RV (00:02): Well, I’m breaking down the interview with one of my newer friends, Dr. Mariel Buque who is brilliant and genius, and I actually love her work. And it was so fun to get to hear the behind the scenes story of, you know, how she goes from being this, this doctor, right? This clinician, this, this woman who’s teaching at Columbia University Medical center or working at, and, and is a professor to becoming one of the most powerful, or one of the most prestigious online influencers in that community in the world. And what I wanna break down for you is there was just, there was one specific line that she said that really got me thinking, which is what I want to, I want to talk about. And she said look, RV (00:47): For seven years, I had a steady flow of information. We were just putting information out for seven Years. RV (00:58): And I think it’s easy to look at somebody like her and go, oh my gosh, like she got lucky. She has a hot topic. She’s whatever the For some reason, the world fell in love with her The, you know, RV (01:14): She’s a doctor. She has, she must have connections with all of this and to overlook the truth, which is that for seven years she put out a steady flow of information. Seven years. Let me ask you, how many years has it been since you have steadily, consistently been putting out information? Not sporadically, not once in a while. For how many years have you consistently been putting out information that helps the world at large that helps your audience? Because if it’s not at least five, you got nothing to complain about, right? I don’t wanna hear about the algorithm, I don’t wanna hear about the topic. I don’t wanna hear about shadow banning. I don’t want to hear about too much noise. I don’t want to hear about only this type of political agenda or that type of political agenda, or only cute puppy dogs or hilarious comedians or, or, you know, silly entertainment stuff. RV (02:18): I don’t wanna hear about any of that stuff. Like, if you haven’t been putting out content consistently, it’s on you, right? You can’t blame anyone else. It’s on you. The tools of the day exist. They’re more accessible than ever before. It’s cheaper than ever before. It’s faster, it’s easier. And so the question is, are you showing up? Are you showing up? Are you doing your part? Are you adding value? And, and this part frustrates me a little bit because it’s easy to say, oh, I’m not that smart. I’m not a doctor, I don’t have famous connections. I’m not rich, I don’t have private jets, right? I don’t have a huge podcast. I don’t have friends that have huge podcasts, right? It’s so easy to point to all these things. And you go, yeah, those things can help, but are you doing your part? Like, are you doing the thing that’s in your control? RV (03:13): What’s in your control is adding value to people’s lives day in and day out, over and over, consistently, constantly never ending. And so I think a big part of, of what we undervalue, and it’s, it’s because it’s because of virality. And we sort of assume, oh, these people with all these followers that must have gone viral and like they blew up. And it’s like, no, it’s consistency. And so I think a lot of this comes down to just being able to outlast, outlast your competition, right? And when I say competition, I don’t really mean like other people. I mean, can you outlast your fear? Can you outlast your self-doubt? Can you outlast your insecurities? Can you outlast the inconvenience of having to figure out technology? Can you, can you outlast the pain it is and the challenges and the difficulties that come along with getting your message out to the world? RV (04:12): If you are a mission-driven messenger, you gotta outlast all those things. It’s not, and, and, and, and if you’re not seeing the success that you want, don’t look back and say, oh, the algorithm, or, oh, I don’t have the right topic, or, oh, nobody cares about this. Or, you know, I, I don’t look this way or that way, or I don’t have this, don’t you? Like, all of those are excuses. And here’s the thing. If you set out on this journey, you said you wanted to change lives, well, you can change lives at any given moment. No one is stopping you from changing lives, right? Making money is a different thing. You may or may not make money. It may, may take, may take time, but if you wanna change lives, you can push a button and publish. You can push a button and record. RV (04:54): You, you, you are one button away from literally broadcasting to the entire world. Like, are you doing your part? And if you’re not, at some point, you just gotta reconcile the reality. Like, you gotta go look snowflake. It’s, it’s not that you’re unlucky, it’s not that you’re not knowledgeable. It, it’s that you’re not showing up, you’re not outlasting, you’re not doing the work. And so I’m gonna give you three strategies, three tips, three techniques, three sources of inspiration that I think will help you outlast the competition. And by competition, again, I’m not so much saying other people who do what you do, although you could, you could think of it that way. I just think it’s, it’s outlasting your own fear, your own self-doubt, your own inconvenience, your own insecurity, outlasting, all of the excuses that will come up on this journey, cuz they will, I’m living them. RV (05:52): I face them every day, right? Like, I still carry this chip on my shoulder of going, man, I would be so much further ahead if I didn’t have to start over five years ago. Like, I was so much further down the road, I had to start completely over, right? So I know what that feels like, and here’s three things that I want to remind you of and e equip you with that I think will help. So these are three sources of inspiration to help you outlast the inconvenience. Number one is vision. Vision. This comes right outta my first book. Take the Stairs, which still to this day is selling like hotcakes. If you’ve not ever read it, it’s a life-changing book. Like, if you haven’t read, take the Stairs. I don’t know how you’re surviving. Like, it, it’s, it is a, it, it is a quick read. RV (06:41): It has got so many powerful fundamental truths about success in general, and it shows up here and it applies to personal brands. Why? Because one of the things that we talk about in there is that the amount of our endurance is directly proportionate to the clarity of our vision. The amount of your endurance is directly proportionate to the clarity of your vision. When you can see something clearly that you want, when you can see it, when you think about it, when you can taste it, when it’s visceral, when you, you dream about it and you focus on it and, and you go, this is something I want in my life, for my life, for my career. When you can see it, then that creates a naturally strong connection to how the sacrifices you’re asking yourself to make today forward you towards that pursuit. It creates a context for action to take place. RV (07:35): And so your discipline engages automatically. You become motivated, you become inspired, you become alive, you become activated, right? But discipline becomes dormant in the absence of a dream. Discipline becomes dormant in the absence of a dream. If you’re not dreaming or you don’t have a dream, or you don’t dream that often, or you don’t dream that clearly, or you’re not spending time thinking about it, then there is no reason to make the sacrifice. There is no reason to bear the inconvenience. There’s no reason to endure the pain, to navigate the difficulties, right? To to to survive the setbacks, to conquer the challenges. If there is no vision, there’s no reason. That’s why the Bible says if without vision, people perish because it literally dies you, there’s no reason to put in that effort, that energy, that work because there’s no payoff at the end. But that payoff is something that exists in your mind. RV (08:30): The powerful part is not achieving it in real life. The powerful part is having it exist in your mind, which is something you can create and access today and it will use, and in your mind will use that to activate your discipline. So what is your vision and do you spend time thinking about it? And, and when you, when we talk about vision, we mean think of a picture, a moment in your life that you wanna live in the future, right? I i, I tell the story often of like walking through the airport and seeing my book on the bookshelf in the airport with the New York Times bestseller logo, like burst on the cover, right? Or, or being on stage at, in, in front of a huge arena or our house that we live in, right? It was years that I was visualizing this house that I, I wanted to have and, and, and, and not so much because I manifested it, right? RV (09:19): It’s because I saw it and I worked my butt off and we worked our butts off to where it became real. But I held it out there. So that, I mean, yes, I’d like to believe that it’s moving towards me, but I was moving towards it, right? And maybe you meet somewhere in the middle, I don’t know, maybe you did manifest it, but I’ve never manifested anything without working my freaking butt off. Like I have never thought about something and had it just like something huge, something significant and just had it show up. Other than one time I did manifest 1 million followers because I went to bed thinking I’m gonna get a million followers, I’m gonna get a million followers. And the next day someone dropped off at my house, a book called 1 million Followers . So it wasn’t quite what I was going for, but it, it was 1 million followers, but it, it wasn’t actually a million followers. RV (10:10): It was a book called 1 million Followers by Brendan Kane, which is actually a really good book. I really, I really like it. We’ve had Brendan Kane on the podcast and so, but you gotta have a vision, right? You gotta have something you can see that you’re moving towards. The second thing is you gotta have some good old fashioned commitment, good old fashioned commitment get this also is in take the stairs, we call it the buy-in principle of commitment. And it says the more you have invested into something, the less likely you are to let it fail. RV (10:50): The more you have invested into something, the less likely you are to let it fail. That means you should increase your investment, increase your expenditure of time, money, prayer, thoughts, resources, attention, like you should increase your investment. Because when it’s difficult, you’re gonna tend to run away. That’s the, that’s the natural default and design of the human brain to keep you safe. Which means to run away from pain, to run away from fear, to do what everyone else does, which is to avoid the inconvenient and chase the convenient chase the easy escalator, right? And what you gotta do is you gotta be a take the stairs person. You gotta be someone that says, no, I’m, I’m not gonna be like everybody, I’m not gonna run away from the pain. I’m not gonna run away from the fear. I’m not gonna run away from the inconvenience. RV (11:39): I’m gonna run towards it. I’m gonna run into it, I’m going to conquer it. I’m gonna be the buffalo. If you’ve ever heard me tell this my Buffalo story, which now is like, you know, going all over the internet which we’ve been talking about for my entire career, being the buffalo charging the storm. That is what it takes is straight up commitment. Because the more money you invest into your dream, the less likely you are just to walk away, right? The more time you’ve got into it, you’re like, I can’t just walk away from this. Like, I’m not just gonna leave this here. I poured my life into this thing. Like I poured my life into pursuing it. And that’s what it takes is to set a goal that matters to you so much that when you go all in, the reason it works is not so much because like you get lucky cuz you went all in or or cuz you figure it out just cuz you went all in. RV (12:26): It’s because you, there wasn’t any other option. And so you do it until you find a way. And there’s always a way, a lot of times it takes a long time to find the way, but eventually you find the way, if you stay committed and you stay committed by increasing the investment, right? You do more, you spend more time. One of my mentors early on in my career was a guy named Randy Gage and he said this, and I’ve always loved this, he said, you should always be the number one investor in your own dream. You should be the number one investor in your own dream. You should be investing. Not your boss, not your investors, not the bank, not your rich uncle. You, it’s your dream. If you want it bad enough, you put your money on the table, you put your time on the table, you come to the playing field and you put your heart on the field and you say, this is what I want. This is what I’m after and I’m all in. RV (13:24): And if you don’t do that, then don’t be surprised when it doesn’t work out. Like, don’t be shocked when you fail. Don’t be surprised that you, you end give up or you get distracted. And what most people do is they don’t get, they don’t quit, they get distracted and then they quit inadvertently, right? Accidentally. And it’s some good old-fashioned commitment. And that leads me to number three. So the number three, the number three force here that you can use, the number three source of inspiration to help you outlast the challenges is service. Service. To me, service is the greatest and most powerful inspiring force there is. RV (14:07): It is getting outside of ourself and what we want and saying, regardless of what I want, regardless of what I care about, regardless of what I like, regardless of what is convenient for me, I’m going to do whatever I have to do to be of value to somebody else, to enhance their life, to improve their life, to, to help their situation. My inconvenience is irrelevant. The fact that it is difficult is not a, not something that factors into the consideration. It’s not a characteristic of the equation. Because what matters is helping other people and making a difference and making an impact. And so honestly, my wellbeing in that is sort of ancillary. It’s, it’s, it’s, it’s irrelevant. It’s, it’s not a part of what matters. When you are living in service and there is no fear, once the mission to serve becomes clear, there is no fear, there is no self-doubt. RV (15:05): You’re not worried about it cuz you’re not thinking about yourself. You’re thinking about the person out there who needs you. That is what I want you to do. That is how you a last your competition. You’re focused on others and you’re going, yeah, this is difficult. Yeah, I don’t feel like doing this today. Yeah, I don’t like it. Yeah, I don’t like the technology. Yeah, this annoys me. Yeah, it’s hard. Yeah. I’m spending, investing more money into my business. Yeah, but it matters because it matters to someone else. And your message matters. Your message matters to someone else. RV (15:44): Your work matters to someone else. Your life matters to someone else. When you get fully present to that. And then you won’t abandon ship, you won’t change course, you won’t alter the destination. You’ll stay focused, you’ll stay on target, you’ll stay committed, you’ll stay disciplined, you’ll stay activated and you will outlast all the fears and inconveniences that show up and you will conquer it and you will do something great. Share this episode with someone who needs to hear it and keep coming back every single week on the Influential Personal Brand podcast. Thanks for being here.