I, I was gonna
KH (07:16):
Say, no, it wasn’t, but it got me started because I would sit down at my computer and here’s what I had. I had a a really cheesy little demo video of me that was mostly words swooping in that my brother actually made that said fresh voice, stor new, new strategy storytelling. And then like this, a little clip of me talking at a sales event for a company that I was employed by, like I worked for. So, and then I had done, I did like little vlogs for YouTube. And so I cut in like me talking just so they could hear my voice, see what I looked like on stage. It was so low budget. I, but I had nothing else. And then I created a one sheet PDF or whatever, and I sat down and I Googled women’s events. And then I would enter ’em into a spreadsheet and I’d look up like, who is the contact?
KH (08:08):
Who is the whatever. And I would look up like, who else needs my message entrepreneur events. So I Googled entrepreneur events. I Googled. And a big thing for me was Amer the, I found the American marketing association and they have chapters in every city. And so I started, so I found the one in Minneapolis and they, so I made this list. And then at the end of the week after I had a hundred, I would send an email and say, this is how I can basically how I can serve your audience, because it’s not like they have a problem. So I’m trying to tell them that I know you have this problem and I can solve this problem. I included the link to the video. I attached a PDF and I sent it. And the majority of people didn’t write me back, but I remember the American marketing marketing association in Minneapolis did, and they said, will you come speak?
KH (09:01):
And I said, yes. And then I thought, well, wait, if there’s a Minneapolis chapter, maybe there’s a Nashville chapter. Maybe there’s a Dallas chapter. And so I then had 50 chapters that I could reach out to. And that’s how it started. So it wasn’t, I mean, it was brute force at the beginning. And I did, I reached out to 600 events. I heard back from probably 50, but it was enough to get me in front of people and, and make no mistake. The events that I was writing for the most part I got paid with, like, here’s a Chi, you can have the remaining chicken taco at the end bar
RV (09:39):
Buffet line.
KH (09:41):
RV (10:31):
Mm-Hmm
KH (10:33):
Was a long story.
RV (10:34):
No, it’s a, I mean, yeah, it’s a great story, but that is it. I mean, it’s like every association, every company has events. They need speakers and you, you call ’em and you ask ’em are you email? And you ask ’em, do you have speakers? And they say, send me your topic and send me your demo video. Like, and that’s how, how it starts. N now you’ve always been great at telling a story. You’ve always been fascinated at a story, your, your, I mean, this is a huge part of what you, you do. You know, your first book, which we also, I think really kind of became friends when you were launching stories that stick, cuz it was like, Hey, how do I hit the best seller list and all that stuff. Yeah. Which was awesome if I remember, I think it hit number two on the wall street journal.
RV (11:18):
Yeah. Like was legit was your great storyteller and a huge part of speaking is being a great storyteller. So what are some of the things, you know, I’m thinking more of stories that stick what are some of the elements that you need to tell? Great stories. And, and let’s say specifically from stage now, it, it might not be, you’re a keynote speaker in front of yeah. An arena of people. It might be a webinar or a podcast interview or an Instagram or a YouTube live or whatever, but like what are some of the kind of mistakes you see experts making when they’re telling stories?
KH (11:56):
Well, the first mistake is not telling any stories because the stories are the thing that people remember. Like I remember from early two thousands, your story about the stairs and I can still see you on the stage telling that story. And it’s, it’s been, oh my gosh, is that almost 20 years? I don’t wanna say that out like that. That’s embarrassing.
KH (12:47):
The second mistake that people make is it’s they choose the story because it’s a story they want to tell. Maybe because it’s funnier, it’s emotional or it makes people cry or it’s about their dog and they really love their dog. And they aren’t, it’s not exactly clear to the audience why that story for this message. And so I would say it’s, you know, it’s really important to make sure that when you are telling stories in any kind of presentation, whether it’s a, a keynote or a pitch that it’s a really clear to the audience, why you’re telling this story to illustrate whatever message it is that you want them to walk away with. And then I think the third thing is, well, there’s so many but I think one of the great, maybe not the mistake, but I think one of the great opportunities stories afford us is the opportunity to just be ourself, to not have to be the expert when you’re up there. Like you’re, you are just telling the story of, of how like something that happened to you or, or a lesson that you learned or an experience that you had. And, and it’s such a perfect opportunity to be human versus here is the salesperson standing in front of the room or here’s the expert that I’m supposed to listen to. So to choose stories that, you know, to recognize that like really cool thing, that story allows us to do and then to choose stories, to tell that that make that even more possible.
RV (14:28):
Yeah. And I that’s so true. This story is so humanizing. It’s like such a way to connect with people also a way to entertain. Like it it’s naturally entertaining and, and provocative, like if you were gonna write a new story. Okay. So let’s say you were gonna give a new speech. What do you think about in your mind? Like, what’s the thought, press you go through where you go, how do I select the story? I’m gonna tell, so maybe you go, okay, I’m talking to this group, I wanna make this point. And then from there you go, I should do a story or like walk us through the sort of thought process that goes on in Kindra’s head, where you go. Here’s how I select the story. Here’s kind of the high, the high level parts and how I sort of like outline it and then, you know, just like take us through that.
KH (15:18):
Yeah. Yeah. So I think I always start with the, well, some sometimes it, it, it can come in one of two ways sometimes. I stumble upon a story and I’m like, oh my gosh. Like and when I say stumble upon a story, either something happens to me or I remember something that happened years ago and I think, oh, wow, this illustrate, like this is a great story. This illustrates a point that I often try to make. For example, in stories that stick, the opening story is about buying a bottle of cologne on a trip in Slovenia. And I specifically, and the salesman told a story and he did such a great job of it. And I specifically remember standing in that situation, thinking to myself, this is a story. This is a story story is happening to me right here. Right now.
KH (16:16):
I need to remember this. So sometimes it’s the story first. And sometimes it is, which then gets engineered into a message is sometimes it’s the message first it’s, this is the message that I want them to walk away with. This is what I want my audience to think, feel know, or do, what story do I have or what story is there that illustrates this objective that I have. And that’s where it can be. It can be really, it can be really surprising like, oh, wait, there was I, and this isn’t a new story, but this is a story I tell this story about using a story in physics class. Like you wouldn’t think as a, as a, you know, as you said, a well paid keynote speaker that I would open keynotes with a story about a paper from physics class in 12th grade, but it illustrates the message I want to deliver. So very clearly that it ends up being the right story to tell.
RV (17:16):
Okay. So you can either start with the story and engineer the message, or you can identify the message and then sort of reverse engineer it back into the story that you want to tell.
KH (17:28):
Yeah. And I think that the most frustrating thing about the process, and I can say this honestly, like, I, I don’t want people to think that it’s like, oh, so easy. Is that often when you have a message it is really, really hard to find the story that goes with it. Like you can be like where you can sit there and say, what’s a, I have, what’s a story I have and one won’t be there. So I’ve gotten a lot better at saying, I have this message I want to deliver. And then allowing space in my own brain for the right story to come along. Now, it does require heightened awareness on my part. Like, do I witness something a different way? Do I recall something a different way, but, or sometimes you find the story you’re like, oh my gosh, this is such a great story. I have no idea where to use this story.
RV (18:18):
Do you keep a list or anything like, do you like, I, I have like,
KH (18:22):
And again, this is where I wish, I mean, in a perfect world, I would’ve created an app for myself and then I would sell it to all of you, but I have, I text story ideas to myself. I have multiple notebooks and scraps of paper and napkins. With story ideas. I, I put ’em in my notes. I email them to myself. So they’re kind of all over the place. I need to get better about that, but that’s
RV (18:47):
Also, but you do capture it, you at least document it and, and attempt to store it somewhere.
KH (18:53):
Yeah.
RV (18:53):
So what is the difference between telling a story and telling something that happened? And, and is there a difference? Cause I think a lot of people go, I, I’m not a good storyteller, you know, but like they tell friends like, oh, Hey, this is what happened, but then it’s, it’s not very compelling. It’s not very engaging. It’s just really flat or it’s like, oh, okay, well, like what was, what was the point of that? How do you make it engaging?
KH (19:22):
I think that’s kind of the, so if you think about telling something that happened the way I see it is, it’s kind of like a, like a flat line. Like you’re just not like dead, like flat line, but you’re just going along the things kind of in chronological order. Which isn’t necessarily, that can be a place to start with a story, but what a story needs is to kind of take that flat line and to bring the two ends together and then make it a 3d, like a sphere. So that there’s, there’s more intention to it. It’s not just this and this and this happened, it’s these things all happened. And this is, this is what it means in the world. So how that happens is, well, I have a three part, you know, a story has a beginning, a middle and an end, but as we’re thinking about stories to think about it in a way of, at first you’re establishing like this world of what was like, what, how you knew the world, what was happening basically setting the scene in what I call the normal.
KH (20:23):
And then the middle part of the story is the action point is the decision that was made. And the interesting thing is, as you’re creating a story versus telling somebody what happened, like this happened, that, you know, I come home from a flight, I say to my husband, we got delayed. And then we, there was a maintenance issue. So we turned back around and then we took off, but there was weather. So, you know, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And now I’m back home. Whereas with the story there would be, it would be like you build it up in the normal so that the audience is thinking something’s about to happen. Something’s about to happen. Something’s about to happen. And that explosion is the thing that happens. And they’re like, oh yes, that’s what it was. And then the new normal is what you learned as a result.
KH (21:05):
What happened as a result? Now that’s the basic framework, but what, and in stories that stick, we talk about this, this is what the research is that a story really has. Then also four key components. It needs a character, an identifiable character it needs authentic emotion. It needs like a specific moment in the story that people can like be drawn into and really visually see it. So that they’re, you know, sitting right next to you on the stairs is in take the stairs case and then specific details. Because again, it’s the specific details that will have the lasting effect cognitively for people to remember that story. Interesting. Did that help? It’s a little mad
RV (21:46):
Scientist. Sorry. Yeah, totally. Sorry. Well I think it, it’s just, I think a lot of it is realizing that there’s a difference between telling a story and telling what happened and going a story is something you have to craft. Like it’s, it’s
KH (22:01):
Tension behind it, intention
RV (22:02):
And energy. And you know, so, and I like stories that stick. That’s really what that is about. So your, your newer book choose your story, change your life is interesting because that’s more about the stories that we tell ourselves.
KH (22:17):
Yes.
RV (22:18):
So I’d love to kind of marry that with what are the stories that maybe you’ve heard experts tell themselves about why they can’t be successful. And then what are some of the stories that you told yourself about maybe the industry or whatever, and then how do you rewrite your, your story to be more empowering?
KH (22:43):
Yeah. I, I mean the stories that we, because of course the stories that we tell ourselves have all of the components by nature that I just mentioned. And so the natural stories that are alive within each of us, those are crafted without effort. That is, we are very good at crafting those stories ourselves. And so we have within us, these very powerful forces, which are our stories that dictate our actions for better or worse. So for example and for talking, and if we’re talking about speakers here, it’s so funny, the, the stories that people tell themselves. So I was working with a speaker several years ago, long before I was a speaker who who was it, wasn’t for a lack of like, it wasn’t like imposter syndrome. But there was definitely some frustration around not being able to get to the next level.
KH (23:42):
And the stories were that this person was telling themselves as well. My content is serious and, and audiences just want they just wanna laugh and I can’t laugh, or I don’t make people laugh because I’m so serious. And so there were, there were some of these stories that were and, oh, I’m a even stories about the stories that could be told was I’m a very private person. I can’t share my stories. So therefore I won’t be successful as a speaker. Hmm. Or as successful as I want to be. You know, I had stories about myself, the stories that I was stories that I had about myself and then stories that were told to me, I was told on multiple occasions that I was too blonde to be taken seriously on stage
RV (24:38):
Really?
KH (24:39):
Yep. That I was too young. I didn’t have enough experience or success that I was too female. Right. So, so that there were, and, and so it’s really interesting too, because those were stories that I could have adopted for myself. As, oh, I, I guess I don’t have a place here instead. Some of the stories that I really struggled with were yeah, like what, what value can I bring to them or that audience I would be, I would be standing backstage thinking that audience doesn’t pair anything about what I have to say. And I would have the stories playing in my head of maybe an event, like way at the beginning that didn’t go so well. Right. Cause I was still getting good at speaking. And so it really is a matter of when you find these stories that you’re telling it’s, it’s seeing them for what they are. Right. Mm-Hmm
RV (26:22):
Yeah. That’s, that’s, that’s really amazing. Like one of the things that I picked up there is like, it’s funny how, when we’re trying to craft, like when we’re trying to tell a story at first stage or something, we have to sit down and go, all right, I need to craft this with intention. But when it’s the stories in our own head about our own life, those are crafted without much effort, almost invisible. Like we don’t even, yeah. You know, some, somebody says something, boom, we adopted as truth. We live, we live our whole life by it. We don’t even know that it’s there affecting how we think what we do. And so it feels like identifying and just going, oh, where did I learn that? Like, where did I, where did I even adopt that from? I think a lot of it is fake. Like it’s, it’s manufactured. They’re not real things.
KH (27:10):
I, I had a really, I had a big epiphany. That’s actually changed my life as a speaker. I realized that I, I had this belief that if I wasn’t terribly stressed and painfully nervous and out of my mind, terrified to go out on stage that I then didn’t, I wouldn’t do a good job. It was like, it was required for me to be really unsure of myself. And that’s how I used that. I would use those stories as like the adrenaline that got me on stage, but it made me miserable. I hated my job because I felt so terrible right before, sometimes days before I, my husband would call it the darkness before I would go and give a presentation. And so I used this self storytelling strategy because I just couldn’t live like that anymore. I would just feel too miserable before every keynote.
KH (28:11):
And so I would choose to tell myself stories that would stop that anxiety stop that, that nervousness. And, you know, you would think that one of the stories you would tell is a time you did a great job. Well, I do. I mean, forgive me for saying this, but I do a great job almost all the time. Right. And so my inner critic is like me, that’s not good enough. That’s not good enough. And so I would stay in this very nervous state. So I decided to, and we’re talking about carefully curating, crafting our stories. I decide, I figured out that the stories that worked were the stories of when all the odds were against me and I still did a great job. So there was this one huge event. So it was a big sales conference for tech. It was like the first tech event that I had spoken for.
KH (29:01):
And I got the stomach flu, like in the middle of the night, the night before I was so sick, they had to put a bucket off stage for me with strict instructions to cut the mic. If they saw me go towards the bucket I was, I was terribly ill and this was way before COVID. So you could, you know, show must go on. I gave a killer 90 minute presentation and then went to the airport and got some, you know, pretzels and Gatorade. And I was fine, but like that, I’m like, wait, I was, or the time where I was in The Bahamas and the whole electrical grid went out, all that was on in the room were the generator lights. And I just called out to the audience. Do, should I just keep going? Like my mic didn’t work. There were no decks.
KH (29:43):
And it was, and it just kept going. And it was awesome. Right? So telling myself these stories, but those are the stories. Those were the only stories. So this is, what’s really important as whatever your limiting beliefs are, whatever they are that you’re telling yourself that you’re, you, you gotta catch it. You gotta figure out where it’s coming from, but then it’s your job to choose better ones. And I have this set of stories that I consistently retold myself. I call it the fourth step it’s installing before I would go on stage until now. I don’t, I don’t have to struggle with any of that anymore. So for example, Roy you’ll love this. I was at an event just a, just a couple weeks ago. And the event got started late because for whatever reason. And so then the guy was going long and I was sitting there and then they, they called for a Q and a and everybody left the room because they didn’t wanna sit for the Q and a, and they went out to get the coffee. And then it was my turn to come up on stage and everybody was gone and they were like in the back, like dinging the gong. I would’ve freaked out before and now I, I don’t, because I know that I know the stories of when I’ve faced terrible odds and done. Great.
RV (30:53):
Yeah. That’s I, I love the word that you use there reinstall, it, it it’s, it’s like a program that you’re just in installing taking the old one out and going, oh, that one doesn’t work. I’m just gonna drop that one. I’m gonna reinstall a new program, which is just a new, a new story. Well I love this Kindra. So good Kay stories that sticks the first book, which is, you know, I would say is really kind of like the art of how to tell a great story. Yep. And then, and then choose your story, change your life, which is, is a lot about, you know, almost like a very personal development, kind of like your own mindset and about how you live your life and how much these stories impact us. Where should people go if, if they wanna connect with you and learn more about, about you and what you’re up to.
KH (31:40):
Yeah, well, you can find me. I’m Kindra hall.com. K I N D R a H a L L social I’m on LinkedIn, Twitter, kind of Facebook, Instagram. You can find me there. And of course the books are wherever books are sold
RV (31:57):
Uhhuh. Well we’ll link up to Kendra hall.com in the show notes. Thank you for this friend. Always, always such a pleasure to talk with you. I’m, I’m so excited about your whole career and the art that it’s taking and all the great work that you’re doing. So we wish you the best and we’ll keep in touch, look forward to, to seeing where you go from here.
KH (32:17):
Well, we’ll see you in Australia, Rory. Thanks for having me.
RV (32:20):
That’s right. I’ll see you soon.
Ep 308: How to Grow a Personal Brand and Build a Real Estate Empire with Vinney Chopra
RV (00:07):
Hey brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview as always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand buildersgroup.com/podcall. We hope to talk to you soon.
AJV (00:53):
Hey everybody. And welcome to another episode on the influential personal brand. This is one of your co-hosts AJ Vaden. Here I am here today with a, a friend we recently got reunited. We randomly were at the same mastermind event together. And I don’t think until here recently, I had seen Vinney in probably 15 years, been a really long time and was such an honor to get to run into him. He’s the happiest, most joyful human on planet earth. You all have a taste in just a moment, but first before we kind jump into a conversation, I might give a couple of high level things that you need to know about Vinney Chopra and why you need to stick around. This is, it’s kind of gonna be one of those interviews where we talk about personal branding. We talk about business, we talk about entrepreneurship, but we’re also gonna talk about scaling through investing.
AJV (01:52):
And Vinney is just a fascinating human being. And some of the most fascinating things that I think you need to know about him is that when VI, he moved to the United States almost 40 years ago, he moved here with $7. That’s right. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, $7 in his pocket. That’s it. And today he’s got more than 650 million under assets. He’s the author of two amazing books. He’s a podcast host, he’s a crypto investor. He is a man of many talents. And y’all, I’m just so excited to learn from him like selfishly, I’m having Vinney on the podcast today, cuz I want to ask him all these questions and learn for myself. And I know that if I can gain something, I know that you’re gonna gain something about.
New Speaker (02:46):
Real estate syndication of being an author, using that, to help your personal brand, but growing your business and your reputation, which are all things that Vinney has done exceptionally well and going from $7 when he moved here to over 650 million in assets 40 years later is nothing shy of incredible. I’m so excited to have you on the show. Vinney. Welcome.
VC (03:12):
Thank you, AJ. Thank you. I’m humbled. I’m privileged to be with you. I appreciate that. When I met you and Rory few months back, maybe last month we were there, you know, in Sarasota it’s it was fabulous to meet you all. And I saw you in presentation here, dynamic. I mean the company you have built is super, you know, just so great. And I’m so fortunate to be with you today.
AJV (03:40):
Oh, I’m the pleasure is all mine. He’s like even in Vinney’s text, y’all he just emos joy. It’s like even his text messaging, he’s just like the happiest guy and I’m so excited to get, to spend an hour with you. So all Vinney. So I kind of gave you a little bit of advanced notice and I clearly shared a tiny, tiny little microcosm of all of the things that you’ve accomplished, but here’s what I wanna do first is I wanna help our audience get to know you. And so here’s, I’m just gonna lay it out there. You can tell us as much or as little as you want, but how did you go from moving to the United States with $7 to being a multi-time international bestselling author podcast, host and most impressively, this incredible real real estate investment empire. How did this all happen?
VC (04:31):
Thank you. Thank you, AJ. Actually, I came with a very humble beginning. We are six siblings four sisters and two brothers, including me. We lived in one bedroom apartment. I think it was 300 scare freak total, literally like one bedroom, one living room and a hallway, never had a television, never had like a telephone or a refrigerator when I was growing up all the way till 11th grade. I think we only had a bicycle and you know, the two legs cycle, right?
VC (05:39):
So that really gave us very good in, you know, power to learn and be aggressive. And to really top in the class, if I may post a little bit, you know, in the junior high, I kind of topped in the high school I taught there also in studies, I got a free scholarship, five year scholarship from the Indian government to, I always wanted to become an engineer. So I’m a mechanical engineer. I took my five years to get the degree that I worked with Larson turbo, which is reliance group, one of the biggest company in India. But then I came here. I always wanted to do MBA masters in business administration. I thought, you know, marketing and engineering, I can make a good living in USA or in India. So I came here with $7. Now I could only bring $7. My grandpa actually paid for my ticket to come here.
VC (06:39):
My parents didn’t want me to come here.
AJV (07:44):
This is amazing. Like it’s like, I mean, it’s like one of those stories of when we think about overcoming the odds as someone who lives in America, it’s a really different story when you compare it to really no access to ed education and like no vehicle, 300 square foot with eight people living in it. Like that’s a, that’s a different level of humble beginnings than what we hear most often specifically on this podcast. And so I know that after college, right, you took clearly a job. So what was your first job? Like? Did you go into engineering or did you say the sales and marketing?
VC (08:24):
It just so happened. I worked like 80 hours a week. I know Ru also worked, I think, you know, in the similar profession, but that was like selling through summer months while I was going for George Washington university and we’ll sell books and encyclopedias 13 hours a day knocking on doors. And that really made me tougher. It made me being very, you know, accepting rejection and making sure that I could really down deep in myself, you know, figure out ways how could to overcome and be happy. I guess, you know, I was not always smiling like this, but I just always felt like, okay. And they gave us great many books by the way, Mandino in the greatest salesmen in the world, Charlie, tremendous Jones, you know, Dale Carnegie’s book how to influence people and, you know win France then think and grow rich, you know, Napoleon Hills. I remember those seven books really got me going mind wise and thinking, oh, I forgot magic of thinking big by WJ Schwartz. You know, all, these are very, very great books. So that’s when after about three summers, I said, you know what, I’m enjoying it so much. Let me just put the engineering in a box literally for some time and let me try out other revenues. So I became promotional consultant, fundraising consultant. I ranked, you know, raised my bar high. So I never went back to engineering. Can you play it?
AJV (10:02):
I, I mean, it’s kinda one of those things where, you know, I think people forget the power of learning, how to be a great salesperson. Yeah. Right. It does not matter what business you’re in. Right. It doesn’t matter what you’re doing, having the skills of knowing how to make a sale and have influence like, like even as a parent, right. It’s like I’m selling every day and my kids are the best negotiators on the planet. Right. It’s like, there is just so much power in knowing how to make a sale that makes you a great business person. So I know that you went on and you were in fundraising for 40 years.
VC (10:41):
Yeah.
AJV (10:46):
For a really long time,
VC (10:47):
He retired in 2015.
AJV (10:50):
So I want everyone to pay attention to that. Let me call that out. So Vinney retired after a 37 year career with the same company, right. But 37 years. And you retired in 2017. It’s 2022 y’all. So your real estate investing really started five years ago,
VC (11:10):
Two eight. When I really took big, big strides, we start, we’ve been married 42 years just to say everybody, and I’ll be 17 this year. I’ll be, you know, after 50, I say, every birthday we go backward. So actually I’m only 30 mind of 17. Maybe
AJV (11:32):
I love it. I love it. But it’s like, I think it’s really important that I think just so often we feel like we look up at some point in our life and we just feel like we’re, I just thought I would be in a different place by now, or I thought I would have more or do more or something by now. And what I love about your story so much is that so much of the monumental success that you’ve had in books and everything has happened post retirement, right? Retirement is not retirement for you. Retirement. Truly
VC (12:05):
Seven years have been spectacular growth years. For me, I’m making more and doing more and being happier more. I was happy all these 40 years also. And we’ve been married 42 years, but what I have really scaled up has been in seven years.
AJV (12:23):
This is incredible. So, okay. So what click, what changed? What’s different? Like what did you start doing seven years ago? Because really what happened is you left kind of the quote unquote corporate America. You left your, you know, quote unquote nine to five, even though I know you’re working more than nine to five, but you left that and you said, all right, this is my, you know, next era, right? This is the next thing I get to do in life. Why real estate? Why investing? Like, what was it like, what was that next step that you took when you quote unquote retired?
VC (12:55):
Surely, you know, actually when we got married, it all depends. You know, when the opportunity knocks, you gotta open the door. I always say that and you should embrace it. That’s what is the other thing, you know, and being consistent in, you know, in the things we do. So when we got married, I was in Ohio, Finlay, Ohio, and we moved to bay area. My peer group started talking about real estate, hold on, I’m a promotional consultant, but I’m meeting over the weekend and all, and they’re saying rental homes and investing over here and there. So when Neil and Monica were born, our two children, we started, we said, okay, let’s dabble into it. Right? So we started investing into single family homes and we were getting cash flows. Okay. Cash flows. Then we went to Arizona, we bought two homes in one day, then another home, another rental later on, on the internet, went to Georgia, bought over there, went to Texas.
VC (13:56):
So we kept on buying these single family homes 2005 while being working full time. Also, you know, we have a lot of free time. What we do with the free time is our own choice. So I became a broker and I declared it to the company. I’m a broker, but I’m not going into that profession. So that helped me a lot to really start building my side hustle. Let’s say, you know, in real estate. So when I retired in 2015, I started a company in 2014, December, November, actually. And that is monil investment group, our kids name, Monica and Neil kind of put together. But before that, I had another company with a big major partner. I was not major partner. And then we sold all the assets in that one, you know, later on. But this Moni investment group has seven companies now in the last seven years. And it’s got monil senior living, monil management, monil you name it academy multi-family academy, then hospitality, Mon hospitality, and all these different, you know, crypto. And now we are going into Bitcoin mining, Mon mining just got built last 10 days. What
AJV (15:17):
VC (16:22):
You know, my main passion is really to make 1 million millionaires. What, I mean, that’s a pretty big goal, but if you look at 8 billion people on the planet, you know, and I think how many I was told out of eight, 4 billion have internet. I really believe that you could pass the information through the internet online education, and that can be spread all over the globe. So that has been my passion. I’ve recorded maybe 1,300 lectures right now, which can really manually teach everything that I do even better. And again, with all the tools and things, and we have dropped it down to 330, 6 of them into a course where people can really learn everything and everything. But writing book also makes the author really dig deeper into themselves. And they even, I say teaching is twice learning. I always say that because you try to perfect the art because you are going out in the open to tell other people about it in simpler ways.
VC (17:32):
I just have to say that I, you know, in Scottsdale, we finished the trip, right. You know, last week. So mark ter Hanson and crystal Hanson invited me for dinner. And as you know, mark ter Hanson wrote that book chicken. So for the soul, they sold 500 million copies, the number one writer, author in the world. So they want to write a book on me. I said, what they said, Winnie, we wanna write a book on you, fictional character, but your life and that book, fictional book is getting more coverage and people are learning about the principles much better. Anyway, I thought I might, it’s been on my mind. And I told them yesterday that yes, I gave permission. And we’ll be now doing interviews and all, and then hopeful. Yeah.
AJV (18:25):
I mean, I think that is just a, it’s a Testament too, of what a personal brand is all about. Right. It’s becoming known for something that you wanna be known for. And it’s like, I love what you said. It’s like teaching is just choice learning. Yes. Right. And I think there’s so much power in what you said of like writing a book or even creating a course or creating content in general really is more self-reflection of what do I have to say? Yeah. And how do I wanna say it? And it’s an R to fine tuning your message in a way that it reaches this very specific audience, but then two was like, you’ve got this enormous goal of helping a million people become millionaires. Right. And a part of that is it’s information, right. It’s education. And so one of the things that I wanna share with the audience today, anyone who’s listening is Vinney has made one of his books available.
AJV (19:19):
And e-copy so if you go to Vinny chopra.com Ford slash freebook. Right. So Vinney, V I N N E Y Chopra, C H O P R a.com Ford slash freebook. I’ll make sure to put that in the show notes, but you can go and grab an E version of one of his books. And I just, I love so much that you’re, you’re leveraging all of your success to help other people have success. And I think that’s really incredible. And I think that’s a power of a personal brand and creating valuable information is that you’re helping other people succeed, but simultaneously you’re becoming more successful every single time someone else hits their goals. And I think that’s a beautiful part of this whole puzzle. And so I, I’m super curious. And then I wanna actually talk about, you know, investing your business through, you know, real estate and scaling, but I’m curious, it’s like, there’s a lot of things that you could do. So why a book? Why a course, like why, why those specific things for you?
VC (20:24):
I would say definitely no, that is passing down the knowledge so that in simpler terms and having people to really act on, right. A lot of people just read and read and read. I like to also hold them accountable. So I do group coaching, every Wednesdays in my masterminds. Then I have personal coaching, only four students. I take a year that way, but that’s just one part of my thing just to give back forward, give giving. Then other side of my business is really getting into the deals and the structures and raising money. That’s what I’m good at. I just waste 4.5 million in three hours on vacation, literally. And you know, and I’ve got four interviews this week with my half a million dollar investors who are very already seen the package, cuz I’m buying $65 million multi-family right now. And then also crypto Bitcoin mining is very big in my mind.
VC (21:25):
And we, even though the stock, I mean, crypto Bitcoin went to 31,000 or whatever, 32, we can mine it at 12,000. So still there is a huge, huge profit. And that’s what I’m very, very excited about right now. Then hotels that’s the other one and senior living is my other one. So I mean every angle it’s kind of like, I give some time to this pocket this time, this, this, this. So I always have believed in, you know, AJ that you never should say, I can only do this or this or this or this, but always replace the R with an a and D and just your subconscious and your brain will just, you know, become so infer. I say, when you say I can do this and this and this and this and this, that has been the real success principle for me to really send it out in the Cosmo with the law of attraction.
VC (22:31):
Like the book was the secret, right from Rhonda burns, which is kind of going for the last, you know, a hundred years, what we think, what we conceive and we send strong signals all around us in the Cosmo. You don’t even know how it’s gonna happen. I don’t even know what, how these things are under unraveling right now.
AJV (23:56):
You know, it’s interesting. It’s like, although you’re doing a whole bunch of different things, there is a common through line. And you know, we talk a lot about that at brand builders group, but it’s, you really have the common through line, the common thing in every component of what you’re working on is investment. Yes. It doesn’t matter if it’s personal investment in learning or it’s real estate or Bitcoin or mining, or, you know, you know, senior living or hotels. It’s all about investments. Good, true. Right. It’s like, that’s that through line. So, you know, we talk about this a lot in brand builders groups. So for anyone who’s listening, who’s been around for a minute, you know, that we really much believe that you break through the noise by becoming known for one thing mm-hmm
AJV (24:45):
Right. And it’s like, now you’re doing a little of this and a little of that, but you’re doing all those little of this and a little of that, but it’s all through the lens of investment wealth building. Right. And I think that’s really important for everyone who’s listening of going, oh my gosh, well I’ll never be at that level. It’s like, no, you are. When you find that common, when you find that common thing that you’re passionate about, that you’re really good at doing, which I do wanna talk about how do you raise several million dollars in on vacation? So we’ll talk about that in a second. But it’s like, once you find that thing that you’re naturally good at you’re superpower, it’s like, then you’re, I really do believe that your mind activates and it goes, and it’s like, it could come in this form and then this form, it’s just like, it’s the same thing with information.
AJV (25:27):
You could read it, you could hear it on a podcast. You could be in a coaching program, a Masterman program, a course, but it’s all the same information, but it’s how it’s delivered in a variety of mediums. That makes it unique. And I hear you saying invest investing is very similar, right? It’s like plenty of people invest in a 401k or in a Roth IRA. And it’s like, but there’s also real estate investing. And then even in real estate, you’ve got senior living, you have hotels, you have multi-family units, you have single family homes. It’s like, there’s all these different ways to expand it. As long as you know, what your focus is. And what I hear you’re saying your focus is really investment. Even when it comes to education, it’s personal investment,
VC (26:07):
You are so right about it. A is you are so right. Two streams just too very focused, you know, attack is of course on the passive investors who are rich
AJV (27:15):
VC (27:53):
I love it to give credit to Monica Chopra, our daughter, she’s our partner else in the business. You met her in Sarasota. She’s wonderful. She’s been with us seven years. Of course. And the good part is that we have in mail Chi designed these beautiful emails that we have used for previous undertakings, where we use raise money. We just clone it. What? Just clone it and put new information in it. Yeah. So we were able to, she was able to design it. She sent it test market while I was there sipping, you know, pina colada or something. And then she said, dad, should we send it out? And we did. We sent out to 1,330 investors we have in our database and we never talk to anybody. But in our bullets we share all the good information and then give them soft commitment forms, clickable links.
VC (28:54):
So as soon as they like the whole system and the brochure and everything, they click on it, then it goes into a survey automatically. And then when they fill out the survey, it goes into Google sheet in real time, in real stamping, we find out if they wanna put 200,300, 500 and so on, and then how will they believe will be investing? We have a whole questionnaire that way. So that’s how we raise that money. Then in the mail chip, it says, oh, so many people clicked and opened and how many did not open? So we resend it again. Mm-Hmm
AJV (29:50):
Know? Oh, let me tell you what y’all I don’t know. Who’s been saying email marketing is dead, but they’re dead wrong. Oh, raising millions of dollars and email marketing right here with Vinney Chopra.
VC (30:23):
In our, in our CRM. In our, I know you mentioned it. I think I saw that in Sarasota. You said your next customer is in your Rolodex, in your right school, literally, which is so true. I love texting also huge, huge fan of texting. So I copy the same message
AJV (31:02):
Great. I think that’s such a great reminder of the power of your email list. And if you’re not building your email list right now, like if, if this was not clear enough, raising millions of dollars yeah. In an email blast, like let’s tune into what are you doing to build your email list, but not just build it, but nurture it right. Provide value to it. That’s huge. Like that’s a really big deal to raise millions of dollars off of, you know, 1300 investors is a really big deal. You know, we, some of us have email lists of 10, 20, 30, 5000 thousand people and couldn’t raise that much money with a launch. So I think there’s one thing in building a great email list in terms of numbers, but there’s a difference in having a quality email list versus just a quantity of an email list. I’m
VC (31:49):
So glad you said it, AJ. Now this was mail Chimp. I used the word that’s very sacred for us. That’s 1,330 investors, but my active campaign list is 14,000 mm-hmm
AJV (32:13):
VC (32:40):
Sense urgency. I should definitely mention that. I get sold out very quickly because I tell them it’s first come first served. Even if you have 5 million with me before I will not put you above the line, you got to make that commitment. It’s time stamped and everything. Mm-Hmm
AJV (33:23):
I mean that, I think again, that’s good old fashioned sales, right? How to create that limit, that sense of urgency. Yes. Something that moves people to action. That’s that’s 40 years of amazing sales that work right there, Vinney
VC (33:38):
Work. And you know, I collect almost 98 to 99% of my commitments, which is unheard of in the syndication world. It’s very unheard of. Even my coach told me, Vinney, you gotta get twice as many commitments to get half of it, money collected to buy anything. But somehow in the other, I always felt that if I can educate my investors nicely, not selling them, nobody wants to be sold at all. But as a consultant and show them all the different avenues, what can go wrong or whatever, and then make them understand right about the investment they will endear to you. And the more open you are, more trustworthy, you are, they will bring money more and more and tell more people about it and everything
AJV (34:31):
True.
VC (34:31):
So we collect almost 99% of soft commitments into hard commitments.
AJV (34:37):
Yeah. That’s awesome. You know, I heard this the other day and I’m paraphrasing it, but it’s, it’s really simple provide value, build trust. Yeah. Right. The more value that you provide, the more trust that you build. Right. that’s so good. So, okay. You kinda mentioned something that’s gonna kind of transfer us into the second part of our conversation. So we’ve got, you know, 15, 17 minutes left here. So we wanna talk about investing, right? So your personal brand is all around investments. It comes in a variety of formats. But you you’ve chosen a very distinctive, you know, path post your corporate retirement into this world of investing. And a lot of people don’t know what real estate syndication is. And so fill in like, what is that?
VC (35:24):
It’s very simple syndication. If you do the word, you know, in the Wikipedia or dictionary, it’s pooling of money together of likeminded people for profits. And you could, you know, syndicate to raise money, to buy a plane and put the plane to use. And that is where the profits will be generated. You could buy apartment building, which I’m in quite a bit and hotels, you could buy office building mobile home park. You could build a company, you know, a VC company mm-hmm
VC (36:34):
When you buy in Mar in stock market, Google stock, you have to pay a hundred percent of it cash or do margins or do options and all that more risky. But in real estate, guess what? You come up with 25% of the money. The bank comes along, they look at the property. They say, yeah, we feel comfortable. We’ll give you 75% of the money. What you bring only 25. They give you three times more and you give the whole hundred to the seller. Now you own the property. What the bank says, just pay us the interest only loan for five years or three years, or give us interest and principle, you know, principle, payback, Orlu payment. We call it right Uhhuh. But now you made that property increasing value. The bank says, you keep all the profits, you keep all the equity. You’re not gonna take any equity out. You. I mean, this is the craziest thing.
VC (37:48):
First of all, you put a hundred thousand, you are buying $400,000 worth. And when the 400,000 increases to 40 million now 40,000, all that gain is yours to keep, oh my gosh. And the tax laws say, depreciation, what is that? Depreciation is that your building is going to be worth zero. If you buy it for 1 million. After 27 and a half years, taxation code says it’ll be worth zero. And you can deduct the losses every year.
VC (39:01):
We call it three DS, but the property management companies took care of it. Right? But then when we started buying apartments, we were having 20 homes in one place, kind of because 20 units, you collect rent from all 20 and they’re paying the mortgage down. That’s the other part. I didn’t talk about that deposition and all that. And bank is separate. Now comes to residence. Mm-Hmm
AJV (40:34):
Up. That’s amazing. So, but
VC (40:36):
It’s the only reason AJ, because I’m able to get money from my family, friends, people I know. And they gave me money. That’s the power of syndication.
AJV (40:47):
That’s amazing. I mean, it’s, it’s a pulling of funds. Yeah. Where everyone wins.
VC (40:52):
Yeah. Everybody wins.
AJV (40:53):
Everybody, everyone wins.
VC (40:55):
70, 30 splits means our investors get 70% of 30 returns and the cash flow, I get only 30, which is great, but they, you know, get benefit and we get benefits to
AJV (41:09):
You. Oh, so much of the win-win I love this. And I think the, that, there’s a couple of things that you said that I wanna kind of go back to, and I’m just curious for everyone who’s listening. Who’s going, I’m at a place where I know I need to be investing specifically in real estate, cuz right now, if you’re not investing, your dollar is losing money, right? Yes. You just have dollars in the bank. You are losing money at the rate
VC (41:30):
7% each year.
AJV (41:31):
It’s insane. So it’s, we’re not really at a time of like, you know, should I invest? It’s like, no, what are you going to invest in? Cause otherwise your money is literally losing its values sitting where it’s sitting. So you went residential versus commercial. Why?
VC (41:48):
The reason is because of economies of scale, because instead of having single family or duplexes all over in different cities and different because you don’t wanna buy everything in one place, mm-hmm
AJV (43:13):
That’s a love it. Well, I think too, especially in this world that we’re living in where how much of a virtual environment are we gonna stay in? Yeah. It’s like, regardless of people ever return to offices, they’re always gonna need places to live. Sure. Right. and so that kind of leads me to my second question. And I don’t know, what’s, you know, it’s like this doesn’t have to be academic, but I’m just curious on your perception with millennials. Yes. Younger millennials specifically. And then the rise of gen Z, right. Which, you know, Monica is, you know, in the verge of this millennial gen Z era, I’m curious, like, what are your thoughts on the importance of how you invest in money in terms of, you know, multi, multi, how like multi-family housing units versus single family homes. Because I’m just so curious, like how many of these people are going to want to buy? I have so many people that I know that are in this younger millennial generation where it’s like, they don’t want to, yes. It’s a decided choice that they’re choosing to rent because they want the freedom and flexibility.
VC (44:16):
You know, you hit the nail in the head. I talk about three tsunamis flowing through the world and USA one is the millennial and Zen Z, just like you said, they like portability. They don’t wanna move lawn. They want to be moving into remote areas and working from laptop, enjoy the beaches and this condominiums renting. So portability is number one on their mind. They don’t wanna be tied down. Some of them saw their parents lose their homes in the last recession or something. Right. So that is a huge, we are investing. It’s a rental rental nation. We call it, we are a rental nation, you know, rent. Yeah. Rental nation, renters nation. Second one is our tsunami, which is a silver tsunami. 10,000 baby boomers are turning 65. So seniors are growing more and more and more 10,000 every single day. So there’s a simple tsunami going through. The third tsunami I talk about is the immigration, the immigrants coming, our population growth is very low. 2.4%, you know, and with the death rate and all. So we do need influx of other nationalities and different people coming through. So three tsunamis are all making USA, a renter nation again. So we have been renter nation. We have so much shortage. 20 billion units are shortage in America right now, 20 million. Even if I built so many apartments still, we will not be able to capture it.
AJV (45:57):
That’s insane. And I love this. And I heard you talk about this just as a tiny bit in Sarasota around these three tsunamis. So I just wanna repeat this for everyone. We’ve got this generational tsunami with gen Z and millennials who don’t necessarily wanna settle down and buy a home. They wanna be flexible and move from city to city or place to place in this, you know, laptop living world, which I think is fascinating. And only growing with the natural, you know, distant work environment that we’re experiencing with virtual work. Second is the silver tsunami. Right? And I wanna kinda go back to one of the steps. You said, you said 10,000,
VC (46:39):
Every night turned into 65 years of age. So there are so many, I’m 70, I’ll be 70 this year, right? August. But up to 2031, what almost nine more years, all these people who are in the sixties, you know, on 61, 62, 63, 64, all the way, the last person will turn 65.
AJV (47:58):
That. That’s not your typical senior living in bar city. But I think that’s amazing because that’s true. It’s like people are living longer and they want better quality of life. No one wants to go to what you think about now, when you think about a retirement home, it’s very yucky and scary. And quite honestly like what kid wants to put their parents in that, right. That’s not ideal, but you’re, so I think this is amazing because it’s like, we’re saying 10,000 a day, you’re entering into this and all these people are living longer. It’s like, where are they gonna go? Right. When they are not able to stay into their home, they’re not able to upkeep it or they don’t want to. And so you’re, you’re doing a ton in this senior living environment. Like, like what do you think is the potential for this particular a real
VC (48:44):
I’m setting my goal at 2 billion, with a B billion in this decade, rest of the decade, I’m doing five projects right now in Florida and Virginia Williamsburg, Virginia should be opening up end of October. Beautiful, beautiful place. If anybody would like to, you know, watch and see and meet me there. That’s Hampton Manor is our brand Hampton, a M PTO N manor.ceo is the website, but Williamsburg, Virginia, Chesapeake, Virginia, we are building. Then in Punta go, we just opened up. We are not even open yet. We are 60% occupied already. We are not even open yet. So people have already given us deposit. And as soon as we open the door, they’re going to all seniors will be coming in. And even the corner of Florida is coming. I just found out yesterday to our facility. There’ll be a big, big write up on our communities because what we are building. So that’s gonna be great. Cape coral. We built it. Palm bay, Sebastian vane Jacksonville, Mari island. So building in all these locations then St. Louis, then Texas, we are coming Nashville. We are coming Nashville. I know we all over
AJV (50:04):
USA. I’m harassing VI like, come on. When are you coming to Nashville? You have two investors waiting on you. This is the it’s incredible. Like I think this is amazing. And then the immigrants tsunami. Yes. Right? Which again, renters I think this is really interesting in hearing this perspective of one syndication where you don’t hold all the responsibility. You don’t hold all the liability. Yes. But you’re pulling it together to do something larger. Right. but then it’s this, I love this multifamily housing component. Especially when you get into like 5,000 units, plus it’s really exciting. And then what I’m most interested is you senior living? Like, I think that is fascinating mainly because it’s so needed. It’s so needed to reimagine what senior living looks like for this, you know, next 10 to 20.
VC (50:54):
No, that’s so true. What you said, AJ, our goal, our motto is let’s spoil the seniors. Yeah.
AJV (51:01):
Love that.
VC (51:02):
You know? I mean, we want them dignified life, respectful life, cuz that’s their golden years. I love that. And we start at like 3,300, I think is the amount which includes all the meals, rents, all the ADLs activities are daily, living, caregiving, linen, laundry, everything included, transportation, all that. And then the care of service. If they need us, it might go to 4,000 or 4,500 and seniors don’t have to pay a penny because there are certain livings where you have to buy a condo or something. Hours are rental units. They are five to seven acres of land. One story, no two story, no elevators and courtyards are built with the waterfall functions, but in greens and swing pools and other things so that, and they can put vegetable garden outside. Just enjoy the life. Yeah.
AJV (52:05):
Oh, I love that. I, I mean, I think too, it’s like, my dad is 70. He turned 71 this year. Yes. And I, you know, I’ve heard him tell me if it comes down to putting me in a home or killing me, just kill me. And I think a lot of that comes down to this mentality around there’s a, a horrible association with, there’s gonna be no quality of life. Right. I don’t wanna be in this stale hospital-like place. And I’m like, well, dad, we’re not killing you. No. So we need other options. And I love this because I think this is so needed and it’s so necessary. It’s not going away. It’s only growing and that’s the power of investing and specifically in this way. And I love this concept of syndication. I think it’s so cool. I could just like sit here and talk to, we didn’t even, we haven’t even scratched surface of Vinney’s knowledge and
VC (52:57):
Exactly. If other people who are asking, listening to us, if you say to AJ, you know, bring Winnie back, I’ll be here whenever you need me.
AJV (53:06):
VC (53:11):
So my gosh, I didn’t talk about the cyber security. My company is doing really well with the venture capital fund that we have also started with my partner, our, our, you know, I’m thinking about bit mining, maybe going to NASDAQ, you know, up there. And also the re small re that I have in the back of my mind. So we are just, you know, mind is a good thing. Right. You know?
AJV (53:34):
Absolutely. and I think this too, it’s like, I know most of you probably aren’t watching our video, you’re listening, but Vinney couldn’t look further away from 70. If he tried it’s, there is power in keeping your mind active and keeping business and keeping just full of life and busy of doing things that you enjoy. That keeps you young. Like the joy, all of this is just, it’s amazing.
VC (54:03):
ADI, you said it. You know, my grandpa, he passed away at 94. He was driving our Indian friends. They might know the traffic in new Delhi. It’s pretty bad. He was driving at the age of 91. What at 91, able to see and manure the car and everything. That’s the thing I will, I’ll be 70 in August. I wanna be like him.
AJV (54:50):
Oh, I bet. That’s how it feels when you’re doing what you love. Right. It’s how it feels.
VC (54:55):
Never a work. No, not at all. I,
AJV (54:58):
Oh, I love it. I love all of this. Y’all I think this is just so fascinating. Not only do I think it’s awesome that you should check out Vinney and follow him. Because he’s got this awesome personal brand that’s growing out of really just a desire to help other people succeed. And it’s like a Ziglar used to say, if you help enough people get what they want, then you can also get what you want me too. And you’re so living back. And so Vinney, when it comes to social media, do you have a preferred platform? Like where should people go to stay in touch with you?
VC (55:29):
Oh my gosh, you just go Google Vinney Chopra. You’ll come with 1000 pages. I, somebody told you, and then you could go on Instagram, smiley, Winnie I’m smile a lot. You know, you could go on Amazon, Winnie smile, Chopra, Winnie Chopra. You could go to Facebook. Youtube channel is growing big time. Tiktok is also getting bigger now Pinterest. They started and of course, iTunes and bus bar. I mean, all my, you know podcast that I’m doing and my live show is every Friday live at nine 30 wi and Bo show my partner and I do it together. No, it’s been fun. It’s been fun. I’m writing a book by the way, Uhuh, my third book is gonna be this one. Oh,
AJV (56:20):
You’re
VC (56:20):
Living, investing made easy look
AJV (56:22):
At, I love.
VC (56:23):
So it’s almost half done. And then of course I’m gonna be coming up with my big book with mark Victor Hanson and his company is going to be, you know, he just personalized it last week. You know, when we met, oh, I don’t know if
AJV (56:39):
Cool, love this
VC (56:40):
With a great book ask. And they’re gonna write a fictional story on me, which I’m very excited about
AJV (56:47):
You. Oh my goodness. So we’ll put all of these different links in the show notes so that you guys can connect with Vinney. And then don’t forget, go to Vinney chopra.com/freebook. Yes. Grab a copy of his book. Follow him on social, subscribe to his podcast. If you wanna learn about growing your personal brand through watching someone else do it, which is what he’s doing. And also learn about the power of real estate investing check him out stay tuned after our recap episode that I’ll do after this Vinney. Think this, thank you so much for being on the show.
VC (57:22):
Thank you, AJ. Thanks to you and R you guys are doing amazing. God bless you.
AJV (57:28):
And thanks everyone. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal.
Ep 293: How to Read People with Vanessa Van Edwards | Recap Episode
RV (00:02):
Vanessa van Edwards. One of the
RV (00:05):
Coolest
RV (00:06):
Sharpest, smartest personal brands that I think is in the marketplace and we’ve become pretty good friends over the last few years ever since sharing the stage together at global leadership summit a few years ago. And she is really, really impressive. And just the science of people is what her brand is all about. And it’s, it’s literally all, all of this about reading people and their nonverbals. And I just, I think it’s fascinating and I think it’s so cool how she’s taken such a specific tri like a specific skill set, you know, all the way down with a very specific type of communication and turned it into such a magnificent personal brand, built it on science and research and data and just, just a really great example and an awesome, awesome person. So this is a recap, obviously of my interview with Vanessa van Edwards, her new book cues is what we talked about.
RV (01:03):
And I mean, just that idea alone of the, the title of the book that are, that there are social signals that we subconsciously send to one another is really powerful. And that’s of course what the whole interview, what her book, her whole book is about. And so I’m gonna, I’m gonna share with you a couple of my highlights and in this case, you know, there’s two big highlights, and then I’m gonna, I’m gonna teach you something that is a part of our curriculum at brand builders group, which I haven’t, I don’t think we’ve ever covered on this podcast. And it’s, it is game changer. Like this technique is the single, maybe the single most powerful technique that we have that we invented. This is our proprietary technique that will make you a master communicator. And I’ll, I’ll tell you what it is. That’s gonna be my third takeaway. But my first takeaway, which is just good to hear, and it’s edifying for what we do and what we teach and you go, how has she built nearly a million subscribers on YouTube, this great social media following she’s consistently selling all these books and built a, a tremendous speaking career. And she said two words aggressively helpful,
RV (02:21):
Aggressively helpful. If
RV (02:24):
You want to get people to pay attention
RV (02:26):
To you, you need to be aggressively helpful. You have to be
RV (02:32):
Relentless. You have to be intentional. You have to
RV (02:34):
Be committed. You have to be dedicated. You have to be ruthless about the idea that your
RV (02:40):
Brand, your media company, your platforms, your podcast,
RV (02:43):
Your social, your YouTube, like your books, your, your, your blogs,
RV (02:48):
Whatever you’re putting out into the world, your keynotes,
RV (02:50):
Your, your
RV (02:51):
Podcast interviews, like when you’re a guest in someone else’s show your webinars, your lead magnets,
RV (02:56):
They have to be aggressively helpful.
RV (02:58):
They to be useful, right? Albert Einstein says you don’t try. Don’t try to be a person of, of influence. Try to be a, a person of, of utility, like be valuable to other people. And that’s the secret. Like that’s the secret don’t hold back. As we say, around here all the time, save the best for first, save the best for first, give away your best stuff. And, and that’s what keeps people coming back. And so it’s just powerful. And again, edifying to have so many like guests on this show who have built huge personal brands that then come and tell us, Hey, this is, this is how to do it. And that’s why we do it is, is because we’ve learned from a lot of them over the years. And we continue to learn from them and, and we can, and we teach you those things, right?
RV (03:49):
So how can you be aggressively helpful? How can you put out content that will dramatically change people’s lives, save the best for first, give it away, make a difference and watch how people show up and come back and share and invite friends. The second thing, which the second, my second takeaway is probably what I would say is my biggest takeaway from this interview. And it is not really what the topic of the conversation was about in terms of how to read people. This though was something I’ve never heard anybody say, at least not so clearly as Vanessa said it. And I almost didn’t ask her this question. And I said, but I, you know, I we’re watching the data of all these book launches, right? So we just, we just helped Tom and Lisa BIU with their book launch launch. We’re helping Eric ed Mylet with his huge book launch right now.
RV (04:44):
We’ve, we’ve, we’ve, pre-sold tens of thousands of units. And so we’re watching all these book launches and, you know, I’m seeing Vanessa clock through every week with several hundred units. And it’s really impressive. It’s very, very hard to do, to sell consistently several hundred units. And so I asked her, I said, Hey, what’s your secret? Like, how do you do the long tail, right? Because we have all this, you know, we have a, a great strategy for how to do a book launch and all the presales and everything leading up to it in like the first eight weeks and, you know, keeping it going. I mean, we’ve got now, in my opinion, perhaps one of the best, if not the best book, launching strategy that there is in the marketplace. And, you know, we got a lot of the results to back that up and prove it with several best selling authors that we have helped.
RV (05:28):
But this long tail long, you know, this long tail is something that I’ve always been super interested in and going man, like what you really want is not, you know, not just the big launch, you want the big launch, you want the big book launch because it lights the spark, right? Like it sets things into motion, but the true perennial bestsellers are these, you know, books that sell several hundred or even a few thousand units every single week for years. And, you know, other than writing a great book and, and hopefully having it propagate, there’s not that much that I’ve seen or heard or learned, or been able to reverse engineer about how to make that happen. And Vanessa shared this great secret, and this was like a light bulb for me. And she said basically that she sells books by SEO, SEO search engine optimization.
RV (06:24):
If you’re not familiar with that term, now we teach SEO. That is a part of our, our curriculum and our, our high traffic strategies training, which is one of our, our phase two trainings. For those of you that aren’t members, we have 12 different topics that are 12 different training, you know, kind of like modules that are they’re each two days. You know, so our entire education takes 24 days just to like go through the full education. It’s, it’s a lot, it usually takes people three or four years to get through it all. But like, so we teach search engine op search engine optimization, but never in connection with selling books. And it’s so simple, right. But it’s so brilliant because you go, how do you create this steady, consistent, long tail sell through of a book? And you go, well, what, what force is there in the world that is steady and consistent and long term?
RV (07:20):
And the answer is search people’s search behavior, they’re search habits. People are searching for terms on a very consistent basis. And if you can figure out what are the terms that people are searching for. And of course, you know, there’s lots of different tools for this, but one of the ones that we, the one that we use internally, which is also the one that sounds like Vanessa uses is called a refs, a refs. And it’s a tool that will tell you, you know, you could type in any term and it’ll tell you, this is how many times this term is searched every, every month on Google. And then you can also go to pages and see which, you know, how, which, how, which, which terms pages are scoring for et cetera, and, and what the average cost per click is. If you want to go out and buy one and what she said, which first of all, this was a tactical tip, which I did not know is that a HFS has a secret tab for YouTube, which is huge, cuz because YouTube is also a search engine.
RV (08:20):
So that means that you can use this tool, which you might already have. And you know, MOS is another one Uber suggests is another one. Like they all, they all, you know, do a decent job of, of what you need to do. But AHS specifically since that’s what we use, I don’t know about the other ones, cuz she didn’t talk about it. But has this a tool that will tell you about YouTube search? So how often are people searching specific terms on YouTube? And then all she did was she made a list of all those terms. And then she created videos that were specific to those questions, which happen every single month, right? People are, are continuously like repetitively searching those terms. And every single month new people are on YouTube searching. And so she creates, she said for like every single book, she creates 20 videos that specifically address these common questions and those specific term search terms that people are looking for. And she creates videos for those where the primary focus of the video, first of all, is to add value, right. To be aggressively helpful. But the secondary vehicle is to promote her book specifically. Right. And all it doesn’t have to be overt. It doesn’t have to be a huge pitch. She’s just adding valuable content. She’s optimizing her presence in the PLA in the marketplace for terms and then suggestively and gently sort of referencing that what she’s teaching is coming out of her book.
RV (09:56):
So genius, so simple, so actionable. So duplicatable, so something that we are going to do. I mean, what, I mean, that’s a huge, that’s a career altering that one idea like could be a career altering idea of just going, because if you, if you write a book that sells several hundred copies every week, like within a few years, that’s a lot of people that have read the book, that’s gonna change the trajectory of your entire career. Like this was a really big tip and not something that I have heard anywhere else. Like out of all the stuff we’ve read that we’ve looked at the courses we’ve been through the, the hundreds of authors that I’ve interviewed, no one has ever given me that tip. So that was a huge, huge tip and one that we are definitely getting into action mode on. So really, really brilliant and smart and simple.
RV (10:53):
So I hope you pick that up and you know, if you’re not selling books apply this to anything, right. You’re selling mouse traps or you’re selling cars or you’re selling battleships, figure out what are the search terms that people are searching for, create VI videos specific to, to those queries optimize the video so that they come up for those, do an awesome video and then make a suggestive call to action to whatever your product of service is like. So we even teach that with content marketing, but just have never thought about it or applied it to a book like it’s, it’s so simple. And it’s like, how did I miss this? How have I never thought about this? Well, UN you don’t UN until, you know, you don’t know until, you know, right. But you go man, one little tip like that, SuperDuper powerful.
RV (11:38):
The third takeaway was something that I’ve heard before. And so I wanted to share with you one of our favorite techniques, and this is something that I personally invented. You know, our team has polished over the years and, and is a formal part of our world class presentation, craft trainings. So the one of our phase three, or excuse me, the third training in our phase in our phase one curriculum is called world class presentation craft. And it applies very much to what Vanessa’s talking about here. And, you know, she said nonverbal communication is 69% of, of communication. And she was talking about how, it’s not the words that you say, it’s your facial expressions. It is your eyes. It’s the, your gestures, your body language, even the clothes you wear, the colors that are around you are all things that communicate in a very clear way.
RV (12:35):
Although, you know, somewhat subconsciously to the people around us. And then she was talking about how our, our vocal pace and cadence is a huge component of that. And so I wanna go ahead and share with you one of our favorite techniques of all time and this, we call this the vocal variety matrix, the vocal variety matrix. And it’s very, very simple, but it’s extremely powerful. So if you were to create a graph where the Y the Y axis was energy, so high, you know, at the top would be high energy at the bottom would be low energy. Okay. and then the Y axis would be like speed, where you know, let’s, let’s say all the way to the right is fast. And all the way to the left is slow. What happens is you have this natural separation of these four distinct quadrants and each quadrant represents a different utility of your voice. And when you master this VO, the, you know, this vocal variety matrix, we sometimes call it the emotions matrix because each different quadrant communicates a different emotion. And it doesn’t matter the words that you say, right? So let me, let me, let me talk this out for you. Right? So for example, quadrant number one is somebody who talks like with high energy, which is often also the volume is very loud and very fast, right? And so you talk like this, and when you
RV (14:00):
Talk really loud and really fast, what you’re doing
RV (14:02):
Is you’re adding a
RV (14:03):
Tremendous amount of energy and emotion and enthusiasm. It doesn’t matter what the words you’re gonna do. Like what the words are that you’re saying, don’t even matter. You’re creating this physiological change in the audience by just talking loud and fast with high energy and high speed that suddenly create excitement and enthusiasm
RV (14:18):
And energy. Similarly,
RV (14:21):
If I talk loud
RV (14:24):
And slow,
RV (14:26):
This
RV (14:27):
Has high energy, loud volume,
RV (14:30):
But slow pace, regardless of the words that come
RV (14:36):
Out of my mouth,
RV (14:39):
You talk like this
RV (14:41):
To create the emotion of respect, you’re commanding authority. You’re, you’re, you’re demonstrating your control, your credibility, your power. And then if I talk low and slow, low energy, low volume, and low speed, it creates a completely different emotional experience, a different energy, one of authenticity, vulnerability, honesty, transparency, connection, and trust. And then if I keep my energy low and I keep my volume low, but then I pick up my pace. All of a sudden I start adding suspense because just by adding, just by talking faster again, regardless of the words that I say, this, isn’t a matter of the words that we’re saying, we’re just talking about delivery here and here. This is what, this is probably the, the most underutilized quadrant of all the four quadrants. But this is somebody who just talks very low, but very fast, but it’s a mental game, right?
RV (16:20):
It’s, it’s mental exercise that forces you to concentrate, to lean in, to create suspense, to be, to be sort of curious, to be preoccupied with like, what’s he gonna say? And like trying to keep up with everything that’s going on and, and notice that no one quadrant is better than any of the others, the magic here, first of all, is that it doesn’t matter what you say, it’s using the vocal variety matrix to determine how you say, because all of a sudden, no matter what I’m saying, this is loud and it’s exciting and it’s fast pace. And then all of a sudden I drop it way down.
RV (16:55):
And I share the lesson that I learned from that story. And what this means for your life personally, is that you have to take this advice and you must go out and execute this behavior, this action. And then I can move on into the next story and set up the next story with back, you know, backstory on the characters and, and saving some time in my presentation by just sort of speeding along, keeping you mentally engaged and forcing you to have to listen, sit on the edge of your seat because of this suspense. And because of the, the way your mind has to be preoccupied with what I’m saying in order to keep up with how fast that I’m talking, but I’m moving through a lot of kind of insignificant details and trivial things just so I can set up the next story, baby. Cuz here we come, it’s getting exciting again.
RV (17:50):
Bam, isn’t that amazing? This is one of the secrets that has shaped my career. I mean, it is one of the biggest things that we coach speakers on when we work with them in world class presentation craft, this is part of, you know, how I created a viral Ted talk and got inducted in the professional speaking hall of fame and you know, became a two time world champion of public speaking finalist, helping people with the art of speaking is one of the things that we do most frequently at brand builders group, both their message, but also the, the mechanics of their delivery. And that technique is called the vocal variety matrix. We’re sharing it here for you for free on this podcast episode. Usually those kind of things, you have to be a paying member to get access to, but I wanted to share that one just as a special bonus giveaway in honor of my friend, Vanessa van Edwards, because of how much content she shared and how much I love what she’s about and just applying one of the techniques that we teach very much to what she is talking about here in the science of people.
RV (18:55):
So I hope you enjoyed that interview. Hey, share this recap edition with someone who needs to hear it. Somebody who you know, is, is trying to build their personal brand and, and the interview as always tell your friends. And if you can leave a review on iTunes or wherever you listen to the podcast that helps us tremendously, you know, we’ll share another ad for that here in just a second, but we really, really need that help. And that’s why we’re here every single week, bringing you the best of the best that we can from our friends and community, and also drop dropping in with our tips and recaps and highlights. So thanks for being here. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand podcast.
Ep 292: How to Read People with Vanessa Van Edwards
RV (00:02):
Vanessa van Edwards. I met her, we shared the stage together at GLS global leadership summit. She was awesome. She got amazing feedback, you know, from close friends and clients, people that I love and trust. I started following her, checking out what she’s into and the more I get to meet her, the more I think she’s just awesome. She’s got great content. We’re gonna talk about, we’re gonna talk about that a little bit today. So she has a new book out called cues. So her first book was called captivate. The science of succeeding with people it’s translated into 16 languages. She’s had more than 50 million people watch her videos on YouTube and her Ted talk. She has a massive YouTube channel, hundreds of thousands of subscribers. Mm-Hmm
VVE (01:08):
Thank you so much for having me. It’s so great to be back with you and talk about everything. You know, I love a cue. You send good cues, worry. I love your
RV (01:16):
Cues. You do. Oh, what is okay. Tell us. Okay. So tell us cues, tell us about the, so this is the new book and yes. And everything you do is basically science backed communication skills ish, right?
VVE (01:29):
Oh man. That’s it. That’s it. So, yes. So I’m a recovering awkward person. So I learn social skills and communication with black and white formulas blueprints. I like to lay it out. And so this journey for this book, so a queue is a social signal, human sent to each other. I never thought I would write this book. I never thought I would write it. This was a, a secret science that I was embarrassed about. Like it started off for my own use. And I’ll tell you the moment it started. So 17 years ago, I was in my, the peak of my awkward stage and I was watching Lance Armstrong on Larry King live. And Larry King asked Lance Armstrong, have you ever DOD? Now spoiler alert. Lance was doping. But in this interview he told a flat out outline. He said, Nope, I’ve never DOD.
VVE (02:16):
And then right after he said it, he did a lip purse. He pressed his lips into a firm line. Hmm. He pressed his lips down together. And I remember watching that interview and thinking, what was that? Like? My spy sense knew something was off, but that specific cue, I didn’t even know it was called the queue back then says, what was that? So I began to look in the research. What is that body language gesture. It turns out that is a universal sign of withholding. When humans wanna hold something back or keep it together or keep it in liars often do it. They press their lips together. We press their lip together to say, don’t say it don’t get yourself in
RV (02:49):
Trouble. Interesting. Interesting. I
VVE (02:51):
Was like, what? And so I started to see this lip purse on people, in shame, people in people who were lying. And I wondered, okay, what if we could study humans? Like we study foreign languages where we break down behavior into specific cues, into our trust cues, our power cues, our danger zone cues, our trust, our, our charisma cues. And that’s exactly what this book was. I was spent the last 17 years cataloging all these queues, seeing if we could learn to speak them.
RV (03:25):
So
VVE (03:33):
Yes.
RV (03:33):
Are they all physical? I mean, are, is that like, like, will you, cause when you say study it like a language, you know, when I hear like science back communication, a lot of times it’s like your voice and your, you know, you’re you’re but are these like more like gestures conscious or subconscious gestures?
VVE (03:49):
That’s a great question. So in the beginning it started off as all gestures. I was like, okay, nonverbal, right? Facial expression, gestures, posture, movement, eyebrow raises. Right. But then I realize, and the research actually backs us up as well is there’s actually different ways that we sh broadcast our cues. There’s four of them. So the first one is non-verbal and that’s actually the biggest 60 to 90% of our communication is non-verbal. And when I say that, people are always shocked. But think about, if someone were to say that they were fine, I’m fine. And hold like a really angry face. You would know they were not fine. In other words, we give more weight it’s nonverbal. So that’s the biggest one. The second one is vocal. So how we deliver our birds words, our pace, our cadence, our volume, our pitch. So how we say our words is just important as what we say, the third one is verbal.
VVE (04:35):
So the actual words we we use, of course, that’s how we communicate lots of cues and the hidden signals in our words. And I have a whole chapter on sort of the secret things you can find out about someone’s charisma, simply based on the words they use in emails. And the last one, the one that’s forgotten is imagery. The colors we wear the props in our background, what we’re carrying in our profile photo even personality, even fonts have personality. The props that we use and jewelry wear. So imagery is the last small one.
RV (05:04):
Mm-Hmm
VVE (05:14):
Right now you’re you just got
RV (05:16):
Nervous, not fixing my hair. You
VVE (05:17):
Just got nervous. I saw
RV (05:19):
It cause you’re reading me
VVE (05:21):
Well a little bit. I can’t help it once. So this is a blessing and a curse. I will warn you. I should actually, I thought about having a warning at the beginning of the book and my publisher said no, which was that these cues, once you see them, you cannot unsee them.
RV (06:23):
A second. Don’t me break me down. Break me down sister.
VVE (06:26):
Okay. Let’s do it. So the reason why highly charismatic people are so charismatic is because they are purposefully sending off very positive cues of two traits. And this is exactly what the researchers found. Highly charismatic people have the perfect blend of warmth and competence that when we’re interacting
RV (06:44):
With competence with a
VVE (06:45):
P competence with a P not confidence, that’s, that’s, that’s a,
RV (06:49):
Yeah, that’s a big distinction. That’s an important distinction. It’s
VVE (06:51):
A really important thing. It’s not confidence. It’s competence. In other words, really highly charismatic. People are at the very same time, warm, open, collaborative, trustworthy, likable, but at the same time, they’re also competent, powerful, efficient, impressive, and productive. And the reason for that is because we like people who answer the two questions. Can I trust you? And can I rely on you? And so when I first met you, you were broadcasting. I think you might do it subconsciously. Cause since you haven’t read, I haven’t cues just came out. So I don’t think you read that one yet, is that you naturally are picking these cues that are both trustworthy and very competent, which makes me want to talk to you, engage with you, makes me wanna level up with you. And that’s because when we’re around care about people, we wanna catch that charisma. We like to, we feel like it rubs off on us too.
RV (07:43):
So what are some of the cues let’s talk about? Buying signals. Okay. Yeah. So if you’re an entrepreneur, you’re a personal brand. You may be a CPA or financial advisor, real estate mortgage, or maybe you’re a coach and you’re, you know, trying to go like, is this person ready to buy? Like those are classic cues. And that’s, you know, the world we came from was, is sales. And that’s part of it probably where I developed this, these learning queues is I knocked on, I knocked on over 20,000 doors. Like I did five years of knocking on doors. Right? So you, you pick up some of these things. What, what can I look for that tells me that somebody’s ready to buy, they’re ready to book me for the interview. They’re ready to buy my, my keynote or buy my book or buy my service or what, what am I looking for?
VVE (08:31):
Okay. So before we even get to that, I’m gonna make a really big statement, which is starts with a corny metaphor, which is that very, very brilliant people have, are it’s impossible for them to share their ideas if they have bad cues. And the way that I think about this as a metaphor is that if your ideas are a car, cues are a gas and this is the problem with really smart entrepreneurs, really smart business people is they have great ideas, a great product, a great service, and they cannot get it to move. They literally cannot get the gas for that car. And that is because really smart people rely too much on their ideas. I think. Well, my idea is great. I don’t have to worry about how I talk about it, cuz the idea is so good that it will just speak for itself.
VVE (09:11):
That does not work. Our ideas have to have cues deal to communicate. And so the very first thing that we think about before you even look for buying signals, which we can talk about is you need to make sure your website, your LinkedIn profile, your social media profile pictures, all are signaling or broadcasting, warmth and competence, your digital first impression when someone Googles you or they look at your LinkedIn profile, they look at your website. I actually count on our website, how many warmth and competence queues we have. I’ll give you a really basic example of how this works. Warmth are things that create the warm and fuzzies for us. Their stories they’re relatable, they’re likable. Competence are data, research, numbers, proof recommendations. So Casper mattress is one case study that I like to use. Cause it’s very, very easy way to think about this.
VVE (10:00):
Cause the reason I think that Casper blew up, I mean literally just destroyed the mattress market is not only because they have a great mattress. There’s been a lot of great matches in the past. But remember that’s like having a really good idea, not knowing how to share it. If you look at Casper’s website, they have the perfect balance of warmth sales cues and competent sales queues. Their tagline is obsessively engineered at outrageous comfort. Those are two. So talking about words, right words can also be warm and competent, competent words make us wanna do things. They make us wanna achieve things. Warm words make us feel good. So obsessively engineered are two competent cues. We like things that have a lot of research done, balanced with outrageous comfort and that makes us feel good. So their tagline is the perfect balance of warm and competent.
VVE (10:50):
If you go down their website, you’ll see pictures of kids jumping on beds, warm proof of our Casper labs with guys in lab coats, competent quote from Vogue about how your bed is your new desk. Funny, warm research, five stars, right from consumer reports, competent, warm clouds and pictures of people sleeping, warm comp like right? So you literally all the way down the website, you see this perfect balance that is tingling something deep inside of us as humans of I can trust this brand and I can rely on this brand. Does that make sense? That kind of breakdown.
RV (11:31):
Totally. Yeah. I mean that, that, that’s fascinating, right? I mean, if you’re gonna hire somebody, I mean, even if you think about how am I gonna, if I’m gonna hire someone to do a job, it’s like, can they do the job and am I gonna like working with them? Like it’s pretty much, what else is there? Are they gonna do a great job? And am I, are they not gonna annoy me? And like, you know, are they gonna, are they gonna be reliable and dependable and, and yes. And show up? I think that’s, I think that’s really fascinating. So, you know, cause that would translate to hiring. And so, you know, the way I process what you just said in the, in, in the reverse of, of sales is to go, what can I do to make myself more attractive in what I’m selling is, is go. So if I’m talking, then that means I’m using customer testimonials and stories and our purpose and our why. And then the competence is like how many clients we’ve worked with and the results we’ve achieved. And the testimonials
VVE (12:25):
Got five star test, five star testimonials all the media outlets, right? Like, so even my bio, right? You read that at the very start that if you count the number of warm and competent queues, you’ll find a perfect balance. So like science to people, my company’s name is very competent. I did that on purpose because I know women tend to default to higher and warmth. That’s just a, a, a basic gender difference. And so I knew that I had to use, I have to use a little more data, a little more research, a little more science to sort of balance out that natural aspect of who I am. So science of people, then the media logos, the media mentions, those are competent helping people that’s warm. Right. So exactly. As you mentioned, you’re balancing that out on the queues side for your buyers. So there’s two sides of queues, decoding and encoding. We’ve been talking about encoding, the signals you’ve sent to others. What’s just as important though, is decoding making sure you’re spotting the right queues in your, in your folks. Here’s my favorite sales queue where I would say customer report queue. If we don’t even say sales, which is the lower lid flex, I know this is a really weird one, but the lower lid flexes, we harden our lower lids as if we’re like swinging to see something better. Just your lower lids. There you go.
RV (13:33):
Your lower eyelids,
VVE (13:34):
Lower eyelid. Yeah. So if you, so if you try to see something across the room, you’ll harden, your lower lids. This is a natural biological response. And what research has found, the reason all humans do this across genders and cultures and races is because when we’re trying to see more detail, our lids close to block out the light, to see more detail, they found that when people are listening and their brain just went from listening to doubting or listening to scrutinizing are lower. Lids will flex as if our body’s going. I don’t know about that. This is the single biggest missed queue in sales. If you were on video call or you were in person, you’re going through your pitch, you’re sharing your great idea and you see that lower lid, flex pause, stop and ask questions. Does that make sense? Does that all good? You know, let me explain something else here. How’s that sound to you? You are going to get right in that moment. Any doubt, the biggest problem for sales folks are entrepreneurs is they don’t realize why they didn’t get the job. You know, they, they think it went well, they leave. And they’re like, why didn’t I get the job? Why didn’t they say yes, it’s probably because you missed that little lower lid flex. It’s signaled literally a, a, a Twitch in their brain that went, I dunno about that.
RV (14:47):
So you’re saying that that is a sign of skepticism.
VVE (14:51):
Yes. It’s a sign of,
RV (14:52):
So like when you focus, it’s like, you know, it’s like a side eye,
VVE (14:57):
It’s a side eye. It’s like, so yes. And it’s also it’s right before skepticism. So the nice thing about it is it just means intensity intense focus. So if you stop and you address it, you can actually prevent a future. No. Or skepticism from coming. We in our lab, we analyzed, you know, the show
RV (15:14):
Shows, I love that. That’s really, that’s really huge and important.
VVE (15:18):
It’s so powerful. It’s so powerful. And you see it now, you’ll see it all the time. You can see it on video too, which is amazing.
RV (15:22):
It’s like I critical, but I’m not yet skeptical. But if I catch you, if I catch you while you’re critical, I can win you back.
VVE (15:31):
There you go. Exactly. Right. So we saw this on we an I love the show shark tank, which is a show obviously where me
RV (15:37):
Too.
VVE (15:38):
I love, love that show. So we analyzed 495 shark tank pitches. It was thousands and thousands of hours of data looking for patterns. Was there things that successful entrepreneurs did in the tank that were more likely to get them a deal? And we noticed, and again, we’re, we’re looking at the show and you see a lot of cut footage, but on shark tank, the successful entrepreneurs would spot a shark, hardening their lower lids and then address their concern. Right? Kevin, you know, I see that you’re skeptical. Let me bring up some more data for you or Laurie. You know, I know this is a surprise for you, but here’s what we’re planning. We really wanna work with you. They were a dynamic on their feet, the worst pictures. And I, I talk about this a lot in the book. I break down Jamie Simoff shark tank pitch who pitched ring in the tank.
VVE (16:23):
So ring is a billion dollar company. He pitched ring in the shark tank and it completely bombed. This is what’s critically important is Jamie. Simoff had a billion dollar idea, right? Amazon acquired it for a billion dollars. Richard Branson invested Shaq invested, but he went on shark tank with this brilliant billion dollar idea. And it totally bombed that is because our ideas cannot stand by themselves. He delivered it so poorly without competence and warmth cues that everyone was out. And a couple years later, he came back into this shark tank as a, as an investor. So what happened in that pitch is he actually gave away all of his competence and warmth. He wanted his idea to speak for itself. But even though this company had amazing numbers and amazing growth, they could not buy into the idea because his cues were so bad.
RV (17:10):
What are some of the other common cues let’s go back to end coding. So what are the other common mistakes that people send? Like you might be on a first date, you might be trying to make a sales call. You might be trying to, you know, get a job.
VVE (17:24):
Let’s talk about what Jamie’s seminar should have done. Right? So like this is his pitch is so demonstrative. So end coding on the end coding side, the very first few words out of your mouth. So that could be hello. That could be, my name is Rory. That could be so good to see you. Okay. So the first 10 words out of your mouth are incredibly important for your vocal. First impression we are listening for confidence cues. I do say confidence with an F confidence. That is because when we hear someone who’s anxious, we don’t wanna catch it. And so we’re in the first 10 seconds, we’re listening for any vocal anxiety. The biggest way we give away our vocal anxiety is we use the question inflection on a statement. So Jamie’s seminar. He way he did this is he entered the tank where he knocked on the door.
VVE (18:08):
So he closed the doors to the tank and he knocked on the door cause he was trying to show like a doorbell. So he knocked on the door and his first line was this it’s Jamie here to pitch. So the question inflections, we go up at the end of our sentence, as if we’re asking a question, the problem is, is research has found this when people hear the question, inflection mistakenly used on a statement. My name is Vanessa. It’s Jamie here to pitch our brain goes from listening to scrutinizing. In other words, we know, wait a minute, something wasn’t right about that. So the most important thing you can do is in the first 10 seconds in person on the phone in video is go down at the end of your sentence. So it’s so good to see you. My name is Vanessa, and I’m really excited to pitch you this idea today, that’s downward, right? I’m keeping my words down. It actually signals high confidence. If I said, my name is Vanessa, I’m here to pitch. So happy to be here today. No, like you would know, I don’t want you don’t your brain doesn’t know why, but you know, you don’t like it.
RV (19:10):
Mm-Hmm
RV (20:02):
It’s like, they’re an expert on something and they get lost in, oh, it has to be beautiful and perfect. Where do I get a graphic designer and a video editor? And it’s like, you’re such a great example of like deliver the goods, add values to people’s lives, do it consistently a few basic things. So I love that. How do you do book launches? I’m curious about this because your books have done really, really well. And, and we do a lot of big launches, right. And we’ve done for our own books, big launches, but the thing that really makes the career, I mean, it helps to hit the New York times for sure. But what really makes the career is when you can have that book, you know, or books that sell 500 units every week, a thousand units. I mean, if, if you’re, if you’re, you know, if you’re lucky, you’ll, you’ll write, you know, John Gordon’s energy bus or Patrick, you know, Len’s five dysfunctions of a team and he’ll sell 2000 units, 5,000 units every week. But you know, like Ryan holiday is another person who’s done a great job of this. Like he, he does good launches, but it’s like, it’s not really about the launch. He sells 800 book, 800 units every week of all of his titles and you know, there’s spikes of course. And you’re you do that? And I love that. How do you do that?
VVE (21:19):
Yes. So yeah. Thank you. Thank you for, by way, for the kind words. So captivate came out in 2017. We had a nice, really big launch. I think we remember four on the wall street journalist. And since then, even, you know, five, six years later, we sell about 300, 600 copies a week and that, you know, amazing doesn’t include our spikes, right? Like sometimes we have spikes from events. Queues is doing extremely well, even better than captivate. We’re seven weeks out from that, but it’s still selling extremely well, probably a thousand or more a week. So the way that I like think about this is very weird. I have a very weird approach to this, which is YouTube is a search engine. And what I mean by that is people put YouTube in a social media category. It is not social media. It is a search engine, meaning people are not only going into YouTube and searching their needs.
VVE (22:07):
Google is also serving up YouTube as an answer to their needs. So for this reason, we think about, okay, who is our ideal person? Our ideal person is an incredibly brilliant professional entrepreneur, entrepreneur, both male and female. We literally have almost exactly split usually around 30 to 55. Okay. So I know my person, they’re really smart. They’re trying to level up their career. They’ve often been held back by some communication or soft skill. Okay. I know that person is what we do is we do specific keyword research and a reps. That’s the service we use. It’s like a software you can use. I think there’s a couple different ones out there.
RV (22:41):
Yeah. MOS or yeah, there’s a whole bunch of them. Yeah. Suggests et cetera. But AHS is, I think, I think that’s what our team uses too.
VVE (22:49):
A has a secret tab. It’s not so secret. Cause I’m about to tell you about it, which is most people use a for Google, we use a for YouTube. So I will go in the YouTube tab and I will search at first, first I think about what are the 50 to 20 keywords or search phrases. I think people are gonna use to get to a book. So for cues, I, you know, we, I started writing cues over two years ago. The very first thing I did is, okay, cues are about reading people, breaking down behavior, communication, charisma, right. I made a whole list of all those terms short and long. And then I had my writing team begin to pump out articles and especially video scripts for me on those specific keywords so that I can already come up for what I know my people are searching for and then serve them really helpful content, like really helpful, like free content, but then also the book. So before queues even came out, we were ranking one, two or three in those big spots for our YouTube videos, the articles are actually less important than the YouTube videos so that when someone is in YouTube and they search charismatic conversation or how to make small talk,
RV (23:57):
How, yeah. How to be more charismatic, like
VVE (23:59):
Ex exactly our videos come up and on the back end of the video, I’m selling the book and the bottom of the video, I’m selling the book. And so I think that every single entrepreneur, it doesn’t matter what you do. You should have a YouTube presence. And by the way, I don’t work for YouTube. I don’t teach YouTube courses. I don’t teach you how to sell on YouTube. So I had no reason to recommend this because I, I actually, it hurts me the more people who come on YouTube, but I feel so passionate about it because whatever your product service book is, if YouTube is a search engine, you have to have a presence on there for your top 50 keywords, because that’s a way that you’re gonna be able to drive people to your product or service. That is exactly how we sell books.
RV (24:38):
I mean, that is so brilliant. And, and, and, and simple, like simple because cuz I, we understand search engine optimization. We understand, you know, even like YouTube optimization, but just the idea of putting your book on there. And you said you put your book at the, at the back of the video and on the bottom. I, and I, I think you’re, you’re saying literally there’s like a, a, an ads, a buy button. Yeah,
VVE (25:04):
We literally, so at the, so first of all, just to get really into tactics is typically our videos will our videos around 10, 20 minutes an average, but you should have, you should mention your book organically or your service organically, ideally in the first third or half of the video. So while I’m teaching, while I’m getting highly valuable, really engaging tips, I never want someone to click on a video and feel like it was a waste of their time. Some point in the first third or half of the video, I will say, and all this research comes from queues. Be sure to check out on an Amazon or an audible. And then I keep delivering, keep delivering in the description of the video. I have not only a link to the Amazon on the audible, but I also, we use a plugin in YouTube. It has a little by mech shelf.
VVE (25:44):
So on our little by mech shelf below every video, actually, we don’t do it for every video. We only do it for videos that directly sell our books. I have cap date. I have queues. I have people school, our big master course. So it’s right below the video. And at the very end, I put a little promo to our book where I’m like, Hey, if you like these tips, check out cues, check out captivate, give this video a light, give a subscribe. I’ll be putting out free content every Wednesday. So that way there’s a couple of mentions. And what I found is I either get a subscribe because I’m delivering good content or they literally go go by the book.
RV (26:16):
You said there’s a, you’re using a plugin in the description.
VVE (26:20):
I am. Yes. It’s a special plugin. It’s QA. Y a I dunno how to say ITA, Chaya, Kaya. I don’t know QA. Y a but it’s a, it’s a plugin that we literally enabled for YouTube that adds a merch shelf, which is like another, that a lot of people, a merch shelf. Yeah. You can sell anything on there. So like if we have a course launch, like we have a lie detection course I can SW swap that into my me shelf on my LA detection related videos.
RV (26:47):
Oh. So basically like you, you can just make a change and it’ll roll through all those videos at once.
VVE (26:52):
It’s manual it’s manual
RV (26:54):
VVE (27:44):
And it’s going after your specific key terms, right. It’s not book promo for my new book. It’s not what it’s called. It’s called. How do you more charismatic how to read people, how to have conversations with anyone like it’s, it’s specific keywords. And so thinking really carefully about that is extremely helpful. And I think you, you don’t have to have videos forever. Like that’s optimistic it also people make cuz they’re like, oh, once I start a YouTube channel, I can never stop. I’m like, no, it’s a search engine. Create 20 incredible videos. My incredible, I don’t mean fancy. I mean just really high value and
RV (28:15):
Your like useful, those are useful.
VVE (28:17):
Those are your 20, like 98% of our ad revenue on YouTube. So we also run ads on YouTube. 98% of our ad revenue on YouTube is from my back catalog. So it doesn’t have to be that you’re posting new videos every week. No, most of my money and our views are from videos I posted eight years ago.
RV (28:35):
Mm-Hmm
VVE (28:43):
Yeah. I enable YouTube ads behind the video. Yeah.
RV (28:47):
Do, do you, do you run paid ads on YouTube?
VVE (28:52):
Like I do not run. Nope. I don’t. You
RV (28:54):
Don’t run ads for your stuff. That’s a completely organic strategy, a complete, like a search strategy.
VVE (29:01):
We, we, we, all of our traffic, 100% is organic and we have millions of visitors every month. Except for during launch. So during launches, we do do pay ads,
RV (29:11):
But y’all like Vanessa is the, the, the, the perfect example of how we just talk about it. If you just add value and you just add value. One of our philosophies at brand builders group is we say, save the best for first. We, we tell people save the best for first. Like just put it out there. Eight years later you’re still ringing and you’re still ringing the, the register.
VVE (29:35):
Yes. And, and maybe this is a good place to sort of end on, which is our same. This is what I teach. All my writers is we are aggressively helpful, relentlessly helpful. Like if I feel that something in a video is boring or not helpful, cut it. I don’t care about the fancy graphics. I have one camera in a room. It’s like a closet I’m in here right now. And that’s it. But it is not relentlessly aggressively helpful. Cut it. That is more important than any fancy graphic, any video equipment that you can get. And so that’s, I think what you have to think about is like, how can you just be aggressively helpful?
RV (30:11):
Love it. So brilliant. So the book is called cues. That’s the new book. Where would you want, where do you wanna point people to go, Vanessa, if they wanna, obviously we talked about your YouTube channel, where would you direct people?
VVE (30:23):
Yes. So it’s on Amazon. It’s available. Wherever books are sold. I read the audible book. If you like my my unique vocal power, I do some fun. There’s a whole vocal section. So I do some really fun ones in there. And also I just wanna thank worry so much, you know, you, I don’t know if your, your listeners know that you are relentlessly helpful. Like literally I have to tell you to stop helping me. You’re such a giver. You’re so kind you always give, give, give, and there’s no feeling of like, oh, I, I need it in return. It’s literally just your relentlessly helpful. And so for people who are listening, like worry is the real deal. And I’m so grateful.
RV (30:56):
Oh, well, thank you so much, buddy. I mean, it’s it’s what works. I mean you know, I was, I, I was mentored by Zig Zeigler and he has that famous quote. If you help enough other people get what they want, you get what you want. It’s like, you can go all in on it. Like you can just, just test it. Like just, it feels
VVE (31:12):
So good.
RV (31:13):
It feels so good. Like you don’t have to, you don’t have to sell or do anything. Like all you’re doing is helping people all day long and then just like, it just, it just comes back. And I love seeing that as a content marketing strategy. I need to, I may, maybe I need to do that. Maybe I’m being too stingy with my YouTube videos. Maybe that’s why my way, maybe that’s why my channel’s not growing. Like I’m not being, I’m not being helpful enough there. So anyways, Vanessa van Edwards, brilliant, sharp, intelligent, useful, helpful. We are so excited and, and to, to know you and to promote you and to be associated. So keep kicking butt girl, you we believe in you. Thanks for being here. Woo.
VVE (31:47):
Thanks you so much for having me.
Ep 289: Personal Brand Strategies for Network Marketing and Direct Sales with Ray Higdon | Recap Episode
RV (00:07):
Hey brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview as always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders, group.com/pod call. We hope to talk to you soon.
RV (00:54):
This episode brought together three of my favorite things, sales, personal branding, network marketing, and and four, I would say leadership, all kind of coming together in this interview that I did with Ray Higdon and welcome to this special recap edition. I love this. I, I love this conversation. I’ve been, I, I love having this conversation specifically about how does personal branding apply to direct sales people, you know, all types of direct sales and then also network marketing specifically, which is really what rays expertise and, and, and special niche is. And so I just, I just thought this was fascinating. And if you know anything about the world of network marketing there’s just a really interesting kind of almost like dynamic happening right now, where companies are trying to really figure out how much flexibility and freedom should people have with their personal brand versus, you know, leveraging the company’s brand.
RV (02:01):
And I think a lot of companies are struggling with that, but it, it it’s really prevalent in direct sales, cuz they’re like, you know, right on the front lines out there selling face to face and, and doing business with friends. So fascinating conversation. I, if and we talked about some of those things with Ray, but the three highlights I wanna share for you apply outside of network marketing. And, and beyond direct sales, I think these are three ubiquitous concepts and takeaways that are really important for all of us and for you, no matter what type of business that you are in. And they they’re super duper powerful and they were great reminders for me. And as I was going back and reviewing the show, I was like, yeah, this there’s some really, really big moments in here. So the first one is when, when Ray said this, he, this is such an important phrase.
RV (02:55):
He said, I want to be duplicatable. I want to be duplicatable. That is a really important concept. And it, it makes sense like that is one of the best things. That’s one of the best lessons you can learn from network marketing, right? Is they just, they teach you how, how, how to sell something. And then if you can teach someone else how to sell something, you just duplicate that process over and over, it’ll change your entire life. But even with your personal brand everything you need to sort of think in terms of being duplicatable, repeatable processes and, and how do you scale things. So whether it’s just scaling your own content marketing strategy, right? Like we call it the content diamond. For those of you that are brand builders members. You know, we teach this, this system of what happens every single week, this, this giant checklist that you have to run, that’s being duplicatable, right?
RV (03:52):
It’s, it’s being able to have many people step in it’s interchangeable parts of your system. We also talk about an eight figure entrepreneur, which is one of our phase, one of our phase four programs that, you know, the same thing about like redundancy and scale. And we, one of the flagship points from, from scale your sales, or excuse me from eight figure entrepreneur, is that we talk about how custom fails, right? Standard scales, custom fails standard scales, custom fails standard scales. Anything that you can do repeatedly over and over and over again. And in this episode, when Ray was talking about, you know, why is McDonald’s the most like successful franchise it’s because it’s designed to be run by the person with the lowest level of skill, right? It’s created for the least common denominator. It’s it is, it is the most spelled out.
RV (04:55):
It is the most explicit. It’s the most specific it’s like, if you follow this playbook and this process, it will duplicate. And that is how things scale. Think, think about manufacturing lines. We, we talk about this, of going a manufacturing line works because it’s cranking out the same thing over and over again. That is how you scale. So you want to think in, in, in terms of being duplicatable, even if you’re gonna choose not to be duplicatable, right? Like you might say, no, no, no, I don’t wanna be the, I don’t wanna be the Honda accord. I want to be the rolls Royce. And I want every single thing to be custom and handcrafted, even if you’re gonna make that choice, that’s something you should do deliberately. And, and intentionally by way of considering to go, what’s the, the alternative of like, how do I scale?
RV (05:47):
But if you wanna be one of those two things, right, you don’t want to get stuck in the middle, which is where a lot of people do. And, and honestly, being duplicatable is gonna be really important, even Rolls-Royce as, you know, great processes and streamlines and, you know, checklists like you can’t build a great brand without being duplicatable. You have to be able to do things systematically, repeatedly on autopilot, over and over and over. And it, it reminds me almost of my in my Ted talk. And so my, how to multiply your time, Ted talk, my second book procrastinating on purpose. One of the, one of the flagship sayings in there is we say automation is to your time. Exactly what compounding interest is to your money. Automation is to your time, what compounding interest is to your money. That’s being duplicatable.
RV (06:36):
It is investing in creating a system or a process that can be stamped out on, on repeat. You should be thinking that way, always as an entrepreneur, like that’s how you free yourself up. As you, you replace yourself with a process. You, you, you, you know, people become interchangeable to some extent the, the, the better your processes are. The second takeaway for me in parallel, I wanted to highlight for you was when Ray said, look, if I had big goals, I would have a prospecting number. And then I would have a marketing metric of something that I focused on. And I love this. You know what, like for example, he said, I’m gonna do one reel every day or three reels a day, I think is what he said. He’s like, if I had big goals, I would be doing three reels a day.
RV (07:28):
And there’s a couple things I, I love about this. The, the high level concept here though, is focusing on what you can control, reminding yourself that your job is to do the things you can do. And you have to focus on doing the things you can do, stop worrying about the things you can do and start focusing on the things that you can do. You have to focus on the controllables, you do the things that are a hundred percent in your power. And so I always, you know, I believe in that concept a lot, we, we write about it in, in take the stairs. And in my first book, we say, put your self-esteem in your work habits, not in your results, put your self esteem in your work habits, not in your results. You let the results shake out. You let the results be a byproduct of the work.
RV (08:19):
So I’m a huge believer in that concept. It’s always great to be reminded of it. The thing that I loved about this and, and the, the little kind of nuance flip that switched for me was that applies to marketing too. Like, it definitely applies to sales. It’s a survival mechanism in sales. We, we would say, you know, don’t don’t focus on how many people say yes, like just focus on how many people you’re gonna talk to. Like your goal is to work a certain number of hours and talk to a certain number of people or make a certain number of dials. One of my old friends, Andrea Wal wrote, she wrote this book on called go for no. And that was sort of, the mentality was like, you know, just worry about like, instead of going, Ooh, I hope I get one yesterday, aim for 20 no’s.
RV (09:06):
And by aiming for 20 no’s, you’ll end up with more yeses than if you were just focused on the yeses. Right? So it’s that kind of idea, which I love it. And, and, and you hear it for that applies very much for sales. The part that was really cool here is the same applies for marketing. The same applies for marketing for personal branding specifically for social media, right? Is if all you’re focused on is how many views did I get? How many followers did I get? How many comments did I get? How many likes did I get? How many shares did I get? If, if that’s all you’re thinking about, none of that is in your control, right? Like none of that is in your control. You can influence those things by the quality of the content that you put out. But the better thing to focus on is, is the quantity, right?
RV (09:52):
Quantity leads to quality. Quantity typically is where things are controllable. So when Ray was saying, I would focus on making three reels a day, that’s a great metric to focus on. That’s a great way to think about it is to go H what is the volume of output you are going to do every day? Not, and, and let the results shake out, knowing that if you put in the work, if you pay the price, if you, if you constantly make good choices, if you continue to, to, to do the, like, have great work ethic and great character and integrity, and you do the right things over and over and over and over again, consistently over the course of time, it’s going to shake out it’s, it’s the compound effect that book by Darren Hardy and which is, you know, that good choices compound. And over time, it all plays out.
RV (10:41):
Like you have to remind yourself of that, even with your marketing is just like, I’m just focusing on, you know, like I’m gonna do a hundred podcasts, or like, I’m gonna do three reels a day, or I’m just gonna write every single week or whatever it is, focus on the activity, not the results. So what is that for you right in your business, in your life, like right now, where are you focused on the results? Where are you allowing your self-esteem to be tied to a result? And you need to break that you need to chop that you need to separate, that you need to sever that relationship, and you need to instead connect your self-esteem to activity, to controllables, to your work ethic, to to like the volume of what you’re doing and allow, and, and then just allowing the results to shake out, knowing that they will be there.
RV (11:34):
They will be there sooner or later, but it’s almost, it’s never, when we want it, it’s always slower than we than we want, but that’s really, really a big deal. And then finally, my, my third takeaway, this is actually more of something that, you know, Ray said that reminded me of a really important concept, which I don’t know that we’ve hit it hard enough on, on, on this podcast, right? And on this show, and even with our, our members with our brand builders members, like, but this is really important to understand. Marketing is long term sales is short term. Generally speaking, marketing is long term sales is short term. Marketing is good. Sales is good, but marketing is, you know, typically it’s like, you’re reaching the masses and you’re building trust with the masses. You’re building an audience that takes time. The good news, right?
RV (12:33):
The downside of marketing is that it takes time. It, it, it takes time to build the systems, create the content, you know, put it out there, grow a following, stay in touch, like earn trust with people. That’s the, that’s the bad news. The good news though, is that it’s extremely scalable. Once you hit the tipping point where you’ve been doing this, now people just start flooding to you and it just gets better and better and better, but it’s hardest early on. And it’s slowest early on like marketing. Isn’t the fastest way to results. Sales is marketing is long term sales is short. Term sales happens right away, right? Sales is human to human conversation. I can pick up the phone. I can talk to somebody today. I can make a sale, right? I have to just convince one person, you know, Mani, mano, or wo mano to wo mano
RV (13:25):
And you’re just going to talk directly to somebody and listen and ask questions, and you can make a sale. That’s the beauty of sales, the, the downfall, you know, or the hard, you know, that’s the good news of sales. The bad news of sales is that while sales is fast, it’s not super scalable. I, I mean, it, it’s, it’s quite scalable to a point, but you know, you, if you always have to do the selling, that’s gonna make it harder to scale, cuz it’s pulling your time. Now, the way you get around that is, is you go through what we teach in phase four, which is scale your sales, which is how to recruit and hire and train and manage and motivate a sales team. So sales is quite scalable has been for decades, but like the, as a solopreneur, it doesn’t, it doesn’t scale super well, cuz it’s taking your time and your time is pulled from all of these other, these other things.
RV (14:15):
The other part is that a lot of people are uncomfortable selling. They don’t know how to prospect. They don’t know how to ask for referrals. They’re not comfortable asking for the sale. They don’t know how to do it. They don’t know what to say when, when people, you know, give you objections. And by the way, if that’s you who you need to request a call with brand builders group and you need to go through our pressure free persuasion course, that is where we teach all that stuff. The tactics of how to ask for referrals exactly. You know, step by step what to say when they give you, when you run, when you get an objection, when you get you know, when you’re unsure of what to do or how to respond like that is, that is sales, but, but sales is fast.
RV (14:58):
Marketing is slow. Marketing is long term sales is short term. But then, you know, long term marketing catches up and it becomes this super powerful thing and, and marketing can also shorten the sales cycle. Because if somebody comes in to you already, you know with a, with like persuaded to use Robert child Dini’s persuasion kind of idea, like if they come to you already sort of pre-sold, that’s gonna accelerate things. And so part of the magic of brand builders group, like what we do internally is, is we do both, right. We do marketing and sales. Like we use marketing to sort of like warm up the leads and bring them in. And then we use sales and then we work through referrals. And so that’s why we’ve been able to build very successful businesses, very fast and, and businesses that are, are, are much larger than most people with millions of followers frankly because we understand how to do both.
RV (16:00):
And so they both work. They’re both good, but they both serve different purposes and you gotta sort of work work, you know, realize which one is your strength, which one is your weakness and how do you incorporate both of them in together? Because marketing is slow and sales is fast. Marketing is long term sales is short term, but, but marketing is scalable. And, and sales is more of a grind. So like it’s all it is. It’s all a balance. But if you’re gonna build a great business and a great personal brand, you want to be friends with both. Like you want to be really good at both marketing and sales and the better you are at those two things, the easier everything else becomes. So maybe you need to request a call at free brandand call.com/podcast request a free call with our team.
RV (16:51):
If you want to, you know, work with us, we do the first call for free. We’ll help you create a customized marketing. And you know, we’ll show you our journey for creating a marketing plan and a sales plan for your business. But that is those are the big take takeaways from today. Be duplicatable, put your self esteem in your work habits, not your results. And, you know, remember that marketing is long term and sales is short term, learn how to do both and you will have a great business and a great brand. Hey, leave us a review. If you wouldn’t mind at iTunes or wherever you listen to the show and share this episode with anyone who you think it might be helpful for. We’re so glad you’re here. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand podcast.
Ep 288: Personal Brand Strategies for Network Marketing and Direct Sales with Ray Higdon
RV (00:00):
So a few months back, I made some friends, Ray and Jessica Higden, who I have really grown to love. I mean, if you know anything about my story, you know, I was raised by a single mom who sold Mary Kay. I was in direct sales when I was in college. I went door to door for five years and, you know, just for really believe in direct sales and the power of direct sales and have been so warmly welcomed by network marketing companies and had the privilege of speaking at a lot of their events. And now at brand builders group, we see a, a growing number of you who are somehow involved with network marketing at, as either a side hustle or a portion of your business, or you’re, you know, maybe you’re a, you’re a fitness influencer, and you’re just recommending, you know, shakes or workout programs or whatever.
RV (00:51):
And so it made sense that we had to get Ray to come on the show. He is one of the world’s leading experts. I would say on network marketing and, and driving business for that. So he has a community called rank makers. He has about a half a million people, 500, almost 500,000 followers on social media. I met him and Jessica. They had a book that came out last year and the, the book came out from hay house. It’s called time, money, freedom. And the book is, and a bestseller and these guys have helped over 300,000 people generate more business, right. They grow their recruits, grow their business. And so anyways, we’re gonna talk about using your personal brand specifically to grow a network marketing direct sales business. So Ray, welcome to the show.
RH (01:45):
Yeah. Hey, thanks for having me man. Excited to be out here.
RV (01:48):
Did I say all that accurately? I mean,
RH (01:51):
Did I I’ll clear, I’ll clarify the last point. So
RV (01:53):
Clarify
RH (01:54):
In the last four years, we’ve helped network marketers bring in over 300,000 new customers, 71,000 new reps and achieve 14,000 rank advances. We actually track production of our, of our group. And so that that’s, that’s just the everything else was perfect, man.
RV (02:11):
Got it. So it’s that’s so it’s, it’s, it’s not 300,000 people you’ve helped your clients generate 300,000 customers recruit 71,000 team members. And then and then how many know the, how much show the rank advance
RH (02:27):
14,000 over 14,000 rank advances. And we have you know, a little bit over 11,000 people in our group. So, you know, you can kind of look at that and in those numbers, but you know, we’re very proud of our rank makers. We give them a action step every single day and they show it big.
RV (02:45):
Yeah. So, you know, there’s kind of two parts of this because on the one hand I’m really curious. And how do you think personal branding drives a network marketing, you know, direct sales business, but also, you know, most of the people we have on this show, it’s, they’re telling us the story of how they built their personal brand. And so you’ve done that as well. So like in the means of helping all of these people use their personal brand to grow their business, you guys have built a pretty monster empire here in a very, you know, a niche vertical, which, you know, regardless if somebody’s in direct sales or not almost everybody listening, I mean, this is gonna be our advice to them is, is to find their uniqueness and really dominate a vertical. And like, you guys have done that as, as, as good as anybody. Hmm.
RH (03:39):
Thank, thank you. Yeah. You know, before we were, you know, coaching and training you know, we were the number one incomers of a network marketing company. So I know, I know what it’s like to be in the field. I know what it’s like to, you know, to grind it out. I also know what it’s like to fail, cuz I, I failed in my first quite a few attempts at network marketing, cuz there were, there were a few of things I just didn’t get about network marketing cuz it is, especially when it comes to branding, it is very different than almost everything else. You know, if you’re like here’s, here’s a brand you would like. So in Cape coral we used to my wife when she was pregnant, we took her to this very specific chiropractor that was chiropractic for pregnant. Women.
RV (04:26):
Love it, like
RH (04:27):
Very specific. And that guy was booked. I mean he was booked. And I said to him, one day, I’m like, that’s a, that’s a pretty good niche. He goes, yeah know man
RV (04:44):
Right.
RH (04:44):
The reason I, I bring that up is, you know, the realtor isn’t typically teaching everyone how to also be a realtor they’re selling houses, but a network marketer kind of revolves around, you know, that world of, of what you do. You want to also be able to share that other or people can do. So I’m, I’m very hardcore when it comes to being, you know, being duplicatable, but there’s also nuances there’s nuances and, and pieces of that, that, that I don’t think a lot of people know that the distinctions of, but we’ve been able to, you know, to navigate that.
RV (05:19):
Yeah. And I, so I wanna talk about this specific, like, so you mentioned that you guys were a top income or number one income earn at, at, at one of these network marketing companies. I feel like the whole issue of personal branding is a conflict. Like it’s, it’s, it’s like a big question mark for how does a network marketing company deal with? Because I, on the one hand you go, yes, as, as one of our dealers distributors, team members, whatever you want to call ambassadors, whatever you call ’em builds this hugely successful personal brand, it, you know, helps them sell more and recruit more. On the other hand, I feel like there’s a lot of conflicts of like, well then they’re doing their own thing. They’re not really doing the company thing. And also it gets a little weird when people start selling products like their own information products that they make to their downline, right.
RV (06:19):
Because you’re in a, your downline or organization, you have a lot of influence and you’re already incentivized to help those people succeed. You make money off of their success typically. So like how do you, how do you recommend people like direct sales companies navigate that or manage that? Or like, what are some of the philosophies either that you’re employing or companies you go, yeah, I think they’re kind of doing this well, cuz I, I honestly see both sides of it. Like I see going, Hey, the company has a brand to protect, we’ve dumped a bunch of money into creating this product and this reputation back in infrastructure. And then also being like, well yeah, well, you know, if you’re growing your social media following, like that’s your asset. So yeah. You know, not to start with the, not to start with the hard questions, but let’s start with the hard, hard ones.
RH (07:04):
Yeah. Yeah. It’s interesting. So I remember, so that company that, that we were the, the top income earns of in 2013, it merged into a larger company and that larger company, you know, like I, I had a lot of internet marketers. I mean, I, I had like, you know, in our space I had,
RH (07:57):
And they’re, they’re big thing was we just don’t want you using our logo or our name. And I’m like done, done deal. And, and I think that that is I think that that’s a smart approach, right? That’s a smart approach to say, don’t use the company name, don’t use, you know, the logo. And I mean, at the time I, I don’t know what it’s like now at the time, I mean, I was getting more traffic than, than their site
RH (08:45):
No, you’re gonna be like, yay. We got Brian Tracy, right? If you brought in you know, some guru, of course they’re gonna continue to sell their stuff. And so if you can allow that, then how can you not allow, you know, this over here? And so there’s, you know, for, for me personally, when I started selling courses, I didn’t market ’em to my team. If someone came to me when we started offering coaching, if someone in team came to me and said, you know, Hey, I wanna hire you as a coach. If they wanted to learn prospecting team, building leadership, duplication closing, you know, the standard kind of stuff of, of network marketing. I’m not gonna charge ’em I, I’m not gonna, you know, hit ’em with some big coaching fee. But if they’re wanting to learn blogging, podcasting, brand, all these things, to me that falls outside the realm of what a network marketing leader should be teaching.
RH (09:41):
And, and so that was a little bit different story. I had a, you know, a few people on my team that, that hired us as, as coaches, but it’s cuz they wanted something that you wouldn’t typically get in network marketing leadership. I think one of the, if, if you look at, at what companies are red hot, I mean red hot these are the companies that are the most flexible they just are. And you know, there’s a lot of you know, we’re not in the eighties where there’s, you can just put hedges up big enough. So no one can, you know, see outside of the company opportunities at every, you know, every second of the day you’re presented with a new opportunity. So the influencer has a lot of options. And, and so I, I think it’s a mistake. If, if companies are saying don’t you dare build a personal brand, but I also think it’s a mistake.
RH (10:28):
If an influencer says you must build a personal brand. So, you know, for example, there’s a lot of, and, and I know I, I go crazy on over here. For example, we, a lot of influencers they’ll bash cold, cold market messaging, right? And so, you know, we teach people how to send, you know, simple messages to people that they don’t know and, and actually get results because some people don’t wanna build a brand. Some people don’t wanna, you know, do all the attraction marketing stuff, they just wanna and get in and get out. Well, one of our students, Christina, Danielle, she’s the number one recruiter in her company. It’s for a pet supplies company which she doesn’t even have a pet. And she does it a hundred percent through cold messaging. That’s someone she doesn’t care to have a brand doesn’t want a brand doesn’t wanna build a traction marketing. She’s the one to get in. She’s the, the number one recruiter in that company. And so there’s a, there’s a lot of things that, that work in network marketing. I think the mistake is saying, this is the only way don’t you dare build a personal brand or you have to build a personal brand.
RV (11:29):
Hmm. Yeah. Well, it’s interesting too, because like back in 2013 you know, that would, that, that makes sense to me to go yeah. Blogging, podcasting, you know, funnel, social media, definitely not part of the mainstream of what you would teach for network marketing, but today it probably is right. Like to go man, like social media, like a lot of these companies thrive or maybe I, I mean, I don’t know, like I’m not as much into it. I mean, I keynote at some of the events, but like, you know, it sure seems like leveraging social media. I mean, you tell me like leveraging social media to grow your business is a, is a, is one way to do it. Like I very, I hear you’re saying you can do it cold, which I believe in, I mean, I was knocking on doors in 2006. Yeah. When people had the internet and people are going, no one is gonna buy books. People have the internet. And yet I made more money than I, than I had any of the previous summers. Like people will always buy from cold calling. It’s not the easiest most glamor, but it totally works. So
RH (12:38):
Here here’s, here’s the difference like you know, for example, way back when, when I first started social media was bashed by every guru and network marketing. So 2009, every guru that is now all for it was like, oh, that doesn’t duplicate, that’s too complicated. I remember going to a conference and you know, a leader, one of the leaders in the company came up to me and said, Hey you’re the guy that recruits a lot of people on Facebook. Right. And I’m like, oh yeah, you know. Yeah, sure. And he said, well, I prefer duplication. And then I’m like, okay, like I, I love that kind of stuff. And so, you know, five months later when I was the number one incomer in the company, I kind of, you know, waved home a little bit. And so like, I I’ve been through all of that.
RH (13:23):
Right now you, of course, should be teaching your team social media for sure. To me, there’s a distinction between teaching how to properly use Instagram, Facebook. How, how do you do reels even TikTok? Like all of those are free platforms. It’s when, to me, it’s when you start to get one level above that, an email list podcast blogging that requires specific knowledge and, and tools. I think you, you should be teaching social media to your team, you know, period that should, that should be part of, of the deal. So even now, if I was running a team, which we retired from building a team in 2016, if I was running a team right now and someone wanted to learn social media from me, I, I would teach ’em I wouldn’t, I wouldn’t charge ’em for that if they were in my organization.
RV (14:08):
Yeah. Let’s talk about that for a second. So like, what are, what are some of the things that you should be doing, you know, and, and for those of you listening, like I just wanna highlight and go network marketing is really just marketing. Like direct sales is really just sales. Like whether you happen to be, you know, selling a supplement and there’s some type of override or whatever, or you’re, you’re running a local donut shop. Like there’s not a lot of the, to a lot of the principles apply. They don’t always, but, so just kind of keep that in mind, but like talking specifically about network marketing, Ray, like if somebody was just starting out today and they just signed with, you know, whatever, pick, pick your, pick your marketing company, what, what should they be doing on social media slash with their personal brand to immediately drive like revenue for their business, new customers?
RH (15:05):
Yeah. And for first, just regarding like, you know, Hey, sales is sales, marketing is marketing the it’s, it’s smarter to think like a franchise, you know, there there’s a line in Michael Gerber’s E MIF book that says the reason McDonald’s franchises rarely fail is because they were designed to be ran by the person with the lowest level of skill. And so that’s how we think about all, all of our training. Can the person with no skill, no influence, no business or sales background, can they do this thing that we’re teaching? And if it requires those things, then that’s not good network. To me, that’s not good network marketing teaching. And so as far as social media, there’s, you know, there’s a few, there’s a few factors. I mean, there’s, there’s, there’s are factors to, will you succeed in network marketing or not pipeline, which is number of people you reach out to follow up with set appointments, with send samples to if that’s what your company does position understanding the position of the prospect when you’re in a conversation, right?
RH (16:08):
So if they havet express any interest, you have no knowledge. Then you have to see if they’re open first, not try to close. ’em See if they’re open three posture, are you easily affected by the opinions of others? Are you to believe in what you have regardless of external acceptance or approval and number four perspective, which is your, your mindset. So how does that translate to social media? Well, you have two categories, prospecting market, right? And so marketing the top of the marketing food chain right now, without question, there is no doubt is the short video we’re in the short video phenomenon, it’s unlike anything any marketer has ever seen. You know, like I was, you know, the last hot trend and marketing in my opinion was way back in, you know, late two thousands, which was Google AdWords and that’s, you know, advertising, but that was red hot.
RH (17:01):
You know, I was taught by a guy that was dropping $30,000 a day, but he was making profit $30,000 a day. And, you know, and it’s, that was crazy. There’s so many people making money on that. The difference now is you now have, have a way to reach more people that don’t know you than ever before and for free. And so, you know, we have students, we, we have one student, she’s got a video, it’s got 15 million views and she didn’t spend a dime on it. And that’s more than who watched the Olympics.
RH (17:53):
So if I was starting right now and I had, let’s just assume big goals, I would have a a prospecting number and I would have a marketing metric of at least three reels a day. So I’d be doing three reels a day. And this is, you know, just adjust if your goals are smaller. But if you, you have big goals, you wanna hit six, seven figures. I would be doing three reels a day and I would have a prospecting goal. And that, that is whatever you have the time for. You know, like when I, when I was serious about becoming the number one income earn, I set a goal of 20 nos a day. So I had to hear 20 nos that day, every day
RH (18:36):
So have a number of how many human beings am I asking if they’re open to my product service or opportunity per day. And that is the key question. Not how many comments am I dropping? Not how many friend requests am I sending? Not how many, you know, anything else, how are you today? Right? None of those I’m I’m saying how many people are you asking? Are you open to my product service or opportunity per day? You combine that with, you know, two, three reels a day optimal, you’re going to build a business and you know, it’s, it’s simple, not easy. And, and I found the no number, one reason that, that people aren’t consistent has nothing to do with tactical or nothing to do with routines or, or anything like that. And we can, we can talk about that if you would like, or if you have more questions.
RV (19:21):
Well, yeah, like I, I think that’s a good, that is good to talk about. I mean, when I, like when I was in college and I was knocking on doors, that was the whole thing was, was you have to do 30 demos in a day. Like you gotta just, you just gotta show this to 30 people who meet the basic criteria qualifications. And it was, you know, it was always, it’s not the theory of averages. It’s the law of averages. And if you show this to 30 people, one to two will buy it. Like no matter how bad you are, right. One to two people are gonna buy it just because they, they need it. And it’s, you know, hopefully it’s a good, it’s a good product. So like I, I do want to hear about the mental side of it. That one thing that I wanna highlight though, that you said that I really love is like, when most people teach marketing that are gonna teach likes followers, comments, shares, engagement, et cetera.
RV (20:15):
But when you said the focus is do three reels a day, which is totally in your control. Yes. And, and focusing on, or like the thing you can control. And it’s like, I don’t know how many views that’ll be. I don’t know how many followers I’ll get. I don’t know how many comments will show up, but like I’m gonna commit to three reels. Every single day is a hugely powerful shift. Just, you know, tactically mentally, even spiritually to go focus, focus on that. So I would like to hear more about why aren’t people consistent, cuz my guess is it has more to do with that perspective as you say that like mindset component. Yeah.
RH (20:58):
You know, I’ve cuz I I’m, I’m a, I’m a consistent guy. I mean I did, you know, I did a video a day every day for 12 years straight because I’m, I’m a lunatic and, and so people have asked me over the years, Hey, what’s your daily routine or how are you so consistent? And so I was, I was a little slow at learning this admittedly looking back, but for the first like five or six years, I would just teach years. My routine and people are like, oh man, that’s awesome. Thank you so much. Then they wouldn’t do it. And so like I’m, I’m like pulling my students. I’m like, Hey, who is anyone doing this? Nobody was doing it. And so I’m, I’m teaching. I’m like, okay, I gotta up my game. I gotta be a better teacher. And so I started asking myself, okay, why do I do it?
RH (21:40):
I’m like, okay. A vision, a vision of who I want to become. So I started teaching that probably five to 8% of people started doing it. And I’m like, okay, there’s gotta be another answer. And what I realized is that there’s two categories of people. There’s, there’s the people that are borderline workaholics. Like I was that are hustling, grinding and to talk about consistency is like that. They’re confused. Right? Why do people, why do do you mean cuz they’re, we’re just, we’re we’re just designed for this stuff and for me, and a lot of, of people that I’ve now coached that’s actually a coping mechanism. It’s actually a coping mechanism with not wanting to spend time with yourself or actually having low self-esteem, which, you know, I grew up in a very abusive home and I didn’t think that that was of affecting me anymore, but it was, it was due to some of those issues of why I struggled to be present with people, why I struggled to have great relationships, but I was always consistent at working the other 95% of people that aren’t consistent.
RH (22:45):
I have found 100% of the time. It is they’ve drawn the wrong conclusion to success based on an observation they made as a kid. Hmm. A hundred percent of the time. So if you had a a parent who was really, really successful and then lost it, all a program was most likely created in you that made you really scared of being ridiculed and never wanting to have a big fall. So if you are afraid of climbing the, of falling off the mountain, just don’t ever climb it. And so what’ll happen is people will get to this, this certain level. And then they’ll just find themselves either distracted, they’ll join a different company or they’ll just not be motivated anymore because past the level is danger. And so the program is there not to hurt you, but to prevent you from feeling a way that really scares you or becoming someone you don’t wanna become, if your parents were really successful and they ignored you, you very likely drew the conclusion that successful parent means ignore a kid.
RH (23:50):
And I don’t want my kids to feel that way. So I don’t know why I can’t get past this level. And you know, I remember I, I coached a lady Tara this was on clubhouse and she like so many people that I’ve I’ve, you know, coached sense. She would go into a company and just rock it up to the top, just crush it, just make it rain break records. And then she would find something wrong and, and leave. And everyone’s like, wait, she left.
RH (24:37):
No drama, no trauma, no abuse, nothing. And you know, they’re awesome. They’re perfect. I’m like, Hmm. Okay. And I know that at programs, often block memories. And so I said, Hey, it’s okay if we don’t, if we don’t, you know, figure it out today. And she’s like, and she remembers catching her mom cheating on her dad. Now five minutes before she said they were perfect. And I know, I know what’s going on, but she’s like, well, what does I have to do with my career? Everything as a kid, she was out of control. She had this perfect scenario was feeling really good about life. And then something happened outside of her control and her reality was crashed. So every time she starts feeling really good about something, she knows that she was about to. So she makes the choice with awareness of that program. She no longer has that program. So now she’s been able to rocket in her, the current company that she’s with. But that’s one example of, of hundreds of different examples. I’ve seen where something happened in the past. Like if we have time, I’ll give one, you know, one more example, you know, when people struggle with motivation,
RV (25:51):
I wanna hear this. I just wanna make sure I’m, I’m, I’m hearing you correctly. That basically you’re saying the reason that people don’t perform is because there is some underlying program that was written perhaps and likely subconsciously yes. From the time they were young yes. That they carry with them. It operates in the background and it basically sabotages them because they there’s this kind of underlying program that’s running in the background.
RH (26:27):
Yes, absolutely. And it’ll disguise it so off as overthinking perfectionism procrastination, or just lack of, of motivation like mine. The one that I discovered I’ve discovered, you know, several is when I was a kid in that house of abuse, some of the relatives knew that no one did anything about it. And so a program was created of, I’m not a priority that program you know, up until this last year, year and a half, I didn’t realize it. But I was that into every relationship I ever had, including the one with my wife. So I would locate and verify how I was in a priority. And that’s why I really struggled with relationships. And if you struggle with relationships, there’s, there’s gonna be a cap to how much impact you can possibly have. And, and so, you know, by me discovering my programs, I’ve been able, a lot of people discover theirs.
RV (27:26):
Yeah. And so you’re, and, and so that’s always there. I mean, all of us have something. I mean, there’s some, there’s something on the hard drive, right. So the you were gonna use one other, you were gonna tell one other example.
RH (27:39):
Yeah. so I was coaching a lady maybe a few months ago and she said, you know, I, I, I get to a certain level and then I’m just like, you know, I’m just not, I’m just not motivated. I know I could do more, but I’m just not motivated. And, and I asked her this very, you know, specific question I said, at what point in your childhood did you figure out that trying hard really didn’t matter. And she’s like, oh, you know, I remember this one day I used my easy bake oven to make these cookies for my dad. And I spent all day making ’em and I decorated ’em. I had ’em all perfect and everything. And when he came home, he yelled at me for using the, the kitchen materials. And man, I think that’s the last time I really tried hard in my life.
RH (28:28):
And so, you know, we’re that, that program is trying to prevent you from feeling that feeling again, it’s not is it’s, it’s trying to keep you safe. It thinks that it’s serving you and it doesn’t want you to figure it out. And so you, you have to do some pretty intense work to, to figure this kind of stuff out. And, but if you’re are not consistent, I guarantee you now, I can’t say that of everyone, but if you’re watching this, if you’re listening to this then, and you’re not consistent, it’s not because you’re lazy. It’s because you’ve drawn the wrong conclusion to getting higher than you currently are. Whatever that means, money impact following success, you know, whatever that means, but you’ve drawn a bad conclusion. There’s something wrong with you stepping it up. It’s something wrong with the next level for you?
RV (29:14):
How do you spot it?
RH (29:18):
The key is one not easy to do by yourself. The, the real key is patterns. Cause you, the decisions that you’ve made have been driven by have been driven by this, these programs, because before you’re aware, you’re on autopilot, right? You’re the puppet on a string. And, and so you’re just you knowing around the cliff, you’re going up and down and you’re making these decisions, thinking that you’re making the decisions, the program’s making the decisions, the program’s making, you see things in a certain light to keep you nice and safe. And so when you become aware, you can, you can become defiant to them. Right? So, you know, like the first time I really confronted my program of me not being a priority. It was a very tough time. My mind, I felt like I was under attack. I mean, my mind was going nuts.
RH (30:12):
And I just thought I was in a, you know, little argument with my wife and I, it came up. I, you’re not a priority, but it’s still a good relationship. That’s what my mind said. And I said, no, I don’t wanna feel that way anymore. I don’t wanna think that anymore. Cuz that’s not true. And
RV (30:44):
Mm-Hmm
RH (30:57):
I mean, that’s, that’s gonna vary based on, you know, based on your life, you know, that’s gonna vary on what, what you’re doing and, and what, you know, what it’s all about. Like, you know, for me, I can now once you become aware of it, you can kind of look backwards and, and, and, you know, like Steve jobs said connect the dots. Right. And and I can see that I’ve, I’ve, I’ve had that program my whole life I’ve had in every friendship, in every business relationship and every personal, I mean, in every relationship I was, I was seeking to prove that I was not a priority and I always verified it because we always verified what we’re seeking.
RV (31:36):
Mm-Hmm
RH (31:39):
So I know we kind of went from network mark. I mean, to deep, deep stuff, here
RV (31:43):
You go. We’re marketing to social media to sort of like limiting beliefs. But the, I mean, I, I think this applies a lot, right? Because a lot of people, I mean, people have the same programs about personal branding or social media, right? Social media is stupid. Social media is a waste of time, social media, whatever. And it’s like, well, there’s a reason why it’s not working for you. Right? Like that’s what you, that’s what you think about it. And it, it’s not the only it’s by, by no means the only way to succeed. But like those underlying programs I think are really, really, you know, they’re, they are really critical. And I think it, you know, tying back to my very first question about like, how do network marketing companies deal with how much flexibility or control they try to extend over the personal brands?
RV (32:30):
There is this old school thought of, I think that is for the most part, been pretty pervasive, which is control. Like we have to, we have to put a fence around our people and, and sort of like shelter them from the rest of the world. And that is really a conflict with like a whole world of decentralization where things are blowing up. Everyone has access to everything. We all see what’s going on in other people’s lives. We can talk to anyone around the world and it’s like, that’s a really big, you know, conflict that we’re, we’re, we’re wrestling with.
RH (33:06):
I, I just, I don’t, I, I just don’t see, you know, and we, I mean, we coach a lot of different leaders work with a lot of different students in different companies. I just don’t see the mega control growing nearly at the pace of some of the more freer companies. And, you know, we’re just, you know, it used to be like, okay, maybe you’re in, you know, whatever you’re in Alabama. And, and there’s only one company that you know of in your area right. Then, okay. You can kind of be controlling, but as soon as you start to ask your show, the question of what if I bring in a big doctor, what if I bring in an author? What if I bring in an influencer, as soon as you bring that up, it’s kind of like, well, well, we gotta accommodate them. Like, well, how can we, how can we say, okay, if you’re successful already, you can keep doing that stuff, but don’t, you dare try to, it just doesn’t make sense. Does
RV (33:58):
That happen? I mean, does that, I mean, I, I know that like oh,
RH (34:01):
All the time
RV (34:02):
Happen all the time,
RH (34:04):
All the time. I mean, so, I mean, I saw, I mean, we recruited one of the top I think like top 10 orthopedic surgeons in the country here in Naples, Florida, I recruited Ron LaGrand. You may know that name. I mean, he ran a, he still, I haven’t stayed in touch with him, but he runs a, a big real estate investment, you know, education company. I think they were doing 20 million a year. We brought in quite a few doctors actually brought in different authors, brought in different speakers for sure. And, and that’s something that a lot of these influencers, you know, they, they, they make money, but most of ’em don’t have residual income. So I, I, I think it’s actually very smart for an influencer if done, right. To have a network marketing thing on, on the background, on the back end, they don’t talk about it every, you know, real or every, you know, post, but to have one in the, in the background so that they can start to build more residual income, cuz most people don’t have that most business owners don’t have that.
RV (35:09):
No, but I think you, I think y’all one, one of the things I’ve been surprised is, you know, at brand builders group, we end up seeing a lot of clients that come to us. You have thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of followers. And they’re going all wanna write a book or build my speaking career, whatever. And we come to find out that somewhere in their back end, they have a, they have a network marketing and that like that a lot of their money comes from the, the, the thing that’s really financing the growth of their personal brand in many cases is more of the network, the network marketing backend. It’s not so much that they’re making money from their personal brand, it’s that they’re using their personal brand and they’re driving people to something on the backend. Like I’ve been shocked at how common that is
RH (35:54):
Very, very common. I mean, you know, it’s, it’s kind of a natural thing of if you, if you gain success and you feel that limelight in a network marketing company, cuz network marketing companies are amazing at edification, making people feel good, feel appreciated. And so you, you, you know, you get a taste of that and you know, you, you may get a taste and you’re at a point where to get bigger taste is a really big leap or you’ve already tasted all the limelight you can, you know, possibly get and you still want to grow. You wanna stretch out. And so it goes from being the person, you know, signing autographs in your company to getting people outside of your company, to know you, which is actually beneficial for the company. And that’s, that’s where, you know, some companies I think misunderstand think that they’re going away, they’re actually, you know, going out into foreign lands and, and, you know, informing more people about that company, if they’re treated right. If they’re not treated right, then a lot of times that influencer’s gonna make a different decision.
RV (36:52):
Yeah. Well, and I, you know, the thing I’ve always,
RH (37:45):
That, that’s a, that’s a great point. So when a new person would come to me and say, Hey, I wanna do blogging. I wanna do podcasting or whatever, I’d say, okay. You know, I, you, you certainly can now just understand it’s more expense of, and it takes longer when, starting than if you just follow the system. And so, you know, and, and nine times outta 10, I would talk ’em outta that fame because they think that’s simple, fast and easy. And, and it’s not, you know, it’s not simple, fast and easy build a YouTube channel or, or a huge following or a blog or, or a podcast. And so like, you know, I would always give, you know, the freedom of choice. Hey, you can, might take you a little bit longer than if you do it this way. And if they’re looking for speed, that’s really good advice because you doing the, you doing the basics of, of prospecting and, and, you know, basic marketing, you’re gonna get faster results than building out, you know, infrastructures. And, and so, you know, it, it is a good point. What a lot of, of, of influencers do is not what they did to reach the top. You know, a lot of them, you know, did you know, did the work prospecting, marketing the basics, reach the top then became an influencer and most, but most people don’t understand that. So you, you do need to teach that.
RV (39:05):
Yeah, no, it’s, it’s really similar to like, you know, people we’re really big on find your uniqueness, figure out the one thing that you can do in the world better than anyone else. And that that’s really how you break through the wall. Not by trying to talk about lots of things and lots of places to lots of different people and people go, well, what about Gary Vaynerchuck? And we say, Gary’s actually the perfect example, because he does talk about everything now. But in the beginning he talked about wine on just YouTube. And that was how he broke through the wall, right? Like in the beginning, the rock was just a wrestler in the beginning, Ellen DeGeneres was just a comedian. Like it, they, they, they all break through on the one thing it’s really similar to, to this conversation. And people need to be taught. Don’t do what they’re doing now, do what they did to get there.
RH (39:53):
Right. And, and here’s the thing about dub, how you generate a lead is not what has to be duplicatable, because if that were true, then you couldn’t, you couldn’t recruit an influencer, an author, you couldn’t recruit a doctor. You
RV (40:09):
Say that again,
RH (40:10):
The way you generate a lead does not have to be duplicatable. What you do with the lead that’s what has to be duplicatable. So if you’re relying on your, so however you generate a lead that does not have to be duplicatable because I know people you don’t, and that doctor knows has clients, and I’m not gonna tell ’em don’t you dare talk to your clients, cuz not everyone has clients like that would make no sense. It’s what you do with the lead. So if the doctor has a pamphlet in their, in their you know, office and people say, Hey doc, you know, you know, here, let’s just say opportunity. Hey doc, it says right here, I can make some, you know, extra money you know, is this something I should do? If the doctor says, yes, I highly recommend it. That’s not duplicatable.
RH (40:56):
If the doctor says, you know what? We have a short video and this is the video that will tell you if it’s a fit for you or not. And by the way, if you ever wanna tell other people, you’d use this same video, watch this video, see if it’s a fit for you. That’s duplicatable now is how he generated the lead duplicatable. No, and it doesn’t need to be, it’s what you do with the lead. So when I would have people come to me after building a brand and say, Hey man, I wanna work with you. I don’t know what company you’re in, but I’m gonna give you my credit card. I would, I would have that happen. And I’d say, Hey, I really appreciate that. That is awesome. Thank you so very much. But you know what? Let’s make sure this thing’s a fit for you. I’m gonna send your short video, watch this video. And the cool thing is that’s the same video that you’ll use. Okay. That’s duplicatable. It says, oh, oh, I must watch a video before I join this thing to kind of get the gist of it. Got it. And it’s the same tool that I would use if I rely on personality, charisma or influence, that’s not duplicatable. And so it’s not how I generate the lead. It’s what I do with the lead. Once they’re in the conversation, once we’re having that communication,
RV (41:55):
Mm-Hmm
RH (42:12):
Yeah. You know, if you’re a, you know, like a lifelong learner, like, like me, I mean I do self development every single day and I have for forever
RV (42:50):
That’s that’s I mean, if you made a video every single day for what did you say? 12 years. 13
RH (42:56):
Years. Yeah. I, so from Ja July 15th, 2009 to July of 2021, I made a, at least one video a day. And the only reason I stopped is I was in a meditation retreat. I’m just like, eh, I’m not gonna do it.
RV (43:09):
Yeah, that’s funny. I,
RH (43:10):
But then I picked it back up the next week.
RV (43:14):
Yeah. Well, I, I think you know, this is interesting Ray and I, I think to me, there is, there is the world of network marketing and affiliate marketing and info marketing and digital marketing all seem to sort of like be colliding, like as, as the tools are available to everybody and the lifestyle is available to everybody and people are more interested in freedom and, you know, time what’s, what’s your book, time, time, freedom, money, right?
RH (43:48):
Yeah. time, time, money, freedom, time,
RV (43:51):
Money, freedom
RH (43:52):
By hay house. Yep. That’s my wife and I wrote this and it’s you know, this is not specific to network marketing. It’s you know, 10 simple rules to redefine what’s possible and radically reshape your life. It’s basically what what I, I did to get out of foreclosure and, and build a, you know, a business and it’s what Jess did to get away from the makeup counter. And and so, you know, it’s helped lot of people inside and outside network marketing.
RV (44:19):
Yeah. Well, super thought provoking, man. Always great to connect with you. Thank you so much for your time and keep helping, helping people make rank, man. You’re you’re you’re doing it.
RH (44:30):
My pleasure, man. Thanks for having me.
Ep 275: Spiritual Truths About Marketing Bestselling Books with Gabby Bernstein | Recap Episode
RV (00:07):
Hey brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview as always it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know the there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to to see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from Martin team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders, group.com/pod call. We hope to talk to you soon.
RV (00:54):
So I knew when I was gonna sit down with Gabby Bernstein, that we were gonna talk about books and book launches and book writing. That was, that was part of like what we decided on the front end that we were gonna talk about. But I had no idea that we would get into such a conversation about spirituality and what the spiritual connection is to launching books. But I’m, I’m so glad that we did, because that was a conversation. If you haven’t listened to it, you have to go back and listen to this interview with Gabby Bernstein. I mean, she’s a number one New York times bestselling author. She’s written nine books. Several of them have hit the New York times list. And several of them sell very, very well. She’s built a huge social media following. You know, she’s a, and she’s a, she’s a spiritual teacher which, you know, like I don’t follow her super closely on that side of things cuz you know, I’m a hardcore Bible thumpin Jesus freak.
RV (01:54):
So I, I tend to follow more of like, you know, pastors and stuff like that. But I like, I like following Gabby, but I thought what was really the interesting, and I’ve always followed her as like a marketer to see what, what she’s doing and she’s just sweet and kind. And so, you know, I built a relationship with her just recently with some of the other stuff we were doing. And then she mentioned, Hey, she is doing a free training for authors on how to become a bestseller. And I said, well, Hey, that’s something we should talk about. Like our community would, would really care about that. And so by the way, if you go to brand buildersgroup.com/gabby, so brand builders, group.com/gabby, G A B B Y you can check out depending on when you hear this you can sign up for the free training that she’s doing.
RV (02:42):
And if you miss the free training, it’ll just point you directly to like whatever the course is. But she’s, she’s you know, doing this free training on it. And I said, Hey, well, we should talk about it on the podcast. And so anyways, we got into this wonderful conversation and, and I guess that that was enlightening for me was never really not so directly connecting the idea of just what a spiritual journey writing a book is. And so I just thought it was really a beautiful conversation. I’m gonna share with you kind of my three biggest ahas, my three biggest takeaway, my, you know, what, what was, what were the highlights for me? And the first one was about vulnerability. So here’s here’s, I’ll tell you, these are the three things I’m gonna talk about vulnerability, responsibility and clarity. These are the three things that came out of the conversation, vulnerability, responsibility and clarity.
RV (03:36):
And the first one is vulnerability, cuz this is something that I’ve always with, which is how vulnerable should I be? Meaning how much should I expose to the world? What is going on in my private life? And you know, just how intimate exactly should we, should we be? And so I’m always fascinated by people who have these really massive platforms, how they, you know, reconcile that issue and, and, and, and use it cuz you know, everyone talks about vulnerability and of course it, it builds a deep, deep, you know, that’s what intimacy is right. Is you’re, you’re sharing these, these intimate details about your life with somebody and, and that’s what makes people feel like, you know, you, but at the same time, people, you know, on the internet, there’s a lot of strangers on the internet who don’t really know you. And so it’s kind of a kind of weird thing.
RV (04:25):
And, and I thought the answer that she gave when I asked her that question, how, where do you draw the line of how much you share was really brilliant? Cause I kind of thought she was gonna say one of two things, which is what most people say is they say, Hey, you should share everything. And just like, you know, you, you know, this is, this is the modern way of the world. Just like, you know, share everything and that if you wanna build fans, you would share everything, which is like, I, I kind of thought maybe she might say that or she might say the other thing, which is you hear a lot, which is like, Hey, these your followers, these are not your personal friends. They don’t need to know everything going on in your marriage and you know, what’s going on with your kids and, and, and whatever.
RV (05:01):
But her answer was so eloquent and brilliant and she didn’t even have to think about it. And she said, share only what you feel safe in share what you feel safe in. And I thought that was just such a, a great thing to go share as much as you feel safe sharing. That’s a really beautiful way to answer that because it’s like, if I feel safe sharing it, then it, it means, you know, that God, the universe, you know, I, I call it God Gabby calls it the universe like, but I think you’re, you’re you have a sense of going it’s I feel good about this. I’m I’m I’m talking about something that I’ve processed enough to where I’m past it. I’m not in the middle of it. And that was another, another really key point that she said, which I thought was a real practical step is she said, make sure you’re able to tell the story safely without being triggered by it.
RV (05:58):
And I think that’s a, that’s a key delineation point is to go, okay, if what I’m sharing triggers me, then that means I’m probably still too close to it. Like I’m still, I’m still, I’m still living inside of it. And so that’s gonna be dangerous because I don’t yet really have the full perspective on what happened, which means some of my emotions might be taking more of center stage or front stage versus like, you know, rationale or logic of, of, of what really it went on. So I thought that just was, was, was really good. Like you know, and it doesn’t give you necessarily a hard and fast answer, which is kind of what I was looking for, but it kind of does it actually gives a, a better answer share only what you feel safe in. And so I think that’s just really, really good.
RV (06:44):
So that’s, that’s vulnerability. That was my, my first takeaway, my second takeaway, which I think is gonna be looking back on this, this, this is gonna actually be my biggest takeaway from this is about responsibility. And when she said launching a book is a spiritual practice like that really hit me. I mean, I, I know that at a distance because I connect everything like for everything I do, you know, I connect spiritually and for me and AJ, like I mean our work is our, is our ministry. I mean that, it, it it’s a, a part of what our ministry would be, but like the, the speak thinking. So specifically that of, of your, of writing a book and marketing a book is a, is a spiritual practice and there’s two parts. There, there are several parts of it. She said, it’s having the first of all, you have to have the bravery to reveal the truth.
RV (07:41):
And that’s really true, right? Is like you gotta have enough faith and enough comfort enough, a confidence security that like what you are sharing you know, is like, you have to be brave to let people see into your mind and see into your heart and see into the things that you’re thinking. And I, so anyways, I think that was really, really good. And then you, and then you also have to establish the worthiness in your own life. Like believing that what you have is worthwhile to say, and I think everybody, right, when they first start out the idea of being an author, every single author has this question of like, well, why would anyone in the world listen to me? Or like what gives, you know, like what gives me the right to, to share this? And I think that’s just the, that’s the wrong way of processing it.
RV (08:30):
You can’t ask yourself who am I to share this with the world? You have to ask yourself who in the world needs this. And if somebody in the world needs this, then that’s why you are experiencing that calling. I mean, this is why we say the calling that you feel to share your message with the world is the result of a signal that is being sent out from someone else. And that person needs you more than you need them. And it is your responsibility to share that message, not because of what it will do for you, but because of what it will do for them, that’s a spiritual practice that that’s powerful. That’s, that’s allowing your, your life to be used. It’s allowing your voice to be a vessel, right? It, it’s allowing your, your, your story to be a conduit to impact and better improve somebody else’s.
RV (09:28):
And, and that is a great responsibility. And so, you know, she said this so directly, which very much aligns with what we say. You have to make it less about you and make it more about the impact that you’re gonna have on other people. And specifically, again, I loved how it was like, you know, really kind of like spiritual and, and, and, you know, like up there, but then it was also so practical the way she brought it down. And, and she said, visualize your reader, like reading your book and visualize the moment of them having a breakthrough in their life. Right. That changes everything. Like, you’re not going, am I good enough? Am I smart enough? Are people gonna think I’m stupid? Like, is anyone even gonna read like this? Like, no, one’s gonna, you know, I don’t, who am I in the world, all these negative self doubts.
RV (10:16):
And, and then when you visualize the idea of somebody, can, can you visualize, can you visualize the idea of one reader, one person looking at the work that you’ve done and saying, whoa, this is going to help me live a better life for the rest of my life. And if so, like, then you have to do it like that is a spiritual calling. And that is just a real powerful thought. It’s your, it’s your responsibility? It’s your privilege? It’s your privilege? It’s your, it’s your pleasure, hopefully, but it’s also your obligation. It’s your duty, it’s your responsibility. And that’s what we believe that that calling that you feel on your heart is the result of a signal being sent out by another person. And so that’s just a different way of, of thinking about it and, and going, gosh, you know, where she was, she was talking about being unapologetic, right?
RV (11:13):
You have to be unapologetic. She said, yes, I have unapologetically put my face on the cover and told the world about the works that I have created. Why not, not out of vanity for myself, not out of a, a, a desire to, to boost, you know, my own self-esteem, but out of a desire to serve and a desire to love and a desire to be useful and helpful to the world around me, which is like the H that’s the highest expression of my life. That what a great way to, to think about it and to overcome, and, and to really put in context what you’re doing when you are writing so that’s responsibility. And, and, and by the way, so just inside of her course, you know, she talks about this. So this is interesting. So I haven’t gone through her course yet.
RV (12:01):
You know, that one of the reasons that we’re, we’re, you know, at least promoting the free training, which again, if you go to brand builders, group.com/gabby Gabby and, and press me enough from a distance you know, I, I know that I have something to learn from her because I mean, the, the woman has sold a lot of books. She’s impacted a lot of lives and she’s got a huge platform and she is speaking to a lot of people, right. So on a practical side, I go, I, I have something to learn from this woman on a personal side, she’s just been totally endearing and just warm, just a complete doll, like and so, you know, and so she’s got this free training, so, but I haven’t, I’ve never gone through her course, but I planning on going through it. And, and I thought, what was interesting is this, this whole kind of module she has on this spirituality and like, you know, and she does meditations, things like that, you know, I would, I hall and prayers, whatever, but she’s, she’s got, she’s guiding people through meditations in terms of the mental component of this, of getting yourself to move past some of these limiting beliefs.
RV (13:03):
Cuz I think that’s really true. We really do struggle. Like most of our brand builders clients I’d say most of them have this issue of they’re worried about self-promotion, they’re worried about healing vein. They’re worried about not being humble. And so it holds them back from impacting people. And so I think this is a really, really big obstacle that we gotta make sense of. And, and, and I think, you know, the approach that she’s taking here is, you know, V very similar in terms of the, the posture, right? It might be a little bit different in of like the exact philosophy, but, but the posture of making it about other people and doing it for them and doing it out of service is exactly the same thing that we teach. It’s exactly the same thing that we believe. And so I’m really curious about that.
RV (13:49):
And, and, and what she’s doing there with those with, with those, you know, those thoughts. So I, I would call ’em prayers. She calls ’em meditations, you call ’em limiting beliefs, call it mindset whatever you call it. It’s, it’s a reality that the way, whatever you think in your own mind about marketing is either going to empower you to reach people, or it is going to disempower you to reach people. And so this is something we have to explore and I’m, I can’t wait to see it. So anyways, brand builders, group.com/gabby, if it sounds interesting, you could, you can, you can check it out. Of course, we have our best seller launch plan training too, and it’s great. And you, and, and you might go, well, why do you promote both of them? Cuz we have an abundance mindset around here and I wanna learn from Gabby and I go, Hey, you know, we do, we want you to learn from us?
RV (14:38):
Yeah, we do. Like we think we’re some of the best in the world at launching books. You know, we sent this, this big email out a couple weeks ago, we’re working with ed millet right now and his book launch. We we’ve helped him sell over 45,000 units. Like mostly he’s done it, but he’s following our system and we’re, you know, he’s a client and he’s following our plan. So like our system works too, but it’s, it’s not a, it’s like, I want more. Right. And there’s not that many people in the world that teach how to launch a book who have actually launched books at the level that Gabby has. So you know, I, I wanna learn. And so I go, Hey, if I wanna learn from her, then you know, some of you probably do too. It’s not a matter of either.
RV (15:17):
Or it’s, it’s a matter of both. So anyways, you could check that out brand builders, group.com/gabby. And then the third thing, which again, is also very aligned with us is clarity is clarity. You have to have this core message the through line. I mean, sh the things that we teach in finding your brand DNA about boiling your entire book down to one sentence, boil your whole speech, your entire personal brand down to one sentence. And I, you know, we talk about it all the time and then I think people come and they go, man, that’s a lot of work. And I don’t know, like I wanna talk about all these different things and it’s like, fine do your own thing. But listen to the, listen to the interviews. It’s not just me or AJ it’s, it’s the Gabby Bernstein. It’s the Donald Millers. It’s it’s the Michael hyats it’s it’s everybody we have on this show.
RV (16:03):
Who’s like making worldwide global impact is saying, you gotta have that core message. That central message it’s, it’s gotta be boiled down and the hardest work you’ll do. And nobody does it, except the biggest, the biggest, you know, brands, biggest personal brands in the world, the biggest influences, the biggest authors and the speakers, cuz they do that work and it’s, and is difficult. But you have to know it because it becomes the litmus test of what is allowed in the book and what isn’t in the book. And, and it clarifies who you’re marketing to and who you’re not marketing to. You know, not every book you write is gonna be a fit for everyone in your audience. Like there’s gonna be new people that your new book is a better fit for that. Aren’t yet in your audience. And there’s some people in your current audience that aren’t a great fit for your current thing.
RV (16:51):
So that’s why it’s like, you’re always evolving in your, and, and you have to have clarity about who you’re trying to serve too many, too many times. We go, well, what’s my purpose. And it, the faster way to get there is not to ask what’s my purpose is to ask, who can I help? Who can I serve? How can I be of value and, and narrowing down? Who is this for? Like, what is the core message and who is it for? And then the practical thing she said again, this was super, you know, the super practical. She said, this prevents you from, from writing five books in one. And that is so true. That’s what happens. Like the reason why the majority of books don’t transmit and sell and get passed on from person to person is because they say a little about a lot.
RV (17:38):
And as my mentor, Eric Chester taught me the very first day. I met with him when I first set out on this journey, like in my early twenties to say, I wanna be a speakers. He said, Rory, don’t say a little about a lot, say a lot about a little, right. And that’s what Gabby’s talking about here. Don’t, don’t try to combine five books into one, take one idea and deep dive on that. That is what makes a great, a great book. And I just, yeah, so I just, I think that, I think that is, is really genius and useful and Edon to all the things that we talk about. So I hope you enjoy this. The conversation is totally different than I expected, but Gabby was delightful and, and sweet, you know, and intelligent and brilliant as she is. You know, and to me, it’s just like, I’m curious to learn from people like that.
RV (18:24):
And, and even though, you know, if you, if you don’t know or you haven’t picked up, you know, we have different spiritual views on the world. I think Gabby’s just, you know, sort of prided herself on just being very like open, which is, which is great. You know, I happen to be clearly a Christian, but, but I still can learn so much from her. And we’re so aligned. It’s like, they’re not mutually exclusive. And, and I, so I’ve learned ton from her. I hope you’ve learned a ton from her. I love following her. She’s so uplifting and encouraging and what an honor to get to interview her. And you know, somebody that has, has impacted as many people as she had and, and for her to share. So generously some of these things that she has learned. So I hope you enjoyed it.
RV (19:10):
I hope you get a conversa. You got to listen in on a conversation between two people that you wouldn’t hear anybody else or you wouldn’t hear anywhere else. Excuse me. Like you would right here. So if you know somebody who is an author, aspiring author wants to be better marketing, send them this episode, send the, the interview of me and Gabby. And hopefully you’ll keep the coming back on and listening week in and week out to the influential personal brand podcast. Thanks for being here. We’ll catch you next time. Bye. Bye.
Ep 274: Spiritual Truths About Marketing Bestselling Books with Gabby Bernstein
RV (00:02):
Well, as sometimes happens, I tend to make a lot of friends whenever somebody is launching a book because we are involved with lots of book launches. And of course, right now, things have been pretty hot and heavy with ed my let’s book launch. And part of that led me to meet Gabby. Gabby Bernstein was in the middle of her launch. And so she’s a recent friend of mine. And I have to tell you, I adore her. She is so sweet and charming and kind. I followed her for years. Like she’s brilliant and intelligent and all those things, but if you, if you’re not familiar with her, she is the number one New York times bestselling author of nine books including the universe has your back super at attract and then be days, which is her newest Oprah’s SuperSoul Sunday called her the next a next generation thought leader. The New York times has referred to her as a new role model and she’s just extremely insightful and warm. And anyways, I somehow suckered her to coming onto our show to hear the, of how she built her writing career and share some of her secrets with us. And so with that Gabby, welcome to the show.
GB (01:11):
What’s up, man? Well, you’re welcoming me and my kitten, Jimmy blue. She everyone’s gonna probably hear her purring in the background because she’s very attached to her mommy and she wants to be in the room with me.
RV (01:22):
Jimmy blue.
GB (01:24):
Yes, girl. She says, hi. She says hi to every blue
RV (01:29):
So Gabby tell us, like, how do you get started as a writer? Like I know, I know you get this question all the time. So that’s part of why I want to ask you is you go somebody’s listening. Did, did you think you were gonna be a writer? Like, did you, when you were a kid, you’re like, yeah, I’m gonna grow up a and I’m gonna, I’m gonna write a bunch of books and, and podcast and like do social media lives and all that.
GB (01:50):
Well, I didn’t know that I was gonna be a writer growing up, but I did have the desire to be a spiritual teacher. And I, when I was in my early when I was about 14 years old, I was the president of a regional Jewish youth group from my temple. And we went all around and we would host these big weekends with hundreds of young Jewish kids. And I was the leader, right? So I was there kind of like this spiritual Sherpa for these high school students and fast forward a decade later, that’s what I started to do as my career. But I, and so I often think that the things that we do by choice is children can often reflect what we end up doing in our, in our career path. I was led to becoming a spiritual teacher, also through my own personal growth journey.
GB (02:39):
When I was in my early twenties, I ran a PR company and was a nightlife PR or firm. I worked really hard to be seen and heard, and ultimately got very addicted to drugs and alcohol, given the nature of the type of work I was doing, where I was doing it. And the age I was in New York city, but also because we become addicts when we’re running from something. So for me, I was running from something I wasn’t even aware of. I became addicted to drugs and alcohol and by the grace of God, I got sober at 25 on my own with, you know, finding a, finding a, a program and not going to treatment traditional treat, just recognizing I had a problem in getting myself clean and sober. But the reason I was able to also get to that level of understanding and awareness was my devotion to my spiritual practice, even when I was using.
GB (03:31):
And so I had, you know, all the stack of self help books next to my bed, my original mentors who are now my friends and, and sometimes deceased mentors, Wayne Dyer, and Louise hay. They were all my mentors even before they were my mentors sitting me sitting next to my bedside. And I, I would even be in after hours parties with people that I didn’t even know, and I’d be pointing to my books and I’d say, I’m gonna be a self-help book, author and motivational speaker. And at the time they’d be like, yeah, good luck with that. But I had the vision and upon getting sober, I got very spiritual. I reconnected to my spiritual roots and I started speaking about it publicly. And the more I started speaking about it, the more I started coaching people, it became very clear to me that I had many, many books in me.
GB (04:13):
And that was the plan and the path I was great at sales. I was, I knew how to sell myself. And I knew I had a very important message to share. And I sold my first book. But when I sold that book, I was really freaked out. It was like that, holy moment of uhoh. How am I gonna write this book?
RV (04:41):
I, I had, I had a very similar, so the very first I, I had a very similar experience. It took us four years to get our first book deal. And I was so focused on like, gotta get a deal, gotta get agent, gotta get a deal, gotta get deal. Like, and then it happened. And I like, when I sat down to write the first word, I had like a, a, a panic attack, I had not even realized the gravitas of what I had just committed myself to. You know, and that’s something I don’t think people always realize is that, you know, when you self-publish, there’s not as much of that, cuz it’s like, oh, if it works out great, you know, if not, it’s like, it’s kind of just you. But when you do, when you do a traditional book deal, there’s real money on the table and a lot of, a lot of lives and livelihoods at, at stake. So that’s interesting. I, I had similar experience.
GB (05:27):
Yeah. And thankfully I was 27. I’ve always had this. And so I was sort of like, I’ll figure it out. And I’ve, I’ve always had that mentality of, if I wanna do this, I’m gonna do it. I can do anything that I want to do. If I don’t wanna do it, I can’t do it. Like if it’s not something I’m excited about and it’s not something that’s passion driven for me. And so I was willing to do whatever it took to figure it out. And so at the time I hired a writing coach and she just taught me how to structure a book and how to structure the outline very quickly. I found my voice as a writer. My, my literary expertise ended in eighth grade. You know, my literary education ended in eighth grade. So I didn’t have any awareness of how to string a sentence together, but I was self-taught.
GB (06:12):
I, I, I wanted to get my message out. And that first book, when look back to the writing, my writing now is much more, much more effective, much more colorful, just a lot better grammar, but you can always have an editor fix those things for you. If you have a message and you wanna get that out to the world, there is a way to do that through a book. And so for me, I’ve written nine books now in 11 years, I think I I’m an excellent writer now, without any experience as a writer, I write very, very vulnerable, authentic stories. I write clear messages, and if anyone’s out there, like I wanna write a book or I have a message I wanna share, but I don’t know how to write or don’t know where to start. I hope my story’s really empowering to for people because I didn’t have anything going for me other than a really important message that I wanted to share and where there is a will, there is a way. And I think that’s the perfect example of that.
RV (07:09):
It is. I, and I, I think I, you know, I texted you a picture. We had a recent leadership retreat of brain builders group, you know, there’s like 10 of our leaders, our all together, and we’re sitting on the beach and two of them had Gabby Bernstein books, two different books of yours. And you know, that like, you know, your impact is, has been, has been really in incredible. Like I talk, talk to me about the vulnerable part. Okay. Like, because this is something that I think there has been a trend in recent years, I feel like more and more for authors to, I guess, share the very intimate details of their life. And to some extent, that’s been really, really healthy for people to see because they read and they, oh, this person’s not that much. You know, that person just like me, on the other hand, there’s been some backlash of life. Oh, well, this person isn’t like maybe who I thought they were or whatever what’s here. My question is, how do you establish the line of what you share and what you don’t. So like is there, and, and this could apply to social media too, but I’ll, I’ll say specifically for books since that’s kind of the thread of our conversation, is there no limit to what I should share with the audience? Nothing. Should I hold back? Or like, what’s your philosophy there,
GB (08:30):
There’s a big limit. I think that you can only share what you are safe in. So if you share about something that’s too vulnerable, still triggering for you, you haven’t fully processed it or moved through it, or you’re kind of good at it, but you’re not a full expert in it quite yet. If it’s something that, you know, if you don’t believe in your own ability, recovery, whatever that may be, that lack of confidence, safety belief is gonna come through in the book. And if you’re too vulnerable in a way that in a time when you’re not fully grounded and steady in your own recovery, that will trigger you and trigger your reader. My most recent book happy days is a great example of that. I wa I wanted to write this book in 2016, I was 36 years old. I just remembered a dissociated trauma. I knew I had to write a book about trauma, but I knew I could not do it until I was on the other side. So the book didn’t come out until, well, I was 42 years old and I had lived a lot of recovery and had done a tremendous amount of work to be safe enough grounded enough and enough of an expert in that experience to really tell that story safely and to take care of my reader at the same time.
RV (09:50):
Hmm. Yeah, that’s a really good, that’s a really great litmus text. So as long as were able to tell the story safely, not be triggered by it. Mm-Hmm,
GB (10:04):
But you don’t have to be like the expert in your field to write what you wanna write. For instance, every book I’ve written, I was an expert in what I knew then, and I look back to my first book and to the today’s book, and there’s a lot of depth. That’s still congruent, even though there’s so much more psychological mentions and, and, and references neuro biological met references my own personal training and therapeutic practices referenced this most recent book than there was 11 years ago. But the depth, the intention, the authentic vulnerability was matching where I was then as much as it is matching where I am now.
RV (10:50):
Mm-Hmm
GB (11:25):
Yes.
RV (11:26):
So why like how do you balance the frequency of writing a book and marketing a book and how do you know, like, do you think that the fact that you’ve written nine books in 11 years is why all your books have done so well, cuz you’re constantly marketing a new book or do you kind of look back and go, gosh, I think maybe some of the books would’ve done better if I would’ve spent more time marketing them before turning my focus to the next one. Like, I’m curious about that, like interval frequency of writing and marketing mm-hmm
GB (12:00):
Well, the number one reason that my books do so well is cuz they’re really good. They’re really good books. And I think that’s probably one of the things that’s overlooked often in the marketing space and when people are talking about like launching and like, you know, making sure you’re buying bulk books and you know, doing all the right events and promotions and keeping your launch going all right, cool. Like maybe you have a big platform. Maybe you can get on the number one New York times bestseller. Maybe you can, maybe you can, you know, sell a tremendous amount of books, but if the book isn’t good, then it’s just that launch. It just it’s it’ll flatline. And you know, I think about my book, the universe has your back. It still just sells tons, thousands and thousands of copies every week because it’s a very good book, you know, are all my books that caliber and some, some are not as great as others in the sense of like, they gonna have that wow power.
GB (12:54):
That’s gonna be so shareable, but they all are good. They all are healing. They all have had a major impact on people and you could meet 10 people and they may all say, yeah, I’ve read the universe has your back. And then one will say, but I also loved judgment detox and I was willing to go there with her or I loved may cause miracles cause of that 40 day practice, you know? So the content has to be really good.
RV (13:56):
Which is what ha, which is what most books do. I mean, there there’s a it’s everything is in the first few weeks and then it just kind of is a slow fade to zero.
GB (14:05):
Yeah, exactly. So you don’t wanna slow fade to zero, so that’s where you write a good book. But I, to answer your question about the cadence with which I’ve written these books and how so in some or early on I would have launched a book and that same week sold the next book and then on the flights of the book tour of the most recent book, I’d be writing that next book. Wow. I do not recommend that to people.
RV (14:33):
It’s insane. I mean, that sounds so crazy.
GB (14:35):
It was so crazy. And some of it was related, you know, some of the speed with which that was happening was related to the, my agent’s advice, you know, like let’s sell the next book, right? When you’re number one, New York times bestseller, it’s a very hot time to sell the next book. Like great. Okay. some of that advice was related. Some of that was related to the fact that I had a book that wanted to come out of me. And so I was ready to, for instance, my book universe has your back. There was a chapter about judgment. And when I was writing that chapter, I was like, oh, Gabby. Like this is a book, you know? And so I needed to get it out because I was like, I was just like sitting on it, you know? So some of it was, it had to come out some of it. And as I got a little bit further along in my literary journey and maybe I’d had about seven or six or seven books out, I actually started to put more space in between the books because give myself a year to write it. So it wasn’t like every year I was putting out a new book, it was almost like every year and a half suppose. And
RV (15:32):
Which is still super fast. I mean, it’s still super fast,
GB (15:36):
So fast, but you know, my most recent book came out two years, so my super tractor came out and that’s actually totally not true. Super tractor came out in the fall in 2020 and then, oh no. So target 2019 in the fall. And I had an audio book that I had come out in March of 2020, and then I hadn’t had a new book until now, 2022
RV (16:01):
Mm-Hmm
GB (16:03):
So, so yeah.
RV (16:04):
So you’re always, it seems like your path has always been like, you see the next one coming already and you go, okay. Like, oh
GB (16:10):
Yeah, yeah. I mean, I just sold my public. Sure. One of my publish, I, I have two publishers. I publish separately two separate types of platforms, but one of my publishers just like, you know, they’re like, what’s next. And I was like, this is what I wanna write about. And they’re like, great. So I kind of already sold the next one, but I’m not gonna start writing it until the fall. You know, I, I have, I wanna have time because the most recent book just wrote, I, it needs air, it needs breathing room. It needs space. It needs nurturing. You know, you’re like, oh, are you winding down? And I’m like, yeah, the launch is winding down, but the, the movement is revving up.
RV (16:46):
Right.
GB (16:47):
And that’s a important distinction.
RV (16:49):
Yeah. the other thing is your platform is always being built consistent. I mean, you have been someone who has just dominated on social media. And so it’s like, you’re, it feels like every book is like growing the audience grows, the, you know, grows the audience.
GB (17:07):
It is, it’s a big platform builder. Yeah. Books are a big platform builder, because think about it. You know, you take your ideas, you put them into writing. It’s such an easy way for someone to act access you. It’s a great beginning of the customer journey. They, they, they read this, they have an experience with you. They sleep next to you every single night on their bedside, you’re on their bedside and you have this intimate relationship with them. And so of course that really is a platform builder. It’s also a beautiful time when you just get a tremendous amount of, of publicity when you’re in that law launch mode and you give the, the media something to write about and you give the podcast or something to talk about. And it really, if you, if you are in that personal growth business, a book is a V a very important asset for you to have absolutely without a shadow of a doubt.
GB (17:55):
And in fact, look, you know, I, I, don’t always recommend that people put their face on the cover of their books. I started that from the get, from the get go, and it has benefited me, but with, but my vision for my, my writing was so that my books would be a, a huge part of the movement I was creating and the brand that I was building. And so all of my books to date have my cup face on the cover. I think this one smaller book I’m gonna print won’t because it’s, it’s the title is you are the guru it’s I it’s an audio, but I’m gonna print it in, in print. And so I think that you gotta take, you know, the teacher off of the cover when you’re saying you are the guru. So that will be one that won’t have my face on it, but the rest of them do, and for me, that has been a platform builder, for sure. You know, people recognize me from whatever they, other places they may have seen me. But a lot of times people like, oh, you’re that girl on that book cover that woman. I’m not a girl anymore.
RV (18:50):
So you’ve, but you’ve done that. You’ve done that deliberately and intentionally, and you’ve never had any, you’ve never had any worry about self-promotion or vanity or like, cuz cuz I’ll say this like a lot of we, we describe our, our audience as mission driven messengers. They’re exactly the people you’re talking about. They’re they’re not writers per se. They’re someone who goes, I have a message. And I would say that I feel like a strong number of our clients, Gabby. One of the biggest I’ll call it a limiting belief that they have is self-promotion they, they, they they’re stuck. They’re stuck. It’s like they’re trapped in these two prisons. One says you have to get this message out to the world. The other says that’s arrogant and vain and don’t be shallow. Like, you know, whate whoever like it’s and they just like, it’s a real pickle. It’s a connector
GB (19:44):
Beautiful point. Yeah. You know, I’ve had the privilege of, of training authors. I, and I have a training, the bestseller masterclass training. And in that training, I address this head on because I think that writing and publishing a book is a spiritual practice. The first step is having the bravery to reveal the truth, particularly for your audience that are just like me, they’re, they’re wanting to carry an empowering message. And then the next step is really establishing the worthiness. Like who am I to be the expert here? Who am I to tell this story? And in that training, I have a lot of meditations and spiritual practices for grounding yourself in the, who am I not to because we have, in order to show up with our highest purpose in this lifetime, we have to dissolve all boundaries to the expression of that truth. And that must come from a place of who am I not to do this.
GB (20:48):
And more importantly, really grounding yourself in the empowering message that you’re here to share and the impact that it can have. And the message mainly is making it less about you and more about the impact that it will have. And I do this whole me in the bestseller master class about visualizing your reader and really grounding yourself in that experience of the reader, taking in your content. And when you can see your reader in that way, and you can sort of have that, that visceral experience of feeling into that journey that you’re gonna take them on. It really takes your, in your feelings of inadequacy, your feelings of unworthiness out of the picture, it makes it bet something so much bigger. And so, you know, we gotta get our own ego out of it.
RV (21:39):
Yeah. But that that’s beautiful. I mean, that’s, that’s, that’s a beautiful thought and I, I I’ll tell you so, so by the way, Y also if you go to and builders group.com/gabby, we’re, we’re part of why we have Gabby here is because she’s someone who practices what she preaches. And we like to, we like to celebrate people who do that. And so we’re, we’re, we’re helping her promote this bestseller masterclass. And if you go to brand builders, group.com/gabby, you can, you can learn about it. Depending on when you get there, there’s a free training going on. So go, go Pronto ASAP. And when you and I were first talking about this Gabby and you were telling me one of the things that really hit me was what, like, to what you just said, that writing a book is a spiritual practice. It’s this and that really hit me both as a power concept that I think people think of it as like a tactical thing.
RV (22:33):
Oh, I’m just gonna like put some words on a page, but it’s actually a tremendously, you know, spiritual practice. It, it, it also really felt like a great example of you living in your uniqueness, that you apply your, your expertise to spiritual teacher, this topic of writing and marketing books. Mm-Hmm
GB (23:27):
Yeah. And I think that, that, you know, as much as I am writing this, creating this course from the lens of spiritual teacher, which there’s no way I couldn’t cause that’s who I am. I’m also a really great marketer. And I have been very unapologetic about carrying my message and putting my face on the cover and being the ex the very loud mouthpiece for my great work. And that is required of us if we wanna get our books out to the world. And I, and I believe that it is our, it is our responsibility to UN ally share our great work with the world. And so that comes through in all of the marketing techniques that comes through in all the spiritual practices that comes it through in all of the, you know, the practices on how to craft and write your outline and your core message.
GB (24:19):
Every single module of that course is infused with the spiritual foundation in the marketing, the, and the profound gift of, of marketing, because it’s, there’s so many people out there that have so much to give, but they have no idea how to give it. They have no, or they have no idea how to ma market it message it, and they have no confidence or they lack the value and the understanding and the awareness of the importance of how much it has to get out to the world. And so that’s what this training offers you. It does. It’s more than just, and I think that’s just in general, what I think my my literary journey has been, has been a journey of having this, this experience of allowing my books to heal so much that I’m, I can hold this book happiness right here. You know, I’m holding this book and I gotta tell you with my friend, you asked me like, is the launch over no way? Like this book has so much value in this world. This book will save lives. This book will transform people on a molecular level, and I will do everything that I can to make sure that every human that needs it finds it.
RV (25:36):
And when you say the term responsibility, that’s what you’re talking about. You’re talking
GB (25:40):
About a hundred percent. Yeah. I wrote a book called happy days, the guided path from trauma to profound freedom and inner peace is the most important book I’ve ever written. Yeah. Maybe it’s not as sexy as super attractive about manifesting, but it’s life changing and it is profound and it is healing. And it is giving a reader who, who may identify as having some kind of trauma with a big tier or small tea, giving them the guided path that I wish I had had when I went through that. And so I’m gonna do anything I can to get it out into the world.
RV (26:11):
Love that. I mean, that, that to me is, is such a huge part of this because, you know, like there’s, there’s tactics, right? Like, oh, you can, you know, dig it on, do PR and like do free events and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. All that stuff is super helpful. But if you don’t believe that the world desperately your message, you will find a way to self sabotage, like, and you’ll blame it on the tactics. But the reality is it’s the beliefs that are holding you back. Mm-Hmm
GB (26:41):
RV (26:45):
Yeah. I love, I, I, I, I think that’s so good that said, okay, just a couple minutes. So do, do you have a few tactics? Cause like the tactics are helpful, right? Mm-Hmm
GB (27:28):
For you actually an interesting point. Yeah. See. So with regard to getting the book out, I, I created a six month marketing plan for in inside my bestseller masterclass. It’s actually, one of the modules is teaching it and then they can download the plan. Like they can really walk away with that plan it, if you follow those steps, you will be able to launch a bestselling book. And the thing that you’re saying, that’s so important in terms of tactical practical methods is giving yourself the space to prepare for birthing something so valuable into the world. And of all the products that I launch in the, you know, podcast and everything that I do in my life the most time, attention and energy goes into launching a book because for me, and I really go six months out. And, and now I’m thinking about that as it relates to, you know, pregnancy, right?
GB (28:22):
Like the first three months, you’re kind of like fun and then six months out, you start to plan. Right? And so that, that planning period, and I, I actually even start planning even for further back than that, but it’s really a six month journey of marketing this book out into the world. And then sort of what happens after the book the, the, the strategy and the, and the commitment and the planning is effective and necessary. In addition, there’s other tools I could give people right now, and I go deep into this, in that free training that you mentioned, and these are, and the free training, I actually share my four secrets to your best seller. And they’re, it’s a good sneak preview of what you get inside the bestseller masterclass, but to touch into some of that. Yeah,
RV (29:04):
So real quick. So just again, Y so if, if, if you’re hearing this podcast, right, when it comes out, you can, you can get the free training because it we’re gonna publish this right before it happens. If you go to brand builders, group.com/gabby, the free training will be happening. So hit, as soon as you hear this episode, go to that lake. And then if you it’s, It’s live
GB (29:25):
Right now.
RV (29:27):
Oh yeah. It’s a live free training. Yeah.
GB (29:28):
Live free training. Yeah.
RV (29:29):
If you miss it, if you miss it, we’ll have that link redirected to either, you know, something other free training she’s got or to, or just to the masterclass itself. Okay. Go ahead. So, so brand builders, group.com/gabby, don’t miss it. Okay. Continue on your four secrets.
GB (29:44):
And so I’m gonna share these secrets in the training. And what I’ll touch into right now is that the number one thing you have to know to write and market a best selling book is what your core message is. And your core message is the through line of your book, an example of a core message, happy days, the guided path from trauma to profound freedom and inner peace that is often the subtitle of the book is the core message, right? So the universe has your back transform fear into faith, the super methods for manifesting a life beyond your wildest dreams. Having that clear core message is so crucial to making sure that you don’t write five books in one, it’s so crucial to making sure that you’re sticking to the message rather than, you know, veering off into a thousand different directions. And it’s so crucial to the marketing process, because if you have written a book that has five different core messages, then you don’t know how to market what you’re marketing. You don’t know who you’re marketing to you. Don’t right. So it’s like the, the core message is so important. And I give a practice on how to establish core message inside that free training and a whole module on it inside the bestseller masterclass.
RV (31:06):
Yeah. that, it’s, it’s interesting, cuz we think of that, that message. It’s almost like a litmus test for what makes it in the book and what doesn’t get, make the cut. Exactly. And then, you know, less like the podcast that you, that you, you take on, you know, like which, which media appearances do you take, which speaking engagements do you take? Like who do you go? How
GB (31:25):
Do I pitch it? How do I even pitch it? Right. It’s like, if you don’t, if you’re trying to tell people how to manifest and how to overcome trauma, you don’t, what are you pitching? You know what I mean? Like it’s not the same book. And so you really need to have that clear core message before you start.
RV (31:39):
Well, Gabby, I, I think I will take you know, I will take away so much from this conversation and, and this idea that writing a book is a spiritual practice and marketing book is a spiritual practice. It is a responsibility that you owe to a reader who’s out there that needs you and they need the work that you’ve been called to be a conduit for. And so check out brand builders, group.com/gabby follow Gabby online. You probably already are. She’s got millions of people, but thank you so much for this time and your insight and your wisdom. And I just, I, you know, I’m honored to, to feel like I’m a little bit of a friend of yours and to, to know the true GE you’re on of all the people you’re gonna impact just in the years to come Gabby. So we wish you the best.
GB (32:30):
Thank you. Thank you. So to talk about this.
Ep 260: 3 Steps to Making Money From Social Media with Vanessa Lau
RV (00:07):
Vanessa Lau has become one of my favorite people to follow. You know, recently I mentioned that Jasmine star, when we had Jasmine on that, I’ve, you know, known her for years and we become friends and I love her. I love following Vanessa as well. I learn a lot from her, but I’ll tell you what impresses me the most about her is her transparency. If you hit her YouTube channel, which by the way, has a half a million subscribers, the very first thing that you will see is a video that auto plays, which shows her crying. It shows her in real life, the starting her dream, her journey as like corporate escapee just a few years ago, like three or four years ago. And now she is a seven figure CEO. And she specializes like in, in teaching online course creators and coaches, unlike how to build their influence, she’s got more than 200,000 followers on Instagram. And she just has a, a, a really powerful knack for teaching practical things in a very, very honest way. I had a chance to interview her for something I was doing with success magazine several months ago, Sean Cannel vouched for her and said she was awesome Hansen, Chang. And we just got to meet and I really, really like Vanessa Laos. So Vanessa, welcome to, to the show.
VL (01:23):
Thanks for having me, Rory excited to hang out with you and have amazing conversation.
Speaker 1 (01:28):
So tell us just a little bit of like, I mean, a lot of the people that we have on this show are people who’ve been around a minute, right? Like you’re you have like shot to the top of this space, just terms of the, the size of your following and your impact, like in a couple years. So what happened? How did that ha like, how did that happen? Why do you think that happened? Like, just tell us the story a bit.
Speaker 2 (01:56):
I mean, I started about four years ago in 2018. I started with my YouTube channel and I never like, even you explain that I’m having like pinch me moments, cuz even for me, I don’t realize how much I’ve grown and how far I’ve grown. But I honestly think what contributed to my success was just being candid and honest. I never thought that I was gonna monetize. I never thought that I would be building courses in the future or just even having a, a company. When I first started, I created my YouTube channel because I was just in so much pain in my corporate job when I was trying to figure out how to quit it. And during that journey, when I was trying to figure out, you know, if I should leave, if I shouldn’t leave, I really couldn’t find any resources that I could connect with to help me with that taboo decision.
Speaker 2 (02:44):
When you decide you wanna leave corporate, you wanna quit your job. You don’t go around your office asking your coworkers for advice. You don’t really have a lot of friends or family to really support you through that decision if they’re also in corporate as well. And at the time I found so many resources of people explaining them, leaving their jobs, but all of those jobs were more so like service level, minimum wage entry level jobs. I couldn’t find any resources that were really for that person who like went to college and has a really high paying job and trying to make that decision. And so I went through a lot of pain to like figure out what was right for me. Then eventually when I did quit, I made it my mission to create YouTube videos, to help that person and share my story of why I quit my nine to five, what was my thought process, the pros and cons, and really documenting my journey of doing that.
Speaker 2 (03:35):
And I think that was kind of the the thing that made me stand out the most was the pure honesty, but also the niche that I was in at the time, I didn’t even realize it was a niche, but looking back, it was like me addressing a pain point that was really specific to a very specific type of person. And I, so I think that’s kind of what really helped me make my mark in the beginning. One other thing that I was really good at when I was starting out was building and community. I think that there’s a difference between building an audience versus building a community. When you’re building an audience, it’s like building a following, getting more views, getting subscribers and all that stuff. But building a community is very different. Building a community to me means making as many of your audience members feel seen, heard, appreciated, respected, and feeling involved in your, and one thing looking back that I did really well was the moment I started building the audience.
Speaker 2 (04:25):
I would invite them to a Facebook group and inside I would do even more trainings. I would actually genuinely try to get to know people. At the time when I had the time, I would also do really generous things. Like, you know, if, if you had a question and book a call with me and let let’s talk about it, let’s hang out and let me, let me help you as best as I could. And I think that’s what really helped me grow a lot faster was because I focused on the community building aspect without me even realizing I was doing that. To be honest, when I first started, I was so naive. One thing that I liked to say is I was successful because I was stupid because I really didn’t know any other industry leaders. I didn’t know any business, best practices. I didn’t know what systems and processes were.
Speaker 2 (05:10):
I didn’t know what were the dos and don’t. And so I just did what felt right? I did what felt human. I did what felt good to me. And at the time I just genuinely wanted to connect with other people because I couldn’t find that connection in my real life. Now fast forward to today, this is why I love teaching people about social media specifically is because through my journey, I really learned that social media has just done so many great things for me. It really put me on a international platform and it helped me connect with so many people like without social media, I wouldn’t have connected with you Rory. And so now I realize like, wow, my mission today is I really wanna help people just like me who have this like story to share or, you know, who have tips and advice that they want to give to other people so that they can avoid the same mistakes they did, but giving them that international platform, whether that’s YouTube, Instagram, whatever is in trend right now, so that they can amplify their message and help more people. Because through my journey, I’ve experienced the beautiful thing where, because of my videos or because of my Instagram or because of whatever I’ve helped, one person get 1% better. And as a result of them getting better, they are now helping other people do the same with whatever they learned. And so that is kind of my mission today. But to answer your question of how I grew so fast, I really do think it’s because I UN unintentionally understood the difference to between community and audience.
Speaker 1 (06:39):
Yeah. That’s a powerful distinction, you know, and I the, I think, you know, between com that component of community, and then also the transparency, you know, we were joking before we started the interview about how you wrote the world’s longest blog post at the end of 2020. And I read it, I read it because it was so honest about what you struggled with and you kind of hit, you know, you hit seven figures and you entered what we call the swamp. And we teach a lot of our clients is like, it’s really exciting to hit seven figures where the real work happens is, is truly between one to 3 million and, and getting to 4 million and beyond is a is a very much a case of what got you here. Won’t get you there. And most of us cuz you can’t do it alone, like you can get to 1 million by just being like a pretty bad mam Jamma, but like getting past three or 4 million is a totally different game and the team and you anyways, you were writing about some of those pains and I just you know, I loved it and it was really, really good.
Speaker 1 (07:42):
So on, on for the social media to talk about that for a second you know, Mo a lot of the people who have big social media followings had them because they amassed most of it before 2018. You know, this was even an I would, we would’ve even been in that category. So we sold all of our social media in 2018. You know, we kind of went, it went in the exit of our first business, but you started in 2018 and you also did courses. And I want to talk about the course business model because it was like, you know, 2018 was not early to the game. It was late to the game and yet you’ve grown really, really fast. And so when it comes to social media specifically, do you think it’s really cuz of that community aspect or, you know, are there other things to it you think that have played a big role?
Speaker 2 (08:39):
I think that one thing I, I like to say to my own followers because they always think that it’s too late to start something is just having the mindset of like, you know, it’s always going to be too late to be on a platform, but you know, today is better than none at all. And so that was the mindset that I had going in just as the FYI, because one thing I realized was like, wow, I’ve been putting start a YouTube channel, my new user resolutions for the last like five years, 10 years even. The best time really, if I were to be completely honest was probably when YouTube launched and a bunch of people discovered this whole influencing thing like that would’ve been the best time time to, to launch. So even in 2018, like I at the time didn’t feel like it was the best time because I missed so many opportunities.
Speaker 2 (09:23):
But even today I think that if someone’s listening to this episode, don’t think that even now is too late. I think that it’s it’s, you should just start. But in terms of other things other than building a community, I do think that it’s just, like I said earlier, like stupidity was my, my biggest advantage. Like I wasn’t, I didn’t even know who my competitors were at the time. And so I didn’t try to do the same things as everyone else did. I didn’t try to like watch someone else’s video and just basically copy and paste what they were saying. And so I think that especially if you’re trying to grow in a saturated market saturated, cuz that’s subjective. I think it’s important to almost shield yourself from some of that. So you can actually let your creativity break through. I think that you were just saying how, oh, I, that, that blog post that I wrote where literally outlined every single month, how much I made, even if I didn’t make a profit, all of my learning lessons, all of that, the reason why I did that was because I had noticed that everyone else during that period, during the new year period, everyone was talking about all their wins and all their successes and how awesome it was.
Speaker 2 (10:34):
And so I was like, you know what, let me just do something completely different to of that and talk about all of my failures and all the LS I took in 2021. And that, that, that blog post went viral. And so that’s an example of something that I still do today, which is doing the opposite of what everyone else is doing or having a more refreshing take on certain things. And I think that also helps you stand out in the crowd. I think even for me doing that and doing things different also attracted the attention of people who were even more successful than me. Like EV like even you RO you messaged me and you’re like, whoa, that blog post was amazing. It brought me back to back then when I was building my business and I was feeling a certain way. And you weren’t the only one I had people who had like doubled the following.
Speaker 2 (11:18):
I did message me about it because it, that blog post was circulating so much that it went up to them in their world. And so I know I’m talking about blog posts, but the same thing applies to videos and Instagram content and social media in general is when you actually have a different take on something, people tend to notice actually, people who are more successful than you, because it’s like, oh, this young person right here, or not even young, like this new will comer, holy. Like I didn’t even think about certain things like that. And so I think that from a even a personal brand standpoint is being different is your advantage. And if you are starting on social media, I think a big mistake that a lot of people make is like, oh, but I’m not successful. I don’t have a hundred million followers or I’m, I haven’t had X, X amount of years in business.
Speaker 2 (12:03):
I’m like, that is your advantage. What you think is not your advantage is actually your biggest advantage of being someone who’s starting out and being someone who’s new, not only from a con tent standpoint, because you might have a refreshing take on certain things that no one challenges or no one questions in your industry, but also it’s a lot easier to build community. You know, the reason why when I answered that question of yours earlier, I said, well, I used to, or back then I’m using a lot of past tense language is because back then I had the capacity to create eight community. And that was my biggest advantage that I took advantage of now with all these followers and all these subscribers, it’s a bit harder to do without a team. And so your secret sauce is what you actually think is your disadvantage, but I guarantee you that it is your secret sauce that you have to recognize within yourself.
Speaker 1 (12:52):
Yeah. I that’s, I love the, even there where you mentioned the idea of a blog, right? I mean, you know, blogging is like, oh, it’s so old school. Now we talk about the blog is the central is the central home headquarters of our digital strategy. And it’s kind of what we teach everything else is just sort of filtering because of SEO and et cetera, et cetera. But you know, just starting with that and going now let’s talk, can we talk about your business model for a second? So we
Speaker 2 (13:23):
Absolutely.
Speaker 1 (13:24):
You came out, it, it was the course. So your course is boss Graham academy. That was like, that’s been like your flagship. That’s like the, the first course you kind of launched and built and have built on, right. For the, the last few years that’s been your flagship. Right?
Speaker 2 (13:37):
I mean, the first thing I ever launched was coaching like one on one. Got it. And the reason why was because my videos, like honestly, when I started my business, I just want to be a YouTuber. My goal is like, I wanna be a full-time YouTuber, make money off of a sense. And you know, I’ll be happy with that. But what I realized is that as I was creating more videos, talking about my story, my journey, and, you know, eventually I started sharing some social media tips that were doing well for me, just cuz genuinely I wanted to share. I started getting like DMS from people being like, Hey, can I actually pay you to help me privately with a question that I have? And I was like, what’s this, you know, a few years ago I had no idea what coaching even was. And so that’s when I started experimenting and just taking on a few clients at first I did for free cuz I had no idea what I was doing.
Speaker 2 (14:24):
And I was like, is this even for real? Then I got confident cuz I was like, okay, I’m getting busy. I’m actually good at what I do. And people are getting results. So let me start charging. Then the next phase of my business was okay, no, now I’m booked out. I am booked out. And at the time I was working with 12 clients, which to some people isn’t a lot, but to me who’s just starting out. That’s a lot at once. Like for someone who doesn’t even know what they’re doing, right. And then I noticed like, okay, there’s some patterns amongst these clients who are the clients that I love working with, who are the clients that maybe weren’t a good fit? Who did I get results for? And through that process of working with one on one clients, it also helped me identify like what my strengths were too.
Speaker 2 (15:01):
Like there were some questions that I was like, mm, I could answer that, but I’m not really passionate about it. Or I’m not really qualified to answer this question. Other questions were asked. I was like, ah, this is like my zone a genius. So eventually because of pure demand, I was literally rejecting so many people and closing out my programs cuz there was so much demand from it. Thanks to the traffic that I was getting on social media. I then decided to package everything that I knew into a course. So I didn’t necessarily build a course because I was like, ah, everyone’s got a course and I’m gonna a lot of money from this. It was really because of like, okay, I’m basically repeating myself to a lot of these clients. I have a whole wait list of people that wanna work with me. So what’s the easiest way to like still create impact for people without trading too much time. That’s when I created the course and now that course is my flagship.
Speaker 1 (15:49):
Yeah. And that, that, you know, we talk about how services are always the fastest path to cash, but they’re the least scalable long term. And coaching is one of the services that has the least barrier to resistance. Like, you know, being a speaker, which is kind of how I came up as a classic kind of corporate keynote speaker. It’s a, it’s a hard road. There’s, you know, a long time for decision making and a lot of competition and you’re book events way out in advance. But when you’re a coach, it’s like, if somebody’s a fan, they could just hire you it’s and they can hire you tomorrow and you can like start working right away. But when you repeating yourself over and over and then going, I just need to package this. So how did you then launch the course? Right? So you, you realize, all right, I’m good at this.
Speaker 1 (16:31):
I’m gonna start charging started for free, love that. Super common in the journey. You’re repeating yourself. You go, okay, I’m gonna package this up. I get it recorded. I get it edited. Now it’s up inside of, you know, whatever, some LMS somewhere then what is the ma the mechanism or the process? Cuz we have a lot of clients that are in this, but, and they could even be like not online marketing coaches, they’re they’re, you know, whatever they’re CPAs or their lawyers or their, and they cannot, they can’t take on any more service based work. They have to commoditize that knowledge. And I don’t think the hardest part for them is creating what to say and getting it recorded. The hard part is going, how the heck do I sell that thing? So talk us through that.
Speaker 2 (17:19):
Yeah. Well I actually did it a bit different where I just sold the sales page first. So I marketed the program and I, I, I basically, I come from a corporate background and one thing that I learned from being in corporate was you all always want to prototype something. I learned this from one of the people who worked at Google that came in for a keynote. And basically what prototyping means is instead of just CR building the product first and seeing if people are gonna buy it, because you could waste a lot of money, time, resources, building a product that’s not gonna sell. When you prototype something, you just create like the bare minimum of what needs to be marketed and sold to. And then if there’s demand, then you build the product. A good example would maybe be like Elon Musk and his cyber truck.
Speaker 2 (18:05):
Right? Like he didn’t even build it yet. He just kind of sold the I idea on it are people interested, do a wait list, get a deposit. And then he uses that money to actually build the cyber truck. So that’s essentially what I did. Even back then, when I worked at keels, I worked for a skincare brand. I was doing marketing. We would prototype like skincare kits. Like we would create the mock up of what the kit would look like and the then just put it on the counter and see if there was anyone that would pick it up just to see if there was a demand for it first, before we actually built the thing. And so I use the same approach to selling. My course is I didn’t want to waste a lot of time. Like it’s a lot, it’s time consuming.
Speaker 2 (18:43):
It’s easy to do, but it’s time consuming work to film a bunch of modules, a bunch of lessons and figure or all that stuff out on top of marketing it. Right. So I just went straight to marketing it. I started off with just doing a poll. Hey, if I launched this program and it had these modules and these lessons, would you be interested? Yes or no? A bunch of people said yes. Okay, cool. Now there’s some sort of demand there. Let me go on to create the sales page and actually outline it. And you know what it would be, what would include now again earlier I said that one thing that made me stood out was community, not just building an audience but community. And so on my stories, I would tell people, Hey, I’m thinking of like creating this course. I haven’t built it yet.
Speaker 2 (19:24):
I’m thinking of doing these modules. What do you think? Or like, what lessons would you wanna learn? And so my audience felt invested in this product because they’re like, we’re basically building it with Vanessa. So obviously when I launched it, a lot of those people who built it with me kind of, they bought it because it was everything that they asked for. And so that’s kind of what I did initially was I pulled my audience just asking, Hey, I’m creating this program. And you know, to those listeners who, if you already have a course, this method still works is like making people feel involved in your launch, making people feel involved in the campaign. And so that’s kind of what I did. Then I launched the the sales page with all like, this is what we’re doing, all this stuff. We like, this is the time that we’re gonna start, but
Speaker 1 (20:06):
The thing still didn’t exist yet. You just created the sales page for it.
Speaker 2 (20:10):
No, I just created the outline in our everything. And then I also, like, didn’t say, we’re gonna start right away. I’m I, I basically sold it first. And then I said, we start a month from now kind of like when you register for school, like, you know, you’ve enrolled, you apply, you get accepted. Okay. School starts on this date. So I had like a month to kind of at least build something on the back end. And so I sold it and first launch made about $200,000, which was beyond me. Like I had no idea that I was gonna make that much, my very first course launch. How much was it?
Speaker 1 (20:41):
Like, it was
Speaker 2 (20:41):
Like, it was like, it was like a $500 product. So I enrolled quite a bit of people 40
Speaker 1 (20:47):
Wait. Yeah. Several. What is that? Yeah, so it would be like 400 like 400 customers.
Speaker 2 (20:53):
Yeah. It was about like 400 customers. I think I had different price ranges. I had like 500 to like 700, depending on if you were an early bird or if you were I, yeah, I had different pricing tiers, but the total amount was about $200,000 that I made. Yeah. And I didn’t have, you know, this, the audience that I have today. So it was crazy for me. And did just like
Speaker 1 (21:14):
Tell people, go to this sales page and check it out. Or did you say come to a webinar or
Speaker 2 (21:19):
Did you do a so challenge? Yeah, you’re bringing me back to memory. So what I did was I was like so I, I, I did tell people that I was building this program and I was like, you know, polling people. I was doing market research. I had a Facebook group at, at the time too. So I also looked at what people were asking in my Facebook group to help inform what was gonna be in the program. And then afterwards I said, Hey, you know, I’m doing three free like trainings over on Facebook. Live of like not even a fancy webinar platform, nothing. It was just Facebook live, cuz that’s all I knew how to use. And so then I, I hosted three master classes and those classes really taught people kind of like here are the things that I’m actually gonna teach in the program.
Speaker 2 (22:01):
Here’s like a little preview and each training kind of walks through three different, you know, CATA GOs. Like one of them was about how to like find your niche. Second one was about content. And then the third one was about like, here are some Instagram like strategies that have been working really well. And then at the end of those trainings, I would just tell people, Hey, if you want to learn more about this or if this like really helps you out, I wanna let you know that I, my program’s ready. Like I have this program am now here’s the link to the sales page. If you wanna buy it by X date, we start on April 1st. Like, so that’s kind of what I did and I not expecting that.
Speaker 1 (22:38):
It’s not, but it’s like, it’s not rocket science. It’s kind of like, if you knew nothing about marketing, how would you do it? You go, I would, you know, come up with an outline, see a, if anybody might be interested, invite ’em to a free training and then offer ’em thing, it’s kind of like, you know, you go through whole foods and they hand you a, a piece of chip on a, a stick and they get a sample or, you know, my mom sold Mary Kay or like people do tapware you come to a party, you try on the makeup. You like, you see the product, you get a sample it and then you buy it. Like, it’s, it’s really not that rocket science. And like, I love how you’re saying that, you know, if you don’t know anything about technology, a start a private Facebook group, and that can be your email list opt in, you know?
Speaker 1 (23:21):
And then it’s like, you just go live and that’s the version of your webinar. And then people can VE mow you the money. Like there’s no reason not, not to to, to do this stuff anymore. Who, so who was who was the first person you hired? Like talk me through your team real quick. So you, you do that, you do that launch, you keep growing on social. Clearly you are reinvesting into your brand and your website and your team. How, how, how did you bring on the roles to start scaling towards your first seven figures?
Speaker 2 (23:52):
I mean, even with my first launch the, I only had one person helping me out and we don’t even know what her title was. She was actually someone from my community. And I remember I was, I was, is growing my Facebook group. Right. And, you know, after your Facebook group gets a certain size, it just kind of becomes chaos inside. Like I would say after like the 3000 person mark, it just becomes like a spam Fest. And you know, you get people who might have found you through cold traffic and just say really mean things or something. And so I actually had someone in my community D I mean was like, Hey, like, do you need help? I think you need help. And I was like, I do. I was like, can I let me just pay you like $15 an hour and just try to help me out.
Speaker 2 (24:36):
And so she was, I think looking back, maybe her title was more of like assistant or general VA. And so she started off just helping me moderating my free Facebook group. Then she also helped me with like designing lead magnets, like for my YouTube videos. Sometimes I would have a lead magnet attached to it to grow my email list. But when I actually did my course launch, you know, the fact that I didn’t create the program yet, she really helped me create some of the slides as we were drip feeding. So the basic to kind of close the loop on how I launched the, the program because I didn’t create the program yet. I had 30 months, like runway to just create something so that when people start on that day, there’s something for them. And so during those first, like 30 days, I created the first module first.
Speaker 2 (25:23):
And then as the program went on week after, I would just drip feed the remaining modules. And after each module too, I would have a feedback form so that our clients could like tell me, like what worked, what didn’t work. And so I would just adjust as I went. And so that’s how I got a lot of good testimonials and social proof on my program because it was exactly what people wanted and people needed. So I’m really glad I to like that approach. And so my first hire, what she helped me with was I would, because it was a lot of modules and like to do in a week, I was kind of like, that was a lot of work back then. I would just do the outline of my slides and then I would send it to her and she would make it pretty. And then when she made it pretty, she’d send it back to me. I would record it and then I would upload it to whatever course platform that you decide to use. So that was really what she helped me a lot with. And she also,
Speaker 1 (26:13):
You signed like skeleton slides of like, here’s the content. And then she would use like Canva or something. And like,
Speaker 2 (26:18):
Exactly. Like, I would literally use like aerial font, like just blank, like, you know, placeholder here, like please create like a, a picture of, of a graphic here. Like it was just really, really rough draft slides. But the content itself was all me. She just made it pretty and presentable and also checked for any spelling errors because when you’re in creation mode, like you’re just, there’s gonna be typos everywhere. Like, and she just polished it up and cleaned it up. She helped me upload it. And she also helped with just like interacting in the Facebook group not necessarily answering questions. It’s kind of what I still did at the time, but like rooting people on like, Hey, you’re doing a great job. Or she would just flag anything that I should know about, but I was pretty involved in, in my first launch and how I delivered the program.
Speaker 2 (27:01):
I also, after every module that dropped, I would do like a, an FAQ call or a Q and a call live. And so if people had questions about the material, I would answer those questions. Now, obviously this was my first time doing it. And that’s why I was so hands on. But to answer your question of how we sit scale to seven figures is eventually after each launch, I would, it, my, my involvement would be less and less because the program became better and better where it, the curriculum could really stand on its own at that point. And people could get results technically without me because the program was so refined and it’s been about like, this is our fourth, third year having the program, I think. And every time that we’ve done an update, we still keep in mind customer feedback and we just streamline the curriculum so much to the point where the version we have now basically can stand on its own.
Speaker 1 (27:57):
I love it. I love it. One last little quick, quick question. How much has paid ads played or no, not played a role in what you do.
Speaker 2 (28:09):
I it’s so funny cuz I feel like I’m one of those maybe rare entrepreneurs where paid ads don’t work really well for me. Most of my sales and traffic come organic, I believe maybe paid ads contribute to 30% of, of like one third of everything. But it is something that I still need to scale up and optimize. So yeah, but I have found that like obviously eventually with organic, you do start wanting, you do start going into paid ads to kind of increase your reach. But I am that one of those entrepreneurs where organic is still kind of my bread and butter in terms of how we get our results in our traffic.
Speaker 1 (28:47):
Awesome. Great to know. So where should people go Vanessa? Like if they want to connect up with you, see what you’re up to? I mean, obviously you’re on the socials. Is that, is that where they go or where would you point ’em?
Speaker 2 (29:00):
Yeah, my socials my YouTube channel is probably the best place. If you guys want to learn more or about social media, about building a business entrepreneurship, and if you wanna hang out on Instagram, that’s great too. I do a lot of more personal stuff on Instagram. But yeah, those are like the top two places. And then from there, you’ll see all the other places you can connect with with me with, so those would be the top two.
Speaker 1 (29:24):
I love it. Well, thank you so much for are sharing. Keep going. We believe in you like you’re you are so cool and there’s just no doubt the trajectory that you are on Vanessa. Like it’s gonna end up somewhere really, really exciting. And, and you know, you’re helping a lot of people, so we just wanna encourage you in your journey and, and thanks for being here. We look forward to watching it all unfold.
Speaker 2 (29:46):
Thank you for having me, Rory. This was awesome.
Speaker 3 (29:50):
Hey, brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for taking the time to check out this interview as always, it’s our honor to provide it to you for free and wanted to let you know there’s no big sales pitch or anything coming at the end. However, if you are someone who is looking to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and get to know you a little bit and hear about some of your dreams and visions and share with you a little bit about what we’re up to to see if we might be a fit. So if, if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders, group.com/pod call. We hope to talk to you soon,
Speaker 1 (30:37):
What a fabulous and encouraging and practical and inspiring interview there with Vanessa. And I like, I mean, I’m, I really think Vanessa LA is cool. Like I have been following her and watching her she’s she’s humble and practical and not pretentious. And you know, you get a sense of that just from, from listening to her. So I wanted to take everything that she’s talked about and I’m gonna share with you kind of like my three highlights, which are, you know, I kind of take this as three steps to making money from social media and, and, and you know, she’s taking us on her journey. And then as, as I sort of assimilate that into what we know and teach and think about how does it apply to you to go, all right, if you wanna make money from social media, how do you, how do you actually do it?
Speaker 1 (31:27):
And I think the, the, you know, the, the first step that she talked a lot about is to basically let your difference be your advantage, let your difference be your advantage. I love when she was talking about how people take notice of things that are different. So the fact that you don’t do things the way that everybody else does, or that, you know, people who are already well known do gives you in advantage. Like you have the ability to take risks and to take chances and to do things differently and even be beyond that, she said, what you think is not your advantage is actually your advantage. I was thinking about how does that apply to us at brand builders? Like, you know, a lot of our clients have more social media followers than we do a lot more cuz some of our clients have millions of followers.
Speaker 1 (32:20):
Literally, and yet it’s like the thing that we would go, oh, well maybe that, like why would they hire us? Well, it’s because that’s not really what we teach. Right? Like our focus is not on making, you know, getting millions of followers. It’s on getting millions of dollars. I mean, frankly, like we’re really good at scaling the infrastructure, the strategy, creating you know, the systems, the operations and, and organizing things in a way to go. Like, how do you, how do you make a business? Like how do you actually build a business? And I, I changed my Instagram, like header here recently, you know, that kind of says what I do. And in a, it says helping personal brands build better businesses. And you know, that’s what I realized is like, you know, what we teach is business. And then underneath that, it’s like entrepreneurship.
Speaker 1 (33:08):
And then underneath that, it’s like specific for personal brands and, and that’s sort of like the, the place that we play in going, ah, they’re not hiring us cuz they don’t need that. The, they already have that. They know how to do that thing. So a lot of those things exist only in your head as insecurities and you know, self-doubt when really that thing, whatever that thing is that you think is your disadvantage often is your advantage. Like that’s what she was talking about is she was able to build a following so fast because she didn’t have a following. And she was basically documenting this whole journey and sharing what works and just being open and, and honest about that. And it reminds me of what Gary V one of the things that Gary Vayner check says, which I think is an awesome one, is don’t feel like you have to create just document, right?
Speaker 1 (33:55):
Like don’t feel like you have to create just document, talk about, share the story of you trying to build and learn about whatever the thing is that you that you are doing. And I think that’s super duper powerful. So your, your, your difference is your advantage. The second thing that she brought up, which I really love, and it was such a sharp, such a sharp distinction and, and such a quick distinction is there’s a big difference between community building. Like there’s a big, there’s a big difference between building a community and building an audience. Like most people on social media are trying to build their audience, right? They’re trying to like get a large number of people to pay attention, but they’re not actually that focused on building a community. They’re not actually, I mean, in, in here’s the difference to me, which she didn’t say this per se, but here’s how I process it.
Speaker 1 (34:56):
Building an audience means you’re broadcasting, right? It is one way communication. Building a community is, is multidimensional or it’s like omnichannel. So meaning not only is it two-way communication. So like to me, you know, an audience is you broadcast. When I do a speech, right? People hire me to come in and speak. I’m I’m broadcasting to an audience and it, and you know, there’s very little response other than like maybe a Q and a portion or people come get a book sign at the back of the room or whatever. And if it’s, so if it’s, if it’s one way communication, that’s a broadcast, that’s an audience. If it’s two way communication, that’s a conversation. But I would say that’s not even a community. So I do think that is part of it is going okay, let’s have a conversation. And that’s part of the power of, even if you think about web one, like one was basically broadcast.
Speaker 1 (35:58):
It was like, you could throw up a website. People could come read web two is social media, which is like, oh, now we can have conversation. Like I, you can leave a comment. I can reply. We can get to know each other, but it’s really even con connecting people inside that conversation separate from you. So it’s connecting two of your list centers or two of your fans or two of your clients. This is a huge focus of us for, of ours at brand builders group for our monthly members, because we now have almost 400 active monthly clients, 400 people that we’re doing one-on-one coaching with who are coming to our events. And what we’re realizing is, oh my gosh, the power, or like in addition to amazing world class content that we teach in our curriculum, the power is the community it’s going. You should do a podcast with you and you should be an affiliate for you and you need to help this person get into that company.
Speaker 1 (36:50):
And you guys should share speaking leads and, and you know, this person write Forbes and they need articles and you have this big story that they cover and, and that’s happening all the time. And so brand builders group is really transforming on, on the paid side of our business to community. I mean, the content is always gonna be there. We’re always leveling that up. You know, but the content’s dialed in, I mean, we spend a lifetime learning this and it’s, it’s like, we, we know it. It’s not super dial. It doesn’t change that often. It’s a lot to learn a ton. I mean, it’s, we have 14 different two day experiences in our full curriculum, but the community is the part that never ends and is always growing and strengthening. And so I just encourage you to think about that as like, are you even approaching social media as it is a one way channel of broadcasting?
Speaker 1 (37:43):
Is it a two way channel of communi, like of, of conversation or is it an omnichannel omnichannel or inter channel connectivity, which is really a community. And that community makes a huge difference. A small community can be tremendously powerful versus a big audience is not that powerful. Right. I think of the, the, like a billboard which is, you know, that reaches a huge number of people, but they’re not really engaged. It’s very passive versus a community is like, we’re living together. We’re doing life together. We’re so supporting each other. We’re we know each other, we’re helping one another and that’s a really, really big difference. And as you know, so conceptually, that’s the difference, I think, between building a community and building an audience now, pragmatically, there’s other parts of this that really roll out in terms of how does this work to your advantage when you’re monetizing.
Speaker 1 (38:40):
And I think it specifically showed up when she was saying, make people feel like they’re involved in your launch, give people a chance to have a backstage pass. Right. That’s really how what I think of like stories on social, or even like Twitter, you, you could think of it this way is, or Snapchat is they’re getting to see your daily life and like follow what’s going on. As you, as you document, as you document your journey. And so when you, you tell ’em the moment, you have an idea for a product and then you get feedback on it and then you kind of like share your rough out line and they get you feedback on it. And then you say, Hey, if I put this together, would, I mean, if you buy it and you get feedback on it and just, it’s almost like they’re sold by the time you create it because they, they wanna see it.
Speaker 1 (39:26):
Like they’re, they’re a part of, of creating it. I think that really applies for, you know, a book launch and for, you know, launching anything, certainly a course launch for her. So build a community, not just an audience. And then the third, the third thing here for how to monetize your social media is do a simple launch, do a simple launch. What is a simple launch to me, it is telling, you know, it’s building an audience and telling them that you’ve created something. And I guess I would add an intermediate step. I would say, you know, you gotta build an audience first. And that’s the part that everyone screws up. Everybody wants to build a product and then, and then find an audience to sell to. You have to flip that you gotta twist that around you don’t, you don’t find an audience after you’ve sold the, after you’ve created the product, build an audience, and then you build the product for that audience.
Speaker 1 (40:21):
Don’t build a product and then hope you can build an audience, build an audience, and then build the product that they need. And so if you flip that, then that becomes the first step is you, you build, build the audience. Then the second step is give ’em a free sample, give ’em a free sample, let them sample it somehow and then ask them to buy it, tell ’em how much it is, what it is, where they get it, how much it costs and ask them to buy it. And so often we get lost in the, you know, the technological complexities of all the different ways to do this. And of course there’s a lot of people that make a lot of money from teaching it and making it complicated. But you could do this, like with a Facebook group. It like, you don’t even have to have an email responder.
Speaker 1 (41:04):
You just start sharing content and you say, Hey, if you want more, come join our private Facebook group. And that basically functions as like your early email opt-in list. Now, long term, we would tell you, you need to, you need to focus very intentionally about getting people off of social media and onto an actual email list. But the point here is just that you could start right away without knowing anything and having any team or ever any technology leverage the idea of a Facebook group or a LinkedIn group. And you say, Hey, come join this group. Now they’re in the group, you’re posting content in there. And then you say, Hey, everyone inside this group, I’m gonna host of free training. And you could literally just go live and it could be one long free training, which would be the equivalent of a webinar.
Speaker 1 (41:50):
You could do three short trainings, which would be the equivalent of a video funnel. Like over a few days, you could do, you know, seven micro, 10 minute trainings five to 10 minute trainings over a week or 14 days. And now it becomes a 14 day challenge or, or something, right? It’s it’s, it’s not, we get lost. We get so lost. And when we so consumed with like, what’s the right technology and what’s the perfect process, and those things are important, they add a lot of value in there’s details. But the big idea is the same. Always it’s like add value to people’s lives, give them a ch you know, to build your audience, give them a chance to sample the product, and then let ’em buy the product. It’s the, the same thing that happens in the food court or at the grocery store.
Speaker 1 (42:37):
They, they, they let you sample it and then they B your chance to buy it. It’s the same thing that, you know, you do with a direct sales company. It’s the same way that you get booked to be a speaker, right? You go speak for free. You let people sample you, and then you let, ’em hire you to bring you in for more. So it, the modality isn’t so much important as just the high level concept of going create something awesome, like add value to people’s lives, make an impact, give them a chance to sample and then show ’em how to get more and whatever the mechanism is, the modality of how that happens. It almost doesn’t matter. It’s just that you’re doing that. You’re connecting with humans and you’re thinking about them as real people. And not just, you know, faceless entities with a credit card in hand that you’re trying to access.
Speaker 1 (43:24):
Like, that’s, that’s what you have to move past. So those are three steps. You know, I, I, I think there’s psychological steps. There’s, there’s three mindset shifts that need to happen that also have corresponding technical, you know, or practical action items that you could take. So I hope you enjoyed the interview. Thanks for tuning in for the highlights. We love you. We’re so grateful for you. If you haven’t left us a review, please leave us a review on iTunes, share this podcast with somebody who you think would benefit from it. Check out our free trainings that we, we have available for you request a free call. If you want to talk to one of our strategists about creating a custom plan for you. We work with all types of people, you know, billionaires and celebrities and people with millions of followers. Most of our clients have smaller followings. They’re they’re, they’re just beginning, or they just have an idea or they’re, you know, intermediate. So talk to us, right. Request a call and keep coming back more, more than anything. Just keep coming back. We’ll keep bringing awesome guests and sharing with you the best of what we know. That’s it for this episode, we’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand podcast.