The Entrepreneur DNA - How to Be Seen, Be Authentic, and Build a Brand That Lasts | Jen Gottlieb | EP 33

Episode Date: August 12, 2024

Get your copy of Jen's new book, 'Be Seen' HERE ---   In this episode, I sit down with Jen Gottlieb; a dynamic entrepreneur, bestselling author of Be Seen, actress, business owner, and super-connector. She discusses the importance of authenticity in building a personal brand. She challenges the conventional view of branding as a curated image and emphasizes that true branding comes from embracing and showcasing your authentic self. Jen shares her experiences with overcoming fear and how taking action, even when uncomfortable, is key to personal and professional growth. She also highlights the value of community over vanity metrics, encouraging listeners to focus on genuine connections rather than follower counts. Ultimately, Jen's message is that everyone is already a brand, and the best way to stand out is to be unapologetically yourself.   ---   Connect with Jen! Instagram: @jen_gottlieb Facebook: Jen Gottlieb TikTok: @jengottlieb Website: jengottlieb.com   ---    

Listen, every day that goes by that you're not making yourself visible to the people that you can help is another day that those people are going to go follow someone else. They're going to go listen to someone else or buy from someone else that might not be as good as you and might not care as much as you simply because you're too nervous about being seen and putting yourself out there. You're too worried about the people that are going to judge you. If you have a mindset of you care about how many followers you have, how many likes you have, how much engagement you have, that's going to be a really, really, really tough

road for you. What is up, Entrepreneur DNA family? This one is exciting. I have someone who I've wanted on this episode for a long time, and she is here, the author of Be Seen. She is an actress. She is a business owner. She's a super connector. She is the woman,

the brand queen, I'll call you. Jen Gottlieb is here. What's up, girl? I'm so happy to be here. Yeah. This is already so fun. Let's go. Let's go. You ready for it? Oh, yeah.

Okay. Well, first, she is a bestselling author, as you guys see. Make sure you get this. This is incredible, but it's really about what I'm so passionate about these days, branding and the power of branding and why branding. So let's get into it. Let's talk about branding. So important. It's not natural for everybody, right? No.

Well, it's kind of like, what's your perspective of what a brand is? And we were just talking about my event that's coming up and I named it something very specific because I want to change people's perspective of what a quote unquote brand is. The name of the event is I am the brand. Love that. That's the event. Yeah. Because I truly I think that there's a big misconception right now.

And I think what gets people stuck from putting themselves out there and being seen is the fact that they need to create this brand. They need to create the fonts and the colors and how they want to be seen as, and what their persona is and like what they talk about and everything needs to be perfect and aligned. And all of those hoops to jump through often gets people really stuck. And they're like, cause it's hard to do that. It's hard to create something that's not you and put that into the world. I know because I did that for years. It's borderline impossible, right? And you have that story. It's possible. You can do it, but it's impossible to keep up with it because it's exhausting that's right so the truth is about brand is you already are your brand everybody that's listening to this right now everything that you are sitting here whatever you're doing

whether you're working out at the gym right now walking your dogs in the school line dropping off your kids like whatever it is that you are doing right now we're podcasting you're in a green shirt i'm in this get up like we're in the middle of Miami, whatever. This is our brand. And it can change. It can evolve. It can shift. The cool thing about you is there's only one you on this entire planet and there only ever will be one you with your exact DNA. So the only way to stand out and create a brand that's memorable and different is to double down on you being the brand, not your colors, not your fonts, not creating something that you think everybody else wants you to be, but being Justin. And all those weird things that you might think are

off brand, those are exactly what you need to leverage to connect deeper with an audience that's only going to want to follow you over every other real estate flipper in the world. This episode just started out so fire right away. This is going to be one of my, this is incredible because too many people wear masks. I mean, you and I are in a space, we're speaking together an event upcoming. You just invited me to your event. Like we're in that space of influencing and things of this nature. There's so many people out there faking it in a bad way, right? People fake it till you make it. Fine. I get that. When you're at zero, you got to kind of get some of your own confidence from somewhere. But wearing the mask of being inauthentic, I just can't agree. It's everywhere,

right? Well, the majority of people that are doing that, I think it really just stems from fear. It stems from insecurity. It stems from, are people going to judge me if I'm not good enough? If I'm just me, am I enough as just me to walk into this room and create content? Is that enough? And I think that what I see from the people that I talk to, the people that I help, people that are masterminds, people at our events, is that there's this feeling of, I'm not good enough as I am to create content right now. So I need to create something that's better than me for people to pay attention and listen,

which is the exact opposite of what people want to see or what people genuinely authentically connect with. Because if you think about, I think about the people that I like to watch and consume on the internet or people I like to follow, or even more importantly, people I like to hire, people I like to give money to, are always people that I can personally relate to. And I can't personally relate to somebody that's like so unbelievably perfect. In fact, I'm just going

to tell you, I mute the people that are too perfect online. I mute them because they trigger me in a negative way. Cause I'm like, I can't be that perfect. Oh my God. Uh, my business isn't like that. My house doesn't look like that. My relationship's not like that. Holy shit. This is like too perfect and too awesome. It almost makes me feel less than. So I'm like, I don't want to look at that.

I really like relating to people that are just real, that are experiencing the wonderful highs of life and also the messy, imperfect parts of life and all of the things that make them them. So if there's something about, let's say I'm looking to hire, I don't know, this is like, let's say a dermatologist. I always use that term because I'm always like online looking at beauty stuff. That's like what I like to do. So I'm looking to hire somebody, a dermatologist, a doctor, and there's so many different ones. And I get referred to like four different dermatologists from all my friends in Miami. They're like, this is the one you need. This is the one you need.

This is what you need. What's the first thing I'm going to do. I'm going to go look up each and every one of those on Instagram. Okay. I've asked a lot of people this. I say, where do you go first to look somebody up? Every single person I've asked, and maybe you'll tell me different, but the majority, no, for me, every single person, I've never had anybody give me a different answer. I think if you, they always say Instagram, I would probably go would probably go google you would i probably would if you ask probably about anything else i think you're right i'd probably go instagram but like i don't know i feel like google the i don't know i think that's my answer yeah you think okay yeah i understand why you would say dr google

yeah dermatologists is fine line because it's like a beauty it's like an aesthetic thing botox and right injector yeah yeah so you might want to see who's their clients let me see what they've done let me see right everyone's a voyeur and i want to get into this there's so much to talk about but like nowadays what you're talking about about this fear i 100 agree i actually think there's a couple fears that there's layers to fear but one of it is the judgment of others right what are people going to criticize me for? I've taken all the judgment from my friends from day one. And they always ask like,

how I'm able to do what I do is I have a shoulder shrug mentality. I don't know where I heard that. That's not my own, but I heard it in essentially like, oh, well, who cares? Like, I don't care if they judge me, whatever, who cares? And I have that mentality. So for me, it actually comes a little easier to do things that are outside my comfort zone without the fear. But I think the fear of that judgment is what's stopping most everyone. And when you talk about Instagram, the fear of how much engagement, how many likes did I get? I think it stops everyone from doing the thing they want to go do because they're going to be like, what if two people like the post yeah but you probably had 2 000 people see it because we're voyeurs these days i am i almost guarantee you are we all to some extent flip up flip up and then when you see something really cool maybe you see me

with my baby you're like oh i'm gonna like that one why but for the most part it's authentic it's real that's i love that you gave that example you You see me with my baby, right? Like, oh, I'm going to like that one because that's you. That's exactly unique to you. And that's imperfect, real messy. Like you're just with your baby. You're hanging out with your kid. Like it's exactly who you are. And I like that you used that example. That just kind of closes the loop for me with the, with the being more imperfect and being more where you and you are the brand. So you've been able to overcome in your own life. How do you, how can we help people get over this? Like how could they become more authentic, be their brand, push into this, lean into it? Because as an entrepreneur, you're ahead of a very awesome company. Um, super connector media, right? That's a, you're the head of that. So that is, but you're helping others, people that want to get into that spaces, coaches, influencers, people. How do you push them through the fear of all this? I don't push them through the fear and I don't expect anybody to completely get over fear. And if you're completely fearless, I think that's why I want to be your best friend. Because if like,

I don't know where that comes from. I don't know anyone that's totally fearless. That's right. So I, and I ask a lot of really successful people, like, does the fear ever go away? Are you ever completely fearless of putting yourself out there on the internet of posting? Does the imposter syndrome completely ever go away? And they say, no, like definitely doesn't go away. Right. You just get better at doing it with fear there.

Anyway, you get more courageous because we get good at what we practice. And the more that you do the thing that you're afraid to do, the more you take away the power that fear has over you. So when it comes to putting yourself out there and being seen, I have a couple of things like mind hacks that I do to get myself out of my own way to do that initial action step, which is to do the post or do the live or create the content.

And then afterwards, I also have some little mindset hacks or turnarounds or perspective shifts that I do to help me overcome that, oh my God God, is anyone going to like it? Or I got shitty engagement or I don't have enough followers. So when you're about to post, I find that at least this is what happens for me. And I usually only just use my own experience because, you know, there's so many different ways to do it. There's so many different people listening to this with different fears and different insecurities. But usually I find that if I'm nervous to do a live or a video or a podcast, it's usually because I'm worried about what people are going to think about me,

what I look like, what I sound like, if I'm saying the right things, if I'm making sense, if they like my outfit, if they like my hair, whatever. There's so many things that people could judge you on, and I'm focusing on that. And that's what makes me nervous to put myself out there when really, if you're creating content on the internet, it's not for you. It's for the person on the other side of the phone. And so I like to remember this acronym. It's HOPE. Help one person every day. H-O-P-E. And when I wake up in the morning and I go to do my Instagram live that I do every single day where I put my makeup on on Instagram and answer questions, I think of, okay, who's the one person right now that I'm talking to?

It's not about me. It's about somebody else that needs to hear the thing that I have to say today. Maybe they need to hear it. Maybe they don't. Maybe it'll seep in in some weird way. But hopefully if I can just talk to them and help them and pour into them and give them something that can help them and they can go out in the world and use that in whatever way possible to maybe make their day better or make somebody in their life a little bit happier that day if i focus on just pouring into them and talking to them and helping them i forget about me and the ego like all the shit about me that i'm worried about it goes away because if

you were sitting at lunch with a friend and they were upset about something or you were solving a problem for them or you were helping them with something, you wouldn't be worried about what you're saying. You wouldn't be nervous. You wouldn't forget the words. You would just want to help them. Yeah. So when I create content, I go in with that. Like I'm talking to one person.

I'm helping them. I'm providing value to them in some way, shape, or form, whether I'm entertaining them, answering a question, giving them a tip, giving them advice, or making them feel a little less alone. That's what I'm doing right now. And I'm not thinking about me. That is so great because I even find myself, I could go speak on stage and genuinely be, there's always nerves, but I have more of a flow than even when I record myself because of what you're talking about. To your point, like I still have those thoughts and like, oh oh it's not perfect and that never goes away from me either and we live in a space of we're always creating content right so I would totally agree with you there's there's always that but when I'm speaking or when I'm in a place of I know I have an audience that I can go make an impact on it's so easy for me because I know I'm focusing on the impact.

When I'm on my phone doing this, that's where I get like, ugh, because everything you just said is like now I'm thinking about me. Is that weird? Did I sunbathe? Did I look weird? And what I love about when you go live, it couldn't be more authentic. You were literally as raw as it comes, no makeup, putting it on and you're going live to go make impact. I just think that, you know, if you guys haven't yet realized the power of this episode, go follow Jen everywhere, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, everywhere. Cause this is so powerful because I would, the next question I'll go with is, do you believe anyone that is in business or otherwise should be branding themselves on social media?

I hesitate to say, I don't like to use absolutes and say absolutely everyone on the planet should do something because there's so many different ways to do things and there's so many different variables and there's so much nuance in this situation. So do I think that everybody should do anything? No. do things and there's so many different variables and there's so much nuance in the situation so do i think that everybody should do anything no do i think that if you have a business and you want to get that business out there into the world and you want to market that business and you want attention for that business or you have a story or you have a product or you have a service that you want people to know about i do feel that it's your responsibility to be seen and to be visible. And you need to ask yourself the question, where is my target customer or my audience? Where are they? Where are they hanging out? And where's their attention? Well, I'll tell you where their attention is. I

don't even need to tell you. You guys tell me. Where is their attention? Go to a restaurant and you can tell me where everybody's attention is. It's on their phone. And the cool thing about social media is back in the day before social media, if you wanted to get your business or your service or your product or your story into the eyeballs or the attention of people that you wanted to know about it, you would have to pay money for a commercial or a radio spot or a magazine article or in the yellow pages or whatever we used to do back in the day. Now we have this amazing stage in our pocket that's free. It's free 99. You can market your stuff and your brand and whatever it is you want to talk about you can put it out there and get attention on it for free crazy it's

crazy so if you're not leveraging it then i mean i'm not going to tell you you're stupid you you you decide that for yourself it is your own decision to make, but you are not leveraging every opportunity that you have. It's an amazing opportunity. I tell my dad this all the time. He's in sales and it's frustrating for me, right? He's mediocre at best. I mean, to the point where like he has to borrow money from me. And my point to him is I say, dad, I have a friend in the same sales that you do that makes seven figures a year. And what he leverages is social media. Son, I don't want to look at people's food and I don't care about their cats. Dad, I don't want to tell you to look at people's food, Dad.

I said, I know something about this. Just start using it. And he won't. And to this very day, and I love my dad, but he will forever kind of just make ends meet and probably have to call me again to borrow money because he's not using everything that we have access to. And to your point, everyone's just online just all the time. And by the way, I don't love that, right? It kind of saddens me. Like I want more people to have human interaction and hang out and not be stuck on their

phones, but it is our reality. Listen, you can't force anybody to do anything. And that's why I do always say even like I go live every day and I'm like, listen, I'm not here to give anybody advice. I'm not here to tell anybody what to do. I think there's too many people on the internet that are telling everybody what they absolutely have to do. There's not one right or wrong way to do anything. There are so many ways, especially in entrepreneurship, but there are best practices and there are things that we know that work. And so I'm just here to share with you what I know works. And I know that for me as a consumer, I hire people that I find on social media. I buy things from people that I find on social media.

And here's the even more important thing. I think a lot of people have the misconception that the way that social media works is that you post a piece of content. This happens sometimes, but it's not the majority of the time. That content goes viral and then you get a whole bunch of customers that randomly saw that piece of content and then they hire you or they look at your services or they reach out to you because they saw that piece of content.

That's direct ROI. I call that direct ROI. I saw the piece of content. I'm going to go hire that person or I'm going to go follow that person or I'm going to go comment on this or whatever the interaction that you want them to have is. However, there's another way that's even more important and more valuable that I think is happening way more than you expect.

I like to look at my Instagram, my TikTok, my Facebook, my YouTube, my LinkedIn as my online resume. It's essentially like my online magazine. It's a representation of who I am and what I do so that when somebody sees me on a stage, a friend refers me to them. They see my book randomly in Barnes and Noble. They had no idea who I was. They're randomly scrolling and they see that I'm going live with this bow on my head. They're like, who the hell is this girl? Or maybe they're talking to a friend and they're like, I really want to start building my brand. Is there anybody that I should follow online or who I should go to an event for or something like that to learn about? And they say, Jen Gottlieb. What they're going to do is they're going to go then search me on social. They're going to go back and look at all

of my content and see if I resonate with them. See if I know what I'm talking about. See if I'm providing value and see if they want to lean in more. So usually your social media presence and the content that you're creating every day isn't the first direct touch. It's the indirect roi it's the after effect they go they see wow oh my gosh i totally love this girl's work or i love this guy's work or i love this guy's podcast i'm resonate with him i'm gonna keep listening i'm gonna keep following and then eventually when i want to flip my house or when i you know want to learn about flipping or become a flipper i'm gonna go and i'm gonna talk to justin that's right. A hundred percent. It's funny. I heard something. I read it somewhere, maybe Instagram. Branding equals belief. And I really felt that, right? I mean, you have your podcast, you have an incredible company,

you are a bestselling author. I just realized, I didn't even mention, you're like one of the top 50 speakers across the nation that are sought after speakers but you can tell why just in the last 20 minutes like i know exactly why you have that title um it is really important for the brand because it's a lot i call it a long tail is how i would have said the same thing it's not the immediate sale or new client it is the long tail of their belief in you because the brand that you present over time, they buy in. It might take 12 months. It might take three years. But if you are consistent at the building of a brand, then they will believe in you and that converts into more business. Yeah. You could substitute the word brand for anything too because I think that people

get the word brand a little, it's convoluted for some people. You could substitute the word brand for anything too because I think that people get the word brand a little – it's convoluted for some people. You could substitute that word brand for relationship or community. Yeah. So I think about my world on social as more of my community or my family. Yeah, yeah. And so when I go live every day, I'm not building my brand. I'm actually building my community and my relationships with human beings. And so that's, I think what's really cool that's happening today that's really, really powerful is that your follower count doesn't really matter anymore. Because with the TikTokification of social media,

Gary Vee talks about this a lot. It's all like TikTokified, meaning you could have 300 followers and I could have 3 million followers, but you could have a video that gets 15 million views. Right. And I don't. That's right. Because you went viral. And so it doesn't matter. Back in the day, it used to be you create content and however many followers you have is however many people see your content. It's no longer that. Now you can create a piece of content that goes crazy viral. And so what I'm trying to focus on with my brand personally and what we teach in our mastermind is instead of focusing on those vanity metrics, like how many followers you have or how many views you get or how much engagement you get, I'm way more concerned about creating actual relationships with my audience.

I want to actually create a community. I want to communicate with them. I want to know what they love. I want to know what they hate. I want to know what they're leaning into. I want to know what they're asking me. And I want to talk to them every single day. So it's more so about really getting into the mind and the hearts of my community. And if I lose followers that don't

want to follow me, sayonara. Better for you. Love it. Bye. I love it so much. Bye. Because that opens up space for more people that are like genuine community members. Yeah. So we have a mutual friend, Pace Morby, and he's the one that really put that into my thought process. He has done a brilliant job with his, I mean, the best, right? The best in the world. And so he and I had this really long road trip, ironically. And I'm like, you know, kind of just asking him like why and, you know, things like that. And he's like, Justin, you can do what I do. do you can actually do that you're just never going to i'm a crazy person and he said in the best way just saying like i am so heavily into the people of that community that the amount of energy and work as they like i'll put an eight hour zoom

call on just to keep giving until people are done asking me questions i'm like i love that and it really has shown, and you obviously subscribe and do the very same thing for your community. And it changed everything in my community in terms of the real estate world. Like I literally give them access. The vast majority of them have my personal cell phone. The funny part is no one uses it. I don't know why here is my real self. Call me right now. You'll see over like you don't use it. But the point is where now I am a full believer in everything you just said. The more I am pouring into the others, the bigger, the more everything comes back. And it's only because I'm giving them my experiences, my wins, my losses, and how to avoid some of those losses I felt.

And it just keeps coming back. It's the people that mean everything. Here's the cool thing about that it also makes life so fun and joyful the best way to feel good is to help others yep so I know that if I wake up and I feel stuck or I'm like in a bad mood for no reason you know you have those days you're like man I'm like I need to get on my Instagram live right now let's go like I need to help people I need to get out of my own way and I need to provide some value so if you have it locked into your day that part of your business is just serving people and answering

their questions and helping them and coaching them and pouring into people. I don't know about you, but that energizes me. Of course. It does. Nothing feels better than being able to help someone with their problem if you can. And I'm not saying that I have all the answers because I certainly don't, but I'm the first person to say, Hey, I'm going to sit here with you on this call or on this Instagram live and I might not have the answer, but I'll hold space for you and I'll help you feel a little less alone and we can talk about it. That alone is a very enlightened saying that you just said, I'll hold space for you. I love that. And by the way, you have bad days. You have rough days. It's not always puppy dogs and rainbows for Jen Gottlieb. I definitely have bad days.

But people don't believe that about influencers. They think we literally walk on rainbows every day and it's just all puppy dogs and rainbows. And I think it's something that's important for people to realize that hours, weeks, months, years, right, it happens to us. The problem that I'm finding right now is that we are, or many people,

again, I don't like to put everybody into one bucket, but many people are spending a lot of time scrolling social media. And when you scroll social media, you often will see all of people's best moments. That's right. They're highlight reels because that's what we share on social. And that's fine. There's nothing wrong with that. We want to share our great times, right? Like when you go on vacation with your family, when your business is crashing, or you you got an award or you're having an amazing moment or a great hair day right or you filter your photo to make you look like a freaking supermodel and you post it and you what we don't see is the hour that that girl spent filtering her photo what you don't see is that 50 photos they had to take before the baby stopped crying that's right what you didn't

see was the argument that the couple got into right before they took that photo on that vacation and i'm not trying to say that everybody has like these terrible moments that happen while they're experiencing their great moments but most people do we just share the great ones so we're scrolling all this great stuff and we're in our own real life that's getting lifey oh yeah we just got into a fight with our partner we just had a situation with the dog puking on the floor our kid won't stop crying we just you know whatever is happening in the business that stuff happens to me probably on a daily basis something happens yeah and but i'm scrolling and i'm like wait a second everybody's life is perfect and mine's not. And it makes us feel very, very alone in the fact that we're just living a real life experience

because we're not seeing that. So I, whenever I go live in the morning, I always make that point. I say to everyone, because it's, I can't control all that, but I can control my little corner of the internet. And on my little corner of the internet, I can say, listen, this is the place where we've got no makeup on. We've got no makeup on. We've got no filters on. We just talk about real life. I don't have all the answers. My real life is not a highlight reel. Maybe I post things that might look great because those are the highlights of

my business and my business and my Instagram and all those things are my resume. But when we go live together, we're going to talk about the real shit and we're going to be in the real life of life and we're at least just not going to feel alone in the fact that sometimes we have bad days sometimes we have bad moments sometimes we have amazing days and amazing moments and we need people to celebrate them with and all of the above and that's the only thing that i can do to help this whole situation. The other thing that I talk about a lot, and this might help someone that's listening right now, is I've made a really intentional decision

to not scroll social media anymore mindlessly. And it was a really difficult habit to break. Okay. I've heard it's called doom scrolling. Ooh, I've never heard of that. I haven't either. So my head of PR should be like, yeah, I was doom scrolling last night. And they came in.

I'm like, what the hell? Doom scrolling. Because I actually, while I do engage in post, I'm not the biggest voyeur on social media. Very rarely am I actually looking at it. That's healthy. I think that's probably why I'm so happy. It's because I just don't like, not because I don't care about people or whatever. It's just like, I have so much going on that like, to your

point, I have my own shit I got to deal with. The last thing I need to do is like be caring or worrying about someone else's shit. Right. So like, I'm just going to deal with my own. But I say that to only say when you said scrolling, I think of the word doom scrolling now and just hours of just flipping up. And I'm like, oh, man. A lot of people do it. And last year, I do like an end of the year audit for myself. I call it a best year blueprint. And the part of it is talking to myself about the things that held me back last year or in that previous year.

Like, what could I do better? What held me back or what wasted a lot of my time or where can I improve? And one of the things that I wrote down was all of the time that I spent going like this. And I didn't even, most of us don't realize we're doing it. I will. And when I really got intentional about catching myself and trying to stop it, I did not realize that my thumb magically goes there by itself. I don't even know it's doing it. It just goes there. And then before I know it, I'm going like this and 15 minutes have gone by and I've wasted 15 minutes. And then I feel bad about myself because I'm like, and it's subconscious. Sure. And so what I decided to do is I made a rule for myself that whenever I catch myself doing it,

so sometimes when I first started, it was like five minutes and I'd catch myself. Then it would be like two minutes in and like 30 seconds in. And now if I just pick up my phone, I'm very aware. But if I caught myself, I would say, I don't scroll and then put the phone down. And that's the process. I don't scroll, put the phone down. So it's empowering. Like this is something that I don't do and I put it down.

And after doing that for months, I finally won't pick it up and do it because I know I'm going to have to say I don't scroll and put the phone down. But here's the difference between using social media intentionally for business and for connection because it can be a really powerful tool. Super. And having it do you. Like you can either do it or it can do you. And when I'm scrolling, it's doing me. Oh, yeah. It's putting information into my brain that I don't need.

It's making me feel not so good about myself. It's wasting time. I'm buying shit I don't need. I'm just – it's doing me. Okay? Oh, yeah. And I can choose one of those three things. If I'm connecting with someone, I'm either going straight to my DMs and I'm connecting with people in my DMs and I'm responding, or I'm going to engage with my own posts and seeing what people are writing, or I'm going to, let's say I want to check out what Justin's doing today.

I'm directly going to Justin's page, not going anywhere else, and I'm going to check on his reels. I'm going to connect. I'm going to thoughtfully engage, and then I'm going to put it down. Or I'm going to get on. I'm going to create a piece of content.

Or I'm going to educate myself. So maybe it's like, for me, I really like to know what's going on in the social media landscape because I teach it. And also I want to get better at it. So I follow several accounts where I know that those people are studying social media. So I know that the content that they're posting is stuff that's working or that they're trying to see if it works or they're playing with different styles and different techniques. So I'll go to their page specifically to see, hey, what's this person trying this month or this week and educate myself on what's working for them and then trying it for me. The few accounts that I follow right now that I know really put a lot of time and effort into their social is Gary Vaynerchuk. He's got a massive team of people that are just focused

on learning how to do social media. That's right. So I know if they're doing something... He's the leader of the pack, I would say. He's... I love Gary. Me and my friends call him Garibare. Gary, if you're listening,

we call you Garibare in our group text. Yeah, we love Gary. I know that Cody Sanchez is doing a great job. She's doing great, yeah. She's got a great team behind her that also is very focused on figuring out what works and what doesn't. Yeah. Hermosi is always

on top of the pulse on top of the game. No doubt. And so I'll just go to those. You're studying them. I think one thing I want everyone to hear this correctly. Don't hear what she didn't say. She's not going to scroll through their stuff. She's educating yourself. Yes. You're actually going there to figure out how you can make a bigger impact on other people. Because the better you become, right, the larger your community gets. And we just talked about this. And now more impact you're able to make. And that is the difference between what 99.9% on people's social media these days and what you are doing is you're actually saying, okay, I'm going to go educate myself.

And the reason why I'm going to do that is so I can actually go make a higher impact on more people in this universe. And I think that's really commendable. I mean, it's a reframing of how you should be using social media. Aw, thanks, friend. Yeah. I mean, there's, listen, whatever you do in this world, there's somebody else out there that does it better and that did it before you in some way, shape, or form. So what if we just understood and knew that the yellow brick road has been paved for us already by so many other people? And what if you targeted those people or thought about made a list of all of the people that did the thing that you want to do before you. And instead of being jealous of them or envious of them or comparing yourself to them, you leaned into being grateful for that

person. I talk about it in my book a lot, like using FOMO as fuel, instead of being jealous, instead of being envious, instead of letting it bring you down and having that scarcity mindset of, oh, they're already doing it. I can't do that because they've already got that audience or they're doing it better than me. And I can never get there. All these things that many people, including myself, will say to ourselves sometimes. I try to reframe that and say, wow, well, if she's doing it or he's doing it, it means that it can be done. And actually there's only one Justin. So I could never do it just like Justin. I could do a similar strategy and I could do it like Jen. And wow, how grateful am I and lucky am I that Justin went and did it before me to show me

exactly how to do it. You can use mentors in your head and all these people are out there now doing it. And what if you just leaned into being grateful that they're already doing it before you and showing you the way instead of being jealous and comparing yourself and stopping yourself and saying they've already got it it's it's like the world is your oyster now if you want to create something you can see it being created before you it's it's really cool yeah i i tend to adopt i'm like you i try to see what things actually work within the, because I think in my head, these are all like impossible algorithms to go viral. You never know.

You never know. But I am watching the same type of people you are. I'm like, oh, that was great for me to watch it, but now how can I do it my way? Exactly. And what can I do? And so I think there's a reframing. I think all people, so I am a little bit more polarizing when I say it. I think if you are an entrepreneur of any size, solopreneur to

having a hundred employees, you need to be on social media. You actually just shouldn't have an option anymore because what you're talking about impact, your clients are actually on social media, like an absurd amount of time and it's the easiest fastest and cheapest way to go make impacts for your clients and i just don't see an option anymore and i think this book is so valuable and i think everyone has to go get this book i'll keep plugging this book this whole episode um because i think what it does is is you're vulnerable in the book but it it helps people understand the fear concept. And I want to kind of dive into fear because I'm a big fear hater.

And I say that because, to your point, we all have fear. We all experience it. I don't care if it's speaking on stage, doing a podcast, going live on Instagram. There's a level of fear. Just doing something new. But as kids, children, little children, you learn how to crawl and you fall and you slam your head. You learn how to walk. You fall on your butt. You hit your elbow. You learn how to ride a bike. You skin your knee. You break your elbow. You learn how to swim. You swallow water. You choke. We have no fear.

There's this picture that I think about all the time of that little baby and everyone's seen it literally walking up to this bear who's standing on their legs and the baby's like oh you're big and furry right the bear the baby has no fear doesn't know any better somewhere and my my thought is in the teenage years we get indoctrinated in shame of ourselves being ridiculed judgments and we slow down our willingness to go do anything and it just freezes us fear just paralyzes us and it's very hard for most people to break through that and figure out like how do i actually take the action to do it so if you could help some of the audience members with your answer of how can people start to break through the like what would be a step or two that they can say okay i'm gonna i just heard jen i'm gonna do this thing what is that for you

i'll tell you a story of how i learned how to do this and before i tell you this story i'm gonna talk about something that everybody sees online right now like it's very very common to see people cold plunging and getting into ice baths and stuff like that. I know it's very trendy. If you're listening to this, there's a really good chance that if you open up your social media, you'll see at least 10 of your friends

doing a cold plunge on social. However, where I learned how to talk to fear was doing my very first ice bath. And this was back in the day when nobody was jumping in a bucket of ice for fun. Just you and Jesse at the floor? Maybe. I don't even know if

jesse was doing it back at this time i was in this mastermind and uh there was this event that we were doing and the guy that was running the mastermind comes downstairs and he's like okay everybody we've got a surprise for you we're doing a surprise everyone come up to the second floor and i'm thinking we're gonna have a party it's gonna be awesome there's gonna be a guest speaker i walk up and there's these silver tubs lined up. Oh, wow. And there's this lady and she's pouring ice into these silver tubs. And I'm like, oh, that's a lot of ice for the beverages for the party that we're about to have.

Like, I don't know what an ice bath is. Right. And he comes in and he's like, we're all going to do ice baths. And I don't know why this terrified me the way that it did but this i i i think i have some kind of trauma around that because it immediately made me start crying and i had started having a panic attack and i started i got so terrified i was like i am not doing this and so talk about fear this is not the type of fear that we're you're talking about with like posting online anxious fear it's like no so talk about fear. This is not the type of fear that you're talking about with like posting online.

A little anxious fear. No, this is real fear, terror fear. I don't want to do it. And so fear starts negotiating with me. And this is what it does when you're about to go create content or do anything. Steven Pressfield, one of my favorite authors, he refers to this type of fear as like the resistance, right? When you're going to create something or you're going to do something that you know can move

you forward, whether you're going to go write a book or you're going to go jump in an ice bath or you're going to do an Instagram live, can move you forward, whether you're going to go write a book or you're going to go jump in an ice bath or you're going to do an Instagram live, the resistance comes in and it's like, oh, you should do this later. You shouldn't do this today. Or like for me in that moment, it was like, Jen, you should tell them that you have to leave early or you're allergic to ice water. I don't know. I don't know what it was telling me all of these reasons why I could get out of there. And so I sit on this bench and I was like, I'm not going to do this. I'm opting out. Like I'm not.

And I watched all of my friends in this mastermind go do this exercise where they were really terrified. And then they got in the ice bath and then they emerged like a new human. Yeah. Right. Overcame this fear because they were all scared too. Because none of, no one really had experienced this ice bath thing before. This was way before it was trendy.

And I sat there on this bench, and this is really the moment. And I thought about my bed that night. I thought about no matter what, this day is going to end. No matter if I get in that ice bath or I don't. Either way, before I know it, I'm going to be laying in my bed. I'm going to be looking up at the ceiling and I'm going to be asking myself, did I do a good job today? Do I want to lay in my bed tonight and be like, I was the only one that didn't do that ice bath? Or do I want to lay in my bed and say, I conquered that shit? Because either way, that uncomfortable one minute that I was going to be in that ice bath was going to end. It was only going to be one minute and it was going to end no matter what. And I was going to get that shot one time. I either do it and I proved to myself that I'm a confident, courageous woman,

or I don't do it. And I proved to myself that I'm not a confident and courageous woman. So in that moment, I was like, okay, here's what I'm going to do. I heard the strategy in this book. It's called Big Magic by Elizabeth Gilbert. she talks about going on a road trip with fear and putting fear in the passenger seat of the car and and driving with fear there anyway yeah so it's not like kicking fear out of the car it's like saying get in the car you're here i get it you're gonna yell at me you're gonna scream at me you're gonna give me all the resistance all all the reasons why i shouldn't do it but i am driving so i envisioned putting Vera in the passenger seat of the car. And I drove. And I got in the stupid ice bath.

And it was terrifying and painful. And I hated it. And it wasn't fun. But when I got out, I got back in. I did it a second time. And this is where I learned that when you do the thing you're afraid to do you take away all of its power yeah you take away all of the power that fear has over you because once I did it I had proof oh discomfort's temporary it doesn't last forever and when I get on the other side of

that I feel like a freaking rock star. And the only way I was able to do that and the only way I was able to learn that lesson about fear was to walk right through that fear and do that thing. That's the only way. So now I go do cold plunges every single weekend by myself. I Uber Eats bags of ice to my apartment and i put them in my bathtub and i do them by myself why serious i do it to practice being uncomfortable sure i do it to practice putting fear in the passenger seat of the car and i do it to remind myself consistently that no matter what like tonight like you're gonna think about this justin are you ready you're gonna get in your bed tonight okay you're gonna look up at the ceiling and you're gonna be thinking about this conversation

yeah jen was right that's why i have this um it says time never stops on my wrist yeah i tattooed that on my wrist because i wanted the reminder every single day that no matter what this moment that we're in it's temporary so i either show up in a way that's going to make me proud at the end of the day at the end of my life or i don't either way it's going to make me proud at the end of the day, at the end of my life, or I don't. Either way, it's going to pass. Every uncomfortable moment, every moment of fear, every moment of imposter syndrome, every moment of like, oh my God, should I do this? Is my cousin from Kentucky going to judge me?

Like whatever, you know, that we're thinking about. And they are. That's what I tell people. I say, you know what? They did. They're doing it. They're doing it right now. Great.

Who cares? So be it. Keep going. Your agenda, your mission, your vision, what you're trying to go right now great who cares so be it keep going your agenda your mission your vision what you're trying to go and accomplish who cares because they're going to do it people gossip all the time we i think we have a mutual friend sean whalen just posted something recently i was like brilliant and it's those that gossip to you gossip about you they're doing it they're gossiping about you who cares you have You have a different path. You're

trying to do something and make impact. Anyone is an entrepreneur trying to make some, I don't care if you're a bakery and you're making cupcakes, you're trying to make people happy. Who doesn't smile when you're eating cupcake, right? I mean, that's the reality. So they're doing it. I just tell everyone, just expect like it's done. They're making fun of you. Who cares? Move on. They'll still answer your call. And the thing about people that judge and make fun and gossip and all those things, it has nothing to do with you. It has everything to do with what they're afraid to do or something that's being activated within them. This isn't my quote, but hurt people hurt people.

And I know a lot of really happy people and I know that those happy, successful people, they don't spend time making fun of others because they just don't have time. They're too busy being happy and successful. They want to lift you up. They want to like, I mean, listen, you came into the studio and you gave me a huge compliment because that's genuinely who you are.

You build people up. You don't tear people down. That's it. And I'm smiling right now because I'm like, this podcast has been so great. And I had all the intention in the world just focusing on branding alone and PR. And oh my God, this is so much better.

Although you're a wealth of knowledge of that. But this is so impactful because I hope, what I hope, the watcher, the viewer, the listener, they can start to utilize social media to brand themselves in a positive way again if you get one view one like it doesn't matter that's the vanity metrics of what you were talking about these days like I have a hundred thousand followers but if you look at some of my engagement you would think I have four followers right like but then sometimes it's a ton of so it's like who cares just do the right thing and put the brand out there. Because if you own a business, you need to help your clients.

And if that is your brand, then put your brand out there. Listen, every day that goes by that you're not making yourself visible to the people that you can help is another day that those people are going to go follow someone else. They're going to go listen to someone else or buy from someone else that might not be as good as you and might not care as much as you simply because you're too nervous about being seen and putting yourself out there. You're too worried about the people that are going to judge you. So I get, I understand why people are obsessed with the vanity metrics and all of that. And we want to get followers and engagement. And sometimes that does help you in your career.

So I'm not going to tell you not to try to build your social media following because I do know that book publishers, big networks, things like that, like you're in the real estate space. I know that these big real estate shows, they're bringing on realtors that have big followings because they want a built-in audience. When I got my book deal, I have a feeling that my audience size helped me get that book deal. So that definitely helps. But that takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of time. So how do you get there with the minds? If you have a mindset of you care about how many followers you have, how many likes you have,

how much engagement you have, that's going to be a really, really, really tough road for you. In short, you're not going to keep that path very long. It's just not sustainable. And I'll ask you because I really respect your opinion on this. I have five laws of success. They're my own and they're kind of formatted. But the first law is you need to decide what you want and who you need to be to get it. So if what you want is followers, how long are you going to run that path? Because that's such a frivolous vanity thing right because who do you need to be to get that right number two would be is you have to commit to that who you are so i always use a fitness example if you decide you want a six-pack

and you are going to be the person to get a six-pack you can't eat donuts and drink coca-cola all day every day right you can't do that You have to commit to veggies and fruits and working out. Number three is do the thing. You made me laugh a little earlier. You're like, do the thing. I say this to my community members at the Science Flippin' all the time. Do the thing. Just do the thing, right? You have to go do it and fuck it up. Make mistakes. It's okay. No one's judging. And again, if they are judging, who cares? But take action. Even if it's imperfect, it creates confidence. And I tell my members in real estate all the time, even if the offer gets rejected, you now know how to make an offer and have confidence to go make another offer, right? Number three is get uncomfortable. We just talked

about that. Somewhere we lose that ability to be totally uncomfortable. And number four, don't have the time expectation on your result. So for example, you are now a bestselling author, but that could have been a desire for a long time before it happened. You are a nationally recognized speaker. All these things, people are like, oh, I want to become this tomorrow. And then they don't. And they mentally check out. They're like, oh, the economy politics whatever they're going to just blame everybody and their mother and if you in my opinion if you adhere to these five you can quite literally accomplish anything anything because the last one just says it may not happen in your in your time requirement but it'll happen it usually doesn't happen in the time requirement

and almost never yeah it definitely and i would i'm for me i'm gonna rearrange your numbers i like it go i'm gonna put the the take action part the do it before the clarity part okay in my version and here's why and i think that there's so many ways of course to do it so I like your way for you and my way would be because just because I talk to a lot of people who don't have clarity on what they want to do sure and they have so much analysis paralysis there's so many different shiny objects that they could follow and so many different things that they want to do and so many different hobbies that they have and so what I usually like to tell them or what I do for myself is I follow like the brown water strategy, which is kind of gross. But I lived in New York City for 17 years.

And even though we lived in a very beautiful apartment, we still had this bathtub that you would turn it on and it would have brown water for like three or four minutes, sometimes 10 minutes before the clear water would come out. And I was like, this is totally like developing an idea or getting clarity on what you want to do. Because here's the thing, I had absolutely zero, zero clarity that I wanted to become a motivational speaker. I didn't know what that was. I didn't know it existed. I also didn't really know that entrepreneurship existed. My whole life, I thought I was going to be an actress. I was like, this is all I'm going to do. I'm going to be an actor. I'm going to audition for shows and movies and TV shows and musicals and all those things.

And I'm going to be a waitress. And that's going to be my life, right? And whenever I get a gig, I get a gig. I had no idea that any of this stuff existed until I started doing it, until I started guessing. And someone put me in front of an audience of like 15 little, little, they weren't little, 15 personal trainers that were sitting on the floor. And I was standing up there telling them my story. I was like, I could do this.

And so I had no idea on the clarity that I wanted to be a speaker until I actually did it. So for some people that aren't clear, they don't know who they want to be. They don't know what they want to do. They have all of these different ideas. I don't know what my brand is. I don't know what I want to talk. They don't know what they want to do. They have all of these different ideas. I don't know what my brand is. I don't know what I want to talk about. Start doing something. I like it.

Be the brown water. The brown water has to come out before the clear water comes out. And it can be messy. It can be ugly. You can slip up. My favorite thing in the world is to try something and figure out,

I hate that. Yeah. I'm closer to the thing I like because I know now I hate this. I don't want to do this now. That's right. That's right. You know, interesting enough,

I would tend to agree with you. Uh, I just think there's so many people, but I do agree with you because a great example would be, I have two podcasts. Both are very highly ranked in Apple. Wasn't always that way. 11 years ago, I started my first podcast. 11. What was it about? Real estate. And I still have it today. It's called the science of flipping. So I interview people about real estate and all these things. But I didn't know what I wanted. So to your point, agreeing to your point, I just did it. I started a podcast and said, fuck it, let's just start.

And see, it has now created this massive community for myself. Hundreds and hundreds of thousands of people now. I have my coaching and educational community that now stems from it. I am doing more real estate now than I've ever done in my entire life. But it's because 11 years ago, and by the way, I'm ranked right now, I'm ranked number two behind Dave Ramsey. Whoever would have thought, not me. I just did it. You didn't have the clarity. You didn't see that. You didn't know, but you took action. Yeah. So I tend to agree. So I like that. I like that little twist on the five. Good. Good.

Jen, this has been beyond a pleasure to get to know you. And I know you've already made a massive impact to all the listeners, the watchers. You guys must get the book. Follow her everywhere. You can already tell the type of person she is. She has an incredible company, right, that can help coaches and others try and break through. And we didn't even get to talk about that just for the sake of time. You can find me on Instagram and find out all the deets.

That's it. Yeah. Thank you so much for jumping on. Thank you for having me. This was so fun. Yeah. I knew it would be. Let's go.

Cool. Well, if this was pretty impactful to you because I know it was for me, go share it with two friends. I'd greatly appreciate it. But stay tuned to the next episode with another incredible guest. Peace.