the bossbabe podcast - 306. BTS - Our VIP Session with AJ + Rory Vaden On Building A Personal Brand

Episode Date: July 18, 2023

What is the 1 thing that you want to be known for? Grab your pen and paper because this episode is a behind the scenes pass into our VIP session with AJ + Rory Vaden. This episode will help you clearly define the one thing you want to be known for + show you how to build a personal brand that truly reaches people. We dive in deep on everything from how to define your uniqueness and who you’re meant to serve at the deepest level to how to create an offer by running it through their “DARES” framework. They’ve worked with some of the biggest + best brands in the world - like Lewis Howes, Lisa Bilyeu, Kevin Harrington, and so many more. This episode will truly blow you away - so get ready to learn, be inspired + get super clear on your next steps!  HIGHLIGHTS How to clarify the ONE THING you want to be known for The secrets + tactics to building a powerful personal brand that goes the distance + reaches your ideal customers Common mistakes to avoid when building your personal brand How to build a great offer + income stream by running it through the “DARES” framework LINKS Learn the simple, proven framework for growing your audience + making money on social media – bossbabe.com/influence  Book a FREE brand strategy call with Brand Builders Group - https://freebrandcall.com/bossbabe FOLLOW bossbabe: @bossbabe.inc Natalie Ellis: @iamnatalie AJ Vaden: @aj_vaden Rory Vaden: @roryvaden

When we talk about personal branding and personal brands, we are not talking about influencers. We are not talking about social media accounts. We are not talking about course creators. Those are all things that you do. But to us, a personal brand is really an extension of your reputation. It's an extension of who you are in a more intentional and formalized way that you are trying to figure out, like, who do I want to be? A boss babe is unapologetically ambitious and paves the way for herself and other women to rise, keep going, and fighting on. She is on a mission to be her best self in all areas.

It's just believing in yourself. Confidently stepping outside her comfort zone to create her own vision of success. Welcome back to the Boss Babe podcast. Okay, you guys, you know how I talk about bringing you behind the scenes? This is actually a real behind the scenes because I am currently doing a VIP day with Rory and AJ from the Brand Builders Group. This is actually my third or fourth VIP day with them. It is freaking incredible. And they started talking about building a personal brand and finding your uniqueness. And I was like, wait,

can I just hit record on this? Because I feel honestly bad gatekeeping so much of this information. And I know that building personal brands is something so many of you are interested in. So with that, I'm about to just hit record. And Rory, AJ, welcome to the Boss Babe podcast. Yeah, so happy to be here. Have you ever done this? Just hopped straight from like, okay, I'm working on your business too. Okay, let's podcast. First time.

Yeah, not in the middle of the session, like not in the middle of the day. Not like that. Well, it's going to be great. So I just want to introduce you both to the audience first. So Rory and AJ Vaden are eight-figure entrepreneurs and co-founders of Brand Builders Group, where they teach experts how to become more well-known and better monetize their personal brand. AJ is the CEO and Rory is a New York Times bestselling author and Hall of Fame speaker. And the reason I actually found you both was you've worked with so many of my friends and AJ is the CEO and Rory is a New York Times bestselling author and Hall of Fame speaker. And the reason I actually found you both was you've worked with so many of my friends and so many people that I'm sure the listeners have heard of.

Lewis Howes, Ed Milet, Tom and Lisa Bilyeu, Amy Porterfield, Jasmine Starr. And I first came to you months and months ago saying, I feel a little bit lost. I have so many ideas. I feel like I've gone in a completely different direction and I'm wearing a whole new identity in this postpartum period. Can you help me? And you've both done a lot more than help me. I've never felt clearer than I do right now. I mean, I'm not even exhausted. I'm just excited about all the things that we've been working on. So where I would really love to start

is the place that you started with me. And that is breaking through as a leader, because we know not everyone breaks through, you know, a lot of people start personal brands, very few people become very influential. So can you give us a bit of context and start there? Yeah, totally. So I think the best piece of personal branding advice that I've ever received, or I'd say that we've ever heard, it's not actually one of our quotes, it's from somebody else. It's from a guy named Larry Wingate. And he said early on, and we heard this early in our career, he said, the goal is to find your uniqueness and exploit it in the service of others. Find your uniqueness and exploit it in the service of others.

And as soon as I heard it the first time, I was just like, that is so brilliant. But Larry was never in the business of teaching people how to do that. And so when we sold our former company, so AJ and I started our former company as business partners. Then we fell in love. Then we got married. Then we had kids. We grew that business from zero to eight figures. We sold that company in 2018. And then we didn't really have an idea for a new business. And we got into this one. We said, okay, we got to help people figure out how to find their uniqueness. And so the way that I think about it, the way we talk about it actually is through this illustration called Sheehan's Wall. And we named this after one of our colleagues, Peter Sheehan, who originally taught us the origin of the concept, which we've adapted to personal brands. But in any industry or vertical or group, there's basically two different types of people, right? There's people who are unknown. They're struggling with obscurity. They're not recognizable. And then there are people who are

known. They're well-known. They have notoriety. They have recognition. And in between those two groups is what we call or what we refer to as she hands wall, this giant invisible barrier. And what most people are doing is they're trying to break through to move from being unknown to becoming known. people on the unknown side of the wall look at the people on the known side of the wall and they say, well, I want to do all the things they're doing. So they look at Oprah and Brene Brown and Nell Robbins and Tony Robbins and Gary Vaynerchuk and they try to emulate what those people are doing. And, you know, like Gary Vaynerchuk is a great example actually, right? So, you know, he talks about Web3 and social media and sports and entertainment and investing and NFTs and all these different things. And so we go, I'm going to talk about all the things I'm passionate about.

And what happens is we bounce off the wall. We have too many messages. And then we also, like every time you go online, you see somebody showing a new ad for like how to make money with masterminds or courses or membership sites or become a keynote speaker or write a book or be a consultant or do retreats. And we have all these different business models. And so we go, oh, I want to have multiple streams of income. And so we launch all these business models.

And then it's like, oh, I got to be on Instagram and I got to be on Snapchat and podcast and YouTube and TikTok. And so then we're on all these platforms. And what happens is we bounce off the wall because when you have diluted focus, you get diluted results. And that is what's happening to most people. They have too many messages to too many audiences, too many different business models, basically too many ideas and not enough focus and not enough execution. And so they're bouncing off the wall. And so really our entire strategy is to help people figure out what is the one thing you can be known for? What is the one audience that you can serve in the deepest way. One is the one revenue stream that matters

above all others. And as we elevate that, we break through the wall on that one thing, doing that one thing really well. And then once you're on the other side of the wall, you then can expand into lots of other things. But that's not how you get there. You don't get there by doing lots of things. You get there by doing a very, very select few things really, really well. And one of the things I want to add to everything that Rory just said that I think is really important. And one, I also have to correct Rory because he's being overly gracious and kind to me and our former business, we did sell, but I also got super fired in all transparency. And, you know, just to be really honest and clear. And, and I think it's,

it's actually really important part of the story because what I find around this topic of personal branding, in addition to finding your uniqueness and, you know and finding that one business model and increasing focus, one of the things that people actually struggle with the most with this term personal branding is actually even understanding what is a personal brand. And it's become really convoluted and muddied over the last few years because of how prominent that term is used. And let me just, I just, I think this is really important for the audience to know when we talk about personal branding and personal brands, we are not talking about influencers. We are not talking about social

media accounts. We are not talking about course creators. Those are all things that you do, right? Those are all professions that you have, titles that you carry, tasks that you perform every day. But to us, a personal brand is really an extension of your reputation. It's an extension of who you are in a more intentional and formalized way that you are trying to figure out like, who do I want to be? And I don't think we have spent nearly enough time in most of our lives actually thinking about what do I want to be known for? So most of us have built a personal brand. You just don't know it. The question isn't, do I want to build one? It's like, no, you already have one. It just may not be the one you want per se. And that's what I was really struggling with prior to this company is I had

put zero intention around doing or becoming what I actually wanted. And instead had spent the better part of 13 years chasing titles, chasing accolades, being overly ambitious, focusing on the money, trying to prove myself, prove my worth without ever stopping to think, is this actually what I want? Is this actually what I want to do and what I want to be known for? And that's where this starts. It's like, what do you actually want to be known for? And then how do you become known for that thing, which is ultimately your personal brand? The formalization, digitization, and eventually monetization of your reputation. So many things that you've said, I totally relate to as well. And one thing Rory and I were just talking about earlier was one thing I really want to encourage women to do is shed the shoulds. I should be doing this, but actually, what do you

want? And what I find is, especially for those of us that are super ambitious, it's so easy to just keep doing, doing, doing, and not really stop to think about who am I? What is my identity? And if we say your personal brand is your reputation and it is part of you, you do really have to have that identity piece dialed in. And that's one of the hardest things for us to do. It's so much easier to create the course, to put the funnel out there, to post the content. But also I can't brush over, you were super fired. We need to get into this. What do you mean? I was super fired. So as Roy mentioned, we started this first company together with two other business partners. One of them was my childhood best friend, fresh out of college,

you know, with so much experience at the ripe young age of 21 is when I entered into starting this business. And it grew in spite of our ignorance and naivety. It was probably because of our naivety. It grew really fast to be super successful. And over the next 10, 12 years, it grew into the eight figures. We had 200 coaches, all these cool things, except for I knew in my core that I should not be there. And I kept pushing that down saying, but I've recruited all these people. We're making all this money. Like we're getting to travel the world. There was excuse after excuse, but there was a deep knowing that I was not supposed to be here and that I wanted to leave. And in fact, I had brought up leaving the company a couple of times prior to my getting fired and didn't convince myself or let others convince me not to because

of the money, because of the obligation to other people. And so then on May 4th, 2018, I walked into a routine budget meeting with our majority shareholder and left that meeting unemployed. And that was a result of me sharing my honest feedback and opinion a few weeks earlier, tied to some other things. But it was the most painful and necessary thing that ever happened in my life because I didn't have the courage to do what I know I should have done. And so for myself, regardless of what anyone else believes, I'm super into my faith. I love the Lord. I'm a big follower of Jesus. And I just felt like God came in on that day and said, you don't have the courage to do it. So I'm going to do it for

you, but we're going to do it my way. And I needed it. It was necessary. Which was immediate and flamboyant and painful in some ways, but it was quick. But necessary. And so, yeah, I walked in and then I walked out. By the time I hit the door to the building, it was very well orchestrated. All my contacts were removed from my phone. My team had already been notified. All of my accounts had already been shut down. So this was not sudden. This was well orchestrated, well planned, and a very healthy, almost seven-figure income

went to zero overnight. What you said there, it just made me think of, you know, I should want this. And I've been there too. You know, you have all the things and you think, why am I not happy? I should want this. This is what everyone else thinks I should want this. And I've been there too. You have all the things and you think, why am I not happy? I should want this. This is what everyone else thinks I should want. And another thing you said brought up, we were hosting an event for our CEO Mama Mastermind a couple of weeks ago. And someone was talking out loud, saying all the things she thinks she

should be doing. And one of the women in there, Catherine, she was like, what's the secret desire here? Because I'm telling you, if you don't make that secret desire known, God's source universe will make it known for you. And it's almost that secret desire you had was actually, I don't think I want to be here, but if you don't have the courage, eventually it's going to happen. So I love the way that you shared that. And, and so then how did the, the business idea you have, you both have now come to play? When did both of you realize, wait, we are really good at building brands. So yeah, you don't actually know this, this story, Natalie. So, so AJ got fired, you know, then we decided like I needed to leave also. So I resigned. And like almost to the day, we got a phone call from a gentleman who I had become friends with because when our first book

came out, 2012, Take the Stairs, it hit the New York Times. I was on this podcast that was new called the School of Greatness Podcast. And I was talking to the guy and I was like, gosh, this guy's really cool. And it was Lewis Howes, of course. And I said, to the guy and I was like, gosh, this guy's really cool. And it was Lewis Howes, of course. And I said, hey, are you ever going to write a book one day? He's like, I've actually been thinking about it. And I was like, oh, well, let me share with you. We just went through it and here's how we pulled it off and what we did. And so we became friends with Lewis just from a cold pitch. I was on his show. I was 29. We were the same age. So we were like young guys.

And then we pretty much lost touch with him a few years later. Had not heard a peep from Lewis. And almost to the day, Lewis called us after we leave the company. And he says, I don't know why, but I feel like I need to talk to you. He said, my business has really grown, but I'm struggling because I have a lot coming at me. We're being successful, but I have so many things, so many directions, so many people, so much. I'm working like crazy. And he said, I feel like I need your brain on my business. Would you guys be willing to spend

any time? Do you have any time open? And it was like, oh, turns out the calendar's wide open. Can you tell me the time? We had no plan. We had no plan. We also had no money, right? So this is part of the story, right? So we both had good incomes. They went straight to zero. We did have good savings. We did have good savings. We were very, we're savers. Yeah.

So that was part of why we were able to survive. But like, you know, we basically, you know, lost our incomes. We had just built this house. We had just had our first baby. And Louis came and he spent two days with us. And he said, this is so incredible. I know so many people that need what you just did for me. He's like, I'm going to have you on my podcast and we're going to tell the world that this is what you do. And Lewis was the one

who told us that this is what we were supposed to do. Brand Builders Group would not exist if it were not for Lewis Howes, because he had us on the podcast a couple weeks later. We had no website. We had no employees. We had no bank account. We had no plan. And here's the other thing that happened. When we left the other company, we had no social media following now.

We had no database. We had no email list. We had nothing except reputation. The one thing we had was a trusted reputation because of the value we had provided earlier. Let's take a quick pause to talk about my new favorite all-in-one platform, Kajabi. You know, I've been singing their praises lately because they have helped our business run so much smoother and with way less complexity, which I love. Not to mention our team couldn't be happier because now everything is in one place. So it makes collecting data, creating pages, collecting payment, all the things so much simpler. One of our mottos at Boss Babe is simplify to amplify and Kajabi has really

helped us do that this year. So of course I needed to share it here with you. It's the perfect time of year to do a bit of spring cleaning in your business, you know, get rid of the complexity and instead really focus on getting organized and making things as smooth as possible. I definitely recommend Kajabi to all of my clients and students. So if you're listening and haven't checked out Kajabi yet, now is the perfect time to do so because they are offering Boss Babe listeners a 30-day free trial. Go to kajabi.com slash Boss Babe to claim your 30-day free trial. That's kajabi.com slash Boss Babe. This is one of our flagship mantras at BBG is we say you always need to build relationships before you need them. Build relationships before you need them.

Give first, serve first, add value first. with until our session coaching yesterday, where you shared that you spent the first year, just like an entire year, just giving content, never selling anything for a whole year. And people overlook that and they go, oh, the reason why your funnel is not converting is because you don't have enough traffic or you don't have the right offer structure or you don't have and it's like, no, it's because you don't have enough trust. Trust must take place before there's a transaction. They don't know who you are. You haven't added value to them yet. You can't extract something from an account that is on zero. And so we had done that with Lewis. We never needed anything from Lewis, never thought we wanted. His podcast honestly wasn't that big back then. And so we started working with Lewis in 2018. And he is still to this day, the client we've worked the most closely with. And since that in the last couple of years, he's gone from 30 million total downloads to over 500 million total downloads. We took him through this Sheehan's wall process of focus. He had 17 revenue streams when we started.

We reduced that down to three. His revenue grew. He became an eight-figure business, sold the podcast. We just helped him plan his most recent book launch. We hit the New York Times again. And that first podcast sent thousands, over a thousand leads to us. We had no website. All we had was a ghetto landing page that said, request a call, fill out this form. And now, brand builders, we should hit eight figures this year. You mentioned several of the other clients we've worked with and Amy Porterfield and Eric Thomas and all these amazing people. And this will be our sixth multi-seven figure business. And this will be our second

eight figure business. It should be by the end of this year. And it's because of reputation and trust and God's divine orchestration and just the blessing of finding our uniqueness in the process of helping other people find theirs. Wow. I love that so much. And it's, it just really goes to show, you know, when you're willing to say yes, the things that will open up for you, willing to go on the podcast before the website's ready, ready to just say yes and go, go ahead. One thing I want to dive into is this idea of uniqueness. And you'd said, you know, becoming known for one thing and being totally honest. So this is now our fourth day that we've done together.

When we were going to be doing our first two days, you'd kind of mentioned, we'll figure out what's the one thing you want to be known for. And coming into that, I just felt so incredibly nervous. And I thought, well, good luck you guys, because I am, you know, very confused about what that one thing, there's probably 10 things. There's so many things. And I didn't think we'd even get to it by the end of day two, nevermind within, I think three hours of day one. So it's possible. But if I felt like that, my guess is there's a lot of people listening also feeling similarly of Natalie, I can barely even tell you what I do

in one sentence, nevermind one word. What do you say to that? I'm happy to start. And I would say my comments will probably be vastly different from Rory's. So you may get to completely different sets of answers here. But in my opinion, this is a huge part of what people struggle with because they simply don't know what questions to answer. They don't make the time to think and they don't have the right questions to walk them through the process of what is my uniqueness and how do I uniquely do things. And most of the reason why is because we're always centered on ourself. We're always thinking about what do I do? How do I do this? And it's like, it's really nothing about you.

And I think that's where we differ a little bit when it comes to personal branding than others out there. I often get asked, don't you think being in the field of personal branding, isn't that just a little prideful and egocentric? And don't you feel like you're just a little self-promotional all the time? And my answer to that is always, well, if you are, you're doing it wrong. It's not supposed to be that way because the heart of how you find your uniqueness is you figure out who is this person that I am best and most well-positioned to serve? And then how can I serve them in the deepest and most meaningful way? And when you start it from, it's not about you, it's about them. The context of how you think

about who you are, what you do, how you do it, why you do it shifts off of this self-centered idea, not like in a negative way, just in a real reality way. And back onto, it's like, no, who am I actually making this content for? Who am I running this business for? And if it's just about you, then that's where the first shift needs to happen. It's like, you will always, always find a way to run a successful business. If you truly do it in the service of other people, it will always pay off. Not always immediately, but eventually it will pay off. And we always say it's like the people who work with us at BBG are ultimately people who want to make money as a byproduct of living on a mission. And finding that uniqueness starts with not so much so many self-reflective questions, but more focused on who am I called to serve and how can I serve that person in the best way? And by doing a process of elimination questions, you're able to kind of fine tune that uniqueness. Rory will likely say something slightly different. No, I mean, so one of the things that happened, Natalie, like obviously when we started,

we didn't have a formal process, right? The first time Lewis came, we were just like basically answering his questions and like bouncing ideas off of him. And then we created frameworks. You know, that's something we're big on, like lots of frameworks and structure. But once we started bringing on strategists

and we started to scale, because we've now taken over 1,700 people through this process and it's a six question framework to help someone find their uniqueness generally takes like the better part of a day. And then we create some other stuff on day two. And when we started training other strategists, we really had to refine our process and our methodology. And, you know, we can certainly talk about any of the six questions if you want, but I'll tell you the shortcut. If there is a secret, we discovered it, but we didn't know when we started the company. We know it now because we started training other people. And here's the pattern that we noticed.

And so we started to train the strategist. What we learned and we realized is that for all of us, you are most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were. You're most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were. So if there is a shortcut to finding your uniqueness, it's about figuring out who can I serve? So the questions, part of what we ask is, you know, we believe that somebody's uniqueness lives at the intersection of who they've always been and who they feel called to be. And so a part of what we ask is, you know, we believe that somebody's uniqueness lives at the intersection of who they've always been and who they feel called to be. And so a part of what we're doing is diving, you know, introspectively like into their past. You basically say, what challenge have you conquered?

What obstacles have you overcome? What setback have you survived? What tragedy have you triumphed over? Whatever that is, that struggle, those problems were a part of preparing you and shaping you into becoming the person that you needed to be one day so that you could reach back and help somebody else. It gives context for your life. It gives purpose for your pain. And it provides clarity for the business model of your personal brand. Because nobody can serve those people like you can. And so for us, I remember being in the

audience, looking at a stage, I'm being at a huge stage and going, how do you get to be the speaker on that stage? I remember walking through the airport and seeing a book on the shelf with this New York Times bestselling, bestseller burst on the cover and going, how do you get to be that person? Like, and this is really fun. We actually, you mentioned some of the very well-known clients we work with. Most of the clients we work with are not as well-known as you and like Ed Milad and people like that. The vast majority of our clients are much younger or newer or more novice, but we actually

just helped our 14th client become a New York Times or Wall Street Journal bestselling author. 14 times that's happened. We have two clients right now who just released TED Talks. They're both on track to hit a million views. Once that happens, it will be the sixth time. They'll be number five and number six. Six clients that have created TED Talks that have gone viral with over a million views. Seven of our clients have grown their revenues more than a million dollars a year since we started working with them.

And that's because we know that pain, right? And we know it recently. We know it very viscerally, like, what is it like to start over? What is it like to be on zero? You know, we had this great business in this platform. And then all of a sudden, we woke up one day, and it was gone. We were back on zero. I mean, imagine waking up tomorrow, and your team, your revenue, your systems, your money, your followers are all zero. And going, we feel so behind.

We feel like everyone else is so far ahead of us. We know what that feels like. And so we're really well suited to help, as AJ described, we call them mission-driven messengers. The people who, they want to make money, but money is subservient to the mission. They want to make income, but it's subservient to impact. We want revenue, but revenue is subservient to reputation. That's who our heart is for. And when we're working with clients, we just have to figure out who their heart is for. And it's almost always for the person they

once were, because that's who they can serve in the deepest way. Oh, I just love that so much. And specifically, when we look at people on stages, or we see a face on a bookshelf and think, how did they get there? Because I remember when I had about 10,000 Instagram followers, and I look at people with a million, and I just think that's impossible. I have no idea how I'm gonna get there. It feels physically impossible. And then I remember doing it and realizing it actually wasn't as hard as I thought.

And it's this, I always try and demystify influence and you're both doing the exact same thing. Let's demystify it because often what happens is a lot of this knowledge is contained to mastermind rooms that you normally need to have achieved a certain level to even get into. And, you know, I am part of some of those rooms and I want to take the knowledge out of those rooms and say, Hey, there is a roadmap that every single one of us has followed to

getting in there. And it's really less about how hard it is and more just, are you willing to really, I think, slow down and look within and get quiet and see what comes up? Do you agree of like, when people come to these sessions and even answering that question that you put out there, you have to be willing to really slow down and take a good look and get honest about where you're at, where you want to go, unapologetically claiming that and how you want to save the world. Yeah. I would say there's two things to what you just said that we see all the time. The first

thing is that people are so, I'm going to use the word desperate because that's how I feel like they are. They're so desperate to get it done that they want to skip steps. And they would rather see the pretty website go live and the pretty graphics on social media than actually know what the purpose of those things is for. Instead of having a well-converting funnel or website, they'd rather just have it pretty and have it done. And it's like, it's really expensive to make it really pretty, really fast. And then they use up their time, money, and resources. And then they're mad that it's not working. It's like building a house on a weak foundation, right?

It's like, yeah, you want a good blueprint before you get started, right? And then you want a really good foundation before you start going up high. And it's no different with our businesses and our personal brands, but we see other people and we compare our step one to their step 1000. And we're trying to skip the 999 steps in between. So that's the first thing that really people struggle with is like, they want to go fast, too fast, and they want to go out of order. They want it done when they want it done.

Cause we're so used to this instant gratification that doing the hard work seems really hard. And that's because it is one of my favorite quotes of all time is thinking is rare. So very few people do it because it's hard work. Right. Thinking is hard, which is why so few people do it. That's the first thing is it's slowing down, but then it's also, it's not comparing your process to anybody else's. And it's also not doing something just because other people in the market are doing it. People come to us all the time going, what do you think about challenge funnels? And I'm like, don't know, never done one. I have no idea. I don't know. And it's like, why do you care? I'm really curious. You've also never done a funnel. Why are you asking? And I think a lot of that lends itself to the second

thing that we see is like to your point of, are you willing, right? Are you willing to do the work and what we see more often today than ever before. And I also have to preface, we come from a heavy sales background. And in my opinion, sales is the most important attribute of any entrepreneur, of any CEO. If you do not know how to bring in revenue, we're at a standstill. So sales first mentality in my book. But what we see all the time from people who are coming across our path is they want to figure out how do I attract and convert strangers on the internet instead of actually talking about what they do with people they come across every day. And I'm like, instead of trying to figure out how to grow your 500 person

following, can we please talk about the 200 people that you actually have in your cell phone first? And there's a back to that process of things of they want it seemingly for the right reasons, but deep down there's ulterior motives that we haven't brought to the surface, which is I want to feel important because I have a lot of likes. I want to feel like I'm making a difference without caring about the one person. Right. I tell this all the time. This is we tease internally that it's the law of AJ because I only have like 10,000 followers on social.

I don't spend and invest a ton of time in that. I know that's weird. We're in a personal branding business, but I don't. But you don't, but you don't have to have millions of followers to make millions of dollars. And I share this example to our team and I'll share it here. It's if you knew that you helped change the trajectory of just one person's life, like if one person came to you and said, because of this thing, this thing I read, I heard, I experienced this conversation, whatever it was, it has changed my life.

Would that not make this worth it? And instead we get upset when we only get 50 likes or a hundred likes or, or even a thousand. We're like, man, that was really down. And it's like, that was a thousand people. Like you're touching, you're impacting lives. Don't forget every one of those people actually has a face and a life and a name behind each of those little things online. Whereas in person, we feel that impact more, but yet that's harder. It's more uncomfortable. It's more out of our comfort zone. But that is really where a lack of willpower we see today is that you're not willing to go to the networking meetings. You're not willing to have the sales conversations. You're not willing to

ask for referrals from your current clients. You're not willing to pick up the phone and cold call or talk to a stranger in line at the tiki bar, wherever you are, whatever you're doing. It's like, we have just as much of our business comes from the personal relationships we have than from social media or anything else online. Like even with Lewis, it's like he would have never had us on a show to launch our business if we didn't have that offline relationship. And so there's a power of both, what are you doing in an offline setting paired with how can you multiply those efforts on an online setting? So true. I just recently had a conversation with a friend actually talking about

that. They'd had someone on their podcast that was really high profile that I never see do interviews. And I messaged him and I said, Hey, this is incredible. How did you do that? And he said, it's all about my offline relationships, the majority of what people don't see. And I think it's so true. And it's not to say that having a following is wrong and it's not going to get you there, but it's also really examining what's the goal here. A lot of people will come to me and say, okay, I want to grow 10,000 followers. And I'm like, okay, that's fine, but let's go deeper. What's the why?

And what I'll realize is they want to make an extra $10,000 a month. And I tell them, you don't necessarily need to add followers to make that happen. There's so many ways, but actually knowing what you want is really important, which also brings me onto something that we would also talk about in our VIP day that I really want is really important, which also brings me onto something that we would

also talk about in our VIP day that I really want to talk about, which is I was talking about business models and feeling like right now I have so many ideas. I could go in so many different directions. And you had this incredible model, the DES model that really breaks down what to look for when you are deciding on your business model. And I really wish someone would have told me this in the beginning of my first business. It would have made things a lot easier. I feel like I kind of got the grasp of this with Boss Bay, but with my first business, I had no idea. So will you walk us through what that model is? Yeah, that's a good one. And, you know, On the business model conversation, just on the mindset here a little bit, I think there's a couple mistakes that people have in their mindset about this.

The first mistake in their mindset is they think, I want to have multiple streams of income. Because you hear that all the time, like you got to have multiple streams of income. You got to have like passive income and all these things. Nobody ever got rich from multiple streams of income. Everybody who is rich, got rich from one freaking amazing stream of income. They did one thing, thing you know we have our close mutual friend jamie kern lima right it was like she did it cosmetics that was she wasn't doing it cosmetics and amazon cards and brand deals and keynote speaking and like she it was like it cosmetics she's that one thing and that is how wealth is created it It's just like Sheehan's wall. You get really good at one thing. And so it's less of figuring out, oh, what's the magical business model? That's the other thing is people go, well, what's the right one? Like, what's the best one? And it's less about figuring out which one is right and more about picking one and making it right, about protecting it and deciding this is the one revenue stream above all others, that this is the one that I'm going to make sure come hell or high water, if everything else fails,

this is the one that's going to work. And it's kind of the same thing of our whole strategy as you go, he who chases two rabbits catches neither, right? That's a Chinese proverb. Like if you're a small business,, you have limited resources, limited time, limited money, limited people. If you dilute that across multiple streams of income, each one is very weak. But if you focus those on one, the likelihood of that one succeeding goes way up, don't you think? I mean, if you just took all of your best resources and pointed them at one direction, isn't there a higher likelihood that that one thing would succeed? And so I think that's one of the worst pieces of vice on the internet, multiple

streams of income, stupid. Now, once you're filthy rich and you've got billions of dollars, sure, spread it around, invest it in different things, but that's not how you get rich. You get rich by having one amazing stream of income. So when we take clients through this process, so our flagship first experience, you know, we have 14 different two-day experiences, right? You're in the middle of the second two-day experience, but in finding your brand DNA, we help people really get clear on four things. What problem do you solve in one word? Who do you solve that problem for? How do you solve that problem in one sentence? And what is the one revenue stream that all others are going to be subservient to? So when we get to that money part, because by the way, we don't really do personal branding.

We really do personal brand strategy. We are a personal brand strategy. Personal branding is visual identity. We don't do visual identity. We do human identity, right? We do business identity. We're figuring out like who you are. We're not in the visual expression part, right? We use vendors and stuff like that to help us with that. But you get to the financial part, we use a model called D.A.R.E.S. Okay, it's a simple technique. D.A.R.E.S. We say, okay, let's look for the dares. Let's pick a business model that has as many of these characteristics as possible. And the D stands for digital. The A stands for automated.

The R stands for recurring. The E stands for evergreen. And the S stands for scalable. Digital, automated, recurring, evergreen, and scalable. So we're looking for which product or service offering could you create that has the most number of those characteristics. Because if it's digital, that means you have no warehousing costs. You don't have no manufacturing costs. You don't have patents and you don't have shipping and tariffs and logistics and warehousing. So digital. If it's automated, that's really powerful because

that means it's self-service. It means you don't have to have a bunch of people on your staff in order to deliver the offering because the customer serves themselves. It's automated. If it's recurring, that's powerful because they don't just buy it once. They pay for it again and again and again and again. If it's evergreen, that means it never needs to be updated. So you make it once and then it's done. And then scalable means that you can add revenue without adding infrastructure and overhead. And this is the difference between growth and scale. Growth means more revenue.

The fastest way to grow your revenue is to grow your expenses. Do more advertising, add more people, add more infrastructure. Your revenue will go up. Your expenses will go up with it. Growth is different than scale. Scale is growing revenue while holding expenses or growing revenue at a rate that is faster than which your expenses are rising. That's profitability, right?

So how can you scale? What offering is scalable? So the truth is there's no business model that has all five of those perfectly and you can make money doing any of them. I mean, like, Sarah Blakely from Spanx is a great example of someone who used their personal brand, you know, has a great personal brand and has a great business, right? She's selling clothing.

You know, Elon Musk uses his personal brand to sell Teslas, like Richard Branson uses his personal brand, sell all sorts of different things. So you can sell physical products, if you're really good at it. And you go, I'm going to get really good at that one thing. So you can make money selling products. You can make money doing membership sites. You can make money doing courses. You can make money as a Hall of Fame speaker. You can make money writing books. The one thing that doesn't work is to try to make money doing all of those things. That's where people fail, they bounce off the wall. And so they're not failing because of a lack of skill. It's because of distraction. Distraction is a dangerously deceptive saboteur of our goals. And so anyways, that's the dares. I think it's so great to lay it out like that,

because a lot of people probably find that they have gold in what they've already got. I wonder if you guys find this because I have clients come to me a lot where something's really working. And they're like, Okay, but I but I want something else. I want to burn it all down and create something else. How do you deal with that? Cause I feel like you probably get it a lot. Yeah. It's interesting. It's I bet if we were to look at the two primary things that people initially come to us for, it's one, they're trying to start some new thing, right? Launch a course, write a book, build a speaking career, something like that. While they're like, well, what I have is on autopilot is what we hear. It's working. So I'm going to go and do this new thing. And so often it's, they're not connecting

the idea that they can do what they want with what they currently have. That somehow is eclipsed the thought process. Like this is just a, this happened here recently. A really good friend of mine also happens to be a client of ours at Brand Builders Group. And he sold his dental practice, really successful. And now he started a mastermind for passive income dentists, which is brilliant in its infrastructure. But he struggled and challenged with, I really want to help people with spiritual breakthroughs. And so he's like, how quickly can I just make this thing successful and put it on autopilot so I can do this thing?

And every single conversation we have is like, you know, you can do this, both of those with the same group of people. Right. And it's just connecting the dots and you don't have to start something new to live out this calling you have to serve the people that you, you can do both at the same time. And I think it's a lot of times people don't realize they think somehow I'm going to water down what I'm currently doing. I'm going to confuse people if I add this other thing in. And the truth is, is that's not the case because if it has to do with you somewhere in the depths of you, there's a through line between everything that you're doing, your past, your present and the future. There is a through line. You just don't know what it is yet. So you don't see how

they all connect, which is what we do is like, we help connect the dots of what did you start? What do you want to start? What do you want to start one day in the future? And what's the through line to make them all cohesive and consistent and work together so that you don't feel fragmented, but you don't have to quit one thing to do the next. What do you think a good question people could ask themselves is to find that through line if they are maybe doing something right now that they're thinking about closing, shutting down and moving on to the next or they have multiple things? What's something they could dive into to start identifying that?

There's a couple different facets of that conversation. One is like, what's the message you have? Like, how do you find the through line of your message? Which I think, you know, like what AJ described is like the emotional side or the artistic side of going, you know, if you have a bunch of real estate agents in your audience and you go, yeah, but I want to teach people about time management. You go, well, why don't you teach the real estate agents about time management? Or why don't you help them? But then the same thing applies financially.

So basically, the concept here is, how do you serve people in a deeper way? And to me, that's the question. What audience can you serve in the deepest way? Not who can you do a good job for? Who can you change their freaking life? If somebody wants to become a bestselling author or a speaker, like a household speak on big stages, we can change their freaking life. We know it upside down, inside and out. The speaking business, the book business, it's what we do. And financially, it also applies. So this is more a logical side.

This is a tactic, a technique that we walk people through. So this is called fractal math. To AJ's point about going the gold, or even what you said, Natalie, the gold is right in front of you. Fractal math says that 10% of your audience will invest at a level 10 times to what they just invested. Okay. So if you had a thousand people buy a $30 product, right?

You generated 30,000 in revenue. You got a thousand people. So if you go, how do I double my revenue? So I got, I generated $30,000. One way to double your revenue is to go, oh, I just need to get another thousand people to pay me $30. But that's actually the most expensive way to double your revenue. The hardest revenue is to sell to a new customer. The cheapest, fastest, most profitable revenue is to sell to an existing customer. Everyone is so focused on width that they are forgetting about depth. They're trying to reach millions of people not realizing they could actually make millions of if they helped a couple dozen people who were their perfect client buy in a deeper way. I mean that mathematically. Okay. So if you say

fractal math, 10% of the audience will invest 10 times more. So if you had a thousand customers that bought at 30, that means that a hundred people, so 10% of a thousand to a hundred, would buy something that's $300. Well, guess what? 300 times 100 is 30,000. There you doubled your revenue and you have no new customer acquisition cost and you already had trust. So you're extending the trust. So it shortens the sales cycle, accelerates the revenue, and the profitability is higher. And it keeps going. So if you had 100 people buy it, $300, that means that 10 people, 10% of 100, 10 people would buy something that costs $3,000. Now, that's another 30,000. If you have that many people, so we're at 10 people

buying a 3,000, right? 10 people buying 3,000, which means that one person, 10% of the 10, one person would buy a $30,000 product. So in that fractal math scenario, we have gone deep. We have quadrupled our revenue without adding a single new impression, without adding a single new email address, without adding a single new follower, without running a single additional ad, we have served our current people in a deeper way. And so we're not against more reach. I mean, holy Lord, if we had millions of people, it's hard to get our mind wrapped around what you could do with that. But everyone is just, they think that the only way to make money is to go wider. And for some people that will work, right? Like you do a great job.

You crush that like way better than we do, right? You guys reach millions of people, but they're overlooking how most people are going to make more money faster is not going wider. It's going deeper. So don't be so concerned about the width of your reach that you forget about the depth of your impact. I just want to shout this from the rooftops. And it just reminds me of a conversation I had on Monday. I was working with a client and they are masters at email marketing.

And they were telling me they spoke from stage and they sold $27,000 worth of their product on stage. And within the next few months, they went on to generate $500,000 from that exact list of buyers. Those exact people that had bought $27,000 worth of product went on to buy another $500,000 worth of product. And what they were saying was, a lot of people think, you know, you've emailed your list, you've, you've told people about what you do and it ends there. Okay. We don't want to push anymore. We don't want to keep selling. It ends there. And actually majority of it is when you continue selling and you find the offer that really fits

for them. So I love that you said that because it just goes back to what we were talking about the beginning of, you know, you don't need millions of followers to make millions of dollars. You can do this. And not that everyone listening, their goal is to make a million dollars, but you can build something really successful with what you've got, which I know we need to get back into our VIP day because I don't want to waste my time with you guys. But there's one question that I want to end this on. And I want to ask you being behind some of the biggest personal brands that we in the world know. And you've worked with people that have millions and millions and millions of followers. Now I want to know what you think is the single greatest secret to growing an online following. Like if you had to pick one, what is the single greatest secret you would say?

You just keep doing it and you don't stop. I mean, I think at this point, it's a prerequisite that you provide good value, that you're not even entering the game if you don't have content that is valuable and truly providing like really good service to the people like without intent, like that's a prerequisite.

That's not even a thing, but it's consistency. It's like so many of us just don't have the time or the commitment. I fall in this category to keep it up and do it super consistently because it's work. You have to treat your personal brand like a business because it is one. It is one. Your reputation takes effort. It takes intention and it takes consistency. It's like, if you're not willing to talk about it, no one knows about it. If you're not willing to talk about your products, your company, what you believe, then no one knows. And there's only one thing I can guarantee.

If people don't know about you, they cannot buy from you. They cannot trust you. They cannot like you because they don't know anything. And so to me, it's just, it's the evergreen consistency effect. It's playing the long game. It's the long game. That's so good. AJ gave a technical one. I'll give kind of an emotional side of it. You know, so tactically you can go on consistency. Emotionally, I think it's what AJ was talking about earlier, I think it is service centeredness. It's being service centered because if you feel the calling on your heart to do this, right? Like if you go and I feel like I have a

book, I got to get out there. I feel like I have a message I got to get out there. First of all, we would love to talk to you about that. And by the way, if you go to freebrandcall.com forward slash boss babe, if you go to freebrandcall.com forward slash boss babe, if you go to freebrandcall.com forward slash boss babe, you can request a call with our team. And we do all one-on-one human stuff. So we want to talk to you and just like hear your vision. But our belief, Natalie, is that if somebody is listening right now and they have this prompting that I want to share this message with the world. We believe that the calling on your heart that you feel is the result of a signal that is being sent out by somebody else.

And that signal is actually coming from someone. And if you feel that calling, but then you don't do it, the real reason most of us don't do it is because of fear, right? We're scared. I don't know how to do, and I don't know how to say the right thing, and I don't know if I look the right way on camera. I feel like Mel Robbins already said that, or Tony Robbins already said that, right? It's all this, I, I, I, I don't know what to do. Fear is so self-centered. That is when you feel fear. You only feel fear when you're thinking about yourself. But there is no fear when the mission to serve becomes clear.

If you're driving down the road and there's a car flipped over in the ditch and you hear someone screaming, you're running to help them. You're not thinking about, how does my hair look? Is my outfit cute? Like, does my breath stink? You don't have any of that self-centered fear because you're going to save someone. You're going to help someone. You're going to serve someone. That is how this is. And as a mission-driven messenger, you have to realize

that there is somebody out there right now who is begging and pleading and quite literally, possibly on their hands and knees, praying for answers to questions that you know like the back of your hand because you've already lived through it. You've already been there. You've already conquered that challenge. You've already overcome that obstacle. You've already survived that setback. And you are most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were.

And when you think about them, that fear goes away and you just hit record and you just hit publish and you just start the business and you just make the first call and you started investing in yourself and you just go because they're out there waiting. And every moment that you are losing to that fear is another moment that that person is stuck in the struggle. That is the mic drop moment to end this podcast on. Yes, yes, yes. I'm even more lit up now to get back into our session. And yeah, I want to encourage anyone listening, if you do want to dive in a bit further and find out more, freebrandcall.com forward slash boss babe. I feel like I learned so much on my brand call

before I even dove into doing the work with you both. So I'm really grateful for that. So we'll also put the link in the podcast below. And yeah, where can everyone find you? Yeah, I mean, I would just say that, Natalie, I would just say start there. If you're drawn to us at all, talk to us. Like, I mean, of course you can follow us online.

You know, of course you list our podcasts like that, but talk to us. So request, you can follow us online. Of course, you list our podcasts like that. But talk to us. So request a call and go there, freerankcall.com slash bossbabe. And we want to hear your story and hear your dream and hear the vision and just what you see. We just want to get to know you a little bit. And what we will do is we will share with you our overall four-phase strategy for how we break people through the wall. And we'll teach you the entire strategy. We'll show you the whole system. If it's a fit for you, we'll talk about maybe how, maybe how we can work together. And if we can't, I think it'll be super powerful. And then we'll point you in another direction and say, Hey, we might not be the people to help you, but we'd love to just meet you and get to know you. So I would just say,

go there. I love that. Amazing. Thank you both so much. Seriously, this has been incredible.