RV: (00:00)  Hey, welcome to this special recap edition of the Influential Personal Brand podcast. This is Rory Vaden talking to you, joined by my wife and CEO of Brand Builders Group, AJ Vaden. We’re breaking down our top three and three from Christy Wright. So you do you and I’ll do me. I got my top three takeaways and why don’t you go?    AJ: (00:23)  Yes, so I think the first thing that I really enjoyed about this is it’s a completely different perspective on building a personal brand, right? And you talked, you kind of jumped right into it talking about this ego problem, like is there an ego issue? Knowing that Dave Ramsey is kind of at the higher level of this bigger concept of a personal brand, very much more than a personal brand these days. It’s more than more like an empire, but I really loved that this is a completely different take on building your personal brand. You’re not doing it alone, but you still have your own unique individual personality. But you’re also getting to leverage the followers experience, financial benefits of working with a much larger entity rather that be a company or a, you know, very well known personality such as Dave Ramsey. But it’s a completely different spin on, I can still be me, talk about what I talk about to my unique audience, do my unique things, but then still be a part of this much larger organization that will provide the mentorship, the financial support, the marketing resources, the audience that already exists to really help you expedite that process. And nobody else we know or talk to really has done it quite that way. We kind of do that.     RV: (01:43)  We do, we do    RV: (01:44)  Do that for our, our strategists. We want our strategists to have their own personal brand and some of the direct sales companies like Rodan and Fields there, they’re really personal – jinx talk you me a pop. They’re, they’re really advocating that    AJ: (02:00)  Micro influencer mentality. So anyways, that was a big first thing. It’s just, that’s a different way of looking at it. Like, sometimes we think what’s like, what’s my personal brand? It’s gotta be all me. And Christy is a great example of, well, not really. There’s another way. So I love that.     RV: (02:15)  And on that point, you know, one of the things that really spoke to me was just her humility through the whole thing is you, you know, the whole idea, like there’s a lot of ego with personal brand. I mean, it’s hard not to, it’s, it’s, it’s your identity and you know, to hear her say, look, I, you know, I really don’t care who owns it. Like in her eyes very, very clearly. She’s like, it’s all God’s, it all belongs to him. And you know, she shared a lot of her, her personal belief spiritually, and you could see how that ties into her brand. And I just think that’s really cool to go, you know what, at the end of the day, if you’re really here to serve your audience, then serve your audience. Like if you’re, if you’re really here to impact people, then find a way to impact people.    RV: (02:56)  It doesn’t mean you have to control everything or own everything. And so that’s a, you know, that’s a different, that’s a different, a different take and a different approach. So I, I liked that. The second thing for me that I really loved, and I think we have this, the same one on this was, she said, who cares if you’re the greatest speaker or author in the world? If no one knows about it, then you’re not able to help anyone. And one of the reasons I love this coming from her was because you could see like if you listen to the interview, you will hear that she is like very bold about her faith, very Christian. And I think a lot of times churchy people feel like, well, being humble means I can’t promote. Like being humble means I can’t tell people.    RV: (03:42)  And yet it’s like, no, you have to, and to use Jesus’ words, right, it’s like go out into the world, you know, go tell everyone. And, and that’s just the reality of business. I think this is the, this is the key. That was the key thing is going look, being humble doesn’t mean that you don’t tell anyone about about what you do. Being humble means that your celebrating what you do, not celebrating who you are so you can tell everybody about what you do. And it’s not just promoting yourself, you’re promoting your message, you’re promoting your cause and but you have to promote like you have to promote. And so I thought that was a really a really good distinction.    AJ: (04:23)  Yeah, I know it’s funny cause I didn’t really pick up that concept in the interview. So I like your take on that. I also like my take on number two.    RV: (04:33)  I like your take but I always really like… I like my take,    AJ: (04:37)  Just say it, but I love this concept that really she’s talked about. And I think it’s something that I struggle with and I think a lot of people struggle with is when, it doesn’t matter if you’re writing a book or writing a speech or you’re being up there speaking or you’re making a video course or you’re building a brand or you’re building a company, whatever. It doesn’t matter. This whole idea that the moment that you start thinking, what can I get from___? You lose. Like the moment that you’re like, okay, I want to rub shoulders with X, Y, and Z so I can meet blank. You lose the moment. You think, all right, what can I get from this partnership or from this company or from this deal or from my audience or from blank fill it in. You lose. The moment that you start doing things to get something. You’re not going to be the influencer that you want to be. And it’s not what can I get? It’s what can I give? What can I give to this deal? What can I give to this partnership? What can I give to my employees? What can I give to my audience?    RV: (05:44)  Or to my spouse?     AJ: (05:49)  What can I give to people reading my book? What can I give to the people sitting in the audience? It’s a, I think that is like a big thing because like I suffer hit and miss. I’m like, alright, what can I post that would get a lot of likes that’s so bad. Like who friggin cares? But yet we’re all plagued with that to a teeny tiny degree or sometimes, a really big degree… I thought that was really important of like the moment you start focusing on what can I get you lose. But if you focus on giving us like, okay, instead of how many likes, it’s like what do I feel like it’s on my heart to share today and how can I give value to whoever finds it one or 1 million. But if I impact the one, it was worth it today. And if you have that approach in business and branding and speaking and writing, again, all the things you will get, it just will be a byproduct of your giving. And I probably could have talked about this for the entire recap because that’s so important.    RV: (06:52)  Yeah, I posted on Insta about this one specific point, so I won’t, I won’t go into it deep here because you can, you can go there and I think you just, you just nailed that. But you know, relatedly, I, and I would say this relates to my third point, which is kind of this, this idea of being focused on the audiences that, you know, Christie was talking about how it can be scary like building a personal brand, putting yourself out there, writing a book, putting out social media posts, podcast speaking. It can be super scary, but look, if you feel that calling, there’s a reason why. And you know, the way that she described it was like if God’s going to call you to it, he’ll help you through it. And you know, regardless of what your, your, your faith is like your spirituality. I, you know, I believe that    RV: (07:36)  If you feel a calling, I think of it as literally there is a person out there calling for you. Like that message the same thing that you feel compelled to share on your heart. Part of the reason you feel compelled to share it is because there’s somebody out there calling for it. Like a signal. Like they need this message. Like there’s, there’s a space that they have, there’s a thing that they’re struggling with and that is like being put out there into the world. And that same, it’s like it’s tugging on you and, and said, you know, I don’t know if that’s how it literally is, but that’s how I think of it and that’s how it feels to me. And so whenever I feel like, gosh, I have to share this, it’s, it’s, it’s the thought that somebody out there is, is requesting to receive it and that takes so much of the pressure off and it takes, it takes the fear out of it.    AJ: (08:25)  Yeah. Right. That’s really, that’s really good. Again, just focusing on the message. I love that. Okay. Here’s my last one is I, I’ve left this comment that she said and I kinda going to take this and run with it. She was like brands or sales and she was talking about sales in this. She said they are not built on personality types. They are built on skillsets and skill sets can be learned. You are not born a keynote speaker or an author or a salesperson. And you know, you hear people say all the time when they just have the personality for it, she goes, no, what you do is not a personality trait. Your profession is not a personality trait at those are skillsets and skill sets can be learned. I think I love that so much cause we’re very much on the more data scientific side. We’re less creative I think, or a whole company.    AJ: (09:21)  But we’re, we’re very systems data. This is what you do. There’s a process and a science to it. And I think that goes to anything. And this whole idea of, well they just had a personality for it. No, that’s a skill set and it has to be learned and honed regardless of what you’re doing and then tie that into writing a book or speaking or building a brand or growing your online following or your business. And I just think that’s really important. It’s like, no, these are skill sets and skill sets can be learned. You just have to do the hard work and not give up. It’s hard work, but it’s not just something that you’re just born with. And magically it appears, and that’s the end. It’s like, no, these are skillsets.    RV: (09:59)  Even I even, I think a lot of our events, like our curriculum at brand builders group, it’s almost divided up into skillsets. Like you got the podcast power, you’ve got keynote craft, you have a full keynote calendar, captivating content. It’s like they’re each sort of themed around these individual skillsets. By the way, if you go to brand builders, group.com forward slash events, you can see our upcoming event calendar, but there you have it, the three and three from a J in me. We hope you liked it. I’m super inspiring and encouraging. Just uplifting interview from Christie, right? You get a chance to go listen to it. Go check it out and stay tuned for more. That’s all we got for today. Thanks so much, brand builder. See you next time.