RV (00:02): Amy Porterfield legend. I mean, did, when it comes to digital marketing, online marketing, personal branding, I mean, she’s a legend, she’s one of the, one of the, the fairy godmothers of this industry or this space, you know, I would say godfather, but you know, clearly godmother and she’s, she has just helped a ton of people, 40,000 people to be exact 40,000 people have gone through her paid courses. And I just, I just love that conversation. I I’m honored when we get a chance to be introduced to people like her and get to go behind the scenes a little bit and bring you the stories, right. Of like she’s working with Tony Robbins for seven years and she’s helping Tony do his first live webinar and she accidentally pushes the wrong button and, and, and, and notifies hundreds of people that the webinar is canceled. RV (00:53): I mean, just to hear those stories to me is just so rich and rare and, and, and, and powerful because it just, you know, it shows you where these people start and, and, and hopefully that gives you encouragement for where you can start. Like, you can start right where you’re at. And and I just, yeah, I didn’t know exactly what to expect from the conversation like Amy and I have been sort of acquaintances and, you know, a little bit messaging back here and there, and then more recent, we’ve gotten to know a little each other a little bit since she moved to Nashville. And and I’ve just always liked her, just never really known her that well. And, and this was so cool to get to learn from her and hear her story. So I, I let’s talk away. I’m gonna share, you know, my three top highlights from the interview with Amy Porterfield and the first one, one is, you know, we don’t sell a ton of courses. RV (01:47): It’s not a big focus of what we do at brain builders group. We, we do one on one personal brand strategy, coaching and training, right? Like we, we do human to human. And so we don’t, we haven’t like put a lot of time and energy into selling courses. It’s it’s and we don’t even really do it at all. I, a lot of our clients do and we’ve done it before, and we know, you know, we know something about it, but like this, the number one question that we’ll always get that always get from people when it comes to their course is how long does it need to be? Like, how many, how many videos and how long? And for some reason, people really get, really get stuck on that. And I loved Amy’s answer. She said simply however long it has to be to get them the result, what a great answer and just the true answer. RV (02:41): Like people aren’t paying for the amount of time, right. They’re paying for a result. If you’ve, if you’ve hung around our, our brain builders community, you’ll hear us say this a lot. People don’t pay for information. They pay for organization and application, right? They they’re, they’re, they’re paying for the application. They, they need help applying information to their life. And so in some ways, the, the better you are at teaching, the shorter it can be, and the shorter it should be. You know, I think it was mark Twain, who said, that said that brevity is the essence of wisdom. I shared that David Brooks, one of my speaker coaches in the world championship of public speaking said, tell the audience every word they need to know and not a word more. And, and Amy is applying that same principle here. It, however long it has to be to get them the result that you’re promising them. RV (03:34): So, but do it the fastest way possible, be efficient with it. Don’t just like don’t drag on and on with content, cuz you think it needs to be longer in order to justify a higher price. It’s, that’s lowering the value of it. Like if you can deliver the secret and you know, and you can do it concisely just that’s, that’s even more valuable. And I, I, I do also wanna mention a little subnote here where she said bake in pep talks to your course. I love that. That was such a great tip. Bake in little pep talks into your course and realize that it’s not just information. People need encouragement. They, they need motivation. They need inspiration. They, they need, they need wisdom and direction and, and, and they, they need help believing that it’s possible. And you know, it was funny when she said the, the more like signature course, the bigger course, the longer the course, the more motivation they need. RV (04:33): And that makes sense because there’s more places where they can get tripped up, right? There’s there’s more, there’s more points on the journey anywhere they can fall off. So bake little pep talks into your course. It’s not just information. It shouldn’t just be boring drudgery through like content, inspire them, challenge them, help them, coach them, encourage them. That’s a really, really important part of, of the journey. So that was really, the second thing was how do you sell a course? And I love, I mean, she said exactly what we do, exactly what she does, exactly what we teach and exactly what we’ve seen works, which is you don’t even really sell the course. What you do is you create a free training. You create a free one hour speech. The way we would say it is the fastest way to take someone from being a total stranger to a lifelong fan is an incredible 45 minute to one hour presentation, right? RV (05:41): It’s your speech now? You’ll that is a webinar like in recorded format. That is a webinar. If it’s, if it’s in live format, it it’s a speech. It could be a live on social media. Like it could be a podcast interview, but it’s like, you have to work to create this tightly bound content, rich value added 45 minute, just delicious and impactful training. And then you gotta deliver it to people like you gotta, you gotta run your mouth. You gotta go out and tell the world. You can do it by podcast. You can do it by going live on social media. You can go on other people’s podcasts. You can go, you can do it as webinars. You can break it up into smaller video funnels. You can, you can go out and do speeches. You like, you can do. ’em Virtually you can do ’em in front of humans, but like you have to give people a chance to sample what you have to teach. RV (06:37): And that’s why that 45 minutes is it’s gotta be so good. Not smoking mirrors, not flashing the pan, not a bunch of teaser. And then I’ll teach you the good stuff, like 45 minutes of life changing content that you give away for free give people. And, and you promote that. Drive people to that. You drive people to the free thing where they experience you. And then the people who are still there, which are the ones who are interested. They’re not only interested, they’re super interested because they were interested enough to register and then interested enough to show up, interested enough to stay and interested enough to be there at the end. So it’s like, those are the people who want to buy. So if by the time they’re there with you at the end, they want to know what you have for sale. That’s why they’re there. RV (07:29): So, you know, use your email and your blogs and your social media and your podcast and your YouTubes to drive people to a free training. And then at the end of the free training, that is where you make the, the pitch to sell. And, and I, I love the way that Amy said that she said, earn your right to sell to them, earn your right to sell to them. It’s like paying in rears instead of paying in forwards, right? Like some of your bills you pay in rears. Like you go, you pay for the service after you’ve experienced it. Right? You do that like at a restaurant, right? You eat a meal, they give you the food first and then you pay for it after, right? That’s, that’s, that’s paying in rears. Other other bills you have to pay first. And then you, then you get the service. RV (08:15): Well, when it comes to content marketing, it happens in rears. You have to deliver the training, add the value first. And then you get the, the, you earn the right to sell. As she says by giving immense value, like 45 minutes of truly immense value. So simple, so simple. The fact that it’s a webinar or a summit or a challenge or a podcast or YouTube video or a live stream, or a standing on a stage, like all of those, those are just details. That’s just the modality of delivery. The concept here is add values to people’s add value to people, add value to people’s lives, show them a sampling of, of what you have to, to teach. And, and then that you earn the right to sell. And then the third thing that I learned from Amy, you know, my takeaway, which is like the grand PBA of them all is we, we always are saying, if you have did focus, you get diluted results. RV (09:18): Focus is power, right? Those, those are concepts right out of our first book, take the stairs all the way back in 2012, that it is focus. That creates power. And you hear us say it, but you don’t believe it. And those of you that are members of ours, when we’re telling you, no, you don’t need five revenue streams you one, right? No, you don’t need to have 17 social media channels. Like you really need one. Like just, just like the ultimate thing that matters is your email list. Right? And, and then she comes on, like the queen of course is like one of the, one of the OGs. If you’re not familiar with Amy, the baby, this doesn’t make sense to you. But, but there’s a good, you are like, if you’re listening to this show, you’ve probably heard of her before. Like she’d been around from the, from the beginning of online marketing and, and her, her, you know, like that, she is one of, one of the, the creators of the space. RV (10:11): And to go 13 years into the business, she got two avenue streams courses and a membership site. But the membership site, she only sells to people who’ve been through the courses like her primary business model is courses. How many courses does she have after 13 years? Three? That’s it three, three courses, 13 years, one business model, one focus courses are not the answer. Coaching is not the answer. Speaking is not the answer. Consulting is not the answer services are not the answer. Any of these business models work. The answer is having one, not having one, having one, meaning you have a so low primary business, this model that it is, it all other things are subservient to that. You’re choosing it for us. It’s one OnOne coaching, right? Like one-on-one training. Like we’re pushing people, we’ve got a curriculum, but we do it through a modality of talking to you one-on-one every month. RV (11:15): And, and coming to our, you know, live coaching events, but we’re human based. Whereas you know, Amy’s doing it through courses and, and, you know, group, group, group teaching, other other people will do it through like selling tickets to their events. Or they’ll just, you know, they’re monetizing their podcasts, all the business models work, but it, none of ’em work when you do them all at the same time. So you gotta find your, your primary. And, and I love what she said too. She said, I’ve I never, one of the things that I did well was I never added something new until the thing that I was currently doing was working really well. I never added something new until the thing I was currently doing was working really well. And, and that’s how you get 40,000 clients. I didn’t do the math on this, but like, you know, you go, okay, if you’ve had 40,000 people, let’s just say, it’s, let’s do a a hundred dollars course buy a $500 course on average y’all that is 20 million in revenue, 20 million at 500, if it’s a thousand dollars, it’s, it’s $40 million. RV (12:28): Right. So, and if it’s $250, it’s 10, you know, per course it’s million dollars. All of those are pretty good, right? Like all of those are, all of those are pretty good. Again, it’s not that the, the, the, that courses are the answer. Courses might be the answer. They might not be. That’s part of what we help people sort out, but it’s like, you can make money doing this. If you just do this one thing and you do it really well, and you focus on one thing and you drive that and thing, that’s the secret. And she’s living proof of it, living example of it. And it’s just like, you gotta believe in it and you gotta just go. What is my one thing? And now if you’re struggling to figure out what is my one audience, what is my one message? What is my one business model? RV (13:09): What is my one marketing platform? Then request a call with our team, go to free brand, call.com/podcast, free brand call.com/podcast, request a call with our team. And we will help you sort that out. That’s why, that’s why we do what we do, but choose one thing, go all in and it will succeed. You can’t fail. If everything you do, if you have all, all of your focus on one thing, you fail because of distraction, you fail because of diluted focus. You fail. Cuz you’re trying to focus on too many things. Narrow the focus make focus on fewer things and you will guarantee your success. Amy, such a great example of that. So encouraging hope you loved it. Hey you know, share this episode with someone who needs to hear it. Tell someone about this podcast, leave a comment for us. And if you’re ready to find your focus, request a call with our [email protected] slash podcast. We’re ready to talk to you. Keep coming back here, week in, week out, we’re doing our best to bring you the legends and the fresh faces of everything in this industry, teaching you the best of what we can, as we are learning alongside of you here on the influential personal brand podcast. Bye bye.