Hey, welcome to this special recap edition of the influential personal brand podcast. I’m Rory Vaden breaking it down so low. Our recap, this is a recap episode of Liz Forkin Bohannon and I am laughing because this episode cracked me up. I thought it was so funny because so, so here is my first, my, my first big takeaway. All right. So my first big takeaway was verbatim what Liz said, which actually has nothing to do with personal branding. Ubut I thought this was just so profound and powerful and relevant and poignant and, and wow. When she said a lot of the problems in the world can be solved with a good job. A lot of the problems in the world can be solved with a good job paying good money, providing good men benefits. And the reason I’m laughing is because this transformation, if you, if you listen to the interview, Liz talks about how she was like this nonprofit, bleeding heart, like change the world. I’m going to go, you know, serve, serve people to becoming this extreme entreprenuer doing who’s launched now a huge direct sales, a business that she’s turned into a direct sales you know, multilevel marketing thing that, that she thought she invented the business model. And it’s just, it’s just hilarious. And it is in it’s awesome. And it’s profound about the idea that, you know, money, money solves problems, but not just giving people money, teaching people how to make money and creating an opportunity for people to make money. And that to me is just powerful. Again, it has nothing to do with personal branding, which we normally wouldn’t share as a takeaway, but I mean, I was inspired because I know that you probably, in some way, lead to the work that you do create jobs for people. And so often we think about like the audience that we’re impacting or speaking to are the people who are buying our products and services. And we think about our own income, but I think this is a good reason and a good moment in time to pause and just go, thank you. And congratulations to all the entrepreneurs who create jobs, whether they’re full-time jobs or part-time jobs, whether as employees or contractors, but that the work that you’re doing as a, as an, as an entrepreneur, as an influencer, as an entrepreneur, maybe who works as part of a direct sales company, or even as an executive, a corporate executive at a big, at a big company, but that your personal brand is serving more than just you. And it is even serving more than your audience. Your personal brand is creating jobs and opportunity for a whole world of vendors and partners and contractors. And one day, you know, if you follow our model and we’re teaching it, you know, if you get to phase four where we talk about eight figure entrepreneur and scaling your personal brand, you’re going to be providing lots of jobs. And that’s just awesome. That is awesome. That is another reason why we love serving you and, and helping people create jobs and businesses and side jobs and side hustles, and you know, work with people in direct sales because you, when you start a business, you create jobs. And as Liz says, a lot of problems in the world can be solved by providing a good job. So that was, that was a huge kind of unusual takeaway and, and rare takeaway from the event and just really profoundly impacted impacted me. And I just you know, I also find it hilarious kind of the transformation of this journey that she went on. And just, just awesome. So that’s great. So my second big takeaway from this, which is just magical is going if you’re an entrepreneur. And when I say we’re not for the purpose of this segment right here, when I say entrepreneur, I’m going to say that you’re a, I’m going to in quotation say a real entrepreneur. And what I mean by that is going, you’re not just a personal brand, right? Like that you’re building and monetizing your face and your persona. But if you’re truly building a company and a, and a, and a brand name and company equity, and it’s not built around your face, most of what we do is, you know, the core of our target audience is people who are authors and speakers and coaches and trainers and consultants. And then, you know, our secondary, I think audience is more of like professional services and lawyers and accountants and, and doctors and financial advisors and real estate agents, and, and then direct sales. And then I think another big part of our audience is corporate executives. And then entrepreneurs like Liz, where Liz is main income is coming from her business, which is not selling speaking engagements and video courses and membership sites and books is from her job and the profits of her company and the salary that she draws. But if you’re a, if you’re that kind of an entrepreneur, I don’t real entrepreneur, maybe isn’t right, but it just, if you’re a classic entrepreneur or a true entrepreneur separate from being a personal brand, Take notes of what she said about the power and the impact And the significance and the Value of free money Marketing that personal branding provides to her company, to her corporation, to her brand, to her business, to her, her logo, to her, her, her exit value to her, to her asset that is this business that she has built. It, you know, she said, it’s remarkable if she could, if she could quantify the amount of free marketing opportunity that she has had for her company because of her personal brand. And I think companies and entrepreneurs and big corporations and small businesses are starting to really wake up to this idea, which, you know, a lot of the most successful companies have figured this out long ago, right? Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, Richard Branson, Steve jobs, you know, these are personal brands that have built huge enterprises and they leverage their personal brand to get media, to create, you know, influential relationships and connections and not to monetize their personal brand in the, in the classic way that we think of it, which is the paids, you know, the, the paids model that we teach and, and the various things that we talk about, but actually monetizing their personal brand through the profits of their enterprise, like of their actual business, the bottom line profits. And that is just, you know I’m going to let the cat out of the bag here a little bit. So we haven’t shared this anywhere publicly yet. So you’re getting an insider secret of foreshadowing, a hint at something exciting that has company coming, that we have officially commissioned and commenced something that we are calling the state of personal branding. And we are in the middle right now of conducting a nationwide survey where we are looking at statistically valid sample, a sampling of valid populations to determine the trends and the data, and doing a pure empirical analysis on the trends of, and the state of personal branding. And one of the things that we are measuring and it’s tied to this is do people trust companies more, or do they trust personal brands more? Do they trust, you know, this big giant enterprise and the logo and the history behind all that? Or are they more likely to listen to a person who is an executive at the company or a founder, or, you know, someone that runs a department or a product line or something that, and we’re fascinated to find out the results. I don’t know the answer yet, you know, from a data perspective, but we’re about to know, and we are going to be releasing this. But if you listen to just what Liz is saying here through kind of her own personal recount, she’s going my personal brand brand, your personal brand as an entrepreneur gets you access to marketing opportunities and connections and relationships and resources and, and money that you would not get if you don’t have the personal brand. And that is reason enough to do it, especially if you are an early stage startup, especially if you’re a small business it’s super duper powerful, but you know, like I said, Richard Branson and Elon Musk, I mean, all these, these people that we talk about, they are the wealthiest people in the world. I mean, literally Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk. So the wealthiest people in the world use your personal brand to build your business. And I thought, you know, what was important tactically for you, you know, real entrepreneur classic entrepreneur, that if you’re listening is to ask the question, how does this serve my main goal right now? Right? So most of you listening are like me, you’re a personal brand. You speak, you write books, you do courses, you do coaching programs, consulting, et cetera, et cetera. And then some of you are more professional services. What I would say is kind of like an intrepreneur where, where it’s, it’s not fully your own business, but you have your own book of business. You have your own clients and you do your own marketing and, and, and sales and service typically. But you’re probably not like dealing with PNLs and stuff like that as much. But then if, if you’re truly running a company, like if you’re truly an entrepreneur and you’ve, you know, you, you file a 10 K every year and you have articles of incorporation and, and, and you have a tax ID number for your business entity. It’s going, how can I use my personal brand to drive the company profit? And that just like you would make investments into advertising and hiring and infrastructure and CRMs and technology, you should be making the same type of strategic investments into your personal brand because of the exponential returns that it gets you. And I think a lot of entrepreneurs are waking up to this. And for those of you that are more classic personal brands, kind of like, as I view myself in many ways it’s, it’s realizing that not a lot of entrepreneurs start companies because they don’t want to be a face. They don’t really, they like being sort of behind the scenes and, and they want to build something that is, you know, kind of, of them, but it is powerful. And I think entrepreneurs need to learn from personal brands, how to leverage their personal brand, to throw a tension and gasoline on the fire that is their company, and to grow their business and personal brands need to learn from entrepreneurs about how to scale and in, in, in incorporate infrastructure and systems and processes, and to build things that operate without them. And that’s, I think one of the things that brand builders group does is we sort of sit uniquely at the intersection because of our experience and passion for both entrepreneurship and personal brands. But anyways, that if you’re an entrepreneur, you gotta be lightened up about using personal your personal brand to separate yourself from every other company out there that does what you do. And now is the time and stay tuned for the data on this. That is coming from the brand builders group, personal the state of personal brand study. I can’t even hardly contain myself. I’m so excited. You’re going to love it. All right. My third takeaway, takeaway number three, here was this term pluck that she uses pluck. Now, you know, it needs, it needs some explaining, which, you know, from that standpoint, you know, it doesn’t pass the clarity test to some of these things that we talk about with titles, but as a concept, the concept that she uses of pluck, I really, really love this because, you know, she, she describes it as a, as a, it’s a, you know, it’s an actual word that means determined, and it’s the determination and the commitment of a beginner. But I also think of it as passion plus luck which is, you know, pluck. So I’m kind of adapting her, her term here. But the, what she said that was super powerful is that beginners have an advantage. So we typically think of beginners having a disadvantage, right? And there are some disadvantages, like you’ve got to figure things out for, you got to prove, you know, you got to prove that there’s a market for what you’re doing. You have to, you know, find a sales model and, and, and, you know, cashflow a startup and get things off the ground. There’s a lot of challenging things about about being a beginner, but there are also a lot of advantages to being a beginner. She talks about at least 14 in her book, but you know, this reminds me, this is a kin to what Malcolm Gladwell talks about in his book, David and Goliath, which if you, if you’ve never read, of course, everything that Malcolm Gladwell writes is very fascinating and curious, and, you know, not as much practical as it is kind of interesting and philosophical, but somehow still applies to a lot of things in life. And this is a great example of one, what he talks about it in David and Goliath is basically how, you know, we think basically how the things we perceive as disadvantages are advantages and how we all think David conquered Goliath. And it was like this mighty giant. And David was this little like scrawny kid with no armor and no weaponry who takes down this mighty giant, which is true. But he says, you know, he kind of makes the case and walks you through historically, what’s going on there, you’ve got this big, whatever nine foot man out there in the field moving, you know, covered in heavy, heavy armor. And, you know, David with the little Slingshot kind of darting around here and, and throwing a rock. And, and David had a lot of experience with this as, as you know, basically a sheep herder and a shepherd. This was a tool that he used on a regular basis. And, and anyways, it’s, you know, the way Malcolm Gladwell kind of presents it, at least causes you to look at us and go, Hey, maybe this wasn’t as unfair as we all think about it. And we like to tell the story is that actually you could say David had the advantage. You know, if it was, if it was a really hot day and he has the advantage of agility, there’s advantages and whether or not that’s true, or you agree with it, or you like it, it’s a powerful perspective. And here’s why this is important because you right now in your own life, think you have disadvantages you right now in your own life. Think there are things about you that you have as weaknesses. And the reality is that every single one of those things could be flipped and turned to an advantage. If you just change the way you look at it, and that changes everything, because whether you’re able to turn it into an advantage or not the fact that you let go of the limiting belief, that your, that your perceived disadvantage is really a disadvantaged. If the fact that you’re willing to let that go, and you’re able to let that go in to say, Oh, this could be an advantage that changes everything.