The School of Greatness - Build A Million Dollar Personal Brand w/Rory Vaden EP 1119

Episode Date: June 4, 2021

“Personal branding is the digitization of reputation.”Today's guest is Rory Vaden. He’s a bestselling author and Co-Founder of Brand Builders Group, which is one of the leading Personal Brand Strategy firms that focuses on helping people become the type of person that everyone wants to business with. Lewis has worked with Rory for many years now and we thought it would be valuable to come together and record multiple episodes on building a reputation and personal brand to help you take your life to the next level. This is part one of their conversation. The rest will follow over the next few months!In this episode Lewis and Rory discuss how to discover your uniqueness for your personal brand, how personal branding is transcending the influencer space and playing a role in every part of our lives now, how to build trust with your customers and audience, the fastest way to monetize and build a 7 figure personal brand, and so much more!For more go to: www.lewishowes.com/1119Check out Rory's website: www.roryvaden.com/blogSee how you can get connected with Brand Builders: www.lewishowes.com/brandcallHere are some links to resources Rory mentioned: www.temi.com , www.rev.com The Wim Hof Experience: Mindset Training, Power Breathing, and Brotherhood: https://link.chtbl.com/910-podA Scientific Guide to Living Longer, Feeling Happier & Eating Healthier with Dr. Rhonda Patrick: https://link.chtbl.com/967-podThe Science of Sleep for Ultimate Success with Shawn Stevenson: https://link.chtbl.com/896-pod

Episode number 1119 on how to build a million-dollar personal brand with Rory Vaden. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, a 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. Michelle Obama said, The only limit to the height of your achievements is the reach of your dreams and your willingness to work for them.

Albert Einstein said, Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value. My guest today is my good friend, Rory Vaden. Now, he's the guy that I go to for strategy on building my personal brand in my business. He's brilliant at what he does. He's a New York Times bestselling author and co-founder of Brand Builders Group,

which is one of the leading personal brand strategy firms that focuses on helping people become the type of person that everyone wants to be in business with. And I've worked with Rory for many, many years now, and he's helped me in so many different ways in my own business around the strategy of launching new ideas, conceptualizing my business growth, building my personal brand, pretty much everything from speaking to design. He's been there and been a part of it, really giving some strategy and some insights on seeing the future and how I could get there.

And he's a dear friend. And we did this multiple part series about building your personal brand. And I'm excited to be sharing this with you over the next few months. So stay tuned for more of these episodes coming soon with me and Rory. But in this episode, we discuss how to discover your uniqueness for your personal brand, how personal branding is transcending the influencer space and playing a role in every part of our lives now, how to build trust with your customers and audience, the fastest way to monetize and build a seven-figure personal

brand, and so much more. And if you're enjoying this and you want to learn more about building your personal brand and taking it to the next level, after listening to this episode, you can go to lewishouse.com slash brand call and you can schedule a free strategy call with someone on Rory's team to learn more about how you can also build your personal brand. And again, if you know someone that would be inspired by this message,

please share this episode with them. And a quick reminder to subscribe to the School of Greatness on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you listen so you can stay up to date on the latest and greatest from the School of Greatness podcast. Okay, in just a moment, the one and only Rory Vaden. Welcome back, everyone, to the School of Greatness podcast. Very excited about our guest, my man, Rory Vaden. He's in the house.

Yes. Good to see you. We've had Rory on a couple times before. He's a New York Times bestselling author of Take the Stairs. Very powerful book to help you improve the quality of your life and your mindset.

And an amazing book called Procrastinating on Purpose, which is the five permissions to multiply your time. And this is some content in this book that'll transform your life, your business, your career, everything, your home life, everything, because it gives you the ability to multiply your time and maximize

your time to have more time, which most people never can figure out how to do. So you teach people how to have more time there. But today we're talking about how to build a seven-figure personal brand. Because personal branding, I've been saying for the last year, is the only way to recession prove yourself is by having a credible personal brand, one built on trust and a powerful reputation. Yeah. And I want to talk about how to build a seven-figure personal brand today and beyond. figure personal brand today and beyond. And you did a big study and got a lot of data points on personal branding in general and what the general population thinks about personal branding. Do they buy more from people with personal brands? Do they believe people who have personal brands

or not? And the value behind having a personal brand. So I'd love for you to dive in on some of the data points you've got, what this study is, and then we'll talk about how we can use this to build your personal brand and monetize it throughout this interview. Yeah. So our company, so Brand Builders Group, we hired an independent research firm called the Center for Generational Kinetics to conduct an independent nationwide research study on trends and personal branding because we've been talking about and teaching people to build their personal brands I've been on the podcast we've talked about it before personal branding has been this emerging like space right of online business influence social media all this stuff that's been really fun and exciting.

But we really wanted to look at what are the actual long-term impacts and what are the trends pointing to from a data-driven perspective? And is personal branding just a thing that affects like a subgroup of entrepreneurs and like the small culture? Or is it becoming bigger than that? Is it becoming more ubiquitous, meaning it applying to everybody? And so that's what we set out to study. How many people are part of this study? Well, so it's a statistically valid sample that's weighted to the US census. Got it. So it has a plus or minus, I think it's like a plus or minus 3% margin of error. So it's like a completely empirically validated, it's the kind of study you'll hear people

talk about on CNN and all that stuff. So whatever the sample size is that they have to get, it's just more than a thousand people, but weighted to the US census. So this is not an international study, so we should say that. But the summary is there's three main things that the data points very clearly to. Number one, personal branding is the future. There are large discrepancies by generation in how personal branding affects their hiring, buying decisions, their trust decisions, which we will talk about. The second big thing is that personal branding is highly profitable, not just for your influencer and their brand deals or your online marketer friend or your coach, brand builders

group. Historically, we worked with a lot of people like me and you that were authors and speaker types, which is just the world we came from, but more and more we've seen this kind of expanding group of clients and that's part of why we wanted to study this. Employees to CEOs and executives and everyone in between, not just Instagram influencer. Yeah, and I think it's like when you hear personal branding,

people often think, your mind kind of goes to the influencer, right? Kind of the lifestyle influencer. They're maybe doing brand deals, sharing products, or things like that, doing sponsorships. Or towards the more like thought leader expert category, which is more of what I personally. Speaker, writer, coach, consultant. which is more of what I personally speaker writer right yeah but what personal branding really is and what we're starting to see clearly is that

personal branding is simply the digitization of reputation yes the digitization of reputation so people like you Gary Vaynerchuk like there's this whole group of people who saw early to go, well, I'm not exactly sure what this is, but I know it's huge. The social media. Social media. It's not just a fad.

Content, social media, online writing, blogs, videos, anything online. Is a part of it. Yes. But I think, you know, so this emerging area was like, oh yeah, there's this new, I mean, you were on the cover of Success Magazine as one of the new thought leaders, as was Gary and several other online influencers. And that's kind of the term is influencers. But personal branding is

becoming bigger than that. It is not just online influencer. It is reputation, which is a concept that's been around for decades, right? The average person goes, yeah, I have social media for friends, but they're not really recognizing that, oh, this is how I'm getting my jobs. This is how I'm going to get paid. This is if I'm going to get promoted. So it's not about having a million followers. It's about the reputation you have with the followers you have. Yeah. And in your space and in your industry. So for example, right? So I've got some of this data points here pulled up so that I don't misquote them, right? So 63% of all Americans say that they are more likely to buy from someone who has an established personal brand to buy from

a company that has no no a person a person so like if if you have a personal brand if i have no personal brand you may not buy something that's right i am 63 percent of of americans say i'm more likely to buy from you versus some stranger whether you're selling me an information course or it's financial services or insurance or anything, you know, fitness or anything, real estate, real estate. It doesn't matter. It's we trust people who have this thing called a personal brand. But here's the part about when we said it's the future. So it's 63% of all Americans, but in that group Okay, so there's a subset here only 33% of boomers and

only 59% of Gen Xers say they're more likely to buy from someone who has a personal brand which means that For specifically to like boomers. It doesn't matter as much to them. It's like not that big of a deal. But if you strip them out, 76% of millennials actually are more likely to buy from someone who has an established personal brand. So this points to an inevitable trend that is saying that the older generations have viewed personal branding as like a fad, a thing that kids do, digital online influencers, this thing I don't really understand, but the future is here. So older millennials are ages 35 to 44. These are the people with all the buying power, making all the decisions, taking over the boardrooms, scaling the companies, building the community.

Raising money, building companies, all that stuff. All that stuff. And specifically to millennials, this stuff influences everything. Who they hire, who they work for, who they follow online. Who they're, yeah. 30%, okay, 30% of people say, I'm more likely to date someone because they have an established personal brand. Wow, that's reputation and credibility and trust right away. Yeah, that's true, right?

I guess you feel like you know more about the person. Yeah, or, oh, these people are following, they have this thing and they have some testimonials. I'm more likely to trust them than someone who has none of that. Right. Yeah. Yeah, but it's just fascinating to go, oh, this is coming into our dating life, how we hire, who we spend time with.

I've never been on any of the dating apps, the Tinders and Bumbles and all that stuff, but I've heard people say like, oh, I match with someone that I know and follow online with like someone I respect or trust. And they're probably more likely to mess with the person they know from online or they've seen online than if they didn't know them at all. Yeah. And that is, you know, so this is, you know, I said there were three main findings. One, this is the future.

Two, it's highly profitable. Here's the third one. It's a trust accelerator. A personal brand is a trust accelerator. A personal brand is a trust accelerator. And that is, you go, how do you build trust? Okay. First of all, we trust people that we see, right? That's why we trust celebrities, which is really funny because like movie stars, we don't even know their real name. We don't even know who they are in real life but we trust them because we see them crazy right so we trust people we see and we see them on TV on TV or on a video

pretending to be someone they're not even if they're credible in real life or not we just trust them because we see them so and this is true in our in our everyday life right like you trust whatever your your your, you trust your parents, you trust your colleagues, you trust the person at the grocery store that you see more than the stranger walking down the street that you've gone, I've never seen this person here. So we trust people we see. We also trust people that we learn from. And we trust people who entertain us.

from. And we trust people who entertain us. And then we trust people who we feel like we know intimate things about. So, you know, if you made a list, if I said, okay, Lewis, write down the five people you trust the most. It's probably not social media influencers. It's probably people though that really know you and that you really know. You know all their dirty secrets. You know their past. You also know where they like to shop, where they like to eat, what time do they wake up. These are things that social media affords us the ability to do. To see you, to learn from you you to be entertained by you and to know you to know intimate things about you intimate things about you right when I came here one of first things I did is I shot a little back you know a little

video here of your studio for our for our fans and followers and friends right because people want to know like what is Lewis house studio look like like it's really fascinating and and I always struggle with this because for me I couldn't I haven't been great at social because I've not been super social I've used it as like a broadcasting tool right and I've always thought I mean what could be more useless than showing people what I ate for dinner. Like why would anybody care? And then somebody asked me, they said, well, think about this. If you had a chance to follow your celebrity crush for a day, so like who would it be for you? Like if you had a chance to go, who would be your celebrity crush?

Like if I was younger or something? No, like right now, like someone who walked in that you were like, oh man, if I could hang out with this person. You mean a girl or a guy? It doesn't matter. Not a girl, but like a guy. The Rock. The Rock. Yeah.

So if he walked in, you'd like lose. You'd be like, this is legit. This is cool. The Rock is here. I want to see what he's doing throughout his day and yeah. Yes. So if I said, okay, Lewis, I can't do this, but let's see. I could. I said, I can give you a chance to follow The Rock for an entire day. Right. But you can't talk this but let's see I could I said I can give you a chance to follow the rock for an entire

day right but you can't talk to him but you're gonna be there right when he wakes up shadow him you're gonna shadow him you're gonna be in every meeting you get to listen to every phone call you get to be in the car on the plane you get to see what he eats what he wears what his closet looks like even though you couldn't talk to him would you do it would you that'd be great of course it'd be fascinating right well that's how it is. It's people are interested in the intimate details of our life. And that is where trust comes from. And that is why this social media thing, it's not just like a social thing. It's creating trust, reputation. And if I feel like I know you, then I can buy from you, I can hire you, I can date you,

I can recommend you to other people. And that's what the data is pointing to. Yes. And if you have recommendations from other people you trust about that person, you're more likely to hire, date, and buy from. Yeah. So this was interesting. So one of the, one of the questions that we asked people, um, is what of are the most influential factors in making a decision about, um, people that you,

that you buy from. Okay. So for example, we asked the question, how important are each of the following when it comes to paying someone for a product or service? And we listed out all these things. Cause a lot of our clients at Brand Builders Group, our clients are interested in a lot of these things, a podcast, a TED Talk, right? A book. A YouTube. And we actually separated book into self-published book, New York Times bestselling,

Wall Street Journal bestselling book, New York Times bestselling book. None of those things matter to people. In terms of what? What someone, what a person has in terms of if you have a book a podcast a blog a it's not that they don't matter they do but not as much as you would think interesting what does matter what matters most more than anything of that is going to influence whether or not a stranger buys from you, 62% of people said that they have

testimonials about their work. And 56%, this is of Americans, said that they are paid to consult or advise on their topic. So in other words, you have real life proof of delivering your service, influences purchasing decisions more than how many followers you have, whether or not you have a book, and specifically the tier of best-selling book, right? You know how hard it is to become a New York Times best-selling author. It's not an easy thing to do. And a lot of time and energy goes into doing it. Well, it matters in the industry. You and I know that we speak that language. Right. But the general population.

No. For the person listening to this, your customer doesn't care. Most of them don't even know the difference between a New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Amazon, USA Today. They don't know the difference. If they see bestseller up there, it's all the same. Whatever. What they want to see is, did you help Sally Jo down the street actually get in better shape yeah or did you help her you know heal her gut or did you help her whatever plan for retirement they want to see real-life examples and then the other thing is there it's really third-party third-party. They want testimonials.

They wanna see proof that you've been paid. They wanna see proof that you're in the media. And then actually the fourth thing was, that they actually fifth, was that they have a nice website. So that actually is of all of the things that's kind of more markety, and is people care.

Having a good looking personal brand website is important. Mobile friendly, loads quickly. Functional, not clunky. But the number of followers you have doesn't matter as much as you would think. Having a million followers isn't the most important thing. It's a factor, but it may help you drive traffic somewhere, but it may not be the reason people buy. Even older millennials, only 20% of them say,

if someone has a lot of followers, that's influential to me. And here's the thing too. So what is influential for most people, having testimonials? Yes, having testimonials. Is the most influential factor. In somebody doing business with you.

Wow. Whether it's hiring. And so here's the thing. When you say having an established personal brand is more likely to get you hired, it is the thing that people look at when they're hiring you. You're going to also get paid more. So we haven't talked so much about the, we haven't talked about money yet. But you're actually going to make money from doing this. And it's a, it is a, it's a trust accelerator. So here's another one. I know we're throwing

out a lot of data points, but the reason for the data points, just to take a minute on that, is to go, the data tells a story here that is important that I don't think the world talks about or understands. We think of it as like vanity. How many followers do I have? How many likes? Who's influential? Like, you know, do you know so-and-so? But the data tells a story here that goes, it's not about that stuff. It's about showcasing your expertise and the value you provide in the world and that people just want to see evidence of that and that if you show that, it is significant. Not the number of followers you have.

And it matters for big companies too. So this blew my mind. Eighty-two percent of all Americans believe that companies are more influential if their executives have a personal brand that they can follow, that they know and follow. And this makes so much sense, right? You go Elon Musk, Richard Branson, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates. There's a face, a personality that we can trust and know and relate with rather than this kind of obscure logo entity yeah it's just it's just a logo now this can also work against you because if your executive you know does something like again reputation it's it's we need to think of this less as personal branding and more as building reputation. A really interesting example here recently that was in the news fairly recent was Elon

Musk smoked marijuana on the Joe Rogan podcast, and the stock went down 9% within a matter of days. Now, it has since since recovered and there were some other things going on around that time, but it shows like that was such an accentuated emphasized moment of going people's trust is tied to the personality and the people in the business Which could help you accelerate the growth

or if you do something wrong, could hurt the company as well. Yeah, it could decelerate. I mean, there's examples of this, right, on social media where it's kind of the whole cancel culture. Absolutely, man. Affecting the business in a big way. Yeah, in a big, big way.

Big way. Big, big way. What would you say are the most important elements to monetizing personal brand then? What are most important elements to monetizing personal branding? What are the important keys to monetizing? Once you know that testimonials, reputation in general, having a great website, media proof are the things that will support you and kind of getting people to be willing to buy from you, what are the elements to help you monetize? Yeah, so monetizing is interesting.

So the last time that we had a personal branding conversation here on the podcast, we talked about the five ways to monetize your personal brand. Yes. So you may remember we call them PAIDS. Yes. P-A-I-D-S. Yep. So basically that's going, these are five vehicles to take a pile of followers and turn it into a pile of cash.

Yes. So the P is a product. Okay, so you're selling a physical product, a t-shirt, right? I got followers and it's like, hey, I made a t-shirt, buy my t-shirt. Or, you know, here's my mug, like buy my mug. Or a book, you know, like a physical product yeah physical product the a is ads and affiliates so that is I have an audience rather than selling my audience something I'm gonna sell someone else typically a brand access to my audience all right you've got ads you've got sponsors for the show yeah so

you've got a heavy ads and affiliate model your YouTube videos you've got sponsors for the show. So you've got a heavy ads and affiliate model. Your YouTube videos, you've got ads, right? You make money from ads and affiliates. That's part of your model. The I is information products, which has been an explosion in recent years in terms of monetizing the personal brand because they have low barriers to entry.

They have high value perceived value so courses membership sites certifications assessments ebooks yeah ebooks digital and there was and this was hard to build these out ten years ago now there's massive platforms that are allowing it to be so much easier to create a course or an e-book or certification membership membership site, whereas you had to build out custom stuff 10 years ago. Now there's a whole industry around this. Yeah, and there's lots of tools and providers and stuff.

D is deals. So that is anytime there's a third-party deal, a book deal, a TV deal, a licensing deal where you're basically paid for creative work irregardless of how well it sells. Right. You know, like royalties usually is associated with that. But the one to highlight here is services. So services are the fastest path to cash.

It's selling your time. But even the way that we thought about personal branding previous to this national research study was that services was coaching, speaking, training, consulting, which is a lot of what we've done. You've done things that we help brand builders group. We help a ton of our clients, but only about half of the clients, a little more than half of the clients do that we're noticing that it's all these other people accountants lawyers doctors financial advisors real entrepreneurs meaning that they're not just like an expert entrepreneur I don't mean like real like you're not but but they're they have a widget that's not their expertise somehow.

Direct sales people and then even executives now are hiring us. A great example of this, it was a big bold move, is Glenn Sanford. And I don't think, I haven't introduced you to him. I've got connected to him, we've earned tech. So Glenn Sanford is a billionaire founder of EXP Realty, which is one of the fastest, if not the fastest growing real estate company in the world, right?

So we met Glenn. We started working with Glenn as a client, and then he bought Success Magazine. That's crazy. So Glenn didn't have much of a social media following but now he now he bought one but I'm massive yeah yeah so he's got credibility and audience and reach because he and it's not just money I mean it's it's not money for him I mean like he's a billionaire like money is not the thing but impact is reputation is trust is feeling like you're doing something good in the world and they all work together.

So on the professional services thing, because we had a fascinating kind of like little data point on this, like you go, okay, I get personal branding if you are an expert of some type. But what if you're a doctor? So 61% of Americans believe their doctor should have an established personal brand. Why? I guess trust. Because I think if they have it, they'll trust them more.

Well, your doctor is a pretty intimate relationship, right? I mean, literally, like you see everything of a person and you go, do I like this person? Do I trust them? Do I, do I believe in them? Right. Going back to that thing I said earlier that people, 82% of Americans said that a company is more influential if their, if their founder has a belief system that aligns with them. This is what we're looking for another way of saying this right is is people don't do business with companies they do business with people yes people that are real people that we can trust people that we can know intimate details

about and so it's not just their doctor it is 58% of Americans believe their lawyers should have a personal brand 55 55% think their banker should. Their coach, their financial advisors, their chiropractors. Everyone. I mean, we didn't ask about everyone. We asked about these. But what we can definitely say is that people want their professional service providers to have a personal brand.

service providers to have a personal brand. And we can also say that people are more likely to engage with a company if the executives have a personal brand. In fact, we asked this question specifically. 67% of all Americans, and if you just do millennials, it's 76.5% are willing to spend more money with these companies if they're connected to the person. So again, all of these are just different data points that tell the same story. Personal branding is transcending this influencer space. It's transcending the thought leader space and it is becoming ubiquitous and pervasive in who gets promoted, who gets hired, who gets on the board,

who gets equity, which company gets funded, even who we date and who we're friends with. It's fascinating, fascinating stuff. So you asked a question about turning it into money. Yes. So I said earlier that the fastest path to cash is services. Yes. We would modify that a little bit now to say the fastest path to cash is to monetize the thing you're already doing. Like what? Whatever it is you're doing. You're an accountant, you're a lawyer. So I think there's been this thought of going, oh my gosh, so I'm going to use my personal brand to launch a side business. And actually it's going, no, I should use my personal brand to blow up my direct sales business and like, you know, pour fuel on the fire or to get myself promoted or to get myself,

you know, more clients for my practice of whatever type of practice it is. It's not going, oh, I got to go create an information product. Right. It can be that. It historically has been that, but this is the migration that is happening here, which is interesting. And it was interesting to me to see, you know, when Success Magazine did that cover article and you were on there and- Brendan. Brendan was on there. Trent CA and, yeah.

Several- Trent Shelton. Marie Forleo and Trent Shelton. I think Rachel- Tim Ferriss was on there. Rachel Cruz. Yeah. I mean, it was really fascinating. It said the new thought leaders.

And it's because people trust you guys. Right. Because they see you. They're entertained by you. They learn from you. They feel like they know you. It's not because you guys have the most PhDs. It's not because you're winning the most PhDs. It's not because you're winning the Nobel prizes

for research. It's a much more human experience that's just available, widely available to all of us. So how do we build the million dollar personal brand then? What's the steps? Is it just start creating content is it being strategic about certain moves you're gonna make is it partnerships is it press is it podcast like what are the steps to building it yeah well the most

important step is the first step which is the step that everybody skips and I shared this you know a while ago when we had this conversation when we first started working together that the best piece of personal branding advice I've ever received was from a guy named Larry Winget. And he said, the goal is to find your uniqueness so that you can exploit it in the service of others. Find your uniqueness so you can exploit it in the service of others. So you need to find your uniqueness. How do we find it? Yeah, well, we did that whole interview together

where we walked you through our brand DNA helix, which is one of the brand builder group kind of frameworks. So that you can reference that, you know, I'm not gonna walk you through all of that here, but I'll tell you, we found a shortcut since then that's worth sharing. Nice. Okay.

So, cause this is a struggle, right? How do I find my uniqueness? It's almost like saying, how do I find my purpose? How do I find my passion? And this is now that we've coached hundreds of people, you know, we've been at this for coming up on like three years now, and this is all we do all day. We started to recognize a consistent theme and a shortcut. And here's what it is

you are always most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were oh yes it's great you're most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were yes so i was 100 pounds overweight and i'm not there anymore bingo i'm positioned to help anyone who's over 100 pounds overweight and I'm not there anymore bingo I'm positioned to help anyone who's over 100 pounds overweight do that thing I was in debt a hundred thousand dollars Dave Ramsey right and I got out of it and here's a process and how I got he was bankrupt and he tells and that's his whole story and it can be you or someone close to you so I also think about you know we have a mutual friend dr. Josh axe right and and? And I believe this was the diagnosis,

I believe his mom had got diagnosed with cancer. And so he went on a mission to learn about food, to use food as medicine. He makes that basically his life pursuit to cure his mom. As a result of that, he starts answering questions for friends. He turns that, he starts sharing that on social and now they have ancient nutrition. I think it's called ancient nutrition and it's like a nine figure business, like monster business. But it came out of not a desire to make money, but a desire to solve a problem and and and that is the genesis of personal branding is going what problem do I solve what problem can I solve what problem do I want to dedicate my life to solving or at least

a season of my life at least the next season yes of my life because that's what makes you come alive and and um you know for you the uh when we had this conversation it was back in 2018 yeah self-doubt yeah was was the word that you were like this is i want the great i want to help people overcome self-doubt and achieve greatness so at that time i just i told you this earlier today, I was looking at my notes. You had 30 million total downloads. It's crazy to think that 2018, that was only 2018. Gosh, you focus. It must've been more, it must've been a little more out of that.

I'm telling you. 30 million. And now we have 350 million, 350 million, 10 X in less, like half the time it took to get there. Right. And you've done a great job of being super clear on what problem you're after, what you're trying to solve, what you're trying to help people achieve, and your business model also. You've eliminated several things and you guys have gone all in and, you know, here we are in this beautiful studio. And I think that's the call for all of us is, you know, I think the title of this is something like how to build a seven-figure personal brand you got a

first know what your personal brand is yeah what your uniqueness is and what I would say is if you focus on the money you may compromise your reputation along the way interesting you may do things that aren't of the highest level of integrity or that you don't necessarily want to be doing or that might hurt people or whatever it may be. Yeah, you could burn out. You could hurt people. It's just if you focus on the money,

then you could compromise your reputation. But if you focus on the purpose. Or the mission. Of solving a problem. Yes. And you go, what problem can can I solve and think about all the great guests that you have I mean not so much the celebrity guests maybe but but like you know the doctors and the you know the the psychologists and yes these people dedicate their life to studying this area of going, I want to help people with this.

And that's where you start. So you have to find your uniqueness. And what's that question? What is my uniqueness? Well, yeah. So the brand DNA helix is six questions. The uniqueness lives at the intersection of those six questions. So just to rattle them off

uh what what problem do you solve yep okay and then what are you passionate about so you brainstorm the answers to all these questions uh and then at the intersection is is where the uniqueness is so what am i passionate about then what do i research which is what do I have academic or head knowledge of? And then what do I have results in? So that is what do I have experience doing? What have I done? That one kind of points to your most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were. And then the last two questions address the business model, which is what are the things people would buy from me

which are the paids you know there's five different basically things you could make and then you you you compare that with what business do i want to be in and that's where we talked about dares do you remember the dares yes i love the dares so the dares is a checklist what business do i want to be in that's the last question what business do i want to be in so the dares is a checklist of characteristics that sort of describe i guess you know the closest thing to a perfect business model i guess if there is such a thing these are dares you're looking for dares so you're looking for things that are Digital, automated, recurring, evergreen, and scalable. So when you go look for Dares, you go, okay, it's digital. If it's digital, that means I don't have manufacturing costs.

I don't have shipping. I don't have warehousing. I don't have logistics. It's digital. If it's automated, it's self-service. It's like I don't need a bunch of staff to service people. It's automated. It's self-service. It's like, I don't need a bunch of staff to service people. It's automated. It's recurring. They pay and they keep paying. Netflix. Yeah, Netflix. And that recurring revenue also affects the overall valuation of a company. So that can have tremendous

long-term financial impacts. Evergreen means it never needs to be updated. So you never have to do, you build the thing and then you never have to update it. And then the S, scalable, means that you can add a lot of customers without adding a lot of infrastructure. And so there's a difference between growth and scale. So growth is I can grow revenues, but I kind of have to like grow expenses.

Build a team and all these other things. Build a team to go with it. Scale means I can grow revenues and the fixed expenses, the team, don't have to grow proportionately. Small amount maybe of growth, yeah. Yeah, it's not like a variable cost kind of a thing. So you want to ask yourself these six questions

and the last one being what business do I want to be in, figuring out what's the business model. What's the perfect business model. For me. Yeah, and there's many different business models, but there's not a best business model. There's only a best business model for you. Right. And so when you're trying to figure out what is a best business model. There's only a best business model for you. Right.

And so when you're trying to figure out what is my best business model. Like I don't want to build a software company. Yeah. Because I don't understand building programs and managing it and software. Like that's not something I understand and it doesn't excite me.

It doesn't light me up. I'm not researching it all day. I'm not passionate about it. All these things. I haven't gotten people results in this software. Maybe in the future I could do it if I had the right partner, but it's not- Or you could just be an investor.

Exactly, I can invest in it, but it's not the thing I wanna drive every day with my time and energy. Cause you would, if you did it, it would be, oh, because building a software company has, you know, top line valuations, I could get a huge multiple, have a big exit, make money and be happy. And you go, no, I'm miserable doing this thing.

Right. Because it's not your uniqueness. It's not the design of your life. It's not the reason that you're here. Yeah. We believe that the things that you've done in your past are hints and evidence and clues as to what your uniqueness is. Yes. But also the calling of your future is a hint and clue to what your uniqueness is. What you feel called towards gives us evidence of what your uniqueness is.

gives us evidence of what your uniqueness is. And so it's like if you don't feel a compelling call there for any reason other than like money or something, that's not in the direction that we would advise you go because it's just not worth it. And so when you're looking at what is the best business model, you take in factors like what you said, like what is my education? What are my passions? The question is right out of the brand DNA helix here. What would I want to spend my time doing every day?

Yeah. What would you do Saturday afternoon at 2.30? You could do anything. That could be a thing. That's a place that you look. Now, that might not be the answer by itself. You have to factor in how would you make money? And that's why it's like this, these six questions overlap. But that's what you're looking for because it's truth. There's not a right answer. There's just a right answer for you. Yes. It's not truth. It's just what's your truth. Right. So you pick a problem. You pick an audience. You pick a business model. And then you said, like, how do you build a personal brand after that?

So from there, usually what you do is you would extrapolate this into a body of work. If you were going to Kind of build it like more of like that expert business. That's how you would do it But part of the realization again coming back to the study is going So many people have already built the thing that they should Use their personal brand to drive towards rights. They should. They just need to focus on leveraging and building their personal brand to drive towards that thing. It's a formula that we talk about called the reputation formula. Results times reach equals reputation. Results times reach equals reputation. Let's take financial advisor. So financial advisors have all of this education.

They're a CFP and a CHLC and you get all these. Series 7 and Series 6. All these licenses. They have all these results, all this knowledge. The problem is if I don't know about you, I cannot buy from you. Right. I can't do business with you. So reach matters, and your personal brand is the fastest way to get that reach.

And a lot of the top advisors in the world, at least in the country right now, are building their personal brand, and they're driving leads that they're just passing to their team. building their personal brand and they're driving leads that they're just passing to their team. There's so many, when people think about personal branding and creating content online, there are so many different things that they could do to build their personal brand. Podcasting, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat, white papers, infographics, photos, speeches, books, courses. There's all these things they could press. All these things they could do. What should they be thinking about first? Yeah. So the number one thing to think about is how can I add value to the audience? Right. That's what it ultimately comes down to. The strategy is much more important than the

technology. How can I add value to the audience? And your social media strategy is much more important than the technology how can I add value to the audience how can I and your social media strategy is one of the three E's you're either going to educate encourage or entertain and usually it's some mix of the three I happen to not be super entertaining I live more in the educating and and you know with bursts of encouragement that kind of come in there. But you're going, how can I teach what I know? And here's the other thing. We all take for granted what we know.

We have something called the curse of knowledge. If I'm a financial advisor, I assume, well, obviously everybody knows what a 401k is. Nobody knows what a 401k is. Nobody knows what a 401k is. Like nobody understands any of that stuff. Like nobody understands your industry terms. This is for every industry. Like people go, oh, well, you know, of course everyone knows about gut health. People don't even know what the gut is.

Like they don't have time to do anything other than the stuff they do in their life. So you have value. And what you do is you basically, you know, I love Jay Baer is a friend of mine. And, you know, basically his whole content marketing strategy is just be useful. Teach everything you know for free, but teach it one bite at a time and in all random order because and so sometimes people get nervous they go well how is this going to help me build a seven-figure brand if i'm giving away everything for free well you have to realize people don't pay for information they pay for organization and application what does that mean it means that I could teach you how to eat healthy.

It doesn't mean you're going to go to the grocery store, buy the right groceries, cook up the right food, and then eat and weigh yourself every week and da-da-da. You need the application. You need someone to help create a custom meal plan, hold you accountable, track you to the thing. Right, right. We all know to lose weight we should exercise more, but we don't actually do it. We need someone to help us apply it. Brand Builders Group is a great example, right? Here we are, we're teaching you all these concepts.

There's a lot of people out there listening right now that are still going to go, okay, I need someone to help me walk through and apply the brand DNA helix to my situation. I need someone to help me apply this data to my business. It's the application part that is the hard part. And I think, actually, this is, again again a trend that's changing in personal branding. Personal branding started early on very much in that kind of info marketing kind of a space. Nice.

And I would even say there's some negative connotation and a little bit of scamminess that has probably caused some people to be reluctant to kind of like get into personal branding or online marketing. But it's changing because information is commoditized.

You give away the information for free, but people need you to help them apply it. It's the packaging of it and the application. Or would you say the application and the what? The organization. The package, the organization. Yeah, yeah. And the application and the application of it. that's what they they need right and and

that is the best way to garner attention is to be useful is is to share what you know to teach what you have the goal is not I will share a little bit and then you got to pay me for the the goods that's that's a scarcity mindset based on information share the goods and pay me for the packaging yeah yeah the application the packaging the holding your hand the walking through it the accountability all that stuff right yeah and if you're again just i'm using the financial advisor just because i'm using it here right it's like you're teaching. And if you're, again, just I'm using the financial advisor just because I'm using it here, right? It's like you're teaching people, and if you're doing a good job, like you're teaching people, oh yeah, here's how to evaluate mutual funds and here's things you can do. And like there's going to be a few people that will do it on their own.

But most people, the more they learn, the more they're going to go like, this is crazy. I need an expert. Like can you just do this for me? That's what you want, right? Like when somebody sees, oh, you know, there's a whole strategy to launching books and to getting keynotes until, you know, building this stuff out. And they go, yeah, I think I'll give Bram Middle's group a call. Like some of them will go do it themselves. That's fine. The worst case scenario there is you're helping people and you're impacting the world. But more people than not will go, I like you.

I trust you. I've learned from you. I see the value in what you're offering. I would like to hire you. And that is true whether it is hiring you as a professional service provider, an expert, or hiring you for the company. Right? If I'm going to hire you to the company, guess what? I'm gonna hire you to the company guess what I'm gonna look at your LinkedIn profile absolutely

looked at your I'm gonna look at your Facebook page I want to read and the most important part on your LinkedIn profile is I want to read the endorsements of all your past employers interesting and what they said about you right that's what I want to see testimonials and you said it's the first thing we want to think about is the strategy, not the platform. Is that what you said? Think about the... Strategy is more important than technology. Than technology. Because a lot of people will say, well, should I launch a YouTube channel?

Should I do a podcast? Should I be on Instagram? Should I do Facebook Live every morning? They think about the platform, the technology of where they should be or what they should be creating. And that's probably not the best question to ask should be or what they should be creating. And that's probably not the best question to ask first, is it? No, yeah. It's strategy. How can I be most useful? How can I be most useful?

Where are my people at? Where's my audience? And not, oh, Sally Jo is doing YouTube videos every day, so I should do YouTube videos because it looks cool and this is happening over there. Don't do that. Don't do it because Lewis does it. Right. Don't do it because, you know. Is my audience on YouTube?

Is my audience consuming this content? Or do I enjoy, am I passionate about being on video? Do I enjoy this process? Is this something I'd have fun doing? Like you said in these questions, then maybe YouTube's a place to go. Yeah. Now what's cool,

this is something I don't think we've ever talked about here, is the content diamond. So the content diamond, what's cool, this is something I don't think we've ever talked about here is the content diamond. So the content diamond, what's really cool about media, media is a multiplier, right? And so, you know, you mentioned procrastinating on purpose in my TED talk, how to multiply time, right? You multiply time by spending time on things today that create more time tomorrow. by spending time on things today that create more time tomorrow. Well, what we're also just kind of realizing is going, oh, media is one of the great forms of,

is a multiplier because if I create a video today, then every day that video is out there. That video is like an employee. It's working for me to find new people. It's getting audience, getting attention, getting leads, getting traffic, getting trust, reputation. For you without you doing any more extra work. Right.

I was mentioning to you this beforehand that I think it's three or four of our top viewed videos in the last 30 days are from videos that are one, two, three years ago. Amazing. That keep getting views that we spent an hour or two hours doing years ago. Amazing. That keep getting views that we spent an hour or two hours doing years ago. And they're getting hundreds of thousands of views right now this month

working for us. So that investment in media is paying dividends years later and will continue to. And it becomes a flywheel, whatever platform you're building on, the more consistent you are with time, usually it pays off dividends the longer on there. Yeah. And you're, I mean, you're building on, the more consistent you are with time, usually it pays off dividends the longer on there. Yeah. And you're, I mean, you're just, you're such a Rolling Stone buddy.

I mean, you know how much I believe in you and it's, you've done all these things and now you've got multiple media assets that are all synergistically feeding, feeding each other. And it's like, it's a snowball that gets bigger and bigger and faster and faster. It's,

it's, it's, it's incredible. So coming back to the content diamond. So the way the content diamond works is pretty simple. We encourage our clients, like here's the whole technical strategy. Shoot one five minute video every week. That's it. On your five minute video, answer one question, teach one tip. That's it. It could be less than five minutes, but five minutes teach one tip that's it it could be less than five minutes but five minutes and then here's what's amazing

about video you you're gonna take that video and you're gonna split it this is how the content diamond works okay we're gonna split it on two paths one path is what we call the text and imagery path the other path path is video and audio. Okay. So someone from your team, you know, if you don't have a team, it's you, but if you have a team, they're going to take that video and they're going to upload it to a tool like, uh, Tammy, TMI, TMI, or rev.com or speech pad. There's a bunch of these, which is an automatic transcription service. And they're going to transcribe that article. From that transcription, someone's going to edit that article into a full-length post

that you can put on LinkedIn Pulse and Medium. But it's in your voice because it was literally your voice. Then they're going to select two or three catchphrases from the article that they're gonna turn into image quotes for Instagram and Pinterest and Facebook or whatever and Facebook and whatever simultaneously while that's happening on the text and imagery path someone's gonna take the raw video and they're going to add a little polish to it lower thirds a little bit maybe of some B-roll, some stock imagery,

some stock music. Maybe they drop a fancy bumper like an opener and an outro. And now all of a sudden you've got this like semi-polished nice YouTube video that you post in full on YouTube. But then you could post a 60-second version of that on TikTok, a two minute version of that on IGTV. And you disassemble this one five minute video into all of these mini assets. So the five minute video is like your main asset, and then you disassemble it into mini assets. And then the diamond comes together. So you start here, the diamond comes together at the bottom, post all of it on your blog, your website. So the one place where people can get all of it.

Oh, by the way, your video, you can strip the audio off the video, and now you have a short form podcast. So now you're a podcaster. You didn't even know it. Yeah. But the one place to go to see the full length video, the full length article, an audio player, the pull out, you know, the two or three pull out quotes is on your blog, which is traffic you own, where you optimize it for Google and SEO and you build subscriber base. And in addition to supporting the social media sites and building an audience there, you also are curating an experience on your website,

which matters tremendously long-term for search results and things like that. So a lot of people think, I've got to work on all these platforms and create content for all these things. But really what you should be thinking about is how do I create a great piece of content for five minutes or roughly around there yeah once a week and really think about that piece of content yes whether it's

scripting or bullet points or whatever to make sure you have everything in that one piece that will then be distributed to all these other places as opposed to thinking I got to be an expert on all these other places and build content for them, just build one piece of great content. That's what we do here. We do three times a week, and we do it in video, audio, text, image,

you know, graphics, all that stuff, and we built the team to do that. There are services out there that can do this for you too. Do you guys do this at Brand Builders? So at Brand Builders, we do exclusively personal brand strategy, right? Yes. So we kind of,

what a CMO is to a company is what we are to a personal brand. So we only work with people. We don't work with companies. Now we work with executives and service providers that work at a company, but we work on that person's face.

It's personal brand strategy. But we have a whole trusted vendor partner network and we've got a bunch of them. You need a video editor, you need a book editor, you need a, we connect the clients to all those people. What's the biggest problem that people have when they come and work with you? It is dilution.

It is diluted focus. They have too many opportunities. They're not sure where to put their time. They want to do a book and a course and a TED talk and a social media content and a podcast. They want to do all of it and they're not sure where to start. Yeah. And when you have diluted focus, you get diluted results. That's right. Good old take the stairs book, which has been out for years now. But yeah, people struggle to get clear on what is their uniqueness? Who do they serve? What is their business model? And what is their methodology? So Brand Builders Group has a brand builders group as a curriculum we actually have one curriculum that's divided into 12 12 like courses but in our our our phase one um which is like our first three courses

really help people just get clear on what problem do i solve who do i solve it for how do i solve it how do i make money they got to select and be clear on that uniqueness first before you try to add scale what people do is they go out and you try to add scale. What people do is they go out and they try to build audience right away. They do it completely backwards because what you have is you have a way to make money and then you have your online presence like your website and then you have traffic sources. The proper way to build it is get clear on how you're going to make money and what the product offer is. Then build your reputation, your website, a professional presentation. Then worry about traffic.

Right. People do the opposite. They go straight to social media and go, how do I get a lot of followers? And then I got to try them. Oh, shoot. I need to build. I need to shoot. I need to build a website. And it's like, oh, how do I turn those people into money?

And so their strategy is come backwards, completely backwards. And then they go, this doesn't work. Why should I do it? And, you know, for a while it was like, well, you don't have to, because this is a, you know, personal branding is a thing, but now the data is saying, no, this is, this is the future. It is more profitable and it's an accelerator of trust. And if you miss this, right? Like this is your last chance. I mean, like Gary Vee's been out there talking about this for a minute.

For 10 years. Right? Yeah, yeah. And some of us have been watching and been like, okay, that's kind of cool. And gosh, I see what it's been for him. But you know, I don't have his style and I don't cuss like that.

And I don't, you know, I don't want to- I'm not a big personality. I don't want to write a book. Yeah, don't have his style and I don't cuss like that. I'm not a big personality. I don't want to write a book. Yeah, I'm not a personality. I don't want to be a speaker. But it's like, if you've been thinking that, you missed it. He'd been talking about it, and now I'm here telling you the data is here saying the time is now.

Millennials, older millennials, younger Millennials and Gen Z this is what they look at to build trust and buy from which means that's who they buy from that's who they hire that's that's who they refer that's a date that's who they date that's who they they recommend that's who they share and what you say if someone is not on social media even with a small little personal brand You might wonder like I don't know who this person is at all. I can't find them online now It's like they don't have LinkedIn if they don't have Instagram or Facebook and you can't see anything. What are they hiding? Is there something can I really trust this person again? Like you said if you can't see them, it's hard to trust them. The person you see more, you learn to trust more. Yeah. We trust the familiar and we distrust the

unfamiliar. The unknown. The unknown. Whether it's online or it's walking down the street. If it's nighttime and someone's walking at me, I don't recognize them. I distrust them. Not because I'm racist or a scaredy cat or a coward or anything. It's just unfamiliar. I don't know who you are. I distrust that. And this is part of the big point, right? Is that you cannot think of personal branding as online marketing. It's not. Personal branding is the digitization of reputation. It is building trust, making impact, growing your influence, and it is the future and it is profitable and you can use it to monetize the thing you're already doing. And that is how you build a seven-figure personal brand. We covered a lot today. We covered the data

around personal branding. We've covered the elements that are important to personal branding, how to build the million-dollar personal brand. We talked about reputation, testimonials,

paids, the different revenue streams. We also talked about the questions you need, paids, the different revenue streams. We also talked about the questions you need to ask yourself in order to figure out what your uniqueness is. Talked about dares. We've talked about all these different things and formulas, the content diamonds, so many things.

And for people that are wanting more, I want you to know that Rory is a partner of mine and I only have a couple people that I do partnerships with on stuff that I don't think I can do as well. And you have Brand Builders Group. I think we've sent over a thousand leads to you plus and hundreds of people who have gone through your trainings, your strategies and helped execute on what their uniqueness is, how to figure out their revenue streams, how to help them build their TED Talks, their book proposals, all these different processes for building personal brand. We created a little video for you guys.

If you want to learn more, you can go to lewishouse.com slash brand call to get a free call from someone on your team just to ask them about their goals. If you want to learn more, you can go to lewishouse.com slash brand call to get a free call from someone on your team just to ask them about their goals. Ask them about their goals, what their future looks like, what they're trying to create, and if it might be helpful for you or your team to support them in building their personal brand and executing these things. So if you guys are interested,

go to lewishouse.com slash brand call. You can schedule a time with someone on Rory's team to learn more. So many people that are influencer friends of mine have been through the programs and the process you guys created and rave about the results they get. So many people you've had have been New York Times bestselling authors. From this process, people have built multiple million dollar brands. Viral TED Talks. Viral Ted Talks. Viral Ted Talks, big book launches, course launches, all these things.

Big social media follower growth. Yeah, so you work with the best of the best in this space. And there's only one person I recommend and it's Rory. So make sure you guys check it out, lewishouse.com slash brand call. We're gonna be doing a series around personal branding, productivity, confidence and mindset. Because I think a lot of it, when people have the strategy and the tactic, even if you have the best strategies and tactics, you still need the belief in yourself.

You still need the skill set in order to have the confidence to put yourself out there. Because when you put yourself out there, you're going to get negative comments, feedback, hate, people trying to tear you down. And that holds a lot of people back. So we're going to teach you through this series with Rory that will be dropping over a few months more of these things and more on how to monetize with your personal brand using these other skills and mindset strategies. So make sure you follow Rory. What's your best place to follow you online? Is it Instagram right now? On social, yeah. But if you go to roryvadenblog.com, but I would just say go to lewishouse.com slash brand call. Request the call. You do that, you'll get connected to me.

There you go. But yeah, I'm out there on socials out there Roy Vaden everywhere you can check out one of his books take the stairs or procrastinate on purpose if you want to learn how to multiply time make sure to check these out as well Roy Vaden we're gonna be doing a series so we'll see you back here soon and thanks so much for being here and teaching these strategies man appreciate you always a pleasure brother and just, the calling that you feel on your heart to go out and do this is the result of a signal

that's being sent out by someone else who needs you right now more than you need them. My man, thank you. Appreciate it. Love you, brother. Love you too, man. Thank you so much for listening to this episode.

If you got value out of this, make sure to share it. Spread the message of greatness to a few friends of yours. Post it on social media. Make sure to tag me, Lewis Howes, and Rory Vaden as well.

And if this is your first time here, click that subscribe button right now on Apple Podcasts or on Spotify to stay up to date because this is going to be a part of a series that I'm doing with Rory

over the next few months. So you've got to stay subscribed so you can see when this is coming out and all the other great interviews and episodes we have coming on The School of Greatness. You do not want to miss this.

I'm telling you. If you want inspiring messages sent to your phone from me every single week, then text the word podcast to 614-350-3960. And also make sure to sign up for your brand call, that free strategy call with Rory. Go to lewishouse.com slash brand call and learn how you can really build your personal brand with someone on Rory's team who's trained in helping you grow your personal brand.

So check out that brand call as well. Sign up for that if you're interested. Again, thank you guys so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed this episode. And I wanna remind you, if no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter, and you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.