The School of Greatness - 346 The Lifetime Millionaire

Episode Date: June 27, 2016

"The premium goes up when you invest in premium design." - Lewis Howes If you enjoyed this episode, check out show notes and more at http://lewishowes.com/346

Episode number three, four, six, the Lifetime Millionaire, and you are entering the solo round. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur, and each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

Chuck Palahniuk said, the goal isn't to live forever. The goal is to create something that will. I am so pumped. I haven't done a solo round in a long time. And a lot of you have been asking, when are you going to come on and share some of your own wisdom? You constantly bring great guests on. And trust me, we've got some incredible guests coming up. We've got Marianne Williamson coming up next, and a lot of other great people. But everyone keeps saying, will you come back on and share some wisdom? So I just got back from Buenos Aires, Argentina. I was there for about two weeks with the U.S. Men's National Handball Team playing in the Pan American Championships, and we didn't do as well as we'd have liked.

We lost a couple close games early on, and it kind of put us in the middle of the pack, unfortunately. close games early on and it kind of put us in the middle of the pack, unfortunately. However, for me, it was a lot of fun getting to play with my teammates and really just being present for a couple of weeks. You know, we practice every morning. We'd have breakfast, lunch, and dinner with the team. We're taking a bus, you know, 45 minutes to the gym, then back and then to the gym and back for a game every single night. And for me, it was really great to just be present and focused on being an athlete and playing at the highest level that I could in that sport and playing against Olympians. You know, we got to play against Brazil and they're going to the Olympics here in the next couple of months. So for me, it was an incredible experience. But on this trip, every day we have a little bit of time, downtime. And one of the days I was walking around near the center of Buenos Aires with one of our teammates, and he wanted to check out a shoe store.

He wanted to just check out and see what the shoes were like down in Buenos Aires. So we walk into the store, and as we go into the store, he's looking at the Reeboks and the Adidas and all these other things and the Nikes. and the Adidas and all these other things and the Nikes. And I remember I was kind of just looking at the shelves. I wasn't really interested in being in the store, but I was just browsing around, and something caught my attention. Something caught my attention, and it was a pair of shoes. And there was no – it wasn't a pair of Nikes.

There was no brand name on this pair of shoes. It was a nice-looking pair of shoes. The only thing on this pair of shoes was a logo of Coca-Cola. And that was it. They were Coca-Cola branded shoes. It was like a pair of Nikes without the Nike swoosh. It was just a Coca-Cola logo. And I thought to myself, and these were like, I don't know, 100 bucks or $150 US to buy. And I thought to myself, this is crazy that a sugar water company has created such a lifestyle legacy that they put their logo of sugar water on a pair of running shoes and people buy them just because they want to have Coca-Cola, the branding on their shoes to have Coca-Cola shoes. Now, for me, I was just dumbfounded by this, by how they have built such incredible

branding and how they have connected emotionally to this lifestyle appeal with people all over the world around their logo. And this is titled The Lifetime Millionaire. And I want to share with you guys my thoughts on this. You know, a lot of people constantly message me on Instagram and Snapchat and Twitter and Facebook, always asking for business advice, business coaching, business mentorship. I get people saying they will move to Los Angeles to work for me for free. People offer to pay me to work for me for many months. And this is the thing that you want to do.

A lot of people say, if you could start out all over again, how did you make your first seven figures? And how did you keep multiplying it every single year? And how do you sustain it for a lifetime? How do you generate wealth and income for a lifetime? And I've only been doing it for, I don't know, six, seven years since I made my first seven figures in a business context. But I haven't lost it. There hasn't been a year where I've done less than that, right? And a lot of people say, well, how do you do this? If you could do it all over again,

what would you get started with? If you were in the beginning and you didn't have any money like me right now, what would you launch with? How do you get this out there? I get all these questions constantly. And I'm glad that people ask me these questions, but I create a lot of content on this. And one of the things that is so true for me is branding. And I talk a lot about this, how I focus on reinvesting in design and branding as much as I possibly can. This is like the invisible return, right? You cannot necessarily track branding and design for it to generating sales and conversions and things like that. You can't track this.

This is why a lot of the internet marketers that you see online who talk about getting rich, who have all these courses and programs and all these other launches that they do, a lot of them, not all of them, but a lot of them have horrible design. It's just like red text and yellow highlighted headlines. You guys know the sales pages that I'm talking about. And for me, yeah, you can make a lot of money being a great copywriter and hyping a product up. But all these people that I see doing this, they have to constantly come up with something new. They have to constantly create some new thing or they're hot for a few years and then

you don't hear about them again. You know, there's a lot of these online marketers that I don't hear about anymore because they never built a brand around themselves. They built a brand around launching things every few months that really didn't get results for people, but they made a lot of money teaching it. And this is the thing. When you get to a place where your brand is on sneakers, when it should never be on sneakers, but people just love the logo,

that is power. That is you generating wealth for a lifetime. And even after you're gone, the goal isn't to live forever. The goal is to create something that will. You know, the person who created Coca-Cola, I don't even know who the person is, you know, created something that lasted way long after them. And people want it.

People are attracted to the feeling of the brand. It's the emotion that you can create with your design, with your brand, with your image. And this is something that everyone needs to focus on. Now, you may build a company and sell it and all these other things. And you may start something and may not want to continue it down the line. Or you may say, well, I just want to do this right now. And I don't want to focus on putting too much into design because I'm not sure where it's going to go. Listen, if you want to be a millionaire for a lifetime, you've got to

focus on design. You've got to focus on your branding and the quality of your reputation. That's everything from your own personal brand to your business's brand. And this is something I'm trying to do for both. I've got my own personal website, where I invest high quality images, photography, you know, my good friend Nick Onkin does a lot of my photos. And people notice it, people tell me that, hey, you know, I'm paying a premium for your products and services and coaching. And it's not because I have cheap design, you know, they're not doing that, because I don't care about my design, you know, just because I have a blank website with a photo from seven years ago with me and my arm cast.

You know, I'm constantly reinvesting in the invisible return, right? It's this invisible return. You can't track the metrics. You can't track the clicks and the open rates and the Facebook ad conversions. You can't track the dollar that you put in to your design to seeing, oh, I know exactly where that $2 came back from that $1. This is not something that you're able to see necessarily. It's not something that you're able to measure. And that's hard for a lot of entrepreneurs or business owners or people just starting out. I get it. If you're someone who

doesn't have a lot of money right now, I get it. That's hard to be like, man, I'm just going to put money into design and hope that it comes back to me. You've got to be strategic about it. You've got to be very strategic about it and have a game plan with your design and your personal branding and what you invest in, in all of your branding. This is something that I, it keeps me up at night, to be honest, it keeps me up at night for whatever reason. I wish I was a better designer myself. I'm like, I could barely draw a stick figure, right? I can barely draw to save my life. But I appreciate and I know the feeling that is attached to my heart and my soul when I see

beautiful design or design that resonates with me. And not all design is going to resonate with me. There's a lot of female brands that are out in the world right now that don't really resonate with me. Maybe I'm appreciative of their design, but I'm not like, oh, I'm going to go buy this, I don't know, lipstick or whatever, or lingerie because that's not what I buy, right? But I can still appreciate and say, oh, that person has great design. I'm sure their company is going to do well. The thing is we resonate with our feelings and our emotions

that a person, an entrepreneur, content, or anything that's put out there, how it is represented, we are connecting with it. Whether it's conscious recognition or a subconscious recognition, we are connected to it emotionally. It's a visceral feeling that we can't even control that's been developed and designed through our bodies and our minds for our entire lives based on everything we've seen, everything we've felt, everything we've experienced. This is what happens to us.

And that's why it's so important now to invest. I'll tell you what, my first website, I invested, I think I had 500 bucks that I gave to a designer to create my first blog. And it was horrendous. I mean, it was just like, if I saw it now, I'd probably want to throw up. It was just a header with my name and like a photo of me just trying to look semi professional with like a sport jacket on or something, which I had no clue what I was doing. But I knew I needed something. So I just got started. I started with a $500 design and a blog. And within about a year, I reinvested money that I made and put it into a better design. And I think I'm like in my fourth or fifth iteration for my website now. And I'll tell you what, every time I redesign my blog,

you want to know what happens? Every single time I redesign it, I put out new graphics, new design, new images. I generate more results. I generate more sales. I get more attention. I get more followers. I get more speaking gigs. You know, the price goes up. The premium goes up when you invest in premium design.

And that's just the truth. Now, you've got to be consistent with everything else. You know, there's so many other parts of the formula in terms of running a good business, having a good product, great copywriting, sales, marketing, having great systems, customer support. There's so many other elements of building your online empire, of building a legacy business, of being a lifetime millionaire. There's so much more that goes into this.

And even if you get to the place where you're a millionaire or generating seven figures in your business in a year, you've got to be able to maintain and reinvest and reinvent on a consistent basis if you want to have it for a lifetime. You've got to develop and design and reinvent your branding and your design as often as possible. Now, I'm not saying you should change your logo every year or something like that. You know, the bigger corporations, they do update it. And you'll see different iterations of Coca-Cola logo from the last whatever 50 years. I'm sure it's updated a number of times.

You've got to make it current to the times. You've got to make it fresh and hip to the time that we are at now. So if everyone else is evolving, but you are staying stagnant, and you have the same design from five years ago, or the same headshot from three years ago, you're not staying relevant, you're not staying up to date, you're not investing in yourself. And you're not saying that you care about your design and your branding. And other people will notice it, whether they look at it for a second, they're going to look at your website for a second. This is the thing a lot of my students that go through my programs, they asked me to review their blog. And I tell you, in the first couple seconds, I can tell them whether or not I'm ever going to look at their

website again. If they have horrible design, and if there's no flow, you can tell within the first few seconds. Go to any website and tell me right now if you can notice in the first few seconds if you like it or not. And if you put any effort into design, people are going to recognize and notice this. And that's going to set you up to be a lifetime millionaire. That's going to set the foundation, right? That's not going to be everything. Again, you've got to do everything else we talked about. Have a great product,

have a great service, software, whatever it is you're offering. You've got to have something where you can generate income. You can't just have a beautiful design and not know how to sell. You've got to learn these other skills as well or hire the team to learn these other skills as well. But this is the first step. And this is my opinion is the invisible return, right? You're not going to see direct results from it. You can't track it from clicks or open rates or anything like that. This is just something that you've got to trust. And again, the story of the Coca-Cola shoes is just, for me, a stupid reminder of how incredibly powerful branding is. That someone could put the logo of a sugar water company on shoes and people will pay

a premium for it just because they like the logo. And they like the feeling that that brand gives them. They like the feeling. They like to remember that day that's at the ballpark when they're drinking a Coca-Cola and their girlfriend gave them a kiss or something, right? It's that feeling. It's that emotion of what that brand has done and that design has done for someone. So I want you to evaluate right now on a scale of one to 10, how is your personal branding or your business design and brand? 10 being you're the leader

in your industry. Everyone screenshots your website and sends it to their graphic designer and says, we need to make something based off of this person's site. We need to mimic this. We need to use this as a framework and redesign ours to make it as fresh and hot and sexy as this design. So that'd be a 10. And a one would be that someone comes to your website once and laughs and never comes back again.

So where are you on a scale of one to 10? Are you the leader in your industry or in your space in terms of branding design? Does your social media accounts have beautiful images and graphics on a consistent basis that you're posting where other people just can't shut up about? They can't stop talking about or they mimic and they copy yours and do it themselves. That's a great indicator that you're doing something right when everyone else is trying to copy you. So where are you in your branding and design?

Are you at the top? Are you at a 10? Are you at a one? Are you somewhere in between? You know, somewhere in between the four to seven range is probably the worst place to be, to be honest. If you're in a four or seven in that range, is probably the worst place to be, to be honest. If you're in a four or seven in that range, it's the worst place to be because you're, you know what?

You're pretty good. You're just in a good place. And I'll tell you what, good is so forgettable. Good is, I'm not going to pay them anything. I'd rather go find someone who's more of a premium that I can really trust. So where are you? And what are you going to do about it right now to start reinvesting in your design? You know, we've got incredible sites out there. We've got DesignCrowd, which is one of our sponsors, that you can go and get a beautiful

new design. You can do a contest over on DesignCrowd and use the discount code GREATNESS to get $100 off your first time using DesignCrowd and use the discount code GREATNESS to get $100 off your first time using DesignCrowd. So again, we've got DesignCrowd, which you can go and you can get a beautiful logo updated. You can get a whole website design redone by doing a contest over on DesignCrowd. You can go find a freelancer if you want to work with someone more intimately. There's lots of ways you can find a designer to help you really redevelop and design the branding that you have. And I've got a new program that teaches you how to build your online empire, that really teaches you how to be a lifetime millionaire.

And it's called Legacy. And inside this course, it's out right now. It's only out for a few more days until we take it down. But inside this course, we have an entire branding document. This is what I tell all my students. You need to go through a process that you deliver. You fill out first this branding document. This is essentially kind of like a vision board for your brand of who you want to be and how you want to be represented to the world and the feelings and the motions that you want other

people to have when they look at your brand for one second. How do you want them to feel? We map this all out on a branding document that I have inside this course that walks you through exactly what you need to fill out to hand over to a graphic designer or hand over to a design crowd type of platform where you can say, this is what I'm looking to create. And the designer that you're working with will know exactly what it is you're doing. The challenge is, we know we want something beautiful.

Answer me this. If you're on Twitter right now, answer me this. I'm at Lewis Howes. How many of you are like this, where you know you want something beautiful done, but you don't know what it is until you see it. I, you know, this was me for the first like five years. I was like, I couldn't explain what I wanted to a designer. I was like, you know, I kind of want something like this and

a little bit like that. And maybe some of this color and maybe some of that color, right? But they would come back to me with something because I was so vague that they would come back to me with something else. Like, nah, I don't like it. Make something else. And it just took forever. It took months and months. A lot of time, a lot of energy, a lot of stress. And I was finally just like, okay, just put this up, right?

This allows you to get so clear so a designer or anyone you're working with can say, got it. I know exactly what your vision is of what you want to create. Now let me go make it and give you something beautiful right away. So inside my course, if you go to legacycourse.net, you can get signed up for that. You can learn more about the program. It walks you through everything from taking an idea and making it a rowdy, putting it into a course or a service or a software to figuring out your perfect avatar, to all the sales and marketing training that you'll need, to how to build a massive audience online, to systems and processes, the legal standpoint, accounting, bookkeeping, all the stuff about building an online business

we talk about and walk you through step-by-step everything I've done, along with the design and branding element. Again, this is something that I think a lot of courses don't have, where they talk about how to develop a legacy brand. Again, a brand that people look at and they trust automatically, instantly. They pay a premium for, and in 100 years, they want to put your logo on shoes and buy those shoes as well. Something like that.

This is what we cover in this course. And again, go to LegacyCourse.net. You can watch a video right at the top that I break down exactly what it is and what you're going to get out of this and all the good stuff that's inside of Legacy. So again, make sure to check out LegacyCourse.net to learn how to build your online empire today. dot net to learn how to build your online empire today. And to wrap this up, there are a lot of people listening that I know who are entrepreneurial minded or looking to take their life to a different level. You want to achieve more. You want to create more. You know you were born for something special in this world. You know that you're here for a purpose, but maybe you're just frustrated because you haven't been able to figure it out or you're not sure how to really get to that next level yet.

And I'm telling you, investing in your personal brand is never going to be wasted investment. Even if you don't have a product or service right now, you're always selling something in the world, and that something is you. So if you aren't willing to invest in your personal brand and your design, in your representation of how you show up in the world, in the physical world and in the online world, both are important towards your personal brand,

how you show up, the emotions, the feelings that people have when they see you. That's both physical world and online. That's, you know, in the physical world is a whole nother topic here. We'll have to do a whole nother podcast about building confidence and the soft skills, the people skills are really developing a brand

in real life that people will talk about. That when you walk in the room, people look at you and then they talk about how, who is that person? Who is that person? What are they up to? I need to go meet that person. There's a way to create that. And I'll tell you what, when I was just starting out, I was like the ugly duckling, afraid to talk to everyone, scrawny, skinny, with acne all over my face, didn't know anything, was super insecure, didn't feel like I could talk to anyone. So I definitely spent a lot of time researching and studying and practicing this so that I could just be comfortable in front of people.

This will be a whole other topic that we'll have to go into another time. But your online brand is something that you can really dive into right now. And there's so many great resources out there, designers out there. And again, Design Crowd, which is a place where you can go and really get a lot of different designers to help you out with your branding and your messaging. So to wrap this up, if you want to be a lifetime millionaire, if you want to make seven figures and you want to do it consistently and you want to build a brand that's a premium brand for a lifetime for your business or as a person, then you must invest in design. You must make it a priority, put funds away, have a designer part-time

on call that you can work with at any time to create graphics, invest in a great photographer, a great lifestyle photographer. I'm telling you the difference between so many people that are just doing good and doing okay and are out there making noise and the ones that are really being talked about is great photos. I've said this in a couple of my speeches that the differentiator in design is photos. Think about it. When you go on Instagram and you see someone that posts a crappy photo or crappy design text over the photo that is just from their iPhone photo, as opposed to someone who's got a beautiful image with a nice blur effect in the background and just, you know, just beautiful design and beautiful lifestyle image. There's a different emotion, a different feeling that comes with that. And yes, at this time and place for just candid, you know, kind of iPhone photos here and there, I get it.

That's all good. But you want to be intentional about your photos. You want to be intentional about your design. You want to be intentional about the feelings people have when they see your name, when they see your site, when they see your image. Because that's going to stay with them for a lifetime. It's going to stay with people, just like Coca-Cola on shoes is with people for a lifetime. And you want to make sure you're doing everything you can to create that invisible return that you cannot see in your design today. Where are you on that scale? Are you a one? Are you a 10? Are you in the

most uncomfortable zone, the four to seven, that is the most challenging and struggling zone that probably isn't generating the results they want, because they're just doing good. They're not being great. Answer that on the show notes at lewishouse.com slash 346. Let me know, do you want to be a lifetime millionaire? And where are you on the scale of investing in your own personal design for your blog and your personal branding as well? The goal isn't to live forever. The goal is to create something that will. And if you want to be a lifetime millionaire, you've got to be willing to invest in your design. I appreciate you guys so much. And for those that are looking to be a lifetime millionaire, you've got to be willing to invest in your design. I appreciate you guys so much

and for those that are looking to build a business, those that are looking to build a legacy brand, whether you already have a six-figure-a-year business or you're just starting out, you're in a career right now but you want to start something on your own, make sure to go to LegacyCourse.net and sign up today for Legacy, which is my brand new program on how to build your online empire. This is my multi-million dollar system for creating a profitable, mindful business and living the life of your dreams.

The cart closes here in a few days, so make sure to get on it ASAP because once it's closed down, it's going to be closed for a number of months. I am super pumped for who we have coming up next. We've got Marianne Williamson coming up to talk about her new book here on Wednesday in the next episode, so stay tuned for that. If this is your first time being here on the School of Greatness podcast, thank you so much for being here. Make sure to share this out with your friends, lewishouse.com slash 346. And subscribe to the podcast over on iTunes. If you're on the podcast app right now, just click on the subscribe button and you'll get updated when new posts come up. We do this every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. So thank you guys so much.

Let me know your thoughts on this episode. My Twitter is atlewishowes. I'm over on Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, add me everywhere. Say hi. I want to know where you're listening from and you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great. Thank you.