Hey brand builder, Rory Vaden here. Thank you so much for tuning in to listen to this interview. We are so excited to bring you this information and want it to let you know that, Hey, there’s no sales pitch coming from anything that we do with this is all our value add to you and the community. However, if you are somebody who is looking for specific strategies on how to build and monetize your personal brand, we would love to talk to you and we offer a free call to everyone that’s interested in getting to know us and is willing to give us a chance to get to know them and share a little bit about what we do. So if you’re interested in taking us up on a free strategy call, you can do that at brand builders, group.com/summit. Call brand builders, group.com/summit. Call. Hope to talk to you soon on with the show.
I am so honored and excited to introduce you to my friend, Rebecca Louise. Those of you that follow her on social may know her as Rebecca Louise fitness. If you don’t know her, let me just give you a couple stats, I guess, cause I’m a big fan of, of people’s, you know, their actual results and what they have produced, which is what one of the things I love about her. So she, I guess was originally known for her YouTube following. I don’t know if that’s right to say, but she’s gotten about 648,000 followers subscribers on YouTube 250,000 on Facebook, 540,000 on Instagram. But here is to me that one of the coolest things, and one of the reasons I, I invited her on the show is she has an app that is now called BTES that has over 11,000 paying monthly subscribers.
She’s got two different pricing tiers, which we may talk about, and it is one of the, the best fitness apps in the world. And, and very longstanding, very reputable has a lot of success stories from clients. But she also is she kind of, she came out of, or one of the things that she does is network marketing as well. We’re not going to mention the name of the company here, but it is a very recognizable, very well known network marketing company. And you all know that we love network marketing. We believe in it. I’m a product of it. My mom, yeah. I grew up around it. I speak to a lot of network marketing, marketing companies. And then her newest thing is that she actually released a book this year called it takes grit which quickly became a bestseller. And anyways, she’s just an all around baller and awesome, awesome lady. I met her as part of a mastermind that I was a co-leading with Lewis howes for, for Lewis was Lewis’ mastermind. She was, she was in there and anyways, it was like, you got it. You got to meet Rebecca Louise. So welcome to the show, Rebecca,
Thank you so much for the lovely introduction. I go down, I’ll record that and just wake up to that every day. It’s going to be my new affirmations
It’s been recorded and I, you will have, it will be available to you whenever you want. So can you just talk to us a little bit about your journey? I mean, I that’s, we kind of think of this show is like the real life story. Because people go, Oh my gosh, you have millions of social media followers and, and, and literally, you know, hundreds of thousands of dollars in recurring revenue from your app every year. But you know, my guess is it didn’t start quite like that right out of the gate. So could you just give us like your, your backstory?
Yeah. So originally I’m from England and I came to America 22, 23 years old to get my commercial pilot’s license pilot’s
License. That’s awesome.
Yeah. And I ended up getting the whole license. I went back to the UK, did all my written exams. And then I was like, I just don’t feel like this is in alignment with what I’m supposed to do, but I loved Southern California and I grew up watching Laguna Hills on MTV. And I was like one day, you know, Lauren Conrad, I’m going to be driving down PCH in my convertible car and I’m going to go for lunch with my my OC crew. And so I got a visa managed to get myself a visa work visa to come to America because I’d done loads of random jobs in London before. So I had tried to do acting, you know, backing, dancing, TV, hosting, like all the things I got myself, a visa together to come to America. And when I got here, one of the first things that I did was I just started go for castings in Hollywood.
And I was like my British accent. It’s going to be fine. I’m going to be able to get jobs turns out that’s not the case. But what I did is I went to an audition to be on a YouTube channel. And I didn’t even know what YouTube was at the time. Yeah, it wasn’t even, it really wasn’t. It was, I mean, I feel so old. It’s like nine years ago now. And so I get that and it’s to be on a YouTube channel. That’s about fitness. Now. I grew up playing so much sports. I knew. What about fitness? Nothing about personal training. So I did not have my personal training license at the time. However, when I went to the costing and they’re asking you to do like a little workout and tool, I was like, Oh my goodness, this is my one talent in life. I can talk and workout the thing.
This is my thing. And so I remember getting the job and I got paid $40 per episode. And I was just so grateful and I would go up and I would film. And I was just in my element and off the 18 months of filming, we grew it to, I think, a million subscribers it’s now like 3.2 or something. And then they just filming. They stopped filming because I just wasn’t really a passion project. It was more a test or trial and error thing and probably to make some residual income. So after about a year of not filming workouts, people on my social media were like, are you going to film more workouts? Are you going to do this? And I’m like, I don’t know, because I’ve just built something to a million subscribers. I got to start again. She didn’t own it. I didn’t own it.
I was part of it. I just got paid $40 per episode to make these workouts. And I grew it because I was excited and I didn’t think about the residual income. I didn’t understand that. And so during this time where it was ending, I found network marketing and my coach in network marketing was like, you need to be doing it yourself so that you can make the money. And I was like, cause we talk about that in network marketing, right. I’ll do the work and I can do the, make the money, or you can do the work and you can make the money. Right. So I got started with network marketing and got amazing results on these nutrition products and then got my confidence to actually start my own YouTube channel. And I
Just a pause right there, even though you were doing network marketing, it was still kind of aligned with your audience because it was a nutrition, your network marketing business was a nutrition product, and which is kind of what you were building your whole personal brand around. So even though it’s like a different business model, it still fit inside of the personal brand that was becoming Rebecca Louise.
Absolutely. And I knew about fitness because I, by that time, I then got my personal training license. Cause I thought I better get this, this I’m doing these workouts online. And I actually didn’t know anything about nutrition. I’d really struggled in my teens with an eating disorder. I got down to 86 pounds and I’m 107 pounds right now. So 20 pounds lighter, that’s quite a difference for somebody who’s five foot, two and a half. So I didn’t actually know anything about nutrition, but it did fit and because it’s nutrition of fitness, but what it gave me was confidence. And, and energy and strength. And I got an incredible result from it as well. So yeah, I started the network marketing business and from the income that I got from that, I was able to invest it into creating my own brand.
Yeah. That’s, that’s such a common story that it’s like, you’re, you know, you do something to create income and then you’re taking that income and actually reinvesting it into the, the thing you, you wanted to do. So yeah. Talk to me about the, the mentality there of YouTube. Because I went through something similar here, we exited our former business and like one day you, one day you go to sleep, you’ve got hundreds of thousands, millions of people you’re reaching online. And the next day we literally wake up. It’s like, I have zero followers. And I’m starting on zero. So did you have some of that, like emotional, you know, head trash to deal with? Or like, how did you bounce back from going? There’s millions of people watching me too, nobody a hundred and I
100% I Didn’t have confidence. I was like, I’ve already built this. How am I going to start again from zero? So I actually started to do is I created a subscription model way before I even started my YouTube channel and I was trading. It was 9.99 a month. It was all on desktop. It was one video a day, which was 10 minutes. There was no recipes. There was nothing at anything else, but I was like, I need to be able to make money because I just, you know, hadn’t got money anymore from this $40 per episode. I mean, it wasn’t much, but at the time when somebody takes that kind of income away from you, you’re like, you know, even if it’s a thousand dollars a month and you’re only making 3000, that’s a lot of money. That’s a third of your income. Right. So I actually had this subscription because I was like, I needed to get money in.
And after about, I would say like nine months, I think I just, somebody told me like, you need to put this stuff out in the world. You need to just let it go for free. And you need to build your YouTube channel because that’s how you’re going to build your brand. And so my income and my network marketing company had kind of built up by that time. So I didn’t feel that, you know, letting all of this stuff and letting my subscription model go would be such a bad thing financially. So then about six years ago, I was like, you know what, I’m just going to put all my videos on YouTube. And for probably about two years, I just let all the videos go. And then I brought the subscription model back as a desktop version that was through Squarespace where everybody had the same password. So it looked like your unique password. Cause it was like que exclamation, Mark, lowercase, whatever. So it’s like number I like probably had, you know, five, 600 members at that time paying nine 99 with all the same password, no idea how to cancel anyone’s account, but I was just alone. And then it just evolved more.
And if you have, if you have five, if you have 500 people paying you 10 bucks a month, you had, you were having $5,000 a month coming in, just doing it yourself. Like, no, you didn’t have like the tech the about you’re using free Squarespace, like set it up, just password, protect a section. And that was how you started. Like that’s how you got to $5,000 a month.
Yes. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. Squarespace. Same, same password for everybody. We’ll be fine.
Huh. But you’re so you’re just so you’re hustling it and, and now I don’t want to skip over. It sounded like you said for two years, you actually, when you went free, you gave everything away for free for two years and then went back to charging. Did, did I catch that right?
Yes I did. Because I just let go of everything of the subscription model because it wasn’t actually building my brand. Like it wasn’t building YouTube. And honestly that is where I get most of my referrals from that’s where I’ve grown most of my brand from. So I’m so glad that I wasn’t narrow minded to say, you know, no, I’m not going to allow any free videos out there because then nobody’s going to want to pay for my subscription. That’s not the case. You know, you can have hundreds of videos or hundreds of free content online and people will still pay for your product. So I had my mindset about that.
Yeah. So can we talk about that? Cause I was, that was one of the things I wanted to ask you is I think a lot of us struggle with, okay, what can I give away for free and how much can I give away for free and what should I charge for and where do I draw that line? And like how much and how frequent. So how have you wrapped your mind around that? Like, what’s your personal philosophy there, about how much you give away and what you give away versus what you charge for in the app?
Honestly, I’ve given out a free YouTube video every single week for almost six years. I’ve never missed a new workout coming out. That is one thing, consistency. So there are, I think there might be four or 500 videos on my YouTube channel, but what that does is it keeps the channel alive. It keeps new people coming in and that’s the whole thing. It’s new people coming in that you’re exposing it to one workout a week or even two a week with a couple of recipes here and there isn’t even a patch and what you get inside the app, like the app is just a whole other level. It’s all there in one place. It tracks your progress. You know, you can check off your workouts that you’ve done. You can get points for doing things in the app. So it’s just a whole other level. So there’s a massive difference in standard, but I can still put out content all the time with getting people to still want to purchase the app.
And so would you say those, like, I would classify a lot of that as like additional features beyond the content. So would you say that the way you do that, it was like, okay, I’m kind of giving away a lot of the content on YouTube, but in the app it comes with all these additional, these additional features. Is there also more content in the app or is it more about the additional features?
Yeah, there’s more content, there’s more, less, longer length workouts. So on YouTube every week I put a 10 minute workout out and that same workout is just a 28 minute workout with a warmup and a cool-down in the app. So you just get a lot more you know, there is 300 recipes inside of the app. You can filter them, you can search which ones that you want. There’s a whole video library that you can search through. It just makes it easier. And for a starting price of $3 and 99 cents a month, that will also track your workouts. It gives you what workouts to do each day as well. So that you, everybody’s kind of doing the same thing. It’s an accountability group. We have a Facebook group and people are just feel part of the community. They’re like, Oh my goodness. Did you do your BTS workout today? Yes, I did. Like how did you find it? So it’s more about a structure and being part of it, like being part of the community, rather than just saying, I’m doing a 10 minute workout here, 10 minutes here and I don’t really have anything that I’m missing.
Yeah. I love that. You know, I think brand builders group is very similar cause we do like a five minute video every single week, but then the, the, our, our, our entry-level product is $99 a month. And it’s two hour long virtual trainings every month where it’s like, it’s very similar to the content you would receive for free, but just spread out over forever and disorganized. So I think that’s, so that’s interesting to see in that application, even in inside of your world, inside of the, the fitness, the fitness space. So while we’re on the topic here of, of YouTube, I mean, this is one that I missed the boat on. I’ve missed the boat on YouTube, my entire career. It’s always been just like this, like, eh, I’ll throw something up there and now I’m like, Oh my gosh, I am stupid.
Like YouTube is where it’s at. W you mentioned consistency, which seems like everyone, everybody says, you know, that’s the ultimate secret is just consistency. Which, you know, don’t anyone skip over that and miss that in addition to that, is there anything else specific to YouTube? Cause you’ve done this twice. You’ve built a huge following, started over and built another huge following, which I find even more impressive than someone who’s done it once. Are there any other like tactics or strategies or mindsets or things that you think are out specific to YouTube?
Really, it’s just what your audience want. Like, I mean, that’s the thing with like any social platform? Like what is it that they want? Like I know which videos do really well on YouTube that AB workouts, you know, a lot of AB workouts, basically a lot of app, maybe some booty workouts. So I know that when I put one of those workouts out, it really does like help the algorithms. So, you know, you could just be a YouTuber. That’s like, Hey, this is the one thing that my people like, and you can keep putting the same content over and over and over again and not being worried like, Oh, well I just didn’t add work at like three weeks ago. No, they want more, they want another one and it helps the algorithms go up as well. And you know, I’ve sometimes made the mistake of going, you know what?
I want to give people overall fitness because that’s what I’m about. I’m about doing the cardio, the weights, you know, a bit of everything. So I try to put that on my YouTube channel, but it actually hurts the algorithm. You know, I have a girlfriend that’s done really well on YouTube and completely blown up this shit at everything is just abs abs and the same thing over and over. And again, so sometimes you want to be creative and do different things, but the algorithm on YouTube is very specific of, you know, what is working and it will really literally rocket you, you keep putting the same content that your audience is liking over and over and over again.
And you’re doing, you’re determining that by data.
Yes, you can tell. So as soon as you put a YouTube video out, it will tell you, Hey, this workout is doing higher than your other ones normally. And it will give you a ranking at a 10 with where it’s at, or it’ll say, Hey, this one’s just not picking up as many subscribers or it’s not doing as well. And then you’re like, Oh my goodness. Like I knew I shouldn’t have put that out there. So there is a little bit of like trial and error sometimes because you’re like, I want to put this out to see if my audience would be receptive to it because sometimes they’re not, you know, I started putting vlogs on my main channel and it hurt the channel because that’s just not what my audience were there for. So I had to pivot and put it onto a different YouTube channel.
Interesting. Okay. Yeah, I mean, that’s such a simple process. I mean, that’s, everybody’s create, that’s the way comedians they create and they test, they create a joke, they test it, they create and test and then they’re just responding from, from the audience. So I love that. Do you do you know, so you have the app, which is huge and y’all, if you didn’t catch this, so three $93 and 99 cents a month, like it’s, this is a very affordable deal. You’re loaded into this app. You have you have also a eight, what is it? Eight 99 for a VIP version. And then 11,000 paying monthly members on this thing that you’ve built over, how long
It’ll be three years in January that the app came out.
Interesting. Okay. So within three years now you had spent two years before that though building up the audience for free before you really started monetizing it. Okay. awesome. So one other question here about, I want to ask you specifically about network marketing, because we, you know, I mentioned we love network marketing as part of my background. My family’s background is we speak, it’s probably the number two audience that I speak to. And how do you balance? Because I think this is becoming a really big issue with network marketing is people make a lot of money in network marketing and it’s, it’s kind of a thing where it’s like a lot of people leave but they don’t leave because they’re still making money. And you know, we’re big fans of going, Hey, the, the fastest way to monetize your personal brand is to use it, to throw fuel on the thing that you’re already doing.
That makes money for some people that makes a lot of sense. They go, Oh yeah, for sure other people go, no, I actually like having kind of two different streams going here. So is there anything you can say about maybe your personal philosophy about how you kind of balance a brand of network marketing and then your personal brand, and, and, and I also would ask you in your network marketing company, do you have people on your team, like in your organization, you do right. You’ve got in your kind of downline, a bunch of people. So I think this is a question that network marketing leaders are also struggling with is like, okay, social media and personal branding is so powerful. What is the message I should give to my team about how to use it and not use it. So anything in that kind of mess, because I think that’s like a little bit of a mess that the network marketing world is trying to sort out and we’re trying to sort out and trying to help them, you know, Edify something that enforces the company, but also, you know, helps people succeed with their personal brand.
And, and you just hit the, like one of the top levels of your network marketing company. So you’re doing both. So yeah. Talk about that for a minute.
Yeah. And I love this and mine are completely intertwined and I love it that way. Because I really feel like net what marketing is, how I can help somebody have the life that I have. I have a brand, I, that’s a specific thing that I know if you want to learn how I did my brand, you have to pay me, you know money to do that. But I want to be able to give the opportunity to everybody. And that’s why I love network marketing over the last seven years. You have to be all in. And one of the things to really Excel at that. So first of all, it was my network marketing company. Like I was filling with that. Once I got that to a certain position for 18 months, I was like hard on in my network marketing company. When I got my check to a certain level, I started to work on my brand when I was starting to employ people.
I would get this to a level where then I would go back into the network marketing really heavy and get that to the next position. And so I would literally do one thing at a time because you really have to it’s, it’s trying to build a multimillion dollar business, both of them, you know, they’re going to take all of your time, but Hey, have you got employees that can just take over for a couple of months while you dive back into your network marketing company? This year was the only year that I have been a hundred percent in both because we’ve had so much growth because of what’s been going on. I’m like, I, can’t not, I can’t afford not to go all out with both of these, but how I’ve worked at over the years is that, you know, I worked in fitness and it’s nutrition is that it’s completely interlaced. So I have YouTube, Instagram, all of the things they funnel into a free 30 day program. After that 30 day program, they get on the app or maybe they get on there.
Okay. Sorry, hold on. So I back up a little bit, I’ve, I’ve started to miss that and I don’t want to, I don’t want to miss this. So tell me, this is kind of like how you see the flow of, of moving somebody in kind of through your system. So maybe from the beginning, they start with YouTube.
Yeah. Because if you have a personal brand, it’s like, how can you bring in those leads to actually have enabled them to become distributors? You know, this is my flow. This is how it works for me. So we have you come in through YouTube, Instagram, whatever, probably they’re followers of mine. They come in, they get onto the app after they’ve done like a free 30 day program that we offer or they get on the app. Once you’re inside of the app, there is a free, like five day better you program. And on that, they get a coach and I have nine frontline coaches and they talk with my new clients that come in through the app about, Hey, what results that you’re looking for? You know, are you allergic to anything? How can we get you started? And then they actually get started on a nutrition plan.
And so those leads come in and they get given to my well, I have my BTE as coaches, and they are all in my network marketing team and certain levels in my network marketing team. But they have to be a certain level to be able to apply, to become a BTS coach. So then they get those leads. And then what happens is those people then get started on a nutrition plan. They get amazing results and we tell them, Hey, do you want to be part of our girl group? Do you want to be part of our community of the BTS coaches and other people, you know, getting started and helping your friends and family get results. They’re like, Oh my goodness, of course, I want to be part of your girl, dang. Like this sounds amazing. Like I have 30 girls flying into my, you know, into my home this weekend to celebrate and recognize all of the new coaches.
We have a leadership development weekend. So then those people got started on a program, become distributors because they want to be part of it. And it just drip feeds from them. So I’ve used my personal brand to help build my network marketing because, you know, I love my network marketing company. I’m never going to leave it. My heart and soul is like some that web marketing companies you get in and you get out and you make the money. And that’s absolutely fine. All companies kind of different. We have people that have been there for 40 years. And when I got started as all the same people that are there, and I know that, you know, if I, I can’t film workout videos forever, like there’s going to be a point where I’m just too old and I thought move around. So I don’t know what’s going to happen with that business, but I know that I’m always gonna have my network marketing company and I can always flourish that, and that really is, I think the strong part of this top part here, it’s actually building this legacy forever.
Wow. So you basically, you’ve done exactly what we were talking about. You have taken a personal brand and you have basically bolted it on as the entry point to a network marketing business model. Now it’s, it’s, it’s also its own thing. It’s a sustainable thing of its own, but it’s also feeding back towards towards a long-term network marketing company. Yeah. Wow. I love that. I mean, I just, I think that’s so brilliant because it’s like, you’re living your passion. You’re helping lives. You’re building your personal brand, you’re making a difference. And some percentage of those people are going to be a fit for the ultimate thing that you’re building long term. And you’re not, it’s like a constant pool of people, but you’re not, you’re not offending anyone. You’re not forcing it on them. You’re letting them kind of self-select through the whole process.
That is fascinating. Love it, love it. Love it. Okay. I want to ask you about your book, but before I do that well, let me ask you about your book first, real quick. So it takes grit is, is now you are officially a bestselling author, which is so awesome. We were talking about that when I first met you whatever 18 months ago. And you know, some of those, some of those, some of those things tell us about the book and where does the book come from and how does that book kind of sit in between the space of your fitness personal brand and your network marketing business, and, you know, you’re the old Rebecca Louise and then the future, Rebecca Louise.
Yeah. So I started writing the book in 2019. So I was introduced to an agent in March of 2019 and pitched this idea. And I didn’t know at the time, like I was ready for a book, but I have all of this training inside of my head for the last six, seven years of working with mentors and going to masterminds. And I want it to be able to give my audience something that was like a no BS guide to how you get to where you really want to be. Because I feel like loads of people are like, Oh yeah, just do this and just do these Instagram posts and blah, blah, blah. And then you’re going to be fine. It’s like, Oh no, I’m going to prepare you for all the crap that’s going to happen. And when you’re prepared for that, you’re going to be like, Oh, Rebecca told me this was going to happen.
And this is how it happened to her. And this is how she overcame it because in my community, I have a lot of people who love the fitness and love the nutrition. But what changed for me, most importantly, as I got older was my mindset. You know, I was introduced to Jim Roan and Tony Robbins, and I was like, my community don’t know personal development. And I was like, I get to be the vehicle to share with them. And that’s why I started my podcast in January 28, 2019. It takes grit. And that, that involved into something that I can actually give people to say, Hey, you know, this is what it really takes to get to where you are. And you can look at somebody on a pedestal and be like, Oh my goodness, it’s amazing. How do they get there? But I share a lot of my own personal testimonials and stories of things that have happened to me that could have thrown me off, but instead I just like stepped forward and made it happen. And this is how I got to where I am today.
Wow. Well, I love, I love it. This is thank you for being so transparent with just your YouTube secrets, your app, your numbers your network marketing business. And I think it seems like, you know, transparency, there is like one of your, one of your superpowers and it takes grit. Seems like it’s a lot about the honest truth about what it has taken to build what you have built, which is incredible. And you know, you’re still so, so young, like I think it’s, it’s, it’s really exciting to see the trajectory of where people will be, you know, not just where they’re at today, but where’s the trajectory of go in 10 or 20 years. Like it’s nothing but extremely exciting. So where do you want people to go, Rebecca, if they want to connect with you, if they want to follow you and, and just plug into what you’re doing.
Thank you. Yeah. You can follow me on Instagram and Facebook, Rebecca Louise fitness, head on over to my YouTube channel, Rebecca Louise, you can get a free 30 day program or just go to Rebecca hyphen, the wheeze.com and all the details are right there. Check out the podcast. It takes grit, the book. And yeah, we have we have just an amazing gear coming up. We’ve got new transformation programs, you know, new features coming to the app and it’s just going to be an amazing 20, 21.
Love it, love it, love it. We’ll put links up to all of that. Rebecca Good luck to you and your organization and your team. I know we’ll be seeing you around the brand builders group, community, and our events more and more, and just really appreciate it and wish you the best. So we’ll, we will look forward to watching and monitoring your progress, tune into Rebecca Louise fitness. That’s it for today. Thanks Rebecca, for being here all the best.
