THE ED MYLETT SHOW - The New Rules of Branding in the Modern Era with Rory Vaden

Episode Date: December 3, 2024

The Secret to Unlocking Success Is Closer Than You Think! Have you ever wondered if you're overcomplicating the path to success? My guest today, Rory Vaden, reveals that the real key is simplicity. Rory is a personal branding expert, New York Times bestselling author, and the mastermind behind some of the biggest names and brands in business. We tackle the myths of success, personal branding, and the real meaning of entrepreneurship—and let me tell you, this conversation is packed with game-changing insights. Rory breaks down why building trust—not chasing followers—is the ultimate goal of any personal brand. He shares how the digitization of your reputation can create life-changing opportunities, even if you’re “just starting out” or running a local business. You don’t need a massive following or slick content; what you need is to add value by being educational, encouraging, or entertaining. Rory's "depth over width" strategy will completely reframe how you approach your business and personal relationships. We also dive into why multiple streams of income aren’t the secret to wealth. Rory’s approach? Focus on one thing, master it, and let depth create abundance. We explore his concept of "fractal math," which proves you don’t need more customers to scale—you need to serve your existing clients better and deeper. What struck me most was Rory’s perspective on entrepreneurship as a form of expression. Whether you're a small business owner, a creative, or climbing the corporate ladder, your work can become your art. But it only becomes worth it when it brings you peace. Key Takeaways: Why trust is the foundation of your personal brand. The truth about scaling: Depth, not width, creates real impact. How to focus your energy on one income stream to build wealth. The connection between service, peace, and success in business and life. Let this be your wake-up call: Success isn’t about doing more; it’s about doing better. Start serving, start simplifying, and start building your life on principles that last. If you're ready to take your personal brand to the next level, I highly recommend visiting freebrandcall.com/edmylett to book a free strategy call with the experts at Brand Builders Group. They specialize in turning your reputation into revenue and can help you identify your unique value, craft your message, and develop a monetization plan tailored to you. Don't miss this opportunity to gain clarity and accelerate your journey to success. Share this episode with someone who needs to hear it today. Let’s keep spreading the impact. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

So hey guys, listen, we're all trying to get more productive and the question is, how do you find a way to get an edge? I'm a big believer that if you're getting mentoring or you're in an environment that causes growth, a growth based environment, that you're much more likely to grow and you're going to grow faster. And that's why I love Growth Day. Growth Day is an app that my friend Brendan Burchard has created that I'm a big fan of. Write this down, growthday.com forward slash ed. So if you want to be more productive, by the way the way he's asked me I post videos in there every single Monday that gets your day off to the right start he's got about five thousand ten thousand dollars worth of courses that are in there that come with the app also some of the top influencers in the world are all posting content and they're

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So go to growthday.com forward slash ed. That's growthday.com forward slash ed. ["The Admirals Show Theme Song"] head. Welcome back to the show everybody. So today's guest has been highly sought after by all of you because he was on the show a few years ago. One of the most popular guests we've ever had on most direct messages, most shares, you name it because his content is so good and you learned so much the last time and so I've asked my really good friend to come

back here today. New York Times bestselling author, one of the all-time great speakers. He's sort of a coach behind the scenes for many of the names and brands you know out there, myself, John Maxwell, Lewis Howes, Amy Porterfield, Trent Shelton. He helps people get their books on the New York Times bestseller list like nobody else in the world. He's an expert on personal branding, entrepreneurship. I just think on life as well. He's also a great man of faith.

He's become a very good friend of mine over the years as well. His company, Brand Builders Group, is the ultimate in helping someone build a brand and convert a brand into revenue in their life as well. Rory Vaiden, welcome back to the show brother. Man, what an honor to be here. I'm so, I'm so enamored with the idea that I get to be your friend and know you in real life. We were talking before this all started about I think the reason that so many successful people follow you is people with real success and people with real money, they're not impressed by fake fluency. They're not,

they're not impressed by fake followers. They can spot people who are talking a game that they're not walking and they follow you because they go, they can look at you, they can listen to you and you go, this is Ed's the real deal. He's done it. He's doing it. And to get to walk alongside of you a little bit is amazing. Well, I feel the same way about you, but it's great to have you in our home too. Incredible. Yeah, we're going to get you out to the island this summer as well.

So anyway, this brain I'm going to pick for the next hour because I know it's going to benefit everybody. I consider you the brains of this industry and a very unique person in the space. So hang on everybody, we're going to get into some great stuff. So let's start with branding first, personal branding, but I know right when I say that there's a percentage of my audience that immediately disengages and goes, I don't need one. I'm in the trades, or I own a chain of dry cleaners, or I work at a job.

And so as a result of that, I don't really know why I would need a brand so in general what's the necessity of having a brand and what does having a brand even mean totally yeah so to keep this simple building a personal brand just means you have an a mechanism for building trust which is really what all this is about we don't even call it a personal brand we just think of it as the digitization of reputation we've said've said that it's the formalization, the monetization, the digitization of reputation. So when you hear personal brand, I want you to think reputation, which I understand because I'm a real business person and I do real life business and I'm just digitizing it. And so there's power to that. But I would still say,

and I would, I would, I stand on this ground, like even today, offline is greater than online. Even today, you think offline is greater? Absolutely. Why? Because we're still human. We're still human. We, we, we connect differently with people and, and many of the people who have built huge online businesses, it's come from offline relationships. And that has never changed and it never will change. And I don't care how much AI comes around. I think it's only more and more causing us to go,

I'm hungry for the connection of humanity, to look into somebody's eyes and to go person to person, who are you? And that's what personal branding is all about. It's just going, can people trust you to do what you say you're going to do? Can they trust you to solve a problem for them? And so having a personal brand matters exactly to the extent that having trust matters in your business. It doesn't matter how many followers you have. Is that an overrated thing? Like followers, right? I think people go, okay, that's great.

I'm a realtor. I've got, you know, 2100 followers on Instagram. So I really don't have a brand because you got to have X amount of followers in order to have something that converts to any kind of revenue. Massively overrated. In fact, we asked this question. So we did a national research study, PhD led, academic statistically valid, weighted to the US census called the Trends in Personal Branding National Research Study.

And we actually asked this question directly, which of the following is most likely going to cause you to buy? And we listed, has a New York Times bestselling book, has a top podcast, has book, has a top podcast, has YouTube, has a nice website, has social media followers. Do you want to know what the number one thing is that the general public says, this is the thing that will actually cause me to buy from you? Want to know what it is?

Testimonials from your customers. Testimonials from your customers, testimonials from your customers, not how pretty your website is, not how many followers you have, not how many downloads you have on your podcast. Show me real humans who said, I bought from you and you delivered a result for me. It costs nothing. It's we could do it. All of us could do it by this afternoon.

And it shows you to go like that's what we want. That's, we could do it, all of us could do it by this afternoon. And it shows you to go like, that's what we want. That's what we trust. We trust people who say you're awesome. It's crazy to me. Right before we got on here, I was going through some messages and I'm not on social media right now, as you know, for some health reasons I've taken the year off. But so I still, I'm on there in the sense I'm not posting,

but I still check messages from different people and you know at my peak I was probably getting about 5,000 DMs a day on my social media right so I wouldn't see most of them so today I was just poking through some of them and I happened to stumble upon a few of my followers one of them was an insurance agent one of them was actually a realtor yeah and they had great brands I like their their branding and stuff but I've noticed most realtors, most insurance people, their brand looks almost identical. It's almost like, here's a photo of my open house. Here's a just sold sign. Like, what would you say to somebody who's like,

I'd like to distinguish myself to some extent online. Let's talk about online right now. What's something I could be doing with my brand that probably isn't the norm that could get me some traffic or some traction? Yeah, well, so I'll say this. I think people have over-indexed too much on unique value proposition. Okay. I think there's this idea of like,

you've got to differentiate yourself from everyone else in the world. I think generally speaking, that is not the most important advice because when people try to differentiate they do something stupid which is they try to be clever and cute and here's the reality. Clear is greater than clever. Clear is greater than clever. When it comes to making money, clear is greater than clever. I need to understand what the heck it is you do if I'm ever gonna buy from you.

And now what I think people do wrong is they go, okay, to use your example, it's like, oh, just listed, just sold. Now all of a sudden, if that's the content you're posting, you are only relevant to somebody who is looking to buy at that moment in that market directly from you. So here's how you adapt the strategy to suddenly become relevant.

So if we don't differentiate based on what we do, because I think that's hard. If you're a real estate agent and you go, if you try to differentiate on what you do, you're gonna sound like a flake. You're gonna like, oh, I help people, you know, live their dreams by finding the ideal structure for them to abide in with their family. And it's like, what, what? So no, I'm a realtor. But you don't, you don't have to be the world's

greatest. You just have to be trusted. And what makes you trusted is simply being useful. So I think content marketing, again, very overcomplicated. To me, there's only three content marketing strategies that work, we call them the three E's, it's this simple. You either have to be entertaining, you have to be encouraging, or you have to be educational. That's it, entertaining, encouraging, or educational. The most viral content is gonna be educational. That's it. Entertaining, encouraging, or educational. The most viral

content is going to be entertaining, the things that move us emotionally. But that's not the highest converting content when it comes to making money. So you don't have to go viral. You don't need millions of followers to make real money. What's the highest converting? Education? Highest converting is education. Because we buy from people that we trust and we trust people who we learn from. So when I hit your feed, I should be able to tell, you are either someone who specializes in entertaining people or encouraging people

or educating people, being useful. So you gotta ask yourself, what information do I have that would be useful? Now, it might be some mix of those three strategies, but a realtor should, like, here's what I would do differently. Don't create content about your product or service, create content that is useful for the type of person who would buy your product or service. Give me an example.

Let's use real estate. Okay. Just listed, just sold is only useful for people looking to buy at that exact moment. Right. If I were a realtor and I was going to use everything that we've learned and I'm going to go, oh, now I'm going to Rory the real estate agent. What I would do is I would instead post information about a specific geographic area. Every single thing about all the schools, what schools are the best, which dentists are the best, which CPAs to use, what churches,

where can your kids eat for free? Like, what do you do when it's cold outside and the kids are stuck inside? Like, information that is useful for the people who live in that area. I want to be the mayor of the town. I want to be adding value to people to where when someone new moves to the area, everyone in that town goes, are you following Rory? Oh, you got to follow Nashville Rory, because Rory tells you everything that's going on in Nashville. And it's like, and by the way, he's also a realtor. So like if you need someone and that's the difference. Now I'm useful to the kind of person who does what I need. And that's it.

It's going to, how can I be relevant to the people following? That's very good right there. Okay, let's step out of branding. Let's talk about some like just real life entrepreneurship stuff, because just so you know everybody, the ride with R Rory can be we can weave in and have a lot of different topics because of how big his brain is and he's one of the few people that you have on your show where he's thinking through every answer. There's not some like regurgitated response. That's why when you watch Rory's brain working as is talking, he's actually working his brain as he's talking. It's not just rote material, if you're on the YouTube version. And so I just want everybody to understand this story. When you hear someone this brilliant, you think,

well, they just always had this big old vision for their life. Well, this is a dude that grew up basically with just his mom in a trailer, ends up working through college, door to door. But when I hear you did the door to door stuff and all that, I'm thinking, what experience. Oh yeah. That explains your ability to communicate. It explains your ability to persuade. It explains your ability to close. And so I just

want everybody to understand that here is the secret. The secret is to serve the person right in front of you. Right? You don't need millions of followers to make millions of dollars. Most of us would have our best years ever. If we had a dozen of our perfect clients, not millions, not hundreds of thousands, not even hundreds, not even dozens. Most of you, if you had a dozen of your perfect client, you could double your income. And everyone is so focused on the width of their reach,

trying to reach millions of people, they're overlooking the depth of their impact. And the true story of success, the fastest path, the cash is to serve the people who are right in front of you to go, look, if every customer you have, like, how do you double your business? We all think, oh, run ads, have a huge podcast, be Ed Mylett, speak in front of millions of people. Okay, those are good things. Oh, run ads, have a huge podcast, be Ed Mylett, speak in front of millions of people.

Okay, those are good things. It's rare that people can do those. The truth about how to double your business for most people is to get every customer you have to give you one more customer. That's how you double your business. You serve the people who God has put in front of you. You go, who can I serve in the deepest way? Not, I'm off to the next and ignoring the people who are here. And that's why it's like,

people don't grow on social because they're trying to reach the masses instead of trying to, and trying to reach the one, the power of one of going change one life, get really good at changing one life. If you can transform one life, then you can multiply it, but you don't need to to make lots of money. You can make a huge amount of money if you over deliver on the people who are right in front of you. I have to tell you, there's such a through line on this depth, not wit thing.

So just this morning, what did I tell you before you said, I said, he's had an incredible interview today. Who did I tell you I interviewed? A Jasmine Star. I said, I had an incredible. One of the takeaways from that interview. She was talking about creating content. Same exact thing she said in terms of everybody thinks they have to go wide but if you would go deep in one area at one type of content as well.

And I just want everyone that's listening to the show today. I want you to just think about how does that philosophy apply to you in your business and your marketing in your branding, maybe it's even in your family as well, whatever it might be. Friendships, the older I get, I gotta tell you, the value of width of friendships is almost worthless to me. Like how many friends I have. It's the depth with the ones I do have and going deeper with my great friends. When I was young, I used to look at my dad as he got older. I thought, gosh, you know, my dad doesn't have that many friends. I remember thinking that, like, I wish my dad had more friends. I remember asking my dad one time, he goes, Eddie, the older and older you get, your circle is gonna get smaller. You're gonna realize it's gonna come down to a handful of friends and

your family. That's what you're gonna have in your life. And as I've gotten older, the richness of my life is the depth of my friendships, not the amount of them. And for some of you friendships, not the amount of them. And for some of you even that feel lonely right now, like I just don't have that many people in my life. You know, you're, I mean I'm going to be hokey with the power of one more of my book, but you're really one new friend away from having a completely different life. Like that that one brother or sister, that one ride or die you end up meeting in your life and you go deep in that friendship.

I really believe that what you're saying right now, what Jasmine said this morning, conceptually the world has become obsessed with width, likes, followers, like the amount of something rather than the quality of it. And you're so right, like we were talking about earlier, you walked into the house, you're like my gosh what paid for the first house? What was my first business, my financial business? I went deep in that business. I didn't have 80 different businesses. I had one business I became tremendously successful and I went deep in that business. So everyone really review that in your life How does that concept apply?

So hey guys, I want to jump in here for a second and talk about change and growth and you know, by the way It's no secret how people get ahead in life or how they grow and also taking a look at the future. If you want to change your future you got to change the things you're doing. If you continue to do the same things you're probably going to produce the same results. But if you get into a new environment where you're learning new things and you're around other people that are growth oriented you're much more likely to do that yourself and that's why I love Growth Day. Write this down for a second growthday.com forward slash ed. My friend, Brendal Bruchard has created

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And then business-wise, what are your thoughts on this? This really popular concept on social, just in in really the world today is multiple streams of income You better have eight ten because you know Ed Mylet's got ten different companies and Joe and Sarah's got this and but what do you Really feel about that the first way to get wealthy is it was like having 15 different streams of income I feel like multiple streams of income is a Narrative that has been advanced by people who want to sell you investment tools and investment strategies. It's a complete lie.

Look, first of all, the idea that the average millionaire has seven streams of income at best is a pretty unverifiable statistic from any reliable resource. So look it up, right? Put it in a chat, GPT, go to Google and be like, try to find the original source of that statistic. Typically it leads you back to people who are selling investment schemes is if you follow the trail back. But let's grant and say the statistic is valid, okay?

So I would challenge that, but let's say it's valid. Here's the problem with this. Yes, maybe the average millionaire has multiple streams of income, but that's what they're doing once they are rich. It's not how they got rich. Nobody gets rich with multiple streams of income. You can't, and just use common sense, right?

Go, how did the richest people in the world get rich? By doing one thing. How did Ed Milek get rich? He had an insurance company. He freaking crushed it. How did Sarah Blakely get rich? With Spanx. How did Elon Musk get rich?

I know everyone goes, well, what about Elon Musk? If you don't know the story of Elon Musk, he made his money from PayPal. One thing, Jeff Bezos, Amazon, Bill Gates, like Microsoft, that one thing, our friend Jamie Kern Lima, it cosmetics. The people, Michael Jordan was a basketball player. Dr. Dre was a rapper. Jerry Seinfeld, Ellen DeGeneres, they were comedians. The Rock was a wrestler. These people got rich not from multiple streams of income. They had one stream of income and that is what you need. You don't need multiple streams of crappy income.

You need one amazing stream of income. And the way you create one amazing stream of income is by focusing on it, working on it. The way you get rich is not through diversification, it's through concentration. You gotta go all in on the thing. Now, once you're rich and you got a lot of money, you know, and this, we talked about this

in our first interview together. Look, if you have diluted focus, you get diluted results. We talked about that with your brand message in our first interview. If you have diluted focus, you get diluted results. We talked about that with your brand message in our first interview. If you have diluted focus, you get diluted results. The same is true with money, right? We didn't talk about it on our first interview with money, but it's money is the literal expression of that. If I have 10 units of resource, call it time, team, technology, capital, prayer, whatever they are. But if I have 10 units of resource and I spread them out across 10 initiatives, each initiative gets one unit of

resource. You can't compete with the best in the world with one unit of resource. You can't, like, you think you're going to compete with the best speakers in the world, the best coaches in the world, the best realtors in the world with one unit of resource? No, you've been lied to. You've been lied to by people who want to sell you things. And do we want to sell yourself to? Yes, we want to sell you what works. We want to sell you the truth. We want to go ask Ed Mylade how he got freaking rich. He'll tell you the true story.

Yes, it's one of the best things ever said on the show. The multiple streets of income thing when someone's really wealthy is a fact that's not true. Meaning, yeah, once you're wealthy, you end up taking that platform. The rock went from wrestler to actor to entrepreneur to blah, blah, blah, right? It all must went from PayPal to SpaceX to blah, blah, blah,

to Twitter to et cetera. But that's not how they got wealthy and that's the concept you said prior of depth versus width. Yes. You got to go deep in the business you're in. You got to be the best in the world at what you do. If you become the best at whatever you do and you go deeper and deeper in it, the reward I believe eventually comes your way. From that place you can go whatever your passion play is, whatever your second thing is, you can go do that. He is right about what he just said. By the way, it's a perfect time to just say this. Not only do you help people with this, but you are actually willing to do it for free. So this is the best brand building expert in the world and I can tell you he is the mind

behind the scenes of most of the people you follow online or to some of us. Whether that's marketing, business, books, entrepreneurship, branding, it is Rory and AJ. I'm just letting you in on the insights. Why he's been on the show twice. People, it's amazing to me because you don't have the biggest brand because it's not what your focus was that one of the most listened to shows of all the famous people I've had on my show, one of the most shared shows is you and it's because of the content. So you're willing to do a free call with someone who needs help with their entrepreneurial journey or their branding journey, correct?

Yeah, absolutely. If you, if you go to freebrandcall.com slash Ed Mylett, freebrandcall.com slash Ed Mylett, we will talk to you because this is how we, we work, not in the masses, we work through individual people, like we go deep and that's why we're a one-on-one like training and coaching company. We work with individuals one-on-one. We have strategists that talk to people and we do the first call for free

because there's no perfect one size fits all answer to what's the right business model? What's the right social media strategy? What's the right way to grow your podcast? It's a combination lock for each person based on where they're at and what they want, who their team is, and how much capital they have, and how much time they have, and you know, what age are their kids? And like, it's all unique for each person, but the principles are there, and it is about depth. So, I want to come back to the depth thing. Okay. So, and that's why we do

these calls because we want to know you as an individual person. Okay. So if you look at income and impact, okay, the depth thing is the thing. So let's talk about impact for a second. You can impact a lot of people. You impact a lot of people. You reach millions of people with this show. It's amazing to me. And you do impact them in a very, very deep way. And I think it is a worthwhile endeavor for anybody who wants to impact more people to go ahead and do that. I also think that the person who adopts one child makes an arguably equivalent amount of impact in the world. That is one life impacted in the, in, in perhaps the deepest, the deepest way. Right? Now, I'm not saying one is better than the other, more valuable than the other. I'm saying

that we all pay attention to width and we ignore depth. So that's on an impact, right? You go, well, only 30 people liked my social media, so it's a waste of time. I'm gonna stop doing it. If there were 30 people in a room next door and you had a chance to stand up and speak in front of 30 people, your heart would start pumping. That's right. Because it's 30 people, but we forget that somehow behind the screen. So now let's talk about money. Okay, so since we've been talking money, I want to introduce a framework that we call fractal math. Okay, I'm a nerd on you for a little bit. Okay, but for the analytics, you'll love this and I'll try to break it down. So fractal math is a concept that has kind of floated

around like conceptually, but we formalized it and codified it when we noticed some consistent patterns in the monetization streams of the wealthiest personal brands. So here's the rule, okay? Here's what fractal math is. 10% of your customers will invest at a level 10 times what they have already invested at.

10% of your customers would invest at a level 10X what they've already invested at. So I'll walk you through it with a little bit of math. All right, so hang with me math people. So let's say that you have a thousand people who have bought a $30 product. Okay, that's $30,000 in revenue. A thousand people each gave you 30 bucks.

So you go, how do you double your revenue? There's two ways to double your revenue. One way is to go get a thousand new customers. But anyone who knows anything about business strategy will tell you the most expensive customer is a new customer. So, the most expensive way to double your revenue is to go get a thousand new customers. That's width. The other monetization strategy is depth,

which is fractal math. To go 10% of your customers, so we had a thousand customers. 100 of them. So 10% would be a hundred. We'll invest at a level 10 times what they just invested at. So instead of giving you 30 bucks,

they'll give you $300. Very good. So now we had a hundred people give you $300. So now we had 100 people give you $300. That's 30,000. You doubled your revenue with zero additional customer acquisition cost. It keeps going though. If 100 people give you 300, that means 10 people, which is 10% of 100, would give you 3,000.

That's another 30,000 in revenue. You tripled your revenue. And then that means if 10 people gave you 3,000, that there's one person who's already in your cell phone, who's already in your CRM, already in your database that would give you 30,000 in revenue. So you go, whoa, I could quadruple my business without adding a new single new social media follower, a single new download, a single new customer running a single new ad, hiring a single new salesperson. I'm not saying that's the only way to do it. I'm saying that's the overlooked way. That's the way that nobody does it except for people who are super rich. You're right, brother. You're right. By the way, you just everybody you were just given

a MBA in business and marketing in the modern era and you didn't need to go to Harvard to get it. That is 100% correct. And I could give everybody 10 different examples from 10 different businesses I've owned and been involved with where that is precisely the case. And you, you, I don't know how comfortable you are sharing this story, but we were talking before we hit record, right? You had one person offer you an insane amount of money. That's a great point. For one-on-one coaching.

That's right. I mean, I'm willing to say that. I won't say who it is, but so I have, I do one-on-one coaching by the way, you can go to EdMylett.com or actually you can go to Erica at EdMylett.com, but it's very expensive and it's six figures to EdMylett.com. Or actually you can go to Erica at EdMylett.com, but it's very expensive. And it's six figures to be coached by me. But anyway, I just did have somebody in my audience who wants much more coaching with me and it's a $10 million a year.

And so that's that one of the one of the one of the one that you're referring to, the 10% of the 10% of the 10%. And in that case, it's somebody that, you know, can absolutely afford that no problem. And I'm going to help them double their net worth so it'll be a drop in the bucket but the point is is that exactly what you just described has happened to me and all of my different businesses as long as I focused on depth and you're completely right about it.

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So hey guys about a year ago rocket money started sponsoring the show and I'm like, you know What I probably don't have any subscriptions I'm paying for that I don't know about right and then rocket money found I don't have any subscriptions I'm paying for that I don't know about, right? And then Rocket Money found $700 a month. More than that actually. About $730 a month that I was spending on a bunch of subscription stuff off my card that I had no idea I was paying for. Rocket Money helped me out tremendously. Here's why. Rocket Money is a personal finance app that helps you find and cancel your unwanted subscriptions.

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Stop wasting your money on things you don't use. Cancel your unwanted subscriptions by going to rocketmoney.com slash my let. That's rocketmoney.com slash my let. Rocketmoney.com slash my let. You know, one thing I was just thinking when you were talking, I want everyone to hang on and listen to me that has kids or that is young, or if you're listening to this and you know somebody young that you should be sending this podcast to.

When I started to do well on social media, I wanted to protect my children from attention they didn't want to get when they were young. I also have started to strongly build up opinions about what age I even think someone should even be on social media. And I think that's a difference in every family, but I certainly don't think it's preteen for sure. However, I wish now sooner, believe it or not, is how much I big and per believe in personal branding in this day and age. I wish sooner I would have encouraged my children to begin to

focus a little bit on that as they were in college. This is something that's probably never been discussed on any podcast literally anywhere ever so I want I want to talk about this with you and I want you to listen to it if you have children or you've got a niece or a nephew or a friend or an older cousin or something like that. I don't know what the age is maybe it would have been 16 17 I'm not sure maybe it was younger for a mature kid who could handle it. But like my son Max now is playing professional golf, but he's built a little bit of a brand.

And he's now generating, you know, thousands of dollars a month in brand deals. As he's playing golf, it's sort of helping fund his golf career. Max Mylett, everybody. But had he focused on building that brand two and three years sooner, I'm convinced that revenue could have been triple or quadruple what it is now. So what are your thoughts on that? I bet you never asked this before. At certain age, someone's starting to build the brand equity, because it's going to take years to build a brand more than likely. Yeah. Could they start being educational

or entertaining as you describe? What's the third one again encouraging or encouraging and Is there an age where like why are we all waiting around until we've got a full-blown career to start building the brand? Why aren't more people that are of college or maybe even high school age? That are younger beginning to build at least the foundation of a brand beginning to create content I think probably that's a huge miss like you you have kids that are, I'm just thinking this out loud, we spend six figures on a kid to go to college whether they do or don't go to school right and most of them come out of here with a degree and some information and no brand yet when you get on once you're into business we all go I need a brand. So I wonder if we're almost putting them one of the most important things completely last

or on the back burner for young people as well. Like sooner the better, probably when they're mature enough to handle it, right? Yeah. Well, so here's what here's no one has ever asked me this question. Here's where I would delineate when anyone should start posting specifically on social and creating a brand this way. And it's when they have the ability and the desire to serve. Sure. Where people get in trouble on social is when they go on there to extract self-worth

and to when they're just, I think one of the dangers of social media is when it's just inherently social. So do I. Now you've got like social pressure and social comparison and that's where it's like you have to be super mature to handle that. From a business strategy, you should start doing it when you have something to say that adds value to the lives of others. And this is the whole secret of personal branding in general.

Everyone thinks personal branding is about vanity, but it's about service. It's not about vanity. Building your personal brand is not self-centered. It's service-centered. It's not what can I get from this? It's what can I give? How can I add value to it, to the community? And the tools of the day give us more ability than ever before to deposit value into other people's lives. And so I'd say as soon as someone is mature enough and has the desire to add value to other people's lives, so they have to have the desire to do that and they have to have the ability to do that. Max clearly has the ability to add value to people's lives. He has a depth of expertise, right? of expertise, even at his age.

And this is what's powerful about expertise is like, anyone can develop expertise if they go deep. This is another place where people go wide. We talked more about this on our first episode together is they try to talk about a million different things and they're saying a little about a lot instead of saying a lot about a little. But Max can go deep.

He can T like he knows that space. He's an expert. Right. I'm thinking about, let me tell you what I'm thinking about. I'm thinking about like a lot of you that have children or that, uh, or again, you just know a young person. My son's passion from a pretty young age became golf. He became someone who knew a lot about that topic and had a passion for it young.

I think sooner he should have started posting about the correct thing on a golf swing or the club he just discovered or this. What if you have a niece or a nephew or a child who loves horses and you almost know inevitably they're gonna get into the horse business someday training and riding horses or they wanna be a veterinarian. You know they love caring for animals. They're riding horses or they want to be a veterinarian. You know they love caring for animals.

They're going to school right now to be a veterinarian and almost everybody's always known they were gonna do that or you've got a daughter who's now passionate about business and marketing and so why is she waiting to get her degree when we know she's gonna go build a brand anyway? Maybe she should be sharing a little bit what she's learning for all the kids that aren't in college online or a particular project she's doing or being encouraging for people. Maybe you come from a particular group of people

who not everybody sees in that space. I just, so many young people now discover passions early in their life. And yet they're doing what everybody else is doing. They're posting the drink from the fraternity party. And I'm thinking, yeah, that's great. great but like you already know when you get out you want to do this or you're studying for it. Start building that encouragement education or entertaining stuff sooner. Now I think the reason they don't do it and I'm being serious here is they don't know how

to do it and that's where someone like you truly, by the way, I'm trying to stuff something in there. You said the website earlier quickly. Freebrandcall.com forward slash EdMyLet. Okay, okay, EdMyLet, not Ed, EdMyLet. EdMyLet. Okay, so the reason I only want that in there is because you did say it quickly earlier. If it's not for everybody, don't go do it.

But if it is for you, go get the free call, who cares? But I just, I didn't know we were gonna go there today, but the more I'm thinking about it, there's so many kids leaving college with college debt right now. There's so many kids right now that have college degrees that are working at Starbucks that are just trying to make a living that are moving back home with mom and dad and I there's a part of me that's like you know what if they had a brand who knows what they could have done with it who knows what could have happened maybe they'd have found a job with that brand.

You know, in a lot of businesses, if I'm interviewing two people and their brand is a good brand, but they haven't posted a bunch of stupid things that disqualify them, which is what a lot of people do when I interview them. Like I've seen your social media, I can't hire you. But having said that, two clearly equivalent candidates,

similar backgrounds, similar capabilities, one has an online brand in presence that may bring our firm revenue or credibility and one doesn't, who am I hiring? Of course. I'm hiring the one with the brand. So I don't know, I mean, you could just go spend $50,000 to get your kid a college education

or you could spend a few bucks on getting to learn how to build a brand. Yeah, and when you talk about building a brand, to me, a brand is, you know, like if you look at it on a on a on a balance sheet in a business, right, it's usually intangible. It's goodwill. It's, it's hard to put an economic value on what a brand is, like, what is your reputation worth? But it's definitely worth something for all of these reasons you talk about. But an audience is an asset. Like an audience is an actual asset. Many businesses buy and sell just for the customer list. Like a group of people with contact information who are all organized around some interest or buying a thing is an asset.

When you build an audience online, you're building an actual asset, an asset that can produce income and revenue for you and your family and for, you know, charitable causes for a lifetime for generations. Right. So, well, what I think Rory is, since we're going back and forth in this is, I don't know what it's worth to have one, but I know there's a huge cost for not having anything. In most careers, if you have nothing, you've done no work on that. You're almost working in an old economy. You are almost working in an economy that doesn't exist anymore. There are some careers where you don't need a following at all or any type of a brand. There are probably some, but they're pretty few and far between. Well, and we have the data on this. So coming back to that research study. So first of all, 74% of Americans say they are more likely to trust someone who has an established personal brand. When we broke it down and we said, like, which of the following is it important to you that this person has a personal brand? We asked like coaches, consultants, speakers, authors,

you would expect those people to have personal brands. The number one profession on the list, 61% of Americans say they want their doctor to have an established personal brand. They want lawyer is very high on the list. Financial advisor is very high on the list. And at first that was surprising because we're like,, why do we why would we care about their personal brand? And then you go, Oh, it's simple. The higher the

requirement for trust, the more important having an established personal brand becomes the data in that study says people are more likely to buy from you, they're more likely to recommend you, they're more likely to work for you. And they're more likely to spend more money with you, if you have an established personal brand. So it's not just your opinion, Ed, like it's not just your intuition, which clearly you've been spot on with building your own brand over the years. We that the data is point blank black and white on this.

We want to buy from people that we trust and we want to. We have to know something about you. Yeah. And don't you think, by the way, unbelievable statistics right there and validation of that. And when we say brand, it doesn't mean that when they go see you, you've got 350,000 followers. It means that you've actually produced social proof that you're good at what you do, whether or not there's a big following for it or not. If you're my doctor, I'm going to go look and when I look, if you've got content that educated, entertained or encouraged me,

no matter how many people liked or followed it, it's social proof, it's business proof that you exist and that you're good at what you do, correct? It doesn't even have to, the following itself is an ancillary benefit, but not a necessity for credibility. Absolutely, it is totally ancillary. We actually, the data in the study is on there.

By the way, we've been talking about the study. If you want me just to give it out for free. So we invested over $100,000 on this study. So if you go to freebrandstudy.com forward slash edmylet, so freebrandstudy.com forward slash edmylet, you can download the research study. I mean, literally we spent 100 grand on this. And that there's data on this specifically that says,

it's not the quantity of followers that makes people trust you. It's the quality of the content. And so it's like, I don't care how many followers my dentist has. Like, I don't care. I'm not hiring my dentist because he's a celebrity. I care when I go like, do people say he's awesome? Does the work look good? Like, does the office look clean and nice? Like, is he sharp? Is he, you know, it's just that. You're 100% right. It's like, I bought many houses that I found online.

Probably some of you have bought your home here and you found it online. I didn't check to see how many followers the realtor had, but I actually was familiar with the home before I even looked at it. And if I had not seen the home, I probably wouldn't have gone to look at it if they can't see your office if they can't see your dental chair they can't see that you have an assistant if

they can't see that you actually operate a business how is it they're gonna come close to you and do business with you so you're totally right about that what does the future hold for business well let me tell you right now you can ask nine experts you're probably gonna get ten different answers bull market bear market rates are gonna get cut They're gonna cut it five times six times inflation is gonna go up or down Who the heck knows you don't really have a crystal ball And that's why I love net suite because you can get some measure of control in the most important areas possible in your business

So if somebody can get a crystal ball together, that would be great But until then over thirty eight thousand businesses of future proof their NetSuite by Oracle, the number one cloud ERP bringing accounting, financial management, inventory, HR into one fluid platform, easy to use. We've been using them now for over a decade. NetSuite helps you respond to immediate challenges and seize on your biggest opportunities. Speaking of opportunity, download the CFO's guide to AI and machine learning at netsuite.com slash mylet. The guide is free to you at netsuite.com slash

mylet. netsuite.com slash mylet. Now let's get off of digital for a second. By the way everyone, hope you really appreciate. I know Rory very well. Rory's calling in life is just to serve people. He's a servant leader. In fact, I get frustrated with him because I think the way he prices most of his business things is so far below what they're worth, but him and AJ are servant leaders. His face is even changing when I say that. This man works so hard to help other people in his life. It's just something that I really admire about you. And you know, I have, you know,

I put out thousands of hours of content that most people charge a lot of money for because I mean, I do charge for other things, but for the most part, I don't because I just want to serve and I have a business second. I really do. And in your case, you truly want to serve and then you have a business second and it's very rare. And I just want to acknowledge that about you. I love that about you and

your wife. You're both that way. Well, thank you for that, Ed. And I, you know, we've talked a lot about money in this interview. And I think it's a lot of people, you know, want to make more money. That's the world I came from. But a concept that I've been wrestling with a lot in the last couple of years, which has really blown my mind and I've wrestled with whether or not this is true. And I've really come to deeply believe this, that peace is the new prophet. Peace is the new profit. See, I, when I was young, I thought that success and the approval of others would, would, would,

you know, give me what I wanted. Then I thought having more money would give me what I wanted. Then I thought it was like having a lot of followers would give me what I wanted. Then I thought it was like having a lot of followers would give me what I wanted. The only thing that actually gives me any sort of deep satisfaction is service. So it is a selfless thing, but it is also a self-centered thing to go, money, there's only a certain amount of money that you need before it doesn't really motivate you that more. But service is where it's at. And you used an analogy one time on a different episode, wasn't with me, but you were talking about eating a steak. And you said, you can be enjoying every bite of a steak. Do you remember when you said this? You said you can be savoring each bite of a steak and yet still want more. That's right. And that's what I really believe. Services. Service is the only thing that deeply

satisfies me immediately. Even if I'm only serving one person. And yet I also have an insatiable desire to serve more people. And that's available to all of us immediately. Like you don't have to have lots of followers. You don't have to have lots of money in your bank account. You can serve a person. And I think so many people are trying to find Happiness and the reason they're not finding happiness is because they're looking for happiness

Happiness is a self-centered pursuit if you look for opportunities to be of service Happiness shows up as a byproduct Right and and that's where I go. And this is one of the reasons that I love you and admire you is I go, there's only a couple friends that I have where I'm like, you don't need anything else. Like, you've got all the money, you have all the influence, you have all the relationships, you've got the followers, the fame, you've got every possible possession and plenty of money to buy more if you need it.

And yet you work, you work hard, you work long, and you work like you don't have any of it. And it's not because you don't have it, It's because I know that deep down in your heart, you have an insatiable desire to serve. And that's why you're still on fire. And, and, and, and this is my issue with you is that you work too hard, uh, to your own detriment, just like we should probably raise our prices. I think you should work a little less.

I appreciate you saying that. I have to tell you, some of this was Rob Dyrdek, who's by the way, another person's been on more than one time because he's so incredible. But Robbie and I were talking about this and we were talking about the six human needs and significance being one of them and he and he and at one time we're both like, I don't need any more recognition and significance. I'm all, I've gone through that and we were at a football game together and he goes, bro, I just thought about something. And he leans over and he goes,

I actually do love feeling significant, but I get my significance through contributing to other people. I feel good about myself. So in some ways, service, working hard, to some extent is still a selfish pursuit in the sense that I feel the best about me. And when I'm pursuing happiness, it's about me. I'm self-centered, which is sort of an ego thing.

And when we're all about our own happiness, it's very difficult to acquire it because real happiness comes from serving other people. And so I've never heard it said as beautifully as you just said it. The truth of the matter is I love work and serving and doing what we're like right now. You and I could be anywhere in the world. We're in this studio today on a beautiful day, inside the doors are closed, two men just talking to one another,

hoping to contribute to other people's lives. Yet I feel far better about myself doing this than I would if I was just sitting out there on the beach today. Like I would rather be doing this than I know you would be, right? I feel the most alive. And for most of you, if you're just not quite,

you feel a little bit helpless, you know, get more helpful. And when you get helpful in your life, you'll feel a whole lot helpless. This conversation, by the way, is already an hour and it doesn't feel like it to me whatsoever. I feel like we've been talking for about 30 minutes. So I wanna ask you an entrepreneur question, I guess last.

Okay. You're in the throes of raising a family. You've got a tremendous wife in AJ. You work very hard at your business. And I asked another person this today, actually was Jasmine. And I'm going to begin to ask this question more. And I really want the real answer. OK. I think if people knew how hard it is to build a business, they may never start it. There's a great clip of the guy that founded a very big tech company.

And someone asked him, he's a billionaire now, but they asked him, what would you what advice would you give yourself if you knew what you knew now? Everything you know about building the business. And he says, I would have never gotten started. If I knew how hard it was, I would have never gotten started. And so I think social media makes entrepreneurship look very glamorous, very easy. Anybody can do it. You just need a phone and a thought and you're going to be an entrepreneur. And most of those are fakes. There's fakes. that's the hard thing for consumption is who's real, who's not real. It's a grind, it's difficult.

It does cost things. It's hard. It costs time, it costs energy, it costs, emotional burden of carrying a business in a company is not easy, you and I were talking today about different personnel changes required in your business, et cetera. Is all of that what you thought it would be?

Is it different than you thought? And if it is different, is it still worth it? Building a business? Yeah, I mean the real. Or was it easier being like a number one or a number two somewhere else, do you think? Well, I'll say this because, you know, we built an eight figure business

and should have never had to work again and then started over. It wasn't any easier the second time. We knew what to do. Like we were more confident about what to do. But it wasn't any easier, like building brand builders group from zero to eight figures, which you know, I don't think we left we left that part of the story. But we went from zero to eight figures in five years, like went from zero all the way back. And it wasn't easier.

I think it's important to ask this question about what makes entrepreneurship worth it. And it's right on the pulse of what we were just talking about. I don't think money makes it worth it. I've been around enough people who are dying, who suddenly found out they were going to die, who then looked back and said, I would give the money back. I wish I had more time with whoever or more time doing whatever. I think what makes it worth it is the deep desire to serve. What makes it worth it is to go, you know, I mean, I became an Eartime's bestselling author when I was 29 years old. I don't even look at my book sales every week. I look at all of our clients' book sales and it's like, man, when this book sold 117,000

copies, like we had never pre-sold before it even came out. Thank you for doing that for me. It had little to do with me. But it was like to be a part of that was so invigorating. There's a speaking event called the Global Leadership Summit. You know, we've been trying to get you to speak there. They should have you. It's one of the biggest leadership events in the world.

We had four brand builders group clients speak on that stage. Like arguably one of the most illustrious stages in the world. Four of our clients were on that stage. That's incredible. I mean, I was giddy. I was just like, this is amazing. We've had 10 clients hit New York Times this year. We've had 13 clients grow their annual revenue

more than a million dollars a year. Now, to some people, that's not a lot. That's not a lot to you, but some of these people, I go, this is life-changing. There's this guy named Ian Koniak, who we actually met in our sales training days. And he knew us from there, and then he became a client. And he was like, man, I think I wanna like post some videos

on sales. And I just said, dude, make a video every day. Just make a video every day. Just make one tip. He did it for two years on LinkedIn. Cause he was like, I can't figure out the other stuff. I don't know how to do a blog and YouTube. Just did a video.

He made a multi-million dollars, like his fourth year, multi-million, life-changing. And I go, nothing fills me up more than seeing that, but that's part of what gives me peace, but I also can't sacrifice my family. I mean, when I say that peace is the new profit, it means money is part of peace. A family that you're proud of is part of peace. Looking yourself in the mirror and being proud of yourself is a part of peace. And also your purpose in the world is part of peace. And you know, we talked about this last time we were together.

We believe that you're most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were. It's the story of your dad and now the story of you and the story of so many. That's a part of peace. So I go, if being an entrepreneur only takes away your peace, if it gives you everything else but it doesn't give you some deep sense of peace, I don't think it's worth it. But if being an entrepreneur gives you enough money to do what you want to do and need to do for your family, it creates the kind of environment that your family grows up in that you're proud of.

It shapes you into becoming a person that you look in a mirror and you're proud of, and it adds, it creates a context for you to create contribution in the world that gives you peace, then it's all worth it at any size. What a great answer. I totally agree with you on all fronts there. You know, I have a perspective on it and then we'll put a bow on this. First off, think entrepreneurs change the world. I think they change the world. I think they change them in big ways like you look at a Musk or a Steve Jobs but I also think that Realtor in Houston Texas is changing her part of the world. One family at a time, one safe home at a time and so in big ways and small ways entrepreneurs make a difference in the world. I don't think political figures

change the world. I think that's a false thing that people sort of buy into whatever party you're in. That's great. That's awesome. I think I think political figures can hurt the world for sure. But they can just get out of our way. Let the entrepreneurs take over and entrepreneurs can really make change. They innovate. They create. They save lives. They change lives. They push the universe and humanity forward. But I also think for those of you that are considering entrepreneurship or are an entrepreneur, at least in my case, it's become my form of expression. It's how I express my being.

It's one of the ways. It's one of the primary ways. My speaking on stage is certainly my art form and my form of expression, but that's tied to the businesses we build. It's tied to this podcast. This and my form of expression, but that's tied to the business as we build It's tied to this podcast. This is a form of expression for you today The business is that you do every day if it's a form of expression for you. See I can't play the guitar I don't play the piano. I can't sing I don't paint well My art is entrepreneurship and for a lot of times and a lot of you that are listening to this in your own way

It may not feel like it every day This is the music of your life. This is your art. This is your form of expression. And although the world may not have seen all of it yet and may not, some of the greatest artists in the world only have two paintings. Some of the great singers in the world only had one great hit. And so the scope of it and magnitude of it is overblown in the world.

But if you've helped, like Rory said, one family, one person, and you've gone deep in that, it may be worth it for you. And if you hadn't looked at it that way, maybe that's how your business could begin to give you peace. Because when he asked you if you got peace from it, maybe it's just chaos all the time, because being an entrepreneur is chaos. But if you step back on a Sunday sometimes and just think about the work you do and the form of expression it is and the lives you're changing and making a difference, maybe that'll give you some sense of peace that you don't have.

Give them the website again, Rory, because you're going to do a free call, which blows my mind. If you're going to give something away for free, I'll promote the heck out of it on the show. Thank you. Yeah. So go to freebrandcall.com forward slash Ed Mylett. If any of this resonates with you in a way that you go, I should bring more attention to what I'm doing. I feel a little bit like the world's best kept secret, or I just have a calling on my life to play bigger to serve more people to impact more people. And being building a personal brand doesn't mean you have to become a speaker or write a book or, you know, do dances on Tik Tok. It means that you're going to digitize your reputation and we're going to scale what you have. You're going to help encourage people. You're going to entertain them. You're going to educate them. And what that's going to do is it's going to drive warm leads

to your doorstep for the thing you're already doing. The fastest path to cash is to monetize the thing you're already doing. Just use your personal brand as a lead generation tool to drive to the thing you're already doing. But even if it doesn't make you a dollar, still a way you can make a difference. So do it and let's talk. Let's be a part of your journey. What a great combo today, dude. Thank you for being here. This was awesome. All right, everybody. All I ask is you just share the work we're doing here. This was awesome. Alright everybody, all I ask is you just share the work we're doing here. Share the episode. God bless you everybody. Max Outt. This is The Ed Myron Show.