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.