HOW TO BUILD A STRONG PERSONAL BRAND ON YOUTUBE | #THINKMARKETING PODCAST 061
Speaker 2 :
If there’s one shortcut to this process, this entire process, we realized that you are always most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were. Who were you? What what? What problem have you solved? What question have you answered? What challenge have you overcome? Welcome to the Think Marketing podcast, the number one podcast for helping you grow your influence on YouTube and then turning that influence into a high impact and high profit online business. My name is Heather Torres and if you’re new here, I want to welcome you to the podcast. We deliver a brand new episode every single Tuesday, so make sure you’re subscribed wherever you’re consuming this content from. And today’s episode is brought to you by grow with video live, our annual conference happening this fall in 2021 And I have some exciting news of a free ticket that you could win and all Access Pass, and I’ll tell you more about how to do that after this episode. Now we’re going to jump right into today’s featured conversation with Sean Kennel and Rory Vaden. This conversation had me on the edge of my seat because I think if there’s one thing you should be focusing on with your YouTube channel and your business, it is definitely your personal brand. Sean and Rory really break down exactly how to do this and the four steps to focus on if you’re building a brand company now you’re on YouTube, you’re creating content, which means you are a brand, whether it’s your face or your company’s face, and I want to make sure you.
Speaker 1 :
Get the most out of today’s episode, so cut out distractions.
Speaker 2 :
In and let’s get into today’s featured conversation.
Speaker 1 :
So how do you find and clarify your niche? How do you define your core message? How do you stand out amongst the competition and really build a powerful personal brand that breaks through the noise? If you want to do that this year, Rory Vaiden is your guy, and I’m so excited to get into this conversation today. He helps people launch best selling books and courses, land high paying speaking engagements, impact millions of lives, build reoccurring revenue streams, generate leads while you’re asleep, get access to a network of industry leaders, build an online following, get featured in mainstream media. And all of that really comes from building a powerful personal brand. So I can’t wait for this conversation with my friend Rory Vaden. Rory, how’s it going?
Speaker 2 :
Buddy, thanks for thanks for having me. I’m so excited about this. You know how much I love and respect what you do. So it’s good to be back with you.
Speaker 1 :
Feelings mutual. And I’m so fired up about this conversation. You know, if anybody’s listening to the Think Marketing podcast, they’re already probably thinking in terms of the power of a personal brand of branding yourself, of marketing. Obviously it’s the Think marketing podcast, but as we go into a new year. Why personal branding? Why building a brand that cuts through the noise and really positioning your brand? Right why does it matter right now?
Speaker 2 :
Well, I mean, I think the personal branding is basically the digitization of reputation, right? Like reputation is something we all understand and we go, yeah, we all have one and we all need one and it matters. When you hear personal brand people are like, I don’t know, I don’t really like social media, I’m too busy. But it’s like no, personal branding is just the digitization of reputation. So whether you like it or not, you have to have one. And if ultimately if people don’t know about you, they can’t buy from you. And so you are either actively influencing that conversation and you have a strategy for it. Or you’re just letting it happen to you, which is not something I would recommend. Just like I would say, you know, you should care about your reputation, you should care about your personal brand.
Speaker 1 :
Man, that’s powerful. And I was reading on your blog and you talk about one of the biggest mistakes people make when building a personal brand, which is maybe one of the myths of why people think I don’t want to build like a personal brand. Like I’m not like an Instagram influencer. I don’t need like to have like a web page all about me. People don’t want to see pictures of what I’m eating during the day what? Why would I need a personal brand? But that is kind of the big mistake that you define on your blog. What is that mistake?
Speaker 2 :
Yeah, so the biggest mistake that people make with their personal brand is they make it about themselves. Your personal brand is not about you. Your personal brand is about the problem you solve in the service to other people. And the best piece of personal branding advice I’ve ever received. I wish this was a Rory Vaiden quote, but it is not. I can’t take credit for it because there’s a guy named Larry Wingett who told me this when I was early in my career. He said, you know Rory, the goal is to find your uniqueness so that you can exploit it in the service of others. That’s what we’re trying to do. Find your uniqueness so that you can exploit it in the service of others. And that was powerful advice. But ironically, Larry wasn’t actually in the business of teaching people how to do that. He was just a speaker saying that that’s what you need to do. And so when we started brand Builders Group, this is, this is our second company, we sold our last business back in 2018 And so we got we had to be in a new space, start a new business. We thought gosh, this is what we want to help people do. We developed a systematic process for how to find your uniqueness. How to walk any person through a series of questions is what it is called the brand DNA Helix to help you hone in and figure out what is unique about you what where is your superpower and you know that was that was the start of start of brand builders group and here we are.
Speaker 1 :
Man, that’s so powerful. And I want to hear about the brand DNA Helix and go through how I can find, you know, my core message, clarify my superpower and those listening. You know, we can kind of dial in our personal brand, but take us back for those that are meeting you for the first time, you’ve been on your own journey as a professional speaker, New York Times bestselling author, you’ve been in the courts, corporate space, Fortune 500 all kinds of different things that you’ve done. What’s been like your personal journey uncovering your own personal brand?
Speaker 2 :
Yeah, well, you know, I think the genesis of what? Well, here’s The thing is, when I was seventeen, I had this calling on my heart. Like for me, I felt it was a calling from God and brand Builders group. We serve what we call mission driven messengers and so we speak to people who have that kind of calling because I felt like I was supposed to go out and talk to the world. And for me, I was very clear on selfdiscipline. And so I was like, selfdiscipline is the thing I’m supposed to go talk about. And so my first company was disciplinedynamic.com It was terrible. You go to discipline dynamic and there was this lightning crash discipline dynamic. And I mean, it was sweet. Like I look back on those days, they were sweet days, but I was very clear. But so I had that working for me. But nobody wants discipline. We know we need it, but we don’t really want it and people have to you know marketing is like you have to give people what they want that’s what is as attracts them. And so some years later through the course of mentorship, you know I had somebody tell me Rory what is the problem that you solve? Self-discipline is the answer, but what’s the question? And that was a really huge moment for me was to figure out. And this is, to me, the genesis of all personal brains is being able to answer this one question in one word. And most people cannot do it, which is what problem do you solve? And you know, that question is difficult, but it it’s important because it helps you figure out what have I earned the right to like? What have I earned the right to talk about? What is the relevance of me in other people’s lives? The intersection of that is at the problem I can solve for them and so. For me, back in those days, the problem that I solved was procrastination. And once we figured out that procrastination was the problem, I became just like we encourage people to do today is you have to become an ambassador of the problem, not just an ambassador of the solution, because people buy solutions to problems more than they buy like luxuries. And so, you know, we studied procrastination. We did all these, you know, independent studies like that got me on national TV And that led us to coming up with the metaphor of take the stairs, which was the title of my first New York Times bestselling book, which was how I really broke through the wall, is a metaphor for the doing things you know, you should do that you don’t feel like doing, which is the message of self-discipline But what I was selling was the problem of procrastination, and people bought on to that. And a lot of people struggle with that, Sean, because they have too many messages to too many audiences, and they’re not clear about what problem they solve. If you’re not clear about what problem you solve, there’s no way in hell your audience ever will be. There’s no way your prospects ever will be. And so people just market a bunch of stuff about a bunch of stuff. And they are part of the noise. The reason you’re caught up in the noise is because you’re part of the noise. It’s kind of like if you’re, you know, if you’re at a party and a bunch of people are chatting and we’re all talking, you know, if you just come in and kind of like talk loudly, nobody will hear you. But if you like ping a glass of crystal, it has this piercing clarity that goes cuts right through the noise and that’s what you need. You need piercing clarity. And most people don’t do that work. And so they ultimately become part of the noise. They stay stuck in the noise and they never breakthrough what we call Sheehan’s Wall to where they break free of that and become the industry leader or the expert in their field, you know, etc.
Speaker 1 :
Man, that’s so powerful. You dropped a lot of Nuggets in there and I want to hear more about Sheehan’s Wall because. Where you said too many messages to too many different audiences and I think that a lot of people we help a lot of people build their influence on YouTube and we want to talk about so many different things make videos on so many different things. We’re so many. We have more multipassionate and even as entrepreneurs who are maybe trying challenge to come up with what is our message that’s going to cut through the noise so what is she hands wall.
Speaker 2 :
Yeah, so? So she hands wall is a, it’s a, it’s a. We named it after a colleague of mine, Peter Sheehan, who originally kind of shared this construct with me. And then we’ve adapted it to fit personal brands. But it’s super simple. It’s basically in any industry or, you know, vertical or space, there’s two groups of people, there’s the unknown and then there are the known and most of us are unknown. We’re trying to breakthrough, to become known. And so there’s this huge invisible thick wall that is Sheehan’s wall. And what most of us do when we start out is we hear all these different ideas about all these things we could do to grow our reach, to grow our brand, right. And we’re multipassionate. So it’s like, oh, i love leadership and communication and sales or I love fitness and nutrition and mental health and you know, spa days and lifestyle stuff. And so we have a lot of messages. To a lot of audiences we hear all these different tactics like YouTube, podcast, social media, email list and all these different business models like membership site, video course, live events, you know, coaching programs, consulting, keynotes. And the problem is when you have diluted focus, you get diluted results. When you have diluted focus, you bounce off the wall. You absorb into the noise, you become part of the noise. And the way to break through Sheehan’s Wall, ironically, is to is to talk about fewer things in fewer places, to become the world’s leading expert on one thing. And that is how you break through the wall now. It doesn’t mean you have to only do that one thing forever. But that’s how you break through the wall. Once you break through the wall and you’re on the other side, you can expand into all sorts of different messages and business models, right? Like Oprah, Tony Robbins, you know, they can talk about all sorts of stuff. Gary Vaynerchuk’s a perfect example of this. He talks about all sorts of stuff today, but in the beginning he broke through the wall by talking about one thing, wine on one medium YouTube. And people forget that. Amazon broke through the wall as a company by selling one thing books, right? Like we all forget it because now you buy like, you know, cars and laptops and your toilet paper all off Amazon. But it’s in the beginning it was just books. So you have to become known for one thing and that’s how you break through the wall. And so, you know, part of the work that we try to help people do is figure out what is their one thing. That they could do to break through the wall.
Speaker 1 :
That’s brilliant. And man, as the world gets noisier and as there’s more options than ever before. Instagram, tik, tok podcast clubhouse, you know it’s all over the place and there’s so much noise in the world. Diluted focus leads to diluted results. And so breaking through on the one thing is so powerful. It reminds me when I was on my personal journey of discovering this and I just thought about my Instagram bio and I was working at a church at the at the time and my Instagram bio. I was a pastor, but I was also a content creator and I was already helping people find cameras and stuff and tapping my toes into what I’m doing today. But i was so multipassionate and my Instagram account was not about who I served. It was about me so I said, well, I’m a pastor, I’m a content creator, I’m a YouTuber, I’m a dog lover, I’m a music fan. And it was just this list about me. And when everything changed, Rory was when I I’ve shifted and I changed my Instagram bio and I just use that as an example. My email, tagline my social media profile across the board. And I galvanized the focus on my YouTube channel to I help people build their influence with YouTube and everything changed. Like, it really was it still took time, and I had to build around that new, clear message. But it brought so much clarity to my social media, brought clarity to my strategy, and it absolutely led to where things were today. And even though I was actually doing that at the time, I was clouding my own message by making it about me, and I was bouncing off of Sheehan’s Wall.
Speaker 2 :
Yeah, I mean, you’re a great example of this, Sean. I mean, I you know that for those of you like for you listening. I had one at one of my best keynote clients ever literally asked me the question who do you know that is great at teaching people how to do video and my brain immediately went to Sean right and like we are getting to know each other like we’re pals but we it’s not like we’re best friends like we’ve hung out a little bit and but I could I was like oh you need Sean and that’s. You know the human brain is a mental filing cabinet, right? And so you want to occupy 1 little box in their brain, like 1 little file in their brain where it’s like I need a surgeon, I need a orthopedic surgeon. Okay, who do I call? I need a child, you know, a pediatrician. I need, I need someone to clean my carpet. I need someone to, you know wash my car. There’s like these little boxes you need to. Own a box. It’s like you need to pick a box and own it. And so like at brand builders, this was a decision we had to make. We only work with personal brands. We do not work with companies. We know we can make a lot of money working with companies, but our passion is for the mission driven messenger though the we brand people, we brand faces, we work with individuals. Now they could work at a company, I mean all of them work at some company. But you know you, by turning away other things. You know it’s weird because it feels like it would be limiting. It feels like it would cost you, but it’s the opposite. You’re serving a smaller audience in a deeper way, and that is depth and substance, and that’s what creates the power in the force to break through the wall.
Speaker 1 :
This is so powerful and I’m excited to get into this brand DNA Helix because we’re going to go through Rory’s framework to help you clarify. If you’re like, okay, I want to break through the wall, I want to clarify my message. I want to figure it out. But we also have put together Rory’s got a way, if you want to talk to someone on his team, to actually get clarity on this stuff. If you just go to free brand call dot com forward slash think. You can or check the show notes on the podcast or the Youtube video. I really encourage you if you just actually want to connect with somebody that can help you galvanize and maybe bounce some of your ideas and your thoughts off them. That’s free brand call dot com forward slash think. And I want to hear about the brand DNA Helix though, and I actually do have this written down. I was at an event when you spoke with for Charlene Johnson and I was sitting next to Heather Torres and Melissa Caputo on our team and we were like, this is gold. And so you kind of walked us through these questions and this framework. And so I’m excited for you to share it with the Think Marketing podcast. But yeah, what is the brand DNA Helix?
Speaker 2 :
Yeah so this is our framework for discovering your uniqueness. It’s sort of the next step to Larry’s advice of find your uniqueness so you can exploit it in the service of others. So it’s six questions and basically, you know, we do one-on-one coaching. So if we were working with you one-on-one right now, we would ask you basically these six questions and you would brainstorm answers to the six questions. And then we would be looking. We teach our strategist to look for what we call thematic overlap. So basically at the intersection of all of these answers is where your uniqueness lies. And we actually already covered the first question is what problem do you solve? So you brainstorm a list of here’s all the problems I think I could solve for people. You know, these are things I know something about that people struggle with, that I can help them overcome, and you just come up with a list. The next thing you do is the second question is what are you passionate about? And so you make a list that of all of the things that light you up, that fire you up. And we want you to look at things that you get excited about. But also one of the keys here is to look for what pisses you off, what makes you mad, like what makes you angry. As well as what makes you sad? Like what makes you, what breaks your heart, what makes you cry? Like what is the thing where you look in the world and you go. I feel so bad that people struggle with this and those two questions what problems can I solve and what am I passionate about? Their chorus, they’re kind of corroborative. They you reconcile. You know, that’s how these six questions work, is you’re kind of reconciling and you’re looking for the intersection. So those are the first two questions.
Speaker 1 :
That is brilliant. And you know, it’s interesting too, because when I thought about video and I talk with like Heather on the tour, Heather Torres, the host of the Think Marketing podcast. She has a heart of empathy. She definitely comes from like this female nurturing side loves helping people get clear on certain things and might walk into an event and think about how the greeters greeted her, or think about how you know how people were responding in there. Conversely, that’s kind of what she’s noticing. And if the energy’s off or something, it would piss her off. She’d be like, man, there, why don’t they have people? Why is there no energy here? Whatever conversely, if I walk in the same event, I’ll be like why is that LED screen like flickering? Why are the lights turned off wrong? Why is the audio so bad here and sometimes you that’s it’s like what do you notice? And that’s not necessarily we’ve all maybe been around people who are critical, but sometimes the thing you’re being critical of is the thing you’ve been called to solve. Because you’re actually, you start realizing, like okay, those are the types of the flow of and being in church communications and even being in communications went all the way back to get started in a video. Just so interesting that thing that makes you angry. And for some it could be an injustices, right? It could be these things or it could just be. I don’t like it when people don’t communicate clearly and they help people communicate clearly and structure their thoughts or I don’t like it when and it can be so many different things. What pisses you off? What makes you sad. It actually frustrates me and makes me sad if people waste time in the beginning of their YouTube video, I’m like, you’re wasting time on the hook, what are you doing? So people like, I thought it was fine, it wasn’t a big deal. So interesting. What problem do you solve? What are you passionate about? That’s the first Helix, right?
Speaker 2 :
Yeah so that the six questions work like a chromosome right in a Brandy and a Helix. So those first two kind of go together. And so three and four are number three is what do you research? So that is what do you study, what do you learn about this could be your formal education, but it’s really more what would you spend a Saturday afternoon learning about if you had free time and you would do it anyways. Like that’s going to point us towards your uniqueness and right. Like our team can’t just look at you and tell you your uniqueness. We just, we have to like guide people through the process and we kind of like hold up a mirror and reflect it back to him but. You have head knowledge, your uniqueness. Whatever it is, you have head knowledge of it. Which leads to question number four, which is what do you have results in and results is different. That is not education, but experience. What have you actually freaking done? What path have you walked? Where do you have results and. These two questions you know if the first two questions in the Helix a problem and passion kind of address like you know what do you want to talk about these next two questions research and results are sort of like what have you earned the right to talk about and if there if there’s one shortcut to this process this entire process we realized that you. Are always most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were. You’re most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were. One of the reasons we start a brand builders group right, is because like I remember. What it felt like to sit in an audience and look at the speaker on the stage and go, ah, that should be me. I remember walking through the airport and seeing the book on the shelf and being like, how do you get your book up there? Like, my heart is so viscerally connected to that person. And then my wife, we, you know, we built our former company together and we stumbled through all of these mistakes and headaches to do it and just realized we could have done this so much faster if we would have had someone. Was teaching us, but nobody had kind of pulled all those elements together. And so, you know, that’s who we serve because that’s who we were. So who were you? What what? What problem have you solved? What question have you answered? What challenge have you overcome? You’re most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were. So that’s three and four.
Speaker 1 :
That’s powerful and the curse of knowledge I know in our community happens all the time to where we have like Nicole from kids OT help. She just crossed a hundred thousand subscribers on youTube her business past six figures. She’s done some brand collaborations, created her own courses. She’s done a lot of things. And she is the mother of a couple kids now, and she is a kids occupational therapist. But it’s really easy for people to count themselves out. Like who am I to teach? What do I know? How do I when as she began to uncover that she knows like secrets of just helping kids do tummy time and grow through those things that you know she knows secrets of breastfeeding and she just knows all these things that she’s learned the hard way. She’s put the time and the kids are still alive and they’re you know, they’re thriving. She’s and she and then she of course is also kids occupational therapist. But so many listening and I want to say this for the podcast like. That you sometimes can be blind even to the process that you’ve been going through the things you really have learned. It’s it could be just, it could be curse of knowledge, it could just be lack of confidence. It could be that generally we’re afraid to put ourselves out there and be bold and crack kind of through that shell because turns out. I mean, Heather Torres is another great example as a home school channel that she kind of does on the side. And she just goes, I just don’t know what I would talk and talk about. And I said, Heather, what are, like the first five things I should know if I was going to be a new home school parent. She’s like, oh, and she just could roll them off. I was like, what are the three mistakes that home school? She’s like, oh, I’ll tell you right now. She didn’t have to prepare. She didn’t need, like, notes. She could hit record. However, there was kind.
Speaker 2 :
Of that block there, where sometimes we can be blind even to the fact that she had read 10 books on homeschooling. Knew more they say right Rory that if you read like a book you know more than 75 % of the population. If you read five books you know more than 99 % of the population. Just as subject like just by going to Amazon and ordering Rory’s books on procrastinating the purpose and take the stairs. You would know more about procrastination and self disciplines than 99 % of the world. But yet we so easy for us right to be blind to our own results. Have you noticed that kind of cursive knowledge lack of confidence in those that you work with?
Speaker 2 :
Yeah, I mean, sometimes it’s a conscious, like imposter syndrome. Like, oh, I’m not good enough because I’m not a doctor, right? But remember, you only, you only feel fear when you’re thinking about yourself. Fear is so selfcentered, right? People don’t need experts. People need help. They don’t need experts. They need help. They don’t ultimately care what your credentials are. They care. Can you help me? Do you, can you guide me? Can you lead me? And when you think about your audience, you don’t have that imposter syndrome. But I. But i think another version is what you’re kind of talking about, Sean, which is more of the black. I’m not an expert on anything. And you go, you totally are like you everybody has done. You’ve been through something. What have you been through? You just don’t realize the depth of it because to you it’s the curse of knowledge. And so I think that, you know, ask yourself, who were you five years ago? Who were you maybe 10 years ago? And go, that’s the person. That you can reach. And by the way, when we get to marketing, which is a phase two conversation, so the brand builders curriculum is actually 4 phases. Phase One is brand positioning. That’s what we’re talking about right now. There’s a whole bunch of other stuff that comes later. But when you get to writing copy, you know, the best copy sounds like you’re in the head of the person and you can do that because you actually were that person. Like you know what that person needs to hear, so. You know and then and it’s also like what’s the thing you never get sick of learning about you never get sick of talking about. Like those are you know that that’s where it is like that’s the uniqueness.
Speaker 1 :
That is five. We got five and six.
Speaker 2 :
We do. Ok, so other than K so that is the uniqueness. Other than questions five and six, which are really important because they address an actual really important part, which is can you make any money with this? And this is where we’re going to like, you know, balance the like passion with can you make a real business out of this. So questions five and six are about money. Question 5 is what are all the things people would buy from you? And we teach that. There are basically only five ways to monetize a personal brand. We call them the paids. There’s five ways to get paid from a personal brand. So it’s an acronym. The P is products. You can take your pile of followers and you can sell them a physical product like a book or a clothing line or some equipment or whatever. The A in Paids is ads and affiliates, which is interesting, you know. So one of our big friends and clients, Louis House, this is his business model. Lewis doesn’t. He does sell some stuff to his clients, like to his audience. But the number one thing Lewis sells is access to his audience. It’s the people who sponsor his podcast the School of Greatness. Which a monster podcast, right? So ads and if you’re good at throwing a party but you don’t really love selling stuff, you might look at ads and affiliates. That could be a great model for you. If you’re a great inventor you might look at products you know or like you could do a day planner. One of our friends, Michael Hyatt has sells day planner. Shaline has a planner physical product. The eye is information. So this is obviously been a burst is to sell information products, which would be video courses, membership sites. Assessments, certifications, there’s been an explosion of information products because they’re super valuable and they’re, you know, fairly low cost to create and the and those are really great. The D in Paids is deals. So a deal is third party deals where you are paid from a third party for the creation of some piece of art regardless of how well it performs. So it’s a TV deal, a book deal, a brand deal. You’re getting paid a flat fee. Or a guaranteed advance, and sometimes you get royalties in addition to it. Usually that’s for more mature brands. And then the S is services, which is always the fastest path to cash is to sell your time for money. If you need to make money quickly, I’m telling you the fastest way to get there is to sell your time to be a fitness trainer, to be a coach, to be a consultant. The problem is longterm it’s the least scalable. So services are a great way to monetize your personal brand. In fact you know we work with a lot of like direct sales companies and stuff because you know the best way to make money is to just take your personal brand and use it to sell the thing you’re already doing. Like you already if you already have some business or you have a direct sales, you know side hustle or something, you could just use your personal brand to grow that thing. But if you’re trying to like, you know, if you have a corporate job and you really want to start something, you probably want to look at services 1st. That’s how you’re going to make enough money to pay your bills to break free. But then long term, you have to look at scale, which takes us to question number six. So question number five is what are all the things people would buy? Which are the paids? And you’re going to look at not all of them, right? We’re looking at one to. Start pick one not it’s not about all of them. And then question 6 is what business do you really want to be in long term? So that’s a different question. Is going, okay, well, short term, I need to do something to make money. But long term, what kind of lifestyle do I want to have? And this is where we encourage people to look for what we call dares. So the dares are the characteristics of awesome business models. So dares is also an acronym. It stands for digital, automated, recurring, Evergreen, and scalable. If there were a perfect if there were a perfect business model, it might be completely digital. It has no physical inventory, warehousing, cost of goods. It would be completely automated and selfserve, where you never had to talk to your client. They could just service themselves. It would be recurring, so people would just pay every month for that thing. It would be Evergreen, meaning you never had to update or change the product, and it would be infinitely scalable. You could have millions of followers, millions of customers without adding any additional overhead. Now that business model doesn’t exist. The truth is it’s all about what do you want to trade off. The Netflix, though, is probably the closest to it. But even Netflix isn’t Evergreen because they have to upload new content all the time. But Netflix is probably the closest that we have found. But ask yourself of the dares what do I have natural strengths in and natural. You know, my team is well suited at creating digital or physical. You know, automated or high touch, high customization, recurring or just one time pace. You know and you just kind of like. So you got to we help people sort of think through the inventory again, it’s there’s not a perfect answer, there’s only a perfect answer for you. It’s not about finding the truth, it’s about finding your truth. It’s your uniqueness that we’re looking for here in with the Helix.
Speaker 1 :
Man, so powerful the six questions and just some fire on monetization there. And I love that by really using every single question to find the thematic overlap to dial in your monetization, to dial in your brand positioning, to dial in what problem you’re going to solve. And again, I do want to encourage you, Rory is a super worldclass individual and we align on so many things, not just worldclass and business, but in family life. Values, faith, all those types of things and have gotten to connect with him multiple times. So if you feel like you want more help and we’re only on one step of like 4 steps, right, you do, you’ve got a whole team that can really help people get clarity for free. And of course there’s ways they can work with you and stuff like that. But even if they just want to get some clarity and really explore this process with somebody who can absolutely pull back kind of the confusion and really break through the and even for people that are far along because as even as I go through this, I’m like man, we could dial this messaging and we could dial our copy and we could dial some things in. So free brand call dot com forward slash think of course that’s in the show notes. If you do want to get some clarity to dial in your personal brand. You mentioned now though this is just that first pillar because what are the four stages of actually building a high impact Highprofit personal brand that you take people through?
Speaker 2 :
Yeah so interesting and yeah so we you know we do one-on-one coaching as you mentioned in the first call we do with people is like an introduction first call free get to know you a little bit and help you sort through some of this. So if you were you really want to zoom out big picture here for a SEC because you and I have never talked about this actually like but so when you look at breaking through Sheehan’s Wall brand Builders group actually are we have one curriculum. That is subdivided into 4 phases and each phase actually has three courses. So our full curriculum is 12 different two day experiences. So we have a ton of stuff that we take people there, which is one of the reasons why we give away so much because it’s like we can’t, we can’t give it away like fast enough, like there’s a ton. But so phase one is what we call the branding phase. It’s all about finding your uniqueness. And it’s about your positioning, how, where do you sit in the marketplace. And it’s, you know, I love how my friend Sally Hogshead describes this. It’s like you want to neatly position yourself inside of a box that people understand, but then you want to clearly differentiate yourself from everyone else who’s in that box with you. We do that in phase one. In phase two, we call that the marketing phase. This is traditionally what people think of when they think of personal branding. This is where we talk about funnels and email copy and websites and social media and podcasting and video and also getting booked as a speaker. It’s like, how do you market yourself? But one reason why a lot of people fail is because they skip phase one and they try to go straight to phase two. They immediately like, I need to get my website launched, but it’s like. You don’t even know what to say. Like you don’t even know what words need to be on the website. Why are you so concerned about getting it launched? And it’s just because that’s what we see everybody doing, you know?
Speaker 1 :
Rory, just to cut in there, I mean that was a bomb right there on the podcast. Like if you’re not doing not just the right things, but in the right order. And it actually becomes the wrong thing if you start you run out without fully having clarity. And clarity is power. Clarity is really that first step. And I’m covering that in that messaging phase. Ok, I love that. So then what’s the next phase?
Speaker 2 :
Yes, that’s phase two and phase three is what we call selling. So phase three is where you’ve built, you’ve built a fire in phase one and phase two now we’re going to throw gasoline on the fire and to what you just said, Sean, so this is where we introduce paid traffic. We teach people how to analyze pay traffic campaigns and they learn their, you know their you know, CAC and their LTV lifetime value and cost per, you know, cost per click and you know client acquisition costs and all that, all of that stuff to throw fuel on the fire, we teach. That’s where you learn about. And doing affiliates, that’s also where we teach one of the courses is called bestseller launch plan and we talk about moving from self-publishing to traditional publishing and how does the New York Times list work and when should you use a New York publisher and what, what’s the Wall Street Journal bestseller and how do you do that? And then we also talk about high dollar offer sales there in selling and then in phase four, phase four is what we call scaling. Phase four, our flagship course is called 8 Figure Entrepreneur which you could actually think of these phases is this way fate, you know it’s like you know phase one you’re just getting started. Phase two is become six figures. Phase three is grow to seven figures, phase four is 8 figures and you know my wife and I have built five different 7 figure companies and 1-8 figure company that we sold back in 2018 and so we talked about. There’s a big difference between being a personal brand and scaling a personal brand into a business. You know, our former company had 200 people, right? And you know you this is where you go. How do you become Dave Ramsey with a thousand employees or a Gary Vaynerchuk or you know, Oprah, like these huge brands that reach millions of people. It’s not just them, right? And it’s not a little team, it’s a, it’s a big team. It takes a big team to make a big impact. And so that’s what phase four is all about. We also teach people in phase four how to recruit and build a sales team because typically by that point to get to an 8 figure business, you’re usually having to supplement marketing with sales, a true dedicated sales strategy, which is actually what we spent our whole past life doing. We used to only do sales. Brand builders is more of a marketing you know company, but that’s the that’s the big picture man and then you kind of like you know a lot of the clients we work with who are more of the like celebrity type, they kind of are repeating the cycle. So they’ve already done it once and now they’re reinventing their next business or their next book or their you know their next thing.
Speaker 1 :
Man, that’s brilliant. And of course you’re breaking down your business model and how you can help people in this side of what you do with brand builders group. But there’s so much value in there and I think that’s a kind of a good question of the day is thinking about what stage are you in? Are you in that branding getting clarity stage? Are you in that needing to master marketing and maybe scale to six or beyond in that selling, mastering sales and paid traffic to your point, absolutely. It’s like gasoline on the fire, but just like the mistake. Sometimes with a lot of people in our community and even in like our inner circle program and different things are like, hey can how do you do Facebook ads, how do you do Instagram ads, how do you do Google Display network? And the question is are you even ready? Like have you proven your message, have you proven your offer? Have you proven your product?
Speaker 2 :
If you’re not yet. If you’re not yet optimizing every YouTube video organically. You’re not ready for that. Like, why would you not do the free thing first? And everyone wants to skip over that because.
Speaker 1 :
I love those steps and obviously we can get a lot of value out of those. Again, I could, we could talk, obviously. Endlessly about all these different stages and all these details. So we definitely have to have you back on the marketing podcast. And if you want to connect more with Rory, of course all of his details are in the show notes wherever you’re watching or listening to this. And if you do want to jump on with a free call with one of the strategists, links are there as well for that. Can’t recommend it enough. We’ve had people in the past when we recommended that on a different video that got so much value out of connecting with Rory and his team and so free brand call dot com forward slash think rory, thank you so much for being a part of the podcast today.
Speaker 2 :
Man, it’s such a privilege. I respect what so much what you’re doing and I learned from you like I actually follow you. You’re just the epitome of just given value and clarity and focus and over delivering and you know the last thing I would just leave y’all with is if you feel any fear or reluctance. To go out and build your personal brand, it’s because you’re thinking about yourself. But if you feel that calling on your heart, we believe that is the result of a signal that’s being sent out by somebody else. And there’s somebody out there right now who needs you much more than you need them. So think about that person and go find them wow rory and Shawn’s conversation for me was so enlightening. I think, you know, we talk a lot about clarity here at think Media, and Rory just really took it to another level for me specifically, and I hope for you as well. And when I think about some key points that I wrote down that I want to make sure that you get into your notebook was you need to get clear on the exact problem that you solve. And you know that we teach this here at the ink media. But it’s even just one level deep of what’s your superpower? What is the thing that you are just so good at and that you could help people with. And I loved that. Roy really carries the same spirit that we have here at think, which is all about helping the people in your tribe. Who are you helping and how do you help them? Is the main question that we ask here when we’re helping our clients get clear on their Youtube channels or how they want to grow their business on Youtube And so I really hope that you take some time to evaluate that. You know, a lot of times we listen to podcasts and we just move on to the next one. But I want to encourage you to take this podcast like a mini course and actually spend time answering these questions. So who do you help and how do you help them? And then the last thing is to remember that your personal brand isn’t actually about you. Was that an enlightening point for you as well? I think for me, when I think about what should I be posting on social media or what type of content should I be creating? I don’t want it to be about me. I want it to be about the person I want to help, and I. Think that the big piece where he said about fear is when you’re making it internal man, that really just breaks down some barriers. So I hope that you pick up your camera this week. I hope that you press record and you start creating content for the people that need you the most. And we’re going to continue this type of clarity conversations at our annual conference grow with video live. You have an opportunity right now to win an All Access pass. To our conference, that’s going to be happening virtually, which means you can attend no matter where you live in the world this fall of 2021 There’s a couple things you have to do to enter to win this exclusive all access pass so.
Speaker 1 :
Make sure you go to thinkmarketingshow.com I’ll have that linked in the show notes below here on the podcast, as well as on YouTube wherever you’re consuming this content on. And all you need to do is rate and review the podcast. Why rate and review it? Well, because that allows us to see who’s part of our community here on the podcast. We get to hear your testimonies on there and learn what type of content you love for us to be creating. But it also helps to put this in the feeds of those other creators just like you. So if you rate and review this podcast. It helps us get the message of what we’re trying to do here at think out to other people. So if you want to enter to win one of those all access passes, all you need to do is rate and review over on iTunes and make sure you go to thinkmarketingshow.com for all the details to enter this amazing giveaway. One of my favorite things to do here on the podcast is to read these reviews and today’s review and shoutout goes to whatever works two thirty four. They said dropping growth bombs, such a great podcast. Very encouraging for me in this journey as well as helping me strategically grow my channel and more importantly myself. Thank you so much for leaving that comment. That really is our heart here at Think Media. It’s to help you have personal life change and we want that to happen through growing your influence on YouTube. There’s never been a better time right now for you to be creating content and helping people through the power of video. And creating freedom based filled businesses. I don’t know if that makes sense, but basically it just means that I am so excited that whatever works, two thirty four said. That not only is it helping them grow their channel, but also themselves. This is the journey that I’ve been on. And I just want to help share the things that I’ve learned. And Sean wants to share the things that he’s learned along this journey of growing you of growing on Youtube Well, that wraps up today’s podcast. Make sure you tune in next Tuesday for another fire podcast. I can say that because I’ve already listened to it. So make sure that you are here next Tuesday and we’ll catch you in the next episode.
