Category: SELLING

Ep 258: How to Execute a Book Launch with Chandler Bolt

RV (00:07):
You know, it’s, it’s not all that often that we’ll bring somebody on the show who services an audience that’s closely connected to ours, but we do it for Chandler bolt. And the reason is cuz I, I love Chandler, I believe in Chandler and I’ve known Chandler for a really, really long time. And we’ve heard great things about everything that he does at self-publishing school. So he’s the CEO of a company called self-publishing school and he’s the author of several books and his most recent book is called published the proven page from blank page to 10,000 copies sold. And that’s what we’re gonna talk about today. You, I was showing Chandler before we kicked off, like I’ve gone through like the whole back half of this book especially like, and just earmarked stuff and underlined stuff. And I love how practical it is.
RV (01:02):
I love that, you know, what Chandler does is like a very, you don’t have to be famous to do this. It’s like, these are things that anybody with a book can do. This is actually the second time that we have had ’em on the show. We did another episode a while back where we talked about basically how to construct a cell published book. And then now we’re gonna talk about what do you do once you have the book in your hand and how do you launch it? You can go to brand builders, group.com/sps. Okay. So brand builders, group.com/sps which is self-publishing school. That’s our affiliate link that if you wanna check out a free training beyond what we talk about with Chandler, I’ll mention that again. But the book again, published the proven path from blank page to 10,000 copies sold Chandler bolt, brother.
RV (01:52):
Welcome back to the show.
CB (01:54):
Great to be here. Thank you for having me.
RV (01:57):
I’m so proud of you, dude. Like you are serving your audience, you, you serve such a, a specific in, in such a deep way. You’ve made a great business out of it. Your ink 5,000 business, you guys are booming and you just really, you know, in the world of self-publishing, it’s just like, you just know this, this space inside and out. So my first question for you is, is there anything that has changed about self-publishing in like the last two years specifically? So obviously there’s been a lot of talk about how traditional publishing is changing and why you might self-publish by the way, one other little disclaimer for everybody, if you’re a traditionally published author or you want to be, I promise that this episode be extremely relevant to you, like sure. So it, even though self-publishing is sort of Chandler like bread and butter, these principles, I mean, that’s why I took notes cuz I’m like, I’m gonna some of these things I’d never heard before. I’m gonna do ’em but what what’s changed recently.
CB (02:59):
Yeah. There’s a lot of changes and, and you’re right, Rory, everything we teach, well, I’d say probably 80% of what we teach you can do, whether you’re self-published or traditionally published. And there’s a lot of good crossover, but you know, kind of over the last, you know, over the last couple decades self-publishing has become the preferred option. For most authors people who wanna make more royalties key, keep creative control, have flexibility, move faster through the process, you know, used to be that the only way you sold books is to get into bookstores will now 70% of all books sold or, or are sold on Amazon. So that’s been a massive shift. It continues to shift. And then the shift over the last couple of years is that it’s just gotten more competitive, just writing and publishing a great book isn’t enough anymore. And, and you know, it used to be in the early days of self-publishing it was like, oh, if you just put it on Amazon, it’s gonna sell.
Speaker 2 (03:47):
And there’s so many buyers, there’s not a ton of competition, but the market has gotten more sophisticated. You know, kind of like the levels of market market sophistication. So it’s gotten more, it’s gotten more competitive. And there’s a bunch of things that have progressed. And I think it’s a really exciting time to publish a book and to self-publish, but the big thing, and I think what we’ll be talking about today on, on this interview is you’ve got to learn sales and marketing. I mean, obviously we are, we, and then both of our companies are very aligned on this is like, Hey, you’ve got to learn and invest time, money and energy and, and become friends with Sam sales and marketing. And, and if you build it, they will not come. You have to tell them about it. And so, I mean, that’s with your book, that’s with your business, it’s, there’s their synergy across the board.
RV (04:32):
Yeah. I, I’m excited about that. Part of the conversation. One of the things that we were talking about recently with some of our members is that, you know, I Pete there’s, this people are pure artists, right? They go, ah, you know, I just wanna create my art. I wanna create my art. And what we realize is that marketing is art. Like marketing is part of your artistry. Like what good is the greatest painting that nobody ever sees or the greatest book that no one reads or the greatest music. Of course your brother is in my all time, favorite re band need to breathe. So any of you need to breathe fans out there, Chandler’s brother, it plays and they like if no one hears the music, like what good is it? And so marketing has to be part of your artistry.
RV (05:17):
You know, the, the other thing that, you know, when I look at what you’ve done, what is happening in the marketplace, you know, there’s always been these things that, that traditionally published authors do like book launches and media tours and, and book tours and bookstore signings and all that stuff. But in the self-published world, there’s been this whole immersion of, or, or immersion of like tactical things that anybody can do if they’re not famous and they don’t have a huge email list and they don’t have millions of social media followers. So talk us through that. Like, how do you even start? How do you even start to think about your launch if you’re, you know, if you’re not Insta famous, like what do, if you can’t get on good morning America? Like, what do you do?
Speaker 2 (06:03):
Yeah. And, and so I, I look at this in a few different ways, so you’ve got the, what are the, what are the fundamentals of a bestseller? So how do I make sure I structure the book in a way that it’s gonna sell well, long term, then you’ve got kind of what I call the envy P launch, which minimum viable product launch, or you’ve got the traditional launch. And so a, a lot of, a lot, if you’ve ever seen a book launch, I mean, it’s the traditional book launch. I mean, like a traditional published book, it follows what I would call the traditional launch and that’s chapter 19 in, in the new book. And then chapter chapter 18 is MVP launch, but really it comes to down to, and I don’t know if anyone will see the video version of this, but it comes down to a, what I call the launch triangle.
Speaker 2 (06:43):
Right? And so it’s these three core elements you’ve got first off creating a launch team, second off, getting reviews and then third off its promotions. And so the, the first two, I mean, it doesn’t matter what type of launch you’re doing create a launch team, which is a small group of people that support you or the topic of your book, right. Could be 15 people, 50 people could be more, they get a free digital copy ahead of launch. And then they leave a review on day one. So now all of a sudden you’ve got 1550 reviews, right. Outta the gates. And this is kind of an army of people who support your book, right. Or the topic of that book. And so these could be family members, friends, customers, all that. So you’ve got launch team that helps with reviews. And then you’ve got the, the third component is promotions and that’s kind of the accordion is how I look at it.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
And so that’s based on the time that you have the money that you have, the resources and energy that you wanna put behind this and is on also somewhat correlated to whether you’re self-publishing or traditional traditionally publishing, right. Is how much are you you putting into this, the success of this launch, and that’s where you can kind of accordion based on that. And so these, those are kind of the three fundamentals of, of the launch. And then I think there’s an important distinction, which is I, I talk about the the Lamber launch versus the Toyota Camry launch. Okay. Or the Toyota Camry approach. And just, most people look at book launches like a Lamborghini and, and, and, you know, Lamborghini, they’re fast, they’re sexy. They use up a lot of fuel, so they’re gone. Right. And so, so they use up all this energy on week one and launch week, and they don’t realize that it’s not, yes, launch week is important, but it’s more about I call the Toyota Camry approach.
Speaker 2 (08:26):
It’s like, how do I just create a book that sells for years and for decades? And that is the mindset of what I call the one year launch. And so launch your launch. It’s not a week, it’s a year. And I forget, this is a quote that I, I was reading this book the other day and I, and I, and I, I saw that and I was like, yes, that’s the one year launch. It’s a mindset to keep marketing your book after the launch. So I think all those things kind of combined to set up the book for success. And then that book goes out and brings back more, leads, more sales, more referrals for your business, builds your personal brand, all that good stuff.
RV (09:06):
Yeah. I think of one of my good friends is Phil M Jones. He wrote exactly what to say which is a self-published book that sold a million copy and he sells them because it’s the only book he has and he sells it constantly. And he creates custom versions, like for Remax and for like, and he’ll sell 200 at a time, a thousand at a time, like, and it’s just, you know, it it’s, he built his whole career on, on this. He has some other books too, but really that’s, that’s the one yeah, so that’s so great. So let’s talk about the launch team real quick, because there are different ways to get on the launch team, right? So a lot of our clients that we’ve worked with that are, you know, maybe have a larger following online, they make people buy the book to get on the launch team. But then if you’re a newer author, maybe you’re like a, you’re a younger author, or you just don’t have as big of a platform for whatever reason. Usually you just kind of make the ask for people to join. So how do you, what, what do you do there in terms of getting people onto the team?
Speaker 2 (10:14):
That’s a great question. That’s the thing about having new concepts as you gotta look ’em up I’m like, look, I’m, I’m flipping up in the book. I’m like, right. What are so when I think about team, so you’re right. I love the, if you’ve got an experience or if you’ve got an existing audience, either having them apply or having them buy a book as a, as a, as a prerequisite to join, I think that’s super smart. Because at the end of the it’s quality, not quantity. Mm. You don’t want a bajillion, half committed people on, on your launch team. You want less but better. Right. And so I look at team as an acronym. So T a M so the T stands for tell everyone, you know, about the launch team and just in a clear, concise way a or, sorry, the E stands for enroll. The people who say, Hey, I’m interested in that, right. Who’d be interested in a free digital copy of the book. And to C the behind the scenes of the launch, people raise their hand and supporting the launch. Okay. E is in enroll, instead of expectations, a is ask for review, which is like, dove, of course you would do that. A lot of people, I mean, very specifically, I wanna
RV (11:20):
Talk about reviews in a second, cuz it’s not as much of a does you would think, so. Keep going. All right. Ask for, review
Speaker 2 (11:27):
It really. Yeah. And so ask for a review and then M stands for a message everyone individually and follow up because you don’t just send out one mass email and say, Hey, everyone, leave a review. It’s launched day, but the, the powers in the follow up. So that’s how I look at a launch team. And then you’ve kind of got the two ways to recruit your launch team, which is kind of what you talked about, which is, Hey, either mass outreach, like, Hey, I’ve already got a big audience. And I could just blast out an email and say, who wants to be on the launch team or for a lot of people who are getting started. It’s one to one and sure. I might have a small social media following or family and friends, that sort of thing. But it’s in one to one conversations about the book leading up to the launch, that’s where you really build, build a healthy launch team. And then, then you’re launching with reviews and with momentum.
RV (12:11):
So
RV (12:14):
You get the people on. Okay. And you can do, I mean, one of the things that’s, I mean, there are some amazing things about a lot of amazing things about self-publishing one of which is that you can do things like get a free audio copy of the book or get a free PE book version of it. I mean, it is really things like that, especially if you’re are just beginning and you’re just starting out, like you can really use it as a list builder and credibility booster and lead magnet and all the things that a book really should be. You, if you, you are traditionally publishing, you can’t do some of that, but you can give away, sometimes your publisher will say, give away the first three chapters or the first chapter, or, you know, there’s other, and you can use to get people to join. We go through a bunch of ’em in, in our training, but once the people are there, okay. What do you do with them? And also, is it, is it typically a Facebook group? Is that typically the mechanism you’re using to manage the launch team?
Speaker 2 (13:13):
Yeah, that’s what I like to do. I I’d say go where your audience is. Right. And so is your audience on Facebook? Awesome. Do that is your audience somewhere else do that and you, I, I would do dual, so Facebook and email, so, so that it’s, you’re getting in front of people and, but then it’s pretty simple. I mean, you form the launch team a few weeks before launch, and then I like to give them one assignment per week for the two to three weeks leading up to the launch and starting with reading the book ahead of time. And then the most important thing is that they leave a review on day one. I mean, that’s kind of like, you can very clearly communicate expectations. That’s the E and team right. Is expectations setting. And so just saying, Hey, if you do nothing else, I need you to leave a review on day one as part of this. And so mark this on your calendar, set a reminder on your phone, whatever you need to do, like that is the most important thing. Anything else is a bonus above that, right? Because that’s, what’s gonna help drive the book long term is the social proof. It boosts your discoverability on Amazon and all other PLA like that is what kind of feeds the flywheel for long term book sales.
RV (14:21):
Yeah. So, so you’re gonna say, read the book, leave a review. And then other than that, it might just be like, you know, make this post on social media. Yeah. Or, you know, send this email to your friends and family like that. It’s just all that kind of, it’s not rocket science. It’s just like following up with them. And it, it really hit me hard when you were like in, so in, in the book again, the book is published, it’s called published the proven path from blank page to 10,000 copies. So we’ll link to it in Amazon on our, on our site in a show notes following up with people one on one and like, yeah, going, Hey, I, yeah, I run, I need your help. Would you be willing to help me?
Speaker 2 (15:00):
Yes. Yes. And, and being very specific, which that’s the piece about reviews, right? Is, is give them an exact link on where to leave a review. Right. And this is one thing that, that might help with your, your clients and, and with book launches that you do as well is just a quick link. That’s easy to remember. And so for me, it’s published book.com/review brand builders.com/like what, whatever the URL is for that person, or then forward
RV (15:29):
The
Speaker 2 (15:29):
URL slash review, and then us forwards to the exact place on Amazon, where they can select the stars and fill out the form. And then anytime you’re asking for a review, I mean, I do it in the book, but then obviously within this context is specifically to your launch team. You say, Hey, go directly to this page and leave a review, take two minutes to do it today. Okay. Our goal is ex by the end, like just very specific. And then anytime someone says something positive about the book, it’s like, Hey, thank you so much. Would you mind copying pacing that into our review link?
RV (16:02):
So I have a confession to make, and I want you to slap me and tell me what I should do. So we have completely ignored reviews, never, never driven people there. Take the stairs still sells very, very well. My second book doesn’t sell as well. But my, my very first book still sells, you know, pretty consistently. And you know, we have, we had, we had 300, we had 300 units last week. Like we get these, we get pops of like big 300, 600 unit weeks. Of course, if I’m speaking, it’s more. And one of the things that we did is we had a, we have like you talk about inside your manuscript, you have to offer lead magnets, right? So you put a link to go download a lead magnet. So we, we did that. We created a test called the focus 40 to test. We’ve been so busy building brand builders group. The last three years, we have completely ignored. All of those people haven’t even looked at it. We just looked at it and we found that 1000 people last year, apparently bought, take the stairs, read it, saw the link, went to the link, filled out the assessment, and then they’ve just sat there and I’m going, we don’t even have a thousand reviews on the book.
Speaker 2 (17:23):
Yeah.
RV (17:24):
We have like 700 reviews. And so I’m just like, I have just missed the boat on the reviews. So why do reviews matter and what we do to, to really drive them? I mean, we’re clear on the launch team. That’s a great one. Yeah. And I hear you saying they can’t leave a review until the pub date. Of course. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (17:44):
Yeah.
RV (17:45):
But what do you do after the fact and like, what
Speaker 2 (17:48):
Should I do? Yeah. Oh, that’s a great question. Or I I’d say I mean they matter cuz they highly impact Amazon’s ranking, right? So there’s two ways you discover, well there’s two or three ways that people discover books. Right. They’re searching for something on Amazon. So they’re actively searching for a book or someone refers it to them and maybe there’s which you’re looking in like a category that they like and saying, Hey, what are the top sellers here? But really it’s the first two. And so how do you show up in search? Well, keywords categories and then reviews because obviously it’s like Amazon is a search engine of buyers. Google is a search engine of browsers. So when people go to Amazon, they got a reason to buy stuff, right. They one click purchase, their credit card is on file. So I wanna bring them into my ecosystem and then show up when they search topics that are what I would call high buyer intent for my business.
Speaker 2 (18:40):
Right. So for us, if they’re searching how to write a book, how to publish a book, like those things we know through all of our content marketing, I mean, that’s someone, who’s a buyer for self public. And so reviews help fulfill that for Amazon. Right. Because they wanna say let’s recommend stuff that they’re most likely to like, well, how do we know that as Amazon? Well, other people said they like it. How do they say they like it through reviews? Right? This is not anything that you don’t know. But what I would do like one or two very practical things that I would task to your this week or next week is I would send a follow up email to anyone who’s ever opted in to that challenge or anything related to take the stairs, the book specifically. Yes. And I would do the book specifically and I would do some sort of giveaway.
Speaker 2 (19:28):
And it’s you know, Hey, if you’re getting this emails because you, you checked out, take the stairs. I’d love to hear what you think. Take two minutes to go here and leave a review on the book. I’m gonna read everyone. So, and I’m gonna randomly pick 10 people who click this link and send you a signed copy of take the stairs. You don’t have to, you know, you don’t have to you don’t have to leave a review to enter to win, but you can click this link and I’d love for you to leave a review and hear what you think. I did that one time got 188 reviews in 48 hours. So that works unbelievably well, second piece that I would do, and this is most important for long term. I’d do this with every book that you have is I called a us the review sweeper.
Speaker 2 (20:13):
It’s just a simple automated email sequence, three email sequence. And anytime anyone opts into anything related to the book, they get dropped into this follow up sequence. 21 days later, they get an email from you that says, Hey, looks like you grabbed a copy of my book. A few weeks ago. I’d love to hear what you think hit reply on this email. What do you think about the book so far? And then your team, you got kind of a customer support macro that just says, Hey, oh, Hey, if it’s positive, obviously is, oh, Hey, thank you so much. Like this is really helpful. Would you mind copying pacing that into an Amazon review? Here’s the link? So you’re kind of doing a two step into leaving the review and then, you know, maybe you have a, a, a, if they don’t reply to that, you’ve got one or two other emails. That’s like, Hey I’m not gonna bother you about this anymore, but I’d love for you to take two minutes today and leave a review with what you think about the book. So I love it.
RV (21:05):
I
Speaker 2 (21:05):
Love that. I mean that I call it the review sweeper, cuz it just sweeps in reviews month after month, year after year, I’ve
RV (21:11):
Heard that you can’t incentivize an Amazon review. Is that, have you heard that?
Speaker 2 (21:17):
Correct? You cannot pay for a review and you cannot in like, I will give you X, Y, Z, if you leave a review. Correct.
RV (21:25):
Okay. But you, you could say leave a review to be entered in a drawing and that’s different.
Speaker 2 (21:33):
I’m going all the way up to the line. So I’m saying click this link. I’m gonna click, I’m gonna select 10 random people who click this link. This Link’s gonna take you to where you can leave a review. I’d love for you to leave a review. You don’t have to leave a review.
RV (21:46):
Oh. But basically if click the link, you, the click, the link is the entry
Speaker 2 (21:50):
Point. Exactly. Exactly. Exactly. And I’m not doing what Amazon doesn’t wanna do is, Hey, I’ll give you a $10 Amazon gift card or I’ll give you blah, blah, blah. If you leave a review, because then that’s compromising the integrity of the review system. But kind of going up to that line while still staying within Amazon’s guidelines and hooking people up and saying, Hey, I’d love for you to leave a review kind of in the process.
RV (22:13):
Yeah. And I’ve also heard people say, just send them a free gift, you know, kind of like a, a law reciprocity. Just send them a free gift. Hey, thank you. I love hope you love the book. Here’s another free gift. You know, by the way, if you ever get a chance, I’d love a review and that’s totally fair game to do. Cause it’s not a quid pro quo. Exactly. Type of type of thing. So so that’s, I, I love that. It’s so as many
Speaker 2 (22:36):
Readers you got, I bet you do that on take the stairs. You’ll be over a thousand reviews within the next three months.
RV (22:42):
Do you think I would get flagged for sending a blast to like whatever that list is?
Speaker 2 (22:47):
No, I, I,
RV (22:48):
I mean it shouldn’t, it’s just a bunch of people, but it, they would probably see the pretty big spike. That’s amazing. You got 188 reviews in 48 hours. That’s like a third of the total reviews I’ve gotten in 10 years.
Speaker 2 (22:59):
Like it’s crazy. That’s amazing,
RV (23:00):
Dude.
Speaker 2 (23:01):
It’s well, cuz that’s the big thing. Right? The overarching thing that I think maybe is major takeaway for listeners is ask like so many people to, they want to help and they enjoyed the book, but all you have to do is just say, Hey, could you take two minutes today to leave a review exactly here. Right? Like here’s the link. So I’m making it as easy as possible and just asking and then doing so you’ve probably got hundreds, if not thousands of people on the sidelines that are like, oh yeah, I love that book. You, but I never left a review. Right. When’s the last time you left a review on a book, unless it was audible at the very end, like, Hey right now, like please click the start. I mean, you know, you got a physical book, you set it down. You’re like, oh, that was good. And I’m not gonna log into Amazon. So it’s like leave review and all that. But, but if someone asks, I’m like, oh, I like that book. Sure. I I’d take two seconds, two minutes to leave review. So,
RV (23:53):
So I love it, man. This, this is the kind of stuff that I’m talking about. Y’all so again Chandler has a, a training brand builders, group.com/s P S. That is where you can go watch the, the free training. That’s our affiliate link. You can check it out, you know you can tell like he he’s giving the goods, right? Like he’s not holding stuff back cuz he’s got a lot of stuff to offer. One of the reasons why we, we love him. It’s not like he can teach you everything. He knows in one 30 minute podcast interview coming back to the search thing in Amazon. Yeah. So the keywords and all of that, that you know, it makes sense just like YouTube is a search engine, just like, you know, Google is a search engine. Amazon is a search engine. Where do you actually go to optimize the profile? Like where do you go to say, I want this book to show up for these terms.
Speaker 2 (24:47):
Yeah. there’s well, there’s a bunch of stuff and, and Amazon doesn’t publicly give information about the, their algorithm, just like Google doesn’t, but we know, I mean you just know what their major influences on that. Right? And so the first they give you seven keywords. So Amazon does, when you publish the book. Now, if you’re traditionally publishing, you can recommend to your publisher. But at the end of the day they’re gonna have kind of the final call and final hands on keys for that. That’s another benefit of self-publishing, but they give you seven keywords that you can target. Those are helpful, but really more so than that, I mean, Amazon’s gotten a lot more sophisticated. It used to be that you could just put that in your keywords and in your title or subtitling, your description is like, cool, no on ranking for this, but like all algorithms they learn and get better.
Speaker 2 (25:32):
And so what they’re trying to say is they’re kind of aggregating a lot of search and when people search these things, they end up on this book and they purchase it. Right. And, and they’re going into the me metadata of the book and, and there’s a bunch of different things like that. So for me, strategic, like if you even look at the table of contents for my book, I’m thinking like I’m thinking in SEO and also in helpful content. Right. So if you see like we’ve got let’s see self-publishing versus traditional and publishing that’s chapter three, we’ve got how to hire and work with an editor that’s chapter nine designing your best selling book cover that’s chapter 11, chapter 12. How to format your book. Right. I, I mean, I could go on and on how to build, how to using a team to sell more books.
RV (26:21):
You’re choosing titles, like chapter titles that people would search for answer a question, same way you would construct a YouTube bid or something like that. Is this reverse, reverse engineer. What would someone be searching for? Are you saying that you, your hypothesis is that Amazon reads the book and can under no doubt the con yeah,
Speaker 2 (26:42):
Really. And, and I think it’s probably a tree, right? That we’re the top things are the keywords, your title and subtitle, your book description. And then I would guess like your back cover your editorial reviews and like maybe some reviews and stuff like that. But I think it pretty summer along that path that goes inside the actual book, because previously people were just gaming it and they were just keyword, stuffing, all the other stuff. So it’s like, Amazon’s gotta go in and say, right, what is this actually? And they’ve got a text file of the whole book, right. It’s if it’s
RV (27:14):
Self publish
Speaker 2 (27:16):
Kindle. Well, no I’m saying like the version, like, yeah, they’ve got a text file. And so it’s very easy for, to aggregate that and improve their search quality. And then that combined with all the other machine learning around what people are searching, what they’re clicking on.
RV (27:31):
Yeah. So, but title, I mean, it’s just the things you would think title subtitle, but there’s not, it’s not like on a webpage where you can go in the back and change your H one tags and your H two tags and update your image, tags and stuff like that. You can’t do that on Amazon book.
Speaker 2 (27:46):
Not quite. I look at that as selecting my keywords. I look at that as like the actual, the structure of the blog post. Okay. The structure of the book. And then I look also look at that as you know, some of the things that you do on the page itself. Cause that’s another thing. I mean, my we’re getting the, I weigh into the weeds, but I mean, when I, your Amazon page, that’s the sales page for your book and people are either gonna come on there for a, a, you know, 15 seconds and leave or a minute and a half and buy. And so on this note I look at, and if you look at my my book page for publish, we’ve been testing and, but we’ve got they call it a plus content. So there’s extra pictures. There’s from the back cover, there’s video reviews.
Speaker 2 (28:30):
There’s a bunch of stuff that’s designed to keep people on the page because the longer that they’re on that page, the more likely they are to buy. And then there’s something like within that. Sure. That there’s a, an image. That’s how to write a book. There’s an image. That’s how to publish a, there’s an image that sell more books and I’m titling those images. I don’t know if that has anything, like, I don’t know if that does anything for my Amazon SEO or not. They won’t tell me, but but that keeps them on the actual page. And then makes it, makes the book stand out and makes them more likely to actually purchase the book.
RV (29:04):
I’m looking at your, I looking at your Amazon page. Yeah. From the publisher. You have pictures in there. Yeah. And that, again, those are things you can’t do when you’re tr you can, you can do them. If you traditionally publish, the problem is you’re not in control of it. You have to convince them to take the time to stop and go update your Amazon page. Meanwhile, they’ve got other authors who are selling, you know, bazillion books every week.
Speaker 2 (29:29):
Yeah.
RV (29:30):
That’s you
Speaker 2 (29:31):
Can tinker with that. Well, I’ll tell you R one of the things I’m trying to figure out right now Michael Bunge, senior wrote a book called the coaching habit. Great book had him on the self publishing school podcast. One thing he did his book page is really good. And I’m, I’m, I’ve got one of the guys on my team trying to figure out how we can do this right now. But is he uploaded a video? It’s a video from the merchant and he’s his, self-published that, I mean, that book sold million, if not millions of copies as well, but he’s got a video that’s from the author which I think is really clever. It’s right. Bef as you get to the reviews, cuz again, I’m trying to figure out how do I get this to jump off the page to where people say, oh, I I’m interested.
Speaker 2 (30:11):
Like this stands out from the other books or other things that I’ve looked at and increasing that final mile kind of that conversion. So we haven’t figured it out yet, but I also encourage people to lead video reviews. And you’ll notice that when you’re on my book page, as well as there’s at least a few of them and th those and I, that’s a, that’s a hack, I think as well is leaving video reviews on other people’s books that are similar authors or SIM it’s. Hey, my name Chandler bowl. I wrote a book called published. I’d love to give this review, take the stairs. Right. And then that’s just a way where those videos are getting a lot of traffic because they’re prominent. And if I’m, if I’m someone scanning this, you don’t see it too often. So I think that’s kind of a hidden gem within the
RV (30:55):
It’s like a, yeah. A pattern like a pattern interrupt kind of a thing. Yeah,
Speaker 2 (30:59):
Exactly, exactly.
RV (31:00):
I was just, I was just looking at my Michael’s thing. That’s awesome. The yeah, I mean, I just, I think I just totally missed the boat on, on the review scenario. So when you,
RV (31:14):
Yeah, so, so, so when you get into, so you have your launch team, you put this together you gotta drive reviews. You have a simple my for doing that when it comes to promotion. Yeah, I believe that was, that’s the other part of this of course time and money. Yeah. You know, costs a lot relationships count for a lot. Right. A lot, a lot. Like even, I mean, that’s almost all we’re doing with our clients is we’re just constantly trying to introduce them to people that are sort of like, you know, in their same ballpark, you know, if you had to, if you had to do three things, when it comes to promotion and you were like, these are three things that I would do that, you know, maybe you don’t hear about that often. What, what comes to mind?
Speaker 2 (31:59):
Yeah. I would say the launch team, if you, if you do nothing else to do that I would say the second piece
RV (32:06):
Would be, I’ve never done that by the way. I’ve never done that for one, not for one of mine. We’ve done ’em for our, our clients, but yeah. Yeah. So that’s a good, good one. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (32:13):
That’s unbelievably powerful. That’s that’s the highest and, and best. Then I would say, and this, I don’t know that this is gonna fulfill the intent of, of, of stuff that doesn’t get taught, but it’s tried, I mean, a virtual book tour, AKA, a bunch of podcast interviews. I mean, that is far and away, the biggest needle mover. And then the third piece is is building a pre-release list or building an email list. I mean, like, again, this is not earth shattering information, but those things tried and true work well. And then if you’re going big one thing I’ve had some success with and we had success with is I sent, you know, I sent you one of these influencer boxes. And so it’s just a fun little box. It has a copy of the book in it. And then you’ll probably notice if you remember from that letter, it was very much no obligation, cuz I hate when people send me a book and then they just like relentlessly follow up and it’s like, it’s like, oh this is a quid pro quo type deal where you just, so it was very much like, Hey, I’m sending this because I think you’ll love it.
Speaker 2 (33:19):
If you’re in this camp, go to this chapter. If you’re in, if you wanna use a book to grow your business, go to chapter 24, if you’re blah, blah, blah. So showing how it could be relevant to them and then saying, if you want to help, here’s two or three ways to do it. Right. Bring me on your podcast, take a picture with the book and post about it. Or, you know, I’m happy to give a, do a book giveaway to your audience or something like that. Right. So making it very clear how people can support similar to the, the, the, how they can leave a review, like very specifically saying, Hey, here’s how you can help. That’s worked well for me. And then, I mean, and then if we’re zooming out 30,000 foot is how do you strategically use the book to grow your business? Right? Because that’s, I mean, all that stuff is good to sell copies, but at the end of the day, most people who are listening to this probably wanna use a book to get more leads, sales, and referrals. And so structuring the book to do that and structuring the launch with that end in mind.
RV (34:14):
Well brand builders, group.com/sps for self-publishing school is the free training that Chandler put together. The book is called published, proven path from link page to 10,000 copies sold. You know, I think a lot of this stuff is simple, but what makes it hard is remembering all of it and doing it in the right order. And you’ve done a great job of checklisting some stuff out here I think to apply to anybody. And there’s not that many books. I mean, we, we created our bestseller launch plan course because it was like, nobody actually knows how to do this stuff. So there’s not that many resources. And this is, this is a great one. So check it out, y’all check out Chandler and so grateful for you, man. You’ve been so generous. Like this is super tactical stuff. You’re helping me like figure out things that we, we, we missed the boat on of completely. I mean, two thirds of everything you’re talking about, we’ve never been done. We’ve never done launch team. We’ve never done reviews. So we got, we got things that we could be doing and yeah. I just wish you, you and your team and your family all the best.
Speaker 2 (35:15):
Thank you, Roy. Thank you so much for having me.
Speaker 3 (35:18):
Hey, brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much are 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 dot slash podcall brand builders, group.com/podcall. We hope to talk to you soon.
RV (36:05):
Executing book launches. One of my favorite things to talk about one of my favorite things to do, although it’s a lot of work you know, we’ve been through this so many times we’ve helped so many clients launch books. I mean, we had three clients at the New York times bestseller list last year. We have at least two clients that are gonna make a real run at it this year. And I, I mean, actually at least at least three, I can think of off the top of four. I can think of four off the top of my head brand builders, clients that are gonna make a run at the New York times list. But I, I, I love this conversation with Chandler because you know, it, it shows how there’s something you can, it shows you, it’s like, there’s something we can all do and you need to do it when, when you launch a book.
RV (36:51):
And I, and I’ll tell you this even though this conversation with Chandler was much more focused on people who have like, you know, a small all our platform, just like not as many followers and maybe not as, not as many like assets in terms of their direct reach and the number of people they can access. A executing a New York times bestselling launch is a lot of these same things, just at a bigger scale. Like we still do. We still do launch teams. And you know, launch teams are a big part of that, you know, reviews. The promotion is a huge part. You layer in a lot more, you, you have, you know, speaking as a component that we talk about and then you’ve got doing public seminars is a huge part of it. And so that, that enters into it.
RV (37:36):
And then you have like press and media, like tradit channel media is, is a huge part of it. And then, and then you have like podcasts then you have social media, then you have street launch team. And then you have like the whole mechanism of like, actually, you know, how do you get all the orders placed doing bulk sales and like, how do you get people to, to, you know, anyways, those are the things that we help, like some of our very high profile clients that you see on our website and stuff. A lot of them we’ve, we’ve helped do that, but you know, even though that’s a lot like, and there’s a lot there there is the, again, it’s just a greater, it’s just a greater magnitude of the simple things. A lot of the simple things talking about here with, with Chandler.
RV (38:23):
So, you know, my three takeaways, first of all, is just the launch team because th this, even though I’ve never had one, we’d never used one for our books. We ha it’s been a, it’s been a crucial part of like every launch that we have run for people. And that several of our friends who have, you know, move a lot of books that they have done. It’s just one of the things that you do and, and you gotta recruit people in. So you’re gonna give them some incentive to join, right? But it’s not rocket science. You do have to have a mechanism to do this, whether it’s a website or you’re just using like a Facebook group or whatever, but, you know, you give some incentive to join the launch team. And then the key to managing that launch team is to give them specific action items of exactly what to do every single week and in our a traffic strategies training, which is our phase two course phase two course, two training of our 12 part brand builder journey curriculum.
RV (39:26):
We, we teach affiliate launches and how to do affiliate launches and why affiliate launches matter. One of the reasons why that matters is because all, a lot of the mechanisms and the, the process and the protocol of running an affiliate launch is going to be very much emulated when you get to bestseller launch plan, which is our phase three course two and you know, much of what we’re talking about here. And so you need to, you need to, to know how to create assets for other people and how to keep them excited and how to hold them accountable and how to ask them to share things. And, and so that’s a huge part of the launch team, but you gotta, you gotta have that launch team and bring them in early and let them see behind the scenes and spend time building relationships with them.
RV (40:08):
And they’ll help you promote your book. They, they, they will. So that’s really huge. The second thing that that Chandler said, which this was newer to me, I, I mean, I’ve never heard it said like this, I thought this was so sharp the way he said it. Amazon is a search engine of buyers, whereas Google is a search engine of browsers. And that’s really true, right? I mean I mean, there is when you’re searching for something on Amazon, like you are searching to buy, you are not spending free time, like just searching around for no reason you go to Amazon to buy something. And that’s, yeah, I think YouTube specifically is a search engine of browsers. Like those are people just like searching for information. The there’s certainly a level of buying intent. You know, when you search on Google often too which is different from like you know, paper, click ads where you’re trying to, to shove an advertisement in front of somebody versus showing up when they, they do a search.
RV (41:18):
Amazon is, is definitely a next level of that. And so, you know, very similarly because of that, you have to think of your Amazon page is your sales page. So just like we would teach you to construct a sales page for your funnels. Of course, you know, our method for that is what we call the 15 P the 15 P of copywriting, which we teach inside of revenue engine. But like, those are the, you know, the words that you put on the page to get somebody to, to buy. And we talk about all the things that need to be on there. You know, the promised the, the, the, the promised the problem, the pain et cetera, cetera, as you work your way down and the order, well, your Amazon page is a sales page. And like for whatever reason, that never sunk in with me quite in the way it did in the moment that Chandler said that, and going, man, you need to optimize that page.
RV (42:10):
You know, you just gotta like pay 10 to it and, and think about what can I do to make this page more engaging? What can I do to keep, make it more valuable? What can I make it to, you know, what can I put on there to make it, you know, more user friendly and, and to encourage them making a decision, which leads to the third big takeaway for me, which was obviously a huge part of that conversation is which is review. You gotta get reviews. And I think, I mean, here’s the part that, like, I haven’t just missed the boat on reviews. I’ve missed the boat on Amazon altogether. Like, I haven’t even thought about optimizing anything related to my profile or the book itself or reviews, or even, you know, looking at my Amazon page, like other than popping in there once in a while, because we’re buying a copy and it’s just easier to send it to somebody through Amazon versus shipping it ourself, or, you know, something like that.
RV (43:05):
Or occasionally we’ll check like best seller rankings and stuff to see how, how the book is doing long tail, but to go, oh my gosh, like you gotta get reviews and all you have to do is ask for. And so my action item that I gave myself was to do, you know, Chandler calls it, this, the review sweep. I’m just calling, you know, I’m just calling this like the review sequence. And so we already have mechanisms built inside of both of our books that, that have people on opt in. And so I actually did the search between when I finished the interview with Chandler. And we have 2,102 people in our database, 2000 people in our database that we know bought the book, read the book, clicked on the assessment and completed the assessment. The meanwhile I have 723 reviews on Amazon that is crazy like 2100 people in the database that we know bought and only 700 reviews on Amazon.
RV (44:09):
And these are just the ones we know, like we have a huge database. I’m, I’m sure that we’ve got many more, many more people inside of the database who have bought the book. And I just, I’ve just totally missed the boat. So I you know, first wanted to identify the list. So I had to go like, you know, fortunately we’re very organized with how we keep our database and all of our tagging structure and all this, all this kind of stuff. So I was able to pull that up quickly, then I’m writing an email to all of these people. That is the subject line. Super duper quick question for you. And then I wrote this, this copy, Hey, you know, Hey, you know, name, thank you so much for buying a copy of my first book, take stairs and for completing our, our focused 40 self-assessment.
RV (44:51):
I have a quick question for you. 20, 22 actually marks the 10 year anniversary of the book, yada, yada, what were some of your biggest highlights from the take the stairs book? And we’re gonna send this out and then everyone that replies, we are going to reply back with a, a message. Oh, that’s so wonderful. Thank you for sharing that with me. Any chance you would leave a review, so we’re gonna do this because it needs to happen and it’s time it’s long overdue and yeah. So stay tuned. You know, I’ll probably by the time that this episode goes live, we will have done this and we will have data to report back to you, but, you know, that’s simple, like it’s, it’s simple things I think launching a book is it, it’s kind of like, you know, people say there’s death by a thousand paper cuts.
RV (45:42):
Well, launching a book is like success by a thousand micro steps. It’s it is doing all of these little things and they all add up to be a big thing, but it’s, it’s a lot of just little minute details like this that you, you have to, you have to build into your process. And of course, if you wanna learn more about that, we, one of our courses is called bestseller launch plan. We teach the full system, how do the bestseller list work? How do you get the book deal? What needs to be the book proposal, you know, how to negotiate advances how to write the book so that it sells what needs to be inside. How do you create the pre-sales? How do you do the pre-launch? How do you run, you know, all the orders through, how do you you know, what do you do on launch week?
RV (46:26):
What do you do with the media? What do you do, you know, for, for weeks two through eight, I mean, it’s, it’s just a monster. And it’s, it’s incredible. And of course, you know, if you’re a brand builders group, client, you already have access to that and we’ll walk you through it, or we’ve got, you can come to our live events. So you could check that out or just hit me up with questions. I’m happy to answer your questions on social media. If you’ve got questions about it, I’m, I’m happy to answer ’em, but yeah, so that what we’re doing, practical things, actionable things to learning them here. Watch, watch these launches y’all and, and, and pay attention. If you’re following me on social, we have some pretty massive book launches. We’re a part of, and I can’t, you know, release publicly who, who they are for, but they are huge.
RV (47:15):
And if you’re following me on social, once we get closer to the actual launch date, you’ll start to see us promoting these things. And you’ll, you’ll see who the people are that we’re working with, and you can follow ’em and, and watch it happen in real time. And those are big ones, but for yours, you, you, you start with what, you can get five people in your launch group, your launch team have ’em support, so you can do it. It’s, it’s all simple steps. They’re not easy, but they’re simple. And most of these ones actually are pretty quick. So you can make it happen and keep coming back every single week we’re sharing the goods, right? Like we got guests coming in, sharing you some of the best secrets for building your personal brand, helping you get your expertise out to the world. So you can become more well known and you can make more impact that’s it for this episode, we’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand podcast.

Ep 257: How To Set Your Coaching Prices with Mary Sobon

AJV (00:08):
Hey everybody. This is AJ Vaden here and welcome to another episode on the influential personal brand podcast. And I am specifically a excited for this episode because I get to talk to someone who I actually work with personally. So Mary has been my business coach for over a year. And so to get a chance to share her expertise with all of you is such a great honor and privilege, but let me give you just a little bit of her background. I can probably talk about and Rav about her for the next 30 minutes, but that’s not why you’re here. So I’ll make this short and sweet, but here are some things that I think is really amazing and some kind of sneak peek into what we’re gonna talk about on the show. Today is one, Mary has a very extensive executive corporate background in like fortune 50 companies, fortune 20 companies. I don’t even know like it’s extensive, but what I love most is she’s been able to take this amazing executive experience from these, you know, multi-billion almost probably trillion dollar companies and then apply it to small business and entrepreneurs like me. So I’ll get the benefit of all, all this worldly expertise that allows me to tailor it to my own business. But she’s worked with more than two organiza 200 organizations. Yeah. More than 2, 200, 200
AJV (01:34):
Organizations since she started her consulting firm, it’s called M two consulting here in Nashville. She works with EO the entre nos organization all over the world. She helps with people with mergers, acquisitions, exits high growth companies. And today she is here to share some of that expertise with our audience. And I’m so excited to have you, so Mary welcome.
MS (01:57):
Yeah, it is wonderful to be here, AJ. And again, it’s hard to believe that it’s already been a year boy time class, especially when the clients are great
AJV (02:06):
Or, or complicated either way.
AJV (02:09):
OK. So give everyone in the audience, just a, a high level background of your corporate world experience. And then when you left that, I guess that’s like over 15 years ago to what you’re doing now. Cause I think one of the things that will really resonate with our audience and our listeners as so many of the people that we work with are probably in a full-time job or in corporate job. And they’re trying to figure out, it’s like, how do I exit this to do this thing that I’ve always dreamed of whatever that may be. So since you’ve gone through that process from you really high up, I’m working with these massive companies to go, no, I’m gonna call it a day and I’m gonna go do my own thing. So give us a little bit of that story.
MS (02:49):
Yeah. And I would tell AJ, I don’t know that I’m gonna be the most helpful role model on this because like a lot of entrepreneurs I actually started as an entrepreneur because I lost my job. The biggest company that I worked for is McDonald’s corporation. I was a regional marketing manager for them and I was with them at a pretty interesting time in, in terms of learning a lot of things, leadership, finance, because they were probably at, at one of the worst points of their professional, all trajectory. And they went through their single ever reorganization that the corporation has ever had. I was working in Nashville in a field office that was servicing about 500 restaurants. And interestingly enough, I’m probably gonna get in trouble for saying this. They closed our office, even though we were number one in the country in terms of improved sales transactions, because we had an inexpensive lease buyout.
MS (03:43):
And I guess when you’re looking at 40 regional offices around the country with a lot of space that matters, but I had a choice. I had a choice to transfer to another city with McDonald’s. And at the time I thought I was gonna go, and then I, then I actually, if found out my dad was really, really, really sick. And I knew that if I left Nashville and went to another city and, and they were gonna help me kind of commute back and forth because my significant other was here. I knew that I couldn’t be taking care of all three things at one time. And so I decided to leave. And I went out and I did some consulting in marketing for a little while, which is really the worst job on the planet. And because small businesses and I’m talking really small businesses, don’t understand why you can’t get a story on their company in the New York time.
MS (04:36):
And so I did that for about a year and it was, it was pretty profitable, but not much fun and then sort of accidentally. And I think this is the thing that it really stood out for me in my story that I want to make sure other people pay attention to. I met one person who opened a door for me that led to possibility after possibility after possibility. And I’m gonna give her a shout out. That person was actually Julie May who, who ran an it company here in Nashville. She was a member of EO entrepreneurs organization. And she said, wow, our organization is kind of a mess and you seem kind of smart and you know how this works. Can you come in and help us? And I had no idea at that point, what they needed or how to do it, but just went in and did the job.
MS (05:25):
Mm. And it went pretty well. And I did my best. And if I look back, I would be appalled at what I did wrong, what I did silly, but I think the most important thing is that I did it. And that led to me meeting different people who were also in need of, of people to come in and just sort of help them with business coaching. It’s an interesting thing to think about when I started, I was the only performance coach that I knew. I wasn’t even a performance coach. I was a facilitator who sort of did some coaching incidentally with that, but now almost 20 years later, you at any room you’re in, you’re in a room with two or three other coaches. So it makes a whole lot of sense that we are, we live in a world in which things are so complex.
MS (06:10):
And so interconnected, you need a partner who can help you sort of sort through things. You just wanna to make sure that that partner has something that’s really valuable for you. And for me, that thing is scaling. I have spent more time working with entrepreneurs, scaling high growth companies. These are companies that are growing 200% a year, 500% a year, and have seen pretty much all of the good, the bad, the pains, the joys of, of that. And it just excites me. It excites me to this day. So I work still with entrepreneurial companies who are focused on growth. I work with entrepreneurial teams, even in larger corporations who are interested still in doing things smart and fast and growth. And when you do that, boy, you never stop learning. And that would be maybe the second thing that I learned is that, man, if you’re coaching, you are a full-time learner in addition to being a full-time coach, because whatever you are working on today, it is gonna be disrupted by something maybe three to six months from now at the most. So that’s kind of my journey in a nutshell, I’ve been doing it for a long time, man. There are a lot more people on the space and boy, I gotta stay sharp if I wanna continue to be successful.
AJV (07:25):
Okay. Well the very first thing I heard and I think this is really important is the importance of saying yes. Yeah. Even if you’re not completely ready and I’m just like, we were talking about this a little bit before, or we started, and I didn’t even know you were gonna say this, but it’s like in your experience, how many people do you think that you’ve worked with who simply don’t succeed because they don’t just do it.
MS (07:49):
So more than 80% of problems in businesses come from people not being willing to sort of lean into the things that are really available to them. That will be really helpful. I was just on a zoom call with a client right before we jumped onto this podcast. And she was talking about the struggle that she’s having with her team in data. And she said, data makes them uncomfortable. And so every time we get busy, they use that as an excuse to say, well, we, we don’t really have to look at the data. We’d have to work, try to work with the data, cuz it’s hard for us. And, and I was guilty of that as well. It was really hard for me to put myself out there. I engaged a sales coach early on and I did my pitch for him. And he said, Mary, not only have you not sold me, you’ve given me a lot of reasons not to use you as consultant.
MS (08:41):
And I did it because I was scared. Mm. And the one thing that I could offer that made me feel so much better about everything is that as a coach, it’s about fit. And you’re not gonna be a fit for everybody. And so being open to the idea that you’re gonna have to meet a lot of people, a lot of those people are not gonna be a good fit for you in order for you to find the people that are is just part and parcel of it. And now I used to go out kind of desperate to you. I wanted to land the business and now I go out and I say, I’m so excited to meet you. And we may or may not be a fit, but more than anything, I just wanna have a lovely conversation and get to know this really great person on the other side of the table.
MS (09:22):
And I get to do that because I’ve been doing this for a long time. And I get when you’re starting, it is really scary. And, but the thing that I often coach my high growth teams on is you gotta bet on yourself. Like it’s okay for you to get involved with something that you don’t know how to do. As long as you are willing to bet on yourself to figure it out. A great example of this was way back when a, a, a, a company had an RFP out to go do something around high performing teams. And my husband came across it and said, you should do this. And I said, I don’t know anything about high performing teams or how you teach it. And he goes, yes, but you’re really good at figuring things out. So maybe you trust yourself. And that started a 15 year relationship with that particular company.
MS (10:10):
But at the very onset, the first sentence out of the guy’s mouth was, well, we’re talking to six or seven experts it, and I thought I’m cooked. So I’m just done. But as we talked, I realized, again, it was about fit. It was about my ability to understand them and listen to him much more than it was about any of my bonafides or whatever model I had. And I would say that’s true for coaching. In general, as you’re starting your practice, if you make it a about you and how smart you are, that’s kind of helpful if you make it about them and making them feel seen and being smart about helping them to know what they already know, man, that’s valuable. It took me much longer to learn that than I wish I had. That’s so
AJV (10:53):
That’s so insightful. Cause I think, I think for most people, and I can at least speak for myself. It’s like any time where I don’t think I’m a good fit, it’s, I’m totally focused on myself. Yeah. And it’s like, at the end of the day, it’s like, who knows and who cares? It’s it? Who I don’t wanna do things that aren’t fun and I don’t wanna work with people. I can’t help. So if I just take that approach and so for that person, who’s rather just started out or their in growth mode or their scale and eight figure coaching. This is wherever they are. How, what would you say are some best practices of figuring out how you figure out who’s the right fit for you? Cause I think a lot of coaches and I can speak for myself for a lot of years, worked with a whole lot of clients that I didn’t wanna work with because I wasn’t clear on exactly who was the fit for me.
MS (11:38):
Yes. And so this is the, maybe the one part where away from clients, you wanna understand how you are very differentiated from anyone else who’s coaching. And, and there’s a weird thing because again, there are a lot of coaches out there and there, there are coaches who coach from technical expertise and there who are, there are coaches who work much closer to for lack of a better word therapy life coaches who just wanna be there for you. And you can find a lot of both. I think the key is to understand in yourself one what, what you are really, really, really gift that that other people may not be. And so for me, early on, early on, early on, early on one thing that I knew that I was pretty gifted at was conflict. And in my mind, conflict, isn’t more mad at each other or hostility.
MS (12:25):
It’s like, Ooh, we don’t agree. We’re in different places on this. And you know, as luck would have it, I just happen to have some gestalt training before I met EO who values the use of this idea of Al and we’re in that world, there is no conflict. There’s only people in different places which allowed me to come into some situations with an approach that felt later easier. This isn’t the end of the world. Nobody’s right. Nobody’s wrong. Let’s just go. And so that was helpful for me to learn that easy early on, cuz that led me into high growth is chop full of conflict. And so I had a lot of opportunities to work with bigger corporations and I know big corporations and this kind of maybe gets to your point, AJ. But I also know that I don’t wanna do work. That doesn’t go and I don’t wanna work in the bureaucracy. I don’t want to sit in meetings and talk for the sake of talking. And so by definition, that’s screened out almost every large corporation. I have an utter respect for the fact that that building consensus and working things through needs to take place. It’s just not fast enough for me. Oh. And so that, yeah.
MS (13:38):
Yeah. And so I think that I always encourage my clients when they’re thinking about the clients to think about the work that they’ve done that has made them happiest and to think about the people in that work that made them the happiest and what qualities the work and the people had. And so for me, it’s, you have to be honest, you have to be a little vulnerable and I don’t mean woo woo. Vulnerable. I mean, you have to be open about the fact that there are things that you need to learn, grow do. And I’m fine with just about everything else. Like I’m good with people who have very strong personalities who have tempers who have a lot of things, but what I knew I wasn’t good at is people who just wanted to make the conversation singular. And so I got there pretty quickly by looking at the work and saying where, to your point, AJ, where am I happy in the work?
MS (14:28):
And where is the work that I come home feeling fatigued and kind of down on myself and really doubting myself as a, as a, as a coach. And so in doing that, I realized I need smaller firms who are moving quickly and who were willing to be honest with themselves about what their challenges were and for anybody else, who’s just starting her out or in the middle of it and is looking for a refocus, where is the work that you have had the best results and that gives you the most energy and who was in that work and what were they like? I might flip, I might turn the tables on you AJ and say, well, how did you learn about clients that were good for brand builders or not?
AJV (15:09):
Yeah. You know, it’s so interesting is as soon as you were talking, my very first thoughts went back to, you know, the first 15 years of my professional career as we were building our previous business coaching, training consulting and speaking. And I think one of the things that I realized during that tenure, which made brand builders group so much easier is I got super clear on what my natural strengths were, but that did not happen organically. It was almost forced by, by having so many clients for so long that just burned me out. Yeah. And it wasn’t until I think I went to a conference or I had a coach or something where I really said that, what do I want to be doing? And I knew, I knew for a really long time what I didn’t wanna be doing, but I wasn’t focused on what I wanted to be doing. And I feel like for me, it’s like, I was clear on what I didn’t want, but it took a lot of focus and effort for me to get really clear on what I did want. And I think for me, what I discovered in this process, it’s like my superpower is to be able to come into it. It’s a a blessing and a curse, really, if you think about it, but it’s a, it’s my ability to come into any single situation, any room, any, anything, and immediately see what’s wrong.
MS (16:26):
Yeah.
AJV (16:27):
Yeah. Probably think it wonderful. I, your team loves you. But it’s like any situation I can immediately go, that’s how you make it better. Yeah. And I, I started attracting clients who wanted that type of feedback who wanted that type of directive, that type of momentum, because I just remembered my sales calls. I’m like, listen, if you don’t want someone to come in and tell you what to make better, I’m not the fit for you because I’m never going to be like, it’s great. I’m just never gonna do that for you. But until I figured that out and it really took 10 years, so it shouldn’t take everyone else that long like take, you know, lessons from this, but it wasn’t until then that I was like, I actually really love my clients because they were fast paced action oriented. I didn’t have to follow up. I didn’t have to hold ’em accountable. They were action takers because they knew, but by the next time I talked to him, I was gonna have three more things.
MS (17:17):
Nice. So people who were happy and people that would tell me people who were happy to be pushed. Yeah. Cause that’s not everybody. Right. And so again, yeah, it’s just, but I, at the beginning of my career on this, I wish I did a much better job of sort of documenting how the work went and because you would get there faster. And so if you are just out today, document your clients, what is working about this client? What do I not love about this client? And as you said that AJ, it reminded me of something that really helped me from a long time ago, there’s a, there’s a gentleman named hum cloud who does sort of these back of the cocktail cartoons that are mini lessons in business. And he does a lot of work on culture now. And one of the things, one of the ones that really stood out for me is he said that, you know, when we think about work, you have this sort of, this ven diagram of work that is really sexy and fun.
MS (18:07):
And then that pays you a ton of money. And he said, people who are starting out have a tendency to think that that ven diagram completely overlaps that all your work should be super sexy and grow your brand and, you know, be wonderful to do and pay you a lot of money at the same time. And that’s a short road to unhappiness because what you realize every time. And I think you probably realized is that, is that there are clients who you adore and there are clients who pay you incredibly well. And the number that are a 10 on both of their scales is actually relatively few. And that’s okay.
AJV (18:43):
Yeah. One of the things that I started reminding myself of when we started brand builders grew what should I like almost almost four years, which feels like yesterday and 15 years ago at
MS (18:54):
The same time and a hundred years ago at the same time
AJV (18:56):
Time. But I said, if I wouldn’t want to coach you for free, then I shouldn’t coach you at all.
MS (19:02):
Yeah.
AJV (19:03):
It’s like, if I, if I wouldn’t wanna do this without making money, then now, you know, 15, 20 years later, I’m in a position you that’s clearly not. I would take anyone in the beginning. For a very long time, I was like, whatever it is you want I’ll, I can do it. I’ll figure it out. But now it’s like, if I, if I didn’t wanna coach you for free, then I shouldn’t coach you at all. And I don’t think that’s how we start. But for me now it’s more about mission and passion of going. It’s like, I wanna be able to do this without having to only do it because you pay me. So it’s like the more I can find those people, the naturally the happier I am and the happier my clients are.
MS (19:43):
Yeah. Love that. But it takes a little bit of time, right? Because you immediately think it has to be bid to those things and to start. And I think that you’re onto something that’s really, really important also, AJ, as you start and, and my view on this shifted a little bit, but not too much. And I’m sure your has, but it, yours has as well, but it is the idea of what is my business about am I in it for the experiential point of, I wanna love what I do. I want to have a blast with everyone that I work with is the purpose of my business to create financial freedom so that I can go out and do whatever I wanna do go climb a mountain or take a month off or take three months off. And it’s kind of related to that thing, but I have always chosen the experiential over the money and that has been great, but also not because when I get too happy with people, I don’t want them to not like me.
MS (20:36):
And so one of the biggest challenges I’ve had as a coach is how do you take people’s money up and learning how to have that conversation was really tough. And I’m sure that you had to do the same thing. Yeah. Okay. But it occurs to me that you were on the same side of that equation, which is, I know what I want my business to do. I want the work to give me energy and make me happy first. And so I’ll take a little less money to do that. Like you don’t have to pick between the two, but it’s helpful to understand. I know other coaches that are like I’m in it to make money. And I do a great job deliver a great service, but the work feels a little different for them. And they get to do a wider space of clients because their needs are different.
AJV (21:14):
It’s such an important distinction for anyone who’s in this space to anyone who’s in this industry of being really clear of like, what are your goals of being in this space? Because that really does clearly distinguish your market and what you’re going after. So that actually brings up a really good question because I know that this comes up in our community all the time is people don’t know how to charge. Right. They undervalue their services. They don’t know how to charge. They don’t know when to do price increases. And I, I find this for both businesses and personal service alike. So both on a coach side and then also on a individual who coaches businesses like any tips or advice or experience shares around, how do you determine what to charge and when your prices should go up or come down, or like, how, how do you do that?
MS (22:06):
Yeah. And but prices the stickiest wicket for all businesses of us sizes. Anytime anybody’s working on pricing strategy, I’ll show you some unhappy people, cause it’s really hard and there are no real right answers on this. But for coaches, it’s actually pretty simple. Most coaches start off by either way overvaluing their, their services or way undervaluing the, our services. And so you’re gonna have to make a choice early on as to whether you go with a retainer model. Am I gonna say it’s X number of dollars a month and we’re gonna make the most of that, or is it a delivery fee for delivery, which is for every hour that I coach you, I get money that there are challenges with both to begin with though. It is easier to get people to sign on for a fee for delivery. It is also easier to make the value of a fee for delivery visible when you’re starting out, when you’re on a retainer and you send a very big number to an entrepreneurial CEO, they’re like, what is all this money for it?
MS (23:06):
Cuz I sure didn’t see it. I spent an hour with Mary, but she’s got $7,000 on here and say, what is, what is she doing that way? And so I find that it’s probably a good idea to try to sell both, but if you’re selling a retainer to make sure that the value of that retainer is visible and defined, not just, I promised to be there between 10 and and 20 hours, it would literally be the, to give them a sense of I’m advancing these things for you. On that, the second thing that I learned is I’m just gonna be, I’m gonna get in trouble for this. My pricing is highly aligned with how easy and fabulous I think you are to work for.
MS (23:47):
That is probably not a great and scientific way to do it, but there are things that I value. Like if you never cancel, if you, I, I do fee for delivery. I’ve always found that just simpler, easier. I’m happier. But if you always show up when you’re supposed to, if you’re not always moving your schedule around or, or, or canceling, if you actually do something with the work, like just like you AJ. And if you share with me that you think what I’m doing is valuable, you get a discount from me and mostly it’s a discount in, in terms of, I’m not gonna raise your rates as we go. That’s fascinating. Yeah. So that’s an well, and then the other part of it is where people always, if you’re a great client, it’s kind of, there’s an, there’s an analogy with this, with a rental house, which is they say, if you find a great tenant who pays all the time and doesn’t trash the house and doesn’t have pets, you never raise their rent because you never want them to leave.
MS (24:42):
And I think that’s kind of how I feel about the clients that I love of. And I have worked for, you know, it’s funny, like you say, we’ve been working together for a year. The number of clients that I have been associated with, but for more than a decade is more than I cared to count. It’s a great thing. But part of that is because I value them and I don’t, I’m not always taking their money up. The second thing that I will say is take your money up on every next client. Like, as you are building your business, if you got somebody to say yes for this amount, try taking it up a little bit and see if you can get somebody to say yes to the higher amount. And if a couple of people say yes to that, try taking it up to the next level.
MS (25:20):
Until you get people who are one in four might say, oh, it’s a little pricey or I don’t know, or just not get back to you. But if everyone is just like, oh, that’s fine, that’s fine. That’s fine. You probably have room to go north a little bit. And that’s what I have done. So I actually have a pretty big spread in, in, in what I charge. But it says, I said I’m a little wacky that way. However my husband, who is always telling me double your double, your price, I’m like here outta your mind for one thing. But secondarily, I spend an unbelievably small amount of time in business development because I’m not great at it. And so word of mouth and people who stay with me allow me not to have to spend on average. I wanna say beginning coaches spend 25 to 33% of our time developing business.
MS (26:10):
I will joke that sometimes clients are paying me to develop business cuz I’m in a coaching session and they’re telling me about somebody else that they wanna introduce me to. Yeah. and so that was my strategy was make people really happy, generate good referrals, good word of mouth. And try to keep prices a little bit lower. Everybody’s gonna be a little bit different, but if you are taking your prices at the key is you have to show value. You have to show here’s what you are getting and why absolutely why it’s worth it for you to have this time. And that’s something that with good clients, they’ll tell you this is valuable or if it’s not valuable and boy, if I go too long without somebody saying, Hey, that was valuable, I gotta check in and say, Hey, is the work aligned to what you need?
MS (26:52):
But on the, on the pricing front, I have found the easiest way to take prices up is to do it with new clients. And when you have to do it, don’t don’t nickel and dime take the significant price increase so that you only have to do it every couple of years. That is absolutely a best practice in our line of work is people don’t want their fee. They don’t want the annual renewal of your fee went up as if we are Comcast or Netflix these days. And every once in a blue moon say, Hey, I I’m just, I’m adjusting to meet the, the business standard really helpful to invent the standards of our industry. Those are I’m adjusting my these cause.
AJV (27:31):
So many. Those are so many good things. I just wanna make sure we don’t skim over some of those because this is a really challenging thing for most people. I don’t, it doesn’t matter what industry you’re in. If you’re in a service space industry where you’re charging fees it’s a big deal. Especially in this coaching training, speaking consulting world. And there’s three things that you said that I think are really worth, just commenting on is. And honestly, one of them is this, this pricing model based on the ease of which it is to work with you. And as you are hourly, it’s like if I have to track you down and follow up with you to show up for my calls, I’m going to charge you more because you cost me more.
MS (28:11):
That’s exactly right.
AJV (28:12):
That’s brilliant. That’s so smart and creates more accountability. I would think in terms of, Hey, listen, if you’re difficult to work with, I have to charge more because you’re holding up space on calendar.
MS (28:25):
Yep. That’s exactly right. That’s so
AJV (28:28):
Smart. Yeah. And I think too, the thing that I love about that is also going, I love that there is a differentiation and although it’s like, I think it kinda like motivates clients to wanna be better clients.
AJV (28:42):
Right. And it’s like, who doesn’t wanna be motivated to be a, a better client of going, wow. If like I’m a really good client then like I would get like locked in at this like grandfathered rate. Like I need to be a good client. And I think there’s like some like reverse psychology. That’s actually really, really beneficial in that. Cuz I think for most people they’re human nature is, well I wanna be, I wanna be a good client too. Not, not, I think most people go into this going, I wanna be a giant pain in the ask for you and then see if you can make it work and
MS (29:09):
Amen. I mean, and you have to have some trust there. Like I don’t say that to everyone. I say that to clients that I really like, and, and it is, it also helps them to understand, Hey, you get a little special treatment, which makes them want to be better clients. I
AJV (29:23):
So smart. So interesting. Never heard that pricing. My I’ll ever love that. So good.
AJV (29:30):
The second thing that I think is really good is this concept of being grandfathered in to pricing. Yeah. Like I think that makes a big deal. I think about some of my longest term consulting clients in my former life. And it’s because I didn’t just raise the prices for raising the prices. I’m like, you’ve been amazing. You’ve been six and seven for your clients year after year. I’m not gonna raise prices just for the sake of raising prices. I’m gonna keep the prices the same. So our relationship will continue. And I, I, you know, I, I can’t tell you how many vendors that I’ve been contacted by. I, since the beginning of this year, letting me though, they’re just doing a standard across the board, 10% price increase and I’m going for what? Like based on what inflation market.
MS (30:12):
Yeah.
AJV (30:12):
And I’m just sitting here going, okay, well, should I increase our, you know, it’s like, and those things where it’s like, and then, you know, Roy and I had a long to sits a lot of discussion around, well, should we be doing that? And then we just set back and we’re like, no, we don’t feel like that’s right. For where we are. And so it’s like one of the things that we’ve kind of doubled down on is we’re not gonna raise prices, but we’re going to be doing new things to increase value without raising prices. And there’s two different ways of going about at it. And it’s like, if you really wanted me to stay and to refer you business, which I would happily do, it’s like raising the prices for no reason, probably isn’t the thing to do. So we’ve taken a counter approach and we’ve added three new, huge benefits to our membership platform going, and we’re not raising prices. Our goal this year is to increase value.
MS (31:01):
So I just love that. And in fact, when I was at McDonald’s, we used to use this very simple but powerful formula that said value equals price divided by experience. Oh, and the idea was to say, as long as you’re providing an experience, that seems better than the price you’re winning on the value score. So you didn’t always have to take prices down. You had to make the experience better. And at the same time was the key to driving value. So what you and Roy are doing is just so smart because it does allow you to but yeah, but it does. And I think that it, so one thing again, that I would, that I would share with, with people who are in this doing, but we do, and even for you guys too, AJ and worry is something that I do and started doing several years ago that it took me forever to do.
MS (31:50):
And this is a, a shout out to a very smart guy named David Baker, who does a lot of writing about business models for advertising agencies. And I got dialed into him on one time ago. But one thing that he says is if it you’re doing it for free, you still gotta put it on the invoice because there’s no way for people to understand the value of it unless they see it. And so I would put it in as a, this line item with a no charge, or I would actually put it in at full boat and then, and then cut it it back out. I’d do it both ways, but helping people to see the, these are things that we are doing that are valuable for you is super, super important.
AJV (32:29):
I love
MS (32:29):
That. Cause they don’t, we do Abstract work, right? Like it’s its, it’s not, it’s not holding something in your hand.
AJV (32:36):
Oh yeah. Out of sight, out of mind, what have you done for me lately? It’s easy to forget like all those things.
MS (32:42):
Right. and so even again, like the last we finish this up by saying, it never felt really great about either one of those things. And so just two weeks ago I found out the thing that I love that I put out invoices. And so now it says, here’s the service with my comp, here’s the thing I did with my compliments. That is like, this is for you. This isn’t even a, a line item. I want you to know that I did this as a little gift for you. Oh that’s. And so as you and Roy are doing things that are really value added, making sure that you find ways to share those that feel good. Yeah. And is an important part for anybody to who delivers coaching consulting as a service.
AJV (33:23):
Oh, that’s so good because it’s true. It’s like, people don’t know what they’re paying for. If you don’t tell them what they’re paying for. Right. And what they’re paying. And especially
MS (33:31):
If you have multiple people, there’s in my line of work, there’s no way for a CEO to know that, Hey, I had a one off coaching session just for the good of the cause with one of your people, unless it says bonus coaching session with my compliments. That’s so good. Yeah.
AJV (33:44):
That’s awesome. That’s so great. And then the third thing you said that I also love because I think this is, I think people do this more than anything else is they never raise their prices. But it’s, I love this. It’s, you know, I would liken it to like client demand. It’s like the more clients you have, it’s like, you have to be raising the prices be, and that’s just, there’s only a limited supply of how many hours you have to deliver. So the less hours you have the higher, the prices must go. So the earlier I think to me, it’s like the earlier you have clients in, they should have lesser rates to some degree because you more ample time. But as that time gets sucked away, prices must increase cuz the value of your time is innately higher.
MS (34:27):
Yep. And on that, I think a couple of things that are important to remember one of which is you can do an introductory rate. Like you can do it. Let’s try very much like what you guys do. Here’s a preview. Here’s a way for you to try me before we get locked in. And people actually love that. Like when I’m selling coaching, I always say to people, well, the best way for you to understand it is let’s just do it. Like let’s just have a coaching session. And if you’re like, yes, that was great. Then we can do next steps. And if you’re like, that was awesome, but you’re coming intense. But then we’re probably not a good fit and great too. But it saved me from doing a lot of pretend work. I’m like, why not just do a little bit of the work and let them see it?
MS (35:10):
And so that I think is something that is important to know that you can also say to people, Hey, we can do my usual rate is like, you gotta know what your actual prevailing rate is. My usual rate is this to us. If we can get to know each other, I’m willing to do three months at this and then we can reevaluate. That’s an okay way to get started. And so that I think is an important thing is that you have some flexibility and don’t publish your rates would be a big one to not publish. Yeah. Your rates. I mean, I go back to you triggered something that was really helpful for me. And I don’t remember who this was. This might also have been David Baker, but I don’t think so, but I ran, I ran across a great formula that said, if you’re working in corporate America and you wanna go out and consult the number that you need to make in terms of breaking, even with your old salary is somewhere between 1.5 and two, just to stay where you were earning your salary in corporate America. Because you don’t think about things like, well now I’m paying my own portion of says social security and now I’m responsible for my own health insurance. And now I have hours that I have to spend an administration that I can’t bill you, but still are a cost center. And so when you set your rates, you have to account for all those things the same way that they do when they set a salary in a corporate world.
AJV (36:35):
Oh totally. Those are such wise experienced comments to anyone. It doesn’t matter if you’re just getting started or you haven’t established coaching consulting practice. Like those are things that so often never get discussed. Like they don’t actually make it to the conversation of how do we set prices. And so funny, cuz this wasn’t an intended part of my interview with you, but this is so incredibly valuable. And all right. So I have just one other quick question, but before I do that I’m gonna put this in the show notes, but when it comes to social media, if people wanna go and connect with you where’s the best place on social media for people to connect with you
MS (37:15):
That’ll be, I’m too consulting on LinkedIn. So I’m an I’m, I’m not young. I’ve been doing this for a long time and had a career before that. And so I have found that for me and really professional social media is my bag. And, and so yeah, reaching out to me through LinkedIn is the best way and to get to me. And just one thing I am so grateful for just the journey that I’ve had and the amount of amazing experiences and fabulous clients that I’ve had that I always wanna help other coaches along the way. And so if anybody wants to reach out with a specific question around pricing or client management, or what did you do about this, please, please, please take advantage of that as coaches, AJ, I’m just gonna share this with you, cuz I think it’s important and know I actually think brand builders, is that a big part of the solution to this coaches don’t have community?
MS (38:07):
Mm, my husband is a political consultant. There’s like 9,000 political consultant bashes a year where they all go together and party it up and celebrate each other. And if you’re a coach that one of the surprising things for me was how lonely it was and how little community there actually is for coaches. And I think that brand builders is actually finding that part of their mission is to create a safe places for coaches to come together and to share. But also just as someone who is a little bit down the PI here, I am so happy to share my experience. If it’s helpful for anyone that just reach out to me at Mt. Consulting on LinkedIn or Mary, so on LinkedIn if I can help you, I will.
AJV (38:50):
Aw. So awesome. It’s why we love you so much and I’ll put all of in the show notes so generous and you might need to prepare yourself. You might be
MS (38:59):
That OS well though, like again, it’s an honor and man, I’m just so grateful.
AJV (39:04):
Oh, that’s so generous. It’s so nice. Okay. Well here’s my last question. And this is like totally has nothing to do with anything other than my own personal curiosity. But I would say and this is connected to this world of coaching that we’re in. But what would you say has been the, your favorite, your most favorite part about being a coach over the last 20 years?
MS (39:30):
So the, the, the obvious answer, right? Like the existential answer, it is such a gift to watch someone change. It is such a gift to be able to watch the light bulb go off in an aha moment, perhaps more importantly. It’s so awesome. And interestingly enough, I didn’t have children, but sometimes I’m like, Ooh, this must be like what it’s like with a kid where you watch your kid figure out how to tie their shoes at a, a sophisticated high level, but to be able to watch people access particularly their own self agency. And that is my favorite part because what I have found with most people is we give up so much of our agency when we are in trouble. When we have problems, we tend to go, it’s all this stuff around me and I’m stuck. And if we just turned inward just a little bit and said, Hey, actually I have more than I need to get out this.
MS (40:24):
And watching people access that part of themselves, cuz then they have it forever in everything. It doesn’t matter what they’re doing. If they’re like, oh, I can figure this out. And that’s pretty much hands down. My favorite part of that for myself if you took the clients away from it, I would say my favorite thing is how much it requires you to stay current. Oh, okay. I can’t think of another business where you do not have the luxury of relaxing and I will share with you that I meet a lot of people who are my age and I’m like, wow, you’ve had pretty much the same job for the last 15 years. And I’d be happy some weeks with having the same job for 15 minutes. But man, it keeps you young mentally. Like there, everyone is talking about the need to keep learning as a way to say young mentally. So that’s my favorite part about selfishly.
AJV (41:13):
Oh, I adore you so much special conversation with so many nuggets and so many awesome tips and best practices. Mary, we love you. And I don’t, I, I don’t know if people caught this, like I’ve had the pleasure of having Mary as my coach. And I mean, it’s like, I, I speak for that. It’s like, I, I know sometimes you say it’s like, wow, just wondering if you still wanna continue. I’m like what, what, what do you mean not be don’t, you’re have to be brave enough to ask sometimes it’s true and I can totally vouch. It’s like when you find that right coach, and this is where coaches out there and finding your clients, it’s like, it’s a really magical, it’s a really magical. And so be intentional with your clients, be intentional with who you do work with because it, it impacts you too, so that thank you so much. Everyone else stay tuned to the next episode on influential personal brand,
Speaker 3 (42:07):
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, 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 buildersgroup.com/podcall brand builders, group.com/podcall. We hope to talk to you soon.
AJV (42:55):
All right. Well, welcome back. Y’all welcome to the recap episode of my conversation with Mary Soin. I love her so much. She is just so full of wisdom and experience. And as my own personal business coach, I was so excited to have her on here and I get the privilege of not just recapping our conversation, but also sharing just some powerful insights of things that she has taught me in terms of what, what do you provide really as a coach? And it’s interesting because as someone who considers yourself in the coaching industry and the coaching business, it’s what we do at brand builders group and personal branding. But it’s also really important that I have a coach to constantly get that different perspective for myself. And so there’s a couple of things here that I thought were so insightful for anyone who is in the coaching industry.
AJV (43:51):
And here are the couple of things that I think is really insightful is one. How do you set your prices? I don’t think a lot of people talk about this, cause I don’t really think a lot of people know how to do it. And I love the conversation that we morphed into on our call on our interview. Because that wasn’t, the intent had that naturally came up and we just went with it. But here’s a couple of takeaways from how to set your price and that think are really valuable. And then I can speak to as Mary, as my own business coach, right. One I think this was really fascinating. There’s two ways of looking at this, right? There is a, or really three ways. There is hourly, there is retainer and then there’s project and that’s how I would kind of lump these together.
AJV (44:32):
And on a, on an hourly, it actually puts a lot more work on you because you’ve got to track all of those per client. But then on top of that I think a lot of times I’m going, well, what if I don’t use, what if I don’t need these? And then she gets booked up, right? And I’m thinking like specifically of like how I’ve been as a customer, it’s like, I feel pressure of going well, if I just book hourly and I’m not on your schedule when I need you, are you gonna be available? Right. And for any of you who have ever been in counseling or therapy or, or life coaching, it’s like, no, when I need you, I need you. And if you’re not available well, that is not really helpful for me. So there’s pros and cons on a customer’s per on a customer perspective of doing it hourly.
AJV (45:15):
Because then the pro is, it’s like it’s cost manageable. Right. but for you as a coach, it’s a lot more work. It’s a lot more tracking of going now. I have to track and prove and document every single hour that I was with your organization or with you. So first one is hourly. Okay. Second one is retainer, right? Pros and cons to that one too, because on a customer’s perspective, I’m going, well, I want you to show me what you did for this retainer. Right. I paid you $3,000 for last month. What’d you do? I wanna know. And so there’s, again, a lot of tracking and reporting on that. There’s clearly a lot more security on the coaches side for pricing, right. Because you can plan out ahead and there’s less tracking. But then there’s again, extra documentation, right? So there’s, there’s always gonna be pros and cons to this, but I would say as a coach a project or a retainer model, I would blend my way to that more to quickly.
AJV (46:15):
Except for if you are just in that one, on one space and then maybe it’s the hourly. But I think the benefit of some of this in a retainer perspective is it allows you more opportunity to provide more value. And so now you have to figure out what that retainer pricing is. And maybe that retainer pricing is $500. Maybe it’s a thousand, right. Instead of going, Hey, just tell me when you need me. It’s like, no, we’re just gonna set up. It’s like, we’re gonna do two calls, three calls a month. One is for you. One is for your team. You can set it up however you want, but that can still be a retainer model. And here’s another way to look at hourly, even if you only do hourly, just have people pay in advance for their hours.
AJV (46:54):
And that could be like a project, right? So instead of billing hourly, it’s like, well, I’m gonna bill you hourly, but I’m gonna do it in advance. So right. I’m gonna go ahead and bill you for 10 hours. And you can use that in any increment that you like. It could be in 10, one hour calls, it could be in two, five hour sessions. But it it’s like I’m gonna bill you in advance. And then I won’t bill you again until you use those up. So there’s different ways of thinking about how you price. But then you also have to think about what is that actual personal, hourly rate, right. And I thought this was fascinating cause right. There’s projects. And then there’s retainers, right? Which happened monthly versus a project, which is a one time, Hey, here’s what we’re gonna do for Q1.
AJV (47:38):
And here’s how much it costs versus you’re gonna pay me X amount of money every single month and definitely, or for six months or for a year or for whatever. And then there’s hourly, which I’ll track every single hour and I’ll bill you, or you can have people buy hours up front and then you don’t bill again until you use those up. And then they buy the next allotment. Right. So there’s lots of different ways to do it, but then the next is, well, how do you set your internal hourly? Right. So you know what to charge for in a project or on a retainer or hourly like, well, what should I charge a hundred dollars an hour? Is it $50 an hour? Is it $500 an hour? I don’t know what my fee is. And so I thought this was so fascinating because I’ve never heard this and I’ve been in this industry and I’ve been in this business a really long time.
AJV (48:24):
And she said, that really depends on the client. And then, and it hit me. It’s like it sure frien does. It does depend on the client. And I love this and I have never heard of anyone else doing this. So I think this is really, really cool. But this concept of going, how easy is it to work with a client? And that is a part of how you hard, like how difficult is the project gonna be for you? In other words, if you are doing something that is gonna require a lot of research time and a lot of documentation time, a lot of coordination time, then maybe there should be a higher hourly rate because it’s, it’s making you do things that are not a part of your norm, right. Versus like, no, this is, you just want me on a phone call and you wanna ask me questions.
AJV (49:15):
That’s easy. Are you, are you a client? Are you working with clients that are very hard to track down and they always take out virtual real estate on your calendar that you’re always having to go back and try to refill. And it’s like that to me was like the aha moment of going, how many clients have I had in the past that would book calls. And then constantly not show up and then I couldn’t fill that hour with someone else. So there was a huge opportunity cost, and then I would have to track this person down, reschedule, reschedule. They weren’t prepared. And I’m like, oh my gosh. It’s like, this is so much more work than we had anticip hated for. So it was like, how easy are your clients to work with? Are they people who show up prepared and ready to work?
AJV (50:00):
Are they people who constantly know show and reschedule on you? And I think a lot of that you don’t know until you work with them. Right. so she talked about, excuse me, having a grandfathered price in. So it’s like I start everyone at some point at based on what the project is based on what they need based on my involvement. But my prices evolve and change, right. Just like inflation changes the prices in the markets as does at my prices. Right. and really it’s more of supply and demand, right? The less hours I have, the more I charge, the more hours I have, I don’t have to charge as much. And that’s the case with, you know, anything it’s like the less there is typically the more you pay for it. Right. and so just this concept of how easy is it for me to work with you?
AJV (50:48):
How reliable as a client are you to work with and how much availability do I have and then how much expertise is required. Those are the things that we evaluate as we’re setting prices. And I think that’s really interesting to look at, of going the more that you do this, the more you should charge, because the more experience, the more value that you provide, but you need to make sure that that’s what’s happening. And I, I know some people who just get in and they’re like, my fees are 200 bucks an hour. And I’m like, based on what I have other people who get in this business and they charge a hundred dollars an hour and I’m like, you should be charging five, like legitimate, you should be charging 500. That is the level of expertise that you are providing. What’s the difference has everything to do with the need of the client and finding that right.
AJV (51:41):
Fit, knowing what your niche is and knowing exactly what you’re gonna be coaching on, knowing exactly what your target market is and what is their income and what are their demographics and what are their psychographics on a huge part of this? Isn’t about what it’s about, who it’s about, who are you targeting and what expertise are you bringing? And in what model are you going to be charging? Right? And this is such a detailed conversation to have in this recap, but I think it’s one that’s really powerful and a customer of Mary’s to know, it’s like, I’m sitting here going. I wonder if my pricing means I’m a really good client, or I’m a really difficult client of I’ll tell you what it did for me. And I, I hung up for this interview and I went and I talked to my husband, Rory. Who’s also a co-host as you guys all know if you’re listening and I asked him and I was like, based on these fees, do you think I’m a bad client on a good client?
AJV (52:33):
And it created this internal desire in me to like, I wanna be a good client. I wanna get grandfathered in to really good rates. It’s like, what do I need to do to be a better client? And then I’m asking myself, do I reschedule on her? Do I knowhow? Do I not come prepared? Do I not stuff. And there is a mentality that intentional or not, that has been created since this interview of me going, I want to be a better client because I want to be rewarded for being a good client and being rewarded means I get grandfathered in at my original rate. Heck yeah, I’m not gonna reschedule on you anymore. I’m never gonna knowhow. I’m gonna show up and do the work because I want these grandfathered in fees because I value your time. And if I, if I value and I respect your time, you’re gonna reward me as a customer, sign me up.
AJV (53:22):
So I think there’s also reverse psychology working here in her favor again, intentional or not, that makes me wanna be a good customer. So again, really fascinating conversation on pricing. It’s a really delicate conversation. It’s always changing and evolving as your prices should, right? They shouldn’t be the same that they were 10 years ago, because you are definitely saying that you were 10 years ago or even five years ago, or maybe even last year. So please check out this full interview. Mary also gave the incredible offer to any anyone in the coaching business. If you’re a coach and you just want more community with coaches and you want advice from someone who’s been doing this a really long time, she said look her up on LinkedIn. It’s Mary Soin into consulting. And she said, reach out to me. And I’m, I’m happy to support. I’m happy to help and ask any questions. So if I were you and I was a coach, I would take her up on that because I’m taking her up on it for free. So check it out, go listen to the full episode and we’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.

Ep 253: How To Build and Scale Your Speaking Business with Molly Fletcher

AJV (00:07):
Hey everybody welcome to a new episode on the influential personal brand. This is AJ Vaden here. I’m the CEO of brand builders group. One of the co-founders and one of the co hosts of this show along with my sidekick partner husband, Rory Vaden, who is not here today. But y’all, I am so excited today because not only do I get to share this awesome individual Molly Fletcher with you guys? But y’all like one of the, I was literally just talking to her before the show started. So if you wanna go read all of her amazing accolades and accomplishments, and there’s a lot, I would encourage you to go read the show notes, but I’ll tell you one of the coolest things about this is when you find people. And in my case, another woman who is equally excited about your success as they are their own success.
AJV (00:59):
It’s one of the biggest gifts in the world. And, and I had a chance to debrief with Molly before we hit record. And I think one of the things that I love so much and why I’m so excited to introduce her to all of you guys listening, is that she’s one of those people who gets genuinely just excited about seeing other people thrive and succeed as she does herself. And it’s one of those things where it’s like, it just makes you wanna be around her more. And I just love her. I think she’s so awesome. She’s a total badass and in so many different respects personally and professionally, and I’ll tell you one thing one thing on the professional side that I think you should know about Molly before we get in is I was at a a joint group meeting in Nashville, Tennessee, that Molly was at, and some had said you’re like the Jerry McGuire of the sports industry, cuz Molly has an extreme past as a very accomplished sports agent. And I started thinking this morning, I was like, she’s not like Jerry McGuire. Jerry McGuire is like Molly Fletcher, what are you talking about? There is no other Molly Fletcher there’s no comparison here. It’s like you’re Molly F and Fletcher, no, Jerry McGuire up in the mix around here. But so many amazing things that we’re gonna talk about today. And so I’m gonna kick off. I’m just gonna welcome you to the show, Molly, thank you so much for giving me some of your time this morning.
MF (02:21):
Hey, it’s an absolute honor. I love you and Rory and the whole BBG family. So I’m, I’m honored to be with you. I really am. Thanks.
AJV (02:27):
And this is gonna be such a great conversation. And one of the reasons why is, because I know that so many of you out there are wondering how do I go from my full-time profession, whatever it is that you’re doing right now, and how do I actually make a transition into a full time personal brand? And so Molly give people just a little bit of background on what your professional journey has looked like from the beginning to where you are now.
MF (02:57):
Sure. Wow. Well, you know, I think I wish I could say it was scripted out and it was perfectly planned, but the truth is it really wasn’t. I, you know, I was a sports agent, as you mentioned for over 15 years and I loved every minute of it and had incredible athletes, 300 athletes, a team of agents, et cetera, helping us serve, serve them. But, but what would happen, AJ? This is interesting is I would have all these young people reach out to me who wanted to be sports agents because people sort of think, oh my gosh, that’d be such a great job. And so I’d have all these young people meet with me and I would meet with these kids because I believe you need to love what you do every day. And so I would be meeting with these young kids and then simultaneously, like I might go to an event and I’d meet a, a 30 year old who said, oh, you know, I always wanted to be a sports agent, but you know, it was just kind of really hard to get into.
MF (03:47):
And it’s super competitive. And, and so now I’m doing this, but I don’t really love it. And now they’re in this kind of job that they don’t love and they’re sort of boxed in. And I thought, well, that’s a bummer cuz you work a lot and your life and you should love it. So I would meet with these young kids and my boss would walk by my office. He would say, oh, who’s that? Is that a short stop for Georgia tech? Is that a golfer for Georgia? And I was like, oh no, it’s this really nice young kid outta Georgia tech. Who’s trying to get into the sports agent business. And, and by about the third or fourth meeting like that, I mean, he’s a pretty driven guy. He looks at me, he goes, look, I am not paying you to a mentor. All these kids out of Georgia and Georgia tech.
MF (04:24):
And I said, okay, so and so simultaneously, right? I’m recruiting lots and lots of athletes, which to me is not too dissimilar to getting in front of tough people that you potentially maybe wanna work for one day. So I started to see all these things aligning at. I thought, you know, I can’t meet with all these people, but I wanna help ’em cuz it breaks my heart. When I meet these 30 year olds that hate their jobs. So I thought I’m gonna write a book about it cuz I gotta help ’em and I’m just gonna write a book, staple it together and give it away if I have to. So I would go when I was pregnant with our first to this coffee shop every day and I’d write and write and write. And so it took me about a year and a half to finally have this book ready to go. And, and I thought, well, let me see if I can publish it. Like, let me just see if I can find a publisher and I could have wallpapered my apartment with rejection letters from publishers. Cause we, we both know that’s a quirky space. Finally, I get somebody that kind of bites. I fly to Indy pitch this whole boardroom of people on this book and they bite and they published the book, which was my first book. So then come university started saying, Hey, will you come and talk,
AJV (05:29):
Pause right there though. You wrote the entire book while you were still like full-time working.
MF (05:35):
Yes, great point. Right.
AJV (05:37):
But I think that’s a really important distinction. It’s not why you jumped ship and said, I’m out. It’s not like this was what I was doing when I had extra time, extra hours, extra minutes.
MF (05:47):
That’s right. That’s right. That’s right, AJ. I would do it at night. I would do it on the weekends. And so that book got fully published and, and I had thankfully the support of my boss to do that book, which was wonderful, cuz I was very transparent with him that I wanted to help these kids. It wasn’t gonna impact my day job and whatever. So then I was speaking to all these schools for free, for fun. Just
AJV (06:10):
So were they finding you or you finding them?
MF (06:13):
They were finding me because of the book it was sort of out there. And so professors started reaching out saying, Hey, would you come and talk to 30 kids or 50 kids or, and I did. And so then
AJV (06:27):
For free
MF (06:28):
For free,
AJV (06:29):
I think that’s important. Like,
MF (06:31):
Yeah, these are great. I’m glad you’re calling these things out.
AJV (06:33):
These are not like most of us who are in this world of speaking and authoring and it’s like, Y it didn’t start with money. Right. It’s like we were paying, it’s like, please I’ll pay you. Can I please come? Exactly, exactly. Right. and I think that’s a really important reminder for everyone. Or anyone who is all on this personal brand journey or who wants to be, it’s like it has to come from an deep rooted passion of, I have a message that I, I cannot contain it. It must come out of me. However I can do
MF (07:05):
It. That’s really well said, AJ. And, and I think, and you say this, I mean, you’re so good at, you know, it, it was something that broke my heart, was watching these people work 82,000 hours of other life or something like that, that it adds up to and hate it. And I thought that’s not right. And, and I grew up with a father who’s amazing, but he hated his job. And I thought, I don’t wanna hate my job. I wanna love it. Yeah. I wanna, as the, you know, I think it’s a Luke Bryan’s song, right? Like do what you love and call it work. And
AJV (07:37):
I love that. So,
MF (07:39):
So that book, so to your point, I would go to these schools and I would speak for free. But one of the things that I think’s important for your listeners is it was also, Hey, as I started to do more and more of it, I thought I gotta record these things. Like I gotta record these so that I can grab recordings of this. Cuz I like it. And if I can do this in other markets, maybe one could get paid. I don’t know. So then it was interesting, AJ. I, I was also, then I sort of, that came out. I was doing that still full blown as an agent. And then I started working with, you know, Billy Donovan and Thomas and Ernie Johnson and John Smoltz and all these athletes and coaches.
AJV (08:18):
I didn’t know any of those except for John else because I’m a brave fan. There you go. Yeah. That
MF (08:24):
One that’s right. Well that’s OK. And you don’t need to. And you know, and so I started to go, wow, the way ISO’s wired, isn’t too dissimilar to Ernie Johnson. And the way smolt is wired, isn’t too different from, you know, Laven. And so I started to, to kind of see the way that peak performers behave their mindset. And I thought, I think I got another book here that I really want the world to know the, the level of curiosity and discipline and belief and, and, and energy man and all these things that went into the best. So I, I reached out to a friend of mine and said, look, I, I think I wanna write this book. And, and then she helped me a bit connecting me with her son who was sort of a ghost writer. He helped me write it with his literary agent who then took me on, pitched it to publishers. And that book was birthed, which is called the business of being the best. Now that book was a little more focused toward business people.
AJV (09:28):
Interesting. Again, wanna pause really quick? You said two things that I think are really unique and important. So I have a, a random question for you.
MF (09:36):
Sure.
AJV (09:37):
How many people do you think actually have a book within them, but they don’t value their own insights enough to publish it
MF (09:48):
A hundred percent of people in the world. I mean a ton like a ton.
AJV (09:54):
I agree.
MF (09:55):
Yeah.
AJV (09:55):
Like to your point, I think the difference and what I love about you is like you saw something and you’re like, I have to put this together and share it to the world. Right. I think all of us have those insights and those intuitions and those things. We just, whether we don’t think other people would care or we’re not sure how to put it together. And you did, and you were still doing it full time working of going, oh, I see these commonalities. And I think there’s something here that would really help other people. And I think, I think it’s really important. So what was it about you that made you go, this is good enough that I think it would help other people like innately inside of you kind of gave you that, no, this is it. Like this is gonna help other people.
MF (10:46):
Well, I, I think I saw so clearly this connection between peak performers and I felt like, and, and I lived in a world where complacency has no room. I mean, chipper Jones woke up every day and, and, and could see the stats of the guy in AAA that wanted his job. Smoltz could see all the guys in AAA that wanted his job. And I thought, wow, this is a different mindset. This mindset of wanting to get better every single day. And, and I just felt like it was something in my heart of hearts that could lay right on top of business, people’s mindset and belief system. And they could deploy it in a way that could help them too, have more drive up their game, all those things. And, and I think I grew up too with a belief that no is just feedback.
AJV (11:40):
Yeah,
MF (11:40):
No, isn’t no, it’s just,
AJV (11:43):
You gotta write that down.
MF (11:44):
It’s just a data.
AJV (11:45):
No, it’s just feedback. No, it’s just feedback. Ooh, that’s so good. I’m gonna highlight that. It’s gonna be tweetable moment of this show. No is just feedback. Right? Well, I think, and I think the reason I wanted to call that out is because so many of the people that we talk to and that we work with at our company brand builders group, it’s like, they, they know they’ve got something, but they don’t have enough conviction and their own ideas to push them out into the world. And it’s like, part of it is like, you’ve gotta have enough belief that no, it’s like, I know this can help and enough confidence of going, I don’t care if it helps one person it’s worth doing it. But then the second thing that you brought out is I found someone who had a son who was a ghost writer and he would say, it’s about people. It’s about relationships. It’s about connections. So talk to us for just one second.
MF (12:35):
Yeah. So you know, wonderful. You know, he helped me and his mother was really one of the first and, and what happened was we, we, we wrote that book and that book, you know, got, got out into the world. And, and then I think this is sort of part of the story and, and that relationship and how important it was. So when, when that book came out again, it was more focused on business people. I, I started getting asked to come and speak, you know, at, at businesses, right. At, at conventions at things. But I was still grinding it as an agent, like full time, 24 7 deal. So if it was really convenient and really, really easy, I could do it. So one day literally across the street from my office, there was this convention and they asked me to come and do one of the breakout sessions.
MF (13:21):
And I mean, AJ, it was pretty bootleg, right? Like it was literally, I can still see the room. I mean, it wasn’t very big. There was these black drapes, there was probably 20 people. It was one of those where they walked in, could see the list of different speakers and they, you know, enough people thought, well, this chick sounds interesting. I’m gonna go sit in there. So I sit, I give kind of a keynote around the book and the common threads I saw and you know, it was probably 30, 40 minutes. Well, at the end of that, this woman comes up to me, whose son was the ghost writer. So that’s where I’m going with this. And she came up to me and she’s really cool. And, and she said, you need to do this. And I said, what are you talking about? She goes like, you need to do this.
MF (14:01):
I said, do what she said, speak. And I said, well, girl, I’m running back to the office. I have a one 30 lunch, a three o’clock call. I’m going to game tomorrow. Like, what do you, I can’t do this. She said, no, no, no. I’m telling you, you gotta do this. I’m taking you to lunch. So we go to lunch and she said, okay, here’s what I want you to do. I want you, she goes, how much are you charging? And I said, nothing. She goes, you don’t charge anything for your, I go, no, she goes, you need to be charging. She said do you own your domain name on your website? Do you know your, I said, no. She said, go buy it, go buy Molly fletcher.com. And she said, do you have recordings of your keynotes? And I said, well, I got a couple.
MF (14:39):
Right? And she goes, every keynote you give from now on, I want you recorded. So she sat with me. I’ll never forget it. And basically said, here’s all the things I want you to have a website up in, in, in a less than 30 days, video bio, you know, all the things that, you know, anyone who’s listening can, you know, if you Google any speaker, you can go and you can kind of see the same things that they have on their websites. That whether it’s through a speaker bureau or a client is looking for. And, and she sort of told me what she thought I could charge and sure enough, the phone started. Right. And it, you know, which was a blessing. And so, you know, and then I started speaking and Marilyn hired me and all these different. And so it just sort of evolved, but I’ll pause there in case something’s coming up for you,
AJV (15:23):
You know, it’s interesting. Your journey is so different than mine because I’m pretty, pretty sure I had to like cold call a thousand people before I ever got paid to speak. I’m pretty sure, like if I went back and counted the amount of free workshops that I did in front of sales teams and sales organizations, it would be in, it would be close to a thousand, but I did four free, right. Begging it’s like, I’m, can I pleased and talk to your three? I will do this for you for great. I’m pretty sure. But it’s, you know, it’s interesting because every journey looks different and that’s the point And you wanna know, it’s like, how do you do it? And it’s like, every journey looks different. The point is you just have to start, you gotta start.
MF (16:09):
Right. I mean, it’s like, I don’t know if it’s a BG line or, but the more you speak, the more you speak,
AJV (16:14):
Always
MF (16:15):
Like the more you speak, the more you speak and, and, and, and, you know, I mean, just to, and, and we had a lot of those, I mean, I’ll never forget when she told me to get more video, my husband and I went to the Ritz Carlton here in Atlanta, and we snuck in, we found a ballroom and my husband’s wonderful. And we find this ballroom and it’s got this beautiful mahogany background. He’s got our camera. And I am like changing clothes four times in the ballroom. And he’s filming me and I’m talking to nobody, I’m talking to nobody and he’s filming me. And then I found, you know, somebody that kind of spa slice it up and turn it into a speaker reel and all that. So, you know, it’s a bootstrap deal out of the gates.
AJV (17:00):
It, and I love it cause that it’s, you gotta be scrappy. It’s like, there are only a few people. And one of the reasons I was so excited to have you on the show is you’re a little known fact is like, Molly’s one of like the highest paid speakers. Who’s not a celebrity who’s out there. Right? Like Molly is doing this full-time multi seven figure, like, like she is doing this and doing it extraordinarily well. And I think for a lot of us, as we think, oh, well you had this X, Y, Z. It’s like, no, like we, we were speaking in empty ballrooms with our husband’s speaking. Like I remember it’s like, for years, it’s like I was doing meetings and living rooms, backyards tax sales, doesn’t matter what it was. I was like, I’ll be there. I’ll be there. Right. So one day you have someone who sees you and they go, you could do this for a living. That’s how it works. And then you could speak, but it’s like, the more you speak, the more you speak, you just have to start. And so I’m curious at what point did you go, okay, this is like, my personal brand is now my full time career. Yeah. Like when was that?
MF (18:07):
Well, I certainly didn’t think of it candidly as a personal brand, obviously now more so, but I, what, you know, what happened truthfully was I love, I loved being an agent and I loved my players and I loved it all like immensely. And I’ll never forget. I landed in like Pittsburgh or New York or somewhere for a keynote. I think I landed in New York for a keynote and, and my players never went to voicemail. I mean, they never went to voicemail. So I get I land and I’ve got like three voicemails from three guys. Well, I, I start calling ’em back and I’m on the phone with one of my guys. And he goes, where are you? And I was like, cuz we’re incredibly close. And I go, oh, I just landed in New York. He’s like who you seeing? And that was the moment when I went uhoh I don’t feel authentic right now.
MF (18:56):
Like I do not feel authentic right now. And I said, you know what, actually, man, I’m given a keynote to a group of, you know, I think it was financial advisors. And he said, oh, wow. Huh. Really? And, and that was the moment when I went, I’ve make some decisions here and you know, it made AJ no sense. I mean, I think I had 17 keynotes on the books, you know, for not a lot of money. And I had a nice situation as an agent. And, but I remember coming home to my husband. I said, honey, I think this message is resonating with people. I think it’s helping people. I think I have an opportunity to have a whole lot more control of my schedule, but more importantly, make a bigger impact on the world than I am now. Like, and I, I was at a point in my career where, you know, I felt like I’d done a lot of incredible things.
MF (19:47):
I’d helped a lot of athletes, but I remember thinking, do I wanna go to my grave and say, I’ve negotiated a hundred million in contracts or do I wanna go to my grave and say I changed a hundred million lives. Mm. And what became clear to me was I, I wanted to change hearts and souls and, and, and, and not just checkbooks and, and bank accounts. That wasn’t what I was about. And that was, and thankfully I said, I’m gonna do this. I’m gonna jump. And, and you know, you talk about kind of relationships. And so one of the guys who was my trainer, when I was a student athlete at Michigan state, he became a speaker and is a speaker. And I reached out to him and I said, Hey, this is what’s going on. And, and he said, you know, you can use my booking agent.
MF (20:35):
She books me. I pay her a fee on every booking. But if you wanted to give her a fee, she could take in some of these incoming calls for you that you’re getting and she could navigate it. And of course, I believe it’s helpful to have somebody in the middle of those conversations. That’s what I did. And I saw the benefit. Yeah. And so I, I put, so this, this woman was fantastic and she would take, she knew how to navigate these. She, you know, and then we built the contract and the bio and all the stuff that happens, but she was able to take in these incoming calls, negotiate these fees and manage my speaking, ke tell it, got to a place where I needed a full-time person.
AJV (21:11):
So, so interesting. Because I think that right there, what you just said is, so, so wise of you need a middle person. Yeah. So, and that’s what you did. Like you did that so successful for all these athletes for 15 years. So like to sit here and, and go, oh yeah. It’s like, that is what you did. Right. Right. So I would love for you to share with everyone, like, what is the benefit of having someone book you on your behalf? Like, what’s the, you know, it’s like people can call, ’em an agent bureau, whatever. Right. But what’s, the benefit could be your spouse. It
MF (21:43):
Could be,
AJV (21:44):
But why, why?
MF (21:47):
Well, I, I, I mean, I think, you know, no different than I saw with my players. I mean, it, it becomes very hard for an athlete to sit in the room with a general manager and say, look, all the other second basemen are at X. Here’s my RBIS. Here’s my slugging percentage. Here’s my on base percentage here. And I should be at Y. And here’s why, because it can get, yeah. And I think when you are saying, well, for me to come and talk to your people, I’m worth X. Well, our budget is why, well, I mean, that conversation is a lot harder for you to do yourself now. It’s not impossible though, because we know that people have to do that in their careers for Ray and things like that. And that’s okay. And we need to, as human beings, I believe, know how to have those conversations. But I think when, when, when we’re trying to negotiate our fee and our time at the core, it, it is, it is, it is someone else that can brag about you that when you are doing it on your own behalf, it’s just odd. Like, oh yeah. Like every time I got a standing ovation, people love me. I mean, you can’t say that. Right. But you’re, but your booking can. Right. So I think, I think they can tell your story as your advocate
AJV (23:08):
Right.
MF (23:08):
Better than you.
AJV (23:10):
Oh, I think that’s the word. It’s, they’re your advocate. Yes. They’re your advocate. I remember there was a point in our business that I told Roy you are no longer allowed to talk about money with anyone
MF (23:25):
Ever,
AJV (23:25):
Like, you are not allowed to talk about your fees, stop it. Cause like two, that point it’s so much easier for him as the individual. Who’s getting booked to go. I mean, okay, I’ll make it work or sure. I’ll stay and I’ll do this. Sure. I’ll add on another one. Cause he felt guilty. It’s like, and is like having an advocate that middle person removes the emotion makes it so purely logical. And one of the best, best lessons we ever learned as somebody had said. And I remember getting this advice from someone at the national speakers association is just remember, they’re not paying you for an hour of your time. Yeah. They are paying you for the years of experience and expertise and original content. And data they’re paying you for a lifetime of information that you have condensed in two, one hour.
MF (24:18):
Yeah.
AJV (24:19):
And that, that changed the way that we negotiated from that point on.
MF (24:24):
Yeah. I J I remember you saying that at an event I was at that you were leading and I, and I was like, that is so well said because it’s so true. I mean, they are. And, and, and, you know, to your point, it’s easier for someone else to say, no, it’s easier for someone else to justify. I mean, the, you know, when I was an agent, I mean, that was, people ran around with business cards, you know? So all my athletes had stacks of my business cards and I can’t even count the number of times that a guy would call me or a gal would call me and say, Hey, I met John Smoltz at Walgreens. And he said, he would love to stop by the school, on my son’s birthday and wish him a happy birthday. And I’m thinking, okay, dude. And like small tea and I, or any of my guys.
MF (25:10):
I mean, I, you know, John can’t do that for everybody. He meets of course. And, but, you know, and I’d say, oh, okay. And I’d take the call and I would listen. And, and, and then I’d, you know, hang up and wait three days and call him and say, Hey, I’m really sorry, but John can’t do that. He’s pitchy that day or whatever the thing was. Yeah. But that, that helped John and all of my players so much. And we, you know, we need, I mean, I’m so blessed and grateful. We get 500 speaking requests a year and do 80. And so I need somebody in the middle of all that to filter through the right fits the stages where we think we can truly make an impact.
AJV (25:47):
How, oh, good. I think that’s such a deal of like, to that point, it’s like, it would be very easy to try to say yes. And then simultaneously just burn yourself into the ground now.
MF (25:57):
And I’ve made that mistake, AJ. I did.
AJV (25:59):
Yeah. As have we, and it’s not one you wanna make again. And so, okay. So, so let’s talk about two things here, one all these for requests, right? So how are you for the person who is maybe speaking already? And they’re like, how do I grow my speaking business? How do I scale it? Where are all of these requests coming from? So how have you AMAs such this amazing business where people are just calling you and then it’s you deciding which ones you’re gonna go to? How did happen?
MF (26:30):
You know, the, the truth is it’s, it’s really been referrals. I mean, it’s people in an audience who leave and go to a different company who I gave a keynote yesterday here in Atlanta. And a guy came up at the back of the room and goes, I need, you need to do this convention that we all go to in the technology space every single year, who do I contact on your team to, to get your stuff in front of them? So it’s, it’s been primarily referrals. We do work with bureaus lots of different bureaus. I’m not exclusive with any bureau and, you know, and, and that evolve by people who had heard maybe me keen, or they had moved to a different career or a different company. And then they went, they let’s say just automatically booked through bureaus. So they went to the bureau and said, Hey, we want this.
MF (27:16):
We’d like to explore having this woman, Molly come and speak. And the bureaus like who’s that I have no idea who she, and then they kind of figured that out. And then that was kind of how our bureau thing went. Was clients backing into an ask and then the bureau coming back to us and saying, we have a client that wants to book you, who do we, who do we work with? So, you know, I’m feel very blessed for that. I’m very grateful for that. It’s, it’s really been all, you know, all the word of mouth, but I would say simultaneously, you know, we have all the tools and things. We have all the, the things in place that allow somebody to get familiar with you. You know, one of the things that you and I know, and it’s wonderful for people to, to, to know is that, you know, nobody’s gonna book you on a main stage, big event, keynote without seeing you speak.
MF (28:05):
And, and not just, I would argue that the best of the best, the spliced up, you know, six minute video reel, that’s just you and all your best moments and the crowd standing and clapping, and you gotta make, get, give ’em a hot, good, solid piece of extended content of you on stage speaking, where they can go, okay, there’s a big clump of time and she’s okay, she’s good. Like we can do this. So that’s, to me really important to having, you know, I would tell every speaker, go get your YouTube channel, get it populated, get stuff on there, have your website with your video real, but have longer clips too. So people can see you for an extended period of time. Because the thing that, you know, I take real really seriously is there is an organization when you really boil it down, it’s an organization hiring a perfect stranger to stand up in front of the most important people in their world.
MF (29:04):
From a business perspective, either it’s their key clients or it’s their employees. Those are incredibly important people and they are hiring a perfect stranger. So you’ve gotta make sure you offset their already anxious feeling. Yeah. That’s so putting a stranger in front of the room. So you gotta make, ’em feel really safe with that decision. And, and so, you know, to me, those are the things that I think are important. Like I’m a big fan of getting into the head and the heart of the people that you serve and saying, you know, like one of the things I always say to people who on a, a pre-call before any keynote, I, I do a call with the client and, you know, I always say to ’em look, you’ve got thousands of things to worry about. The last one I want you to worry about is me.
MF (29:48):
All I want to happen is that you have a line of people after that, come up to you and say, dude, where did you find that chick? That was exactly what I needed to hear that. That’s all I want. You got AV people, you got music, you got customers, you got box lunches, you got dinners, you got awards, ceremonies, you got other speakers, you got panels. Don’t worry about me. I’ll be there early. I’ll crush it for you. People will say, thank you so much. And I wanna be super low maintenance and, and, and over deliver.
AJV (30:18):
Yeah. That’s so good. So I love that. It’s like, if you think about it in terms of reality, it’s like, you’re right. It’s like, you’re asking someone to pay you. Who’s a complete stranger and they have no real idea. What’s gonna come out of your mouth and then you want them to put you on stage in front of their most important people. And they’re sitting in the back of their going, please don’t mess this up. Please. Don’t mess this up please. Right. So how do you eliminate those fears? So I have a question. If you were gonna tell people, here are three things that you can do to be less of a stranger to your audiences, what would they be?
MF (30:52):
Well, number one, I, I would say video on your website and on your YouTube and not just short form, but long form. I mean, that takes a lot of angst out and lots and lots of video. The more, you know, early in your career, the more that you’re speaking get, ’em all videotaped, different outfits, different backgrounds, different stages, authentic, real stuff, and get that up there because that will give him a, a sense of she’s done this, he’s done this, and they’ve done it a lot in a lot of different circumstances. Okay. That would be one, you know, two testimonials. And you talk about this age. I mean, you talk about this a lot, and I think that’s a really big deal to particularly early to say, look here, here’s, you know, you have your list of printed testimonials on your site or wherever, but also, Hey, look, and I did this as an agent.
MF (31:37):
When I was recruiting a player, I’d slide my client list across the table and say to any young player, Hey, look, I can sit in this boardroom and tell you everything. I know that you wanna hear, but call John smoke, call anybody, call these guys or gals, ask them. Yeah, because what I’m telling you, we’re gonna do, we’re gonna do it, but feel free to call anybody. So testimonials to me are absolutely huge. And then the other thing I thinks really important is get on the phone with the people that are hiring you before you speak
MF (32:11):
And, and, and, and get in their head, get in their heart, ask questions, understand what those hearts and souls in that room are worried about. I, I know lots of speakers that say, oh, I do the same keynote every time I’m not changing it. I’m not doing a pre-call cuz it isn’t gonna change. And I’m thinking, number one, like I could personally not do that because I need to know what the people in the room are worried about. What are they excited about? What’s what’s on their hearts and minds. What did they hear before I went up? What are they gonna hear after I gotta get in their head and heart? So pre-calls are really powerful because AJ I’ve probably given, I don’t know, 700 to a thousand keynotes. And, and I mean like paid over the last, like when it, when I did it as a, now in my world and nobody’s ever canceled a pre-call like nobody, because they cannot wait to get, and they have seven, eight busy people on these calls. It’s, it’s a, it’s like, you are the seventh person on the line. And they have like all these people and, and they want you to know their world and it matters. So I would say that’s a really important step that I think people sometimes underestimate that really matters really matters.
AJV (33:29):
Ah, you know, and so much of every single thing that you’re saying comes back to two things that you’ve got kind of said throughout this conversation, which I think are really important for people to grasp onto is one, the more you speak, the more you speak, right? So if you really want to be a speaker or build your speaking business, make sure you’re speaking, that could be for free. Most of us started that way. Eventually you’ll get paid for it. Doesn’t matter if it’s five people in a room or 500 speaking is speaking. Right. And then the next thing it’s, it’s relationships trust, right? Yeah. Build relationships. The people who are inviting you in do a really good job. So they refer you to other people get testimonials that increases trust, you know, get to know these audiences. So they know that you really understand them, but it’s build relationships so that you can build trust.
MF (34:18):
Yep, yep. Right.
AJV (34:20):
Universal.
MF (34:20):
That is absolutely right. And I think for a non celebrity speaker, I mean, I’ve spoke at an event recently with magic Johnson and I was getting micd up with the AV guy and, and I, I said something about his magic doing in Q and a and he goes, oh, they wouldn’t give us access to him before the event. We, we, we, we have no access to him. They are micing him. We have, and you know what, he’s magic Johnson,
MF (34:44):
Molly Fletcher. Can’t do that. I’m like, Hey, I’ll be down there 30 minutes early. Right. What do you want? You know what I mean? So I think, you know, it, it is, it is such a rewarding space to, to be in. But I, but like you said, AJ, I mean, be patient be gentle on yourself. Right. Honor, the people that you’re getting in front of and, and make it, you know, feel like it’s your first and it’s the most important one for you over deliver. All those things are so important. And, and to your point, I mean, I spoke for free a lot and you did too. And you know, the keynote that I gave early in my journey is very different from the one I give now. And, you know, with the more you speak, the more you grow, the more you see what lands and what doesn’t, what people re resonate with and what doesn’t, what people come up to you after and go, boy, that story about whatever was really powerful that you start to see, what’s, what’s really clicking. And then you can blow, you know, add on to the, so if it serves you and them in, in so many ways, it’s, it’s so important.
AJV (35:50):
Ah, I love that. I have love this conversation. I know that we’re almost at a time, so I wanna just do two, two last quick for the person who is listening to this, this show and this interview, and they’re going, man, it’s like, I’m not into the speaking business yet, but I have this message on my heart. I feel called to like share, this is what I wanna do with my life. Where do I start? Right. if you were to go back and, you know, tell your, you know, however long ago it was of like, this is what I would’ve done differently to expedite my journey. This is what I would tell that person today. What, what would she say?
MF (36:30):
You know, get out there more and speak more truthfully, like you said to three exterminators, if you have to, to your dog, in your office, to your husband, to your partner, to your, just keep refining, refining, refining, and playing with it. Okay. And, you know, and, and, and figure out your unique style. You know, I mean, there are so many wonderful speakers in the world and everybody has their own style and, and they land in their own way. And so be true to who you are, you know, don’t try to, to be anybody that you’re not. But to me, those are important things for people to keep front and center, but I would just say like everything in life, right. I, I, I, you know, I didn’t get, I didn’t, you know, when I was playing tennis, I had to hit a lot of floor, right.
MF (37:20):
A lot of bag. So just, just keep doing it, keep getting the wraps in the more you get the wraps and the better you get. And then I would also say what I didn’t do enough of to, to, to boil your question out more deeply is watch yourself, watch your videos of yourself and look at your, look, watch your own videos of you speaking and, and critique the heck outta yourself. You right. Really beat yourself up. The other thing I wish I would’ve done earlier too, is, you know, I have a few people who, what, what happens after a keynote is, is even if you were horrible, people go, oh, that’s so great. Oh, thanks so much. That was awesome. I mean, and so you think you’re really good?
MF (38:00):
Sure. You have some people in the back, like I have on my team or my husband who go, Hey, you totally missed the point in that story. Or you walked too much or you didn’t, or this or that, or you had lipstick on your teeth or anything, but have those people in the room early so that you can really work out some of those kinks that are gonna give you great feedback. Because at the end of every game of like, you can tell if it really, really landed or if it didn’t, but nobody’s gonna walk by you when they’re leaving the room and not say anything. Most people say, oh, that was awesome. And you don’t, maybe they mean it. Maybe they don’t. So you gotta have some people that are telling you the truth.
AJV (38:35):
Yeah. And I love what you said too. It’s like, because how many of us have heard a good speaker, but then never remembered them. And it’s like, it’s one thing to be good. But you said it’s like, you actually, you need to figure out what makes you different. What, what makes you unique? I’ll share this from my girl crush, my celebrity girl, crush, JLo JLo. I love what she says. She says that everyone is good. It’s no longer good enough to be good. You have to be different. So what are you doing to be different? And that’s the beautiful part about all of this is you are already different. Whoever you are. It’s like you are already different in the world. Has your life experiences, your unique brand, you know, your unique DNA. They do not have your brand message. They do not own it.
AJV (39:22):
They do not possess it. And then we try to look around and blend in and it’s like, it’s not good enough to be good. You’ve gotta be memorable. You’ve gotta be different. Yeah. So figure out what is it that makes you really different. I love that. I love that. Okay. So then, and I promise, I’ll let you go. So you recently had a awesome new Ted talk that came out called the secrets of a champion mindset. So I know for so many people out there, something on their bucket list or one of their goals is to do a Ted talk, right? Yeah. So give us just your 62nd. Like if I were, if I were gonna teach you or coach you or help you get booked for a Ted talk, like, what would you tell somebody, like, what do they need to do to get out there and figure out how to go out and deliver a Ted talk?
MF (40:07):
Well, can I tell ’em the truth, AJ?
AJV (40:09):
Yes, absolutely.
MF (40:11):
I called you, I called AJ and I said, AJ, I wanna do a Ted talk. And she’s said, okay, well, and you help me thankfully. And Rory with kind of what that uniqueness is and all those things. And, and, and, and then you were so kind, and I know, you know, you’re incredibly busy, but you were so kind to sort of connect me with some people that had delivered some Ted talks. And, and then I connected with some of those folks. And one of ’em said, you know what? You, you’re in Atlanta, you’re in Buckhead. Let me connect you with the people that, that manage that Ted talk. And so I, I did and they bid, and I delivered a Ted talk a couple months ago secrets of a, of a champion mindset, which is, you know, clipping away. And I think helping a lot of people, which has been really fun.
MF (40:58):
So my advice to people is lean into, to the relationships that you have. I identify, you know, a stage. I mean, the good news is now there are so many TEDxs, there are so many Ted talks there’s there, there are some, I would say too to people that are better than others, there are some events that are more well managed than others. So I, I would encourage people to get really clear on that and make sure that you’re positioning yourself consistent with the brand that you wanna put out into the world. And so it was, as you, as you talk about it, as Roy talked about, it was about relationships. And then it was about leaning in and establishing those, helping them and, and they were kind enough to help me,
AJV (41:37):
Oh my
MF (41:38):
Gosh. Find a good fit.
AJV (41:39):
I totally forgot that. I even did that.
MF (41:41):
Yeah, I know. And that’s why I was like, can I tell the truth because your phone might blow up.
AJV (41:46):
I think like do that. I love that. It’s like, don’t try to do it on your own.
MF (41:51):
Yeah, yeah. Yeah.
AJV (41:52):
Like, like you said, it’s lean into relationships. It’s you know, seven degrees of Kevin bacon. Right. Everyone knows someone who knows someone who knows someone, but put your dreams out there, put those goals out there. And it’s amazing. Once you’re willing to put something out there, then someone goes, I could probably connect you with someone who could probably connect you with someone. Sure. So it’s just never be afraid to put it out there and ask
MF (42:16):
Well, yeah. And, and, and also don’t be afraid to go right to the source, right. Go right. To me, there’s so many Ted talks now, Ted acts, whatever, go, go to some different markets and, and, you know, put a compelling theme out there. I mean, I think a, a book that I recommend to people who are considering a Ted talk is the red thread, who is a woman that I, I, I met through a woman, that’s a BVG friend. And, and, and that was a really it’s, it’s all, you know, cuz Ted talks are different and, and my Ted talk is different at some level, a little bit than what I deliver from a main stage. And, and that was really, that was a helpful book to identify what is that one thing that, that is gonna really, that gonna be really that thread through the whole thing. What’s that one thing people will lift up and extract from it and then maybe, you know, process deploy, think about it in their own lives. So that’s an important thing too, to recognize that the, the Ted talks that go viral, that Ted talks that are really, really good study those look at those. What, what in your mind made them good and, you know, lift that up and authentically apply it to yourself.
AJV (43:20):
Ah, that’s so good. I love that. And if you guys wanna go check out Molly’s new Ted talk, it’s secret of a champion mindset. We’ll put the link in the show notes. You can also just go check it out on YouTube. I’m sure it’s out there. You can also go to Molly fletcher.com, right. And Molly, if people wanna connect with you and stay in touch, where’s the best place for them to go.
MF (43:44):
I would say go to Molly, fletcher.com. That’s the best place. And, and, and from there they can source all of our social handles, all that kind of stuff. And
AJV (43:51):
Molly, you also have an awesome podcast which I think is helpful. You had amazing. Yes, you are such a great interviewer. I actually, I I’ll share this with everyone. I, I, hands down, I’ve been doing a ton of podcast interviews here lately promoting our national research study by far hands down. Molly has been the best interviewer that I have done on a show in a really long time. So major crew to you. So everyone go check that out. Thanks so much for listening, Molly. Thank you so much for giving us some of your time today. We love you. Everyone else. We’ll talk to you later. Catch the next episode of the influential personal brand. So
Speaker 3 (44:31):
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, 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 we hope to talk to you soon.

AJV (45:14):
So welcome to the recap episode of my interview with Molly Fletcher on how to build, grow, and scale your speaking business. All right, y’all, I’m gonna keep this super high level, but really, really important because to me it doesn’t matter if you are thinking about being a speaker, if you are currently on that journey or if you are already an established speaker and you’re just trying to figure out how to do more of it or do less of it with higher fees this conversation is for you. So these are three big highlights. Three big takeaways from I got that I got from my interview with Molly Fletcher. So here’s the first one. And I said this probably five times in the interview, but I’m gonna say it again for the sake of all of you who are listening to this recap episode and you are not gonna listen to the full episode.
AJV (46:04):
The more you speak, the more you get to speak. And I don’t think we can say that enough. It’s if you wanna be a speaker, if you are a speaker and you do more speaking, if you’re currently doing a lot of speaking and you just wanna raise your fees, whatever it is, the formula is the same. The more you speak, the more you get to speak, or the more you speak, the better you get, right? The more you speak the higher your fees can be because you get better at it and more people see you. And then it becomes a conversation of supply and demand. I, I loved what Molly said is that, Hey, in the beginning it was, you know, one, you know, one event she was doing for free for some students. And then it kind of grew from there, but now they get over 300, 500 requests a year and she’s picking and choosing because she’s only gonna do 80.
AJV (46:51):
And I say only eighty’s a ton, right? Because in a speaking engagement, you’re probably gone for two days. That’s 160 days. That’s 50% of your year. That’s a ton. That’s a lot of days. But at the same time, it’s, they’re picking and choosing because they have such a large supply of requests. Why? Because the more you speak, the more you get asked to speak, and the more you get asked the pickier that you can do, right? Just because you get invited that that’s, that many times doesn’t mean you have to do it. But I love that because it’s such a great remem reminder for all of us and a great thing to remember from even me of going, it doesn’t just happen. You have to make it happen if it’s what you really wanna do. And that means you need to be willing to do it for free in the beginning.
AJV (47:38):
Very few of us actually start with fees from the very first time we do it. Why? Because we actually need the practice right before we say, Hey, I’m good enough for you to pay me to do we need to know what we’re gonna say? What impact is it gonna have? How am I going to differentiate myself? What is my message? And you need to get good at it. Right? And I, I love that. And it kind of leads into the second thing. It, it’s a great thing to put in perspective of right? The more you speak, the more you get to speak. And the more that you will speak because you better, more people see you all the things. But the second thing I think is a really great aha for me. And I never heard anyone say it this way is you have to remember that what what’s really happening here as an individual on the behalf of a company or an organization is inviting you a stranger to come and get on stage in front of their top client or their top employee employees.
AJV (48:33):
And they’re gonna pay you and hope what comes out of your mouth is good. That’s kinda a big risk. Especially when you’re paying a lot of money because you’re going, man. It’s like the words that come out of your mouth could really detract from our business could really set us off. So how do you, as a speaker, as an aspiring speaker, create more confidence and trust so that you don’t feel like a stranger to the people who are looking at you or talking to you or considering you, or even for the ones who have booked you. And I thought Molly gave some really good tips. There it’s one. You need to have tons of video footage. And guess what? Y’all, you can only have tons of video footage. If you’re actually out there speaking a ton, the more you speak, the more you get to speak.
AJV (49:21):
So one, I have tons of video footage and not just the highlights, not just the sizzle reel, not just pictures of standing ovations and people standing in line to meet you, but people need confidence and long what she said, long form content, 10 to 20 minutes of going, Hey, I just, I was able to watch you for 10 or 15 or 20 minutes. And I have confidence now that you do know what you’re doing and you will deliver a good message and you do it in a good way. That helps you become less of a stranger, right? It’s confidence inspiring and helps build some credibility and trust even before they’ve ever met you. So make sure you have tons of videos, create a YouTube channel, have long form videos, have short form. You need both. It’s not one or the other it’s both, but have lots and lots of video footage.
AJV (50:05):
Right. Other things she said is do pre-calls right. Actually get to know these people, don’t just show up and go help. It goes well. No, like do your due diligence figure out why are they having you? What’s the theme of their conference? How can you compliment the message that they’re saying internally to their team or to their clients what would make it a home run for them? What are the biggest things that they’re running into? Why did they decide to book you? How does this fit in with the other things they’re discussing at this meeting or throughout the year, those are all things that will help you line up to make sure that you compliment whatever they’re doing. And it fits very seamless and no one’s gonna say, Hey, it was great, but it felt really disconnected to everything else.
AJV (50:46):
That’s our job as speakers is to actually come in and do that due diligence and do that research to make it feel like I made this program just for you. And you don’t have to completely change everything you do every time. But have the opportunity and elements with each part of your speech. That is like, this is where I could tweak it and tailor it just enough so that it really resonates with each unique audience. So help yourself become less of a stranger. I think other ways you can do that, make sure you have a website, even if it’s a one page landing page with a bio and a link to a video, but someone needs to be able to go AJ vaden.com and go somewhere. And for all of you who are just getting started and like even mine right now, my website is in progress.
AJV (51:30):
I, I just have it redirected to my LinkedIn, right? Cuz on my LinkedIn, I can have media clips. I have recommendations and testimonials like just redirect it. There’s always a short term solution to the long term end result goal that you’re after. So even me right now where my website’s in construction, I just, you direct my LinkedIn profile because you can get media clips, you can get testimonials, all the things that I need are there. So become less of a stranger. And then the third thing which I loved, and it’s such a great reminder for all of us in this business. If you were trying to build a speaking career, you are also in sales, right? Right. You are in marketing, you are in sales, you are in customer service. That’s what are doing. And she talked about the power of referrals.
AJV (52:12):
She goes, I have built most of my speaking business. Most of my, most of my speaking contacts are referrals. They were people who were in the room who saw me speak, which goes back to the more you speak, the more you speak, but they were people in the room who said, Hey, have you ever spoken into this event? Or I think you could be great at this or what about this? So it’s making sure that you’re mindful that every audience you go to, it’s an opportunity to get invited to a new audience. So what are you doing? What is your message from stage about how like, this is actually what you do as a profession, right? Talking about other events that you’ve spoken at the are simple, easy ways for you to seamlessly add that in so that people in the audience go, oh, this is what you do.
AJV (52:58):
I wonder if I’m a part of any other groups or associations that would like a speaker like you. And that’s our job to figure out how do we very seamlessly weave that in so that it, it reminds entices the audience to refer you to other organizations. So very simple things that you can be doing to build, grow and scale your speaking business. I love this interview. I love her. She’s got such a heart for her message, which just oozes out of her. And there’s no, there’s no doubt in my mind, the reason that Molly gets booked so much so often is because she’s got a heart for what she does. She’s got a passion for the message. And you can feel that in her interview. And that’s a huge part of what we gotta do. This cannot be a job. This gets, this has to be something that you love to do.
AJV (53:48):
And it’s what you get to do full time. Right? And when that happens and it’s all about the excitement and the passion, everyone else catches on, right? Enthusiasm is contagious. So how can you, refall in love back into what you do that makes it so contagious. Other people are like, I need some of the at energy, some of that enthusiasm, some of that passion on my stage to reinvigorate my audience, right? People are looking for the emotional parts of us as speakers, as much as they’re looking for the content. So just remember at the end of the day, this cannot be a job. It gets to be a passion that you get to do full time that it’s not just a job. So thank you for listening. Go check out the full episode, go check out. Molly Fletcher, Molly fletcher.com. She’s amazing. This interview was incredible.

Ep 237: How to Build a Legendary Speaking Career in 5 Years with Michelle Poler | Recap Episode

RV (00:02):
I love Michelle Poler. Oh my gosh. That was an awesome interview. And I am doing the recap for you solo today on the interview that I just completed with Michelle poler and I have become a quick fan of this woman. I just think she’s cool. I think she’s fun. I think she is funny. I think she’s got a great story and what an awesome, I mean, so many lessons came out of that conversation. I mean, we’re, we’re titling it around how to build a legendary speaking career in five years because her story is amazing. Like she has gone from, I’m terrified to be on stage two. I’m one of the busiest, highest paid speakers in the world in five years. And that’s a pretty, you know, rapid transformation. And hopefully that gives hope to you. Like if you have that dream of saying, Hey, I want to be a speaker.
RV (00:56):
Then, you know, it shows you that it’s like it can be done. There’s, there’s a system to all of this. There’s a process. And that’s my first takeaway actually was very much in that vein of how she built this, this very legendary speaking career in five short years, because if you’ve spent any, any time at all around brand builders group, either as one of our members or gone through any of our free trainings or, you know, watched any of our, our, our, our free online summits, et cetera, et cetera, that we do, you know, that we are big believers, big believers, that if you have diluted focus, you get diluted results. So what do we teach people? Well, the very first thing we do in finding your brand DNA, which is our phase one course, one curriculum is we help them figure out what problem do they solve in one word, we then help them figure out what is their one business model.
RV (01:47):
The one way they should focus on making money. And then we have them focus on what is there. One message. Michelle is a great example of that, right? Like she has one problem, fear, one business model speaking. She has this, this one message about doing what is uncomfortable. And then she did exactly what we tell people to do, which is show videos of you doing what you do. Use video marketing as a way to just showcase and demonstrate what you do so people can sample you and they can see you doing it. And that’s what she did. I mean, in her case, she was actually overcoming fear. So it was entertaining as well, but that’s all you’re doing on social media. And video is just giving people a chance to sample you, like sample your expertise, teach them like, if you want to change lives, start changing lives, like push the button and let’s go hit record and let people see you do what you do.
RV (02:52):
Give them a 62nd sample, teach them, inspire them, educate them, you know, help them. And, and that is what she did. And she did it consistently. And she did it for a few years. And at first it was small and a few years later it was big. And that’s the nature of this. Most people just won’t stick with it for a few years, but if you start now, I mean, think about it in five years, you could be a legend doing something that you haven’t even started yet five years. Like that’s super powerful. So I, I just love that part of the professional story of, you know, what Michelle has been able to do in her husband. Her husband’s awesome. We of course, got to meet with them backstage at the global leadership summit last year, as we had one of our friends Jamie Kern, Lima was speaking there and I had spoke there the year before.
RV (03:42):
And one of our other friends, several of our friends have spoken there and you know, Michelle was there. And so that’s how we met and just absolutely love it. So that was my first takeaway. One, one problem that you solve one business model do one thing at a time and use video to show people a sample of what you do. Couldn’t be more textbook brand builder type speak. So that’s it. The second takeaway was hit me powerfully personally. So here’s what she said. She said, every decision that you make is either comfort based or growth based, which are you choosing like any decision or choice that you faced there is going to be a comfortable option or a growth option. There’s going to be a safe, familiar thing, or there’s going to be a new, scary, risky thing. Which one are you doing most of us by the default.
RV (04:44):
And you need to understand this. This is the default design of the human brain. This is neuroscience. The default of your brain is not designed for success. The human brain is designed for survival. The number one function of the human brain is to keep you alive. And so what happens is you will automatically always default to safety, to comfort, to familiar, which means you’re not growing. You’re not changing. You’re not evolving. You’re not adapting. You’re not learning. You’re not pushing, you’re not stretching. You’re not accomplishing something new. All of that requires deliberate, intentional focus to say, yeah, this is scary and I’m going to do it anyways. It is what we talk about and take the stairs. The story about be the Buffalo, or if you’ve ever read my story about do it scared. And this idea that you’re, you are scared and you do it anyways.
RV (05:44):
That is the essence. And so I, one of the things that I did is just like a little practical challenge because I was inspired by the interview with Michelle was I made an Instagram real where I did live singing, which I’d never done. I don’t, you know, I don’t do much dancing. Most of what I’m doing is content like teaching, right? That’s most of what my social strategy is and what I’m doing. And so I thought I’m going to do something fun that I’ve never done. And this is a secret skill that many of you probably don’t even know that I have, but I’m, I’m quite handy at rap lyrics. I can hear the lyrics really well and I memorize them. And so what I did was I took the song from the sound Disney soundtrack, marijuana, the song that, that the rock Dwayne Johnson sings called your welcome.
RV (06:34):
And I wrapped it and I put it on social media, which was way outside of my comfort zone zones. I think I would never, ever do, but I did it just for fun. And just in honor of Michelle. So Michelle, there you go. That, that is my, my homage to you. My, my Dwayne Johnson lip singing rap Instagram real but it was, it’s such a simple thing because it’s like, there are so many other ways just since my conversation with her, that I have realized, wow, what’s the safe decision. What’s the risky decision. And we are deliberately more and more starting to choose risk, you know, calculated risk, calculated risk. I would say to use a term from Adam Grant’s book, originals calculated risk. I really love that concept calculated risks cause I I’m risk adverse. Because I’m, you know, I’m really logical.
RV (07:27):
And also like you, I have a human brain that’s designed to keep me safe, but being an entrepreneur, being successful, being an influencer, like being a mission-driven messenger, changing the world, all of those things, making more money, making more impact making like all of those things require comfort based decisions. They require stepping out of your comfort zone, doing things new. And that leads me to my third takeaway that I walked. I walked away with, out of that conversation from her, from, with Michelle. And this was also so practical was, you know, I was, I’d asked her the question, obviously go listen to the interview if you haven’t. But when I asked her directly like, you know, give me one tip for overcoming fear, like give me one practical tip for overcoming fear. This is so simple. Here’s what she said. Just ask yourself, what do I need to learn in order to be able to do that thing?
RV (08:23):
What do I need to learn? Right. So the fear is in doing something that you’ve never done, a huge part of that fear is just not knowing what does it take to do it? It’s the uncertainty. It’s, it’s the incompleteness of the story in your head, right? It’s it’s like, there’s a, you can see a finish line, but you have no idea what the journey is. It takes to get there. So you kind of know like, well, I don’t know if I could get there. It’s kind of scary the thought, but when you go, what do I need to learn in order to be able to do that thing? It’s now very controllable. It’s very concrete, right? It becomes more pragmatic. It’s like, you can get your hands wrapped around. It is. Oh, well sure. It would be scary to, you know, write a book.
RV (09:11):
But if I learned the writing process that authors use that wouldn’t be a scary, right? So that’s like what we teach in captivating content or in our bestseller launch plan. The one of, so in that, in that curriculum, we talk about how to become a bestseller, not the writing part, but the marketing part. And one of the things that was huge for me was just learning how the bestseller list worked. Right? So the very first time I ever thought about, I want to be a New York times bestselling author one day, it was terrifying. It was, it was, it was impossible. Like I might as well have been saying I was going to be LeBron James or the president of the United States or Warren Buffett. Like it couldn’t have been something any further away from my reality at that time. But I started moving in the direction.
RV (10:01):
I started learning about it. And one of the things that I learned was, oh, each of these bestseller lists obviously have some function that they use to determine what makes something a bestseller and they’re all different. That’s one of the things we had to learn. One of the things that we teach now and going, oh, if, if I can sell this many units over this period of time, that is what makes someone a bestselling author. And just learning that changed everything. Just like learning that one piece of information, because it went from this very obscure kind of like, oh, I can never do that to, oh, how could I do that? And in take the stairs in the buy-in principle of commitment, we talk about how most people allow their, their creativity to move in the direction of the, the neutral, which is, can I do this?
RV (10:58):
Is this possible? Should I try? Do I like it? Do I agree with it? And neutral always becomes negative. Neutral, always eventually becomes negative. But to the person who in what ultra performers do is just one degree different. They don’t say, can I do it? Should I do it? They say, how can I do it? And the moment you ask the question, how everything changes, because now you’re, you’re just going, oh, well, what would it take to pull that off? How could I meet that deadline? How could I hit that target? How could this become real? How could this become true? And that changes everything. It moves it out of this, this fear-based uncertainty and to this very like pragmatic, practical process. So whatever it is that you’re wanting to do with your personal brand or just in your life and your business in general, just first of all, kind of go, all right, well, what’s the comfort based thing.
RV (12:02):
In other words, what’s the word? What’s the thing. What’s the decision that scares me and then immediately follow up with, well, what’s, what’s the one thing I need to learn in order to be able to do that. And if you can answer that question, the fear will go away. And the likelihood that you will achieve that thing will go up exponentially. What do I need to learn in order to be able to do that thing? Hopefully you’re learning here every single week, how to build and monetize your personal brand, how to extend your reach, how to grow your impact, how to grow your influence and how to grow your income. That is why we are here. If you’re learning stuff from us, would you do me a favor and just share this podcast out with someone who you think needs it specifically this episode and maybe the episode the interview of course, with Michelle so that they can listen in and just go, who in your life is over, you know, struggling with something right now. And they’re, they’re facing fear. Just send them these two, these two, these two episodes say, Hey, I thought you might like this. That would be a super helpful to us. Make sure we can keep providing awesome content and great yet. Keep getting great guests for you so that you can keep learning so that you can keep conquering your fears. Thanks for being here. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.

Ep 236: How to Build a Legendary Speaking Career in 5 Years with Michelle Poler

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 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):
So a couple of years ago, I got a chance to speak at the global leadership summit, which is the large, one of the largest, if not the largest speaking events in the world. And then last year I was part of helping my friend, Jamie Kern, Lima, get to speak there. And she shared the stage with Michelle Poler, who you’re about to meet. And I have I’ve known of Michelle because she’s a very, very successful speaker. She is very loved and respected in our industry. Several of my friends like Jason Dorsey have met her and talked so highly about her and then shared the stage together a lot. And as I got to speak, I got to see her speak at GLS and we kind of became friends a little bit. And I just think she’s darling and has the coolest story. If you haven’t heard of her.
RV (01:39):
So she is kind of a, she’s the founder of a movement that’s called hello fears. She’s reached 70 million people with this movement. There’s, you know, she did a TEDx talk. She wrote a book called hello fears. She has spoken for huge companies, ESPN, Netflix, Microsoft. She’s been on the today show and featured in pretty much every major national media, but and he was, I just wanted to hear a little bit, I wanted you to get, to hear a little bit of her story of how she got started, and then maybe we’ll sneak a few tips from her about overcoming some of our fears and building our brands. So Michelle, welcome to the welcome to the show.
MP (02:20):
I was expecting some applause or something like
RV (02:25):
Dancing. We’re alive of it. You’d be dancing.
MP (02:28):
Yeah, exactly. I would be dancing, but I get the one.
RV (02:31):
Yeah, I love it. So you know, you’re from Venezuela, which I love that is wonderful. And, and I like have have a couple of friends from Venezuela is a, you are another one. Tell us how did this all get started? Because you were a little bit of a, I mean, this all started out of reluctance from you for, for you is how I interpreted it’s. Most people go, I want to become a speaker or be an author, and I’m going to write a book, but your whole story and start of your personal brand is like came from a completely different place.
MP (03:04):
Yeah, totally. I never in my life would have expected to be where I am today. Not even in my wildest dreams, because I had no idea that what I’m doing today was a thing was a possibility. So I didn’t grow up. Like you said, I’m from Venezuela. I didn’t grow up with speakers. Like never a speaker came to my school just to motivate us, you know, if there was a speaker, maybe it was like a mathematician or something like, you know, professionally in their area. And so I would, I had no, and then I didn’t, then I went to college for arts and there were no speakers also in my school that was in the United States when I moved here. I was 19 years old. I did my career here as an art director, graphic designer. And then I, you know, I, I worked at an agency, an advertising agency and they don’t invest that much.
MP (03:57):
I don’t want to you know, just, I guess, I don’t know every agency, but from what I’ve seen in advertising, they don’t invest normally that much in the personal growth of their employees. So there were no speakers in my agency when I was working there at YNR young and Rubicam. And so I was never exposed to this speakers. And when I moved to New York to do a master’s in branding at the school of visual arts, I, I was asked to do this 100 day project where we could choose anything we want to do for 100 days in a row. And it was like a series of exercises that we did that led me to understand that it was time for me to face my fears. That I’ve been a very fearful person, but mostly comfortable person my entire life, like I was achieving a lot of things. So I never really thought I need to get uncomfortable in order to
RV (04:52):
Cool assignment. It was a school assignment to do and do something for a hundred straight days.
MP (04:59):
Yeah, you can do anything. And you had to also share your project online day after day. Like it couldn’t be just something that you keep to yourself. It had to be somewhere on social media, you could decide where. And so I decided to use YouTube and face my fears. I decided to face one for your day, for 100 days, create a video for that and post that to YouTube. So it was such a big endeavor that even my professor was concerned. She’s like, I don’t think you should go this route. This is a lot of work and this is not even your thesis. And I was working full-time in advertising while I was doing my master’s. So I had too much in my hand and I still decided to go for it because I had a hunch. This project could change my life. I had no idea where this was going to lead, but in my mind, my goal at that point was to create a project where I could not only become of course, a braver person. Cause that was my main goal, but also where I could show all of my skills, my creativity, my design, my video editing my community building all of those skills. I wanted to put them into one big project. So then I could apply to jobs in branding showing this project that was like my goal, like the best that could happen for me was to get an amazing job maybe at Instagram or Google or YouTube, like a really cool brand. That was my, my intention.
RV (06:23):
I love that. So I didn’t piece that together that it was the college project and that you were you. Cause I noted. I mean, one of the things that I noticed, I was like, well, yeah, this is an amazing story, but the videos are amazing. And that’s because you were studying that one of the reasons, cause you were studying storytelling and visual design and editing. So that
MP (06:47):
I started editing videos for my honeymoon. Like when I got married, we bought a GoPro and I was like, I have to make the best video with this GoPro. So I learned from my brother who actually is a filmmaker. And he taught me everything. I know. So I was like, this is the perfect excuse for me to create one video a day. Cause I love video-making. And storytelling and branding and design and all of that. I just put it together and created this project called 100 days without fear that ended up leading me into speaking.
RV (07:22):
So you, you, how did it work? Like functionally, did you, did you live the hundred days and film it and then go back and edit it or did you live a day? Film it, edit it that night and post it.
MP (07:38):
Let me tell you what my schedule looked like. So I would go to work from 9:00 AM to 5:00 PM at my agency. Okay. In New York. And then from there I would go to my class from 6:00 PM to like 10:00 PM. Right. And so I would have a few times during the day to face a fear, it would be either very early in the morning. Like for example, one day I cooked something very outside of my comfort zone with a lot of boiling oil that I was, it was scary for me. And then, or I could do the lunchtime. That was the most popular time for me to go face a fear. So I was in my agency working alongside with all my peers, like my teammates. And then I’m like, be right back. I’m going to touch a snake or something. And so I would like go really quick to like central park, hold a snake, okay.
MP (08:26):
Pay the guy $2, go back to my work, keep working. And then I would go back home. I Reverend 10, 11:00 PM. And I would have to edit a video of what I, or, or I would use the nighttime. For example, I went by myself to a bar at night. So I would, or comedy show that I ended up doing standup comedy. So I would use one of those three times during the day. And then I would go back home, edit the video. Then I would do homework for my next day or whatever. I have left for my job and I was not sleeping, but I was on a high courage and excitement and living life to the fullest.
RV (09:03):
Wow. So how long did it, how long does it take you to edit one of these videos?
MP (09:08):
It was around maybe an hour and a half. It was like three minute videos. But yeah, it takes, takes a long time just to put re choose to write music. I started all my videos doing stop motion. So the, so it would say like fear number one. And it would be things that move by that by itself. And then I’m like, okay, I’m done doing stop motion. It only lasted three days. I’m like, I need to, to be able to do this in a quicker way.
RV (09:34):
All right. And so, so you, you would shoot these experiences. Most of them were pretty short, like a few minutes and then you would just come and spend like a couple of hours every night editing it and then you would post it and then you’d just go back to work the next day for a hundred.
MP (09:48):
Yes. For a hundred days. And whenever I could impose, for example, like it was a really busy day or I ended up facing a few really late or when people started to worry, they’re like, are you okay? Did you die facing your fears? Cause I’m doing scary things every day and I’m like, I’m fine. I’m fine. I just went to like to get hypnotized. And I had no time to go, sorry. So one day I would post two videos or during the weekend I would try to face more than two fears. So I have a little bit more so during the week I have more time, it was insane, but it was the best time of our lives. And I say our lives because I did it with my husband. He supported me since the beginning. We didn’t have kids at the time. And so he was like, let’s do it. I want you to become a braver person. I want you to be a braver mom one day for my kids. So he fully supported me and he faced my fears with me.
RV (10:37):
That is so crazy. So then you just made a list. Did you make a list of a hundred first and said, okay, these are the a hundred I’m going to do. And then cause like, did you have to travel for some of them or were they all in New York?
MP (10:51):
I tried to keep all of them in New York and some of them were upstate. So I would have to rent a car, maybe spend a night, something like that. But that’s, and then if I had any trips along the way, for example, I went to the how conference, you know, the branding conference. It was part of the school that I was like the school trip. So I face a lot of fears there. I was like, oh, this is a networking event. Like what can I do that is outside of my comfort zone? And so the way that I did it is I built a list of 20 things and then I couldn’t come up with any ideas. I was like, what, how am I going to start a 100 day project if I can’t come up with more than 20 ideas.
MP (11:31):
So I put this on Facebook, this was in 2015. So Facebook was like my biggest social media at that time. And I had no following. I mean, I was no one. I just had family and friends like there as my friends on Facebook. And so I posted there saying, Hey, I’m going to start a project where I’m going to face 100 fears. Can you suggest some ideas? And I think that’s the best thing that I could have done just because I started building community without realizing it, basically all the people that commented there. I had like around 60 something comments or more, I don’t remember. Everybody that commented felt like they’re part of this project since the beginning. So every time I would go out and face a fear that they suggested, for example, somebody said, you should go crush your wedding. You should go post nude in front of a drawing class. I mean, things that I know that never crossed my mind, I was like, yeah, it’s insane. So I was like, Hey, I did what you suggested. Here’s the video. So they felt like, oh, that’s so cool. I suggested something. She actually did it. And now I’m part of this. So they were the first ones to share my project and rude for me. And it was a really good feeling cause I was not alone doing this.
RV (12:45):
And when did you get the sense that this was taking off or like blowing up or cause there’s, there’s also a Ted talk that happens in here. But is that after?
MP (12:55):
Yeah, so it was, you know, it was one comment from a friend from college that she never reached out to me. And while I was doing the project, one time she reached out and said, you know, your fears, like your videos are making me a braver person. I’m daring to do more things at work. After I see you face your fears. And she knew me from college. So she was like, I remember how fearful you are. So I’m very proud of you. Thank you for inspiring me. And that comment made me realize that this project had a lot of potential. So I was like, this should be out there more people should know about this. And then one day out of the blue day, 40 of the project, it was picked up by daily mail in the UK. And they reached out and they asked for permission to publish my videos on their website.
MP (13:42):
And I was like, heck yeah, you can publish my videos, whatever you want, do whatever you want with my videos. That will be amazing. And so they published that and minutes later it was all over. It was every single website was sharing this and then contacted me like Huffington post CNN, Fox, all of them were like, we want to face fears with you. So, because I was in New York, it was really easy to just you know, get together with them some place and then go face fierce together. And that was pretty cool. Cause then it was all over the media and a lot of people started following the project. So I went from like 150 followers to 30,000. Wow.
RV (14:23):
Wow. That is so cool. So at the start of a, at the end of a hundred days, how many followers did you have? Like 30,000.
MP (14:30):
Yeah. Around that people that were like so eager to see what was the next year. And they were all really worried. Like what’s going to happen after it. Cause they’re like, we’re loving this project. We don’t want it to end. And I was so exhausted. I was like, I need this project to end, but I can’t continue facing one fear a day is taking over my life. Of course, one of my fears was quitting my job. So I didn’t have a job for the last, maybe 35 years, which was really helpful because I have more time to do this. I also graduated from my program, so I had more time to do this. And then the last fear was to speak at Ted TEDx. And so I had more time to prepare for that. It was not on the day 100. It was like a few weeks later. Cause that’s the date that the, you know, the event was taking place. And then I had a lot of people that they expecting to see what happened next.
RV (15:21):
So did you reach out to Ted? Did they find you? What, how that happened?
MP (15:26):
So when I started this project, I put TEDx as my last fear. And then I got so like the imposter syndrome selling me. Who do you think you are? Of course, you’re not going to go get into Ted who, you know, they’re not going to accept whatever. And so I removed it and I was like, yeah, I’ll forget about that. And when the project went viral, I was like, maybe I should consider reaching out. Maybe they will listen because I am all over now. And I know the impact that this project is having on so many people. So my husband found out who the organizer was for TEDx Houston and he reached out and through LinkedIn and this guy responded and then he was like, I love your project. Yes. I want you on our stage, but are you from Texas or related to Texas in any way?
MP (16:16):
Cause we won local speakers and I was like, I’m not I would love to, but now I’m not. And then he’s like, I’m sorry. And then I wrote a huge email listing, all the reasons why I should be on his stage, even though I’m not from Texas. And two weeks later he wrote back saying, okay, Michelle you’re in. And I was not only in, I was one of the highlights of the day. And it was like a really amazing experience to see that you can get the things that you want if you dare to really go after them and ask for it and you know, be persistent. Huh?
RV (16:51):
I love the smell. And so I think, but in your, your Ted talk has several hundred thousand views
MP (16:57):
Almost like half a million.
RV (16:59):
Yeah. So, which is awesome. But I think one of the, one of the things is I think people go, oh, Michelle went viral and that’s how she started her career. Which in which in some ways is true based on what you’re saying, but it’s in some ways also not true. It wasn’t like you had millions of followers or 10 million views on a Ted talk or something. So how did you then kind of parlay it? Like as we kind of go, okay, now we move this at some point, the light bulb goes on in your head like, Hey, this could be my business. I should do this. And you, you leveraged off of that and you turned it into what is now a really phenomenal business.
MP (17:41):
Yeah. Yeah. So exactly. It’s what you’re saying. It’s not like I blew up and suddenly brands all over are me. It’s not like it was just a virality wave that I was able to like capitalize for like know how to really take advantage of that for my next stage. So the question I made myself is what exactly resonated with people about this project and how can I turn that into something bigger? And so we met Jason Dorsey, as you mentioned at the beginning of the podcast that day, he was speaking also at TEDx and he saw me and he’s like, Michelle, you should be gone a speaker at call me. And so we call him and he gave us the tips on how to start, basically build a website, build a demo reel, what’s your audience? What are your, your talking points, develop a 45 minute talk, things like that.
MP (18:35):
And so we started to work so hard on that. And then we started to pitch this talk to company. So I listed all of the friends that I have that work in different companies like corporations. For example, I have my, one of my best friends working at Google. One of my friends, someone that I know of actually works at Facebook at Netflix. So I started calling people, do you know anybody that works here or there? I wanted my resume to have like this amazing companies and logos that I admire so much. And we started pitching this, showing them my TEDx and then showing them what I recorded myself, presenting at Google and all of these different companies. And that’s how we started building the speaking business from the ground up.
RV (19:16):
And that, what year was that? What year was that?
MP (19:18):
2016.
RV (19:20):
I mean, that’s pretty crazy that from in the year 2016, you built like your first demo video. And then by the year 2021, you were speaking on the biggest, the biggest speaking stage in the world. I mean, five years, that’s pretty incredible.
MP (19:36):
It really exceeded our expectations. Like we never imagined this would go this far, this fast. And also for example, my husband was still working in finance when we started and he was helping me develop my presentation. He would practice, reach out to clients and bureaus and all of that, but he was still with his full-time job because I was not working. Like I was not making any money. And then one day he called an amazing person that represented or actually still represent brunette brown in the speaking industry. And he was like, Hey, I I’m trying to help out. My wife here develop a speaking business. This is her demo reel. This is her TEDx. What do you think it was at his job in his office having this phone call with this person called Michelle and she saw this and she was like, you should leave your job and represent your wife. And you both should work full time on this because Michelle has an amazing potential. I actually I’d love to help. So she started helping me also. And she’s still representing me today and that’s been one of the best things that happened in our lives. So my husband quit his job in finance and worked full time with me doing
RV (20:48):
This. And when you guys started, so you start this as like a little social project and you do a Ted talk, then you basically create a website, some program descriptions, you had a video editing, which is a huge, that’s a huge asset to have had it. And but then you basically just make a list of all these companies you want to speak at. And then you start calling friends and family and saying, Hey, do you know anyone who works at this company? And then you just said, they, you find out who books the meeting, and then you say, Hey, I’d like to come talk. Here’s my bio, here’s my program. And here’s my demo video. And that, and then, then that’s how you started.
MP (21:26):
Yeah, yeah. They would say, okay, I’m not in charge of this, but I know the person that organized an event last year, let me reach out. And then it would go from person to person until we find the right one. And then of course I started doing events for free for this companies. I wanted to build my resume and then they started hiring me back and paying my fee to, you know, to bring me back to all their different offices. That’s what I did with Google and all of the other companies. And I think it was just a lot of self-confidence that got me there. Like when you know that what you have has so much value and that is so unique and authentic and original, and that you’re the right person to be delivering this message and, and talking about this things and inspiring people, then I think, you know, you have half the battle won because you believe in yourself. And I actually have this sticker right here that I love that I created says, when you believe in yourself so much, you make others believe in you as well.
RV (22:24):
I love that. I love that. That w and, and so basically you just start calling on these companies, you start speaking for free, then they say, Hey, we’d love to have you come back and do something. And so then it’s like, what’s your fee. And then you have a fee and then you do that more. And people see you and they say, will you come speak at my thing? And I have a friend, and then you raise your fee and you just basically been in that cycle for like five years until you end up getting a call from the global leadership summit and say, Hey, will you come, will you come speak on, speak on our stage? And, and, and so you still book gigs and in primarily, you’ve also been very, very focused on keynotes, right? Like your core businesses. You’re a speaker.
MP (23:07):
Yeah. Actually when I started, I had so many ideas. I was like, I want to do merch. I want to do YouTube. I wanted to speak. And I also want to create a company. I want to do all these things. And then my husband is very strategic and that’s really good for me cause I’m all over the place. And I have so many ideas and I want to do them all, you know, typically like the creative personality. And I’m like, yeah, I could do this. I can do that. I could do that. But then he’s like, Michelle, let’s focus on the one thing that can help us leave our jobs and actually, you know, make a living out of this. So it’s not YouTube, it’s not merged. It’s not any of those things is speaking. So let’s do this, let’s focus on one thing. And then that’s lesson that I keep you know, putting into practice until today, every time that I’m going to commit to one project, it’s just one project at a time. And so by doing that, we were able to really get this beam to the next level. And once we were very comfortable with our new career as speakers, then I started also doing social media. I started, I wrote my book, hello fears and, and doing all the other things I did merge. And now I have a baby.
RV (24:18):
That’s the, I
MP (24:19):
Did the baby.
RV (24:21):
Yep. Once you have a baby that you, you won’t do much for five years. You’ll. You’ll, you’ll take care of that, that baby. That is so great. Well, so this has been awesome, Michelle. I, I, I, it’s so cool to just hear, hear your story about how this all happened. And you probably don’t realize this, but you’re reinforcing like every single thing that we teach to our clients and members in terms of how, how to go about doing this and on that, can we talk about fear for a second? Can we do like more of like a little coaching coaching session just for a minute. And by the way, the book is called, hello fears. If you, you didn’t pick that up, that’s the name of Michelle’s book? So on the topic of overcoming fear, this is something that I think personal brands have to face a lot because it’s like, oh yeah, I want to go speak for Google, but I’m scared.
RV (25:16):
They might not like me. I might not get ahold of them. They might reject me, or I might want to reach out to speakers, bureaus or literary agents, or I might want to get on television or even just get written up in some article and there’s fear there, or for a lot of our clients, it’s even just scary to get on camera and say, you know, I want to post a, a 62nd video, which sounds really simple, but, but you go, man, I can find a hundred reasons not to press record on my phone. So why do you think we have some of those fears? And, and obviously you had a little bit of the benefit of doing a hundred days of facing fears. And so you kind of rolled off of that momentum in this, but do you have any tips for people that are struggling with that kind of thing?
MP (26:01):
I think it’s so sad that the main reason why we don’t achieve our goals and our dreams is ourselves. Like it’s ourselves telling us for some reason, like we’re not worth it or it is not worth pursuing. So fear stops us for so many reasons, for example, and I, I talk about this also in my program. I’m like the first thing I tell people is fear stops us. Why? And so I give the example of when I wanted to lunch my online program, all the different reasons, for example, what if somebody else is already doing a program about branding and you know, why would they choose me? What if people think that I only want their money? What if I, all those what ifs, right? What if it’s not as good as people think? And then we listen to that and we stop ourselves from doing the things that we actually want to do. And if you ask me, what’s the main fear people have, what will you say? What do you think is the main fear people have
RV (26:55):
That they won’t be good enough?
MP (26:57):
I think the main fear people have is disappointing. Other people that’s one of the main things. And so we stopped doing so many things because we don’t want to be perceived as something we don’t want to disappoint other people. So and it’s such a shame because we need people’s value. We need their value. And for that, we need them to have the courage, to put their valley out there, to shut up like their imposter syndrome and all those ideas. And I can tell you a couple of things that are helpful, for example if your message can help three people, can you think of three people in your life that have asked for help in what, in the area that you teach? You can also help 3000 people. And what I mean by this is that if you know, more than other people, about a certain topic, you are qualified to do that.
MP (27:49):
That’s one of the main things that we tell ourselves, I am not qualified because for example, you want to talk about any topic like even parenting? No, there are some people with PhDs that talk about parenting. If you are a parent, you can talk about parenting to anybody that is not a parent because you know, more than people that are not parents do. Now I have a nine month old baby. I know more about babies then Michelle, a year ago. And I would’ve loved to hear this. Michelle talk about babies, you know, like, so if you do, if you know more than a group of people, you are qualified, that’s it, that’s the main thing. Yeah. You don’t need to be the best one, but it’s enough. And let me think and just try to think, well, the, the thing I teach everybody in my, in my talks that you heard is what’s the best that can happen seriously. If you dare, if you choose to go out and record that 60 minutes, 62nd video, what’s the best that can happen. What if that can lead you to accomplish those things that you’ve been wanting for so long, but you keep listening to all your excuses out there. And that is still focusing on the rewards is the main thing that will help us take action when we’re in that spot.
RV (29:02):
And, and, and it’s just that shifting it from what’s the worst thing that can happen, which is what most of us think about to, what’s the best thing that can happen. And in that moment, when you’re kind of like, Ooh, I want to do it, but I’m scared. This just like that, that one little shift is a catalyst for doing, for, for actually doing the thing that you want to do.
MP (29:24):
In my case, I promised myself that I was never going to allow my fears get in the way of my treats. That’s the simple, not as not so simple premise, I guess, or line thing that I promised myself. And so every time I want to accomplish something and I see, and I realize that my fear is the one thing getting in the way. That’s when I have to go out and do it and forget about my fear and think what’s the best that can happen and hope for the best. And most of the times, the only things you regret are the ones that you didn’t do.
RV (29:58):
And so the moment you, so you just kind of have like this mental alarm in your head that says, I want to do something, but I’m scared. And so whenever you feel that it’s like, okay, I have to do it now.
MP (30:10):
Oh yeah. Yeah. Because I see the world in two different, like in this context, every decision that you choose is either a comfort based decision or a growth based decision. So whenever we’re in front of any situation, you have two options. Are you choosing growth or are you choosing comfort? And it doesn’t look the same for everybody. So very personal thing. So you have to think which one is the scariest thing to do right now that most of the times is the growth option.
RV (30:44):
And then you just go for it.
MP (30:47):
You work on it, you work on yourself first. I think that’s the most important thing, working on yourself, working on your confidence and when you’re ready, then you go for it. But it is important to work on ourselves. People, sometimes they don’t want to go to therapy. They don’t want to learn new skills. They don’t want to work on themselves. And then they pray. They want to achieve certain things. I think it all works. It all starts with you.
RV (31:11):
Hmm. That’s interesting though. So you’re saying that like, Hey, okay, do you feel this fear? You want to do it? And then it’s, it’s not necessarily just go out, just jump in and do it. It’s like, okay, what, why do I need to learn in order to feel equipped to, to then go do that thing.
MP (31:28):
The imposter syndrome to be real, you don’t want to be an imposter. And so in order to delete, like raise the imposter syndrome from the equation, you actually need to become the person that you would admire, right? You can’t teach about finance and B being broke. You, you can teach about achieving your dreams. If you have not achieved your dreams. I think that first you have to become the person that you would admire. And then you can teach others about that. But also there’s part of ourselves, like our fear telling us that we’re never there and it’s never enough. You know, and that, yeah. So it always telling you, you need to read one more book. You need to do one more course. No, you have to stop. And also think, okay, I think I am at this point where I can teach people what I know. And you can’t just stay on the loop of doing another course, another book, because then you will never put everything you’ve learned into action.
RV (32:24):
Is there any, you have any tips for identifying the difference there between where you go, when am I just, when am I actually going? Okay, I’m equipping myself so that it’s not imposter syndrome versus I’m using it as something that we call creative avoidance. That’s a term for my first book where you’re like, you’re using it as a really a procrastination mechanism.
MP (32:49):
I think that I don’t like to compare myself with other people, but it’s okay to compare yourself with yourself. So maybe think about yourself a year ago. Where are you? Are you still kind of in the same or you, you say, whoa, I wish I could tell this things that I know now to my year ago, self, if there are some things that, you know, you’re like my, my one year ago, self would love to know this things. It would have made his life easier. Then I think Europe one where you can share what you know with other people is yes, you can always know more and you know read more and all that, but then you have to understand what and any it’s okay to start when you’re not ready. Right. That’s one of the things that, that people say, I love this quote from, I think Reed Hoffman that says if your first product doesn’t embarrass you, you launch too late.
MP (33:42):
I love it. I’m very much like I have an idea. I, if I feel I have what it takes, I started and I started trying it and then people will give you feedback. That’s also really valuable. So just maybe try it with a small group of people and see the result there, see the impact. And then you will see, yeah, definitely this is ready for a larger group. Or maybe I should work on it first because for example, my talk, my keynote presentation w the one that I started six years ago is very different from the one that I am giving today. But if I would have waited six years to make it perfect to launch it, you know, I would be nowhere. Cause I just needed all the feedback, all the things that went wrong, all those things to just build the perfect talk that I feel right now is at an amazing level where I’m so confident about this, but it took me six years to get here.
RV (34:34):
I love it. Well, the book is called, hello fears. This is Michelle Poler. You’ve been listening to Michelle. Where do you want people to go? If they want to like sync up with all the stuff you have going on,
MP (34:43):
I would love for them to join me on my community on Instagram. So hello fears on Instagram. That’s where you’ll find everything about me and we’ll just keep in touch. So just let me know that you listened to this podcast so we can connect there.
RV (34:57):
I love it. Well, we’ll link up. We’ll link up to that. As well as your website and the book and everything thanks for helping us overcome our fears. Thanks for modeling. It. It is inspiring and super helpful to actually like get inside your, your mind a little bit about how you push yourself past cause you had so much, so much experience doing it. So keep inspiring, keep doing what you do and we’re, we’re we’re pulling for you. We’re we’re fans. We believe in you. Thank you
MP (35:24):
So much. My pleasure to be here.

Ep 235: Selling with a Servant Heart with Jim Doyle | Recap Episode

RV (00:02):
Selling selling, selling, selling is something we have to learn how to do it is such a critical skill and it is becoming a bigger part of what we’re focusing on. Teaching people, teaching our brand builders members. And so this was an apropos timing of the interview with my good friend, Jim Doyle welcome to the influential personal brand podcast. It’s Rory Vaden. I’m breaking down that interview and my top three takeaways from it because it was powerful and I’ll say this, you know, AJ and I, and our team have very specific I would say unusual philosophies about selling. I say unusual because they’re different from the, you know, there’s thousands of sales traders, thousands of sales trainers out there in the world. And I would say there are very few people who align philosophically with what AIJ and I, and our team believe about Holly, how selling should be done.
RV (01:02):
We’ve we’ve had a few of those people on Phil M Jones. We had him on. And and then Jim Doyle, what we, we haven’t had a ton. We haven’t had a ton though, but this was one of them. And I absolutely loved it. I mean, I’ve known Jim for so long and just some great reminders. And so this obviously comes from his, his new book selling with a servant heart. Here’s my top three, my top three takeaways. Number one, the customer is not buying your business. They are buying what your business can do for them. That is such an important, it’s such a subtle but distinct and important shift that you have to realize when you’re selling people, aren’t buying you. They’re not buying even what you do. They’re not even buying. Do they like you? Like, that’s a small part of it.
RV (01:57):
What they’re buying is what you can do for them. What benefit can you provide in their life? What result can you manifest for them? What, like what transformation do you have to offer them that makes their life or their business better? That’s what they’re buying. They’re not buying you what you do. I mean, as much as they’re buying what you can do for them. And this is one of the greatest mistakes that, I mean, it’s the most common mistakes that you see in marketing and selling is talking all about you, your product, your expertise, your knowledge, like how much H how, how much time you spent in your industry. And it’s like the only thing that matters is what you can do for people talk about them, their needs, their desires, their, their wants their goals, their dreams, their future, like talk about their, their plans and see if you can help them.
RV (02:59):
Like what, what you do should only be talked about in the context of that. Can you help them achieve those things? That is how you want to talk in a way, if you want to have great marketing, you want to have great sales. That’s all it is. It’s that simple. But the mistake that happens like 99.9% of the time is we talk about me, my us, our w like we, instead of you, your dreams, your goals, your hopes, your future, your plans, and how might I assist you, or how might we assist you in getting there, or how do we work alongside of you to make that come true? And that’s just such a subtle distinction, but a sharp one and a necessary one, and a critical one. If you want to be able to make some money in, in what you’re doing with your business.
RV (03:53):
Second thing, great. One, a great takeaway is he said, listening has a partner, and that is good questions. I love that. Being a great Brene greatest sales means being a great listener and being a great listener has this partner, which is being great at asking questions that is in our sales training that we teach at brand builders. So our events called pressure-free persuasion and in the closing section, which is all about helping someone make a decision, we talk about how being great at sales is being a master question. Asker. It is not being a smooth talker. It’s not having the gift of gab. It’s not being overly persuasive. It’s, it’s not being convincing or compelling, or even, even persuading. It’s certainly not pressuring. It’s just being a master question. Asker. It’s asking questions in a way that help people see for themselves that either what you have to offer will help them achieve their goal, or it will not.
RV (05:03):
And they will realize for themselves if you facilitate. And that is a key word here is that we believe in service centered selling is about facilitating a decision, not making a decision, not convincing people, not pressuring people, not pushing people. It is helping people make their own decisions about whether or not what they’re buying is good for them. So all you have to do is ask a bunch of questions that help them get clear on what they want. Ask them a bunch of questions that help them get clear about the fact that they’re not achieving it yet. And then ask them a bunch of questions about what they think would help get them there, and then show them how, what you’re doing fits that need like, aligns with that purpose. And you will create a sale, but it’s, it’s like your just drawing information out of them.
RV (05:58):
And then kind of showing up in this one specific area and tying what you do to what they need. You’re not pressuring people, convincing them, lying to them, manipulating like doing all the things that most salespeople do, at least not. If you do it, the brand builder way, right. Service centered selling is what we teach. And so obviously the title of Jim’s book selling with a servant heart was very, very much in line and we know him. So B com when, if, when you think about becoming great at sales, think about becoming great at asking questions. That’s what I want you to think of not being a master negotiator, not being a smooth talker, not having all the confidence in the world, not having the gift of gab, not, not being likable, not being you know, the, the hard, closer, just think of like, when you think of, I want to be better at sales.
RV (06:53):
What I want you to think is I’m going to become a master at asking questions. That’s what you should, you should think about. And if you want to know exactly what questions to ask, that you should probably talk to us about the concepts and information that we teach in pressure-free persuasion. Maybe you should pick up a copy of Jim’s book. And but you know, it’s, it’s the, all the stuff that I’m talking about right here. Like it, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out. It just takes a little bit of intention. And I think a focus on service rather than on just selling which ties takes me to my third big takeaway from this interview, which I loved. And I just, I love the way that Jim phrased this, as he said, I have to turn off my ego. I have to turn off my desire to be the star.
RV (07:42):
Ah, that’s so good, right? Like we have to be able to do that in lots of areas of our life. If we, if we really want to be serving people, if we really want to be a mission-driven messenger is we have to move out of that window. Out of that stage of going, I want to be the star. I want the eyes on me. I want the attention. I want the fame, the influence, blah, blah, blah, whatever. And just going, I’m turning off my ego. I’m here to help you achieve your goal. And I’m going to ask some questions and listen acutely to what your goals are and see if I can help to see if what I have is an actual fit for you. And if it is I’ll help you buy it. If it is not, I will help you move on and not waste energy debating about whether or not you should buy what I have.
RV (08:36):
And I’ll help you move confidently in another direction. That is what this is about you. All it is, it is genuinely legitimately, authentically putting their needs before yours and trusting that your needs will be met. If you do it. It’s like what? My, my mentor, the legendary, his executor is the most famous quote of all. If, if you help enough other people get what they want, you will get what you want. So help them focus on asking questions and seeing how you can help. And if you can have them buy your stuff, if you can’t help them in some other way. But that’s all, this is, that’s all this is about. And that’s all, we’re about the brand builders group. We’re just trying to help you. Hopefully this podcast is helping you. If it is, we do me a favor and share this with somebody who you think needs to listen to this, a recap and needs to listen to this interview, an episode that we did with Jim and and just keep coming back. We want to keep pouring into you. We love you. We appreciate you. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.

Ep 234: Selling with a Servant Heart with Jim Doyle

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 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):
If you’ve been listening to this show for any amount of time, you know, that the national speakers association has been a huge part of my journey was a huge part of my journey, especially early on as a speaker. And so I met Zig Ziglar and Brian Tracy, and so many you know, of my personal mentors and mark Sanborn, Eric Chester, David Avin. Well, there’s a group that NSA has called the million dollar speakers group that started a handful of years ago. And through that group, I got a chance, a we got a chance, AJ and I to meet a lot of the, the, the really sustainable businesses that have been run by speakers. So they were speakers that they turned their expertise into a business, and that’s the man you’re about to meet Jim Doyle. I met Jim through that group. We’ve been friends for a lot of years now at this point he’s run a multi-million dollar training company for years, and we’ve just known each other through that.
RV (01:47):
And I’ve always admired him and looked up to him. One of the things that he did recently is he did an Aesop with some of his team and sold some of the ownership of his company back to his own team members, which is really, really a wonderful way to leave a legacy and something that you just don’t hear that much about. But anyways Jim has a book that just came out, it’s called selling with a servant heart the 10 lessons on the path to joy and increased income. And another thing, if you’ve been listening for a while, you know, we almost never have people on here to talk about sales because we have a hard time finding people who we agree with and how they teach. And we’ve got some really, really specific philosophies around selling that are pretty rare, but Jim is one of the guys that over time we’ve really come to a door and endorsed and we, we endorse this book. And so anyways, I wanted you to get a chance to meet him and learn from him along alongside of me as I learned from him. So Jim, welcome to the show.
JD (02:54):
Thank you. I, I have to laugh, but you know, Brian, Tracy Zig Ziglar Jimbo, Like I’ve arrived at to be even in the same sentence with those guys who were just legends and impacted and thought so many people I’ll take it, but I don’t I don’t think by any stretch of the imagination, what those guys have done is amazing.
RV (03:20):
Well, and I tell you, but in all, in all, like just objectivity, it’s a rare, it is a rare speaker who builds a multi-million dollar enterprise that scales beyond themselves that lasts, you know, over a decade that that actually has a wealth building, a true wealth building component. That’s a transferable asset. That’s really incredible. And so Jim, I want you started really, you, you tell us, tell us what you do. Like tell us what the company is. Obviously the book is about selling out. I want to hear that, but kind of talk to us about like how you started your career and grew the training company. So,
JD (04:03):
So I was always in the media business and the radio and TV business and like many entrepreneurs. I went broke into a deal in the early nineties and I was like, okay, what the hell do I do now? But I had always loved training and speaking. So I started a company in 1992 called Jim Dolan associates, our 30th year, it’s now called jda.media. So this is our 30th year and over a period of time and over, and I really should have been cited over a period of time. You know, it became, I think the largest training company in the TV space, for sure. And I think one of the lessons I’ve learned in that process that maybe is helpful to folks that are trying to do that and try to build a business is the line there’s riches in niches.
JD (04:54):
I think if you look at many of the members of that billion dollar group who have built big sustainable businesses, I think about our friend Roxanne Emmerich, who’s done that in the banking space, who is the guy that we knew, who, who was the guru of nursing homes and senior living centers and somebody, those people you know, people who done it in financial services, bill gates on a subject of referrals who built big businesses by being more niched focused. And I think what that allows you to do is to provide more services than just a training experience. And then you move to the next company in the next marketplace, down the road. Now you can do coaching programs, online programs build more sustainable product businesses that give you more opportunities. So I think that’s one of the lessons that we learned there’s riches in niches.
RV (05:46):
Yeah, that that’s really true. I mean and, and, and some of those folks you get, it’s like, they’re not necessarily names you would recognize, like you might somebody who, you know, speaks in marinas full of people. But in terms of the, the equity value of an, of an asset in a company that’s, you know, survive without them, they are there they’re huge and valuable and provide extraordinary wealth to the founder. And then also, you know, that the people who come after them. So one of the things that I really think is cool about what you guys do. So, so you’re, you’re saying, when you say media and TV business, you’re in media sales, you’re, you’re training you, your niche is training like advertising sales reps at like a local TV station to call on local businesses to sell air like ad ad ad time. Yeah,
JD (06:37):
Yeah, absolutely. So they’re using the, the, the TV stations platform. And then now, today, increasingly using all of the digital platforms that are available that, that television station might’ve created or represents.
RV (06:50):
Interesting. And so these are these like, like, you know, whatever, like your local news for kind of a thing, or,
JD (06:58):
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we’ve, we’ve had clients in Nashville with clients and I think right now, 75 markets around the country. So you know, we’re able to go out and actually make sales calls side-by-side with their team members with just a whole file cabinet of ideas that we’ve learned from traveling all over the country. So we’re the, we’re the king of stolen ideas. We steal an idea, we steal an idea natural and sell it in Austin for a profit. And hopefully for the benefit of the business owner, that it gets some expertise that they might not have been able to get under normal circumstances.
RV (07:34):
And I think, and I said like tongue and cheek, but the, that is really rare. What you guys do is you not, I love this. You don’t only just teach people how to do it. You kind of do it alongside them. Like your, your team actually goes on sales calls with them, shows them in real time, like how to apply the concepts and the techniques you’re teaching. Yeah.
JD (07:55):
Yeah. So correct. And I’ll give you an example. I mean, you were kind enough to allow me to interview you for the book and, and ha as well. And you talked about something that was a big takeaway for me because it crystallized, you said it in a way that I didn’t, you know, made it clear when you talked about acute listening. So we teach as most, I think effective sales trainers teach as most business owners should probably embrace on a technique of, of doing a lot of diagnosis before you present ideas. And so when we go out on a sales call with a salesperson in a market their idea of listening, maybe three questions before they start talking about advertising, how’s your business? How’s the market right now? Oh, what are you doing for advertising? So the behavior that they model with our people is, you know, a 30, 40 minute conversation, that’s all about them, about the customer’s business, their challenges, their issues. Nobody wants to buy advertising, you know, almost they want to buy the things that advertising can do for them. You know, whether it’s solving a problem, dealing with a competitive threat, taking advantage of an opportunity in the marketplace. So, you know, that, that whole idea of understanding what the customer really wants is foundational to anybody who wants to be effective in sales, whether that’s a consultant, a business owner, or a salesperson at a TV station.
RV (09:20):
Yeah. And so the, I think that that’s super cool that you actually do the sales calls with them, to your point about the niches. That’s also like if you’re serving a vertical, you can do it. Like if you worked in that vertical for years, you know, it, you know, the game, you know, the people, you know, the lingo, the like all, all the, you know, the normal objections, et cetera, you can do that kind of depth of service that someone that just says, I teach sales training for everybody. It doesn’t mean it’s bad, but they can’t, they can’t do it to that level of detail.
JD (09:51):
Absolutely. Yeah. I mean, th the more you know about the category, the know you, the more you also understand what the needs are in that category. So you can adapt, we’re create new products based upon what an opportunity is. That may be a new opportunity just in the last year caused by the pandemic. So I’m a big believer in going deep rather than wide you know, deeper rather than why that has at least served us. Well, of course, now I’m ready to book to go and go wider, but violating all my own advice. But but I think that, I think it’s served me well for a long time.
RV (10:24):
Well, and, and I, I would say, you know, so the way that we teach it, we call it, she hands wall. And I don’t know if you’ve ever heard us talk about this. We named this after Peter she hand who you probably know
JD (10:33):
Of course. Yeah.
RV (10:34):
W you know, we kind of took a, one of she hands models that he, he created for sort of like the corporate space. And we applied to personal branding saying that the way you break through the wall is by becoming known for one thing in one space. But then once you break through the wall, then you can expand into other things. After, after you have a team and you have money and you have resources and experience. And I think you’re, you’re a great example of that. So let’s talk about selling with a servant heart. There’s, there’s no shortage of books written about sales. Certainly not at this point. So why the need to write this? And what do you think is distinct or different about this philosophy compared to, you know, what other stuff people may have read or heard about sales?
JD (11:24):
So if you Google sales books and you look at the titles, it’s things like closing, winning, winning, winning you know, I, I gotta tell ya, I don’t think that great salespeople think about winning in the same way that maybe that’s the literature. And so I, I quite honestly get offended by a lot of what I read and, and one of them that I get, because we have a lot of great sales people, people who could be great, who are being taught, that this is the way to do it. And if you sell in that way, you know, maybe you’ll have some success, but I don’t believe that you’re going to find the joy that you can have in a long-term career in sales that you get, when you put your primary focus on serving people. You know, when I interviewed AIJ who, by the way you told me was the best sales person in your family. And one of the best you’ve ever seen,
RV (12:26):
She is to hand hands down. And I would, I’d say this, you know, separate of being my wife, like we work together, you know, for years, he is the best sales person hands down that I’ve ever seen.
JD (12:39):
And I would agree after having spent an hour on the phone interviewing her, but she said, you know, when you make your customer’s needs more important than your own needs. Well, in order to do that, you’ve got to believe that if it’s good for the customer, it’s ultimately going to be good for you, even though that might not be the case immediately, but if it’s good for the customer, it will ultimately be good for you. And so, and good. I mean, the first word of this book title is selling. This is not a relationship, or this is not a book to help you feel, you know, kinder in general. This is a book about being more effective in selling more effective at getting growing your business. But how do you grow your business? The more you serve, the more you get back and where you give the more you get back.
JD (13:26):
There’s a guy that I interviewed in the book Dave wall Dave if he was a, if he was an RV dealership, he’d probably be the biggest in the country. He sells these $2 million coaches, these beautiful motor home coaches, $2 million, $2 million. One of his customers who was an old client of mine said, you got to talk to this guy. And he S his customer said, this guy took a phone call from me. I didn’t, I had an issue with my coach. He took a phone call for me in the course of the conversation. I said, where are you? And he said, well, I’m on a family vacation in Argentina. And he was on a satellite phone somewhere in Argentina. And my friend said I was astounded. He took that call. So I asked Dave about it. And he said, I took you know, five minutes out of my time to help a customer.
JD (14:21):
Well, how has Dave one 60% of Dave wall’s business is repeat 60%. 30% of his business is referral. If you build relationships like Dave has you start every year at such a high level of productivity that you’re going to be an award winner. You’re going to be a high performance salesperson, all because you’ve got a commitment to customers. So you know, the idea that, you know, we’re going to win where they were going to close. You know, what I think selling is a lot more about the way you are as a person and a lot less about the words you use. And so that’s hopefully a focus of what I hope to accomplish by doing this book.
RV (15:06):
And that’s, that’s a really cool way to think about it. You know, like if you’re, if you’re just cold calling randomly every year, you start on zero with a whole bunch of people, you’ve got to cold call. If you’re, if you’re building relationships, then you come into that year, basically with an army of people that are helping generate leads for you, because they’ve all had this wonderful experience. That’s cool way of thinking about it.
JD (15:30):
I think it’s building relationships, but it’s also building trust, you know, the currency of relationships. I have a lot of salespeople that I like. I have a lot fewer that I trust and being trusted is the, is, is the pathway to really having deep, honest business conversations. But I was thinking about one of the biggest takeaways I had from doing this whole book. So I interviewed 35 people in all different industries. And so UNH we’re part of that group. And but I, I, I talked to the guy who had oversight ticket sales for the NBA and a mortgage broker who did probably 10 times the volume of a top performing mortgage broker. And as I reflected on all these conversations, one of the things I realized is man, there was a scary, real important it’s like to be trusted, has a lot of responsibility. I mean, you know, one of the guys that I interviewed said, you know, you can’t try with people’s money. You can’t try, you’ve got to do. And so there’s a responsibility of trust that. So it’s, it’s getting the relationship with trust, but then, you know, honoring that by being so good at the solutions you bring, that you continue to just build on that foundation.
RV (16:56):
Mm Hmm. Yeah. So, so what do you think to move, to move this tab to the tactical? Right. So if you buy into this sort of philosophically going, okay, you know, I’m building relationships, I’m earning trust, I’m doing what’s in my customer’s interest beyond, ultimately than what is just in my own. What are some of the things that should show up tactically? Or what are the things that we can do or say inside of, you know, how we prospect or how we qualify or ask questions? I mean, does it, what, what comes to mind in terms of the, the actual expression of how to do this in terms of selling with a servant’s heart?
JD (17:42):
That’s a, that’s a great question. I think that there are differences, but servant, heart sellers have in every part of the sales process I’ll give you Justin gurney was the guy that I talked about who oversaw ticket sales. He worked for the NBA national basketball association. So his job was to work with all 30 basketball teams to bring best practices on tickets and suite sales and, you know, the expensive sponsorship kinds of things. He said, the model has historically been a model of, you know, make a bunch of phone calls, you know, sit on the phone all day and call business owners where you probably gotten those calls from, you know, one of the international teams I’ve gotten them from the teams down at Sarasota. The Tampa teams are now that now they’ll make the phone calls slightly more sophisticated because the wait for the open, the email before you, then they then call you.
JD (18:37):
But it’s the a hundred calls a day kind of situation. He said, he found on every single team that there were outliers one or two people on a team, all of these 30 teams that did it differently, they focused on building a relationship. They spent a lot of time. If you want the specifics of tactics, we spent a lot of time, more time than any of their colleagues on, on learning about why you might use those tickets. What are the business issues that you’re trying to solve? What can an entertainment experience do to enhance your customer relationships and guess who were the top performers in every one of those teams? So fast forward a few years, Justin joins the New Jersey devils hockey team running their efforts and he tries to hire a team of outliers and he tries to hire a team and teach a culture that is very focused on diagnosis to your word and into acute listening, acute listening, really paying attention to what the answers are listening longer and in more focused than 95% of all the sellers do. That’s probably the number one skill that I think sets apart of servant heart sellers. Is that
RV (19:51):
Like the volume, the quantity of time for how long they’re listening?
JD (19:55):
Exactly. I think that most salespeople spend about 20% of their time listening and 70, 80% of their time pitching serve at heart sellers spend 70 to 80% of their time listening. And 20 to 30% of their time presenting, they can present for a lot less time because when they present a solution, they mail it. You know, it’s done really understanding what the customer’s issues are.
RV (20:22):
What are they listening for? I mean, yeah, like that’s, I guess that’s my biggest, like, so what w what are they listening for? Is it a, is it a standard set of questions they’re asking or
JD (20:35):
Well, I think that there’s going to be questions that an insurance salesperson might ask that a realtor wouldn’t or that a manufacturer, somebody selling manufacturing ask, but somebody else would, but the general principle to think about is I want to ask questions that have deep business conversations to try to uncover what is the customer potentially need, or how could they use the product that you sell in a way that solves their problems, not yours. You want to make a sale? That’s no problem. They want to, you know, solve a particular issue within, within their, their business. So, in, in Justin’s case, by having those kinds of conversations now they get to the pandemic where you think, you know, if you’re listening to this thing and you think your business had trouble, how’d you like to be a professional hockey team shut down.
JD (21:32):
Your building’s not even open. Nobody can come. At one point, I talked to him and they had no idea when they were going to even reopen. And yet they were still making sales and renewing deals because they were having the kind of conversations about how you could use that suite. They could use those tickets after the season started again. Other teams were laying off their people, the New Jersey devils kept theirs on and continued to find some impact. Now, come out the other side, who do you think is going to do the best? Who’s going to have the greatest impact. There are other specifics. I mean, one of the other specific things that I really took away from this is the idea that in your presentations, the servant heart sellers tend to teach and not sell.
JD (22:19):
So rather than here’s the greatest thing that you can do. They’ll spend a lot of time talking about what this product is going to do for your business. What is it going to, what is the problem it’s going to solve? I interviewed the only guy that I interviewed who had ever called on me. I interviewed him because he just impressed me so much, 25, 30 years ago. And he, he went on to oversee sales for arbitrage, which is a big radio company that did ratings for all radio stations in America. He said their most successful salespeople were people who started as trainers and then moved into sales. So customer would buy a product and they would train them how to use it. So when they moved into sales, that was their default. Here’s this new thing. Let me show you how this could make your station look good. And they had the highest performance across a whole sales staff from a bunch of people than people who were just coming in and trying to sell, teach, not sell, became something I really took away from the interviews that I thought was significant.
RV (23:27):
Yeah. That’s, that’s interesting. I mean, the other thing about the, I mean, yeah, that’s a powerful idea that you also kind of get the benefit of seeing what you do, being applied to people in real life, and then going to talk to a prospect. Like I was thinking about our, of strategists, how their, their conviction goes up when they actually come through the training or work with our clients and see how they apply it. And then they get to get, they get a sense of it. It helps them go out and have more conviction and clarity about what they’re selling to. And then to what you’re saying, it’s like, it’s more of a teacher’s heart than a commission breaths, salesperson kind of, kind of a thing.
JD (24:11):
Well, also also those stories not only help their own belief, but they conveyed correctly can also help their customers, their prospects.
RV (24:20):
So what are the things that you’ve you find? I mean, how do you think this applies specifically to personal brands? There’s, you know, we have, we have a one of our, one of our members only events is called pressure-free persuasion. And so there’s a time where we start talking about this sort of tactical one-on-one selling. But like, where do you think, like, even as you just look at your own career, you think back of going, here’s where I had to sell and learn how to sell in order to build the business that I have. You’ve got how do you think that this, like today, a lot of times when people think personal brands, it’s almost more like they think marketing, right? You’ve got, you’re doing videos and social media and funnels and writing books and, you know, even speaking from stage, but I would, those, those skillsets, I think, are pretty markedly different from the ability to have a one-on-one conversation with somebody and, you know, discuss their needs and eventually move them to make a decision and give you a credit card or send you a check. W so, so how do you think this applies, you know, sales still applies to personal brands?
JD (25:31):
Well, ultimately no matter how strong a brand I’ve built, I have to sit on a zoom call, be in front of a prospect or a potential client and have a one-on-one conversation. You know, if you, as you asked the question, I was thinking about you and I probably both had the experience of being with a lot of very successful speakers, very effective speakers guys who have built great personal brands, but when you spend time with them, one-on-one, they have a very, very hard time losing the spotlight. They have a very hard time not being onstage. So as a consequence, they tend to want to dominate the conversation. And, you know, I understand that probably guilty of that more than a few times myself, but it’s the opposite when you take your marketing. So my marketing is I’m out there, you know, here’s my content.
JD (26:33):
Here’s what I’ve tried to do. Here’s the messages that I’m sending out to the marketplace. Well, now somebody engages with me. I’ve got to just say, what are the issues that you’re trying accomplish? And I’ve got to, I’ve got to turn off my ego. That’s the hardest thing is turning off my ego, that desire to be special, that desire to be a star and really listen, listen acutely to what somebody is trying to accomplish. And then I can try to figure out, all right, what is it that I do that can best serve them?
RV (27:06):
You know, the part about this listening thing, which is crazy is you know, like the way I was taught on sales was just when you’re talking about it’s all a numbers game and you just like kiss, keep going no matter what. And you’re just burning through people and you know, kind of this, when they say this, you say this and, and you got to gear yourself up and you know, kind of like be, be persistent until they buy kind of a, kind of a conversation.
JD (27:36):
And they have, they have my money, got my money. I’m gonna get my money.
RV (27:40):
Yeah. Right. Yeah. They’re holding my money. I have to get my money out of their pockets. Yeah. The and that’s so hard, like it free for the sales person, like emotionally. It’s like, that’s a lot of pressure. What’s so crazy to me about asking questions is like, it’s so much easier. Like people tell you, rather than having to like gear yourself up and say, okay, I’m going to go spew a bunch of stuff at somebody and not shut up until they acquiesce. It’s like, I can sit back and do nothing while they tell me exactly what it is that they need. And they like lay out this roadmap for exactly what they need to hear and, and, and, and tell you how to like, make a sale.
JD (28:31):
Right. And if you, if you spend just 15 or 20 minutes on Google before you make that call looking at the business issues in that category tried to find out some of the competitive issues that are going on. So I did a few minutes on their website so that you can, so your questions are not just how’s business or what’s going on in your business, but rather lead to more in-depth business conversations. They’ll tell you everything. And they tell you everything because such few people do that. And that’s, that becomes a competitive advantage. You know, it’s interesting if we have this conversation that you know, I am more focused on listening or I’ve talked a lot about listening, but listening also has a, a partner. And that’s a good question. It’s you, you can’t just listen, you know, how, you know, did you watch the game?
JD (29:23):
What do you think about the Titans? You know, how’s your business? I mean, blahblahblahblahblah now I want to be able to engage in a business conversation. So w I, and when an organization does it, I know you have a ton of entrepreneurs who follow the podcast, follow your work. And I had a banker, you know, this is a banker who took this into his entire bank’s culture. Rather than call his people commercial lenders, they call them commercial bankers and they were instructed to have business conversations, train taught drilled to have business conversations with, with every prospect. Where do you see the future of your business? Do you have anybody identified who might be a buyer for this company down the road? They’re trying to look at the longer term business issues so that they can help this this business owner oriented business to that, and provide perhaps the capital to do all of those things. Unbelievable loyalty, less pressure on rates for, you know, borrowings, because I’ll pay a little bit more for that degree of service, if I’m trying to borrow money for something. And when the pandemic hit and this bank, landmark bank in Kansas could fulfill PPP loans in a hurry. When the big banks couldn’t do anything, they got hundreds of customers. We’re now extraordinarily loyal to the bank. So this is, these are, you know, this whole idea of, of asking good questions is a partner with listening, has to be.
RV (30:57):
And you’re the questions you’re trying to ask there are, how do you, how do you know what questions to ask? I mean, one is to do the research. It’s funny, you mentioned this. So one of the recent interviews we did with Sam Richter about, I don’t know if you know, Sam, all the customer intelligence and the online research stuff that he uses, which has been really
JD (31:15):
Good stuff. So,
RV (31:17):
So once that, you know, it’s kind of educating yourself on some of the industry dynamics, maybe the company dynamics, et cetera, what are the other triggers or, or things that we’re paying attention to, or how do we reverse engineer and come up with the right kind of questions.
JD (31:38):
I’m listening in every business conversation, obviously for opportunity for problems. So I’ll give you one specific technique. I learned this from a guy who was a producer on a 60 minutes type of interview show. And he said and this is, this goes to your comment in our interview about acute listen. He said, when they would do an interview, they would train reporters that after the person answered the question to not immediately jump in with another question, you said, pause, don’t fill up the space, nature, abhors, a vacuum. And most people will start speaking. And he said, we would get the most compelling soundbite, the most interesting piece, the less rehearsed idea after the pause. So people would have the rehearsed, but then they give you maybe something really honest. And if I hear that really honest bit of pain or problem, then you keep asking a few more questions to see, is this going to be something that might create an opportunity on it’s the understanding that whatever business you’re in the customer is not buying that they’re buying what that can do for their business, how they can solve a problem and, and, or take advantage of an opportunity.
JD (33:08):
So that’s the kind of listening that I have to be able to do to understand what are their needs.
RV (33:14):
I love it. I love it. Well, Jim Doyle is the author selling with a servant heart is the book long time friend. Check this out, Jim, where else do you want people to go? If they want to connect with you and learn, learn more about what you’re doing, and heck if you’re trying to sell some media stuff, you’re the guy for sure.
JD (33:34):
So LinkedIn Facebook, for sure. Love to connect with folks on LinkedIn. And the there was a specific website for the book which is servant selling book.com. Love to see people there. And I can’t tell you how grateful I am for the opportunity to do this. I have such admiration and respect for you and what you built. And so this is an honor for me. I I had the privilege of interviewing you when you brought out, take the stairs. And so I was thinking today, what an honor to get the to do the reverse, thank you for doing, for, for doing this.
RV (34:10):
Yeah, of course, man. It’s, it’s our pleasure. And you want over AIG AIG’s heart with your interview and then the, all, all the information about Maine and the lobsters and everything is just really, really, really, really wonderful.
JD (34:26):
So we still have to have lobsters on the coast of Maine
RV (34:29):
Sometimes. That’s right. Well, she is, she’s convinced that we are going there at some point soon, so I’m sure. We’ll see. I’m sure you’ll be, he’ll be the first, the first call would make
JD (34:40):
Thank you
RV (34:42):
All the best, my friend. Thanks

Ep 233: Sales Intelligence and Advanced Online Research Strategies with Sam Richter | 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 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):
Accessing the full power of Google search. Hey, everyone, welcome to the influential personal brand podcast recap. It’s Rory Vaden standing in for myself and AJ today. She’s not going to be with me because I am breaking down this interview about all of this data and this research and this whole conversation that we just had with Sam Richter. I’ve known Sam for a really long time. He’s one of the most well-respected speakers in our profession and around the national speakers association. And man, I just, this, this whole concept blows me away. On the one hand, it’s tremendously frightening how much data is available out there online, on the other hand, it’s this, this tr tremendously powerful tool that you can use to build your business and, and to build your personal brand and, and the, if you haven’t listened to the interview yet, obviously go back and listen to it.
RV (01:59):
What happens is we have this whole conversation around Boolean logic and all of these very simple search term modifications that you can make to tools like Google or LinkedIn, or even Facebook to be able to pull up very targeted information to serve a lot of various needs. And so, you know, it was really about Boolean logic and most mostly about, I would say Google and LinkedIn and you know, Sam has this tool. I mean, he, he, he basically takes these he creates these custom interfaces and he overlays them right on top of all of these search tools. And we’re actually buying it. We’re going to buy it for all of our brand builder members. And so we worked out an arrangement to buy this. This is so powerful because I’ve sat and watched Sam do this. Now it’s a little bit tricky to listen to him on the podcast.
RV (02:55):
You know, it’s, it’s harder to follow because you can’t see as he’s like in terms, but I’ve sat in a room and watched him do this live where he will pull up basically like every single association meeting in an entire industry. And then, you know, be able to pull up the contact information of all the people who are involved with these associations and having it right at your fingertips at, at like the click of a button so that, you know, if you’re wanting to speak, whether you’re wanting to be paid or whether you just want to go out and speak and add value to build your brand and build awareness for your business and drive free calls and, and, you know, do do that kind of prospecting using, speaking as prospecting, a lot of what we teach. It’s just like, boom, right here in front of you, this tremendously powerful free tool with Google, along with this custom interface that he has built overlaid on top of it.
RV (03:54):
And so, you know, I’ve been so impressed by that. And just over the years, seeing what he’s been able to do with his career that we’re, we’re going to buy this, we’re buying, we’re buying it, we’re buying it for all of our brand builders members. Not just for us internally, we’re going to, we’re going to put a custom version of this inside of our portal so that our members can like do this. And I’m, I’m pumped about it because this is what we believe in this, like such a huge part of you know, the conversation is not limited to speaking, but that’s sort of the lens that I’ve seen Sam do this, and I use it and know, know him and how he uses it and, and how our brand builders members will use it. But, you know, just as that, as one example to go, how can I instantly build a list of, of contact information of all the people I want to reach out to, or at least know who the people are that I want to reach out to.
RV (04:46):
So incredibly powerful and such a, such a key step that a lot of people struggle with, right? And you go, oh, I’ll have my assistant do it, or I’ll hire a VA to do it, but then they gotta be trained to know how to do it. And then they got to spend hours digging around and try to find stuff and knowing exactly what to look for. And so anyways, I’m just super excited about this and if you haven’t listened to the interview here are, or even if you have listened to the interview, here are some direct applications. And, and for my, you know, first takeaway that I wanted to share, I wanted to just kind of share with you, what are some of the key applications that I see of how you would use this or how I would use it, or how we would use use this power, this ability to go onto Google, understand Boolean logic, add more advanced search features, or obviously use Sam’s custom tools that he makes.
RV (05:42):
So first of all, you, you could use it for speaking engagements, right? To go. I want to secure speaking engagements for free or for money, you know, to prospect and reach out to also media opportunities, right? Like blogs and podcasts and things like that. Also, you would use it for research on, let’s say your prospects. So let’s say that you have a key meeting set up with either a VIP relationship or maybe it’s a vendor that you want to vet, or maybe it’s somebody that you’re looking to hire for your team, or maybe it is something like the you know, a sales meeting that you have that you just want to know a little bit of information about that company, right? You can use these kinds of tools to do that, that type of research. The other use case, the other type of research that I think is huge, especially for personal brands, is, is doing your own academic research, like for your own thought leadership, being able to pull statistics and data and reports.
RV (06:48):
And these are some of the major use cases for how you can use these free tools to bolster up your personal brands, authority, credibility, and trust just by taking some minutes to do the research. So that was the first thing I just wanted to share with you as a takeaway. Whereas here are some of the applications there’s, there’s probably a hundred or thousand applications for how you could use this, but those are some of the key applications that I think are going to be relevant for us and for our brand builders members and, you know, potentially for you related to that. The second big takeaway, which I had not seen specifically, was this URL that he shared called you got research.com, you got research.com. And I actually went to the URL and I did a search for personal branding trends, reports, and sure enough, the first one that popped up was the brand builders group trends in personal branding, national research study that we just released.
RV (07:54):
And so one, I was encouraged that, you know, it’s indexing on Google and like people are going to start finding it. We just released this a couple of weeks ago. And to, to see it work in action to go, the report that we put out is exactly the kind of report that we would want to read from other places, from other sources to be able to site in trainings that we have and in books and in articles, because it’s statistically valid, PhD led, you know, academically sound research, the kind of statistics that you, you would want to cite and be able to cite properly and, and have trust that they’re accurate and so forth and so on. And so that one tool alone, you’ve got research.com, which is a free tool. That is, that’s an example of one of the interfaces that Sam has built that already overlays that he gives away for free with powerful, right?
RV (08:46):
Like you need to, you need to have statistics to quote in your, your social media captions and your podcasts in your articles, in, in your sales conversations, in your keynote presentations, in your marketing collateral on your website, like think of all the places you can use this statistic to the, you know, in your talk to like open a presentation and go, where do I get this data? Where, where do I find this? Well, you’ve got research.com and it’s free. And all this stuff is just out there on the web, which was amazing. So that was my second takeaway is, is check that out. You got research.com and, and start supplementing and supporting that, the ideas that you’re presenting in the world with statistically validated, you know, empirically kind of accurate data. And, and it allows you to be data-driven and not, you know, have to like spend as much time as you might have to do to do the original data.
RV (09:44):
I mean, the, we S we spent tens tens of thousands of dollars putting together the study that we are now giving away to you all for free. Of course you can go get a version of that at brand builders, group.com forward slash study. You can download our study if you want to see it, or just go to UGA research.com type in personal branding, a hit trend reports that at least when I did this, it was the first one that popped up. But B this is how you become a real thought leader, right? Like this is how you become a real expert is you’re actually reading data. And, and you’re, you’re doing academic research in your space. And this is a great tool I think, to do that quickly. So that was super powerful. The other thing that really blows my mind this was my third takeaway is just searching for file types and, and for directories.
RV (10:35):
So I had no idea that you could search by file type on Google and pull up, you know, let’s say like, let’s say you want an annual reports, right? You could pull up annual reports, which companies releases PDFs all the time, and you can go find them on this invisible web. And this whole concept of the invisible web was kind of weird too, is you go well, there’s, there’s the websites that we see all the time, because they’re URLs and there’s buttons that you can click to get to. And then there’s this whole other world, which you can’t really like navigate to. But people are uploading things, you know, to the public domain on the web. They just don’t make it easy for you to get to and find stuff. And you can find PowerPoint presentations, you can find you know, like these annual reports, you can, you can find Excel files that have databases and directories, which is pretty crazy, right.
RV (11:34):
You can find word documents. I mean, I have to think, like if I was in school having access to all this information, like what I might do with this to be able to, I mean, you know, don’t plagiarize stuff. And I guess, you know, you, you, there’s an ethical dilemma here with how much, how much information, I guess you feel accessing and using. Now I would say, don’t just go get a database and add it to your email list just because you can, right. That’s that is going to violate all sorts of, of you know, the, the email, like GDPR compliance and, and it’s also kind of an ethical dilemma, not kind of, it’s, it’s an ethical dilemma, I think, to just steal someone’s contact information and just start marketing to them in unsolicited, like fashion. But you know, if you’re wanting to, to, to make personal customized, you know, reach out to people and let them know what you’re doing, I mean, nothing can stop you from doing doing that.
RV (12:29):
So I think that’s a fair thing you can do. There’s lots of, lots of ways you could do that. So doing that in, in this kind of method, doesn’t, doesn’t seem unfair as long as you’re not just like barring them with emails, but saying, Hey, I want to call somebody and, you know, try and build a relationship with them and to do this or that, or whatever. One-On-One on a one by one basis. I think that’s fair game. Cause you could go knock on a door, you could call it, you know, look out, look at the phone number and call it. You could do go to an office park and do that. Like, there’s lots of ways to use this information, but you know, it’s, there’s Excel databases, PDFs, word docs. That’s just interesting to me and see like what other presentations are out there.
RV (13:15):
I think you just need to be careful of you don’t want to plagiarize stuff and you don’t want us, you definitely don’t want to do violations of, of you know, GDPR compliance and things like that. But I mean, I don’t know, I it’s, it’s powerful. So use it, use it, use your discernment in your judgment wisely, but pretty wild to know that you can search for file types. And I would also pay attention to what which of your own files are find-able in that way. Right. And making sure that you’re aware of where are you storing things and is it actually publicly accessible through these you know, search engines like Google, for example? So lots of different use cases here. The one that we’re predominantly focused on is, is I would say as a, as a targeted outreach tool to identify, you know, legitimate prospects that might be interested in what you’re doing and reaching out to them.
RV (14:11):
And also you know, probably even more than that is doing the research also customization for your presentations, right? To go, all right. I want to customize my presentation to whatever audience I’m in front of them. And that’s huge to be able to do that right, to say, okay, maybe you talk on leadership, but you’re gonna go speak to the automotive industry, or you’re going to go speak to the financial services industry and go, how can I spend a few minutes, grab some, some key data points of that industry specific and then tailor what I’m saying directly to them. That’s next level. That’s next level. I mean that customization in our world-class presentation craft event, one of the lessons we teach customization and we talk about doing this. And so these tools, you got the news.com, you got research.com and those are the free ones that Sam gave out.
RV (15:01):
And then also the Intel engine, which we’re going to, like I said, build into the brand builders, membership community. Amazing, amazing. So just really eyeopening, fascinating stuff. I’ve, you know, a totally like nerdy conversation that was not really on my radar of like, oh my gosh, what a, what a tactical practical, pragmatic kind of thing that you can be doing. And that’s what we want to do here. We want to be sharing with you principles, inspiration, and then also like tactics and make you think and go, Sam is a hall of fame speaker. He’s one of the top speakers in the world. He’s built this whole business by learning how to use Google. I mean, and teaching other people how to do this. One simple, one simple skill, which is tremendously, tremendously powerful. So I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you enjoy all the episodes. If you did make sure that you share this with somebody who you think would find it interesting or fascinating and keep coming back next week and next week, we’ll catch you on the influential personal brand podcast.

Ep 232: Sales Intelligence and Advanced Online Research Strategies with Sam Richter

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 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):
Well, it was by special request that I was hunting out a specific man for a specific job to talk about a specific topic that I wanted for you. And that is my friend, Sam Richter. I’ve known Sam for a lot of years. We just kind of been casual friends through the speaking profession. He is in the national speakers hall of fame and he is one of the top rated keynote speakers in the world. And he’s a CSP he’s written books. He is the but when I think of Sam, I, I think specifically of like a very deep expertise on a topic sales intelligence. And so I want to, I remember seeing him the first time and it just blew my mind the first time I heard him talk and I know that he teaches companies how to do this for big, big money. And so I was like, I wonder if we could call it a favor and have him come on the podcast and talk about some of these things. So Sam, welcome to the show.
SR (01:54):
Well, thank you, Rory. And you know, I love what you do. The sales intelligence is really how to find information on other people. So you can be relevant. It’s basically the modern day version of Dale Carnegie. You know, Carnegie said the sweetest sound language language is the sound of someone’s name. And I believe with all the information that we have access to at our fingertips, the sweetest sound in English language is the sound of someone’s name based on what do they care about? Well, the flip side of sales intelligence, or I guess another way of saying it is ethically spying on people and ethically using it to help them. Well, the flip side of that is personal branding. It’s assuming people are spying on you and as you know, better than most everybody’s spying on us. And I’m not just talking like the government or anything like that. I’m talking about prospective employees, current employees, certainly prospective customers bankers, funders, they’re all, you know, spying on us or searching us. How do you control what they find? And that’s what you speak about. So you know, our messages are incredibly complimentary to each other.
RV (02:59):
Yeah. And I, I, I think everybody has heard of Google clear clearly. But I don’t think people understand, like the average person goes right to Google types in something real quick. It’s usually three words or less, and that’s how they use it. 99% of the time when I heard you speak, it blew my mind that it’s like, there is so much power in understanding how to use Google.
SR (03:31):
And w as, as some, as a personal brand, there’s all these things that we need to find, right? Like we want to find potential events. We can speak at, we wanna find potential podcasts. We could be on, we need to find literary agents or publishers or, or we need to sign a virtual assistant or a graphic designer or video editor or, you know, on and on and on. And I think we’re under utilizing, you know, Google specifically. And I guess is that that’s primarily the tool we’re talking about here, right. Is, is, is advanced Google searches. Let’s Google, it’s also social media, LinkedIn, Twitter. It’s also in Mo but most people don’t know and I’ll kind of shock them with this. Google actually gets to a very small percentage of the free and publicly accessible internet. The rest is what we call the invisible web, know the invisible web.
SR (04:20):
You you’ve probably heard of the deep web or the dark web that’s where bad guys hang out. And that makes up even an incredibly tiny percentage of the invisible web. So that 95% of the free and publicly accessible internet is just websites. That for whatever reason, Google can’t vacuum up. And so there’s a lot of those kinds of websites when, I mean, by vacuum up, if you think of Google as like nothing more than a big vacuum cleaner, cause that’s kind of what it is. It just goes around and finds websites with words on the page. You, you it sees those websites flips on the vacuum. Cleaner sucks up the word stores, the words and the Google vacuum cleaner bag or the database you go into Google and type one or two, three words. There’s a human being sitting in the background. It’s basically Google saying, where do those three words appear most often now the challenge now Google is awesome.
SR (05:06):
Right? And we know that that the channel and its algorithms are amazing. The challenges let’s say I go in and type in the word speaker, well do I mean professional speaker or Bose stereo speaker again, Google is pretty good. He said, probably knows what you’ve searched on in the past and knows what websites you’ve looked at. So it’s probably going to give you the, the, the right information. And you know, it’s, it’s job is to do that. But remember, the Google is not, Google is a search engine, but they’re not a search engine company. They’re an advertising company, meaning they want you to get really good results, but they wouldn’t mind if you clicked on an ad once in a while. So what I teach is how to really refine those results, whether it’s on Google or the invisible web using mathematical algorithms. And then I also teach and build tools that automate that. Yeah. So
RV (05:57):
Let’s talk about the [inaudible]. What does that mean? You know, like when I hear, I could use an algorithm, I’m like, I don’t, I don’t know. I don’t, you know, algorithms use me, don’t use the algorithms. So tell me about what does that mean to have an algorithm that you use on Google?
SR (06:14):
It’s just a fancy way of saying it’s a simple mathematical equation. So for example, let’s use that one. I just gave, I go into Google. I type in speaker and I get a bunch of results on stereo speakers. A very simple switch is to go back into speaker and then type in the minus sign and attach that to the word stereos, the minus sign needs to touch the S in the word stereo. Now every result you’re going to get, we’ll have the word speaker in it, but if any of those results have the word stereo in it, those results won’t show up. And I can do that about 30 times. So I can start out with a super broad search term and in seconds, get down to the information that we care about. Another simple trick is using quotation marks. Now, if you go into Google and type in Karen Jane Anderson, as an example, we’ll, you’ll get some really good results.
SR (07:06):
Probably the first page of results will be Karen Jane Anderson, but you’ll also get close to a million results because you’re also going to get every website that has the word. Karen has the word Jane, and has the word Anderson. So if there’s a webpage that has Karen Johnson, Jane Smith, bill Anderson on the same webpage, you’re going to get that result. A simple thing like using quotation marks. When you put a word, a job title, name of a person, name of a company, or even a phrase like digital reputation management or a phrase like a personal branding. If you put that in quotation marks, you’ll treat the words within quotation marks as a single entity. So those two tricks alone, the minus sign in quotation marks will probably save you an hour a day. Oh. And by the way, it not only works in Google. Those techniques will work in social media, the work when you’re searching your email, you know, how many times, if you’ve gone in your email, oh, where’s that email I sent to Rory, where is it textual work, or even your network drive. Where’s that presentation I sent to the widget corporation. You can go in and put widget corporation within quotation marks. You’ll get better results.
RV (08:17):
Interesting. So this is this is your you’re referring to Boolean logic, right?
SR (08:23):
Yep. That’s very correct. Yep. And then there’s other things beyond bullying, but in general, that’s correct. So,
RV (08:29):
So what is w what is Boolean logic? Like? What does that mean and how many, how many elements are considered part of it? Cause this is what you’re talking about is, is a really big deal. It was like, you know, the problem with Google is that it searches like this gigantic universe. And so finding, and for most of our clients, they wouldn’t be searching for speakers. It’s more like they’re searching for events that have speakers, right. And so if you said, you know, insurance association speakers, I mean, who knows what comes up, but if it could have stuff like you’re saying, like, you know, musical stuff because of the
SR (09:06):
Right, right. So bullying actually is from a 19th century mathematician, a guy named George Boole and the first modern use of a bully and George bull is kind of credited with, for lack of better term coming up with the zeros and the ones. So 19th century, the mathematical patterns that make technology work. Now, the, the beauty of really great technology is it’s intuitive, right? I fire up Google, I type into words, results, just show up. That’s kind of the problem, a really good technology. I type into words, results to show up. So I never really learned for lack of a better term, the good stuff, and the good stuff is the Boolean or reading the manual. The good news is it’s very easy. Just most people don’t do it. And frankly, most people don’t need to do it. It’s really when you’re, when you’re wanting to laser focus, a search where you might need that information.
SR (09:55):
So for example, if I wanted to find the meeting planner at the here, here would be a good one, the meeting planner at the speaker association, but not the national speakers association, the stereo speakers association, I’m making this up. I don’t know if there is, there probably is a stereo speaker association, you know, high fidelity stereo speaker, but that’s where you use these combinations of quotation marks and minus signs plus signs. There’s other bunch of other ones as well to really refine your results again, you’re going to do just fine typing words into Google. It’s, it’s really more when you want to, Hey, I really want to laser focus my results into something specific where you need these techniques. Okay.
RV (10:39):
And so is it primarily like, are the, are the big ones, quotation signs plus signs and minus signs?
SR (10:47):
Yes. There’s lots of others if we want to get really technical. So for example if you think of how people save a word document on their computer, well, most people use fairly logical titles for their documents. So for example, if I was saving a document, I might call that document widget corporation proposal. Well, you can actually limit your search to just titles of webpages, just like you might do when you’re searching for a word document. The nice thing about web pages is they’re usually titled something that’s very logical because that’s how you get higher up in search engines. And so for example, you can use a Boolean term called entitle, I N T I T L E and then the colon, those two dots in title. So for our listeners, let’s say I wanted to find a list of associations in the medical industry, right?
SR (11:45):
I could go into Google and type in medical association and I’ll get some good results. Also get a bunch of junk, or I can say entitle medical title association, meaning the only results that are allowed to appear are, were our results with the word medical as part of the title of the document, or excuse me, an association as the title of the document. Now I can also use quotation marks. So that exact phrase has to be in the title. So in title, colon medical association, put medical association within quotation marks, and it will pull up that exact result, that exact phrase, medical association, as the title of the document.
RV (12:26):
And can you also search by you? Can you search Google? This was one of the things that I remember was you can search for file types. What are all the file types that you can search into Google and how do you find them? And, and, and, and by the way, when you say invisible web is this, like, these are things that people store on the internet, but are not things that you would get to by like going to their website and clicking through their menu, or is invisible web
SR (12:56):
Well, there’s, there’s, there’s, I guess there’s two definitions that I use for the invisible web. The first definition are websites that for whatever reason, Google can’t back you up, I’ll give you an example. There are many websites that you have to create a, a login to access Facebook as an example. So Facebook, you can access some Facebook pages via Google book, but in general, you have to have a free Facebook username and password. Well, Google can’t create the username and password, and frankly, if you could find it, everything you wanted via Google search, there’d be no reason to have a Facebook account, right? So that would be an example, it’s the free and publicly accessible internet, but you have to have a username and password to get in it, not once you’re in it. Many times, Facebook, unfortunately, is not one of them, but many times you can use the same Boolean techniques to search once you’re inside that website.
SR (13:49):
So again, Facebook, as an example, if we think of every picture, every post as a page on the internet, well, I don’t know the number, but it would have to be trillions of pages that are on the invisible web. So you couldn’t access those via Google. You’d have to log in to access those. Now, there are, that’s one definition of the invisible one. The other definition is I’ll just give you, is my personal definition. Anything past page two on Google search results is invisible. Meaning no one’s ever going to find it, which is where you come in, really on, on reputation, right? And personal branding is to make sure that you show up number one. That’s why people should be getting interviewed should be you know, doing speeches. So they show up high up in Google search results, because if you’re on page two or three on Google search results, it may as well be in the invisible web cause no, one’s going to find you sure.
SR (14:40):
Getting back to your question as it relates to documents. Well, there are trillions of documents that people post online, right? It could be Excel spreadsheets or PowerPoints, and you can find those by using what’s called a file type colon search in Google. So file type colon PPT, or file type colon. PPTX, we’ll find PowerPoint documents. Now, why do we care? Because I could go in and type in Rory Vaden within quotation marks file type colon PPT, or file type Poland PPTX. And if there’s any PowerPoints that ever been posted out there about you or featuring you they’ll show up, including that one time where you were the, you know, you were cornered, right? You were sitting there after you gave your speech standing ovation, someone in the back said, this was awesome. Can we get a copy of the slides? And the, and the event planner stood up and says, yes, we’ll be posting his slides online on our super-duper James Bond, you know CIA NSA protected website, which of course wasn’t protected at all because we can find it, you know? So that’s where, that’s where you can find those kinds of document.
RV (15:48):
Well, and some of that’s like you know, the other time where I think about using this as like w w women to your words, sales intelligence. So there there’s one part of it is how do I find a list of people to contact that would be hyper relevant to what I do to where there’s such, you know, they’re going to know me or a lot of the people I know, et cetera. The other thing is, you know, maybe I get a, I get a lead to be like a, hold on an event to go speak at. And I get a meeting with them and I want to go, how can I customize my presentation, either my sales presentation or my actual presentation to prepare. And so you can find, I mean, you can find all tore, all sorts of internal power points and meeting notes and stuff like that.
SR (16:36):
Absolutely. And that, that level of customization is really, what’s going to differentiate you from your competition, from those who go out to, as I like to say, they wing it. Or they, you know, in, in Aurora, you and I have both seen this before where the speaker gets up and Hey, it’s so great to be a part of. And there’s a pause. They look down the financial industry in, because yesterday they did the exact same speech for the automotive industry the day before that the medical device industry. So that level of customization is so important. A couple of quote, unquote, invisible websites. And they’re invisible because Google doesn’t know they exist because I created them and I don’t let Google know they exist. One is a news search engine called you got the news.com that’s Y O U G O T T H E N E w S.
SR (17:22):
You got the news.com, which will pull up not only Google search results, but it will pull up local newspapers, trade journals, industry journals. So for example, when I did it, you got the new search on you, Rory. Well, I clicked on the regular news, which would be Google news. I think about if I recall maybe 12 articles showed up, but when I clicked on the more news button, and now that features again, local newspapers, trade journals, industry articles, thousands of articles showed up. And there’s also a tab on there for press releases, social media posts, blog posts, again for prayer, preparing for it, whether it’s preparing for a sales call or customizing your presentation, use something like you got the news five minutes before the meeting, frankly, five minutes before you step on stage, you’re going to massively impress the number of times where I’ve done that five minutes before I go on stage.
SR (18:12):
And I get up in the first words out of my mouth are instead of saying, Hey, thank you St. Louis it’s Hey, congratulations. Many of you might not even know, but your company just won a fortune, you know, fortune best places to work or something like that. That massively differentiates. Another one is a site I built called. You got research, Y O U G O T research.com. And that one will specifically find a credible objective research, white papers on different trends, survey results, but every single result is a PDF file. Why a PDF file? Because I found in doing Google searching, oftentimes when I’m searching for reports, all I get are places that want to sell me the report. In this example, I actually get the report. I get the PDF file, and there are things I teach on what to do with PDF files and, and how you can use those in sales, but, but for preparing for a speech, it’s great stuff.
RV (19:06):
Well, that’s funny. Yeah. So we are this Wednesday releasing our trends in personal branding, national research study, it’s a PDF. It will live on a, on a hidden URL of which it will be behind the gated. We’re not selling it, we’re giving it away for free, but it will be behind a gated page.
SR (19:24):
And we won’t be able to find that we won’t be able to get behind the gated page, but if somebody downloads your document and then post it on their server, then we’d be able to find it
RV (19:34):
Interesting of which surely they would mean somebody in the world that might, might do that. Yeah. So that just means like, and you’re saying that you got research.com is like, if I’m trying to research a subject of any kind, then I’m going and just saying, show me all kind of like statistically valid research studies and
SR (19:54):
Yeah, I’ve, I’ve I’ve modified it. So there’s different buttons. So one would be trend reports. So that would be research reports that talk about trends and other ones, survey results. So specifically dealing with survey results and there’s overlap between the two market outlooks, and then there’s even a button in there that it’s called. I think it’s industry statistics. I don’t have it in front of me, but that actually minds the invisible website, the department of labor. So for example, if you went in and typed in construction and then click the click that button, it will pull up all the latest statistics as it relates to types of employees, how much money they make, how many employees they are in that industry, again, help you, whether it’s doing business planning or whether it’s preparing for a presentation, just get you that information, credible objective information in seconds. Again, could you do it on your own? Absolutely. But knowing these and knowing where to look, I think can save you potentially hundreds of hours per year.
RV (20:53):
I mean, yeah. I mean talk about like podcast topics or blog topics or book, you know, site having. I mean, I think I’ve had incredible information to site in an actual book or something that is like, it needs to be statistically like sound. That kind of thing is really is, is huge. So that in that case, those tools that you built, they are just layered on top of Google.
SR (21:18):
That’s correct. It’s sitting on top of Google and I’m adding a 30 to 50 word Boolean algorithm. All you’ve got to do is type in, let’s say you want a trend report. You just type in construction. If that’s the industry, you care about trend reports, there’s a pull down menu that allows you to search by by date range. So you choose past a year typing construction, click trend reports in a 50 word algorithms going to be running in the background. Now here’s another little trick for you to finding PowerPoint documents. So that would be file type colon PPT or PPTX, here’s where there’s a great one. You know, it’s kind of one of those sayings when people talk about writing or jokes or something like that, right? Like everything that’s already been written or everything that already could be written has already been written by somebody in some shape or form.
SR (22:04):
What I mean by that is and I, for those of you with kids in the audience, this can help a lot with their homework because my kids would never call me. When they’ve got a research report due in college you know, they’ve known about it for three weeks. They happened to call me for hours before it’s due. That would never happen. Right? So here’s a little trick you go in and you search for a PowerPoint document on your topic. So let’s say your topic is a, you’re doing a report or again, in, in, in using our, our examples here, maybe you’re going to be speaking in the automotive industry. So whether it’s doing a report or you’re speaking in the automotive industry, go into Google type in say, automated automotive trends. And then now here’s a little trick or, or in all upper case proceeding or right after the, or if you type an or an uppercase a space before and after the, or not lowercase, but uppercase or you’ll get either or so you expand your search.
SR (23:00):
So I might type in automotive or excuse me, automotive trends or, or an all upper case issues, file type colon, PPT, X I’m telling Google, go find me a PowerPoint document. Only PowerPoint documents with the word automotive, with the word trends or the word issues somewhere inside that PowerPoint. Now, if I want to refine it even further, I can say in title automotive trends or issues, file type colon, PPTX a bunch of PowerPoints will appear now, how is this a huge time saver? You click on a few and you see, you try to find other people’s data. Now you’re not going to plagiarize. You’re not going to their PowerPoint, but in the lower right or left corner, what do we all do if we’re decent and we’re ethical at what we do, we put our source for the data, you know, a widget, a widget corporation, 2020 study, right?
SR (23:59):
You’re going to find that in the lower right corner of PowerPoint life, we’re going to grab the name of the source, go back into Google, paste that in, put it within quotation marks. Now we’re going to go find the original source of that data. So it was a little complex. What I just described much easier if we were on zoom and I was showing you, but, but hopefully people get it because what I’m doing is I’m looking at somebody else’s PowerPoint presentation, not to steal their content, but to see what data sources did they use. Now, I’m going to go back into Google finding the original data source. Well, heck I’ve just saved myself three hours of research.
RV (24:35):
Ah, yeah. I feel like that happens a lot too where people will cite it, but then sometimes people will say things and they’ve never actually liked the one I think of as the like statistics you hear about how much of the workforce is disengaged. Like so many people use that and it’s like a Gallup survey. Yeah. Most of the people who use that have never actually read the actual exactly. And being able to kind of like add the context and see the full report is a super powerful and, and on the topic of reports, I guess if you’re looking at PDFs, you could also pull up people’s annual reports. Now, if they’re public companies they’re available anyways. But even if you’re certain, certain private companies might have versions of their annual reports posted online.
SR (25:20):
Absolutely. So, you know, file type colon PDF, or file type colon doc or docx would be word documents XL would be XLS or XL SX. So what kind of Excel spreadsheets are out there? All, everything from budgets to member lists, attendee lists all sorts of different types. And it really it’s, you know, it’s kind of a science and an art. So the science is the plus the minus the quotes, the file type, the entitles, there’s a bunch more as well. And the art is kind of knowing when to use it. So you just try different things until something shows up that you like.
RV (25:56):
Yeah. So, but if I wanted to, let’s say that I had a you know, I wanted to get more speaking gigs and I wanted to go, like, I need all of the associations, you know, I want to get all the, you know, whatever the financial, financial advisors and like associations. So I could just theoretically say, you know, I might go on and do something like in title, financial associations file type, colon dot XLS.
SR (26:30):
Yeah. You could do that. But what I would also recommend is, is that a phrase I like to use is think like the author. So if I wanted to find a list of associations that paid speakers and I was creating that list. So if I’m the author of that list, what words would I put in there? Now, the obvious ones would be all association lists. No, here’s kind of a backdoor way of doing it. So already let’s say I want to find a, a list of more places, more associations that would hire Rory Vaden. Well, what I might do is pull up, pull up my past client list and say, Hey, I’m going to type in three associations who paid me in the past, you know, the medical association, the automotive Otis association, and the banking association put, put the name of the association in quotes file type colon PDF.
SR (27:25):
All right. So what I’m saying is those three associations have to be in the PDF file, but then I’m going to do something a little bit different. I’m also going to add the phrase member directory. So I’ll put that in quotes or, or an all uppercase membership directory, but that in quotes or a, or an all uppercase attendee list, what I’m looking for is a PDF document where all three of those associations have appeared. The concept being is if there’s a list of great associations out there, if those three aren’t in it, it’s not a good list, but if those three are in it, it’s probably a really good list. So it’s kind of, again, that phrase, thinking like the author. Well, if I was creating a list of great associations for it to be any good, what three associations would have to be in their search for those, instead of just searching for the phrase association lists,
RV (28:17):
I need the Sam Richter keynote past keynote client fee range, greater than X type dot XLS file. That’s I mean, this is amazing. These are free searches. These are free Boolean logic is all free. Theoretically, you could just go to Google and start messing around with plus minus file type. In, in title,
SR (28:45):
All in quotes you know, all in text in URL. I mean, there’s a bunch of them, but you know, the key is it. You don’t have to get too fancy. I mean, it, I guarantee if you just start using quotation marks and minus signs, just forget all the rest of it. Quotation marks and minus signs. You’ll save yourself two hours a day
RV (29:05):
And the minus sign, does it have to be, yes, there’s a minus sign and then a space, or does it have to be,
SR (29:09):
And the minus sign must touch the word that you want to remove. Now, if you want to remove a phrase. So if I wanted to remove a stereo speaker, I’d put stereo speaker within quotes, and then the minus sign would touch the first quote. Got it.
RV (29:24):
I got it. The other way that we can do this is you actually have a tool. Well, you, you also build a bunch of tools. You build, you build them for different industries, where you basically take, how does this work? You basically take, you create your own user interface. Cause some your searches will use 30 parts of Boolean logic that are all in this query, but you build a custom graphic user interface where you can just go type stuff in, and then it’ll run all the searches for you. It’s basically as if you were sitting there like personally doing this.
SR (29:57):
Correct. So what I, what I do in, in the industries in which I speak, you know, my kind of stake in the ground is, is very high content. So obviously entertaining, motivational those kinds of, you know, we’ve got to do that. But also very high context. And kind of my, what I like to say is, is, you know, hire me and the learning and most of most important, the implementation or the execution of what I share, doesn’t have to stop once the ovation subsides. So I produce what’s called a sales Intel engine for just about every industry in which I speak in a sales intelligence. So I’ll, I’ll interview my prospects. And I’ll say, you know, who, who are the types of companies that you call on? What are the types of decision-makers? Why does somebody buy from you? Why somebody buys might be, I call that a sales trigger what’s going on in their life, where they need you today.
SR (30:45):
And then I will build Boolean algorithms and, you know, it could be 20 to 50 different words. And then I’ll add a button on top of that, if you will. So instead of somebody having to type the 30 to 50 word bullying algorithm, let’s say that they sell to electronic electrical engineers. So instead of having to search the 30 to 50 or typing the 30 to 50 word algorithm to find electrical engineers, I just have a field that says location. They type in Dallas, there’s a button that says electrical engineers, they click on the button and it’ll instantly pull up all the electrical engineers in Dallas.
RV (31:20):
So you can even search, you can narrow searches by location. I mean, you can narrow your search by anything with Google.
SR (31:25):
Yup. Yup. But that, but that’s a very specific bull. I wouldn’t even want to try to explain it to you. Cause it’s, it’s pretty complex in terms of being able to yes, you could type in Dallas, but to do, to, to literally get the city of Dallas is a pretty long equation.
RV (31:46):
Interesting. So where do you go to, how do we go learn about these? So you said you, you call them sales, Intel and engines, and you built them. You have built these for different verticals for different industries. Yeah.
SR (31:59):
Yeah. And I, I, I build them all the time and I have a holding page for lack of better term of my catalog where after I do them for a company, I’ll say, Hey, I wonder if anybody else would want something like this. And I’ll S I’ll take out some of the personal things related to that company then make it available on an industry basis. So I’ve got a webpage. My catalog is Intel engine, I N T E L. And then engine is spelled weird. N G I N. So I N T E L N G I n.com. And that will have, I think right now there’s probably a dozen engines on there. I’ve got about three dozen more that I still need to frankly, build their landing page and put them on there. But in general, I mean, you’ll go there, you’ll see ones for the conveyor belt industry for the electronics industry, for the speaker industry. And then there’s a general one that’s called the premium engine. That just kind of is all things to all people for financial advisors. I’ve got a really powerful one. So those are the kinds of engines I’ve developed.
RV (32:58):
Hmm. Fascinating. So then we don’t have to actually know any of this stuff. We can just, whatever, pay us little monthly fee and then just like type in the filters and it’ll deal, pull it all up. And then it just sends us to Google and just says, here, here’s exactly what you need.
SR (33:14):
Yeah. It’s just designed to save you time and, and hopefully help you find information that you might not even have other known otherwise, knowing that existed now, inside the engines, I also search other other search engines and other databases beyond Google. Google is the primary one. I’d say 80% of the results will show up in Google, but the 20% I’m also searching other other if you recall earlier, invisible websites.
RV (33:39):
Interesting. Yeah. Well, I mean, I just, you know, I think about if I had to do a book launch and I wanted to grab a list of book reviewers or media writers or podcast hosts, or I wanted to grab, you know, a bunch of associations or I wanted a list of a membership directory of everybody in this industry that, you know, the way my mind would normally go about that is hire a VA, giving them parameters and let them go search for hours and hours and hours. But if I just search for file type like a membership directory and the right things like that, probably all those things, those things that I’m looking for have likely been compiled by somebody somewhere. And if I know how to do the Boolean logic, I can like go right to it. If it’s, if it’s on the web somewhere.
SR (34:25):
Yeah. If it’s on the web. Now the challenge today, especially in today’s world with certainly a lot of these member directories and attendee list show up, you still have to be careful because as you know, again, depending on what statistic you read, who knows which one’s right, but a good percentage, 30 to 40% of people have left their jobs or will leave their jobs either in the past year or the next year, whatever that number is. I don’t know. And so that means that a lot of those lists may no longer be valid. That’s why I also use LinkedIn. A lot of these techniques, you know, the same bullying techniques you can use within LinkedIn, but theoretically people keep their LinkedIn profiles up to date. So that’s why I like LinkedIn. So for example, I could go into LinkedIn and in the main search forum, I’ll type in book reviewer. Now, if I type in book reviewer with no quotation marks, I’ll get book reviewers, but I’ll also get anybody who’s. Any, I’ll get a music, I’ll get a music reviewer, who’s read a book. So book reviewer within quotation marks will tell LinkedIn only find that exact phrase.
RV (35:29):
Yeah. That’s so powerful and simple. So all right. So Intel and Intel engine, but without the ease and engine, right? The Intel engine.com. So that’s where you could go to check out one of these. I want to look at, I want to look at the speaker one, cause I want to use it and maybe we can do a deal or something with, for sure, for brand builders members. I want to talk to AJC. Maybe we can buy this for every, all of our members and provide it. Cause this is pretty, pretty powerful stuff. And where else do you want people to go Sam? Or if they want to connect with you and learn more about what you’re up to
SR (36:01):
Just go to Sam richter.com. Sam, R I C H T E r.com or frankly Rory, if if you can’t find it, just go to Google type in my name with, or without quotation marks. That’s my business card. I mean, if you couldn’t find me that way, don’t listen to anything I have to say, because I’ve also had to learn the, the flip side of this. Right. So if I’m going to teach how to find people, I better be able to be found. Yeah,
RV (36:25):
Absolutely. Well, Sam, so cool, man. I’ll always pick up so many tactical like tips of like, oh, that’s so, so good. And appreciate you being willing to share here. And as always brother, we wish you the best.
SR (36:37):
Thank you. You too. Keep up your great work. It’s so needed in today’s world and I’m just super excited for all that. You’ve accomplished. Congratulations. Thanks buddy.

Ep 219: Optimizing Your Amazon Book Sales with Naren Aryal | 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 see if we might be a fit. So if you’re interested in a free strategy call with someone from our team, we would love to hear from you. You can do that at brand builders, group.com/pod call brand builders, group.com/pod call. We hope to talk to you soon.

RV (00:55):

I love talking about books and selling books and writing books and making books and changing people’s lives with books. And that is why I’m excited to do this special recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast. I am breaking down the interview that I just did here with Naren Aryal. And he is someone that has been a friend of a friend for awhile, and now we’ve got some of our clients that have done projects with them. He’s becoming one of our preferred vendor partners that we’re we’re we’re using and introducing, introducing people to. And so it was, it was time for us to sit down and have a chat and it was awesome. I mean, I love it. You maybe aren’t familiar with Aaron and I, I think it’s like some of these, some of my favorite episodes are ones where it’s like, you, you don’t know these people because they work in the, behind the scenes part of this whole space and an industry and, and business of building personal brands, but they have the secrets, like they’ve got the knowledge and they’ve, they’ve got you know, the tactics and this episode was one of those.

RV (02:04):

And so definitely go back and listen to it. Of course, I’m going to share with you my top three takeaways and highlights from the, from our chat together. But I’m rolling solo today. We don’t have AJ and so you’re just going to get me, and I’ve got three big takeaways from this, from this interview, from this episode, but each of these have a ton, like I got so much out of this, which is, which is crazy, right? Like we’ve we do. We help people do book launches all the time where we teach how to do book launches. We’ve done book launches. Like we’ve got friends that are launching books, like constantly, almost every week. We have a friend doing, doing some type of a book launch. And, and yet I learned a ton and that shows you that there is a lot to learn about and it, it doesn’t happen by accident.

RV (03:01):

It doesn’t happen by luck it’s it’s strategy and knowledge like so many things. So here’s my first takeaway was very simple and high level, but even for me, this was so clarifying. It was the five parts of book production. And just going like this was so powerful. And these are like the phases of writing a book, which most of us don’t even think about and writing a book can be intimidating yet when you understand and break it apart and break it down into these five phases. Now there’s, there’s another phase of which is actually writing the book, which is the first step, which is what we help people with at brand builders group, right? Like we help you figure out what’s the problem you solve. What’s the message in one sentence, who are you writing to? And then we help you in our captivating content event, we help you do the thinking of the book, which is the, the, the most important part, in my opinion, is, is the original thought leadership pulling out your true expertise, organizing it into pillars, creating true intellectual property that is truly unique from you and not a regurgitation of stuff that other people say.

RV (04:14):

So we do that, but then what happens once you have a manuscript, right? That’s where a lot of people get lost and Naren broke this down. I thought so well, and just these five phases, these five parts of book production. So like once the manuscript is sort of done, then what happens? So first of all, there’s the editorial and all of these phases also have costs, right? So this is something you got to think about when you go, should I traditionally publish, should I self publish? Should I use a hybrid publisher? Like, you know a lot of our clients do on like maybe their first or second project. So there’s a lot to it. So editorial is, you got to edit the manuscript. It’s gotta be sharp and tight and clean and, and punctuated. And, you know, the thinking has to be good first, but then the writing has to be good.

RV (05:03):

And those are two different things. And so you’ve got editorial, which could be ghost writing could be coaching, could be editing, could be just proofreading. The second phase is the design. So there is, there is design, which is more than just the front cover. I mean, that’s what we think about is what’s going to go on the cover, which is part of it, but it’s also what goes on the back cover and what goes on the spine and what goes on the flaps. If it’s, if it is a hard cover book. And then also, how do you lay out the book in on the pages? Are there pull quotes? How big is the font? There’s something called the gutter, which is how close are the words to to the, how close to the words line up to the crease in the book, like all these things you don’t think about, how much margin should you have around the outside of your pages?

RV (05:52):

How many pages are there? What visuals have to be designed, right? Like there’s a whole of stuff in that second phase of design, then there’s publishing, which is a word that we hear a lot. And most people sort of assign, I think publishing is like a blanket statement for all of this, but actually publishing is really just one part of this. And so that’s why I think a lot of authors are let down when they find out how little marketing that publishers do, because they don’t realize how much work there is to do in just publishing the book. So that is the, the, the, the creation of the book, you know, finalizing the, the, the files, pulling it all together and then printing the books, listing them in, you know, the, the library of Congress, getting the ESPN, getting them uploaded into retailers and into distributors.

RV (06:46):

And it’s actually like inventorying the book into the system that, that makes books available world worldwide, or at least, you know, domestically then the fourth phase is warehousing and distribution. So when you publish you, you now have a bunch of physically printed books, and you’ve got that book is now available in a variety of places, but it’s not physically there. So now you have to physically get this book to these locations, to these retailers. Now if it isn’t, if it’s an online, even if it’s an online retailer like Amazon, they have to have your book in their inventory, or you have to use their like print on demand service if you’re self publishing. And so a lot of people do that, but you know, if you’re working with a publisher, whether it’s a a hybrid publisher or traditional publisher, someone’s got to print books and ship them somewhere, and then they gotta be stored and there’s costs associated with all of these steps, right?

RV (07:49):

And then finally there’s marketing and, and platform development. In our case, we would call it launching. And it is, it is the book launch. And this is where brand builders kind of steps back in a lot of times. And you know, one of our, one of our flagship events is called bestseller launch plan, where we teach the whole systematic step by step process of exactly what needs to happen to get people, to buy the book, which is an eight month process. We, our checklist starts eight months before publishing date before the pub date. So that’s just that fifth phase. So when you back out from there, okay, warehousing distribution, and then publishing and then design and then editorial, and then the manuscript creation, and then the ideas and flushing out all of that it’s, it takes years like it’s, it’s a couple years at least to do a book the right way, at least the way we would teach.

RV (08:42):

So that was powerful. Five parts of book production. And really there’s, you know, six, if you count the whole ideation, which is really important. And then that last stage platform development that happens years and years before, during, and after the book launch, which is actually my second takeaway. It was really great to hear, Narren talk about the importance of platform development because not every, not every author gets that. I mean, I’d say most authors don’t get that. There’s this myth that you’re going to write a great book, and then someone’s going to publish it and it’s going to become a best seller. It ain’t true. Like it’s not what it’s about. Y’all like the, the, the biggest bestselling books are not the best written books. The biggest bestselling books are not the best thinking books. They’re not the best advice. They’re not the best strategies necessarily.

RV (09:41):

They are the books from people who have the biggest audiences. Did you catch that the best selling books come from the people with the biggest audiences? That is what it’s about is you got to build an audience. And so, you know, the, the, one of the things that we’re always telling our members, right, are our coaching clients at brand builders group that we work with one-on-one is, we’re always saying, you’ve got to build the audience for the book before you build the book. So you even back that stage up to go, you’ve got to build the audience for the book. Just like when we, when we talk about the ideation of a book, so this is another thing. Cause because we do help our clients with creating original IP and their thought leadership, but we don’t deal with all the nitty gritty logistics of like making the, the book, an actual physical thing.

RV (10:37):

With the ideation we tell our clients build you know, build. So first of all, build the audience for the book before you build the book. And then we say, right, the book has a conclusion, not a hypothesis. So you shouldn’t publish a book and share. And this is our opinion. This is our opinion is to say it shouldn’t be ideas that you think might be true. That would be hypothesis. A lot of books fail because the author is writing a hypothesis. Well, what a book should be is a conclusion. It should be the final finished, tested work that you’ve tested on your clients on yourself. You’ve got data behind it. You’ve got actual case studies and strategies and stories. And it’s, it’s the conclusion. So that is with the ideas in the book, similar though, with your platform development, this is a big shift that authors need to make.

RV (11:32):

You know, if you ever have a chance of being a best selling author is you have to realize that you have to think of a book launch as the culmination of a relationship, not the Genesis of a relationship. A book launch is really the culmination of a relationship, not the Genesis of a relationship, meaning you don’t write a book and then people find out about you. People find out about you and then you write a book for them, right? You build the audience before you build the book. And if you wrote a book and it didn’t sell well, don’t misconstrue that as thinking like your book was a bad book, it wasn’t at all. It means you probably didn’t have the audience built for it. There’s a lot of very average mediocre books that sell lots of copies because they come from people who have the biggest audiences.

RV (12:23):

And so the first people don’t buy your book typically on first exposure, they buy your book because they’ve had lots of exposure to you consistently. And then they see your book and you go, you know what I’ve I’ve heard of this person. They’re really good. I like their stuff. I want to see what this is about. Now in reality, sometimes the book is the Genesis of relationships. But it’s usually because somebody who had a relationship with you bought the book and then told someone else, you gotta read this thing, right? So there are some people who find out about Rory Vaden still to this day, because someone said, you got to retake the stairs. This book will change your life. That happens a lot. But a lot of people it’s, it’s more of, they hear me somewhere. They see my Ted talk, they see me speak.

RV (13:10):

They hear me on a podcast interview or interview, or they, they stumble across me on social media, from hashtags or from they stumble across my blog because of search engine optimization, all these other things that we teach. And then they kind of follow, follow, follow, come into the email list, get loved on, you know, they subscribe to the podcast, we’re dropping value, value, value constantly. And then we release a book and they go, man, I I’ve learned a ton. I, I wanna, I wanna, I want to get serious about learning more from these folks. That’s how it works. That’s the culmination of a relationship in reality, it is a, can be the Genesis of a relationship, but you got to understand the flip in the switch in your brain that most authors think, okay, I will write the book and then people will find it and I will become famous.

RV (13:55):

Or the book will become a bestseller. No, no, no, no. That that’s not how it works. It’s the other way around. So build the audience before you build the book. And then the third thing which we talked about, which I love, which I do not do, have never done, don’t know anything about. And, and I’m going to start learning and diving into is Amazon specific strategy. And so there were two parts of this. One is the category, which we are aware of, but we never do this because we traditionally publish. And so our traditional publishers set the categories that it’s in, but if you’re self publishing, you know, Amazon has, I don’t know, thousands of categories and subcategories and subcategories of subcategories. And you, when you self publish, get to determine three categories to rank your book for. And what Darren said, which is a simple strategy, is go take two of those three and pick the categories you want your book to actually be in.

RV (14:55):

So that other people who are interested in those categories will find your book, but then take one of your three categories and choose a very non-competitive category so that you can become a best seller an Amazon bestseller in. And the way that happens is you become Amazon publishes bestseller lists that are updated every hour and they have bestseller lists that are done category by category. This is why there is an explosion in the world of bestselling authors. The vast majority of them are Amazon bestselling authors and there they are category best-sellers and often sub category of category bestsellers. But that’s a great, I mean, that’s a, that’s a great win. That should be a first, you know, when to go, you’re truly a best seller. Like according to Amazon, your book is the best selling book in that category. At least for an hour in compared to all the other books in that category.

RV (15:55):

So that’s a good strategy to do to legitimately be like, Hey, I’m, I’m a bestselling author. Now we’re going to teach you how to kind of, you know, if you really want that title best-selling author, you need to not just have the title. You want to have more, more and more credible versions of that, right? Like to be the number one book, Amazon worldwide as much more difficult, or even the number one in your sub, like your, your category, your like your main category, like business versus marketing versus marketing for dentists, right? Those are how they go. And then outside of Amazon, of course, there’s wall street, journal, bestseller, New York times, bestseller USA today, they’re all, you know, difficult to reach much more difficult than an Amazon bestseller because it’s only Amazon is just for an hour. And it’s compared to all those other books in the category.

RV (16:46):

Anyways, that said, I think it’s a great strategy, brilliant, simple, easy there it’s completely authentic and validated, like you’re the best seller in your category. So choose one of your categories strategically for that purpose. So simple, so simple. And then the other thing that he said, and this is one I’ve never done is by, by bid on the ads for the terms of books that are like yours in your category in Amazon. So Amazon is a search engine, just like Google is a search engine, just like YouTube is a search engine and they make money off advertising. And you apparently we can bid on terms. And so if you say, I want to bid on this term when people, you know, look for this book, show them my book as well. I think that’s pretty clever way to use advertising spend. So it’d be tricky to figure out how many of those convert and do you make your money back on that?

RV (17:40):

But I think this is this is a world we’re going to get into. So holy moly, like that’s a lot of information that I just dropped and spit at you for the last few minutes, but there’s so much to learn. This was such a practical podcast. I picked up a ton of stuff, helped me organize my thinking, go back and listen to the whole episode and, and just know like the, if you’ve got the dream of being a bestseller, it’s possible, it’s probable. I mean, it’s very likely if, if you stick around here and you follow the things we’re teaching and the things that our guests are doing, that you will do it because it’s very systematic. It’s not easy, but it’s fairly predictable and systematic. If you’re willing to do the work, as long as you know exactly what the path is. And that’s why we’re here every week is to help you find the path, know the path. And then at some point, our invitation to you is to join and actually become one of our paying members where we’re working with you. One-On-One and we’re actually helping you do the path for your own personal brand, but either way, keep coming back week after week. We’re so glad you’re here. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.