Tag: Rory and AJ Vaden | Episode

WWK Ep 027: Small Audience, Big Money: How to Monetize Without Millions of Followers

RORY (00:00)
here’s something that I’ve been changing my mind on lately, which is the value of consistency in terms of your posting. if you’re trying to build a large following and you’re trying to be an online marketer and you’re trying to really grow that aspect of your business, consistency is really key. It’s really important. If you’re a small, small,

Business, and if you are sort of a micro influencer who’s gonna make a lot of money from a small audience.

I actually don’t know that you should be spending all your time cranking content consistently. And the reason why is because the algorithms are no longer just rewarding you for cranking out a whole bunch of content.

AJ (00:42)
In a world where everyone thinks that bigger is better, today we’re gonna talk about the power of a small audience. And I think this is a good reminder for all of us, including me. So maybe today is just for me that bigger isn’t always better. And that a small audience can actually generate just as much, if not more, revenue than a big audience. Would you believe that a smaller audience can actually be

More powerful in generating revenue from your business than a huge audience. And would you believe that some of the highest paid experts in the world actually have an embarrassingly small audience? And so that’s what we’re gonna talk about today is how do you monetize a small audience and that it’s never too late to get started, and that it’s most powerful to serve the audience that’s right in front of you. And you can do that whether you have 10 followers or 10 million followers. So, Rory.

Here’s my first question of today. All right. All right. If you were to narrow it down to some of the best monetization models.

That would help someone go, I don’t have a big audience. Actually, I have a relatively small audience. We’ll say below 5,000. Below 5,000 followers online. We’ll say email us and all of that. But if you have you have a small audience, what are some of the best monetization models that you can use to actually generate revenue and create a business with a small audience?

RORY (02:09)
Yeah, so it comes down to one word, I would say really is like intimacy or access. When you have a small audience, what people are gonna pay you for is more access. Right. When you have a big audience, they they they don’t get close to you. But when you have a small audience, you can serve people in a very close way and they will pay money for that access. So I think, you know, my brain immediately goes to coaching and consulting as the actual business model to.

Make a lot of money from a small audience. Why? Because those are the most intimate environments from a business model where you go, I’m really getting to know people. I’m I’m working closely with them and their team. I’m probably walking with them over some period of time. And so they get access to me. And then also to the extent that I can do more done-for-you services, that is going to be the primary, those are the primary levers that I’m pulling: access and execution.

To go, hey, we we can get a lot of money from a very small audience. Even one customer, you know, two customers, five customers, ⁓ you know, you can make a lot of money serving people. And when we say you make a lot of money serving people in a deep way, that’s what we mean. You’re up close with them and you’re walking, we’re walking with them to the point of executing exactly what you have to share.

AJ (03:34)
So for clarity’s sake, can we just define what is coaching versus consulting?

RORY (03:39)
Yeah,

that’s a great question. ⁓ I want to hear your answer to this too. Okay, so basically

the the the simplest delineation in my mind between coaching and consulting is I think of coaching as B2C business to consumer. I’m working with an individual person. ⁓ I think of consulting as you know B2B business to business. I’m working with a group of people or a company. And even if I’m I can be coaching as a subset of consulting, but it’s like I’m consulting an organization and as part of that package

I’m coaching individuals. So I think that’s the main delineation that I have, but it’s it’s still they both sit inside the vein of: I have a framework, I have a methodology, I have unique intellectual property, I have a unique method, something we would call your modular content method, and I’m deploying my method.

to an organization or an individual to help them apply that to resolve a problem and achieve a payoff. And it’s just am I doing that at the organizational level or am I doing it at the individual level? That’s it.

AJ (04:47)
Yeah, I’d I’d say my definition’s pretty dang close to that. ⁓ it’s just a a one to one versus a one to many. It’s like when I think about a coaching relationship, it is a one to one relationship. When I think about consulting, it’s what am I institutionalizing that is one to many. ⁓ it’s for the people who are here today, but also for the people who will be there in the future. I’m putting systems and processes in place that allow people to run on a track. ⁓ so it’s more systems and process driven. It’s more

are what I would say corporate.

RORY (05:22)
Give give give us some tangible examples because ⁓ so here’s something that I don’t think not everybody knows about you because you know today you’re the CEO of brand builders group and we do what we do. ⁓ in our former business, among other things, you ran a consulting division that was a multi-seven figure division inside of the whole company, and you were doing a lot of this B2B. What when you say installing systems, giving people a track to run on, taking a methodology and applying it one.

to many. What are examples of the kinds of systems? What are the ways you’re institutionalizing your expertise in an organization at scale that allow you to charge high fees and and more importantly, bring high value worth high fees?

AJ (06:07)
Yeah, I think one of the biggest opportunities for people who want to be consultants or who are consultants and who are maybe even asking this question of like, well, how do I better monetize what I’m doing in my consulting business with a really small audience? And the beautiful thing about consulting is you don’t need a big audience. you couldn’t handle a dozen projects if you wanted to. Like if I had three projects running at the same time, I was like

trying to breathe air through a straw in the middle of a tsunami. Like more than three or four projects. I couldn’t handle more than that. But that has a lot to do with how do you define consulting, right? And it is the institutionalizing of systems and processes. So here’s one tip to ⁓ actually help monetize a consulting business is I started every consulting project with a research phase. And I think a lot of people don’t do that. In fact, I know a lot of people don’t do that because we have hired many a consultant

that never offered that. Or at least we considered hiring them. But I think that’s a really big part of like I was like, I can’t even tell you what you need. I can’t even offer my services to you because I have no idea what you have in place. So if you really want to consider this, what I will sell you where we start everyone was a flat consulting package that was just a research package. Now, this isn’t a research study. This is hands and feet

Hitting the pavement and being like, I’m coming in and I’m secret shopping. Right. I spent three months as a somewhat undercover retail operations person for a client that I cannot name publicly here because I don’t think that would be fair and right, but it’s like I had the uniform.

Right. I was working in the retail stores, ⁓ doing research. That was a part of what I was being paid to do. Why? I needed to go. Did the systems and operations that they had as a company actually make it to deployment in the stores? Were they actually using the scripts? Did leaders actually do what they were taught to do? Right. So it’s one thing to have systems and processes. It’s another thing for your people to actually use them. We know that even internally at our small company. So a research phase is going, hey.

If you really want to see movement and success in your organization, then I first have to assess where you’re at. I can’t help you get to where you want to be if I don’t know where we’re starting from. ⁓ Also, that’s a part of the adoption process. It’s going, I have to be able to culturally align whatever I’m doing to something that’s going to fit in your organization. And that’s why I charge a premium. Everything I’m doing, even though there are systems and processes, I’m going to adapt them. I’m going to mold them. I’m going to customize them to fit within your culture.

Cultural parameters based on something that I think your people would actually do, that they would actually adopt. And I can’t tell you how to do that if I don’t know your people. So I would be reviewing scripts. I’d listen to sales calls. I’d sent in call centers for hours and hours at a time, listening to how people answered the call, had the conversations, ended the call. I would ask them how they documented stuff. They thought I was there often being onboarded as a new employee. So it wasn’t deceptive. I just didn’t share a whole lot. And I was introduced as hey.

She’s here shadowing today. And it’s amazing how many people never asked. What are you shadowing for?

RORY (09:26)
And so you

you would actually companies would actually pay you to basically just go listening. Just listen, read, watch what they’re doing. You’re not actually teaching them anything. You’re not doing anything for them. You’re just learning effectively. You’re learning their organization and how they do what they would do.

AJ (09:33)
What’s happened?

Absolutely. And then at the end, I provide my feedback analysis and recommendations. And at that point, my part of the process could be done. And I was like, you can take this research report. because this is hands-on research of what’s happening at the frontline level, at the mid-level manager, at the executive level. This is what’s being used. This is what’s not being used. Here’s why it’s not being used. Here’s what’s working. And here are my recommendations of what need to be improved. And on a consulting basis, most people

Are going, hey, we’re trying to increase increase top line revenue. ⁓ 99.9% of the time, it was something to do with revenue generation or revenue retention. ⁓ and then I would say, here’s the real problem: there is no consistent sales training. There is no sales training, there are no scripts, there are no processes to follow. You don’t even have regular meetings, there’s no chain of communication, there’s no

No, whatever. The point is, is that is one way for anything that you’re doing as an actual consultant to be implemented and to get real results, is that before you go and deliver, which we often hop to, it’s go, hey, first I have to assess. And it didn’t matter how small the company was. I did this for companies that were as small as twenty or thirty people. And I did this for corporations that had hundreds of thousands of employees.

RORY (11:08)
And to so to tie this back to monetizing, if you have a small audience, right? You can’t provide that level of service to clients and have hundreds of clients to go spend four hours watching their videos, watching their people, going through their website, secret shopping them, reviewing their internal training materials, interviewing their leaders, interviewing their frontline. And you go, that is a massive value add. And it’s exactly what we’re talking about when we say it’s more access to you.

It’s a more intimate experience. And the end of that first project is just telling people what to do. So you learn and assess and then you tell them what to do, but you don’t tell them how to do it. That’s what they hire you for on the ongoing basis. But so that would again a few clients, a big big big

AJ (11:57)
There’s a great ways to a great way to increase monetization if you’re a consultant. And then coaching was always just a part of what we included in the next phase. That’s like part of what you need is you need coaching. Like these people need help. They need support. They need guidance. so I would just say like that is one way to monetize a very small audience because you can only handle a very small amount of people doing that level of intense work. So you don’t need huge audiences for one-on-one coaching or for consulting.

And again, it doesn’t matter the organization size. ⁓ It’s like, you know, you’re paying a premium because you are paying me to do something that is completely custom for you. It’s this isn’t a course. This is like I am in your uniform, in your call center, following your people, going on sales meetings. And so you can charge a premium for that because it’s so custom and it’s so tailored.

RORY (12:50)
Yeah. And it I think when you think about monetizing a small audience, I think about this as like David and Goliath, right? It’s like if you’re Goliath, you’re big. You’ve got a big audience and that gives you certain advantages. But most people who have a big audience monetize it by selling lower price products to a lot of people because they built a big audience by sort of generally applying at a sort more surface level to a lot of people. If you have a small audience, that’s like David, right? You’re more nimble. ⁓ and

You go, I can serve a small number of people, but in a much deeper way, a much more intimate way, and a much more customized way, which I think is a big word that you use there. And people will pay for that premium. They’re not paying you a lot of money because you have a lot of followers. Nobody pays you a lot of money because you have a lot of followers. People pay for a result. They pay for you to solve a problem. They pay for you to be helpful and to be customized and unique to their situation. And that doesn’t have anything to do with how many followers you have.

have and you could actually argue that the smaller the audience you have, the smaller the team you have, the more time you have available to be with clients because there’s less time you’re having to do to like manage your team and your media company and and do all of those things.

AJ (14:03)
Thanks.

So here’s what I would say is if you’re because the question really to go back to this is what are the top monetization models that you can use with someone who has a ⁓ smaller following, under 5,000 people? And we’re saying it’s one-on-one coaching or it’s consulting. Now, I think something that’s really valuable to add on to that if you’re, you know, sit in that coach or consultant category is to go, well, how do I get started in that? Right? Like if what if this is ⁓ a business model that I’m new to? Like, how do I introduce myself as a

coach or consultant. And here’s where I would say that true expertise is your biggest advantage. And this is where I would also say that our what I think is one of our most powerful quotes out of our book, ⁓ which is about the person you serve. And what we say all the time is what, Rory?

RORY (14:51)
You’re most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were.

AJ (14:55)
Okay, so pause right there. You’re most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were. This is the fastest way to activate a coaching or a consulting business. I’ll give you a couple of ⁓ nuanced micro examples that are varied just to help you have a little understanding of like what

I don’t know. It’s like I I’ve been in roofing sales for the last 20 years. Like, how would I do that? So we have a client at Brand Builders Group. Who is that person? He was a top 1% in the nation salesman for a nationwide roofing company.

Okay, they went through a merger acquisition, something. And anyways, his office got closed and he found himself ⁓ without a job. he was getting recruited left and right to join all these other roofing companies in his local area in Florida. But he didn’t want to do that. He goes, I actually want to build my personal brand. I want to get out of being an employee for another company. And I I at this point doing this for I think he had been doing 30 years, he goes, I want to build my

personal brand. How do I do that? And I’m like all these companies that are recruiting you to come and be their top performing salesperson, just saying you’re not for hire, but you are available as a consultant.

Right. True expertise, true results was the pathway for him to building his coaching and consulting business. He didn’t even have to go find these people. He just had to take these recruiting calls and turn them into sales calls. So that’s one way, right? So let’s just say you found yourself being laid off or there was a merger and an acquisition or whatever, but you’ve got real expertise and a real reputation in your industry. That’s why building a personal brand, ⁓ even as a corporate employee, even as a frontline

Salesperson for someone else matters a lot because he had a reputation and decades of real results and experience where people started calling. They were blowing him up. And all we talked about is take those recruiting calls and turn them into sales calls. You’re not available for hire, but you are available as a consultant.

RORY (16:59)
And an easy line to say there is to say you’d have to pay me so much money to be an employee, you could not ever afford it, but you can fractionalize that and I can not only d you know help your team, I can install the principles that makes everyone on your team do in exactly what I did. And that’s because you had the results to prove

AJ (17:19)
That’s right. So that’s the first example. The second example is how do you make this transition? So let’s say you are trying to make the transition out of corporate. And one, let me just say this as a caveat. I do not think everyone should leave corporate. I do not think everyone should own own their own business. I do not think everyone should be a coach or consultant. That does not serve everyone really well. I think it is great and amazing for some of us to be nine to five employee jobs. That is like what we were built and suited for. And companies need you. Companies need it. So like let me just say that. Like not everyone should do

RORY (17:48)
It’s

also not as easy as glamorous to be an entrepreneur.

AJ (17:51)
Like first,

I’m not saying everyone should just like bail or threaten their employers. Cause if my team says, ⁓ listen to that podcast, I’m gonna have like a full on like meltdown and be like, delete that podcast, right? That’s not what I’m saying. ⁓ but I do think this is important. ⁓ if and when the time comes where you’re like, hey, like, I do have a calling on my life and I do know I need to go do this other thing. Like a great transition out is to contact your current employer and be like, hey, I’ve got to go do this other thing. Like, I feel called to do it. I can’t be a full time

I’m employee anymore, but would you ever consider retaining me as a consultant?

So that could also be another path to transition. ⁓ not allowed for our team members, of course, because you want to be full-time employees here at VVD, but for other companies, that is a really good transition that I have actually had lots of people at Brand Builder’s Group go, hey, because I was so valuable, because there was so much trust equity in the decades and decades that I had been there, this was a good, healthy transition for me and for them. Instead of leaving the organization, I became a consultant on retainer as I started.

building out this other business and it was a win-win for both entities. That doesn’t work all the time. It does it’s not a good fit for every situation. But one is to turn recruiting calls into sales calls. the second thing is to make your current employer your first client as you’re making this transition out of corporate. So those are two things. The third thing that I

RORY (19:14)
Just on

one thing on that. So and often what happens is the the company’s gonna pay you less money. So one, you had to get great results when you’re there.

You had to kill it. And then what happens is they go, Okay, I can actually pay less money to hire someone else to do your job. You’re gonna train them to do that as a and then and now I’m your customer and you have to take care of me as getting one customer to go off into the into the future. So but that does happen, ⁓ that that that can be a good way where you’re saying it is a win for everybody and sort of like a springboard for somebody.

AJ (19:45)
Yeah,

it’s a it’s a healthy transition path for both parties. because losing top talent is hard for any organization and starting your own business is especially hard for any individual.

RORY (19:55)
But as a consultant, you have to think that way. You go and I’m I’m trying to replace myself. People are paying me a lot of money, but not forever. They’re paying for me to install a system and a process that other people can step into. And that’s what you’re doing. And when you’re not serving a lot of customers, you’re not having to cater to a large audience, then you can do that kind of deep work.

AJ (20:19)
And then the third thing I would just encourage is I think the third way that you could kind of start up in this is really where you’re actually, and I I really do strongly believe this, is that you are a local presence. Like I really do believe that most people’s initial coaching business and initial consulting business comes up with local clients, local prospects, because you are a local presence. That means that you’re a part of different associations and networking groups in the town. You are an active member of your church.

You serve on nonprofit boards, you are a well-known community member. And I think that’s really important in an era where it’s really easy to sit behind a screen all day long. And I just remember this, ⁓ I heard this a long time ago, is like be with people before paper, people before paper, people before paper. and this never rings more true is that when you’re actually trying to start your own thing as a coach or a consultant or even your own business, is that you already have an established community.

community presence. And people are coming out of the woodworks to go, how can I help? Who can I introduce you to? Because you are an established person in that local community. Because I bet most of your first clients will come in your local community.

RORY (21:33)
Mm-hmm. Yep, I agree with that. I mean it’s gonna be referrals, it’s gonna be word of mouth. Th and you know, crush it where you’re at, right? The best way to get your the next thing is to be awesome at your current

AJ (21:44)
Exactly where you’re at.

RORY (21:45)
And

when we say the the best marketing in the world is a changed life is going, you need one customer who has an amazing experience with you who’s gonna introduce you to their people. That’s right. And if that’s not happening, that means they didn’t have an amazing experience, which means you need to go back and work on your product a little bit. So there’s a question ⁓ here, what role does content consistent consistency play in small audience monetization?

we hear a lot of people feeling like they’re po posting into the void. How do you keep going when the numbers don’t feel like they’re reflecting the effort? That’s good. So here’s something that I’ve been changing my mind on lately, which is the value of consistency in terms of your posting. ⁓ if you’re trying to build a large following and you’re trying to be an online marketer and you’re trying to really grow that aspect of your business, consistency is really key. It’s really important. If you’re a small, small,

Business, and if you are sort of a micro influencer who’s gonna make a lot of money from a small audience.

I actually don’t know that you should be spending all your time cranking content consistently. And the reason why is because the algorithms are no longer just rewarding you for cranking out a whole bunch of content. ⁓ And as a small business owner, as a micro influencer, the way that I think most of you are going to make money from social media is not that media is generating leads. It’s that it’s the new website. It’s that when you’re at your local chamber of commerce and someone hears your name.

They’re gonna go look you up on LinkedIn. They’re gonna go look at your Instagram profile before they talk to you or before they agree to a meeting or just in their decision-making process. And what I think matters more is having

A few pieces of really quality content that people see on your feed, they’re not gonna buy from you because you post every day at 9 a.m. But they are gonna buy from you when they look at your last 10 videos and they go, my gosh, all 10 of these videos are killer. I got 10 tips in 10 minutes that blew my mind that were more valuable in their free content and more beautiful and presented well than what I paid my last consultant in their monthly retainer, right?

That’s how I think the future of making money from a small audience connects to social media. And I’m, I think I’m gonna stop encouraging the people with the really micro audiences to just be like, you just gotta keep creating content and create content and create content and post thousands of times a day. I don’t see that, I don’t see that small creators are making a lot of money that way. I think if you wanna build up, be a micro influencer and you get to 10,000 followers, you’re gonna get some brand deals, but that’s not how you’re gonna get rich. And I think the consulting and the coaching, you make a lot of

of money by having a few pieces of really quality content and you make sure every one of your prospects sees them and you you feed it to them in your email nurture sequence like you know send them an email with a link to your best performing YouTube video. I think that’s what it really is about because the algorithm there’s too much noise and the algorithm is just not rewarding volume. ⁓ and AI is, you know, people are produce producing so much garbage.

AJ (24:54)
So

I would ⁓ so I think this is a worthy content topic to go, okay, so posting every day might not be all that fruitful for someone with a small audience, but what’s the frequency that you need to hit at minimum?

RORY (25:08)
You need to not look like you’re a ghost, right? You need to not be like, I posted I posted in 2023 a picture with my cat. That’s not that ain’t it.

AJ (25:16)
Yeah. So but even if it’s good quality content, and I can just tell you, like as somebody who is vetting vendors and employees, like if you haven’t posted something in the last 30 days, I skip over you. Like if I’m going and looking LinkedIn profiles would be a great example. It’s like, because that’s where we do a lot of our business recruiting and or vendor vetting. And it’s like if it’s not a complete profile, i.e., there’s not even a picture, or the last time you posted anything was months ago, I literally I’m like

Like I’m a

RORY (25:47)
They’re an inconsistent person. They look like an inconsistent person.

We were literally texting about this this morning. A vendor we’re evaluating that is one third the cost of other vendors that we’re looking at, but but their their content is very inconsistent and the service they’re selling us doesn’t at all match up with the content that they have posted. And it’s like, yeah, they’re cheap, but it it looks like that’s why they’re cheap, is it it doesn’t match up what we need. And it’s like, ⁓ I don’t know, like we have to we have to discuss this and figure it out. But that’s a great example.

AJ (26:19)
Well, and I would

just say, like, even as an employer who’s recruiting, right? And it’s like the first thing I do, literally, I think this is good for us all to think of like where do personal brands really matter, right? And it’s like the first thing I do before I go through your resume is I go to your LinkedIn profile.

I come back to your resume to verify, but I’m going there to go like, are you engaging? I want to be like, what what did you have to say online? Have you gotten endorsements? It’s amazing how no one has recommendations. And I’m like, huh.

Like, are you not asking for them? Do they post? What are they posting about? What are their interests in? Your resume is the static thing that you fill out and you forget it. It’s a set and forget thing that people are only updating once they’re looking for a job. ⁓ that’s not a

RORY (27:08)
Public. It’s

also not public. So you don’t have the corroboration of

AJ (27:12)
It’s not an

indicator of a good candidate or not, in my opinion, anymore in today’s time. It’s, you know, you update it only when you’re looking for a job. It’s like, it’s not something you keep up to date. It doesn’t give me anything cultural for me to go, like, are you really a values alignment? So I go to your LinkedIn and it’s amazing because we’re in the middle of hiring somebody for our finance team and it’s like

There’s no pictures. There’s incomplete profiles and it’s like their resume looks amazing. And I’m like, you don’t even have a picture. You don’t even have a complete profile. Like I I no. Moving on.

And so again, even in a finance and accounting world, I don’t expect you to be some content creator or ⁓ you know, some finance, you know, influencer. But I’m going like, this is a public facing representation of who you are. And there’s nothing there. There’s no recommendations. There’s no interests. There’s an incomplete profile. There’s not even a picture. And the last last job that’s mentioned is one that you had five years ago. I have a problem with that.

As a business owner in today’s time, when I’m going like, hey, I have to know more than just what it says on a piece of paper that can’t be corroborated.

RORY (28:21)
So one of the things that we’ve been doing recently that’s been awesome is we take members of our actual paying community at Brand Builders Group and they ask us questions and the other members vote up the topics. And those are the questions that we choose to answer here on the show. So this one comes from Trevor. Trevor says, I’m a business consultant with 12 years of corporate experience, and I know I have real value to offer, but

But I only have about 1400 LinkedIn connections and barely any social presence. Everyone I see succeeding online seems to have hundreds of thousands of followers. Is it too late for me to build something real or am I starting from too far behind?

AJ (29:03)
No, it’s not too late. No, you’re not starting too far behind. Remove the word only before 1400 and the perception you have is not accurate. So let’s dissect this question a little bit. Like one, you have 1400 followers on LinkedIn. That’s amazing. You only

Again, it’s like again, this is I think is really important. You’re a business consultant. We just talked about this. Like this whole episode is for you. Trevor, I really I’m gonna figure out who you are and I’m gonna send this episode to you because this is really important. Like you don’t even need 1400 to have more business than you can handle. You are a business consultant. That’s what you do. We just said if you had more than three or four clients, you’d be so inundated you couldn’t breathe. ⁓ so again, it’s it’s reframing what we what we really need to focus on, which is how many clients do I need? How many of my

What new ones am I trying to get this year and reverse engineer that? So one, remove only. You have 1,400 people who have invested into your content. That’s amazing. How can you go better serve those 1,400 people? How can you better outreach to them, but build better relationships with them, give them the content that would generate your next 10 clients? So one, congratulations, you have 14. It’s not only you have 1400 connections on LinkedIn. Amazing. ⁓ Number two, it’s never too late. ⁓

clients in our community who are in their late seventies. Like they’re crushing life. They’re crushing it. It’s never too late. that is something that we tell ourselves when we feel like giving up.

When we look around and we compare our step one to someone else’s step ten thousand and go, everyone else seems to be, you know, doing this or this. And it’s like, one, that’s comparison, and you just can’t compare. Right? ⁓ perhaps they’re not business consultants. Perhaps they need that volume. ⁓ we cannot compare. So I would just encourage put some blinders on when it comes to that, because you cannot compare things that aren’t comparable. It’s like, you know, do I like this Kiwi or do I like

Rice. It’s like they’re not even the same thing, not even in the same category. We cannot compare those two things. and then it’s like, are you starting from too far behind? No, you’re not behind. I don’t know why you think that. Like, who has told you that you were behind? You are not behind. You’re exactly where you should be. You have 1400 LinkedIn connections. You’re a business consultant. You can’t have 1,400 clients. You probably could only have 14 clients. You are not too far behind.

RORY (31:30)
I think a big thing people need to understand in here is that the number of followers that you have is not a demonstration of the level of value you can provide. And in many ways, the larger the audience you have, the more obligated you are to serve them and to be available to like nurture that community, which means the the less available you are to work with any small number of those people in a very deep way. When we hire people to do various services for us personally.

For the business. We don’t look at how many followers does this person have at all. It’s not even in our consideration of do we hire them. We do look at: is it relevant? Is it up to date? And is their content worthwhile? Is it useful? Is it valuable? Are they demonstrating that they are an expert at the thing that we are considering hiring them for? And I just want to ask All of your clients are doing the same thing.

AJ (32:28)
And I want to add two other things to that to what we said because we’re not talking about hiring people. We’re talking about hiring vendors. ⁓ the two number one things that we also vet is were they referred to us?

Did someone else recommend them who has used them and can vouch for them? ⁓ and then two, it’s like, do they have a list of testimonials that prove that they’re really good at the thing they say they can do? Right. And it’s like, one, can I go and validate those testimonials? Are these real humans with a first and last name? Like are they videos? and it’s like I weird, we’re just living in an an era right now where Amanda P says, I’m like, Who’s Amanda P? Like, is she a real person? Like, I I I need to know. I need to see her picture. I wanna know her last name is, I wanna know where she works.

I need to go validate this because that is an like if you weren’t referred to me, it’s like this is how I’m proving that you’re trustworthy. Is I’m basing the experience of someone else who’s hired you. And if it’s just partial human, it’s like I it’s not enough for me. Right? It’s not enough. So I think those two things in addition to everything you said are also really important when we’re looking at these things. It is not follower count though. That’s not even a piece of consideration.

RORY (33:33)
And and and to me, testimonials, what we’re really looking for is sample work. Yeah. We want to see a sample of what you’ve done and a testimonial, depending on what trait you’re in. Like, you know, if you’re a videographer or photographer, I should just be able to see a portfolio. When you’re a consultant, it’s a little bit tougher to see your sample work. And so testimonials is the closest thing to that. But we’re trying to go, can you create the thing that I’m considering hiring you for? Point blank. That is that is the question. But it’s not about how many followers you have. The only

Person who’s concerned about that is you. And that is a fear living in your own head. It’s false evidence appearing real. It’s a figment of your imagination. Do not let you do not let it hold you back. Doesn’t mean you shouldn’t create quality content and demonstrate your expertise, but do not let the number of followers be the reason why you can’t grow your personal brand and turn your reputation into a massive pile of revenue. That’s right. All right.

AJ (34:26)
Preach it.

RORY (34:28)
So, if you have a small audience and you want to make a big amount of money from a small audience, which by the way, arguably we are some of the best in the world at making a lot of money from a smaller audience. We don’t have a huge audience, and much of our audience has only grown here in the last couple of years, really. ⁓ so if you are that person or if you know somebody who has a real expertise and a real passion for helping people and a real mission-driven, ⁓ you know, sort of purpose and stance in life, make sure you share this episode with them and then let them.

know they can request a call with us at freebrandcall.com forward slash podcast and we’ll do the first call for free to understand where they’re at. We’ll show you our entire four phase journey and we’ll create a custom plan for exactly what steps you need to take next, whether you work with us or you don’t.

⁓ and for the rest of you, please ⁓ thank you for tuning in to the podcast. Please rate and review this show wherever you listen or watch. Make sure you hit subscribe, follow, ⁓ and share. And we’ll catch you next time on the wealthy and well-known podcast.

Now, before you go binge watch all the rest of our episodes, we want you to know we’re committed to serving you as an individual in a much deeper way.

AJ (35:43)
And we actually mean that. We don’t have to make these episodes. This is something we want to do to serve the person who’s really listening. And the first way that you can do that is to actually subscribe, to tune in and to learn more on every episode that goes live.

WWK Ep 026: 100,000 Followers or 1,000 Emails? The Truth About What Actually Grows Your Business

WATCH THE INTERVIEW LISTEN TO THE EPISODE BELOW A big following feels impressive, but it does not automatically create trust, leads, or revenue. In this episode of The Wealthy and Well-Known Podcast, Rory and AJ break down one of the most common traps in personal branding: assuming that more followers means more business. They unpack why neither followers nor […]

WWK Ep 025: The Real Secret to Becoming Wealthy & Well-Known

RORY (00:00)
you are the definition of well-known like in your space in your communities and that’s what I want people to see is to go like everybody is modeling after like these people with a bunch of followers but like even the people with a bunch of followers the equity they create is their offline relationships and like

AJ (00:17)
Way to save it, Rory. Just trying to come back here. How have I become so unwell known?

RORY (00:20)
Yes, so tell us.

Yeah, how have you become well-paid without knowing anybody and anybody knowing you?

AJ (00:28)
Wow,

Alright guys, time to talk about some real truth. Most of us have been told and most of us have believed a lie about what fame really is. And we’re gonna share some real…

truth about fame and what really matters when it comes to building your personal brand. See what most of us think is that becoming famous means going viral and having a huge social media following and being known by the wider world. But what we want to do is break it down and talk about micro fame, how to become famous to your audience, how do you become famous in your small niche and why that matters more today than ever before.

All right, Rory, I’m going to kick us off with a question about…

⁓ Please welcome my co-host, the co-founder of Brand Builders Group, my best friend, my husband, New York Times best-selling author, Hall of Fame speaker, Rory Vada.

RORY (01:38)
joking

on another episode that she always always introduce her and she always forgets to introduce me she’s just like alright let’s get into it okay anyways now that that’s Eddie out of the way let’s get into it micro fame strategy love this conversation

AJ (01:53)
And really what I talk about is like how to become famous to your audience. And I think that’s the part about becoming well known that people often just misconstrue. They’re like, this whole personal branding thing, it’s about ego and vanity to popularity contest. And it’s like, no, it’s not. It’s about being known to the audience.

you want to serve, right? So it’s becoming famous in your niche, famous to your audience. And that is important.

Because if you have something that really serves that audience, then you owe it to them to let them know that you exist. Right? So it’s not how do you become like Mr. Pitbull worldwide over there. It’s not being the rock Dwayne Johnson, but it’s how do you become famous in your niche? So let’s talk about that. How do you do that? How do you become well known to the person that you want to be known by?

RORY (02:52)
Yeah, I can tell you a strategy that I’ve never said out loud before about how to develop micro fame and it’s not something that people talk about a lot or expect to hear.

AJ (03:02)
Well,

you’ve been holding out on us.

RORY (03:04)
I’ve never

had this question posed in this way, but I actually, you one of the questions on our sheet here is how do you get podcast invitations when you’re not famous yet? And I kind of consider myself a master of that. Like I have gotten on many of the biggest podcasts in the world and like am so far away from famous or like what most of the other guests are. And that question and the way you tee this up made me think about, huh, how have we really done this? And here’s a strategy that you’ve you’ve never heard before. And I’ve never talked about this.

figure out in any niche there’s like 15 people that really matter a lot. there’s 15, like if you just said who are the 15 people that matter most in my space and then ask yourself how could I be extraordinarily valuable to those 15 people?

And if you actually did that, which is what we have done, right? We figured out these are the people who are very important in our space, very influential. Rather than trying to go viral reaching millions, we said, how can we become extraordinarily valuable to these 15 people?

AJ (04:09)
Influen.

RORY (04:23)
and we did that and they became the gateway to other people. And I think that that strategy is not one that is just unique to us. think that that is how you create micro fame is you figure out who are the most influential people. It’s a small group. And rather than shotgunning to try to go viral and reach the whole world, there’s a small number of people in any sort of niche or industry or vertical.

that really are the people who matter. And if you can figure out how to be extraordinarily valuable to them, then you’ll ride in their wake and they will take you everywhere you want to go.

AJ (05:00)
So I love that and I think that is it’s like, how can you provide use resources? How can you be of service to someone else? Like what have you learned? What have you gained? What do you have that you can give to someone else to build a relationship, right? So give us some ideas. Like for someone who’s out there going, love that, I could do that. How do I do that? What would you say?

RORY (05:24)
Let’s talk about how not to do it. Okay, here’s what most people do is they go, these are the 15 people that are that matter in my space. And they think about how could I get on their show? How could I get on their stage? How could I get they think about what they could get? That’s the wrong question. The whole mindset has to be what can I give? How can I be useful? Is it’s it’s redirecting your reticular activating system in the opposite of how everybody else

AJ (05:38)
not the give.

No expectations

of anything in return, no monetary compensation. It’s just how can I be of use?

RORY (05:57)
right. Yeah. we actually in inside of our ⁓ pressure free persuasion course, we we teach that sales starts with relationships. I’ve never heard anyone else talk about sales, that relationships is actually the first part of our cycle of selling, we call it the service centered sale selling cycle. And you go service centered sales cycle.

AJ (06:17)
a lot of us is service.

Again, service centered

selling cycle. Yeah, there we go.

RORY (06:28)
And, and we have something that’s just called like the relational equity matrix. And we go, okay, what are all the things you can do? So one is, you can give people encouragement, you can send people referrals, you can send people recommended vendors, you can help them hire people, you can ⁓ advise them on some portion of their business, you can send them gifts, you can create experiences for them, you can volunteer for them. Like there’s

all of these things that you can do for people that add value to them. And it’s not just money. you you know, if you have money, some of it is right, like, you know, a lot of if you’re trying to get to really, really successful people, it’s like, don’t and you have money, donate money to their foundation, volunteer to be on their board, but like,

the way to get to people is not by saying what can I do for you or what can I get from you? It’s what can I do for you? And it’s really just being open to what do they need? ⁓ You know, I use the story of Gretchen Rubin a lot who’s not a brand builders group client. And, you know, has over the years become more and more of a friend. But all I did was wait for when she had a book launch, reached out to her, pitched her to be on my podcast. And I said, Hey,

I don’t have a huge podcast, but I know a lot of podcasters. And if you come on my show and I get a feel for what you’re looking for, I will personally go out and pitch you to like 20 shows. And she did that and I did that and we became friends. it was a slow been a slow relationship over the years. But those are the kinds of things it’s not what can I get, it’s what can I give? That’s good. And there’s lots of different things you can give people.

even if you can’t give them an audience because you don’t have an audience, there’s other things you have that you can give.

AJ (08:15)
Yeah, everyone has something. Definitely. It’s just how do you position that in the best service to the person you’re trying to build a relationship with.

RORY (08:23)
And it

starts by doing something that you actually do really, really well. It’s listening by watching. It’s not just listening, like listening to what they say, you watch what they’re involved with, you watch what they’re interested in, you watch what they’re doing, and you sort of anticipate the needs that they have. Because you can’t ask them, what do you need, then you’re just creating work for them to do.

AJ (08:50)
I would tell you like to that, ⁓ and I love that you should probably formalize that strategy and share it more often. That’s really good. One of the things that I have become really focused and intentional about doing is every single time I meet someone as they’re talking, my number one objective is to pinpoint who I can introduce them to. Like it doesn’t matter how long I’ve known you, how long I’ve talked to you, it could be five minutes or five hours. ⁓

Every conversation is going to end with, have someone you should meet. You said something that made me think about this. Let me know if you’d like an introduction. I do that no matter what to every client, every prospect, every friend, every stranger. Like if you’re engaged with me, my number one goal is who can I connect you to? I am very intentionally trying to become a connector in every single conversation. I just think that’s one of the most

value-ridden things I can provide is valuable connection.

RORY (09:53)
And it’s mutually valuable to both of them and valuable to you as a byproduct.

AJ (09:57)
But it’s

also something that I’m intentionally wanting to become known for. And so I’m very intentional about everywhere I go. like, want people to know that they can come to me for connections and referrals and resources. Like, I want to be known as the person to go to if you’re looking for blank kind of connection. And I think that’s just that. And I share that only because anyone can do it.

Like anyone can do that. You don’t have to have some like Navy SEAL expertise or like some like secret skill set. Anyone can become a master connector.

RORY (10:35)
Totally. And I’ve always been a big believer. You know, one of my favorite quotes is that Mark Twain quote that says every man is my superior in some way. Related to that, I’ve always thought to myself, everybody is a somebody somewhere. Yeah, right. Like, everyone has a hookup or a connection to something somewhere. And if you can figure out what does everybody have the like hookup to the connection, and then other people need that and vice versa.

AJ (10:52)
something to

RORY (11:02)
It’s just like you become this this facilitator, this conduit, and the value rubs off on you as you create all of these connections. ⁓

AJ (11:11)
I

love that just for a second like for those of you who are going well, I don’t know anybody like I Don’t have anything I could offer. It’s like first of all, that’s a terribly limiting mindset So whoever is listening who’s already saying that as you’re listening driving down the road is like stop that right now But it’s like I literally was thinking about like I have a person to go to I’m like Hey, who’s selling raw milk out of their trunk? Like where we’re gonna find it or you know, like it doesn’t matter like what it is It’s like a lot of friend who does that I have a friend who sells raw milk or I have a friend who has fresh

or you know I have a friend who whatever it’s like no matter what it is so it doesn’t matter what the thing is or what your socioeconomic status is everybody knows somebody somewhere right and so it’s like really try to train your brain on like how can I just become a resource but that that only works if you’re actually listening like if you’re actually

listening. Like I was in a conversation earlier this week with a couple of other parents who homeschool their kids and our kids are homeschooled and I always have to clarify I am not a homeschooler because some people will hear that and think I am, I am not. I’m not equipped for that amazing role but our kids are homeschooled. They go to a homeschool academy and so they were talking about well how did you do that and how did you get into that and I was like ⁓ let me tell you and like I had like three or four like teed up resources had nothing to do with work. It was all about homeschool and I’m like well this

is where we, you know, register with and this is how we did this and this is who I go to do the fat for that. It doesn’t matter what it is, right? It’s like whatever is whatever it is, have your list, be a resource, but you got to listen for it. Whatever it is.

RORY (12:46)
Yeah, whatever you’re into. That’s

a good transition to this. This question, I think is powerful. And it is what’s the difference between being well known and being well paid? ⁓ And how do I achieve both? But let’s start with the first part of the question of what’s the difference between being well known and well paid? Do you have to be well known to be well paid?

And I’m curious your thoughts on this because you’ve become well paid over the years and not you’re not necessarily the most famous person. So that’s my introduction.

AJ (13:20)
So rude.

She knows no one and no one knows her.

RORY (13:27)
you know everybody here’s the thing is you are the definition of well-known like in your space in your communities and that’s what I want people to see is to go like everybody is modeling after like these people with a bunch of followers but like even the people with a bunch of followers the equity they create is their offline relationships and like

AJ (13:49)
Way to save it, Rory. Just trying to come back here. How have I become so unwell known?

RORY (13:52)
Yes, so tell us.

Yeah, how have you become well-paid without knowing anybody and anybody knowing you?

AJ (14:02)
Wow, actually was gonna start with both of those things are really relative. Like what is well known? What is well paid? I think that’s all super relative based on who you’re talking to, right? Like yeah, if you compare me to Mel Robbins, I’m very unknown comparatively speaking, but if you compare me to, you know,

RORY (14:10)
and what is well paid.

AJ (14:27)
Sally Jo down the street, I’m probably fairly well known. So I think it’s all relative. I think that the balance and all of that is don’t compare yourself to anyone else. And I think that’s probably why I’ve always been fairly well paid, as I don’t really compare myself too much to other people. I don’t really care what they’re doing. I never really have, you know, that’s a gift I’ve been given. ⁓

RORY (14:51)
You have a

zero impressibility score. Other than Dolly Parton, there’s nobody in the world that impresses you.

AJ (14:58)
She’s impressive, I’m not gonna lie, she’s impressive. ⁓ But I do really think it comes down to this whole idea of being well known. And what I love about the conversation today is I don’t need to be well known by a lot of people, I need to be well known by my people. And that all starts with knowing who my people are.

⁓ I go into some, know, like Rory very much represents like the marketing side, like the digital marketing side of BBG. you know, he’s always trying to get me to go to like these different events with him with all these very well-known like influencer and, you know, and I’m like, that’s not my people. Those are your people. Like I don’t fit there.

Like I try and I’m like, they’re talking all this stuff and I just glaze over. I don’t know, I got dozed off, blacked out. It’s not my thing. And what I have been really okay with is like, I know my people. And I’m pretty well known in the entrepreneur crowd of our town because I make an effort to be so.

Right? I’m involved in the entrepreneur organization. I do networking lunches with them. I host dinners for them. I help be on boards with them. It’s like, I’m trying to be well-known in this space where I want to be well-known. And it’s not a huge space. It’s a very niche space in my town. ⁓ So it’s small.

but that’s where I want to be known. And so that’s where I focus my time and attention. And I think that’s what it means to be well known is you just have to be very clear on who do I want to be known by and where are they? And you got to show up.

RORY (16:32)
Yeah, the other thing is you’re talking this ties back to what we were saying earlier is I’m realizing, ironically, one of the best ways to become well known.

is to help other people meet each other. And when you help other people meet each other, you get caught in the crossfire. Like going back to my Gretchen Rubin story, right? It’s like Gretchen Rubin would never know who I am today. If I had never introduced her to all these people and introduced her to this like mastermind that I’m in that now she’s a part of, right? And it’s like now

I am somebody to her. And she would recognize me not because of my accomplishments and my audience and you know, like, I mean, she sold so many books compared to how many books I’ve sold or whatever, right. But it’s like I’m known to her because I helped her know other people. And I think the same is true about wealth, right? It’s like, if you want to help other people, if you want to get wealthy, help other people get wealthy. One of my favorite quotes I heard recently was billionaires are just people who create millionaires.

AJ (17:31)
Yeah,

I love that.

RORY (17:32)
So good. Yeah.

And so true, right? And it’s like, everyone’s approaching it. This whole conversation is about flipping this switch from going, how do I get and how do I become to how do I give and how do I help others become? And the irony is that when you focus on how do I give and help others become, you get when you focus on how do I get and how do I become you don’t get. And that is just like super ironic.

AJ (18:00)
Yeah. And the thing that we can all give is introductions and connections. It doesn’t matter. And so I guess back to how do you become well known? It’s one, it’s relative, right? Don’t compare. But most importantly, it’s like, you got to know who you want to be well known and you have to know where they gather. And then you have to show up consistently. Right. And so I think that’s, that is how you become well known in a niche space, right? Famous in your space. Now on the other part of well paid,

Again relative, right? ⁓ It’s all relative. So once don’t compare whatever well-paid is to you whatever well-known is to you a lot of you are trying to build local presence own it be good with it Some of you are just like I would just like it’s my dream to make six figures Awesome, don’t compare yourself to someone trying to make eight figures. Don’t do it. It’s not worth it So just stay in your lane put some blinders on and be like this is my calling This is my path my race. You can only run your race

You cannot run someone else’s with all of that said, ⁓ how to become well paid. You just said that awesome quote is that the billionaires are just people who make millionaires. heard another quote here recently, similar to that, that I’ve really latched onto is that seven figure earners, seven figure earners master the basics that six figure earners are too advanced to do. And I’ve really hung on to that of like,

No, seven-figure earners are just people who are not above doing the basics and the fundamentals. They are masters of the basics that six-figure earners are too advanced to do. And I think that’s so good and it’s so wise and a great reminder to all of us is that making money is not hard. It’s a numbers game. And it requires you to become a master of the basics, which is

work the numbers.

RORY (19:59)
Literally, I think even us right? We’ve had multiple eight figure ventures now at this this point three ⁓ and the You and I spend our time going how do we get more calls on the calendar? How do we renew more customers?

AJ (20:19)
Same conversation.

RORY (20:20)
how do we get more referrals? And even on our financial calls, it’s like we’re just trying to get our our PNL tight and go like get it accurate and go are these benchmarks in place? And what is it compared to our budget? And what is it over prior year? Like the most fundamental I had somebody reach out to me, a friend of ours that we you know, we haven’t seen for a few years. And he reached out to me with the most beautiful question. And this is someone who doesn’t earn a lot of money.

AJ (20:35)
more.

RORY (20:50)
It was a really beautiful question and I was honored that he reached out. don’t even know if I told you this, but he has a son and he’s a single dad and he said, if I could just save up $5,000 for my son, Rory, I know you know this stuff, tell me what to do with it so that he could have money when he’s grown up. Right? And this is like a friend of ours that doesn’t have a hard work. You know who I’m talking about?

AJ (21:14)
I know exactly your time.

RORY (21:16)
I was like, first of all, such a beautiful question to go, this dad is trying to change the legacy of his family. He’s trying to do something for his son. And he is going, I want my son to have a better life than I do, or a different life than I have. Next, I was totally honored that he reached out to me. just like, don’t know, I haven’t talked to this guy in a couple years. And I was like,

I am so flattered and honored that you had asked me and that you think I would actually have some type of answer. And then I definitely responded with a very thorough but simple answer as I said, Hey, Jane, I don’t do crazy investments. We don’t own like a whole bunch of stuff. We do growth stock mutual funds and we invest early and I said if you just take $5,000 and you put this in a simple IRA,

and you don’t try to gamble and make bazillions and you just let because of your son’s age he’s like five years old if it grew at eight percent for 60 years it would be worth over five hundred thousand dollars and that was powerful and and also you know i hope the lesson in for him was like it’s simple like it’s it’s it’s simple stuff

Most people are like, how do I get rich quick? How do I say I want want crypto I want so I want to I want to own 27 companies I need to invest in 47 different and I want I want apartment complexes I want fix and flip and I all this stuff and it’s like no we’re like really boring with our or you’re awesomely boring and and and I also think back you know a lot of my friends that when we started brand builders group which it was our you know a new endeavor at the time

AJ (22:52)
awesomely awesomely boring

RORY (23:07)
A lot of them go, I can’t believe how fast you’ve grown. And they’re like, I remember when you talked about 1000 messengers when you started the company. And like, you actually are still doing the thing like we, we haven’t even gotten there yet. And but we haven’t changed direction. Like it’s been the thing. It’s, it’s totally the fundamental.

AJ (23:26)
It

is the fundamentals. It’s not the sexy thing that everyone wants to talk about, but it’s becoming a master of the basics. And to be well paid, it’s like, you got to work the numbers. Right? It really is a work the numbers. It’s just, you don’t, and that’s the beautiful thing about it is like, you don’t have to be a masterful marketer or a masterful salesperson. You just got to work the numbers and let the ratios fall out. And the more you do it, the better you get.

It’s kind of a great thing. I would say the only thing that has made me a pretty good salesperson over the years is like, I’m just going to outlast everybody else. My follow-up game is strong. My organization game, my calendar game is strong. It’s like, I’m just going to outlast everyone else. That just gets bored and moves on. It’s master the fundamentals and work the numbers.

RORY (24:18)
Another thing on this monetization strategy is the David and Goliath. And ⁓ everyone knows the story of David and Goliath, but also Malcolm Gladwell wrote a book called David and Goliath. And the argument that Malcolm Gladwell makes in that book, and it’s a fascinating book as is everything he writes, is that we all think that David had this miraculous moment where he overcame the giant. ⁓

there’s an argument for that for sure, and God was with David, but… And what Malcolm, the argument he makes is he says, yeah, but David also had an advantage. This guy was huge and was weighed down by all of this armor. David was nimble and quick, and he had spent his young life fighting lions with a slingshot. this wasn’t just like a random lucky shot. He had spent his life preparing, and this particular set of circumstances worked to his advantage.

AJ (24:49)
But God equipped David, prepared David.

RORY (25:14)
The reason I point that out, a lot of people listening that don’t have huge followings, they think they’re at a disadvantage of like, huh, I’m not famous enough, no one is gonna buy from me, et cetera. ⁓ Or they think I’m new to entrepreneurship, how am I ever gonna compete with people who’ve been doing this for 20 years? And what you don’t realize is that the earlier you are, you have an advantage. And the advantage is that you have more time.

Right? When you’re you either have time or you have money. And you always know which one it is because if you don’t if you don’t have have time if you have if you don’t have money, then that means you have time or you’re not spending your time right. But when you’re starting out, you can offer a level of service that is intimate and up close and personal that is worth way more money to fewer people. It’s easier to sell

higher dollar offers to fewer people who pay you more for more attention. That is the fastest path to a lot of money. People who have huge audiences and huge teams, they can’t offer that level of service because they don’t have that much time available because they’re busy managing their team and managing the empire and all this stuff. So what you think is a disadvantage actually is an advantage. It’s like David being small and nimble and quick. And when you’re new to this business, here’s the other thing.

you can charge less, right? Like, people who are famous and have a lot of demand, they can’t sell one on one coaching for a low dollar amount because the demand is so high, they have to charge more because they don’t have that much time available. You can what you have the advantage of when you’re just starting out is supply, you have lots of supply. Now demand is low and supply is high, which means the price is low. That’s an advantage. You can go to the market,

and sell at a lower price, which is what you should do. And then you raise your prices over time. So what feels like a disadvantage of not being famous actually totally is. What feels like a disadvantage of being new as an entrepreneur actually is a tremendous advantage. You just got to change the mindset and the limiting beliefs that are there.

AJ (27:31)
Yeah, I love that. All right, well, this is a good transition into our community question. All right, Rory, tell us what this section is all about and what’s the question of the day.

RORY (27:39)
Community questions. So this

is great, right? So at Brand Builders Group, we have members that are in part of our coaching program that we foster relationship and help them build their business. And inside of our actual portal, they can write in questions to me and AJ and other members vote up the questions. And then the top ones we pick here for the show. So this one comes from Michelle. It says I am a nutritionist who works specifically with women over 40 going through perimenopause.

I know exactly who I serve and I love the work, but there are so many health and wellness influencers out there that I feel completely invisible. How do I break through and become the go-to name for my exact client without competing with people who have 10 times my following and 100 times my budget? What a perfect question for what we’ve just been talking about.

AJ (28:33)
I was

just thinking the same thing. That’s just the perfect question for you. Women over 40 going through peri-man-pause. Can you not relate to that? Exactly. I love this question. It’s like, how do I break through and become the go-to name for my exact clients? So what I love about this is that, knowing what you do and who you are, I bet you don’t need thousands of clients. I bet you couldn’t even handle hundreds of clients. I bet

you’re looking for dozens of Fast, bet. So how do you become the go-to name for your exact client?

RORY (29:05)
if even doesn’t.

AJ (29:11)
Assuming you have some clients, it’s to double down on those clients. It is to give them a life changing experience and then ask them to refer you to their friends. And that’s the unique thing about your exact business, Michelle, is that women over 40 going through perimenopause, they know other women who are over 40 going through perimenopause because we’re all talking about it. That’s for sure. Everybody’s talking about it, right? So you can find them. You know where they are, right? And so it’s like one, it’s like, don’t forget the best

client you have is or the best client to get is the one that you already have. So use those people to get referrals and get referred but don’t just ask for a referral be like hey I know this is a hot topic with everyone I’d love to host a lunch. If you would just invite five friends I would love to do a free luncheon, a free webinar.

It’s like just ask every single one of your clients. Like if you would invite five of your best friends who are going through the exact same thing, you are, I’d to take everyone to coffee. I’d love to host a lunch. I’ll do a virtual webinar, whatever it is. If you have local clients, great. If they’re, if they’re out of town, fine, do it virtually, but just start going like, I just want to meet these people in person. I want to look them in the eye. I want to learn what their issues are. And I want to let them know that there’s a better way and start with the clients that you have. Do coffees, do luncheons, do happy hours, do

Saturday morning workouts and ask people to invite people to come with them, your clients, invite their friends. We’re all talking about, we all know who each other are. That’s where I would start. Then the next thing that I would do, because you don’t need 10 times the following and a hundred times the budget, as I’d start going to every single person who services these people who are over 40 going through perimenopause, I’d build relationships. I’d start with my OBGYN, right? I’d start with my physician.

I would start with every single person that serves me as a 42 year old woman, not yet going through perimenopause, but like I would start there and it’s like, these are all the people that serve me. I’m going to start building relationships with people because I know they have more people like me, right? I know they know more people like me. And I’m going to just take that grassroots local referral word of mouth marketing because I serve my clients so well. It’s an easy yes, because I’m giving them life changing results.

It’s an easy yes to invite other people into something for free to learn about what I do. That’s what I would do if I were you.

RORY (31:36)
Yes, this so good. And I have to come back here to the story of David and Goliath in the Bible. There is one of the…if you read Scripture on this story, it is going how David…they tried to suit David up in armor, and he said, I can’t wear this armor.

He was, David was smart enough to know or spirit-led enough to know that he couldn’t compete with Goliath at his own game, size versus size. David was smart enough to say, I’m going to embrace my strengths and the things that God’s given me and I’m going to use those tools, a slingshot and no armor. And small entrepreneurs need to do the same thing. You might not be able to compete on size of audience. What you can compete on is intimacy and access to the clients.

serve a smaller group of clients in a deeper way. There’s, you know, you can make $100,000 by selling 1000 people $100 product, you got to have a big audience to sell 1000 people $100 product. The other way you can make $100,000 is to sell 10 people a $10,000 product. And it’s way easier to do that and serve a small group of 10 10 people in a very, very deep way.

That’s how I’d be thinking I’d be doing exactly the things that you.

AJ (32:53)
said. Yeah. And if you’re out there listening and you’re going, well, how do I take all this information and apply it to what I’m building to my audience, to my business, then honestly, we would just really encourage you to take us up on our free call offer. ⁓ One of our team members at Brandbender’s group will sit down with you for a one hour free strategy call to talk about what you got going on, how we can help. And even if we’re not a fit with you, give you some tips and advice and some struck an instruction to keep you on the right

path. if you want to take us up on that, ⁓ we would encourage you to go to freebraincall.com forward slash podcast.

freebrandcall.com forward slash podcast and grab a call with someone on our team so that you can talk through how can you take some of these ideas and apply them to help you grow your business and serve the audience that you’re meant to serve. Now, we’d also love it if you would share this episode. So if you’re not ready for that call, but you’re all like, wow, this was helpful. I have more friends who need to hear this, then please share this, like it, leave us a review on whatever platform you listen to it.

We would so appreciate it. And most importantly, we invite you to come back and listen to another episode the next time on the Wealthy and Well-Known Podcast. We’ll see you later, y’all.

listen up. You do not need the whole internet to know your name.

RORY (34:17)
just the ones who are in your wonderfully weird little corner of it.

WWK Ep 024: Why Less Qualified People Make More Money Than Experts

Rory (00:00)
It’s one of the things that breaks my heart and makes me so angry about the world that we live in today is that I think a lot of the most under qualified people are getting the most attention and the most revenue and I don’t think that’s fair. But whether I like it or not, it is what it is. So we’re going to teach about how to

AJ (00:17)
That’s interesting because

I don’t have that same disdain that you do at all. don’t.

Rory (00:28)
Here is something uncomfortable that I’ve learned that you probably aren’t going to like. It’s painful to hear this, but customers don’t buy from you because of your credentials.

This is one of the most frustrating things that we hear time and time again from mission driven messengers. Why am I more qualified than other people out in the marketplace, but I don’t seem to have as much traction. That’s what we’re going to talk about on today’s episode is how to convert your credentials into customers and why they don’t convert just by themselves. So if you are someone who is qualified to build a great personal brand, but you feel sometimes like a little bit of the world’s best kept secret, we’re going to unblock that for

you here on the show. Joined by my business partner, best friend, CEO of Brand Builders Group, co founder, co author, New York Times bestselling author.

AJ (01:17)
You’re

always so nice about introducing me and I always forget to Like as you were doing that I’m like I always forget I just roll into the conversation

Rory (01:21)
Yeah, you never introduced me.

That’s how you are. You’re like, all right, let’s get down to business.

AJ (01:33)
business.

Yeah, I’m like, let’s get on with the conversation. Today. So yeah, so here’s I think this is a good question, because I think that we’ll have similar, but varying responses. Yeah, of why don’t credentials actually help you grow your personal brand? Because I think we spend so much time just as professionals, of trying to get that next certification, right? Get that next credential, get those next three letters behind your name. And it’s like at the end of the day, that

Rory (01:35)
What is our conversation?

AJ (02:03)
doesn’t really necessarily move the needle. Why not?

Rory (02:09)
The answer I would say to why that doesn’t matter is because people don’t buy you. They buy them. Right. They’re not buying really who you are. They’re buying what they want. They’re buying their dream. They’re buying their transformation. So so it’s it’s not I think people who are chronic overachievers and academics. OK. Right here you got two people who did really well in school. Right. I was I was a study bug as was AJ.

AJ (02:34)
High School Valac

Tutorian over there.

Rory (02:36)
I was high school valedictorian of a very small school. I beat the other guy. ⁓ We had 90 people in our class. you know, it was, it was something, but I think those of us that value traditional academia and research and credentials and things like that, we tend to assume that other people will not only value them, but that they will buy because of them and pay more because of them. And it’s just not true. People will pay whoever is available.

AJ (02:57)
them.

Rory (03:06)
whoever is accessible and whoever they think can help them get a result. And I’m not saying I like it. In fact, I’m saying I hate it. It’s one of the things that breaks my heart and makes me so angry about the world that we live in today is that I think a lot of the most under qualified people are getting the most attention and the most revenue and I don’t think that’s fair. But whether I like it or not, it is what it is. So we’re going to teach about how to

AJ (03:33)
That’s interesting because

I don’t have that same disdain that you do at all. don’t. ⁓ I think that it’s really important. It’s really valuable, specifically in some professions. There are some industries, some professions where that does hold more clout and more weight and I would expect for you to charge more and that would be justified. ⁓ But I think for a lot of people, they’re going, no, I just want to know that you’ve done the thing.

Not that you’ve studied the thing, learned about the thing, researched the thing, like reported on the thing. I want to know you’ve done the thing. And I think a lot about like, even as we do a lot of interviewing and recruiting at Brandbuilders group, I have literally stopped looking at education. I don’t know if that’s good or bad. Sorry to admit it here. I don’t care what your GPA is.

I don’t care where you went to school, don’t even care what your degree is. I want to know what was the last five years of your work experience.

Rory (04:33)
Right. Have you done the thing? Yeah.

Well, and that to me is OK. Right. And that’s where to me, I think that’s an important conversation is where does real credibility come from.

AJ (04:42)
But to the point, right? It’s like, yes and, right? It’s like, it’s great when we go and we do all of that academic. We were talking about this the other day.

Rory (04:51)
There is somewhere that credentials matters a lot, a lot, a lot.

AJ (04:54)
Yes, but we were also talking about the other day of, you know, we have some friends that we know in our life who were like, a, students, valedictorian, top of their class and love them to death, but can’t think for themselves. It’s like literally if it wasn’t in a book, if they couldn’t follow the exact process for it, like they can’t think for themselves.

Rory (05:18)
They can memorize information, but they can’t critique.

AJ (05:21)
It

cannot, it will not transfer to real life. There’s not a system for that. There’s not a process for that. There’s not an SOP for that. I don’t have a one pager for that. Like I just need you to go figure it out and they cannot do it. And so I think there’s, there’s some of that, that, you know, I think academia can almost, almost drive the natural creativity out of us that has starting to really kind of expose itself. It’s like, well, yeah, you’ve

researched and taught all the things, but you’ve never actually done the thing. Now that’s different for the person who has researched it and done it. So just, want to make a clarification that it’s not saying getting your MBA, master’s, PhD is an important and valuable. I really do think in a lot of places it matters a lot. And in other places it doesn’t. So it’s knowing the difference of the two. So if I would actually just take a side, you know, like a master’s MBA or PhD for a second.

And what I find more people are doing or going like, where can I get this next certification? And will this next thing help me do this? And it’s, that’s the part where I’m like, you are spending your time in the wrong areas. You’re trying to go get certified in something, somehow thinking some letters behind your name is going to get you business instead of actually doing the sales work that needs to be done. It’s creative avoidance in a regard. It’s trying to figure out, Hey, is there some sort of way I don’t have to go make the sales calls or have the conversations.

and can I just go learn some stuff and hopefully people will find me.

Rory (06:51)
the part I think where you know you say disdain it’s like I don’t have heartburn with somebody who has done the thing getting the business I actually love that even more than the academia and the research and I go like to me all you need to be credible is that you’ve actually done the thing yeah your most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were you conquered the challenge you walked the path you solved the problem you triumped over the tragedy you overcame the obstacle to me that is

is the ultimate level playing field of what deserves credibility. I don’t mind when that person wins. What I don’t love is when the best marketer wins without either the credibility, without either the academic, what I’m saying is academic credibility or the life experience. And that’s what I’m seeing a lot today.

AJ (07:29)
without,

breaks

my heart. That’s frustrating. That’s annoying. But yes, yeah, I was thinking about one of our clients that we were talking to earlier this week, and she has her PhD in seismot…

Rory (07:52)
seismology

she’s an earthquake

AJ (07:54)
No, I’m not

a PhD in this. But yeah, she’s an earthquake engineer. And I’m like, yeah, I need you to have a PhD. Yeah, I really want you what’s the next class you can take? Yeah, I really want you to make sure that, you know, architectural foundations are secure and high earthquake prone areas. Like I need you to have a PhD. Like that’s important. But then in other areas, like to your point where it’s the person who’s just

you know, marketing that they’ve done the thing, they haven’t done the thing, haven’t studied the thing, they have no credentials. And when they’re winning, that’s, that’s, that’s giving us all a little bit of a bad rep.

Rory (08:31)
Well, and I think, you know, don’t hear what we’re not saying. We’re not saying that credentials aren’t important in particularly one area. If you stay tuned, we’ll talk about where credentials really do matter. So we’ll get to that. But

what we are saying is that the people who are winning today aren’t the smartest, they’re not the most qualified, they’re not even the most experienced, they are the best marketers. And that it comes down to marketing and sales and those, and in some ways that is just doing the thing. Like when you’re building an entrepreneur, that’s what it means to be an entrepreneur. One of the things I’ve been saying a lot like in the last year is that creators favorite form of creative avoidance is to create. Creators favorite form of creative avoidance is to create.

is an academics favorite form of creative avoidance is to study, like to study stuff, to learn the thing and not actually, you know, do the marketing and sales. And so I think what we want to talk about is why first, so let’s start there. So why doesn’t credentials equal customers? What do you think?

AJ (09:18)
the

Genuine believe that credentials don’t equal customers because true experts are spending all of their time, money, energy, and resources actually honing their craft and not telling anyone about what they do. I believe it really does sit on the individual where they are so consumed with the next research and studying and analytics and diving into case studies. And they’re so busy doing the thing that they have never looked up and actually told anyone about the expertise they have.

I think that real true experts, what we’re actually talking about are the world’s best kept secrets because they have not had the desire or the reason to equally study sales and marketing. They have an amazing passion for a thing and it does not include the business components of the thing.

Rory (10:34)
is interesting because we have an explosion in our community of like doctors, like lawyers, professional advisors who spent their career doing the thing. And I think what we’re learning, we talk about this in Wealthy and Well-Known, is that there are two parts of your art. There is the art of your art, and then there is the art of letting people know that your art exists. Marketing is art. Marketing is part of

your art and as people wake up to that, right, I think about Dr. Gabrielle Lyons, one of my favorite, you know, success stories of one of our clients who just she just kills it. She’s like a deep, deep expertise, spent her whole life researching like the real deal doctor, you know, like not an honorary degree, like a straight up this is the this is the real deal. And then she’s also become a master in in marketing the last couple years and branding and positioning and she’s just crushing it and she’s changing lives. And

AJ (11:31)
But that’s also because academia doesn’t teach those types of professions, business, sales and marketing. And that’s a real problem. And I hope that really changes in academia because it’s like for anyone to be insanely successful at their craft, they’re gonna have to learn the business components of how to run that business.

Rory (11:55)
I

mean, it’s crazy. I did get an MBA from a private school, you know, a great university shout out to Denver University, go pioneers. ⁓ But like,

that MBA, everything that we were taught about how to start a business was all about like raising money and pitch decks and like other people’s money and investors like, and the reality is that most entrepreneurs, they bootstrap it, start, you got to sell, you got to market, it’s more of that like guerrilla tactics and it was like, I didn’t learn a thing about any of that.

even the marketing we learned is like, you know, the four piece of marketing with you if you’re managing a $500,000 a year advertising budget, but it’s like, that’s not where entrepreneurship happens, right? It’s not where you start.

AJ (12:39)
That’s why I think most people are spending all of their time honing their craft, which is why they’re true experts, but they yet have not made the time to hone the skills necessary in the sales and marketing arena.

Rory (12:51)
So let’s talk about the skills

required in the sales and marketing arena. And this is a thing that us academics need to understand that we do not. When you have poured your life into your craft, you tend, I’ll speak for myself and people that I know, we tend to think people should respect us for what we’ve done and

operate accordingly. And this is where I think doctors and academics get a little of a bad rap of like, oh, they’re arrogant, because it’s like, yeah, because I put in the time to do this. But in the marketplace, people don’t buy because of you. They don’t because of how smart you are. They don’t buy because of how many degrees you have. Usually, they don’t even understand what the initials after your last name even stand for. They only buy because of what you can do for them. And if everything is about you and how great you are, and what you’ve done, and your research, and why you’re the best,

They frankly don’t care. They care about, can you help me succeed? How fast and who else have you done that for? Not how long have you studied it? Not what awards have you won? Not why you’re the world’s greatest? Just do you have a plan to help me succeed? Have you helped other people succeed? Can you do it fast? And can you articulate that clearly? And if you spend all your time talking about yourself, you’re going to be a highly qualified, very broke entrepreneur.

AJ (14:13)
Well, I think the other thing is too, I think this is really worthwhile, is that I think if you are in a industry, a profession where credentials carry a lot of weight, medical field, health care field, financials, like some of those other kind of things, ⁓ to be honest, they’re just the standard prerequisite. It’s almost the expectation that it’s

Rory (14:39)
just have a

CPA or that you have all these financial designations that

AJ (14:44)
You don’t get the

credit that they warrant because it’s kind of like the price of entrance. So I think there’s some of that that’s occurring where it’s like, well, yeah, of course, that’s just what you, that’s what I expect for you to do. But we had the opportunity to hear Dr. Henry Cloud speak a week ago and he was talking about how he selected his knee surgeon. And I thought it was very interesting. You know, he’s an academic.

Right. He’s got a PhD in psychology and he had gotten multiple referrals to three different types of doctors and one was world-class, well-known LA.

you know, knee surgeon to the stars and another one was recommended that was out of state. And then there was another one and another one had founded a clinic and he went through all these things. And it was so interesting to me how he selected the one he selected. And the one he selected is the one who actually took the time to ask questions about him, had done research on him, said, I see you’re a golfer. And like, it was all these things. Cause again, people aren’t buying your credentials.

Right? They’re buying what you can do for them. And out of all the doctors he selected, he chose, he lives in LA, to leave LA, or he did at the time, and go to Little Rock.

Rory (16:04)
Yeah, Arkansas.

AJ (16:05)
to have

this knee surgery done. And it’s like he was surrounded by world-class surgeons all around him. And he was like, but they didn’t care about me. They didn’t ask me questions. It was about, see this all the time. I know I’m the doctor. And the one he selected was like, hey, I see you’re a golfer. When’s the last time you got to golf? I can’t believe you’re walking around on that thing. Tell me when the pain started. And he said, they took time to get to know me and catered what they did to my goals.

to what I wanted to restore to, and that’s the one he selected. And I think that’s the same that goes for anyone, doesn’t matter what credentials you have or have not, it’s are you going to take the time to get to know your customer? Because it’s not just about what you’ve learned, it’s how can you apply what you’ve learned to help the person right in front of you.

Rory (16:53)
Yeah, and I think, you know, a risk is if you’ve put a lot of time into credentials, you want people to view you as important because you’ve earned that. But people don’t buy because you’re important. They buy because you make them feel important. And that’s a really important, that’s a key shift to understand. You know, I think about the speaking industry, right? Like, I see this all the time. I’ll lose a speaking gig to someone. I’m a certified speaking professional. I’m a CPAE, Council of Peers Awards of Excellence for the Hall of Fame. I’ve been a two time world champion.

of public speaking finalists. And, and never has anyone hired me for any of those things. In fact, I lose gigs a lot to people who don’t have any of that kind of training, but they’re more well known than I am. They’re a better marketer, they’re they their book sells better, whatever, like, they have more, they’ve done a better job of getting to the decision maker, and, and making their expertise more relevant to the decision maker than I have now. So I think that’s, that’s important.

AJ (17:25)
so impressed by it.

Rory (17:53)
distinction for people to understand. And it doesn’t mean that the credentials aren’t important or worth pursuing. It’s just they’re not the things that lead to conversion.

AJ (18:02)
Now you did mention earlier though, there’s one area where credentials really matter. I think we should talk about it.

Rory (18:08)
Should we talk about that?

The area that credentials really mattered is when you are getting featured as a guest on media. It really does matter. And people ask me this all the time. I think it was last week we just had our 116th client become a national bestselling author, which was also the 24th client that we’ve helped hit the New York Times.

we are helping clients hit the New York Times, honestly, ethically, and regularly right now, knock on wood. And it’s through a lot of hard work, and it’s a lot of energy, and it’s a lot of time, and it’s a lot of resources. And people say, is the New York, does the New York Times bestseller list still matter? And it’s like, to the average person on the street, it matters zero. In our national research study, we actually proved that the average person on the street

cannot tell the difference between a New York Times bestselling author, a Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Amazon, they can’t even tell the difference between a traditionally published book, a hybrid book, or a self published book. They do not know, they do not care. So when it comes to making money from customers, they only care, can you help them? for the media, it matters. If you’re gonna get on Good Morning America, if you’re gonna get booked on the biggest podcast, you know, I use Louis just because he’s, you know, a friend.

AJ (19:19)
The idea matters.

Rory (19:29)
Lewis gets so many books, Lewis Howes I’m talking about. So School of Greatness, they have one of the biggest podcasts in the world. Every week people send them books. And there’s two piles. There’s the automatic no pile. And then there is the maybe pile. And if you’re a New York Times bestselling author, you automatically get into the maybe pile. Doesn’t mean you get it. It means that you are immediately separated from 90 % of the people you probably get a look. And that’s true.

for a national or a local, particularly a local TV interview, that’s true for a speakers bureau, a literary agent, ⁓ any type of podcast or media interview. And if that’s why, if you show me someone who’s getting $50,000 to speak consistently, I will show you a bestselling author. I’m not saying I like it, but I’m telling you that is how it is. And companies have to be able to justify paying a certain amount of money, and they use credentials as part of it. So credentials still matter a lot

in those circles in the in the street cred of your industry right in those rooms at the National Speakers Association being a CSP and a CPA ⁓ it makes a world of difference. At Toastmasters it means nothing at Toastmasters being a two-time world champion of public speaking finalist is a big deal. There’s nowhere else in the world does it matter at all like nobody knows and so that’s but but if you’re trying to get a meeting

AJ (20:57)
video.

any industry. Totally like credentials matter in your industry because you’re all speaking the same language. You know what it takes, but outside of your industry to get customers, not as much. But I would say like that’s the same for like industry conferences, getting on panels, credentials matter for that. Why? Because they held a different standard. They act as a filter of somebody who has done more work, earned something that most do not. Books act as a filter, right? If you have a book, that’s one thing. It was a best selling book. It was at Amazon. Was it USA Today?

day, was it New York Times, they act as filters. But for consumers, for dollars and cents, maybe not as much. So I want to break the rest of our interview up into two categories. there’s a lot to cover in this conversation. And here are the two categories. The first one is, okay, what if I’m someone who doesn’t have a lot of credentials? But I do have a lot of experience, like a street cred, right? How do I build my credibility without a big name or really well known resume? So that’s

Part one. Part two is, okay, what if I have all the credentials? Like I am a full blown expert and I have all the letters behind my name to prove it and I spent all the money to do it. And time. And time. Like I have got all the things and yet it’s not really working for me. So those are the two categories. What can each of those category of people start doing today to help them grow and scale their business?

Rory (22:04)
BULL

All right, so we’ll talk about the first person who has the experience and maybe not the former credentials. This person struggles the most with imposter syndrome. They doubt whether or not they’ve earned the right to do it. And I would argue that…

If you’ve walked the path and overcome it yourself, you are as qualified as anyone else in the world to teach what you’ve done and to teach the way that you’ve done it. And that’s why we say you serve the person you once were. And so you need to know that because nobody cares about the customers don’t care about the credentials they care about. Can you help them? And if you’ve been through it personally, then you can help them.

And that makes you really, really qualified. Now what I would lean into if I don’t have the formal credentials, there’s two things we always encourage people we teach this in our expert bio lesson inside of phase one, course one, finding your brand DNA expert bio, names and numbers, names of people you know, names or names of people that you’ve helped names of organizations you’ve worked with. So so names of customers, if you can use any type of recognizable name.

of a university you went to media outlets you’ve been featured in stages that you’ve spoken on specific names of organizations or people that you’ve been associated with. You’re drafting off the credibility of those names, make sure they’re legit and you’re not lying and making stuff up. But the other one is numbers. And this one is specific for people who lack formal credentials is maybe you didn’t go to a fancy named college, maybe you haven’t worked for a fancy named company, maybe you don’t have fancy named clients. But if you’re a real expert, you have numbers.

What numbers am I talking about? Numbers that quantify how many years you’ve been studying this. How many people have you helped? How many hours have you put into it? How many articles have you done? How many people, clients have you helped? Names and numbers, I would really lean into that for that person.

AJ (24:22)
Okay, I love that. I’m gonna give an alternate. Love all of that. I would say the alternate to that is to lean in heavily into your story. I would double down on my story and targeting to the bullseye, to like that little tiny red dot in the bullseye of who am I going after?

Rory (24:33)
Yeah.

AJ (24:47)
And as you were talking, it made me think about how we hired our executive life coach.

And I kind of owned the task of doing all the interviews. And I was looking at all different types of different organizations who are very well known, who had well credentialed executive coaches, life coaches. And one of the things that I kept finding in all of that is like, man, they just seem like they all have it too together. And I was in a place in our business where I’m like, I don’t, I know I won’t show up authentically talking to someone.

who their entire story is, I’ve done it right every step of the way. And I was like, I probably went through six or seven different like, you know, sample calls, sample interviews with all these different companies. I was like, I was like, they’re, they’re, they’re too good. They’ve never, they’ve never fallen off the pedestal. And the reason that we picked our executive coach is because he was so authentic with his story of how he was at this certain position, made some choices.

really fell from graces, ⁓ lost a lot, had to go rebuild ⁓ and reset it. And he’s like, I’ve been through the fire and I know how to help you get to their side. And it was like, no, I need someone who’s been through the fire. I want someone who’s was here and then here and then came back here. Like I need someone who’s walked the walk who knows exactly how I feel. Where am I right now? And who’s on the other side. And it wasn’t his credentials.

It wasn’t the numbers or the names. I didn’t care. didn’t even ask. It was like, no, you’ve been exactly where I am and you’re somewhere I want to be. You’re the guy. And so I would lean in heavily to the story of your most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were. Right. And that’s just knowing what problem you solve. What’s the cause of that? What’s your unique message and how you can get people through it? What are the payoffs and go knowing who you’re going after?

And I just think about how I hired our executive life coach, no names, no numbers, no credentials. I didn’t ask. I just knew the story and I knew what was mine. And so we hired him. So I would just also encourage you to lean into your story, lean into the thing that you’ve been through, lean into the thing that you’ve made it through. You know, what is the challenge that you’ve overcome? Uh, and who’s the person you serve? And that would be the alternate to not to negate what you said, but in addition to that, drive that home.

Rory (27:11)
Yeah. And if you struggle to tell your story and understand your uniqueness, your brand positioning statement, all those things, that’s what we do. So go to freebrandcall.com slash podcast, you can request a call with us for free. We’ll talk you through it. We’ll spend an hour understanding your story and ⁓ knowing where you are and we’ll create a little custom journey for where you can go to take your personal brand next. And part of that may or may not include ⁓ working with us and letting us support you. So check that out freebrandcall.com slash podcast.

AJ (27:16)
So we do.

Rory (27:41)
But I will double down for both categories. for both categories, whether you have the credentials or you don’t, I would actually double tap on what you said about sharing your personal story. double tap, tap, tap. If you ⁓

AJ (27:42)
because of the other category. Let’s hit the other category.

Rory (28:01)
I think this is also a sobering thing for people to realize if you’ve spent so much time and money having the formal credentials, those are not going to connect with people as much as your personal story or even the stories of your clients.

AJ (28:14)
Well, even if the credentials matter, the story is what differentiates you from everyone else who has the same credentials.

Rory (28:21)
It is in the story is what creates connection. And it’s like, what are credentials credentials give you credibility. But the story is what creates connection, connection creates trust and trust must happen before a transaction. So I think the story is really powerful. Honestly, I think that’s something that you and I don’t do enough of is sharing our personal stories and our stories of like,

where we come from and things. I mean, we share a lot of client stories and we dabble in the stories. that’s one thing I’ll speak for myself to say I need to get better at sharing more of my story. And I think I fit in the category of someone’s like, I did get an MBA, I was valedictorian, like, I have done national research studies, I did write a bunch of books like

AJ (29:08)
I disagree with that because I don’t talk about any of my credentials because I don’t have any. I don’t talk about them at all.

Rory (29:16)
Whatever,

There’s a strategy. Just don’t have any credentials, then you won’t have to worry about talking about it. I mean, ultimately, what matters most is talking about your prospects story and your prospects dream and your prospects life.

AJ (29:23)
It saves so much money.

You got

to be relatable to the person that you’re serving and they got to believe that you’re in it for them. And I think that that really matters the motive and that matters. All right, we did talk about this other one. I don’t want to run out of time. So what if you do have the credentials? They’re not they’re not doing the thing for you.

Rory (29:50)
Yeah, you got one of my favorite quotes is from a guy named Larry Wingate. And he said, at the end of the day, business is very simple. You have to have a really good product. And you have to ask a lot of people to buy it. And there’s a really good chance that if you have a lot of credentials, you have a really good product. You know what you’re talking about, you spent your life researching it. There’s also a really good chance you’re not asking enough people to buy it.

And you are probably hiding using research and creation and testing and validation as a advanced form of creative avoidance of not getting out and telling the people about what you do and sharing what you have with the world. And so that’s where you need help. And that’s one particular group that we really specialize in helping is overcoming some of that call reluctance that feels

AJ (30:38)
What’s

one thing that person could start doing today? That’s one thing outside of requesting a call. You’re saying? Yeah, like if they’re kind of hiding behind their credentials and they’re going, yeah, I’ve done all the work. I’ve done all the research. I do have that. Like I am an expert.

Rory (30:44)
to generate more business.

They should be speaking for free everywhere. Everywhere. Like literally think of yourself as chicken on a stick is the metaphor we use at the food court, right? Or at Whole Foods. It’s like people just need to sample you. And you probably are a little bit reluctant to sell. And that’s probably because you’re so used to being successful. The idea of rejection just terrifies you. ⁓ And so one of the ways

to kind of go around that, right? We can talk about going through that at a different time. But one of the ways to temporarily go around that is to go teach what you know for free everywhere, everywhere, podcasts, going live on social, virtual webinars, pre-recorded things, YouTube videos, Instagram, like stop trying to be perfect and just go teach what you know for free. And then tell people, hey, if you want help applying this to your organization or to your individual life, email me and request a call.

Like it is that simple. Not simple, but and there’s an emotional element here that is really hard. really, want to sink in on because again, the more successful you’ve been at school, and these types of things, which there’s a very like black and white do this thing, get this grade, get the, you know, get the degree, get the diploma, whatever. When you get into the human side of entrepreneurship, and sales and rejection,

AJ (31:49)
Not easy.

Rory (32:16)
It’s a very scary place for that person to go.

AJ (32:20)
That’s a good transition

⁓ to our community question, because every episode we take questions that were submitted by our community at Brand Builders Group. They get voted on and we pick one to share an answer on the podcast today. And what you were just saying is very complimentary to the question of today. And we’re going to wrap up with this. So this is from James who says, I have an MBA, 20 years of corporate strategy experience and a real track record of helping companies grow significantly. But I feel invisible on

line compared to coaches with half of my experience and a fraction of my results. I keep thinking I just need to explain my background better but it’s not working. What am I actually doing wrong and how do I flip the switch?

Rory (33:07)
I he says it right here. I think I just need to explain my background better. That’s not why anyone buys, right? Spoken like someone who’s worked really hard and built a real, and I feel for James because this is what it feels like to be a mission-driven messenger, to feel like the world’s best kept secret is like, I’ve paid my dues, why is nobody buying from me? And it’s because honestly-

AJ (33:30)
It’s

even I’ve paid my dues. It’s like I help companies get real results. Like I can help you.

Rory (33:37)
but it’s a little bit self-centered. And that’s the thing you gotta be careful of is how to explain my background better. It’s self-centered. It’s how do you share your story in a way that people relate with it? And how do you ask questions that make other people feel important and where they come to their own realization that you have a method that can help them? I think it’s as simple as that.

AJ (33:58)
Yeah, would just, know, a couple quick quick things to add to that. It’s like, it has nothing to do with you explaining your background better. It’s helping you become an advocate of the problem you solve. Right? If you’ve helped so many companies have monumental success, what was the problem that you saw for them? Like, what was it? What was the problem? Like, because if they have it, so do many other prospects.

So do many other companies. have to become a screaming advocate of the problem that you solve. A lot of people know they have a problem. They’re not often aware of why they have the problem, right? And so that’s what we call the cause, right? There’s a problem, right? A lot of people are aware like, hey, like I’m in financial debt. Like I have a problem. They don’t understand why they’re in debt. It’s because they keep spending when they shouldn’t. Like, why are you doing that? I’m trying to keep up with the Joneses.

I’m comparing myself to everyone else and you you’ve got to identify what that is and then you have to help people know it’s like I cannot only identify your problem. I can tell you why you have that problem and I have solution to fix the problem. So it’s not about your background. It’s like I know the problem. I know why you have it and I know how to solve it. Request a call with me right? So I think it’s less about your background and it’s more about you got problems. I know how to fix them. Let’s talk.

Rory (35:04)
there

And if you feel like James…

that you are the best kept secret and not enough people are buying from you. We know how to fix that problem. We should talk request a call with us free brand call.com slash podcast. In the meantime, if you’re not ready to talk to us just yet, just keep tuning in. Keep tuning in share this episode with other friends and family and other entrepreneurs and executives and other experts that you know, if you think they’ll enjoy it. And if you haven’t yet, please rate and review this podcast wherever you listen to it and come back next time. We’ll see you on the wealthy and well known podcast.

AJ (35:58)
Credentials tell people what you did, but a story tells them why you did

Rory (36:03)
It’s not like anyone is out there going, whoa, certified twice, take my money.

WWK Ep 023: Your Logo Can’t Shake Hands: Why Founders Must Be the Face of the Brand

RORY (00:00)
analogy that I’ve landed on that’s really helped me with this is launching a rocket ship into outer space. And you go when you’re first launching a rocket,

like I think it’s like 80 % of the fuel is used just getting it out of the Earth’s orbit, right? Is this this gravitational thrust. And when you’re launching a company, that’s exactly how it is. It’s like getting it off the ground is so difficult, you have to do everything in your power to get it up.

AJ (00:28)
Ready?

When’s the last time that you bought a service from a company just because of its logo? And then ask yourself this, when’s the last time that you bought from someone that you know, liked and trusted? Here’s the difference between those two questions. We don’t buy from companies. We buy from people. We don’t buy logos and colors and typography and iconography. We buy trust and we…

by reputation. And that’s why for those of you who are hiding behind your company’s logo, thinking that’s what’s gonna help your company grow and you’re putting all your money into branding and advertising and marketing your company, those days are over. We are in the face forward era of why being the face of your company matters. And we’re gonna talk about exactly how to get you from out behind the logo and into the spotlight to help your business grow today.

RORY (01:30)
This is an important lesson for entrepreneurs, a lot of entrepreneurs who do hide behind their logo. And I want to I want to ask you this, right? So as the CEO of Brand Builders Group, you’ve got a lot of things on your plate. You’ve got a lot of things vying for your attention that do have are not the things that have to do with you being a face forward part of our business. Yes. But you also don’t particularly love social media. You also don’t particularly love like online

networking, you also don’t listen to like a ton of podcasts yourself, but yet you prioritize some portion of time inside of your schedule to make sure that your face is a part of everything brand builders group. How do you justify doing that when there’s so many other things that are vying for your attention? And how do you like make that calculation and consideration?

AJ (02:26)
It’s a genuine discipline. Today is a great example. We had time set aside to record podcasts today. This is the last thing that my brain was telling me that I should be spending my time doing. After three and a half hours stuck in front of financials trying to troubleshoot some things for Q1 close, justifying why I should go leave the finance team and disarray.

and come over here and record some content, my logical brain said, that does not make sense. My get it done, type A, task rabbit mentality was not telling me this is where I should be spending my time. The reason though that I do schedule for it and I do make the time for it is because I actually believe

that having an executive face forward presence of the company makes a significant difference and why people choose to buy from us, why people choose to work for us and why people actually choose to stay.

both employees and customers of Brand Builders Group. And if I spent all my time behind the scenes ⁓ working on spreadsheets or putting strategies together and I was never out in front, two things would happen. One, I would lose touch with what our customers, our community actually needed.

I’m not going to learn that in numbers on a spreadsheet. I’m not going to learn that in just the financials. I’ve learned that from being with our customers. I learned that from figuring out what problems they have, what needs they have, what they love, what they don’t want, they want more of what they want less of. And I don’t need to hear it third party. like personally, I like to hear it direct because I don’t have any filtering. The second thing is that if I’m always behind the scenes, I also lose touch with our team.

And they lose touch with me. Both things happen. And so I don’t get to talk to every single team member every single day, but this is a way to multiply my efforts, multiply our thoughts, our beliefs, our values, not just to our team members, which I do hope they listen, but I don’t know if they do. ⁓ but also our community, right? It’s a way of going, Hey, you don’t get to know the behind the scenes, everyday life of me. But when I choose to come out behind all of the

multiple calls and KPI reviews and month in close reviews and all the other things that happen. This is a chance for me to one help make sure that values and beliefs aligned individuals can find us and vice versa, but also team members. Then the benefit for me is that I’m not just looking at data. Data tells one half of a really important business story. People tell the other.

and you gotta have an equal balance of team member input and customer input to balance out the numbers. And that’s why I make time for it even when it’s highly inconvenient, even when timing definitely doesn’t make sense. But it’s like anything, if you don’t schedule it, most likely it won’t happen. And if this wasn’t on the calendar today, I guarantee you.

It would have been the first thing cut from my, just go make some content when you have a break. There would have been no break. There would have been no content. So it’s scheduling and prioritizing the thing that you believe will move the needle.

RORY (06:00)
So how do you, if you’re an entrepreneur and you have been sort of leaning into putting yours to your company brand and hey, I don’t need to be seen, it’s not about me, it’s all about, all that people need to know about is the company. And then whether it’s through our national research study, which if you go to freebrandstudy.com slash podcast, you can download where we talk about the data that proves how important.

it is for an executive to be seen or just through kind of what you’re sharing here or just through intuition that you go, okay, I do buy into that the idea that people don’t buy from businesses or companies they buy from people. And I do I do want to start building my personal brand. How do you separate your personal brand from your business brand? And how do you draw those lines? ⁓ How do you delineate? Like, what do you share personally versus professionally and how much

Do you share of your personal life? ⁓

AJ (06:58)
Okay, those are

a lot of questions. You pick one question. was 36 questions. Pick one.

RORY (07:05)
So how do you start building a personal brand if you’ve been, I’ll say hiding behind, solely behind a company brand? How do you go ahead and start building a personal brand without confusing your customer?

AJ (07:19)
I wouldn’t start with my customers. I would start with my employees. Yes, building a personal brand. I think for most people who’ve been hiding behind their company logo, they’ve been doing the same thing internally within their company. They haven’t been really allowing themselves to be known by their team of employees either.

RORY (07:23)
Building a personal brand. What does that mean?

AJ (07:39)
Right? They come up and they’re like, I’m the boss. I’m the leader. I have to know. I have to have the answer. I have to be the one to have it all together. I don’t think a lot of employers come in and talk a lot about their personal life or their personal beliefs or personal values. I don’t think they’re testing out content or thought leadership with their teams. I don’t think they’d, I think more people have a proclensity to actually record a video and share it with strangers than they do their own friends and family.

I find that to be true in most cases. And I bet if you asked yourself when’s the last time that you had an in-depth conversation with a friend or a family member about what you do versus how much you talk about it on social media, on videos, I think the percentage would be widely skewed towards talking to strangers than friends and family.

RORY (08:30)
So you’re saying that if an owner is not building their personal brand as part of building their business, they’re also probably not sharing much of who they are with their own team member internally. You think that’s usually going to be the case.

AJ (08:43)
I ⁓ almost always. And I would say you start building your personal brand by making sure that you have a personal brand within your own company. We just got off the heels of one of our twice annual speaker showcase events at BBG. And one of our amazing clients, Steven Hoschka, had this amazing quote, which I will be saying for the rest of my business career, which is, culture is the mindset.

of the company. And I think that a lot of companies that lack culture lack a shared mindset because the owner isn’t actually creating a culture that is from their mindset. I think a lot of companies have this culture that they’re like, well, this is what I want the company to be. But sometimes it’s even disconnected from who they are.

And I think that one of the things that entrepreneurs can do to start building their personal brand is just to start actually within the company of like, do my own employees, do my own team members, does my own executive team really know who I am? Do they know how hard it was when I started the company or did they just know the company today? Like, do they really know what I did before I started the company?

Did they know how hard I worked? Did they know why this was important to me? Do they know why I’m still here? Do they know what keeps me up at night? Do they know what my dreams are for the company? Do they know what my dreams are for my role and where my gifts are? Do they know where my challenges are? I don’t think most leaders share that. I definitely don’t think most entrepreneurs are sharing that. And I think the first place to start is you’ve got to build a personal brand within your company, your team members, your employees.

need to know who you are first. And I think that’s a great place to one. Well, one, it’s easier because you have a captive audience, right? You can schedule a team meeting and like, I got a keynote right here. Like you got a captive audience scheduling an all company meeting. ⁓ You already have a captive audience. It’s like, why not start with being like, hey, I’m going to start my very first newsletter just to my own company.

RORY (10:56)
help me understand, okay, if I’m an owner, how do I even think about what’s the difference between a personal brand and a company brand? Like, I understand my company brand, I have a logo, it’s my business. How would I, how do I define a personal brand? Because my identity is probably connected in many ways to the company I’ve built. you know,

AJ (11:19)
Well, I we say this all the time, right? The definition of a personal brand is the formalization, digitization and monetization of your reputation, right? So your personal brand is just the. Formulized reputation that you want to have, right? A simpler way of saying that is your personal brand is what people think about when they think of you. And I think the reason I would say the best place to start for entrepreneurs is within your own company is ask yourself or even ask your

team. What do you think about when you think of me? Again, you have a captive audience where you can make people respond and be like, does that actually align with how I want to be known? I think that’s a first gauge, a first point of going like, hey, if I really want to do this externally, I have to start internally. It’s got to be known with the people that I spend most of my time with in order for me to help get it known by a whole bunch of other people. So I think part of it, it’s like personal brand is just

Are you known for the thing that you want to be known for? What do people think of when they think of you? A company brand, and I say this all the time, it’s like a company is just a collection of other people, right? But how many times have you bought from a company and you’ve had an incredibly inconsistent experience just simply based on who you worked with? Sure. Right?

And therein lies what Stephen was talking about with culture is the mindset of the company and mindset is a shared set of values that starts top down. Right. But I think a lot of times we don’t do that. We want other people to do it.

And it’s like, that’s a great way to start. But I also just find it’s like, it’s a great way to test content and share things and see what resonates and make sure this is the thing that I want to go take public to make sure that it does have a connection point to my company. And the difference of a company and your personal brand, we think about an entrepreneur is your company is just the business model of your personal brand. It’s not a completely different thing that you’re going off and building. And I think that’s where people get really confused and they get it wrong. If you take

Either you or myself, we both have independent personal brands, right? Of course we do. We have our own reputations. We have our own messages, our own life experiences, our own life stories, but our business model is the same, which is brand builders group. My personal brand’s connection to brand builders group is that it is my business model. So my personal brand, regardless of what I’m talking about, is just helping generate awareness to brand builders group.

RORY (13:53)
a

lot of executives, particularly at large companies, assume that if someone’s building their personal brand, they equate that to like their moonlighting. It’s a separate, it’s a side job. It’s a different thing.

AJ (14:04)
PNB, but it doesn’t have

RORY (14:06)
And it certainly can be which can be can be an issue. But if they’re just directing all of that attention and awareness back to the company, it’s like each person is a billboard for the company, each person is 100 % is an advertisement for the company, like they’re out there in the community, which is like, well, they should be that anyways, to their friends and family. It’s like, people ask, where do you work? What do you do? And it’s like, that is an opportunity for every

team member to be a contributor to lead generation and marketing for

AJ (14:35)
It’s

like every person’s bio has what their role is and where they work. Like, I mean, it is a walking billboard. I say this all the time. It’s like, no one ever has ever hired a company to be on a podcast. Companies don’t speak on podcasts. Human beings do. No one ever has booked a company to be featured in media.

It’s the owner of the company, the founder of the company, the executive of the company. No one has ever hired a company to come speak on their stage. They hire people from companies to come speak on those stages. And so I think that’s a huge part of what we need to recognize is a company isn’t hired to sit on a panel. A company doesn’t get the community service award. Those are people, right? And people make up companies. And so for entrepreneurs,

Really what you have to think about is like, are the walking advertisement for your company, for your mission, for your values, for what you believe in, for your customers, for the service, for your team. You are the walking marketing campaign.

RORY (15:40)
Same, same for a nonprofit, church like.

AJ (15:42)
All of

You have got to be the thing that is just, you know, bubbling over ⁓ with everything that is your company. And your company also needs to be a reflection of you, right? Like you got into it for a reason, right? There’s got to be a connection of what you do and who you are. ⁓ And a lot of that has to do with like, there’s some sort of belief that you have, ⁓ a customer segment that you want to serve, a service that you just deeply believe that matters.

in the world and you just got to find that connection and become a massive advocate for it. And I believe that’s how entrepreneurs build their personal brands that thus help their companies grow.

RORY (16:26)
What would you say to an executive who’s who is just a little bit nervous about being on camera and being on stages and being out in front of people? So if they buy into this idea of like, yeah, I think me broadcasting more of my personal convictions around why we do what we do and who we want to be could be valuable for the company in many different ways. But I don’t love being the center of attention. I don’t feel comfortable on camera. I don’t really like even speaking on stages like

Do you think it’s so valuable they should get over that or like what would you be advice to that?

AJ (17:01)
I think there’s workarounds for every single one of those. Another reason why I say start with your own internal team first. ⁓ A part of that is practice. part of that is ⁓ anything that you do for the first time is a little awkward, uncomfortable, and scary. It only gets less awkward, less scary, less uncomfortable the more you do it. And yeah, you probably won’t be good at any of it the first time you do it. Who’s good at anything the very first time? First podcast probably won’t be as good as the 100th. First time speaking, it’s not going to be as good as the 100th.

that’s just the process of doing it. But I think the thing that I have found most people think is they have pigeonholed what it means to be in media, be on a podcast, going out and being a representative in the community. And it’s like, if you’re like, I have stage fright, I can’t speak on stages, well, then be a panelist, right? Be on a panel and just let people ask you questions. I have found most people can do that exceptionally well, if it’s in their industry, if it’s in their space.

They have massive expertise, but the idea of standing on stage by themselves talking to a big audience, but find your work around. How about doing a Q and a, how about being on a panel? So same thing.

RORY (18:12)
think it’s powerful for an executive to do anything where they’re having to overcome fear because it’s like it’s a communication to your team like I’m learning new things, I’m struggling with new things, I’m dealing with change.

AJ (18:26)
But I do think it’s a it’s a leader goes first mentality. If I’m asking my sales team to get out there and show up and knock on doors, then I got to be willing to do that. If I want my team to go out there and generate leads, then I got to be willing to do that. That doesn’t mean that’s 100 % of my time and focus, but I got to be willing. Be like, you know, project Maverick. We talk about that a lot. Like I love Top Gun Maverick. And when Tom Cruise at the very end of the movies, like I got to jump in the jet and show these other pilots that it came

be done. I have to prove it. I have to go first to show them this can be done. We as entrepreneurs get the opportunity to do that for our teams but also for our customers.

RORY (19:08)
What about ⁓ here’s a viable concern that I think entrepreneurs sometimes have and I don’t know that I have a great answer for this and I’m curious to hear what you would say. The valuation of a company, one of the things that drives down the valuation of a company is if a company is dependent on the founder, the more dependent on the founder, the less valuable the company is. And so they equate, if I build a personal brand to help grow the business, then that

ties the valuation of the company more to me and I want that to be separate. Do you think that’s true? If so, why or why not? And how would you how would you think about that? And then and I’ll share I have an analogy for this that I’ve kind of come around to over the years.

AJ (19:52)
You know, I would say the realness of that is the fact that anyone who is going to be buying your company is most likely going to keep you on board for one to three years for that exact same reason. They know how valuable you are and it’s why they retain you as a part of the contract.

It’s like, then there’s a phasing out. There is a filtering out. I know very few exits where the owner sold and was like, I’m out 24 hours later. There is a phasing out because there is trust and value that has to be transferred. And the trust transfer happens because you transfer the trust as the owner.

And so I’d say one, that’s just a big nonsensical thing of like, well, you’re going to be retained anyways to ensure all things go aligned. Otherwise all your employees would bail, all your customers would bail. So you’re going to be retained anyways. There’s going to be a phasing out naturally. But the other thing I would say is like, that would only be a concern if you’re trying to scale something to sell it, right? And if that’s the only thing you’re doing, it’s like, well, guess what? The quickest way to scale it is to build trust.

And so I would say one is like, doesn’t matter how you cut that pie. It doesn’t really make sense when you talk about what’s really going to happen in an exit.

RORY (21:09)
Yeah, I think you go…

whether you build a personal brand or not, if someone’s buying your company, it’s because the value you’ve created, which is largely because of you. That’s right. And the faster you can grow a company, the more valuable it is. And if a personal brand is something that’s going to accelerate the growth of that company, then you should do anything you can do. Anything you can do to speed up the growth of the company is a good idea. The analogy that I’ve landed on that’s really helped me with this is launching a rocket ship into outer space. And you go when you’re first launching a rocket,

like I think it’s like 80 % of the fuel is used just getting it out of the Earth’s orbit, right? Is this this gravitational thrust. And when you’re launching a company, that’s exactly how it is. It’s like getting it off the ground is so difficult, you have to do everything in your power to get it up. And so you have these rocket boosters that are on the side to launch it into outer space. And then once you clear the Earth’s orbit, those boosters kind of fall off and go away. And so what I would say is like, man,

When you’re launching a company, you have to do everything in your power to make it succeed, anything that will help you grow, survive, thrive, sustain, it’s like you must do it. And so if your personal brand is that and the data suggests very strongly and clearly that it is that you should be using that to grow it.

And then, you know, if there’s an exit on the horizon, or you reach a certain point where you’re starting to think about that, it’s like, okay, then maybe you could think about like, kind of breaking that off. ⁓ But I think you’re on it too, which is if if you sell the company, no matter if you have a personal brand or not, they’re still going to have that issue. So what difference does it make? It doesn’t. And even if you keep the company,

You know a company we’re selling looks a lot like a company worth keeping we say that a lot is to go at some point you need to make sure the business is going to operate without you right but here you and I are going we’re going to use our personal brands to grow this company and get it going and Maybe one day it could survive completely without us. That would be a good thing That would be a healthy thing, but there’s no reason not to like increase the viability of success for everybody by by doing it so

Either way, think it’s like, think that’s mostly just an excuse.

AJ (23:27)
I think there’s a couple of things that I would just encourage entrepreneurs, small business owners to remember is like building a personal brand ⁓ has four amazing components to it that will actually help your company. The first one is it helps with customer acquisition. Then it helps with customer retention. Then it helps with employee acquisition. And it helps with employee retention.

And those are four big components that people just don’t think about. They don’t talk about. And those are four things that a founder.

an entrepreneur should be doing no matter what phase of your business that you’re in, helping acquire customers, retain customers, acquire employees, retain employees. It doesn’t have to be your full-time gig, but it is a part of your gig as the business owner, and building a personal brand helps you multiply and expedite those efforts. It really is about accelerating trust, and the amount of customers that learn about you,

from a panel that you sat on, that doesn’t mean they’re going to run to your company website and buy from you. But they’re like, man, when I need that, I’m going to retain this little bit of information that I heard, or I saw, or I witnessed. Or when your employees start talking about, this is the type of person that runs our company. That matters when I’m

hard things come or hard times come or you need employees, then you put your employee force out there for you to help recruit. Same thing happens with your customer first. When you have a really aligned customer base, they help build more aligned customers. But that only happens when you’re attracting people that

share the same values and beliefs that you do. How can you attract those people? They know that you have them. How do they know you have them? You tell them.

RORY (25:22)
Yep, absolutely. ⁓ Well, I think that’s an important conversation for entrepreneurs and executives to understand. it’s just like, man, in the world today, it’s like whatever you can do to drive revenue. And beyond the data of this, right? So again, if you go to freebrandstudy.com slash podcast, you can download our national research study of ⁓

we invested over $100,000 into this PhD led study to answer some of these questions about how much does it influence, how much does the personal brand of an executive influence the average person’s decision to buy from you, recommend you, work for you, vote for you, hire you, date you, all of the things. But even just common sense is to go, would you rather work for a company

where you knew nothing about any of the people who worked there in senior leadership, or where you felt like you knew the executives of the company you were going to work for.

AJ (26:18)
think of just one teeny tiny story that happened just a couple of weeks ago. ⁓ We were in a finance meeting and I kind of sit as CFO at the current moment of Brand Builders Group and our bookkeeper was asking me as we were hanging up the phone, she goes, how’d you get into being an entrepreneur? And she was like, it just feels like.

You know, you’re a mom, you have two kids, like this is a lot. And I laughed and I said, it’s in my blood. She goes, what do you mean? I thought, oh, I’m a third generation entrepreneur. And she goes, how so? And I said, oh, my grandfather started a company and his wife was his business partner. And then my dad bought out my grandfather and my mom was his business partner. So being business partners with my spouse and running a business is the only thing I’ve ever known. I grew up with all our aunts and uncles

being the employees of my dad’s business and Christmas parties and birthday parties were mixed of company team members and family members and friends. It’s like it’s all I’ve ever known. I don’t even know how to do it any other way. And she laughed and she was like, wow.

That’s so helpful for me to know about you. She goes, that actually makes so many things, makes so much more sense right now, and the way that you choose to run things here. And I was like, yeah. And she goes, I’m so glad that we had that 10 minute chat. And I think a part of it is that’s never come out publicly.

I don’t promote that, but that one little conversation was so helpful for her to go, I just needed to know who you were. I just needed to know where you came from so I can relate to these, you know, conversations where you have such a strong conviction on how it should be. And I’m like, well, that’s because I was raised in this. It’s the only way I know how to do it.

RORY (28:09)
And had you not married such a pretty boy mama’s boy, maybe we’d be in a construction business together. But since you married me, personal brand strategy it is, ladies and gentlemen.

AJ (28:18)
But

it starts, building a personal brand really does start with one-on-one conversations just like that. I love that. No, regardless. Regardless of how, but it’s like those little stories do matter. Helping people get to know you, it matters.

RORY (28:26)
your story.

All right, that’s a good on the topic of community and community questions. This is something that we do on every segment we give our members, our monthly members who are in our program, a chance to ask questions and basically vote them up on what they would like us to answer here on the show. So this question comes from Kevin. He says, I’ve been running a successful accounting firm for 11 years. My company has a strong local reputation, but I want to expand nationally and attract higher end clients.

Everyone keeps telling me I need a personal brand, but I’m genuinely not sure how to separate me from the firm without confusing my current clients or undercutting the business I’ve built. How do I build both at the same time without one hurting the other?

AJ (29:21)
Well, I would start with ⁓ making sure that as you’re building your personal brand, you have a direct connection that the purpose of that is to generate leads for the accounting firm. That’s how you don’t undercut it. It’s like, no, I am going to build my personal brand as the founder of this accounting firm.

And a part of that is, you know, we talk about this all the time, is your most powerfully position to serve the person you once were, right? So what audiences are you speaking to? Hopefully they’d be in the space where you can help people who have accounting needs, right? Because that’s what you’ve been doing. You’ve been serving businesses who rather need fractional support or tax support or whatever it is you’re doing, but it’s like your personal brand.

I think a lot of people get confused with, I have to go start a new business. I have to launch some sort of product or a book. No, you don’t. Most people build their personal brands with intentionality to simply drive leads to their existing business. The second thing people get mistaken all the time is, I have to go build some new audience. No, you don’t.

That’s the hardest, silliest. Don’t do that thing, I can tell you. It’s like, no, you build a personal brand and you start sharing the message with the audience you already have, which are all the clients and all the prospective clients that you’re currently serving. That’s how you go and reach more. That’s how you go from a local brand to a national brand without undercutting either thing.

RORY (30:45)
Yep, I 100 % agree. think the big misconception here you touched on it is that people

inappropriately equate the term personal brand with a business model or a new revenue stream. They go, they, this is inaccurate, but this is what they think. If I’m going to start my personal brand, I need to start making money as a speaker, as a podcaster, as a book writer, as a course creator, as a membership, blah, blah, No, you don’t. In fact, the fastest path to cash is to use your personal brand as a lead generator for your current business.

the most simple, most common, most profitable, and the highest percentage of our clients are just simply using their personal brand as an accelerator for their current business. It’s less like they’re starting a new company, and it’s more like they’re launching a new marketing initiative that funnels into their existing business, a super high powered marketing initiative, which is the personal brand of the founder or executives, multiple executives feeding into

the business. so that’s just a common misconception that people have that leads them astray. And and so I think use your personal brand, talk about what you do, talk about what you believe, talk about your expertise, there is no difference.

AJ (32:02)
and talk about it to the audience, that would be your prospective clients.

RORY (32:06)
Right. And drive, you know, so it’s like, this is not two different things. You shouldn’t be confusing anybody. This is a very aligned like use your personality to drive to drive more revenue and leads into your current business.

Other than that, if you’re like really trying to start a separate business, I wouldn’t call that building a personal brand, I would call that starting a separate business. So I think executives and entrepreneurs should think of it less as like, oh, I’m starting a new business like a personal brand as a business. And you should just think of it as more of I’m using my personality to grow my existing business. Maybe that will help you make the distinction sharper and clearer. So that’s a great question from Kevin, a common one.

AJ (32:51)
Yeah, and I would just encourage for anyone who’s out there listening that you’re an entrepreneur, you’re a small business owner, and you’re going, okay, I’ve heard people say this enough times, I’ve thought it about enough times, maybe I really should explore this, then I would really encourage you to schedule a call with our team and you can go to freebrandcall.com forward slash podcast and request a one hour strategy call to talk about how do I build my personal brand to help grow my business. And that is how it can really help

you as an entrepreneur is to generate leads to funnel them to your existing business so you can grow and scale it. So freebrandcall.com forward slash podcast grab a call and let us help you explore.

RORY (33:33)
And if you know an entrepreneur that is out there who needs to do a better job of building their personal brand or who could have more potential growth for their company, share this episode with them. ⁓ Give us a ⁓ like, a subscribe, comment, review this podcast wherever you’re watching or listening to it. We’re so grateful for you. We’ll catch you next time on the Wealthy and Well-Known Podcast.

AJ (33:55)
Look guys, your logo cannot shake a hand.

RORY (33:59)
We’re not saying your logo is bad. It’s just emotionally unavailable.

WWK Ep 022: Followers Don’t Pay the Bills: The Real Formula for Wealthy & Well Known Brands 

RORY (00:00)
A creator’s favorite form of creative avoidance is creating. A creator’s favorite form of creative avoidance is creating. They love to create, create, create, create, and they never tell anyone they exist. And if you’re not willing to go chase and you’re not willing to talk about, if you don’t care so passionately about your calling that you’re not going to share it with anyone, like you’re going to struggle.

What if all of the personal brands that you follow, the ones that seem to be building and growing effortlessly, the ones that are landing the big stages and the big speaking engagements, the big book deals, getting lots of followers, growing their online presence, what if there was a formula that they were following? Well, here’s the thing, they are.

Almost all of them. are very similar patterns and we’re going to talk about them today. Whether those creators know that they’re doing it or not. There are several identifiable, duplicatable systems and formulas that any personal brand can apply. And that’s what we’re here to pull the curtain back on and expose and share with you today. Welcome to the Wealthy and Well-Known Podcast. I’m joined by my wife, business partner, best friend, ⁓ and the CEO of Brand Builders Group, AJ Vadant.

AJ (01:14)
All right, so here’s the first question of the day that we’re going to talk about. What makes a personal brand go viral? And is there a formula that you can actually follow?

RORY (01:27)
Yeah, so I would say that the formula for going viral is watching the formulas that go viral. So basically when you see a video go viral, what we’re seeing today is that right now creators are watching the hook structures, the formats and the patterns that when a video goes viral, it’s because of the structure of the video and the format of the video as much as the framework of the video, right?

It’s not just what you’re saying. It’s not just what you’re teaching. It’s more about how you’re presenting that idea, how you reveal it, how you ⁓ unroll it, and even how you edit the video. So what’s happening is people are seeing a video go viral and then they’re just replicating those formulas.

AJ (02:18)
Let’s pause

there. Let’s talk about what are some of those formulas.

RORY (02:21)
Yeah, so I mean, there’s there’s hundreds of these hook formulas, right? And people talk about them. But like one that’s really popular right now is, if I had to start over from scratch today, and I wanted to achieve blank, here’s exactly what I would do. Right? That’s a really, a really, a really classic one that’s like going viral right now. Another thing that is going viral right now is ⁓ when people are putting multiple videos on the screen. So it’s like, here’s an example of this, here’s an example of this, here’s an example of

We had a video go massively viral, hundreds of thousands of views, ⁓ thousands and thousands of comments and stuff. And it’s exactly that. Here’s this, here’s this, here’s this, here’s this. And it’s not the quality of the content. It’s not the framework. It’s the format. I’m not sure how I feel about all of this, right? But a lot of, think, what is

important to understand and what we do at brand builders group right is we’re dissecting and understanding a lot of these patterns not just for going viral on video going viral on videos like one of our our least valuable concerns because it’s not necessarily what drives revenue and trust long term but it is a great example of to go everything we do at brand builders group where you go how to become a best-selling author

How do you sell high dollar offers? How do you fill out rooms? How do you speak on the biggest stages? It’s a formula. It’s always a formula. It’s all about pattern recognition. And so I think it’s one of the things you could say, what do you really do at Brand Builders Group is like we identify the patterns, we then reconstruct them in a pragmatic way that anyone can follow. And then we teach them in all these different areas of a business.

AJ (03:59)
So I think what would be really helpful for everyone listening, me included, I think one of the things that a lot of people talk about are the patterns. They talk about the algorithm. They don’t really tell the end user like, go try this, go do this. And I think a part of it is you have to try many things to see what’s gonna click with your audience. But if someone was listening today going, okay, great, give me the three formulas to go and try online, what would they be? So I think you listed two of them, right?

if I had to start all over I would do this. Yeah. The second one would be multiple screens of going like give people the images of multiple things that you’re showing all at the same time.

RORY (04:41)
So the real answer to your question is the one thing that I would do is I would follow the top creators in your space. I would look at which of their videos are over indexing, meaning they have way more views than they had followers, right? So this is an important thing is to go, if a video has 100,000 views, is that an over indexing video? And the answer is, it depends on how many followers they have. If you have 5 million followers in your video, got 100,000 views, not so much.

5000 followers and you got 100,000 views. That is a rich, there’s a rich idea, there’s a rich format, there’s a rich opportunity there. So the the, the formula, it’s not the best thing is not for me to just give you a formula. It’s different in every space. The the granular overarching formula is follow the top creators, pay attention to what’s working for them, and then replicate your own version of that.

And that is particularly in the space of viral online video, we’re talking carousel, well, not even video, but just carousel posts, reels, YouTube, you’re going to see if you watch closely all the top creators, that is what they are doing. And it’s a fascinating study because it tells you that the psychology

is very consistent of the human brain and very repeatable. And so you can go I can watch what a fitness trainer did to go viral. And mostly what we’re copying is the hook structure the first three seconds. Now when we teach what is a hook, a hook is anything you do or say in the first three seconds to get people to keep watching. That’s how we define it because I’ve never seen anyone define it. Right. So that’s how we define it.

And a great one example of a hook structure that we teach is the I want blank test is to say how would your viewer answer the question I want blank and then tell them in this video, I’m going to teach you and fill in whatever however they would answer the I want blank. That would be a generic hook structure that works really well that if you don’t want to do all this other stuff, you go, just use the I want blank test. But now people are even using AI to track all of these patterns and go,

this woman hosts a cooking show and she said, you know, here’s five things I would have learned, I wish I knew when I first started cooking. And you take out the word cooking, but here’s five things I wish I learned when I first started speaking. And then that’s it. So the psychological structures, it’s about the pattern is noticing the pattern.

AJ (07:15)
So I think one of the things that would be helpful is to talk about what are some of the other formulas, right? So you’ve got a format formula, which is kind of what you’ve been talking about and the different types of format. Would you say that there’s any specific formulas to follow when it comes to duration or any way to end the video, captions or some other, are there some other formulas that we should talk about that would be helpful for anyone listening today?

RORY (07:41)
⁓ There’s one other very advanced thing that I would share that I think is universal enough to everybody listening and that is that if you have four parts in a video, okay, so say you have four points, it’s a YouTube video and there’s four points. Point number one should be shorter than point number two. Point number two should be shorter than point number three. Point number three should be shorter than point number four, meaning

When people feel like they’re making progress early, they’re more likely to stay. If they feel like it’s dragging on, they tend to leave. But if you go, okay, you hook them in the first three seconds, and then what you’re seeing in a lot of these other YouTube videos is hooks within the video. So the most important hook is the opening hook. But then you say, hey, you mentioned something like, there’s three ways to create

You know, there’s three patterns that every creator needs to know to go viral. And the first one’s right now. And I’ll tell you the second one in a sec in just a minute. That is a hook inside of a hook. It’s going I’ll tell you the second one in a second. I’ve just told them about something else that is about to come. And that’s what kind of the definition of a hook is. So that is another sort of psychological pattern that we’re seeing pretty consistently is this idea that you’ve got

shorter points earlier in the video. There’s something going on that when people feel like they’re making progress, like if you can get them through the first few chapters, then they’re likely to stay longer. And then they give you more permission to give you more of their time basically as time goes on.

AJ (09:21)
What about anything in your opinion with reels versus stories versus carousels versus all the other things when you think about different formulas patterns and formats?

RORY (09:34)
Yeah, I mean, another carousel thing that’s going viral, and by the way, I would not consider myself an expert on this. This is not where we spend a lot of our time, which is what I think we can get to is to go, a good question is to go, why don’t we spend more of our time studying this stuff? And because this, lot of this stuff to me points more to vanity metrics than it does to profitability. But inside of this area, which we do spend some time studying, another really common

thing that’s performing really well right now is your backstory. Like your personal story. People are tuning in to where did you start and if it’s a carousel post, it’s like pictures, right? So I’m working on one of these right now where it’s like I’m taking pictures from all of these different areas of my life, where the picture is worth a thousand words. And it says, here’s where I started. Here’s what I wanted to do. Here’s where I struggled.

This is what was low. This is what I did. This is what I learned. Here’s what happened. And now I can teach you comment blah, blah, blah below for the opt in those personal stories are performing super well right now. I think about that’s a great carousel post formula.

And I think the other thing that is performing well, you know, lot of people will say you don’t sell on your feed, you sell in your stories. That’s where and really we say the dollars are in the DMS. That’s really where sales happens. But like even lead generation happens more in the stories. So you attract them with the content on your feed, you nurture them inside of your stories and you convert them in your DMS or on a free call. But inside stories is a lot of where customer testimonials are being shared. That’s another really common thing of going you need one

thousand customer testimonials, and you post a couple every day inside the stories. Because when people find you from your feed content, they go, wow, this was valuable, who is this person? And then they follow you closely, they go in your stories, and then they’re seeing, whoa, you’ve helped this person get a result, and this person helped them get a result, and this person helped get a result. And now I’m interested in engaging in potentially buying.

AJ (11:42)
So for the

person who’s listening going, that feels like a lot of work. I felt like a lot to do. Uh, how, what do I, what, do you want me to do here? I have a, I have a full-time gig. I have a full-time job. Like who’s supposed to film me? Who’s supposed to edit all this? Who’s supposed to know all these formulas? Who’s supposed to know all these formats? What would you say to that?

RORY (12:02)
I would say yeah, you’re right. It’s a lot of work. Like there’s no free lunch as grandma used to say, right? Like everything that looks effortless is not effortless. So there is a whole lot of people getting sold a bunch of garbage because on the surface it’s like, ⁓ you know, I’m a stay at home. I’m a mom of four and I run my own business and I do it all through Instagram and AI comment this below and sign up for my webinar. And then they’ll buy something that’s just like

garbage because the reality is this is someone who is working 12 hours a day or they have a team or they’re spending a bunch of money on ads or like it’s like there there is their excellence is never an accident. It’s never an accident.

AJ (12:46)
I would say even that it’s not even excellence. It’s like even the effort and all of this is not to be taken lightly to come up with the content to learn the formulas to just even follow the other top creators in your space. All of that is an extraordinarily large commitment of time, energy, money and resources. If this is what you’re really trying to do. And I think that’s one of the things I just kind of wanted to highlight is

And I love the idea of like, yes, follow the top people in your field and then realize as you’re following them, they have a team. Like they have someone following them. ⁓ They have video editors, they have graphic designers. Like that is, it’s not apples to apples.

RORY (13:31)
So I would love to talk about this question. How do I know if my personal brand is actually working? What metrics should I actually be tracking? So if we’re saying like, look, I can show you a list of people who’ve gone viral who struggle to pay their bills. And I can show you a list of people who you’ve never seen a video of theirs online and they fly in private jets. And it’s just ironic the world that we live in is there’s a whole lot of like, you know, drawn to the vanity stuff.

And so I think this is topic that we should talk about is what are the metrics that I should be tracking? What are the actual measurable KPIs that are going to lead to dollars?

AJ (14:13)
Well, ironically, none of those, in my opinion, would be found on social media. In my books, the actual metrics would be number of calls being generated and run, which could come from social media, but those are a lot harder to come by.

RORY (14:31)
But we would

rather have a video with a hundred views that drove five free calls than a video with 50,000 views that drove no free calls.

AJ (14:39)
all day long, every day. It would be the number of clients being converted. It would be number of clients that are retaining. It’d be the number of referrals being sent by clients because then it’s like proof that your work is actually working. would count client testimonials as a KPI because it’s proof of what’s working. Number of presentations that you’re giving and presentations could be keynotes on stages, workshops in your local community,

podcast interviews, it’s whatever you’re doing to get your message out into the world. ⁓ Those would be the actual metrics that I would be looking at. It’s like how many calls are being generated, calls being run, clients being converted, clients being retained, referrals being sent. And then on top of that, it would be like, what are all the other things you’re doing to generate the calls, which are your presentations?

RORY (15:12)
going on.

Yeah, it’s funny, I literally just got off of a live training with our members. And I was we were talking about the success tracker. So this tool that we created that tracks basically the eight core metrics that every personal brand needs to drive for behavior, and then the four results that they measure. it’s it’s like, how many emails have you added to your list? So that that’s to me is like, the most digital thing to care about is like, how many email subscribers, but even that is super misleading, because it’s like,

AJ (15:55)
emails.

RORY (16:04)
you can add free emails all day from all over the place that like have nothing to do with the people that are actually going to do business with you. But that is a first metric. Sure. As going emails, then you know how many phone numbers you collect, how many free calls requested, how many free calls ran. And then it is presentations given referrals given referrals earned. And it’s like if you do those things, and you focus on you know, how many media pitches have you sent?

those things will lead to actual money. It’s you getting in front of humans in more of an offline way or more of a longer form content way. I will say that I am being drawn more to YouTube is going.

I think, you know, YouTube is really a place where trust can transfer because it’s long form content, right? And, and, you know, there was a study, I believe it was from Google that came out that said seven hours, people need to spend seven hours online with you before they actually would be willing to like, making an investment. And you know, in the world of YouTube, that might be like 10 to 14 videos in the world of reels. It’s like, it’s pretty much impossible to get to seven hours. mean,

AJ (17:14)
I that is one demographic that we should definitely be talking about. To not talk about it would be not fair. But I would just tell you, in my personal opinion, it’s like if someone who I do not go to YouTube or to social media to find experts, it’s like if I’m really looking for someone to hire, if I’m really going after that one, I’m going to ask for referrals from my network. So it’s going to be word of mouth. Or I’m going to read their book. And time-wise,

It’s similar. It’s like the average book is six to seven hours in length. So whether I read it or I listen to the audio, but it’s like, if I’m really going to invest.

thousands of dollars or tens of thousands of dollars. I’m not going to do it just off of social media content or even off of YouTube content. It’s not going to be just off of a podcast interview. It’s because I heard about someone that I, that I trust. Like I trust someone. I heard about someone else. I went then and investigated, found that they had a book or found that they had a free course. I’m tested that. Then I’m going to request a call. Like there’s a series of multiple things that can happen online and offline. But the thing that’s going to expedite all of those

is that someone I trust said, this is who I trust. And that could be…

someone that I already really like, know and trust as a personal friend. It could be someone as a thought leader that I’m an avid follower of and I just align with their content. But that’s gonna be the thing that’s gonna expedite it more than anything else. And those things can happen online and offline. But the first thing I’m gonna do before I invest tens of thousands of dollars, I’m like, do they have a book and I’m gonna go read it?

RORY (18:53)
Yeah, and I think, you know, this is a good question. How do, ⁓ excuse me, what is the difference between personal brand awareness and personal brand authority? And I think that’s part of what you’re talking about, right? Awareness is like, okay, a lot of people see me, but authority means people actually trust you enough to buy from you. And when you look at what are the resources, what are the assets that you can create that create personal brand authority that

actually make people want to buy from you. The number one thing on the list, and this is in our national research studies, is 61 % of Americans say that testimonials from other customers is the most influential marketing asset that you have. The others would be a book, the other is you’re paid to speak on your topic, the other is you’re featured in media for your expertise, right? But when you look at followers, views, likes, all that stuff.

much, much, much lower because you just you can game it, you can fake it, you can buy it. And we all know that and everybody is doing that. And so it’s different where it’s like, that’s why I think people have to spend seven hours with us online before they trust us. They have to spend much longer. Whereas we know that

AJ (19:54)
And we all know that.

longer.

RORY (20:11)
you can do, we often say that the fastest way to take a complete stranger and turn them into a lifelong fan is a world-class one-hour presentation. We know that in an offline environment, the trust happens much, much faster. And so getting in front of humans and even like a live webinar is gonna be ⁓ such a more trust-accelerating experience than just a bunch of kind of like loosely connected videos.

AJ (20:36)
I agree. And I think that’s one of the things that’s really important. Micro content may get you followers. It may get you likes. It might get you shares. I have often found it’s not going to produce revenue.

It’s like it’s a part of a formula. It’s like you’ve got to get them to start engaging with you. Then they have to start following with you. But then at some point you have to move them off the platform and into your email list so that you can then invite them to some longer engagement, a free webinar, a free audio thing, a free, whatever it is. And that relationship has got to continue into longer forms of content.

uh, where there can be a real trust transfer, but that’s not going to happen in 30 to 60 second reels.

RORY (21:20)
Mm Yeah. By the way, so if you’re listening, if you haven’t yet, you can download our audiobook at free brand audiobook.com slash podcast. So wealthy and well known at the New York Times bestseller list last year, we give up. This is why we give our audiobook away for free is it’s like, it’s the fastest way for someone to figure out is brand builders a fit for me? And can they really help me? And do we kind of align philosophically? And that’s why we give it out because we know that if we haven’t met someone face to face, they got to spend some time and they’ll and and so we

give that resource.

AJ (21:51)
And ironically, it’s about seven hours. Seven ⁓ hours.

RORY (21:54)
That’s right.

Okay, here’s another question and then we’ll go to the community question. How do thought leaders consistently get booked, featured, and referenced without chasing opportunities? So, if we’re saying, okay, getting booked to speak on stages, getting cited in the media, ⁓ if those are things that lead to true authority, true trust,

building transaction accelerating authority. How do thought leaders go get booked on those things without chasing opportunities?

AJ (22:29)
I would not necessarily say that thought leaders aren’t chasing opportunities.

RORY (22:34)
I’m gonna say the same. The air is in.

AJ (22:38)
the question.

The errors in the question. like, I’m going, ⁓ no, if you want to be out there, then you are out there selling and promoting yourself. You are marketing of why you should be a trusted resource. You are selling yourself. You are pitching yourself. You are putting yourself out there and making yourself available. This whole idea of they’re not chasing opportunities. And somehow magically people are just emailing them and calling them and DMing them of going, I don’t, know you’ve never reached out to us before, but you know, I randomly found you.

like that’s not not happening. And that’s the best

RORY (23:13)
The best speakers in the world are not sitting at home manifesting speaking gigs. They are out hustling, talking to people, writing books, producing content, building relationships, giving referrals, crushing it on stage, staying late, asking who do you know, sending pitches. Like if you are above chasing opportunities, you’re just never going to find opportunities. And like you might find a few, like a few may find you, but that is not going to be that’s not going to be the key to building your career.

You want this, you have to go chase it. You have to go knock it.

AJ (23:45)
down. But

I do think it’s one of those things like, you know, it’s, we say this all the time, the more you speak, the more you speak. And that’s because the more that you’re putting yourself out there, the more that you’re chasing the opportunities and saying, yes, when it’s right, and it’s aligned and putting yourself in the right opportunities and the right positions to be seen, to be noticed, to be heard, ⁓ then naturally, there is a momentum that starts to build. But again, like anything, when you stop it, the momentum stops too.

So I do think there’s this interesting thing where it’s like, I only have to do this for a little while and then it’s going to catch. And it’s like, well, it could catch for a minute. But I can’t think of anyone that we know who is uber successful in this space doing something that has lasted over the decades that isn’t continually putting effort out there into keeping that engine moving.

RORY (24:38)
Totally.

Even I remember in grad school, there was this this case study about Coca-Cola and they were talking about however many hundreds of millions and billions they spend on advertising every year. I think it was like 80 million dollars a year on advertising. is 20 years ago. But and somebody asked the CEO like, you’re Coca-Cola. You don’t need to advertise. Like, why do you spend 80 million dollars a year in advertising? He’s like, if we didn’t spend 80 million dollars on advertising, it’s like a car. No matter how good a car is, it still needs fuel to run. Like that is the fuel.

This I’m going to say something that’s going to make a lot of people upset, but you heard it here first. A creator’s favorite form of creative avoidance is creating. A creator’s favorite form of creative avoidance is creating. They love to create, create, create, create, and they never tell anyone they exist. And if you’re not willing to go chase and you’re not willing to talk about, if you don’t care so passionately about your calling that you’re not going to share it with anyone, like you’re going to struggle. You’re just going to struggle.

AJ (25:38)
But that

kind of comes back to what we said in the very beginning. It’s like, yeah, it does take a lot of time, energy, resources, and money to even figure out this social media thing. It’s like you do have to chase it, right? It is an engine that requires fuel. It requires your content, your creativity, your constant adjusting and flexing with what the algorithm is doing, what the market is doing. So again, the idea of set it and forget it, that’s just not the world that we’re living in online or offline.

All right, let’s move on to the community question. Yes, so

is one of our favorite parts of the show because we get to take a question that has been voted on by our BBG community. All of the questions were input, the community voted on. This was the top one and that’s what we’re gonna answer today. So here it is. Here’s what’s been selected. It’s from Tiffany. I’ve been posting content consistently for eight months. I have a clear niche.

Decent production quality and I genuinely believe in what I’m teaching. But my growth has flatlined at around 800 followers and I can’t figure out what’s missing. I feel like I’m doing everything the gurus say to do, but something isn’t clicking. What’s the one invisible thing I’m probably not seeing that’s keeping me stuck at this ceiling?

RORY (27:10)
two ways to grow on social media, Tiffany. One is organic, the other is paid. The thing that you’re not seeing is what it actually takes to grow with either of those strategies. To grow organically requires a team or a lot of time, understanding and monitoring viral patterns. You’ve got to study what the other it’s not just what you’re saying. It’s not what you’re saying. It’s how you’re saying it is probably the format. It’s the presentation of it. It’s the structure. It’s the hook.

And as AI takes off, more creators are soaking up more of the attention because they’re spending their time and they’re developing their teams developing tools to ⁓ reproduce those hook structures and those hook patterns. So that’s one thing.

AJ (27:52)
before you move on to the next, because mine is connected to that, it’s the key words in this that stuck out to me is for eight months. And there’s just a part of that where I know we all want it to be done now and eight months might feel like a long time, but it’s not. And eight months is just the beginning. And if you have gone from zero to 800 months,

our 800 followers in eight months, that’s a hundred new followers every month. And if you’re not putting ad spin behind it and you’re like, I’m just doing what I’m figuring out. It’s like, I’d be pretty proud of that. All right. Like that, that’s not what you probably want to hear, but I would just encourage it’s like, if you had said, I’ve been doing this consistently in this way for this long for five years and I’m stuck, I’d be like, okay, there’s a problem, but this is eight months and nothing is going to have monumental explosive success.

in this world at this current state of things with eight months.

RORY (28:48)
Yeah, that’s a good

word. That’s a good word. The other way to grow on social media is paid. And that’s what you’re not seeing. The people who are growing massively are paying for it. They’re not buying fake followers, but they are paying lots of money. I’m talking tens of thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of dollars every month.

to show their content to more people. So they’re hiring expensive crews, they have expensive equipment, they have expensive, they got teams that are doing research, and then they’re building, they’re building teams, and they’re pushing money in the front because they have a business model in the back that pays for it. That’s a part of what we teach people how to do a brand builders group is to go, okay, how do you put

$100,000 in the machine is you can do that as long as you know there’s 250,000 coming out the back end. Now we teach our clients to grow without paid ads, right? That’s not a huge part of our strategy until later later down the road. But that’s the thing that you’re not seeing when people are growing and it looks effortless. One, it’s not effortless. And two, there’s probably a ton of money. And many of the biggest creators, okay, not to expose the secret. Many of the biggest creators are spending

millions of dollars just promoting and boosting and pushing their content in front of more people. And that’s going to continue to happen. And so the future of marketing is not about who has the best content. It’s about who has the most sophisticated system. And if you are someone who wants to learn how to build a more sophisticated system, go to freebrandcall.com slash podcast, you can request a call with our team, we’ll do an intake to see where you’re at and we’ll create a

a custom journey for you of what you need to do to take the next steps to grow your business and also to determine if we might be a fit as a partner to help you in that journey. But it is frustrating and it is discouraging and it’s hard and it’s hard. It’s hard for us. It’s hard for everybody. It’s a dogfight right now.

AJ (30:46)
It’s discouraging when you’re comparing your numbers to someone else’s. And when you’re focused on, I have impacted and I have grown from zero to 800 people who are now absorbing my content, getting value from my content. I am now serving 800 people that I wasn’t eight months ago. It’s not discouraging at all. It’s actually quite encouraging. The only part’s discouraging is when you’re comparing your step one to someone else’s step 1,000. And that’s the hard part about the online world.

Is it so easy to look at everyone else’s doing and think that what you’re doing doesn’t matter? But those 800 people, they do matter. Those aren’t followers. Those are human beings. And I would be encouraged if I were you.

RORY (31:29)
love that. Well, ⁓ if those 800 people were in a room right now, you certainly would be that’s right be fired up and impacting them. So hey, send this episode to somebody that you know that you think might enjoy it. And if you’ve been listening for a while, we’d love for you to rate comment review this show wherever you listen to it. We’re so glad you’re here. Keep coming back. We’re going to encourage you and we’re going to hopefully inspire you and share with you the strategies that are working to help you get your mission out to more people. We’ll catch you next time.

AJ (32:03)
We don’t want you to be invisible.

RORY (32:05)
So hit subscribe.

WWK Ep 018: Quit Now! If You Won’t Invest in Your Dream…

speaker-1 (00:00)
I’m sorry, but if you can’t come up with a few thousand dollars to invest in your dream, then quit your dream now. Because if you’re not spending that money and time with us, then what are you spending it on? And I go, if you’re not doing it, like you’re not gonna make it.

speaker-0 (00:20)
I want to say something to a very specific type of person who is listening to this episode today. You know you’re capable. You know that there’s a calling on your life. You know you have the experience and the expertise to make a real difference in lives of people that need.

to need to hear from you and only the way that you can share. But somewhere along the lines, you’ve begun to drift. You’ve begun to not believe in yourself. You’ve begun to give up on your dream. You’ve begun to stop doing things that you used to do. And really what’s happening is you’ve begun to give up on yourself and the dream and the calling that you have on your life. And I don’t believe that it’s an accident that you’re listening to this episode today. This episode is

for you, the person who has begun to drift to fall away from the calling on your life and hopefully today is a call back to that calling so that you can get back on with your dream. So Rory, this is a unique episode of really a wake-up call to the person who is giving up on the calling, on their audience, on themselves, up on their dream. And so I’d love to just start with you as like, what do you think

that person needs to hear today to be reinvigorated to get back to the work that they used to find with vigor and passion and excitement that now just feels pointless and exhausting.

speaker-1 (01:50)
Yes. I mean, if you had a dream, and you’re feeling discouraged, the first thing that I want you to know is that you’re normal. It doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you. I think there is a mental part of this of like, we need a motivational kick in the pants. And then there is a psychological part of understanding how the human brain works. And I hope we talk about both of those things today. And I want to start

with the psychological part in terms of why you’re normal. The human brain is not designed for success. The human brain is designed for survival. And there’s a big difference between success and survival. To survive means to stay safe. To survive means to conserve energy. To survive and stay alive means to do what is not risky, to do things that are predictable.

Everything about survival is about safety. What does it mean to be successful? Almost exactly the opposite.

Success is about doing things that make you uncomfortable. Success is about doing new things. Success is about taking chances. Success is about doing things you’ve never done before. And so if you’re feeling discouraged, it doesn’t mean there’s something wrong with you. It doesn’t mean that God doesn’t have it, you know, in your destiny to be successful. It doesn’t mean that your calling isn’t important. It doesn’t mean that you’re not qualified. It means that you have a perfectly functioning

healthy, normal human brain, but that that normal human brain is pulling you to safety and security and comfort and predictable. And you’re just experiencing the tension between

the way that your brain is designed first and foremost to keep you alive and you becoming the person you need to be, which is somebody that is comfortable being uncomfortable, somebody who is willing to do things that other people don’t do, someone who is willing to do things that you don’t like doing or don’t feel like doing just because they’re new things. So you’re in the middle of an important journey. You’re not backwards. You’re not behind.

You’re right where you’re supposed to be, but you are at a point where you got to decide, you going to turn back to the way you’ve always done things, or are going to follow the calling and keep going forward? And I think today’s episode is about helping make sure you keep going forward.

speaker-0 (04:25)
Alright, so I have a personal question for you. Yeah, I don’t think I know the answer to this.

speaker-1 (04:27)
personal question.

It’s like date night. On

date night we try to ask questions to each other that we don’t know the answer

speaker-0 (04:36)
Is there something that you have given up on in your life that you truly quit that you look back now and you really regret?

speaker-1 (04:45)
Wow, yeah, that’s a deep one, babe. Say it again.

speaker-0 (04:50)
⁓ Is there

something in your life that you truly gave up on that you quit that looking back now you really regret that you didn’t see it through?

speaker-1 (04:58)
No, ⁓ there’s not. And I know that’s not the like empathetic answer and like, but it’s there is not. There’s some like crazy dreams that I have, know, like, ⁓ you know, I’ve always had a dream of like a TV show for speakers like ⁓

speaker-0 (04:59)
Wow.

No, but

I mean something that you actually-

speaker-1 (05:17)
Yeah, like something

real. mean, the closest thing would be not winning the world championship of public speaking. You know, that was something I really, really wanted. And I came in second in the world. And, you know, it’s like, you know, I could have gone back and do it, but I realized it really wasn’t about the title. It was about the person who became the process. So

speaker-0 (05:38)
Do you regret

going back a third time? do you wish that like hindsight 2020? It’s like, no, I wish I would have gone back and tried for.

speaker-1 (05:46)
first.

don’t. don’t. And I think that’s actually an important part of the conversation of this is to go my life, you know, early on, it was like trying to achieve destinations.

And it was really about like, want to conquer this thing. And I think as I’ve studied success more and tried to adapt it in my own life, I really embraced the idea that it’s like, it’s actually not about the destination. It’s about who I’m becoming in the process. ⁓ You know, as the famous philosopher Miley Cyrus once said, it’s all about the climb. ⁓ And so I think that’s relevant.

It’s not that I haven’t failed. mean, that would be an example. I guess you technically could say I failed to reach that goal. But what didn’t fail was my ultimate destination was I wanted to become one of the best speakers in the world. didn’t it wasn’t the world championship that was the finish line. It was inspiring people and changing them and setting that up. And in many ways, I we’ve been able to do that. And there’s still another level to that that I’m still pursuing. But there’s not a finish line to that. And so I think a part of

what you have to do is you have to learn to fall in love with the daily grind. have to fall in love with the idea that

I’m going to experience losses along the way or what people would call losses. I didn’t get that. I wanted to have a number one New York Times bestseller. We’ve hit the New York Times twice now, neither time number one. I would have loved to do that, but it’s like, ⁓ it wasn’t really about, that’s not what writing a book is about. It’s not about the number one New York Times bestseller. It’s about writing a book that changes the world, forwards our business, codifies what we believe in, and those things are all

available and more meaningful. And so I think sometimes people get discouraged because like they didn’t get the result. you know, we did a big launch recently and it was like, I would have loved to have a better result. But we had effective progress. And so I think that is a psychological switch that people need to flip in their brain to go,

Yes, I’m moving towards results, but what I’m really interested is strengthening my character, creating better processes, enforcing consistency, knowing that even though I didn’t get on paper the W, the win that I wanted in the way I got the win, the long term is the game that I’m playing and I’m on track for that as long as I don’t quit. So I haven’t ever quit something that

like I was in the middle of just because it was hard or just because it wasn’t going the way I wanted. I can’t honestly say that I have. I’ve gotten close to quitting.

speaker-0 (08:48)
What number did take the stairs? Do you think that’s a coincidence?

speaker-1 (08:50)
Number two, New York Times.

I’ve thought about this a lot. So I got number two, world champion of public speaking, number two for Take the Stairs. There was a college, ⁓ you know, in college there was an award called the Student Excellence Award that I won at one time. I was the runner up for that. I did end up winning that two years later. But ⁓ it’s possible that there’s a coincidence to it because I think part of how I view this is anytime I don’t

get what I want. I view that as both a question of my own motives, of like, did I really want to help people or did I really want something for me? And the other thing I use it as a question of is a question of faith, of do I trust God because God sent me in a direction but it didn’t actually come true.

like in the way I thought it was going to come true, in the way I wanted it to come true. ⁓ And so, I think that’s a test of faith is to go, will you continue going forward? Will you continue to trust me even though what you’re experiencing right now in this moment is not the way you would have drawn it up? To me, that’s the very essence of faith.

speaker-0 (09:51)
and the way you.

Yeah. And I share that because I’ve often thought about that, you know, too, of, know, the way we want success often looks different than the way that God sees success. And for the person who’s, you know, on the verge of giving up or quitting, how much of that really does come down to is I just didn’t think it would look like this. I thought it would be different than this. I thought it would be easier than this, or I thought this would have happened. And because our own expectations, which were founded in nothing really,

other than what we wanted, aren’t met in the exact way that we wanted.

speaker-1 (10:47)
That’s, mean, look, the difference between gratitude and frustration can be explained simply with frustrations, right? If my expectation level is here and what I’m experiencing is above that, I experience gratitude. If my expectation level is here and what I’m experiencing is below that, I experience frustration. The only difference is where is the expectation, right? And so, I think when people place expectations on God, on themselves, on other people,

speaker-0 (11:14)
success, marriage,

speaker-1 (11:15)
where you think

you’re supposed to be at this age, where you think you’re supposed to be, you know, at this many years in the business, you’re setting an expectation level, again, basically based on nothing or typically on comparison, which is even worse. And, and that’s where your emotions are coming from, is this baseless set of expectations. Now, I try to hold myself to high standards.

But I have low expectations, right? It’s like I’m sort of pleasantly surprised with whatever result we do get even if it’s beneath and that’s a concept. Everything we’re talking about here, by the way, is inside of the Take the Stairs book, right? This is like what I built my career on because that’s what I built my life on. And there’s a section in Take the Stairs, which is my first book for those of that don’t know, where I talk about

Successful people put their self-esteem in their work habits, not in their results. And it’s one of the most defining characteristics because even if you’re a top performer,

If you experience low self-esteem because you didn’t get the result you wanted, then you’re going to quit at some point. But if you’re a low performer who just goes, I’m just focusing on my work ethic, I’m controlling what I can control, I’m getting better, then over the long haul, it’s going to work out. And, you know, I don’t mean to over-spiritualize it, but you know this. My life verse is Hebrews 12-11, which says that,

of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. And I’ve put my faith in that verse my whole life to say, what feeling good right now is not an essential criteria or measurement or determinant of my success. It’s actually completely irrelevant to my success because God’s Word tells me, common sense tells you,

Ultra-performers will corroborate, as will data, that in the long term, if you do the fundamentals, that ultimately you will reap a harvest of righteousness and peace for those who have been trained by it. And I look back on my life and go, man, lots of seasons have been hard, but I look at where I am and I go, well, I don’t know how else to describe what I’m experiencing other than a harvest of righteousness and peace.

speaker-0 (13:42)
Yeah, I think I love that take on it. And I love that you’re able to look back and go, hey, there was nothing really that I gave up on. And there was nothing that I didn’t follow through. ⁓ For the person, unfortunately, I can’t say that I was like making a mental list. like, I have like a page full of things.

speaker-1 (14:00)
I mean, I’m curious. Yeah, now I’m curious about what…

speaker-0 (14:02)
Like, well, I know, where do

you want to start? But it’s like as I was reflecting and thinking of like, why did I not see dance through? Because you know, I was in a company, right? I was a dancer for 13 years. I just I realized, like I was thinking, it’s like, I just didn’t want it as bad as the other girls did. I was more concerned with, am I going to be available for social hour? ⁓ You know, and I think a lot of that had to do with insecurities of really wanting to be liked and really wanted to be in the in group. ⁓

And what I regret is that I let down my company.

I regret that I didn’t practice as hard as they did and that I was not as prepared as they were. I some of them went on to Juilliard and the Atlanta School of Ballet. Like they were very good because they practiced really hard. I didn’t have that level of commitment as a young teenager. I just didn’t. have like a long list of things that I’m like, I wish I probably would have saw that through and that went through. I was a different person then. And that’s not who I am today. But I would, I think we’re

My question is, is for the person who’s going like, yeah, maybe I just don’t want it as bad as I used to.

speaker-1 (15:10)
you.

That I think is a fair question because because you asked me and I say like, I would describe myself as someone that I have an extremely I have always had an extremely high level of commitment and focus to a very few small number of things. Right. And and so the paradox principle of sacrifice from take the stairs says, okay, how do people pull themselves through the muck? How do you endure the pain?

about that. ⁓ So when you ask that question, what is what must I do in order to endure the suck of achieving the goal? And it’s simple, you leverage long term vision to endure short term sacrifices. That’s it. So if someone is struggling with discipline, a lot of times people will say, Rory, I’m struggling with a lack of discipline. But in reality,

It’s not that they’re struggling with a lack of discipline as much as they’re struggling with a lack of vision. In other words, discipline becomes dormant in the absence of a dream. If I have a clear vision and it’s the vision I really want and I spend time thinking about it and I allow myself the permission to dream about it coming true,

then it creates a naturally strong connection. Think of it like a safety line, right? Like ⁓ that is pulling me through all of the muck it takes to get there. Inversely or conversely, if I don’t have a clear vision of what I want or…

I it’s fuzzy or I have a vision but I don’t really want it that bad or I have a vision and I don’t think about it that often or I have a vision but I don’t allow myself the permission to have it because I think it’s really unrealistic because it is unrealistic for all of us at first but if you don’t have that then you don’t have a more line to pull you through the muck and so you don’t because in this instance

there’s a context for the sacrifice to take place. There’s something that I want, I’m willing to do whatever it takes to get there. In this one, there’s not anything I really want, which means my brain is gonna default to whatever is most convenient, most comfortable.

in the short term and so we don’t. And so I think that’s part of what, and this is a place where I do struggle a little bit relating with some people and I think for the most part people are like, Rory’s a nice guy, but when I coach my private clients and even if I’m coaching a young speaker, when I look at the cost of our brand builders group program, I was having this conversation recently with someone on our sales team. I go, if you, we are giving people,

what I believe is more valuable than a four-year, six-year degree in this whole space for less than the price that you would pay to take one class for one semester in college.

I believe our program legitimately is as valuable as a four-year degree if you want to be a speaker, author, coach, consultant, or if you’re an expert of any kind. And we give you the entire freaking program for less than one college class.

plus the live experiences, plus the AI bots to execute it. And I go, I’m sorry, but if you can’t come up with a few thousand dollars to invest in your dream, then quit your dream now. Because if you’re not spending that money and time with us, then what are you spending it on? And I go, if you’re not doing it, like you’re not gonna make it.

speaker-0 (19:03)
Well, that comes back to the difference of do you say you want it or do you really want it? Exactly. It’s like, do you want it bad enough? Do you really want it?

speaker-1 (19:13)
Do you want it enough to endure what it takes to get it? That’s the real question. Right? It’s like, yeah, everybody would love to have a New York Times bestseller. Okay, here’s a more, funnier example of me in the opposite, right? It’s like, so we, know, I’ve been using AI to write songs, as you know, right? And it’s like, I’d ⁓ love to be a music star. Like, I would love my songs to be all over the radio. Like, I think they’re really good. And I would love to have famous people sing the songs and get millions of dollars in royalty checks.

But I don’t love it enough to endure what I would have to do to get it. What I’d have to give up to get it, to hustle and to build the relationships with a whole new industry of people and like, you know, cannibalize the time of the vision that we’re pursuing now and everything. like, yeah, it’s like, it’s a dream. It’s not, it’s not

actually a goal. It’s not something that I’d be willing to commit to. And so because of that, it’s a hobby, right? And I go, yeah, I’ll throw a little time at it just for fun. But like, that’s the question is, do you want it? Do you want it bad enough? And I will say for many, for many people watching,

you don’t actually want it bad enough and you’re gonna get destroyed by people who do want it bad enough. And I actually think it’s an honorable decision to say, yeah, you know what, I actually don’t really want this. I thought I did, but I don’t really want it. I think that’s an honorable decision. I think you should go all in on something you genuinely care about because you can’t compete, you can’t kind of compete and play against professionals. In the world of personal branding these days, you better bring your fricking A game because you’re competing with Cody Sanchez and Alex Hormone.

and Louis Howes and Amy Porterfield and Jenna Kutcher and Ed Milet and John Maxwell and it’s like maybe you’re not playing on that level but you’re playing against people who care about their calling and I go if you can’t invest a little money and a little time to do this you might as well just give up now. That’s you know the unfriendly Roy but that’s how I honestly feel.

speaker-0 (21:15)
Why, you know, it’s interesting because I hear a lot of people talk about, you can tell Roy is heated about this topic. I have struck a chord. have struck a chord. ⁓ but people, lot of times they say, well, I’ve just, I’m so passionate about this. And I think people use that word loosely. And we talked about this here recently of like the actual definition of passion is being willing to suffer for something. And it’s like, when you say I’m passionate about something, you’re going, no, I am willing to suffer. am willing to endure. I am willing to do the

speaker-1 (21:20)
You’ve hit a

speaker-0 (21:45)
hard stuff. I am willing to be inconvenienced. I am willing to suffer, right? I want to just like highlight that word for the thing that I love.

speaker-1 (21:53)
This is why they call it the passion of the Christ. Yeah, mean, but it’s so again, it’s all spiritual.

speaker-0 (21:56)
I knew you were going to truth,

I think it’s the difference between passion versus interests, passion versus hobbies. There’s a difference there. And it’s like, are you interested in this? I eat you.

speaker-1 (22:12)
My music,

new songwriting.

speaker-0 (22:14)
passionate about this. And if you’re passionate about it, that means you can’t not do it. That means you’re willing to suffer for it. So I just, wanted to just reconcile some of the conversation to the person that we’ve, you know, kind of started with, like that you’ve begun to give up, that you’ve begun to recoil, that you’ve begun to stop doing the things. And it’s like, maybe, maybe the first thing that you can do after listening to this episode is go, ⁓ is this an interest or a passion? And perhaps there’s

There’s a line of difference that you need to recognize in this thing that you’re doing. It’s like, no, this is something I’m interested in versus this is something I’m passionate in. Because if it’s just an interest, it’s a hobby and those can come and go, right? You spend more, you spend less, but that’s different than a passion and a calling.

speaker-1 (23:03)
And I think the difference between another difference between an interest and a passion is an interest is something that works out if it’s convenient for it to work out. Like if I have some extra time, I’ll deke around with songwriting. If I post it and it takes off and goes viral and okay, great, it works out. That’s different than a passion that goes, I’m going to do whatever it takes, right?

being a speaker, becoming one of the best speakers in the world wasn’t something that I lightly did or accidentally did or stumbled my way into. It was a commitment and a focus and an endurance and it still is, right? I still feel like I’m early in my speaking career of like really where I wanna be. And by the way, I don’t think it’s dishonorable at all.

to identify something as an interest. Totally. think what you’re saying is really important is just be honest with yourself.

speaker-0 (24:01)
And I think perhaps if you’re feeling a dwindling in something, I guess what I would maybe ask you to reflect on is, was it really just an interest? Was it really just something you’d like to do? Was it a hobby versus a calling and a passion? You know, as you were talking, I was thinking, I have a good friend, his name is Dennis. And what started as something that was just a hobby and interest was pickleball. And it was something that he did for fun. Then he kind of was like, hey, I’m pretty good at this. this now it’s a social thing. He did it with his wife and he was doing it with friends. Now it’s a full.

passion. And it’s like, here’s how I know it. It’s all he wants to talk about. He’s like, Hey, you want to get together and play pickleball? It used to be, Hey, do want to get together and talk about business? It’s like, ⁓ and everything is situated around his pickleball schedule and his now tournaments, what he’s reading, what he’s watching. And it’s like, I have watched this shift from, it’s something I casually do to it’s something I’m passionate about doing. He gets up at 5am to do it before work. He’s now watching game film. He’s hired a

coach, he’s now weight training so that he can have a better spring. He’s now reading books and he just got the lottery ticket for the U S open for pickleball. It has evolved into something and it’s, and I think the reason I called on that as you were talking is like, I’ve watched a hobby turn into a passion and there’s a difference. It’s Hey, this is something I do and I have time and it’s convenient versus no, I’m willing to be inconvenienced. I will spend my money, time and energy to learn about it, to do it, to talk about it, to practice it.

And that’s

Maybe that’s just some self-reflection that you can ask yourself. It’s do I read about this in my spare time? Do I talk about it when no one else is bringing it up? Is this what I spend time thinking about or dreaming about or journaling about? Is this what I’m asking questions? Is this the content I’m following? And if the answer is no to all of those, then maybe it’s just an interest and that’s okay. But then maybe you shouldn’t be beating yourself up so much. This is just a seasonal interest or something that has come and gone versus knowing the difference between a passion.

which is something you’re willing to suffer for, a true calling on your life.

speaker-1 (26:06)
And here’s a litmus test, another litmus test to know if something is a calling and a passion or just like a hobby and an interest. If your commitment is conditional, that means it’s a hobby and if your commitment is unconditional, that means it’s a passion and a calling. To me, the metaphor I’ve been thinking about a lot and coaching myself with is a wedge. I love a wedge. A wedge forces itself into something, right? Like you prioritize

speaker-0 (26:18)
That’s good.

speaker-1 (26:36)
You a passion. You prioritize a calling. You don’t wait for the time to be available. You make it available. It wedges its way into your life, into your conversation. You don’t go, if I have time, I’ll do that. It’s like, no, I’m gonna do that and then everything else will be, if I have time, I’ll do those things.

speaker-0 (26:59)
That’s good.

All right. Well, this is a good transition into our community question, which you get to read.

speaker-1 (27:08)
question I

to read to you okay so community question ⁓

One of our favorite segments. Okay, so these are from our members that are in our brand builders group membership program. They vote on the most pressing question and then they vote up, you know, which questions they think are most applicable to them. And the one with the most upvotes is the community question. So this week it’s from Sarah. Rory and AJ, I’ve been a brand builders group client for almost two years. Thank you, Sarah. I’ve done the workshops. I know my brand. I know my message. I genuinely believe in the work I do, but I cannot stay

consistent. I’ll be on a roll for two or three weeks posting showing up making progress and then something happens. A busy season, a hard week, a vacation and I fall completely off. You’re not alone. And then the shame of falling off makes it even harder to get back up. This cycle has been going on for two years. I’m exhausted by it. How do I break it for good? Wow. What a powerful honest question. ⁓ Yeah. AJ, why don’t you just solve this one for us?

speaker-0 (28:14)
⁓ Here’s what I would say is you got to ask yourself is there something in the cyclical nature of what you’re doing that isn’t sustainable and is that why you keep falling off? ⁓ And so I think that there’s a lot of things like if I just take the more tactical approach versus the mindset and the emotional approach.

speaker-1 (28:26)
That’s good tactical.

I’m gonna take the mindset

and emotion.

speaker-0 (28:36)
I figured you might, ⁓ is it’s really more of like, Hey, are you biting off more than you can chew? And that’s why there’s an ebb and a flow. Is it not sustainable in a hard week or on a vacation week? And you got to ask yourself, it’s like, okay, well, what would need to change to make this sustainable regardless of the week?

Regardless if I’m on vacation, if it’s a hard week, if I get busy, if someone gets sick, there’s got to be something that’s sustainable no matter what. And I guess another tactical thing is like I would give yourself three versions of what consistent looks like for you. I have a my routine.

consistent, I have a low consistent week and a high consistent week. So here’s what I mean by that is on a normal routine week, this is what I do. On a low week, in other words, I would say something unexpected happens. A child is homeschooled, from school sick. There was a family emergency. It’s a vacation.

speaker-1 (29:41)
We

icepocalypse.

speaker-0 (29:43)
We

have ice pop-o-lips. In other words, what your low consistency week is, this is my bare minimum. So you’re just setting three levels of consistency for yourself. This is a routine norm that I’m going to do on a normal week. Then give yourself the permission and in a off week, then you have my bare minimum expectations.

and give yourself some grace and some peace of going, I’m going to stay consistent, but consistent looks different for me in those weeks. And then also get, but counter that with a high consistency week, is, Hey, if you have extra time, I don’t know where that comes from, but if you do, if you have extra time in a week, it’s like, Hey, on those weeks, I’m going to do this. And now you have ranges. And I think a part of having ranges is what eliminates the guilt and the shame to give yourself the grace and the compassion of going like, Hey, there’s going to be unexpected stuff that happens.

to get sick. Family members are going to fall sick. You’re going to get sick. There’s going to be vacation days. Kids are going to be out of school. There’s going to be things that happen. So give yourself like, hey, bare minimum expectations are going to happen on my unexpected weeks. My norm is this. And when I have that extra time, if it ever comes, then this is what it’s going to look like for me. And that’ll give you permission to ebb and flow through all those without feeling guilt and shame while still staying consistent.

speaker-1 (31:00)
That’s good, that’s good.

For you Sarah that asked this question and anyone who is struggling with consistency where you’re on and then you’re off and you’re on and you’re off, you say this cycle has been going on for two years and I’m exhausted by it. How do I break it for good? Part of what I would say Sarah is I think you need to reframe this. You’re saying I’m exhausted by it. When I read this, I’m energized by it. You’re talking about how you keep coming back. You’re talking about how you’ve been in for two years. You’re talking about how you’re fighting. You’re talking about how you have over

overcome shame and gotten back on the horse. I’m not exhausted by this. I’m energized by this. This isn’t necessarily something that you have to break for good. This is just you’re building the muscle that it takes. Like you have to rethink how you’re thinking about it. And I think that the, you know, the devil plants these seeds of doubt like, ⁓ this isn’t working. You’re inconsistent. No, that’s what he’s saying because you’re almost there. You’re on track. Like you are doing the

thing. So just it’s you have to you have to celebrate what you are doing and not be so focused about what you’re not doing. Look, this whole episode is been about helping you understand that you may not get the wins and you might have to slow down. You might have to slow to a crawl. Just don’t stop. Just don’t quit. Progress over perfection.

Like the victory is not in whatever expectation you’ve got in your mind of what consistency looks like. The victory is that you have been facing rejection and difficulty and you keep going. That means you’re winning. That doesn’t mean you’re losing. That means you’re winning. Keep going. Keep going. Slow down if you must, but don’t you quit, Sarah.

speaker-0 (32:52)
Yeah, and I would just, I would add to that. It’s like, this is a good reminder of how muscle is built. Muscle has to be broken down before it can be built up, right? And that is literally what you’re saying here. It’s like in order to get stronger, there has to be things that are broken down and every single time you get back on and you do it again, it’s gonna get a little bit easier and you’re gonna get a little stronger. This is a reframe. This is not exhaustion. This is growth. This is ⁓ being energized. And I love that reframe.

Y’all, everyone who’s listening, I would just encourage you, like, if this message resonates with you, one, would you just save it and come back to it on those days when you feel defeated and go, no, I need to go back and listen to this motivational pep talk from Rory Vaden of why I gotta keep going and I can’t give up.

Or maybe you’re listening to this and you’re going, this episode was built for this person I know. I have to share it with them. They’re on the verge of giving up on something. I need to share it with them. Would you just do us a favor? Do them a favor and share this episode with someone that you know that this could help give them just enough spark to keep going. And while you’re at it,

If you wouldn’t do us, or if you wouldn’t mind doing us a favor and subscribe to this so that you can get those constant reminders and tips to keep going the strategies that you need, but also the heartfelt personal experience and motivation that what you do matters. so subscribe this, share this with a friend and come back next time to hear me and Rory talk it out on the wealthy and well-known podcast.

Keep going. Keep going. going. And subscribe. And keep.

speaker-1 (34:30)
Going. Keep. Going. Keep going.

That’s great.

WWK Ep 017: More Money, More Problems? How Entrepreneurs Prevent Burnout

AJ (00:00)
gonna start by quoting Biggie Smalls. Mo money, mo problems. that’s not just a line in a rap song. Mo money, mo problems. You got mo stuff to…

RORY (00:09)
This

is why I this is I fell in love with you, babe.

Many, many entrepreneurs burn out because they don’t take care of themselves. They don’t follow the rhythms, the routines, and the priorities that we’re gonna be talking about on today’s episode. As an entrepreneur, business owner, like you, have to maintain your health and optimize your wellbeing, both mentally and physically. So we’re gonna talk about some of those ideas for how to do that with both myself, Rory Vaden, co-founder of Brand Builders Group.

I’m joined by my wife, my business partner and our CEO at Brand Builders Group, AJ Vaden. So excited to have this conversation, babe.

AJ (00:53)
Yeah, I think this is a good opportunity for reminders and refreshers for the both of us. And so as we’re reminded of all the things that work and what we should be doing, everyone else will get the benefits. ⁓

RORY (01:07)
There are some

topics that we teach that we do a really good job of and there’s other topics where it’s like we’re working progress. But I want to start the conversation with understanding why is it so stressful to be a CEO or and to be an entrepreneur? I think a lot of entrepreneurs, whether they’re just starting out or if they’ve been doing it for 30 years, I think there is this sort of destructive, limiting belief that a lot of them have that it’s like

AJ (01:13)
We’re working.

RORY (01:34)
shouldn’t be so hard and why is this so hard and if it’s this hard I must, you know, I must suck. Like I must be doing everything wrong or like everybody on my team is wrong or like just like this is terrible or it’s not God’s design. But you know when you zoom out I look at entrepreneurs on the whole and I go no this is kind of just like a hazard of the job. ⁓ And so I would love your perspective and opinion on why is it so stressful? Like what makes

the function and role of a CEO stressful. And then maybe we can try to first understand what is kind of normal ish, and then what is really like abnormal and then we can talk about the routines and rhythms for how to how to manage it all.

AJ (02:16)
Yeah, I think I would actually start with.

a not so often talked about shift from entrepreneur to CEO. Because as an entrepreneur, you typically start with doing everything. And so I liken to talk about there’s really two different definitions of CEO. And in the entrepreneur seat, a CEO is really the chief everything officer. do everything. They make the sales, they send the invoices, they pay the bills, they do the bookkeeping, they do the delivery, they

do the ideation, the execution, they do the marketing, and then eventually they hire someone and then someone else and then someone else and then someone else. But an entrepreneur starts as CEO, chief everything officer. And it’s really hard to make the leap from chief everything officer to chief executive officer. And I think there’s a, that’s just not discussed of when does everything start to fall off your plate.

And in what order does everything fall off your plate? So at some point you actually do become a CEO, which is chief executive officer, which means you’re making executive decisions. You’re not paying the bills anymore. You’re not sending the invoices. you’re not the one who is making every job post or delivering every client or having every sales call. And sometimes that shift happens quickly. And I say quickly, I mean, over five to 10 years, sometimes that shift never happens because the CEO,

entrepreneur wasn’t able to release things from their plate rather willingly ⁓ by choice or even by force.

And I think there’s a lot of that is your identity gets caught up in it. Or you just get so used to being so busy, you don’t know what to do with yourself if you don’t have all that stuff to do anymore. And I think there’s a lot of different things or you tried to pass it off and it didn’t work or someone left and then you live in the mindset of, I tried it once, it didn’t work, I’ll never do it again. Lots of things don’t work the first time. That doesn’t mean we don’t try again. But I think a lot of us live in that seat.

RORY (04:22)
So the I love this distinction between the chief everything officer, which is really an entrepreneur, CEO is a fancy title to a true chief executive officer. There seems to be stress at both places, though, like, you know, you people might think, if I was a true if I became a real CEO, and I had a bunch of people on my team to just do everything, I wouldn’t have stress and that at least not been my experience or observation that that is really what happens. It’s it’s like new levels, new devils ⁓ that

that kind of thing. what are some of the stressors that you think are normal that are kind of like, yeah, you’re going to experience this if you’re an entrepreneur or if you’re a CEO. ⁓ And then what are some of the things that maybe you try to go like, yeah, maybe this is where it is unhealthy or

AJ (05:14)
Yeah,

I think there’s two things that I would like to highlight. gonna start by quoting Biggie Smalls. ⁓ Mo money, mo problems. And that’s not just a line in a rap song. Mo money, mo problems. You got mo stuff to…

RORY (05:31)
This

is why I this is I fell in love with you, babe. Let’s talk about being a CEO by quoting Biggie Smalls. That’s my woman.

AJ (05:39)
But there is

some truth and it’s like you got my money you go have more problems And I think there’s a lot to that and people just think if I could just hit this revenue mark if I can just hit this net profit Mart if I just hit these income levels and as like well those come with more Responsibilities they come with more decisions they come with more more complexity and then they come with the second thing which is more people more problems Mm-hmm, right and I say that lovingly I love our team and I choose to have a team that’s not for everyone and I

think a lot of entrepreneurs don’t know that they don’t want a before they have one.

They realize it after the fact. Not everyone was meant to have a business where they manage a lot of team. that’s it. That’s it. That’s a choice. Like you have to have a love and a passion of building, growing, leading people to do that really well. And there’s a difference between why a lot of people became entrepreneurs because they didn’t want to work for someone else or they didn’t want to have to do, but it’s like you’re like, if you’re going to grow a business, you’re going to have to work with other people. Right. And those are your team. And so I think a lot of people get into this because they wanted freedom and flexibility and

They wanted to do their own thing and it’s like, well, once you start adding people and systems in place, well, some of that starts to shift because now there’s a team dynamic and you don’t get to make every decision on your own anymore because it impacts other people and their livelihoods and their families. And so I think there’s a lack of reckoning with that before you realize, ⁓ I’m growing. have to have more people. Wait, do I want more people? I don’t know. And I think a lot of us grow for the sake of we think growth is what we should do versus growing is what we want to do. ⁓

And I think a lot of that just comes from comparison and other issues. But I think this whole idea, like, you know, to what you were saying is what are some of the stressors that happen? And I think it’s like stress is going to come when you’re trying to do more than you’re capable of doing. And I say capable in terms of capacity. ⁓ And I think that we all have different levels of capacity.

And when you’re trying to do more than what you have capacity for is when stress comes. And I think it’s good for us all to remember, I think we use the term stress as negative. There are two different types of stress. There is a good stress, and then there is a bad stress. There is a stress that is good and healthy.

And then there is a stress that is not healthy and that is continued stress. There are some parts of quote unquote, term stress that are actually good and healthy. Biologically speaking, ⁓ they get us moving. get us doing things. They create awareness. It’s, but those prolonged are not good. it’s

RORY (08:17)
build muscle, build resilience and

AJ (08:24)
Daily minute stress, no problem. It just does that continue and compound day over day, week over week with no relief. And that’s where stress becomes really unhealthy. But stress in and of itself is not a bad thing. It’s just when it takes over and there’s no break, there’s no relief is when that becomes a bad thing. And that comes back to, you doing more than you have capacity to do?

RORY (08:48)
Yeah. And

the people topic is one that I think is a good example to go.

having people problems is normal. It’s expected. It’s hard, but it’s a healthy normal part of running a business if you have people. You have people problems not because your people are problems, but because the inherent nature of us as people is we go on vacation, we have babies, we burn out, we get bored, we have conflict with each other, right? And there’s just a natural like set of conflict, I think,

that comes from having a group of humans trying to do anything in close proximity. And that in and of itself, I think is an important realization for an entrepreneur to know, just like you’re saying is to go, if you’re bringing on people, you need to understand one, there’s going to be dynamics and challenges, there’s going to be amazing opportunity and growth that comes, but you’re signing up for increased complexity and some amount of challenges that are outside of your control. And you really have to

care about them and their their overall development as part of this.

AJ (10:00)
that what

you need to recognize is that as you bring on a team, you have to choose to become a leader, a leader of people. And it’s a, you’re adding on a whole new set of tasks and responsibilities from entrepreneur to entrepreneur to now I’m also adding in leader, leader of people. And those are ironically different.

RORY (10:24)
That is so good. Those are different. That is so true. You don’t have to be an entrepreneur. You don’t have to be a leader to be an entrepreneur. ⁓ you don’t necessarily, you don’t have to be an entrepreneur to be a leader. But the moment that you choose to scale a business and bring on people, you must also be a leader.

AJ (10:46)
You’re bringing on a whole new job and set of skills that I don’t think people recognize. ⁓ in other words, when it was just you or you and one person, it’s like, maybe you didn’t have to have so much formality such as one-on-one meetings or processes or systems or documentation and policies and, ⁓ benefits and, ⁓ team meetings. And it’s like, well, that all creates structure and guess what? That all takes time. And you didn’t double your time. You didn’t double your capacity.

And all of a sudden all these new things are creeping in and the old things haven’t come off. And that’s what I’m talking about with capacity. And so I think there’s a lot where that stress really starts to grow as we keep adding, adding, adding, and nothing falls off.

RORY (11:32)
Now.

I think, you know, it’s sort of a law of nature that if something is healthy, it grows. Right. ⁓ And I think I’ve always felt like if a business is healthy, it should generally be growing, barring like, you know, really crazy circumstances. And so that means there’s always going to be some stress, like your growth is always some level of stress. So the conversation shifts to going, OK, what can we do to manage that stress?

load as you’re saying some of it is healthy some of it’s unhealthy but there’s always stress there like if you’re growing there is stress.

AJ (12:11)
But not always bad, but yes. And even if you’re not growing their stress.

RORY (12:13)
huh. Yeah, so.

That’s right. Yeah.

If you’re if you’re declining, there’s there’s even more stress. Yeah, like there’s there’s there’s stress there too. So what are some of the practices? Yeah, the rituals that either you’ve done, you’ve seen other people do you’ve learned from that helped you sort of maintain? You know, we say in our new book, that peace is the new profit. ⁓ How have you tried to like, maintain that from a practical

AJ (12:41)
Yeah,

well, I would just say that if you relate to feeling like, yeah, I have way more work to do than I have hours in the day and I have zero capacity and I have to work on nights and I have to work on weekends and yeah, I’m exhausted. It’s like, well, I can relate to you. And I would just say you most likely can’t solve it on your own. So I’d say most of what I’m going to share, I have learned through lots of outside help, coaches, conferences, masterminds, mentors, ⁓ reading, know, prayer,

like this is not something that just comes.

RORY (13:16)
And if people don’t know

this about you and me, you’re a personal development junkie. Totally. We are personal development junkie.

AJ (13:22)
Totally.

⁓ Like one of the core values at Brain Builders Group is personal growth, i.e. personal development. So yes, I’m a huge advocate of it and apparently in this area, I’ve had to do it a lot for it to finally stick.

RORY (13:38)
Plus you’re

married, you’re married, you’re you have the extra blessing of being married to someone who adds a little extra stress along the way just just to keep you.

AJ (13:46)
But

here’s something that I have found. Now I’m a part of EO Nashville, the entrepreneurs organization here in Nashville. And I’ve had the immense privilege to have the same forum, which is like a small group within EO for 10 years. we’ve seen marriages come and go, businesses come and go, ⁓ business divorces. We’ve seen family members come and go. And it’s been a very deep relationship. And one of the things that I have seen

More that we’ve seen, you know, mergers, acquisitions and exits. So I’m just saying like first hand, real life, all the things, ⁓ resignations and hard decisions, like all the things. And one of the things that I’ve seen that causes the most stress in all of our lives is when we constantly ponder why.

And we just, we live in this, why did that happen? Why didn’t that work out? ⁓ Why, why, why? And there’s just not near enough conversation around what am I gonna do different? How can we move forward?

And I believe that in my own personal life and in the lives of the people that I get the closest front row seat to when we ruminate and why did this happen or why is it like this or why is the business declining or why didn’t that customer buy or why did that person resign or why didn’t they file the taxes on time? Why, why, why, why, why? We’re surrounding ourselves with problems and zero solutions. We’re not even giving ourselves the opportunity to go what needs to happen next.

How do we need to move forward? And I think it’s a really important thing where it’s like, would say most of my stress is when I sit there and try to figure out why isn’t this working versus what’s the next thing I can do? What’s the one thing I can do?

RORY (15:38)
You, not everybody watching knows this, you lost your mom when you were young. Did you ask that question why you were 15 years old? Of course. Right? So did you, how does that, I mean, I’ve never heard you talk about this until this very second about this distinction. And I, as you’re saying it, I’m going, that is so true. Like why doesn’t do much?

AJ (15:50)
Don’t

It

doesn’t do anything. ⁓ It does nothing for us.

RORY (16:04)
It keeps us ruminating in nothing

like productive really.

AJ (16:10)
Because even if you find the answer as to why, until you go do something about it, nothing changes.

RORY (16:17)
Did that, so did you learn that from your mom’s past?

AJ (16:21)
No, think I don’t know. don’t know. I think that I came to a very good healthy resolution years after she died of going, I have two perspectives that I can choose to move forward with. One is, why did this happen to me?

And give a whole bunch of excuses of why I was a rebellious teenager or why I don’t do this or why this happened or why I think this way. but those, those really did feel like a lot of excuses. And I think a lot of that work happened at a personal development conference. went to landmark forum and, ⁓ I think that during that retreat, right, it was like a three day retreat. I really learned it’s like, I can rather choose to live in this. Like, why did this happen to me? Why my family? Why my mom? Why, why, why?

And I like, at the end of the day, that wasn’t doing anything for me. Or the other perspective was to go like, what can I take from this event and do something positive with it? And it was a perspective shift that I made in my early 20s of like, it really did change my heart and my stance towards bad things happening to, I don’t focus on the bad, I focus on the good. And it’s like, a bad thing happened after

15 years of good things. So why don’t I talk about all the good things? Why do I talk about this one event that was really bad and I don’t talk about the other thousands of events and moments and memories that were really good? And then that made me think about in business and in sales. I remember in like my early days in sales, if I didn’t make a sale, that was the only thing I could think about.

I didn’t think about the 20 people who signed up that day. I thought about the two who didn’t follow through. And so it was like for me, it was a full life shift around I get to choose what I focus on. The bad events or the good events. And I think that’s just a choice for all of us. In the middle of, you know, we had someone recently ⁓ resign in their role at Bremboilers Group.

Right? And it’s like, I can really just get myself up in arms of like, what am I doing wrong as a leader? And don’t, and like, don’t get me wrong. I probably had a good 16 seconds of that. And before I had to like check myself, but then I had to look around and go, oh yeah. And we have 41 people who are still here. So do I want to focus on this one person who just wasn’t a fit for where we’re at in this culture of business growth? Or do I want to focus on the 41 people who were like raising their hands, going, I’m here for it. Those are choices. Bad things happen simultaneously.

with good things all around you. And I think bad stress happens when we only focus on the bad things that are happening and we’re like, why did this, why did this, why did this? Because you could also ask yourself, why is all this good stuff happening? But we don’t do that. We ask, why is the bad stuff happening? We don’t ask, why is all this good stuff happening? And I think we have to really have a good healthy discipline of countering the two. And I just don’t think we as human beings in the current state that we live in do that naturally, do that on our own. ⁓

life coach that I talk to every month that has to like bring me back to this every month because I can’t do it on my own. I have a prayer practice and a journal practice every morning where the Lord brings me back to this every morning because I don’t do it on my own.

RORY (19:39)
Yes,

I want to talk about that. mentally speaking here, there’s a big transition of going, how do you how do you stay mentally, emotionally healthy? It’s spend less time asking why and asking more time what what can be done? ⁓ It’s spending less time going. You know what bad thing happened and going spend more time thinking about what the good things were that happened when you get.

AJ (20:07)
police

counter.

RORY (20:08)
At least counter it. I mean, coming back to your mom, that’s always resonated with me that you’ve always said, you know, I don’t think of it as I lost my mom when I was only 15. I think about it as I had 15 years with the best mom ever. ⁓ And I think that’s just that’s a choice. Like that is a choice. So that’s on the mental side. ⁓ What about the practical side, the pragmatic? Like, what are the things you do in your schedule? What are the things that

activities that you engage in? Are there any other like actionable things?

AJ (20:44)
Yes.

Yeah. So I want to talk about three very specific actionable things that I think really matter a lot when it comes to how do you prevent burnout in your own, in your own life, reduce stress and actually enjoy what you do. And I think most of us who are business owners, entrepreneurs, we did this because there was a love and a passion for it. And I think it was Mike McCalliwitz I heard who say this is the biggest threat to any small business.

is that the founder just decides they don’t want to do it anymore because it becomes too much work, too much stress, too much burnout, and they’re tired. So how do you prevent that? Because that’s definitely not why you started. And I think there’s some things you have to have in place. I think the very first thing is that you actually have to have time to think.

I think most CEOs or entrepreneurs in both categories, chief everything officer or chief executive officers. If you’re, if you run with a rhythm of meeting to meeting to meeting to meeting to meeting to meeting to meeting, you have no time to think or process. So that just means you’re just making decision after decision after decision without any time to reflect, pause, think, ideate, brainstorm, counter ask questions. And it’s just not a healthy pace to be in. Again, you can do it for a short amount of time. You can do it for a day or a day every

but it can’t be every day of every week. At some point, and I use this term a lot for myself, it’s like, you’re gonna have decision fatigue. And that happens when there isn’t time to think. So schedule time in your calendar that is for strategic thinking. And then don’t schedule over it, right?

RORY (22:28)
And are you talking about

like morning routine? Are you talking about like during the day?

AJ (22:32)
During the day, Monday, I block my calendar from 2 p.m. to 5 p.m. Every Monday. Now, for those of you who listening, another practice that I have, because I have a business partner, is that we have a Monday morning walk that is our business meeting.

RORY (22:46)
That’s me.

AJ (22:50)
So, but I think there’s two things there. One, we’re business partners, we have a weekly meeting. If you have a business partner, or even this could be your executive team, you need a weekly meeting.

That’s not with everyone, but it’s with your business partner or your executive team. And it’s a three hour meeting. It’s not a 30 minute standup. It’s not a one hour stat review. This is a three hour. What’s the most important things? What do we have to discuss? What do we need to get on the same page with? What did I do last week that I didn’t tell you or vice versa? What’s happening this week that we may or may not know about, but it’s a three hour. So think that’s the first thing. If you’re not hearing me is there is a three hour business meeting with your partner or executive team every.

RORY (23:29)
week.

And I will say we started Brand Builders Group on three hour walk around a park and

Now we have 50 employees between the three businesses almost and a lot more complexity. In every stage, there has been enough to fill a three-hour meeting every Monday and more. If you’re not spending at least that much time together, everything splinters and fractures and goes crazy and creates stress.

AJ (24:01)
and create stress. Yeah. And then

you’re trying to catch up on nights and

RORY (24:05)
Because I think when you have a business partner, even if you have an executive team, one of the causes of stress is you have people running really hard in different directions. And we’ve been guilty of that. All the time. If we don’t sync, we run so hard that we just end up like, even if we’re one degree off, we’re

AJ (24:24)
And

creates

a lot of frustration for our team because then they hear two different messages or two different areas of focus. But I want everyone to hear it’s like that’s the first thing to actually not have burnout is to have this routine meeting that you don’t miss. The second thing if you didn’t catch what I heard is it’s not in a boardroom. It’s not in a conference room. It’s not at your computer. It’s not at your desk. We do it on a walk. And I think that’s really important because this becomes more about a conversation than an agenda. ⁓ It creates freedom and flexibility.

to talk about things versus what’s next. What’s next? It’s not a PowerPoint presentation. This is a conversation. Two, I have found, this is for me, not for Rory, but moving helps keep my stress level down. So as we’re getting into things that we don’t disagree on.

RORY (25:09)
And

if your stress level is down, my stress level is down. So it is for me.

AJ (25:13)
But

these are things for like when we may not have ⁓ alignment on and I have found that being in nature Specifically in nature helps me go

RORY (25:22)
If y’all haven’t noticed AJ’s hair is really red and it’s it’s you know, it’s it’s it’s indicative of certain certain behavioral ⁓ patterns. There’s some fire some truth. There’s some truth to the fiery redhead.

AJ (25:37)
Bye.

I’m not not agreeing with that. ⁓ But being in nature helps keep me centered and remembering these conversations. These problems are very small. God is big. The world is big. This is small. God is big. The world is big. ⁓ And so, again, just a perspective shift that I don’t get in a boardroom because in a boardroom, I’m looking at stats and metrics and agendas and my mind goes elsewhere. So you got to find that. Maybe that doesn’t work for you, but those are just two things every Monday. So I start my Monday.

from 8 to 11 in a very important business meeting with my partner, but then from 2 to 5, I’m in my own meeting with myself. And that’s my strategic thinking time. And a lot of that is I put that on my calendar because there were so many things I needed to go back, write down, reflect on, take action on from my meeting with Rory.

And it’s like, also have a meeting with my chief of staff. You know, some of you may call it an EA right after my meeting with Rory. And it’s like, usually it’s like that helps me prioritize my week. And I don’t wait to the end of the week to tackle those things that happens on Monday for me. And so I have found that there are good rhythms and patterns that work really well for me. And stacking my Monday with meetings is unhealthy for me. A lot of people start, they have meeting Mondays. That’s not healthy for me. I can’t have a meeting Monday. I have to have a thinking Monday, a planning Monday.

and most of my meetings happen on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays. So if I’m gonna take calls and meetings, they’re never on Mondays and they’re never on Fridays. So I have themes and blocks of time for each day of the week so that I’m in a good ⁓ mental pattern of this is what I do on this day. And that has been a very healthy routine, but I don’t start the meeting.

or my Mondays with meetings because they’re crazy. And then I just start the week behind. And I think people who have the Sunday blues, right? And they’re like, tomorrow’s Monday. It’s because they know what’s coming on Monday, which is it’s a full eight hour marathon. So I didn’t want to have that. And…

That was up to me. I get to make that decision, so I don’t have a bizarre Monday. I have a very well-paced strategic meeting and then a meeting with myself to make sure that I’m well planned for the week.

RORY (27:55)
I also want to highlight one thing about the meeting that we have. ⁓ If you’re married or you work with your spouse, I want to make sure people know this is where we talk about work stuff. We do not talk about work stuff at night and on the weekend because that’s a mistake that I made for years. Yeah, we both made of like we have to have dedicated part of treating the business like a business is giving it ample space and time during the workday to talk about work stuff.

and not cramming the workday with everything else and then having the strategic stuff try to spill over into the nights and weekends. It’s not a good formula. That’s a recipe for stress, not a recipe for peace and scalability.

AJ (28:40)
was the first thing. That was a long answer. I’ll make the other two quite shorter. But the first one is just meeting rhythms and how you spend Mondays. I think Mondays set the tone for the week, at least for me. And running a company and a business and making sure I’m well planned and thought out for all the one-on-ones I’m going to have, team meetings, metrics meetings, financial reviews, whatever is happening that week, it can’t be on Monday. It’s not healthy for me. The second thing is how I start my day, right? And so think this is a really important part. It’s like if you start your day ⁓ in a tailspin, you’re going to end your day in a tailspin.

So I have a really good healthy morning routine. Your morning routine can be whatever it is, but for me, I know that between ⁓ six and seven, that has to be just my time with the Lord.

And when I have that time, I have a good day. And if I don’t get to have that day, that time with the Lord, I usually have a hard day. And it’s because I didn’t have a time to sit and reflect and be grateful and to be in the word. that just, what it does, it just sets the tone of what am I grateful for? What have I been blessed with? And anything that that’s hard that I have to face that day, I’ve already countered it with all the good that’s in my life. Bad things happen all the time, but I choose to counter it with the good things that the

word has given me by talking with him about it every morning.

RORY (29:56)
So I want to double tap on that because, you know, second nature for us at this point. like to somebody who goes, you know, I picture somebody listening to that being like, wait, you spend an hour reading Leviticus like every day? Like, how do you spend an hour reading the Bible or like what are you doing there? Like to go, that doesn’t seem, you know, exciting or maybe sleepy or whatever. know, like, ⁓ how do you how do you break that hour apart?

AJ (30:25)
If

you’re not a believer, that could be reading a personal development book or if you’re of a different faith, it’s reading whatever. So I would just say it’s your spiritual time, it’s your faith time. But mine’s a combination and I’m stealing this from the book. Jamie Winship wrote the book, Living Fearless. I was not a journaler prior to reading that book. I actually thought journaling was pointless and useless until I realized it wasn’t. It was a great revelation for me a couple of years ago when I started this practice.

⁓ But here are the prompts and I do these same prompts every single day. The first thing is I say, Lord today I’m grateful for. And then I share what I’m grateful for. And it’s sometimes the same, sometimes different. I journal just in case I forget. Right? So that’s the first thing. The second prompt is, Lord today I pray for.

RORY (31:07)
In your journal you write

AJ (31:17)
and I pray for people, pray for business, I pray for change, I pray for whatever. But those are the first two things. Then my third prompt is, Lord, what do you want to reveal to me today? Then I go to the Bible. So that’s how I start my Bible study.

RORY (31:31)
And you got, so you got those questions from Jamie.

AJ (31:34)
Well, there’s another one,

so I’m not done. okay. So, Lord, what do you want to reveal to me today? And that’s when I go to the Word. That’s when I go to Scripture. ⁓ And lo and behold, every single day, He has something to reveal to me. So then I go back to my journal and I write down what it was. Like, what stuck out to me? And I have a highlighter in my Bible, and there’s just always something that sticks out in a new and different way. It could be a verse, it could be a whole book, it could be a whole chapter, but there’s always something. And then I write it down, and then my last prompt is, Lord, what do you want me to do with that?

Not why did you reveal that, but what do you want me to do with that Lord? What’s my action item from here? And that’s how I have clarity of how to move forward in that day.

RORY (32:14)
So you’re literally having a conversation with God. Every day. Asking, what do want to reveal to me? Then you look at the Word, find the answer, and then you record the answer.

AJ (32:26)
That’s

the hour. And so it’s not like I’m reading scripture the whole time, but maybe 20 to 30 minutes of that time is like in the word reading. And I just look for guided plans. I’m not trying to figure it all on my own. I find guided plans, read through a Bible in the year. I’m doing a deep dive in a certain book, whatever it is. I find plans and I follow the plan. But here’s what I would say is important if you’re faith curious or you’re a follower. It’s like, if you go, he’ll always show you something.

And it’s always something that you need right then and there. And I just always need something. ⁓ There’s always something to learn. There’s always something to be shown. But that’s how I start my day. So my Monday routine is really important to me. My morning routine is really important to me. And then the third thing. ⁓

RORY (33:09)
hold on. So before

we get to the third thing, feel like, ⁓ forgive me, but I got to do a shout out here for the Eternal Life podcast. if any of you, if you struggle, if you’re a very logical, analytical person like I am and you struggle with faith, ⁓ that used to be me. I was a skeptic of faith and specifically Christianity and didn’t, I just struggled to believe that somebody had performed miracles and walked on water and raised from the dead. ⁓

And over 20 years, I put a lot of time into studying the history, the archaeology, and the logical and academic evidence to support the Christian faith. And I consolidated all of those findings into a free podcast called Eternal Life, Seven Questions Every Intelligent Skeptic Should Ask About Jesus. And it’s not meant to convert you. It’s just a presentation of the logical evidence that I found that is how I became a very devout convicted

believer, not on a spiritual encounter, but through a deep logical exploration. So you can check out the Eternal Life podcast if you or someone you know is like, know, faith curious but struggling with some of that. so back to number three.

AJ (34:25)
I

think more than anything, ⁓ not more than anything else, but I would say one of the things that has been most revolutionary in my life that I really truly underestimated the power of more than anything else. Like I didn’t underestimate the power of spending time with the Lord or having a good schedule. I didn’t underestimate. I knew that was important. I just had to make time for it. What I truly underestimated more than anything else was the importance of diet.

and physical fitness. And I always, I just don’t have time for that. And it’s like, now if I don’t make time, I feel the impact. Like I was really blind to how important it was for me to have a physical release of stress. And that looks different for all people.

RORY (35:11)
So this

is something we’ve learned about you together in the last couple of years. We didn’t know this about you. We knew this subconsciously, but we didn’t bring this into our consciousness about you, which you are a high energy burner.

AJ (35:23)
Congress.

high energy

burner which means if I do not have intense physical movement all my stress I tell I tell my kids I’m like ⁓ what’s his name shadow and Sonic if you’ve ever seen the third song yeah he’s got chaos energy and he runs around ⁓ chaos energy and that’s me I’m shadow from Sonic unless I release it and so I have to figure out it’s got to be a very brisk walk it has to be hot yoga it has to be punching a bag or playing

RORY (35:41)
of Sonic 3.

AJ (35:58)
intense game of pickleball with my kids. It has to be an energy release. A casual walk ain’t gonna do it. It’s gotta be an intense release, but it’s like even sometimes Roy will just look at me and he’s like, you need a walk? I’m like, I need a walk. And I’ll come back a different person. It’s like, what happened?

RORY (36:13)
Well, because because because I’m the opposite, right? It’s like yoga for me. I want a nap, right? I want a massage. Like I’m completely

AJ (36:21)
That’s

why like, whatever it is, but it’s still a physical release. I think that’s what people have to realize. Yours could be a nap. It could be a massage. Mine is a physical release of energy because all that stress builds up. And that’s where you just have to spend time going like, what does my body need? Not my mind. What does my body need to keep up with?

RORY (36:24)
Yeah.

my

mind. And by the way, here is a little bit of physiology and that we learned this is a scientific thing. We had you had a doctor that prescribed to you that said you need to hit stuff that there is a chemical release that happens in your body when you hit things. so rather than hitting me, we got a punching bag and 10 paddle sports we got we got we have we have pickleball now, but we have table tennis,

⁓ and real tennis and just anything where you can actually like make physical contact with.

AJ (37:17)
It’s amazing how much it makes a difference and again every body physical body is different So you have to know yours, but I truly underestimated how keeping my body in check actually allowed me to keep pace with my workload And so there is like for me a physical release. It might maybe it’s a power nap. Maybe you’re like Rory and it’s like

RORY (37:38)
You’re either sloth mode or your tiger mode. Like it’s probably ⁓ one of these two. And by the way, like you see this because when guys get frustrated, this happens sometimes, they punch a wall, right? And that like when guys get super duper wound up and get so angry, they will punch a wall. This is ⁓ a biological.

AJ (37:44)
⁓ But it matters. It matters a lot.

Gotta have a relief. Gotta-

Here’s what I would tell you if it doesn’t come out and a physical release it comes out in anger It comes out in frustration. It comes out and other physical ailments. It’s gonna come out If you guys have never read the book the body keeps the score It’s like the body holds on to your stress You have to figure out how to release it to be a better healthier happier person for your team for your family and for yourself And so the physical release is a huge part of my routine now, but then also the diet part again I totally truly

underestimated of a clean diet makes me a better productive leader.

RORY (38:40)
And I want people

to understand, we’re not talking about losing weight, being in shape, looking great. We’re talking about these are the things that are essential and critical and necessary for entrepreneurs for their mental health, their spiritual well-being.

AJ (38:56)
you

Extra hydration is necessary for the brain. what I used to think, I have eight glasses of water a day. I’m doing a great job. And it’s like, you need half of your body weight in water every day. And if you have a different type of drink, in ounces, if I have a coffee, then I need to add another eight ounces to counteract that. So I watch my water intake like a boss because your brain physically needs it to be high functioning. Other things of like when I have protein,

versus other things so I never have anything sugary or carby before I have a protein.

RORY (39:33)
Carby should

definitely be a word just for the record.

AJ (39:37)
But I’m just like, these are things that I’m going like.

My mind has been blown how these changes have changed my capacity, my mental capacity, my physical stamina that I’d really underestimated. I’m like, that’s a bunch of hoopla. No, it’s not. ⁓ It’s science. It’s sciency. is sciency. sciency. And so those are things which, however, again, I would just say if you’re listening to this and you’re like, can’t be that simple, right? You have a low stress Monday, you spend some time with the Lord, eat some protein and drink a lot of water. That’s what you’re saying?

I’m like, yeah, that’s what I’m saying. And over the last two and a half years, my stress level, my work capacity, my fatigue, my energy levels, you’re gonna test to this. am healthier, better and younger at 42 than I was at 32 by a long shot because I take these things serious now for my mental, physical and spiritual health.

RORY (40:34)
Here’s how you need to think about this. If you had a horse…

Let’s say that you had a million dollar racehorse that you owned and this horse won you money every time it went out. Wouldn’t you feed it the best food? Wouldn’t you get it the best coaching? Wouldn’t you? You’d have the best trainers. You would you would do a deliberate muscle routine, physical routine. Like if you had a million dollar racehorse, you would do everything to care for that racehorse. Every entrepreneur as an entrepreneur, you are the million dollar racehorse. Like you have to care for your

in that way and when you do these things you make more money. Just the word that AJ has been saying this whole time which I love is capacity. It increases your capacity and as you increase your capacity you can carry more which means you’re more productive. It doesn’t mean that stress goes away, it means that you can handle more before stress comes and so you’re able to handle the bigger levels and you get bigger results.

AJ (41:33)
When it does come, you

know how to release it faster. ⁓

RORY (41:36)
it. right. question.

AJ (41:39)
our community question of the day. This is a reminder. We do this every week and BBG members vote on the most pressing question that they want us to answer on the podcast and then all the other members upvote it and we pick the one that was most popular. So here we go today from Jason. I’m a real estate agent and I also coach agents on building their business. My weeks are completely reactive. I’m always putting out fires, jumping from call to call, and by Friday I realized I didn’t post-con…

content once, didn’t follow up with half my leads and didn’t move any of my big goals forward. I tell myself every week that next week I’ll be more intentional, but it never actually happens. What is the single change that would break this cycle for good?

RORY (42:25)
Ugh, these questions are awesome.

AJ (42:27)
These are real.

RORY (42:29)
These are from our members, right? This is from a member. ⁓ Jason and anybody who feels overwhelmed, busy, buried, and behind, here’s what I would say is the biggest difference between ultra-performers and multipliers. This comes from my second book and everybody else. Most people believe their strategy is, I will do all of the things that other people need me to do and with the time that is left over,

I will dedicate that to the things that I want to do. What multipliers do is I want you to think of a wedge. Okay, the metaphor here is a wedge. You don’t wait until you have space to do what you need to do or what you want to do. You have to wedge the things in.

that you wanna do. And it’s not just that you wanna do, it’s the things that you need to do. You multiply time by spending time on things today that give you more time tomorrow. But the whole book and framework is called the five permissions. The permission is what this is about. The emotional permission to invest time on things now that create more time tomorrow.

Absent a conscious calculation and absent a conscious permission to spend time on things that must be done, you will subconsciously, inadvertently default.

back to the constant state of interruption and urgency and just falling victim to whatever is latest and loudest. So you have to think longer term and realize that I’m not waiting until time is available to do my priorities. The definition of a priority is that it is a wedge. It’s not an empty space.

AJ (44:12)
Yeah, so I think very tactically speaking is that whatever your big goal is, whatever the most important things are to you, that has to be the first thing on Monday before you answer a phone call, check an email before you put out any fires. That’s got to be the first thing that you put your time, effort and energy to. so I think that is really schedule management. It’s priority management of making the first thing, the first thing before all the other things. the second thing I would just add to that is if you’re stuck putting out a lot of fires, then you got to ask why, why isn’t your

putting out the fires if you have a team. And one of the things that I would just say, it’s like I was victim to the mentality of taking a lot of personal pride and being the one to put out fires. And when I realized, ⁓ if they always come to me, they’ll never do it themselves. And so I really have a strict policy now with the team. It’s like, don’t bring me problems. Tell me what problems you fixed. Don’t bring me problems. You tell me what problems you fixed today. I would rather you take action and do it wrong and we’ll fix it on the back end than you coming to me and having me fix it.

So if you’re the one fixing all the fires, you gotta ask yourself, did I put myself in that position? Have I trained my team to have me be the fixer? ⁓ Or do you not have someone, right? So I think that would be the other thing I would add. And then the third quick thing that I would just say to that is this whole concept of being reactive versus proactive. That’s a choice. Lovingly, kindly, that’s a choice. And you just have to have the self-discipline to go back and wait.

It can wait, but proactive is a choice versus being reactive. And that means that you have a plan and you follow the plan back to why I start my Mondays with planning so that I don’t live in a reactive state. That doesn’t mean there’s not unexpected fires that come up I have to get involved with, but that means I have a plan of making sure the main thing is the main thing. And that takes me three hours every Monday.

RORY (46:04)
Yeah,

this

ability to prioritize is the hard work of being an ultra performer. It’s just like, you know, you have to lift weights. If you want to build muscles, you have to learn to block and protect the things that multiply time. If you want to become a multiplier, it’s not easy. It is simple, but you just got to do it. So if this episode has encouraged you and you believe it’s going to help you think about someone in your life that maybe could have a little more peace, share this episode with them and let them know there’s some tactical insights here that can hopefully help them on their

entrepreneurial journey. As always, if you want to talk to us about how our team can help you implement and execute and support your journey and applying all of these things that we teach on the show, go to freebrandcall.com forward slash podcast, freebrandcall.com forward slash podcast. We’ll see you next time on the Wealthy and Well-Known Podcast.

AJ (46:57)
y’all you gotta learn how to prioritize and right now you need to prioritize hitting that subscribe button so you can learn more stuff like this

RORY (47:06)
And if you need a physical energy release, hit the subscribe button right now. You’ll feel much

AJ (47:11)
Of course, it’s science.

WWK Ep 015: Follower Rich, Dollar Broke? The 4-Step Trust Funnel That Actually Converts 

WATCH THE INTERVIEW LISTEN TO THE EPISODE BELOW Most people assume more followers means more revenue. But the real gap is not attention. It is trust. In this episode of The Wealthy and Well-Known Podcast, Rory Vaden and AJ Vaden break down why “big platform” does not automatically equal “big business,” and what to do […]

WWK Ep 014: Why You’re Losing (It’s Not a Strategy Problem)

Rory (00:00)
they’re losing and they assign that loss to, maybe this isn’t the right thing for me or maybe I’m just not smart enough or I’m just not good enough or I don’t have enough time or I don’t have enough team. And it’s like, no, you’re just an amateur playing among professionals and you’re getting beat because they’re more committed. I mean, I not be making friends there, but that’s what I think the truth

Your brain lies to you. Your brain is one of the things that holds you back from building a great personal brand. And what we’re talking about today on this episode is what are the lies and the limiting beliefs that experts and entrepreneurs have that prevent them from building a truly successful personal brand. I’m here, I’m Rory Vaden, co-founder of Brand Builders Group, joined by my wife and business partner, AJ Vaden. Let’s go.

AJ (00:52)
Yeah, like one of the things I wanna make sure we nuance is that you said, lies that your brain believes that prevent you from building your personal brand or business. Sure. Right? And so I just wanna make sure as we’re talking about this, that it’s not just a personal brand. Like these things impact your business, impact sales, impacts relationships, impacts all the things. So we’ll take it through the lens of personal brand, IE business.

Rory (01:18)
I mean, when I even say the term personal brand, I almost think of a personal brand as just a marketing engine for the business, right, for most of the people.

AJ (01:30)
I know that’s what you

think. huh. But like it’s good for everyone who’s listening or watching to make sure that you know that we have that context in that filter as we talk about all of this.

Rory (01:41)
Yeah, so,

so let’s dive in. I want to I want to ask you let’s have a conversation about what do you think based on our own experience, our hundreds of clients, and just what we kind of observe and what our data tells us is happening. What do you think are some of the biggest limiting beliefs that people think about their personal brand or their business that is really holding them back? It’s not really true.

AJ (02:08)
Yeah. And so I want to use a large spectrum of what I have noticed to be true in the world. And this isn’t just from working with, you know, hundreds of clients. This goes all the way back to childhood, to school, to parenting, to previous ⁓ employment. And literally just this week, I’m talking about my eight year old Jasper this week, we were talking about doing schoolwork. Why do I have to do that? I’ve already done it.

I’m like, you’ve done it one time. He goes, yeah, but I’ve already done it. Why do I have to do it again? Then, let’s all take it back to our school days. How many times did we say, why do I have to do this again? I already know how to do this. I’ve already done it. I already know this. ⁓ And then you think about professional athletes. Think about how many times they have to swing a bat. How many times they have to throw a ball? How many times they have to run the exact same route?

And I think that we lack a little bit of some of that in business when you parallel it to sports.

Rory (03:15)
So

you’re saying the lie that people believe or the limiting belief they have is I shouldn’t have to keep doing this. I’ve already I already know how to do this. Why should I have to keep

AJ (03:26)
I think people get bored with monotony.

We have a constant shiny object syndrome of there must be a better way. This is too easy. This is too simple. There must be a way for me to get faster other than just practicing. There must be a way for me to not have to do it over and over again. And I think that we just naturally as humans get bored with doing the same thing over and over again. And we want to keep changing it up when the truth is the more you do something, the better you get at it.

and the easier it becomes. And I think the lie we believe is that it can’t be that easy. It can’t be that simple. When we think about social media, it can’t be as simple as just post something every day. It can’t be as simple as just put some money behind it. Like there’s got to be some complex formula that I just don’t know. There’s got to be some secret. And I think we think that about sales. I think we think that about marketing. I think we think that about relationships. And I think about often, like as a parent, how many times I’m like, I know you did it.

We’re just gonna do it again and again and again and again until it’s second nature. But somewhere in adulthood, we forget the power of consistency, the power of doing the small thing over and over and over again. And we believe the lie that it’s that easy.

Rory (04:42)
It reminds me of it’s this is I think the difference between amateurs and professionals, right? I’ve heard it said that amateurs practice until they get it right. Professionals practice until they cannot get it wrong. And that really is true. Like the example that you’re using of sports, it’s like, okay, yeah, I can shoot a three pointer and make it once but Steph Curry does it so many times that it’s almost impossible for him to miss. And that is what it takes

AJ (05:07)
every time.

Rory (05:12)
to build a personal brand. It’s like you have to you have to be brilliant at the basics. You have to master the fundamentals of content creation, lead generation, sales, follow up, delivering, over delivering and renewing. If you get those fundamentals right, it’s like there is nothing else.

AJ (05:31)
think a lot of that is we believe a lie that there’s some complex formula, some hidden secret, something that we don’t know yet. And so instead of doing the thing that we do know, we try all these new things and we keep trying all these new things, meaning we never do it enough to become really sophisticated at it. And I think we see that building your business, building your brand, social media, marketing, the list goes on and on. There’s just some truth in the fun

fundamentals and I think there’s some timeless truths that it doesn’t matter what new technology is out there, the emergence of AI, all the new things. There’s just some basic truths in sales and marketing and business that are timeless and it doesn’t really matter anything that new that comes along. It’s just a new medium to do the same old thing.

Rory (06:24)
way.

Totally. All right. The second limiting belief that I think people have about building their personal brand in their business is they think I’m not good enough to do this. They look at other people. They want to do it. They want to be influential. They want to speak on the stages. They want to have people reading their books or watching their shows. They want that. But deep down, they actually struggle with believing they’re not good enough. I think, you know, the classic word for this is imposter syndrome.

And even though they may have spent 10 or 15 or 20 years becoming an expert at their craft, they still somehow struggle with like, I don’t know that I deserve to be heard by the world or I don’t know that I’m smart enough or good enough to be heard, you know, by the rest of the world. So that that’s what I think is one of the other most common limiting beliefs in our community or the people we work with.

AJ (07:22)
with. Like

how do you see that showing up? Because I think there’s a lot of different byproducts of that. But what I think this would be good of you know, for all of you who are listening up going like, well, is that me? I don’t know. So what are some of the symptoms, some of the signs that show up when this is the root? So

Rory (07:40)
So one of the symptoms that people don’t talk a lot about but that since you asked me directly I think is really, really indicative of this is there a dabbler.

they dabble in things and it kind of comes back to what we were talking about a little bit before. They’ll dabble like, yeah, maybe I’ll learn a little bit about this or maybe I’ll start a podcast for a little bit or maybe like I’ll start writing a speech or I’ll start writing a book or I’ll start writing a blog or two or you know, I’ll join a membership for like a couple months or even a year but like they’re dabbling and because they don’t

really believe it. And if they if they really believed it was possible, they would commit to doing whatever it took to make it happen. And the and the truth is, it’s not that they’re not qualified to do it is that they’re not committed enough ⁓ to do the work it takes to make it happen. And so somebody struggling with imposter syndrome is a dabbler. And they’re competing against committed ultra performers.

and they’re losing and they assign that loss to, maybe this isn’t the right thing for me or maybe I’m just not smart enough or I’m just not good enough or I don’t have enough time or I don’t have enough team. And it’s like, no, you’re just an amateur playing among professionals and you’re getting beat because they’re more committed. I mean, I not be making friends there, but that’s what I think the truth is.

AJ (09:11)
I don’t disagree with that. I was just curious. Well, I think, you know, kind of on that same lines, you could categorize this as a another lie, a separate lie, but I think it falls within this category. So I’m going to bring it up because it’s in the same vein as I think one of the reasons people ⁓

Really, I don’t know if the word dabbler is the one I would use, but I think the reason they don’t commit is because of comparison. I think a lot of imposter syndrome actually is the result of comparison.

And I think what most people do when they’re really suffering from this concept of imposter syndrome, which is basically believing that what you have done isn’t as good or as important as somebody else, even though it’s the same thing is at the root of that, like even in that definition, it’s going, no, you’re comparing yourself to someone else.

And you’re comparing your step one to someone else step 1000, your day one to someone else’s day 1000, your year one to someone else’s year 10. And they’re not comparable. And when we do that, we, what we don’t do is see all the work behind the scenes. I think that’s where we all suffer is like we see the end result and compare our behind the scenes mess to someone else’s very well curated end result.

Rory (10:20)
That’s it.

AJ (10:33)
And therein lies comparison. And I think that’s one of the downfalls of social media because everything can look so presented and it can be the end product.

We all have to remember like no one saw the camera crew scrambling behind the scenes or the amount of lighting prep or script prep or all the years of experience that it took to make that 30 second video or the amount of camera practice to feel confident when that red light goes on. Nobody thinks about that, right? Just you mentioned Steph Curry earlier, right? They see him in the game, but they didn’t see all the missed shots. They didn’t see the years and decades of practice.

And I think that’s where we all fall short of just taking a peek behind the scenes of like, why am I comparing at all?

Rory (11:21)
Yeah, that’s so good. And social media is like the perfect little capsule of this because you are literally seeing an edited, polished, perfected, highlight reel of a bright moment in somebody’s life and your feed is just filled with that. And just all the hours going into it. I saw an interview with Alex Hermosy recently, and he made a comment that I thought was really profound. said, Yeah,

the more advanced we’ve gotten in content production, the more we spend time planning and the less time shooting. He’s like, all of our time is spent in the planning. And then the shooting is just like, you know, we come in and we’re ready to go. And I thought, that’s, that’s, that’s a professional. That’s, that’s what a professional is.

AJ (12:06)
But that’s, think,

that’s the same thing in business and in sales. It’s like a great sale happens because there was immense planning behind the scenes. There was research, there was review, there was product knowledge, there was training, and then a seeming, you know, short 30 to 60 minute conversation ends well. And it’s like, wow, you’re such a great salesperson. It’s like, no, you’re such a great practicer, right? You’re such a good rehearser. You’re such a good student. You’re such a good learner. ⁓ Things don’t happen without all of that.

And so I think a lot of us struggle with this idea of I can’t do it because they’re looking at someone else who’s done all the practice and comparing them to themselves who have done none of the practice.

Rory (12:47)
Yeah, there. Shout out to our friend, Phil Jones. We’ve had him on this podcast before. He wrote a book called Exactly What to Say. And I love one of his core philosophies is the worst time to think about what you’re going to say is in the moment when you’re saying it. Right. Like, and that’s like a classic example of an amateur, like the worst moment to like think about what you’re going to do or say is like in the moment it needs to happen. You haven’t prepped. You haven’t planned like you’re

not you’re not experienced leading leading into it.

AJ (13:20)
Cause you haven’t practiced it. And this is a good reminder for all of us. No one is good. The first time you do it, no one knows what you’re doing. The first time you do it, doesn’t matter who you are. Elon Musk, Jeff Bezos, it doesn’t matter. They did not know what they were doing until they did it.

Rory (13:37)
wish we still had you remember we made one of our first products was that that DVD called speaker that showed all the clips of me speaking it was horrible. I speaking at comedy clubs and Toastmaster clubs and we had it on film. And then you could see the world championship the world championship at the end. That’s such a powerful, a powerful thing. ⁓ All right.

AJ (14:00)
So I want to add one more thing to this because I think it’s really important. What I have found internally within our company at my previous profession as a sales trainer, working with companies, working with teammates, here’s one of the biggest things that I would say about this comparison thing that just drives me nuts is that people would rather fail live in the moment with a client versus, ⁓ I guess even be open to the embarrassment of role playing with their leader.

And it’s one of the things that as a leader, I’ve always done. It’s like, no, we’re going to role play this. And they’re just like, no, I’m like, no, we’re going to roll play this right now. And it’s like, we do that with a practice interviews and presentations and sales conversations. And it’s like, why would you expect for you to be good? The first time you ever did it with a paying client. And I would just, I caution to say like, it doesn’t matter what your profession is. It’s like, it is your job to practice before you go play the game.

Rory (14:57)
Did you imagine a pilot that learned how to fly with like, with you know, the first time or a surgeon that

AJ (15:02)
We were talking about

the other day. was like, I want the gray hair man in my pilot seat. you know, it’s, don’t want the fresh new person learning all this stuff. like, no, I don’t want your new techniques. I want the old tried and true techniques. Thank you very much. But I would say the same thing. when you think about going on camera or going on a stage, like how dare you think that somebody should pay you to speak in front of their people. And that’s the first time you’ve done it. Like.

So I think there’s some humility in going like, no, like we gotta take it back to, no, I’m gonna practice like I play and we’re gonna do it right and we’re gonna do it again and again and again so that when you get on stage, people are like, whoa, even if it was the first time, because the truth is it’s never the first time. I love it. Next one.

Rory (15:47)
Okay,

I’ve got another another really big limiting belief that I think hold the people back, I want to make sure we get to it. But do you have a burning one that you want to share? Or should I just jump in and share?

AJ (15:59)
I mean,

I don’t know if I would say it’s burning, so go ahead.

Rory (16:03)
Okay, so I’m going to say this and it’s going to sound like a sales pitch, but this is not a sales pitch. Well, it’s always a sales pitch. But I genuinely believe one of the most debilitating limiting beliefs that holds people back from building their personal brand is that they are in they are afraid to invest money into their business. And I don’t just mean coaching.

AJ (16:08)
Are you sure?

Rory (16:33)
I mean, they’re afraid to invest into a nicer camera. They’re afraid to invest into a nicer logo, into a nicer website, into running ads, into hiring a team member, into paying better to get better team members. And there is this fear always with money that that entrepreneurs have, especially when they’re like really starting out, where they go, ⁓ I’m not gonna hire you for coaching. You’re just trying to take advantage of me. Or like, ⁓ I don’t really need that camera. Like it’s it’s

you know, like, it’s probably not like necessary. And to an extent, nothing is necessary. Like it’s nothing is, you know, essential going to make or break like no bit of coaching or equipment or person is going to make or break your business like you are. But every one of those decisions levels up. And when you compound the leveling up of all of those things, and I just think that people, they don’t want to invest. And when you look at the people who are winning,

they invest time and money into equipment, into education, into coaching, into staff, into personnel. Like they spend money on their business. And I think this is one of the most critical limiting beliefs that holds people back.

AJ (17:50)
Where do you think that comes from?

Rory (17:53)
scarcity around money. Yeah, it comes from comes from scarcity around money. And especially, you know, I think about me growing up somebody who didn’t come from a lot of money. When you finally have like a little bit, it’s like money is survival. And when you equate money to like survival, it’s just like you cannot reinvest because it’s like, this is my survival. And there is an evolution that happens to on the way to becoming like a wealthier person that is money is a tool.

and I use money as a tool to grow and make more money among other things. so I think…

I think we live in a world of scarcity financially, and I think there’s a lot of horrible information about money. And frankly, there are no shortage of people trying to take advantage of you and take money out of your pocket and investment schemes and crappy coaches. And so I you know, there’s a part of that that I go, yeah, there’s you, know, you get burned a few times, and you’re like, I’m never doing that again. But I think entrepreneurs actually ironically have a much

like poor people are actually the ones who are more emotionally attached to money. can say this from having been there because it’s like this is my survival. I must have this. can’t let this go. I found that wealthy people are kind of emotional emotionally detached from money. It’s like a hammer. Many they have they view it more as a tool, right? And it’s like, yeah, I’d be upset if I lost my hammer. But it’s like, it’s just a hammer, like I can go get another hammer and make it happen. So anyways, that’s I think a

AJ (19:13)
depends.

Rory (19:28)
I think that’s a big one. What do you agree?

AJ (19:30)
I just say

that there’s a couple of things that you said. It’s not that I disagree with. think there’s just some perspective shifts. Um, and I think one of them is this whole idea. Oh, I’ve been burned a few times or I’ve even heard people say, I’ll never do that again. I’ll never pay for another conference. I’ll never hire another coach because it was such a bad experience. And my response has always been, I don’t know where this came from, but it’s just like, well, didn’t you learn from that experience? Like,

Isn’t that in and of itself a great lesson of what to do, what not to do, what you like, what you don’t like, what not to do next time, who not to hire next time? Isn’t that valuable in and of itself? And I think that just comes back to the principle of there is no failing, there’s no bad decisions, there’s only lessons learned.

Rory (20:03)
lesson.

AJ (20:21)
Right. And I think if we can have that perspective shift, when we think about learning and investing into your business, it’s like, even if it fails, even if it doesn’t work, even if it backfires, I will learn something is a mentality, a perspective shift that helps. I think people try again, do it again. ⁓ and I think that’s a really important thing is, you know, yeah, like you’re going to make mistakes. You’re going to hire the wrong people. Things aren’t going to work.

Let’s just call it what it is. Like it’s gonna blow up in your face. It’s gonna backfire. Things are going to break and not work. What did you learn?

Rory (21:00)
That’s so good. mean, that also makes me think of another another key difference between wealthy people and average people financially is that wealthy people always think longer term. So

a lot of people, especially if you don’t have a lot of money, right? This was me, even as a young entrepreneur, I remember literally emptying my bank account writing a check to Darren LaCroix for a humor class that was like, it literally was the last dollars in my account. ⁓ But

you know, I think about I was like $2,000 or something for this one class. And that was that was a lot of money to me. And I go, ⁓ my gosh, I’ve made 10s of 1000s of dollars over the course of my career from what I learned in those two days. But like, when you don’t have a lot of money, you’re like, Okay, I need to put a dollar in the machine. And if I don’t get to back to today or tomorrow, I’m never doing this again. And

AJ (21:59)
What happens more frequently even is if I don’t get it back in the short amount of time frame, I’m just going to quit altogether. Yeah. I’m just going to stop altogether. And it’s like success doesn’t happen overnight and growth and change definitely doesn’t happen overnight or in a week or in a month or in a year sometimes. And it’s like, you got to have that long-term perspective. I’d say one of the things that you said, I think is important to kind of highlight it’s now we live in an age and an era where learning and improving, there’s just no excuses. Anything you want to learn is out.

fingertips literally with a clickety clack of your type board there it goes between all of the new you know LLMs and blogs and podcasts it’s like no excuses yeah that doesn’t mean it’s all credible doesn’t mean it’s all but that whole idea that ⁓ I’m just I’m not gonna invest I’m not gonna try I’m not gonna learn it’s like that’s that we’re just beyond that there’s just there’s no excuse for that in today’s in today’s world

Rory (22:58)
And

I love what you’re saying there about like, we have spent so much money on kind of crappy or mediocre coaching or crappier, mediocre, like services or crappier, mediocre, like, you know, courses or knowledge or information or tools that we bought. But it’s like, it’s it’s valuable, even if it doesn’t work, because it’s like learning. I think it was Thomas Edison who said something like, you know, I learned it’s valuable negative information. It’s like,

You have to learn a thousand things that don’t work to find the one thing that does work.

AJ (23:32)
yet.

would say it’s like I’ve read plenty of books that I don’t recommend plenty of conferences that I wouldn’t go to again. Like there’s a lot of that and I can honestly say I learned something from every single book, from every single coach, from every single conference. It may not have been a multitude of things, but at least one thing. And my approach has always been whatever I’m going to do, what’s the one thing? I don’t need 10 things. I’m not going to do 10 things. I need one thing. What’s the one thing? And I’ve been to many events where it’s like I left halfway through

a third of the way through, not because it was bad, but it was like, I got what I needed. I’m good. Right? And if we all go through with this approach of just like, what’s the one thing? What’s the one thing I need? What’s the one thing that’s a takeaway for me? And often if you just open up your mindset and just go, I don’t need a lot of things. I don’t need all the things. I need one thing that I can go and actually change or start doing or stop doing or see differently. Even, you know, a lot of times I just leave with a perspective shift.

And that is worth it to me. And so I think again, all of those are just choices of going, how do I spend my time? How do I spend my money in order to get the results that I’m looking for? And then nothing is a bad investment. Everything is a good investment because you got something.

Rory (24:49)
Absolutely. So, all ⁓ right. I want to ask you a question, which is if somebody is watching right now and they’re struggling with these three limiting beliefs that we have, we have talked about. So they basically, you know, have like the novelty addiction of like the new thing. They have imposter syndrome or they have a scarcity around money. What do think they could do in the next seven days to do a mindset reset?

you will. Like, ⁓ we’ve been there and all three of these at many times in many places. What, what would you tell to somebody if they’re if they’re struggling with any of these things, you go the next seven days, here’s what you should focus on to shake free.

AJ (25:35)
Yeah, I would say the first thing is to go back through these things, which could be the novelty addiction or what I would call this shiny object syndrome. Could be the imposter syndrome or IE comparison, or it’s the scarcity of money, which I think you can also liken it to what am I to? I think it’s a lot of that comes to I’m choosing to see what I don’t have versus what I can glean from this. And I think all of those are to say, which one do you suffer from? Maybe they’re all of them, but let’s pick one.

Right? think the first thing you got to do in the next seven days is go, where is this showing up in my life? And you have to pinpoint the catalyst of it. And I would just encourage you to pinpoint which one of those three things is really nagging at your soul, because there’s typically one of them. And then I would say, I, this is really just have some time of reflection, grab a journal, get outside and give yourself 30 minutes to go. Where is that coming from?

What was the event that sparked this in my life? Because I believe that when you can pinpoint where it started or what triggered it, now you can take control over it. Right? And I think the reason that most of us keep living in this hamster wheel of the same thing, you know, happening again and again, ruminating in our lives is because we, we don’t have control over where it started so we can rewrite the narrative.

And so if you’re really struggling from, you know, imposter syndrome or comparison, then you got to sit down and go, when did that start? Where was it? What was it? What happened that started that? Because there was always an event. There was also, there was always a moment where there was a trigger that then began this pattern in your life. And I think it doesn’t take us long. It’s just, you just got to have the time and give yourself the mental space and permission to go there.

Because once you do, and once you can identify it, you can actually start to make tangible changes. You can say like, were you compared to someone else in the classroom? Or you compared to a sibling, right? Where you compared to other people on your team that were perhaps better at you at that season in your life at a sport or, you know, school or whatever it was. And I think a lot of it is just going back to where did that start so that you know, that’s not true in your life today.

It was an event that happened and it was a lie. Cause this whole episode is about lies. These are lies. These are not truths. Those lies started when you started to believe something that wasn’t true about yourself and you got to go back and go, when did that lie start? And how can I start to speak truth over myself to combat that lie? Because it’s not who you are today. We’re believing things today that started from one thing that happened years ago or decades ago, and we haven’t been able to let them go. That’s what I would do in the next seven days.

to truly, really start to eradicate these lies from your life.

Rory (28:26)
I love that. I love that. All right. So we need to go to the community question. want to, I want to wrap up. want to give you three, I want to give you three specific affirmations or mantras or beliefs that you could use to rewrite. If you’re struggling with these, these are things that have helped me. So number one, if you are struggling with this issue of like shiny object syndrome, the mantra, I always remind myself it’s in our book. If you have diluted focus, you get diluted results. Number two, if you’re struggling with

I would encourage you, this is a quote that I think about often, it’s from Mark Twain. said, each man is my superior in some way. And therefore, I am superior to each man in some way, right? So we all have value to learn and gain from each other. Number three, if you’re struggling with scarcity around money, I would encourage you to say, money is a tool that I invest and I use it to bring me more money.

So those are three little belief patterns you could adopt or try on and see if that helps you.

AJ (29:30)
Love it.

All right. So in this community section, right, this is one of the favorite times of this episode because we get to answer a question from our brand builders group community and everyone gets to submit a question and then they vote up on which one we’re going to talk about on the show today. So let me tell you, I know this is from Derek. He says, I’m a financial advisor with real expertise. I know my stuff, but I freeze every single time I try to film content. You’re not alone, Derek.

It’s not that I don’t know what to say. I just feel, let’s highlight that word, all caps, feel like I’m going to say something wrong or look stupid on camera. My coach keeps telling me it’s a mindset issue, but that advice hasn’t helped. Is there an actual tactical step-by-step way to train your brain to self-sabotaging when the camera is on?

Rory (30:26)
gosh, this is such a…

AJ (30:28)
Such

a question and applicable to 99 % of us. I have a few, but do you want to start?

Rory (30:32)
Yes, sure.

So

To me, like everything that we teach, there is a mental part of this and then there’s a technical part of this. Since he’s saying that ⁓ he’s been attacking the mental part, I’m gonna talk about a couple technical things. Okay, so number one, most technical tip I have if you feel nervous on camera is hit record on the camera long before you actually go to talk to it. So let it just be recording and just sit in the room

⁓ and get used to like, the camera’s on and it’s like, you just, because if you have to like hit record and start talking, there’s like this pressure of this moment being on. But if you just let the camera roll and just like, the camera’s just rolling all the time, you feel less of like, okay, time to like turn on and like go into presenter mode. And you get comfortable with the idea of just, ⁓ I’m being recorded, it’s not a big deal, we can edit it after. And you’re more likely to just talk to the camera.

that you would in your normal voice and not go into like presenter mode or influencer mode. Because I think that’s the big tip here is don’t think about looking at a camera and like, don’t think about I’m talking to thousands of people, pretend the camera is like a face and talk to the camera as if it’s like a person in your normal voice. So.

AJ (31:55)
Yeah, I think that’s good. tips. Mine are very similar to that. So I’ll just kind of tag on to that ⁓ is if you have a hard time talking to the camera, it’s because you’re really talking to yourself and that’s weird and it’s awkward. So don’t talk to yourself. Here’s two things that you can do. One, literally print out a picture of your avatar or your favorite client or your spouse or your best friend or whoever, whoever you want and tape it above the camera.

And so you’re not talking to the camera, a lens, you’re talking to a person. So what we tell people to do is like literally print out, like who’s your ideal client, right? Who’s the person that you’re making this content for or what do you imagine they would look like or, you know, just have a friendly face or whatever it is, but talk to the picture. Don’t talk to the camera, talk to the picture.

And it really helps us go, okay, this is actually for a person. And it becomes less about what you’re saying to the camera and more about serving the person. The other thing you can do is use a teleprompter. Right? It’s like, if you know your stuff and you know what to say, and you just freeze when the camera goes on and your mind goes blank, that happens to a lot of us. That’s just like our nerves are kicked in. So give yourself a little bit of a study guide. So use a teleprompter. Like we have plenty of people who use note cards on stages.

Right? Like that’s a normal thing. Don’t feel like you can’t use that here. So use a teleprompter or have a postcard, like a giant poster board in the back. Like those things help. And then one other quick tool or tactic I would say that would be really helpful is if you really freeze with that, then just have someone interview you so you can have a real conversation, a real dialogue. And then you just need a good editor.

right? So that you can cut things as they need. But it’s like, have someone actually stand behind the camera and ask you the questions and then you’re talking to them. So if the picture thing doesn’t work, the teleprompter doesn’t work, turning the camera on early doesn’t work, then you just need a real life human that you can have a real life conversation with because that, that is what makes great content. That’s what the conversational tone of even, you know, episodes like this happen because you’re just talking to a real human. And so get you someone to stand behind the camera and just ask you the questions.

Rory (34:01)
Love that. I can’t resist the opportunity to do a shout out for Nashville Creative Spaces right now. ⁓ So we own a building in Nashville called Nashville Creative Spaces and we have a teleprompter in that space and a live human. And one of the reasons I’m bringing it up is because people always tell us, I booked the studio so I didn’t have to worry about the right mic and the right camera and the right lighting. But what I got most was your team coaching me through the fear of what to say.

AJ (34:13)
and a live human.

Rory (34:30)
or how to say it and also just having the teleprompter right there. We solve all that problem for you. So ⁓ you can check out Nashville Creative Spaces. And if you are a personal brand who goes, you know what, I am struggling with some of these limiting beliefs that we’ve talked about on this episode and I do need the combination, the perfect blend of ⁓ mental and tactical and I want the accountability of being in a community or even having a one-on-one coach.

Go to freebrandcall.com forward slash podcast. You can request a call and talk with someone from our team to see if you might fit to be a part of our member, mission, our community of mission-driven messengers. And we’d love to get a chance to meet you. So for myself and AJ, this is a wealthy and well-known podcast. Share this episode with someone who you think needs it and don’t let those believing beliefs hold you back. We’ll catch you next time.

AJ (35:22)
you being a dabbler right now?

Rory (35:24)
be a dabbler. Subscribe.