How To Turn Your PASSION Into A 7-Figure Income Stream | Rory Vaden

In this powerful episode of The School of Greatness, I sit down with my friend and personal brand strategist Rory Vaden to discuss the science and strategy behind building an influential personal brand. Rory brings groundbreaking research and proven frameworks that have helped shape some of the biggest personal brands in the world, including my own journey with The School of Greatness. His insights on finding your uniqueness and serving others authentically will transform how you think about building your brand and business. To request a free brand strategy call with Rory‘s team, go to lewishowes.com/brandcall! Summit of Greatness is back in Los Angeles in 2025! Get your tickets NOW! https://lewishowes.com/ticketsIN THIS EPISODE YOU WILL LEARN:Why 74% of Americans are more likely to trust someone with an established personal brandThe number one reason most personal brands fail and how to avoid this common pitfallHow to identify your unique "one thing" that will help you break through the noiseWhy multiple streams of income is actually harmful advice for new entrepreneursThe proven three-step framework for separating yourself from the crowdFor more information go to https://www.lewishowes.com/1687For more Greatness text PODCAST to +1 (614) 350-3960More SOG episodes we think you’ll love:Alex Hormozi – https://greatness.lnk.to/1537SCGary Vaynerchuk – http://greatness.lnk.to/1618SCEd Mylett – https://greatness.lnk.to/1409SC Get more from Lewis! Get my New York Times Bestselling book, Make Money Easy! Get The Greatness Mindset audiobook on SpotifyText Lewis AIYouTubeInstagramWebsiteTiktokFacebookX

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Rory Vaden?

  Multiple streams of income is the dumbest piece of advice on the internet today. Nobody who got rich, got rich through multiple streams of income. Nobody. The way you get rich is by doing one thing extremely well, over and over and over, and you master it, and you dominate it, and you crush it, and you make money.

• 0:24Speaker 01

  It's Rory Vaden, a New York Times bestselling author. He's an eight-figure entrepreneur, Hall of Fame speakers, TED Talks, have millions of millions of views. We've worked with some of the top names when we think about the concept of personal branding.

• 0:36Rory Vaden?

  Your personal brand is not just colors and fonts and logos. The way that we defined it is very different. It's the digitization of your reputation. Everybody thinks the key to making millions is like, "I gotta reach millions of people." No, you don't. The fastest way to succeed in business is to change the lives of the people who are right in front of you. I'm gonna give you the greatest secret that we found for how to do this, and you don't want to miss this, because this is, everything we do boiled down into one secret.

• 1:09Rory Vaden?

  What's up, Los Angeles?

• 1:15Rory Vaden?

  I'm so excited to be here. I loved being in Columbus and Ohio. It's great to be in LAX, although I did figure out it's faster to fly to Ohio than to drive across town in LA traffic.

• 1:27Rory Vaden?

  Have you had a great day? Yeah! Epic day. Who loved Joe Dispenza? Yeah! I mean, we got to see Joe Dispenza, we got to see Rachel, we got to see Cody, we got to see Louis with his shirt off, come on. Yeah! And we're gonna have a great time. One of the questions people always ask me whenever I speak at large events like this, the balcony and all these people, they say, "Hey, do you ever get nervous when you speak in public, like to the big rooms?" And I actually used to get nervous, but then I found this research study that was done by Harvard that found, they studied all these different audiences, and they found that actually only 11% of the audience retains any of the information the speaker says.

• 2:09Rory Vaden?

  We're going to talk about how to build an influential personal brand. And this has been one of the great honors in my career is to be a personal brand strategist to Lewis Howes, one of the greatest voices in our generation. Getting to be a part of Lewis and his team and work with Matt and just have a small piece of being behind the scenes crafting what they're doing has just been so inspiring. And being with you, I know that you all don't see me, but Lewis and the whole team, they work so hard for you, they care so deeply about you. And I know that you care about living your dreams and also just making the world a better place. And I'm so ecstatic and honored to be here.

• 2:50Rory Vaden?

  And I know that what your experiences these two days is going to be life-changing. Now, my role is going to be somewhat tactical because I'm going to talk about what we do at Brand Builders Group. And we have worked with several of the biggest personal brands in the world. In fact, Ed Mylett, any Ed Mylett fans out there? Yeah! So Ed Mylett is a client of ours. You know, Jim Quick, Trent Shelton, Amy Porterfield, Jasmine Star, Eric Thomas, the Hip-Hop Preacher, all private clients that I've had the fortune and the blessing of getting a chance to work with to help them sort of craft some of the things going on with their personal brand.

• 3:32Rory Vaden?

  So what we're going to talk about is what really is a personal brand. According to data, okay, not just according to opinion, but according to data. And Cody just talked about how there's such a big opportunity with starting a business and owning a business. And I think the greatest opportunity for owning a business right now is building a personal brand. I just think it's extraordinary. So we'll talk about that. Then we're going to talk about why personal brands fail and then how to separate yourself from the crowd. Because there's a lot of people online and it's like, well, how do you then break through the noise? And those are all the things. But I want to start off by talking through exactly what is a personal brand. And...

• 4:15Rory Vaden?

  Really, a simple way to think about a brand in general is, what do people think of when they think of you? Right? That's really what it is. What do people think of when they think of you? And that's a really important thing. Now, you don't get to control that. You only actually get to influence it. So there's a lot of things that we can do and there's a lot of strategies that our team does when we work with personal brands to help them sort of craft a narrative that encourages the world to respond to them in a certain way. But ultimately, you don't really control your brand. In fact, the classic definition that we offer about personal branding is very different from how most people think of it. Because when most people hear "personal branding", they think that we're like an agency,

• 4:59Rory Vaden?

  like a marketing agency, that we do like logos and fonts. We don't do any of that. We're a personal brand strategy firm. So the way that we think of it is that your personal brand is not just colors and fonts and logos and websites and emails. That's what people all think of, like social media and podcasts. But the way that we define it is very different. It's simply the digitization of your reputation. That's what personal branding really is. The digitization of your reputation. So it's not even really a new concept. It's really an old concept that is just being modernized through the platforms and the outlets that are available to us today. What is it that people think of when they think of you?

• 5:45Rory Vaden?

  Now, one of the things that we did is, you will come to find, the more that you know and follow me and stuff, I am basically just a nerd with a microphone. And I really love data and we really love strategy. And we actually went out and we conducted the world's first national research study to understand what the data is about personal branding. And so we hired a company. We had a PhD-led study that has waited to the US Census, that is statistically valid, right? And it's to understand the dynamics of personal branding. To really understand, is this important? And if it's important, why is it important? And one of the things that we found that is fascinating is that almost three-fourths of Americans,

• 6:31Rory Vaden?

  74% of Americans, say they are more likely to trust someone who has an established personal brand.

• 6:41Rory Vaden?

  They're more likely to trust you. And so we thought, oh, well, maybe this is just like, you know, what parts of the business does this affect? Like, is this really just about vanity and going viral and TikTok and followers and sort of celebrity? Well, no. What we found is that Americans say, this is the general population, it says that they are willing, 63% of Americans say they are willing, more willing to buy from someone who has an established personal brand. 57% say they're willing to recommend you. 55% say they're more willing to do business with you. My favorite one on here is that 29% of Americans say they're more likely to date you just because you have an established personal brand.

• 7:24Rory Vaden?

  Ooh la la, la señorita, right? Like, that is fascinating, fascinating. So I thought, well, yeah, I guess that maybe that's true. It's probably just for the young generation, though. It's, it's, this can't really be like, you know, maybe if you're a YouTuber or, you know, maybe, maybe if you're a podcaster, I'm sure this really matters. But we said, but surely this doesn't affect like, you know, like real jobs and like real business, right? So we actually asked that question. And we took some of the most common professional services. And we asked, how much, how important is it that these people that you do business with have a personal brand? And the results are shocking.

• 8:07Rory Vaden?

  61% of Americans said they want their doctor to have a personal brand. Americans say they want their lawyers to have an personal brand, their employers. And then it's, at first it was shocking. It was like, wow, that's fascinating. But if, if, if someone's gonna do surgery on you and cut you open, you kind of want to know who they are, right? Like, it matters to you a bit what their pedigree is and what they've done and how much experience they have and maybe where they went to school or whatever. And so then the epiphany happened, which is very, very simple. The higher the requirement for trust, the more important having an established personal brand becomes.

• 8:51Rory Vaden?

  So then the question is, how important is it that people trust you? How much does it matter in your business, whatever business you're involved with, that they actually trust you? And if your business has anything to do with people giving you money, then it's probably pretty important. Now, we invested over a hundred thousand dollars into this research study, when all was said and done, to produce, to conduct it, field it, you know, analyze the data, produce the reports. And we are giving away the entire national research study. If you want it, there's a lot more data than we're gonna have time to get into, but I'm gonna give it to you for free. If you want it, just hit this QR code. It'll take you to my Instagram profile.

• 9:34Rory Vaden?

  And just DM or comment the word greatness. And then I will send you, through the DMs, I will send you the full study. So you can either go on the QR code or just go to Instagram, and then just leave a comment or DM me greatness, and we'll send you the full study. But that is, according to data, that is what a personal brand is and why it matters. It's not just something for online influencers. It is becoming so pervasive, it is affecting the very structure of how we think and operate and do business, and who we choose to do life with. It's pervasive, it's ubiquitous. So then, that brings us to, why do most personal brands fail?

• 10:20Rory Vaden?

  And this is a really important question, because as this becomes more and more essential to our daily professional lives, we need to understand why do most personal brands fail? And the reason is, because building a personal brand the right way is simple, but it's not easy. In fact, here's what I want everybody to do for a second. Just stand up, if you will, just for one second. Go ahead and stand up, everybody just stand up. We're gonna do a really quick exercise. And don't worry, I'm not gonna make you touch anybody or do anything weird. Okay? All I want you to do, all I want you to do, is everybody turn and face the person to your left. The person on your left?

• 11:06Rory Vaden?

  Great, okay, well done. Now turn back and face the person on your right. Everybody look at the person on your right?

• 11:14Rory Vaden?

  Okay, great. Now this is the tricky part, and here's where the choice comes in. What I want you to do is to think very hard, and then turn back and face the better-looking of the two.

• 11:35Rory Vaden?

  Once you've made up your mind, you can sit down.

• 11:39Rory Vaden?

  I love that. I love that. I love it because it's so incredibly awkward.

• 11:47Rory Vaden?

  I mean, like, some of you are sitting next to your spouse, so you feel kind of obligated, right?

• 11:52Rory Vaden?

  Half of you are looking at me. Thank you very much.

• 11:56Rory Vaden?

  But that exercise demonstrates a very important part of what I'm talking about, that that simple is not easy, right? Left and right is a simple choice, but as, once you change the context of that choice, it becomes difficult. The things I'm going to teach you are very simple to learn theoretically, but they're very difficult to execute upon. And the number-one greatest mistake that almost all personal brands make, and the number-one reason why personal brands fail, can be demonstrated through a framework that we call She-Han's Wall. Now, we named this after a colleague of mine, named Peter Shehan. He was the one who taught me the original kind of concept,

• 12:40Rory Vaden?

  but it was in corporate, and then we adapted it to personal brands, and we named it after him. He didn't name it after himself. But this shows very much what the challenge is, because in any given market, or vertical, or industry, or, you know, new business area, there's two different groups of people. There are those who are unknown. They are living in obscurity. They're unclear, untrusted, and unknown, which is the mass population. And then there are those on the other side of the wall who are well-known. Right? These are the people who have notoriety. This is Tony Robbins and Gary Vaynerchuk and Brene Brown and Oprah and The Rock and people like that.

• 13:25Rory Vaden?

  Well, in between these two groups of people is this huge invisible wall that we call She-Hands Wall. And what most of us do is most of us who are on this side of the wall, we look at what the people on the other side of the wall are doing, and then we try to do and emulate what they do. Right? So we go, well, Tony Robbins has lots of different topics, right? He talks about unleash the power within and date with destiny, and he talks about money and business mastery and health. And you go, oh, he's got lots of topics. And Gary Vaynerchuk talks about, you know, wine and sports and music and entertainment and social media and cryptocurrency. And so we look at those people and we go, well, I have a lot of topics too. I have a lot of things that I'm interested.

• 14:10Rory Vaden?

  So we talk about a lot of different topics. So we're talking about a lot of topics. And then what happens is we struggle to clarify an audience because we go, well, my friends from high school are following me and grandma's following me and my colleagues are following me. But then I'm also trying to start this new business, but I'm involved with this nonprofit. And then like some people from my Bible study are in here. Then my kids' parents. And like, we're trying to address like all of these different audiences. And then, of course, we got to be on all the different profiles, right? So we're trying to keep up with Twitter, X and Facebook Meta and Snapchat and Pinterest and Instagram and maybe podcasts and YouTube. And so we have all these profiles. And then every time you turn up, man, every time you scroll online,

• 14:53Rory Vaden?

  there's somebody showing you a new way to get rich, a new business model. And they're like, man, if you want to get rich, courses are the answer. No, you should write, you should launch, you should launch a course. You should launch a mastermind. We should do live events. We should be a coaching company. We should do consulting. You should be a keynote speaker. You should write your own book. You should, you should do destination retreats. And it's just like, okay, all the multiple streams of income. And it's like, we're doing all of this. And then we're, but we're a small business, so we're doing all of the jobs and we have too many ideas. And what happens is you bounce off the wall. And the reason you bounce off of the wall, friends, is so incredibly simple.

• 15:31Rory Vaden?

  It's because when you have diluted focus, you get diluted results, period.

• 15:41Rory Vaden?

  When you have diluted focus, you get diluted results. It's hard when you're distracted. And by the way, I struggle with this too, because now I'm a parent. And so, this is what my daily life looks like. Like, this is from my house. So, I'm sorry I'm late to respond to your text message. It's not that I'm busy working and I'm not having fun. I'm dealing with this, people, okay? So, the question becomes then, okay, if diluted focus creates diluted results, we don't want that. And trust me, you've tried it, right? You're living it now. Everybody who comes to us, this is what they're trying to do

• 16:24Rory Vaden?

  and balance all of these things, and they're bouncing off of the wall. And this is what happened, frankly, when Lewis came. The first time Lewis came and worked with me in 2018, and we've done many different sessions together, but Lewis had 17 streams of revenue. We wrote him out on a board. And he was talking about all the things he was doing, because all of his friends were doing FreePlus shipping funnels, and they were doing, you know, all of these different things. And he had 17 revenue streams, because he thought that was like a good thing, because that's what we hear, right? Multiple streams of income. You want to get rich, you should have multiple streams of income. Let me let you in on a little piece, a little secret. Multiple streams of income is the dumbest piece of advice on the internet today. And there's a lot of dumb advice on the internet.

• 17:09Rory Vaden?

  But nobody who got rich, got rich through multiple streams of income. Nobody. The way you get rich is by doing one thing extremely well, over and over and over, and you master it, and you dominate it, and you crush it, and you make money, and then you deploy that money, and then it multiplies. But that's not how you get rich. That's what you do once you're rich. So the question is, how do you break through the wall? And the single greatest piece of personal branding advice I've ever received came from a gentleman named Larry Wingate. And I wish this was my quote, but it's not. I heard this from this guy Larry. And here's what Larry said. And the moment I heard this, I was like, that is so brilliant.

• 17:54Rory Vaden?

  That is exactly what you should do. Larry said, "The goal is to find your uniqueness and exploit it in the service of others." Find your uniqueness and exploit it in the service of others. And this is what we have replicated over and over again with our clients. You see, what we do is we take our clients through a process that helps them identify what is the one thing that they could potentially do better than anyone else in the world. And what we do is we focus, we go all in on that one thing.

• 18:38Rory Vaden?

  Serve one audience, one topic, solve one problem, make money with one primary revenue stream. And if you think about it, think about this like a concrete wall. Y'all, like if I had, if I had a sledgehammer and I'm swinging at a concrete wall and I'm hitting the wall all over the place, nothing is going to happen to that wall. I'm just going to get tired and frustrated. But imagine this, if I hit the same spot on that wall over and over and over and over, at first it'll be frustrating just the same, but then the paint will chip. Then there will be a crack. Then there will be a divot. Then there will carve out a little spot. And you hit it again and again and again. And eventually you will crack through that wall. And then, once you crack through the wall,

• 19:22Rory Vaden?

  you can reach through and pull the entire wall down. And once you are on the other side, then you can expand into lots of other things.

• 19:34Rory Vaden?

  Then you can do the thing, like, yes, you know, The Rock has a tequila line and a clothing line, and now he's got facial stuff and like, all these different, and he's an actor and he's a comedian. But in the beginning, he was a wrestler, right? Like, he got famous from professional wrestling. Yes, Gary Vaynerchuk talks about a million things on a million platforms, but in the beginning, in the beginning, how did he get there? He talked about one topic, what was it? Wine. Wine on one platform. Youtube. Youtube. Gary Vaynerchuk broke through the wall talking about wine on Youtube. And so, we have to figure out for you, what is your one thing?

• 20:18Rory Vaden?

  Specifically, the genesis of building an influential worldwide personal brand comes from answering this one simple question with one word. Most personal brands fail because they can't even get this first step right, which is answering the question, "What problem do you solve?" In one word. One word. That's important because people buy solutions to problems. That's what we spend money on. We think of, a lot of times we talk about money, like, you know, private jets and buying houses and cars, but the reality is, what people spend money on is to solve problems, right?

• 21:00Rory Vaden?

  Like, you may not have money, but if your tire gets, if you get a flat tire, you find the money. Your water heater breaks, you find the money. Your kid gets sick, you find the money. People always have money to solve problems. They sometimes have money to buy luxuries, but they always have money to solve problems. And look at some of these examples, right? Now, these are not clients of ours. Brene Brown is such a great example of this. She has become one of the most influential people in the world, in the world. Not just as an author or a speaker, in the world. And Brene Brown never set out to be famous, she never set out to like, be an online marketer. She dedicated her life to studying the problem of shame. Brene Brown is the world's leading expert on shame.

• 21:44Rory Vaden?

  She was a researcher, that's what she studied. Dave Ramsey, personal friend of mine, lives in Nashville. Dave Ramsey has 1,000 employees. It is a multi-nine-figure business a year in annual revenue. He reaches 17 million people every week on the radio by saying the same thing over and over and over again that he's been saying every day for three hours for 30 years. Debt is dumb, cash is king, follow my seven baby step formula.

• 22:20Rory Vaden?

  Three hundreds of millions of dollars. Dave Ramsey owns the problem of debt. You can't talk about debt and not talk about Dave Ramsey. Someone will mention him, he owns it. Tony Robbins dedicated his life to helping people be free from pain. That's what he does. When we worked with Lewis all the way back in 2018, we helped Lewis get clear on one thing, that he was going to talk about overcoming self-doubt. That his interviews would be different because he would ask people about how they got through self-doubt. He would share his personal story about how he overcame self-doubt. He'd build a community for people who were trying to move past self-doubt so they could achieve greatness. And it's not just in business.

• 23:04Rory Vaden?

  Mother Teresa dedicated her life to ridding the world of poverty. Martin Luther King Jr. literally gave his life to rid the world of inequality. What would you give your life for? Now, for me, this was how I broke through the wall originally. Most people don't know me for this now, but I started my career when in my early twenties, I studied the psychology of procrastination. That was all I studied. I was one of the world's leading authorities on the psychology of overcoming procrastination. And I invented these two new terms, creative avoidance and priority dilution. In 2022, Lewis actually had me do my Take the Stairs talk at the summit. Some of you may have been there. That was the talk that I built my career on.

• 23:49Rory Vaden?

  The Take the Stairs book became a New York Times bestseller when I was 29. That was how I met Lewis. And then I had a TED Talk that went viral that was all about how to overcome priority dilution. Well, that's who I was. That was my original personal brand. But then we sold that company and we actually had a non-compete. I had to pivot. Part of what we did was we sold all of my social media, all of my email list, our team. It was all gone. And so then we started over in 2018. And Brand Builders Group, we figured out that the problem we were going to tackle was obscurity. We were going to tackle obscurity. We were going to teach people who were living in obscurity, who felt called to reach more people, how to become more wealthy and well-known.

• 24:32Rory Vaden?

  And in five years, we went from zero, we started back over on zero, and we went to eight figures. We hit the Inc. 5000 list twice. And more importantly, we started working with the biggest personal brands in the world, became clients of ours, because we were the leading authority on one specific problem. And so the question for you is, what problem do you solve in one word? We have to know that answer, because you have to sell the problem as much as you sell the solution. If you want to make money, you have to become an ambassador of the problem. You have to promote the problem. You have to celebrate the problem. You have to raise awareness for the problem.

• 25:16Rory Vaden?

  And by virtue of doing that, you will become the natural, automatic, assumed go-to source for the solution. We have 12 different two-day experiences that we take clients through. We don't have 24 days right now for me to take you through all of that. So what I'm going to do is I know some of you go, "Well, Rory, is there a secret? Is there a shortcut? Like, how could I find my uniqueness?" And I would love to help you do that. That is something that we do help people do. But I'm going to give you the secret right now, the greatest secret that we found for how to do this. And we discovered this once we started training strategists. So we have about 45 employees now. And we have a couple dozen strategists who are just talking with clients all day, every day,

• 26:01Rory Vaden?

  helping them figure this out, and then turn it into a business, and turn it into like revenue-generating income. Well... What we started to discover was a pattern. We started to notice a consistent trend, something that happened over and over. After we'd done hundreds of them, it was like, there's definitely something similar with each person. Even though everyone has their own uniqueness, there is this pattern. And I can tell you what it is in one sentence. And you don't want to miss this because this is, everything we do boiled down into one secret. One sentence, we figured out that for all of us,

• 26:40Rory Vaden?

  you are most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were.

• 26:55Rory Vaden?

  You are most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were. Nobody is more credible in the world than you, going back and reaching back and helping somebody else who is going through something that you have already been through. That's how Lewis and I first became friends, right? I had just hit the New York Times Bestseller List. I was on his podcast and it was like, hey, man, you should write a book one day. And he's like, I'm working on it. I said, well, I'll tell you everything I know about how we hit New York Times. And, you know, we became friends through that process. And I never actually needed anything from Lewis. I just thought he was cool and we were the same age. And I was like, I was like, man, I'll tell you what I know.

• 27:40Rory Vaden?

  We became friends and then honestly, we lost touch. And then what happened is one day, my wife and I walked into our former company and she got fired by our investors. And she was one of the founders and they fired her because she is very vocal and she had some very specific opinions about how people should operate in business and out of business. And she shared that and they weren't excited about that. So she got fired and so, and then I resigned. And everything we had spent 12, 12 years building was gone, just like that. Everything, it was just gone. We walked away from it all. Now, we ultimately sold the, we sold the company.

• 28:20Rory Vaden?

  So we, we got something for it, but we, we weren't planning on doing that and we had to start over. And to the day that that happened, I got a phone call from Lewis Howes. And he said, hey, man, I know we haven't talked in a while. But I feel like I'm supposed to call you. Because my business has grown quite a bit since we've talked, but now I'm pulled in a lot of directions. I'm not sure really what to do. The podcast has gone from like 8 million to 30 million downloads. But I have all this team and I'm just, I'm making money, but I'm not keeping any of it. I'm spending it. I'm stressed. I don't know what to focus on. I don't know what to say yes to and no to. And I'm like, you know, doing all these different things. And he says, "Is there any chance that you, I could borrow and rent

• 29:04Rory Vaden?

  your brain to work on my business?" And it was like, "Well, yeah, the schedule's wide open."

• 29:13Rory Vaden?

  And Louis came to our house. We spent two days together. And at the end of that two days, Louis said, "This is the most powerful business experience I've ever been through. This is what you were born to do. This is your new business." And we said, "No, no, Louis. No, no. This is not our new business. We don't have a new business. We just got out of a business. We've been working like crazy for, you know, 12 years." And he said, "No, this is what you're supposed to do." And I said, "Louis, you don't understand. I don't have any audience. We don't have a podcast. I've lost my podcast, my email list, our team, our social media. Everything is gone." And he said, "Well, that's okay. I have an audience."

• 29:54Rory Vaden?

  And he said, "This is what you were born to do. We're gonna have you on my show. And we're gonna tell the whole world what you did. And we're gonna walk through this. And then we're gonna offer everybody a free call." And from that day, we went from zero. We had over 1,000 free calls come in from that first interview from Louis.

• 30:21Rory Vaden?

  Brand Builders Group exists because of Lewis Howes.

• 30:32Rory Vaden?

  And we were able to take that one interview. We had no team, right? So I built this janky webpage that was like, drove people to the free call. And we said, "Well, if you believe in us, then we'll pay back to you a referral fee on anyone that you ever refer to us." And we have done that, and we have grown together. And not only have we gone from zero to eight figures, Lewis's little podcast over those next three years that we worked together, and their team and all the other things they were doing, they went from 30 million downloads. And we told him, we said, "Lewis, you have to stop doing all this other stuff. You have to cut all of these revenue streams. I know you have a bunch." And we said, "Lewis, you have to go all in." I never taught anything to Lewis Howes about podcasting or social media or anything.

• 31:15Rory Vaden?

  The only thing I ever did was I said, "This podcast thing that you kind of do as a traffic source, I think this could be your one thing. I think if you went all in on this one thing and you shut everything else down, I think it could be big." And to his credit, he shut down 14 revenue streams. Some of those were multi-seven figures. We had one conversation one night in a hotel lobby. We went upstairs, he shut down his mastermind, his high-level mastermind, that was millions of dollars in revenue. Where I come from, we have a phrase for that. We call it having big cojones.

• 31:49Rory Vaden?

  And not only did we grow, that little podcast went from 30 million downloads to 500 million downloads in the next two and a half years.

• 32:01Rory Vaden?

  Because he went all in. He went all in on the one thing. We still do this. We will offer you a free call. Any of you who say, "I want to learn strategies about how to do this." I feel called to do this. If you go to lewishouse.com/brandcall, or you can hit the QR code. Now, the wifi's not very good in here. It takes about 10 seconds for the page to load, so give it like 10 seconds. But for a few hundred of you, if you're serious about going, "I want to build a personal brand, I feel called to do this," go to that URL, fill out the form, and then our team, you can schedule a time, our team will, again, to this day, we will do the first call for

• 32:46Rory Vaden?

  free with everybody in here who's serious about doing it. And that's still how we operate. So, that's the mistake that most personal brands make is they bounce off the wall because they have diluted focus and they get diluted results. We have to find your uniqueness so that you can exploit it in the service of others. Which leads me to the third part, which is, okay, so then how do you separate yourself from the crowd, from the millions and millions and hundreds of millions and billions of people who are on social media? I'm gonna tell you how to do this, okay? I'm gonna share with you the three things that you must do that will separate you from the crowd, but I just wanna warn you that these three things, some of you are not gonna

• 33:31Rory Vaden?

  like them. You may not wanna do them, but you must do these three things. There's no way you can do it without doing these three things. And this is another thing I've learned from parenting, right? So this is my son Jasper. I know, isn't he cute? He gets that from daddy. So, this is a couple of years ago, at Halloween, Jasper was totally into fire trucks, man, like loved fire trucks. And he wanted to go as a fireman for Halloween, but his mom and I found this really cute panda costume and we thought it would be so much cuter if he went as a panda bear. And so we're like, alright buddy, you're gonna go as a panda bear for Halloween. And he was like, no daddy, fireman, fireman.

• 34:16Rory Vaden?

  And we're like, but bud, a panda bear would be so cute. And he said, fireman. And we had to teach him that sometimes in life, you have to do things you don't wanna do.

• 34:39Rory Vaden?

  He wasn't ecstatic about it at first, but you know, he'll get over it. So here's the real deal, right? Where you go, if there's a million realtors in the world, there's a million chiropractors in the world, there's a million accountants in the world, there's a million, you know, whatever, whatever your trade is, whatever your skillset is, you go, yeah, there's a million of them. You don't try to differentiate based on what you do. That's incredibly difficult to do. Right? And then people don't understand what you do because you're like saying some weird thing that they can't understand. Right? And it's like, can you just tell me what it is you do? But you, the problem is, we're trying to differentiate ourselves, but we're trying to differentiate ourselves from everyone else who does what we do. So we're trying to tell them like, we do something different, which we don't. We do the same thing everybody else does. You don't differentiate yourself based on what you do.

• 35:24Rory Vaden?

  You differentiate yourself based on who you are.

• 35:33Rory Vaden?

  The reason that people buy from you is because they trust you. Yes, there's a bazillion realtors on the planet. Yes, there's a bazillion people who could do my taxes. But I want, I want Joe because I know him and I trust him, right? Like, I want Lisa because I know her. I don't just trust my, my money to anyone. They want you. They need to know you. They need to see you. They need to believe in you. You have to make them believe and show them that you care. Y'all think, all y'all think, like so many people believe that, man, if I'm gonna, if I'm gonna build a personal brand, then you, in your mind, you go, that means I need to have millions of followers.

• 36:16Rory Vaden?

  Or I need to like, you know, have a YouTube channel with a bazillion subscribers. Uh, because that's the stuff that matters. Or I have to have the world's most beautiful website. Or I must, I must like, get featured in the media. That's what everyone thinks they need to sell customers. We actually asked this question. We said, what is the number one most influential marketing tool that will cause someone to spend money? Do y'all want to know what it is?

• 36:48Rory Vaden?

  I'm just not sensing any enthusiasm.

• 36:52Rory Vaden?

  Because I can skip this part if you want. You want to know the number one most important factor, the number one most important marketing tool when people buy from you? It is testimonials from your customers. Look at all these things. They have a podcast, a TED Talk, a bestselling book, a New York Times bestselling book, YouTube videos, a blog, social media, a website. They speak on their topic. The number one thing, they don't care about any of that. They want to know, "Show me a human who had a great experience with you." That's what they want. That costs you nothing, except delivering on what you said you would do for your customers. Everybody thinks the key to making millions is like, "I gotta reach millions of people." No, you don't.

• 37:37Rory Vaden?

  The fastest way to succeed in business is to change the lives of the people who are right in front of you. If each person that you do business with gives you one referral, right? The fastest way to double your business is not to reach millions of people. The fastest way to double your business is to over-deliver with every customer you have to where every customer you have will give you one referral. If every customer you have gives you one referral, guess what you just did to the business? It doubled. It doubled. Stop being so focused on the width of your reach that you forget about the depth of your impact. Serve the people.

• 38:20Rory Vaden?

  Don't be so focused on the width of your reach that you forget about the depth of your impact. If you want to change the lives of millions of people, you have to become really, really, really, really good at changing the life of one person. That's how it's done. And then you need to get your customers to say that for you. When this data come out, we actually changed our own marketing material. We had never done this before. And then, you know, whenever I would try to tell people like, "Here's what we do. You know, we do personal brand strategy." And then we saw this, we're like, "Oh, we should have our customers explain what it is that we do." So allow me to practice what I preach here. I'll show you a 70-second clip, video, of our customers explaining now who we are, what we do.

• 39:05Rory Vaden?

  Welcome to the stage.

• 39:06Speaker 02

  Rory Vaden.

• 39:09Speaker 03

  He is a Hall of Fame speaker. I didn't even know that existed. Oh, it does. He has killer content, amazing delivery, and he's one of the most gracious, extraordinary people I have ever met.

• 39:20Speaker 04

  Rory Vaden is here. He's New York Times bestselling author. He's been ranked as one of the top 100 speakers in the world by Inc. Magazine.

• 39:27Lewis Howes?

  I've been in business for 30 years. I've never worked with anybody like you before. You are remarkable. It's all because of this gentleman is single-handedly preparing me to succeed.

• 39:37Speaker 03

  I got to work with Rory and his team. One of the best experiences I've ever had.

• 39:43Lewis Howes?

  He is one of the most brilliant strategists that I've met on how to take your brand to another level.

• 39:49Speaker 06

  Rory has a viral TEDx talk with more than 4 million views.

• 39:54Speaker 07

  Rory Vaden, he was just a freaking genius. I have learned more about my personal brand in the last four days and decade that I've been doing this.

• 40:03Speaker 04

  He and his wife AJ serve as the co-founders of Brand Builders. He helps a lot of people build their personal brand. A lot of celebrities actually build their personal brand.

• 40:11Speaker 08

  One of his superpowers is helping people find their own superpowers.

• 40:15Lewis Howes?

  Welcome to the show. Great to see you, my friend.

• 40:16Rory Vaden?

  Hey, Michael. It's good to be here. Thank you for having me.

• 40:26Rory Vaden?

  So which is more powerful, me trying to tell you what I do or our customers saying it? The same about you. Your customers will do the selling for you, but you have to serve the one in front of you and not always be chasing the next one. So here's the other things you got to do if you want to build, how to break through and separate from the noise. In order to build trust, first of all, people need to see you. They have to see you. They have to. We trust people who we see every day. So they got to see your face. That is, I mean, it's not the only way you can make money. You can make money without showing your face, but if you're building a personal brand that is about you, they need to see you and know who you are. That's the second thing. They need to know you. They need to know about the things you care about, about your fears, about your hopes, about

• 41:10Rory Vaden?

  your dreams. The data, we have data on this. Americans say that they're more likely to spend money with the companies who have founders who share their personal values.

• 41:22Rory Vaden?

  I did this whole huge side project last year, and I was terrified to release it because I used to be a very skeptic. I was a skeptic of religion and specifically I was skeptical about like, you know, a resurrection and miracles and walking on water. And I did all this research in my personal life, and I found this mountain of evidence that supports the narrative of Jesus of Nazareth. So, so thank you. Now, I was just gonna keep it to myself, right? And I was keeping it to myself, and then what happened is I had kids. And I had this terrifying thought that what happens if my kids, what happens if I die before my kids get old enough for me to explain to them all of this evidence that I researched?

• 42:07Rory Vaden?

  And so I was like, I need to record a podcast. So I sat down and I was like, I need to record everything that I learned. And so I did this, I recorded it, and it's like 15 episodes, called Eternal Life: Seven Questions Every Intelligent Skeptic Should Ask About Jesus. And I was terrified to put it out. I thought I was gonna get so much hate. I thought people were gonna, they were gonna like, just go, "You're crazy." And, and it's the opposite. The opposite is when people know what you believe and they know who you are, you more strongly attract the people who were meant for you. Now, there's probably some people that go, "You're crazy." But there's way more that go, "Now that I know who you are and what you're about, that helps me trust you." So, people have to be able to know you. They have to be able to learn from you. Like, there's basically three strategies, the three Es.

• 42:51Rory Vaden?

  You're either gonna educate them, entertain them, or encourage them. Some mix of the three. That's the whole content strategy. But basically, you just share about what you care about. You share about what you care about. Now, it is true that if you suck in real life, you will suck online. Right? So I can't, I can't, you know, I can't do much to help you about that. But if you really do wanna go, "I, I, I wanna get serious about this," then I would love to stay in touch with you. Again, I mentioned two resources. So one is the National Research Study. You can DM me the word "greatness" on Instagram. I'll send that to you for free. The second thing is lewishouse.com/brandcall.

• 43:33Rory Vaden?

  Now, with all of you in here, our team isn't big enough to do free calls with everybody. So it's gonna, we have some open slots for like the next 30 days. You're calling me right now, thank you. I'm calling you too.

• 43:48Rory Vaden?

  Although I do need to see other people as well. So, I want to leave you with this, the last little thing. Here's the biggest misconception everybody has about personal branding.

• 43:59Rory Vaden?

  Your personal brand is not about you. People think, "Oh, personal brand means I have to..." It's vanity, and it's fame, and it's flexing. No, it's not at all about that. A personal brand is not about being self-centered. A personal brand is about being service-centered. A personal brand is about understanding that you are your highest self by when you are your highest value to others. It's understanding that in business, when you are selling, there are wins and losses. But when you are serving, there are only wins. And so, if it is true, if it is true that you are most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were, then you just have to ask yourself, "What challenge have I conquered? What setback have I survived?

• 44:43Rory Vaden?

  What tragedy have I triumphed over? What obstacle have I overcome?" And it's not just about that, it's deeper than that. This is more, this is deeper in your soul. You have to ask yourself, like, "What makes you mad? What makes you sad? What breaks your heart? What makes you cry? What is the thing that you look out in the world and you go, "I'm not okay with that. I'm not comfortable with that. I won't allow a world, I won't live in a world where that crap goes on because I was born to do something about it." Because we believe that what breaks your heart breaks your heart for a reason, that it is God's divine design of your humanity, and you were created to do something about that problem.

• 45:29Rory Vaden?

  And so, the calling that you feel on your heart, that tug that says, "I should share my story. I should get this out more. I should create some videos. I should create some content for this." The calling that you feel on your heart is the result of a signal that's being sent out from someone else. And that person needs you way more than you need them. Like, there are people all around the world, right now, who are seeking and searching and begging and pleading and quite literally on their hands and knees praying. Saying to God for answers that you know like the back of your hand because you've been there before. And the only reason you wouldn't share it is because you're scared. You're scared that I'm gonna say the wrong thing. You're scared I'm gonna look stupid. You're scared that someone else is better than you. You're scared you're not gonna be the right thing.

• 46:12Rory Vaden?

  But fear is so self-centered and you only feel fear when you're thinking about yourself. But there is no fear when the mission to serve is clear. So stop thinking about yourself. Start thinking about the people you're gonna help. Go out and teach everything you know to the person you once were. Thank you very much.

• 46:31Lewis Howes?

  I hope you enjoyed today's episode and it inspired you on your journey towards greatness. Make sure to check out the show notes in the description for a full rundown of today's episode with all the important links. And if you want weekly exclusive bonus episodes with me personally, as well as ad-free listening, then make sure to subscribe to our Greatness Plus channel exclusively on Apple Podcasts. Share this with a friend on social media and leave us a review on Apple Podcasts as well. Let me know what you enjoyed about this episode in that review. I really love hearing feedback from you and it helps us figure out how we can support and serve you moving forward. And I want to remind you, if no one has told you lately, that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter.

• 47:15Lewis Howes?

  And now it's time to go out there and do something great.