Build A Million Dollar Personal Brand w/Rory Vaden EP 1119

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

• 0:00Lewis Howes?

  Episode number 1,119 on how to build a million dollar personal brand with Rory Vaden. Welcome to the School of Greatness. My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week, we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you discover how to unlock your inner greatness. Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin.

• 0:30Lewis Howes?

  Michelle Obama said, "The only limit to the height of your achievements is the reach of your dreams and your willingness to work for them." Albert Einstein said, "Strive not to be a success, but rather to be of value." My guest today is my good friend Rory Vaden. Now, he's the guy that I go to for strategy on building my personal brand in my business. He's brilliant at what he does. He's a New York Times bestselling author and co-founder of Brand Builders Group, which is one of the leading personal brand strategy firms that focuses on helping people become the type of person that everyone wants to be in business with. And I've worked with Rory for many, many years now, and he's helped me in so many different ways in my own business around the strategy of launching new ideas,

• 1:12Lewis Howes?

  conceptualizing my business growth, building my personal brand, pretty much everything from speaking to design. He's been there and been a part of it, really giving some strategy and some insights on seeing the future and how I could get there. And he's a dear friend, and we did this multiple-part series about building your personal brand. And I'm excited to be sharing this with you over the next few months. So stay tuned for more of these episodes coming soon with me and Rory. But in this episode, we discuss how to discover your uniqueness for your personal brand, how personal branding is transcending the influencer space and playing a role in every part of our lives now, how to build trust with your customers and audience, the fastest way to monetize and build a seven-figure personal brand,

• 1:56Lewis Howes?

  and so much more. And if you're enjoying this and you want to learn more about building your personal brand and taking it to the next level, after listening to this episode, you can go to lewishouse.com/brandcall and you can schedule a free strategy call.

• 2:10Lewis Howes?

  With someone on Rory's team to learn more about how you can also build your personal brand. And again, if you know someone that would be inspired by this message, please share this episode with them. And a quick reminder to subscribe to the School of Greatness on Apple Podcasts or Spotify or wherever you listen. So you can stay up to date on the latest and greatest from the School of Greatness podcast. Okay, in just a moment, the one and only Rory Vaden.

• 2:35Lewis Howes?

  Welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness Podcast. Very excited about our guests. My man Rory Vaden is in the house. Yes. Good to see you. I, we've had Rory on a couple of times before. He's a New York Times bestselling author of Take the Stairs. Very powerful book to help you improve the quality of your life and your mindset. And an amazing book called Procrastinate on Purpose, which is the five permissions to multiply your time. And this is some, some content in this book that'll transform your life, your business, your career, everything, your, your home life, everything, because it gives you the ability to multiply your time and maximize your time to, to have more time, which most people never can figure out how to do. So you teach people how to have

• 3:17Lewis Howes?

  more time there. But today, we're talking about how to build a seven figure personal brand. Yeah. Because personal branding, I've been saying for the last year, is the only way to recession prove yourself is by having a credible personal brand, a one built on trust and a powerful reputation. Yeah. And I want to talk about how to build a seven figure, figure personal brand today and beyond. And you did a, a big study and got a lot of data points on, on personal branding in general and what the general population thinks about personal branding. Do they buy more from people with personal brands? Do they believe people who have personal brands

• 3:59Lewis Howes?

  or not? And the value behind having a personal brand. So I'd love for you to dive in on some of the data points you've got, what this study is. And then we'll talk about how we can use this to build your personal brand and monetize it throughout this. Interview.

• 4:15Rory Vaden?

  Yeah, so our company, so Brand Builders Group, we hired an independent research firm called the Center for Generational Kinetics to conduct an independent nationwide research study on trends in personal branding because we've been talking about and teaching people to build their personal brands. I've been on the podcast, we've talked about it before. Personal branding has been this emerging like space, right? Online business, influencers, social media, all this stuff that's been really fun and exciting. But we really wanted to look at what are the actual long-term impacts and what are the trends pointing to from a data-driven perspective? And is personal branding just a thing that affects

• 4:59Rory Vaden?

  like a subgroup of entrepreneurs and like the small culture? Or is it becoming bigger than that? And is it becoming more ubiquitous, meaning it applying to everybody? And so that's what we set out to study and

• 5:14Lewis Howes?

  How many people are part of this study?

• 5:15Rory Vaden?

  Well, so it's a statistically valid sample that's weighted to the US Census.

• 5:20Lewis Howes?

  Got it.

• 5:20Rory Vaden?

  So it has a plus or minus, I think it's like a plus or minus 3% margin of error. So it's like a completely empirically validated. You know, it's the kind of study you'll hear people talk about on CNN and all that stuff. So whatever that sample size is, you know, that they have to get, just more than 1,000 people, but weighted to the US Census. So this is not an international study, so we should say that. But the summary is there's three main things that the data points very clearly to, okay? Number one, personal branding is the future. There are large discrepancies by generation in how personal branding affects their hiring, buying decisions, their trust decisions, which we will talk about. The

• 6:05Rory Vaden?

  second big thing Is that personal branding is highly profitable. Not just for your influencer and their brand deals or your online marketer friend or your coach. You know, brand builders group, we, we work with, you know, historically, we worked with a lot of people like me and you that were authors and speaker types, which is just the world we came from. But more and more, we've seen this kind of expanding group of clients and that's part of why we wanted to study this.

• 6:35Lewis Howes?

  Employees to CEOs and executives and everyone in between, not just Instagram influencer.

• 6:42Rory Vaden?

  Yeah, not, not, and I think it's like, when you hear personal branding, people often think, your mind kind of goes to the, the influencer, right? Kind of the lifestyle influencer, they're maybe doing brand deals, sharing products or you know, things like that, doing sponsorships or towards the, the more like thought leader expert category, which is more of what I personally.

• 7:02Lewis Howes?

  Speaker, writer.

• 7:04Rory Vaden?

  Coach, consultant. But what personal branding really is, and what we're, we're starting to see clearly is that personal branding is simply the digitization of reputation.

• 7:17Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 7:17Rory Vaden?

  The digitization of reputation. So people like you, Gary Vaynerchuk, like there's this whole group of people who, who saw early to go, well, I'm not exactly sure what this is, but I know it's huge.

• 7:30Lewis Howes?

  The social media.

• 7:31Rory Vaden?

  Social media. It's not just a fad.

• 7:33Lewis Howes?

  Content, social media, online writing, blogs, videos, anything online.

• 7:39Rory Vaden?

  Is a part of it.

• 7:40Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 7:40Rory Vaden?

  But, but I think, you know, so this emerging area was like, oh yeah, there's this new, I mean, you were on the cover of success magazine as one of the new thought leaders, as was Gary and several, several other online influencers. And that's kind of the term is influencers, but, but personal branding is becoming bigger than that. It is not just online influencer. It is reputation, which is a concept that's been around for decades, right? We, we, the average person goes, yeah, I have social media for friends, but they're not really recognizing that, oh, this is how I'm getting my jobs. This is how I'm going to get paid. This is if I'm going to get promoted. So.

• 8:19Lewis Howes?

  So it's not about having a million followers. It's about the reputation you have with the followers you have.

• 8:26Rory Vaden?

  Yeah, and in your space and in your industry. So for example, right, so I've got some of this data points here pulled up so that I don't misquote them, right? So 63% of all Americans say that they are more likely to buy from someone who has an established personal brand. To buy from a company that has... No, no, a person. A person. So like if you have a personal brand... If I have no personal brand, you may not buy something. That's right. 63% of Americans say I'm more likely to buy from you versus some stranger, whether you're selling me an information course, or it's financial services,

• 9:06Rory Vaden?

  or insurance, or anything, you know, fitness, or anything. Real estate. Real estate, it doesn't matter. We trust people who have this thing called a personal brand. But here's the part about when we said it's the future. So it's 63% of all Americans, but in that group, okay, so there's a subset here, only 33% of Boomers and only 59% of Gen Xers say they're more likely to buy from someone who has a personal brand. Which means that specifically to like Boomers, it doesn't matter as much to them. Right. It's like not that big of a deal. But if you strip them out, 76% of Millennials

• 9:51Rory Vaden?

  actually are more likely to buy from someone who has an established personal brand. So this points to an inevitable trend that is saying that the older generations have viewed personal branding as like a fad, a thing that kids do, digital online influencers, this thing I don't really understand. But the future is here. So older Millennials are ages 35 to 44. These are the people with all the buying power, making all the decisions, taking over the boardrooms, scaling the companies, building the communities. Raising money, building companies, all that stuff, yeah. All that stuff. And specifically to Millennials, this stuff influences everything.

• 10:34Rory Vaden?

  Who they hire, who they work for, who they...

• 10:39Rory Vaden?

  Who they follow online, who they... Thirty percent, okay, thirty percent of people say I'm more likely to date someone because they have an established personal brand.

• 10:51Lewis Howes?

  Well, it's reputation and credibility and trust right away.

• 10:54Rory Vaden?

  Yeah, that's true, right? I guess you feel like you know more about the person.

• 10:57Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, or, oh, these people are following it. They have this thing and they have some testimonials. I'm more likely to trust them than someone who has none of that.

• 11:07Rory Vaden?

  Right. Yeah, but it's just fascinating to go, oh, this is, this is coming into our dating life, how we hire, who we spend time with.

• 11:15Lewis Howes?

  I've never been on any of the dating apps, the Tinders and Bumbles and all that stuff. But I've heard people say like, oh, I match with someone that I know and follow online with like someone I respect or trust. And they're probably more likely to message the person they know from online or they've seen online than if they didn't know them at all.

• 11:34Rory Vaden?

  Yeah, and that is, you know, so this is, you know, I said there were three main findings. One, this is the future. Two, it's highly profitable. Here's the third one. It's a trust accelerator. A personal brand is a trust accelerator. And that is, you go, how do you build trust? Okay, first of all, you, we trust people that we see, right? That's why we trust celebrities, which is really funny because like movie stars, we don't even know their real name. We don't even know who they are in real life, but we trust them because we see them.

• 12:07Lewis Howes?

  Crazy.

• 12:08Rory Vaden?

  Right? So we trust people we see.

• 12:09Lewis Howes?

  And we see them on TV.

• 12:11Rory Vaden?

  On TV.

• 12:11Lewis Howes?

  Or on a video.

• 12:13Rory Vaden?

  Pretending to be someone they're not.

• 12:14Lewis Howes?

  Even if they're credible in real life or not, we just trust them.

• 12:18Rory Vaden?

  Because we see them. So, and this is true in our, in our everyday life, right? Like you trust whatever, your spouse, you trust your parents, you trust your colleagues, you trust the person at the grocery store that you see more than the stranger walking down the street that you've gone, I've never seen this person here. So we trust people we see. We also trust people that we learn from. And we trust people who entertain us.

• 12:46Rory Vaden?

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

• 13:29Rory Vaden?

  Intimate things about you, right? When I came here, one of the first things I did was I shot a little back, you know, a little video here of your studio for our, for our fans and followers and friends, right? Cause people want to know like, what does Lewis Howes' studio look like? Like it's really fascinating. And, and I always struggle with this because for me, I couldn't, I haven't been great at social because I've not been super social. I've used it as like a broadcasting tool. Right. And I've always thought, I mean, what could be more useless than showing people what I ate for dinner? Like, why would anybody care?

• 14:05Rory Vaden?

  And then somebody asked me, they said, well, think about this. If you had a chance to follow your celebrity crush for a day. So like, who, who would it be for you? Like if you had a chance to go, who would be your celebrity crush? Like if. When I was younger or something? No, like right now, like someone who walked in that you were like, oh man, if I could hang out with this person. You mean a girl or a guy? It doesn't matter. Not a, not a good girl, not a girl, but like a guy. The Rock. The Rock. Yeah. So if he walked in, you'd like lose, he'd be like, this is legit. This is cool. Yeah. I want to see what he's doing throughout his day and yeah. Yes. So if I said, okay, Lewis, I, I can't do this, but let's see, I could. I said, I can give you a chance to follow The Rock for an entire day. Right. But you can't talk to him. But you're gonna be there right when he wakes up.

• 14:50Rory Vaden?

  You're gonna shadow him. You're gonna shadow him. You're gonna be in every meeting. You get to listen to every phone call. You get to be in the car, on the plane. You get to see what he eats, what he wears, what his closet looks like. Even though you couldn't talk to them, would you do it?

• 15:02Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, it'd be great.

• 15:03Rory Vaden?

  Of course, it'd be fascinating, right? Well, that's how it is. It's people are interested in the intimate details of our life, and that is where trust comes from. And that is why this social media thing is not just like a social thing. It's creating trust, reputation.

• 15:21Rory Vaden?

  And if I feel like I know you, then I can buy from you. I can hire you. I can date you.

• 15:26Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 15:26Rory Vaden?

  I can recommend you to other people. And that's what the data is pointing to.

• 15:30Lewis Howes?

  Yes, and if you have recommendations from other people you trust about that person, you're more likely to hire, date, and buy from.

• 15:39Rory Vaden?

  Yeah, so this was interesting. So one of the questions that we asked people is what are the most influential factors in making a decision about people that you buy from? Okay, so for example, we asked the question, how important are each of the following when it comes to paying someone for a product or service? And we listed out all these things. So a lot of our clients at Brand Builders Group, our clients are interested in a lot of these things. A podcast, a TED Talk, right?

• 16:11Lewis Howes?

  A book.

• 16:11Rory Vaden?

  A YouTube. And we actually separated book into self-published book, New York Times bestselling, you know, Wall Street Journal bestselling book, New York Times bestselling book. None of those things matter to people.

• 16:23Lewis Howes?

  In terms of what? What someone, what a person has?

• 16:26Rory Vaden?

  In terms of...

• 16:27Lewis Howes?

  If you have a book, a podcast, a blog, a...

• 16:30Rory Vaden?

  It's not that they don't matter. They do, but not as much as you would think.

• 16:34Lewis Howes?

  Interesting. What does matter?

• 16:35Rory Vaden?

  What matters most, more than anything, that is going to influence whether or not a stranger buys from you? 62% of people said that they have testimonials

• 16:47Lewis Howes?

  Crazy.

• 16:48Rory Vaden?

  about their work. And 56%, this is of Americans, said that they are paid to consult or advise on their topic.

• 16:58Rory Vaden?

  So in other words, you have real life proof of delivering your service influences purchasing decisions more than how many followers you have, whether or not you have a book, and specifically the tier of bestselling book, right? You know, like, you know how hard it is to become a New York Times bestselling author? It's not an easy thing to do. And a lot of time and energy goes into doing it. Well, it matters in the industry. Like, you know, you and I know that, we speak that language.

• 17:26Lewis Howes?

  With the general population.

• 17:28Rory Vaden?

  No, for the person listening to this, your customer doesn't care. Most of them don't even know the difference between a New York Times, Wall Street Journal, Amazon, USA Today. They don't know the difference.

• 17:39Lewis Howes?

  If they see bestseller up there, it's all the same.

• 17:40Rory Vaden?

  Whatever. What they want to see is, did you help Sally Jo down the street actually get in better shape? Or did you help her, you know, heal her gut? Or did you help her, whatever, plan for retirement? They want to see real life examples. And then the other thing is, it's really third-party credibility. They want testimonials. They want to see proof that you've been paid. They want to see proof that you're in the media. And then actually, the fourth thing was, that they, actually fifth, was that they have a nice website. So that actually is, of all of the things, that's kind of more marketing, is people

• 18:25Rory Vaden?

  care.

• 18:26Lewis Howes?

  Having a good-looking, personal brand website is important.

• 18:29Rory Vaden?

  Mobile-friendly, you know, loads quickly.

• 18:31Lewis Howes?

  Functional, not clunky, yeah.

• 18:33Rory Vaden?

  But the number of followers you have.

• 18:35Lewis Howes?

  Doesn't matter.

• 18:36Rory Vaden?

  Doesn't matter as much as you would think.

• 18:38Lewis Howes?

  Having a million followers isn't the most important thing. It's a factor, but it may, it may help you drive traffic somewhere, but it may not be the reason people buy.

• 18:47Rory Vaden?

  Even older millennials, only 20% of them say, if someone has a lot of followers, that's influential to me. And here's the thing too.

• 18:57Lewis Howes?

  So what is influential for most people, having testimonials?

• 19:00Rory Vaden?

  Yes, having testimonials.

• 19:02Lewis Howes?

  Is the most influential factor.

• 19:04Rory Vaden?

  In somebody doing business with you, whether it's hiring. And so here's the thing, when you say having an established personal brand is more likely to get you hired. It is the thing that people look at when they're hiring you. You're going to also get paid more. So we haven't talked so much about them. We haven't talked about money yet, but you're actually gonna make money.

• 19:23Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 19:24Rory Vaden?

  From doing this. And it's a, it is a, it's a trust accelerator. So here's another one. I know we're throwing out a lot of data points, but the reason for the data points, just to take a minute on that, right? Is to go, the data tells a story here that is important, that I don't think the world talks about or understands. We think of it as like vanity. How many followers do I have? How many likes? Who's influential? Like, you know, do you know so and so? But the data tells a story here that goes, it's not about that stuff. It's about showcasing your expertise and the value you provide in the world. And that people just want to see evidence of that.

• 20:07Rory Vaden?

  And that if you show that, it is significant. Not the number of followers you have. And it matters for, for big companies too. So this, this blew my mind. Eighty-two percent of all Americans believe that companies are more influential. If their executives have a personal brand that they can follow, that they know and follow. And this makes so much sense, right? You go Elon Musk, Richard Branson, Steve Jobs, right? Bill Gates. There's a face, a personality that we can trust. And know and relate with, rather than this kind of obscure.

• 20:49Lewis Howes?

  A logo.

• 20:50Rory Vaden?

  Entity, yeah. It's just, it's just a logo. Now, this can also work against you, because if your executive. You know, does something like, again, reputation. It's, it's, we need to think of this less of as personal branding and more as building reputation. And, you know, a really interesting example here recently that was in the news fairly recent was, you know, Elon Musk smoked marijuana on the, on the Joe Rogan, Joe Rogan podcast. And the stock went down 9%, like within, you know, a matter of days. Now it has since recovered and there were some other things going on around that time, but it shows like that was such an accentuated emphasized moment of going,

• 21:36Rory Vaden?

  people's trust is tied to the personality and the people in the business.

• 21:44Lewis Howes?

  Which could help you accelerate the growth, or if you do something wrong, could hurt the company as well.

• 21:49Rory Vaden?

  Yeah, it could decelerate. I mean, there's examples of this, right, on social media where it's kind of the whole cancel culture.

• 21:54Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely, man. Affecting the business in a big way.

• 21:57Rory Vaden?

  Yeah, a big, big way.

• 21:58Lewis Howes?

  Big way.

• 21:59Rory Vaden?

  Big, big way.

• 22:00Lewis Howes?

  What would you say are the most important elements to monetizing personal branding? What are the important keys to monetizing? Once you know that testimonials, reputation in general, having a great website, media proof are the things that will support you and, and kind of

• 22:23Lewis Howes?

  getting people to be willing to buy from you. What are the elements to help you monetize?

• 22:28Rory Vaden?

  Yeah, so monetizing is interesting. So the last time that we had a personal branding conversation here on the podcast, we talked about the five ways to monetize your personal brand.

• 22:39Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 22:40Rory Vaden?

  So you remember, you may remember, we call them paids.

• 22:42Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 22:43Rory Vaden?

  P A I D S.

• 22:46Lewis Howes?

  Yep.

• 22:46Rory Vaden?

  So basically that's going.

• 22:49Rory Vaden?

  These are five vehicles to take a pile of followers and turn it into a pile of cash.

• 22:53Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 22:53Rory Vaden?

  So, the P is a product. Okay, so you're selling a physical product. A t-shirt, right? I got followers and like, "Hey, I made a t-shirt, buy my t-shirt." Or, you know, "Here's my mug, like, buy my mug." Or a book, you know, like-

• 23:06Lewis Howes?

  A physical product, yeah.

• 23:07Rory Vaden?

  Yeah, a physical product. The A is ads and affiliates. So that is, I have an audience. Rather than selling my audience something, I'm gonna sell someone else, typically a brand, access to my audience. All right, you've got sponsors for the show.

• 23:22Lewis Howes?

  Yep.

• 23:23Rory Vaden?

  So you've got a heavy ads and affiliates model. Your YouTube videos, you've got ads, right? You make money from ads and affiliates, that's part of your model. The I is information products.

• 23:35Rory Vaden?

  Which has been an explosion in recent years, in terms of monetizing the personal brand. Because this is, they have low barriers to entry. They have high value, perceived value. So, courses, membership sites, certifications, assessments-

• 23:50Lewis Howes?

  eBooks, yeah.

• 23:51Rory Vaden?

  eBooks.

• 23:51Lewis Howes?

  And this was hard to build these out 10 years ago. Now there's massive platforms that are allowing it to be so much easier to create a course or an ebook or certification, membership site. Whereas, you had to build out custom stuff 10 years ago. Now, there's a whole industry around this.

• 24:10Rory Vaden?

  Yeah, and there's lots of tools and providers and stuff. D is deals. So that is, anytime there's a third-party deal, a book deal, a TV deal, you know, a licensing deal, where you're basically paid for creative work, irregardless of how well it sells.

• 24:26Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 24:27Rory Vaden?

  You know, like royalties usually is associated with that. But the one to highlight here is services. So services are the fastest path to cash. It's selling your time. But even the way that we thought about personal branding, previous to this national research study, was that services was- Coaching, speaking, training, consulting, which is a lot of what we've done, you've done, things that we help, yeah, Brand Builders Group, we help a ton of our clients. But only about half of the clients, a little more than half of the clients do that. We're noticing that it's all these other people, accountants, lawyers, doctors,

• 25:10Rory Vaden?

  financial advisors, real entrepreneurs, meaning that they're not just like an expert entrepreneur. I don't mean like real, like you're not, but they're, they have a widget that's not their expertise somehow.

• 25:24Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 25:25Rory Vaden?

  Direct salespeople, and now, and then even executives now are hiring us. You know, a great example of this, it was a big, bold move, is Glenn Sanford. And I don't think, I haven't introduced you to him, but you have.

• 25:39Lewis Howes?

  I've got connected to him, we've earned texts.

• 25:41Rory Vaden?

  Okay, so Glenn Sanford is the billionaire founder of EXP Realty, which is one of the fastest, if not the fastest growing, real estate company in the world, right? So we met Glenn, we started working with Glenn as a client, and then he bought Success Magazine.

• 25:58Lewis Howes?

  That's crazy.

• 25:58Rory Vaden?

  So Glenn didn't have much of a social media following, but.

• 26:03Lewis Howes?

  Now he bought.

• 26:04Rory Vaden?

  Now he bought one.

• 26:05Lewis Howes?

  Bought.

• 26:06Rory Vaden?

  A massive.

• 26:07Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 26:07Rory Vaden?

  Yeah, so he's got credibility and audience and reach because he, and it's not just money. I mean, it's, it's not money for him. I mean, like, he's a billionaire, like, money's not the thing. But impact is, reputation is, trust is, feeling like you're doing something good in the world, and they all work together. So on the, on the professional services thing, because we had a fascinating, kind of like, little data point on this, like, you go, okay, I get personal branding if you are an expert of some type. But what if you're a doctor? So 61% of Americans believe their doctor should have an established personal brand.

• 26:50Lewis Howes?

  Why?

• 26:51Rory Vaden?

  I guess trust.

• 26:53Lewis Howes?

  Because I think if they have it, they'll trust them more.

• 26:55Rory Vaden?

  Well.

• 26:57Rory Vaden?

  Your doctor is an intimate, it's a pretty intimate relationship, right? I mean, literally, like, you see everything of a person and you go, "Do I like this person? Do I trust them? Do I, do I believe in them?" Right? Going back to that thing I said earlier, that people, 82% of Americans said that a company is more influential if their, if their founder has a belief system that aligns with them. This is what we're looking for.

• 27:24Rory Vaden?

  Another way of saying this, right, is, is people don't do business with companies. They do business with people. Yes. People that are real, people that we can trust, people that we can know intimate details about. And so, it's not just their doctor. It is, 58% of Americans believe their lawyer should have a personal brand. 55% think their banker should. Their coach, their financial advisors, their chiropractors. Everyone. I mean, we didn't ask about everyone. We, we asked about these. But, but what we can definitely say is that people want their professional service providers to have a personal brand.

• 28:03Rory Vaden?

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

• 28:46Rory Vaden?

  And it is becoming ubiquitous and pervasive in who gets promoted, who gets hired, who gets on the board, who gets equity, which company gets funded, even who we date. Wow. And who we're friends with. It's, it's, it's fascinating, fascinating stuff. So, you asked a question about turning it into money? Yes.

• 29:11Rory Vaden?

  So I said earlier that the fastest path to cash is, you know, services.

• 29:17Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 29:18Rory Vaden?

  We would modify that a little bit now to say the fastest path to cash is to monetize the thing you're already doing.

• 29:27Lewis Howes?

  Like what?

• 29:28Rory Vaden?

  Whatever it is you're doing. You're an accountant, you're a lawyer. So I think there's been this, this thought of going, oh my gosh, so I'm going to use my personal brand to launch a side business. And actually it's going, no, I should use my personal brand to blow up my direct sales business and like, you know, pour fuel on the fire or to get myself promoted or to get myself, you know, more clients for my, my practice of whatever type of practice it is. It's not going, oh, I gotta go create an information product.

• 29:59Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 30:00Rory Vaden?

  It can be that. It, it historically has been that, but this is, this is the migration that is happening here, which is, is interesting. And it was interesting to me to see, you know, when Success Magazine did that cover article and you were on there and

• 30:18Lewis Howes?

  Brendan.

• 30:18Rory Vaden?

  Brendan was on there.

• 30:19Lewis Howes?

  Princier and yeah.

• 30:21Rory Vaden?

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

• 30:31Rory Vaden?

  And it's because people trust you guys.

• 30:34Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 30:35Rory Vaden?

  Because they see you. They're entertained by you. They learn from you. They feel like, they feel like they know you. It's not because you guys have the most PhDs. It's not because you're winning the Nobel prizes for, for, for research. It's a, it's a much more human experience.

• 30:52Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 30:53Rory Vaden?

  That's just available, widely available to all of us.

• 30:56Lewis Howes?

  So how do we build the million dollar personal brand then? What's the steps? Is it? Just start creating content. Is it being strategic about certain moves you're gonna make? Is it partnerships? Is it press? Is it podcast? Like, what are the steps to building it?

• 31:15Rory Vaden?

  Yeah. Well, the most important step is the first step, which is the step that everybody skips.

• 31:23Rory Vaden?

  And I shared this, you know, a while ago when we had this conversation, when we first started working together, that the best piece of personal branding advice I've ever received was from a guy named Larry Winget.

• 31:34Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 31:34Rory Vaden?

  And he said, "The goal is to find your uniqueness so that you can exploit it in the service of others." Find your uniqueness so you can exploit it in the service of others. So you need to find your uniqueness.

• 31:49Lewis Howes?

  How do we find it?

• 31:50Rory Vaden?

  Yeah. Well, we did that whole interview together where we walked you through our Brand DNA Helix, which is one of the Brand Builder Group kind of frameworks, so that you can reference that. You know, I'm not gonna walk you through all of that here, but I'll tell you, we found a shortcut since then that's worth sharing.

• 32:05Lewis Howes?

  Nice.

• 32:05Rory Vaden?

  Okay. So, because this is a struggle, right? How do I find my uniqueness? It's almost like saying, "How do I find my purpose? How do I find my passion?" And this is, now that we've coached hundreds of people, you know, we've been at this for coming up on like three years now, and this is all we do all day, we started to recognize a consistent theme and a shortcut. And here's what it is. You are always most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were.

• 32:34Lewis Howes?

  Oh, yes, it's great.

• 32:35Rory Vaden?

  You're most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were.

• 32:38Lewis Howes?

  Yes. So I was 100 pounds overweight, and I'm not there anymore.

• 32:43Rory Vaden?

  Bingo.

• 32:43Lewis Howes?

  I'm positioned to help anyone who's over 100 pounds overweight.

• 32:48Rory Vaden?

  Do that thing.

• 32:49Lewis Howes?

  I was in debt $100,000.

• 32:51Rory Vaden?

  Yeah, Dave Ramsey, right?

• 32:52Lewis Howes?

  And I got out of it, and here's the process and how I got out of it.

• 32:55Rory Vaden?

  He was bankrupt, and that's his whole story. And it can be you or someone close to you. So I also think about, you know, we have a mutual friend, Dr. Josh Axe, right? And the, I believe this was the diagnosis, I believe his mom had got diagnosed with cancer. And so he went on a mission to learn about food, to use food as medicine. He makes that basically his life pursuit to cure his mom. As a result of that, he starts answering questions for friends. He turns that, he starts sharing that on social. And now they have Ancient Nutrition, I think it's called Ancient Nutrition. And it's like

• 33:32Lewis Howes?

  Massive business.

• 33:33Rory Vaden?

  A nine-figure business, like monster business. But it, it came out of not a desire to make money, but a desire to solve a problem. And, and, and that is the genesis of, of personal branding is going, what problem do I solve? What problem can I solve? What problem do I want to dedicate my life to solving?

• 33:57Lewis Howes?

  Or at least a season of my life.

• 33:58Rory Vaden?

  At least the next season

• 34:00Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 34:00Rory Vaden?

  Of my life. Because that's what makes you come alive. And, and you know, for you, the, uh, when we had this conversation, it was back in 2018.

• 34:10Lewis Howes?

  Yep.

• 34:11Rory Vaden?

  Self doubt

• 34:12Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 34:12Rory Vaden?

  Was, was the word that you were like, this is, I want the great, I want to help people overcome self doubt and achieve greatness. So at that time, I just, I told you this earlier today, I was looking at my notes. You had 30 million total downloads.

• 34:27Lewis Howes?

  It's crazy to think that, 2018.

• 34:29Rory Vaden?

  That was only 2018.

• 34:30Lewis Howes?

  Gosh.

• 34:31Rory Vaden?

  You focus

• 34:32Lewis Howes?

  It must've been more, it must've been a little more out of there.

• 34:34Rory Vaden?

  I'm telling you.

• 34:35Lewis Howes?

  30 million.

• 34:36Rory Vaden?

  And, and now

• 34:37Lewis Howes?

  And now we have 350 million.

• 34:38Rory Vaden?

  350 million, 10x'd in less, like half the time it took to get there.

• 34:44Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 34:45Rory Vaden?

  And you've done a great job of being super clear on what problem you're after, what you're trying to solve, and what you're trying to help people achieve, and your business model also. Um, you've eliminated several things and you guys have gone all in and you know, here we are in this beautiful studio. And I think that's the call for all of us is, you know, if, I think the title of this is something like, how to build a seven-figure personal brand.

• 35:10Lewis Howes?

  You've got to first know what your personal brand is.

• 35:14Rory Vaden?

  Yeah, what your uniqueness is and what I would say is if you focus on the money, you may compromise your reputation along the way.

• 35:22Lewis Howes?

  Interesting. You may do things that aren't of the highest level of integrity or that you don't necessarily want to be doing or that might hurt people or whatever it may be.

• 35:32Rory Vaden?

  Yeah, you could burn out, you could hurt people. It's just if you focus on the money, then you could compromise your reputation. But if you focus on the purpose.

• 35:42Lewis Howes?

  Or the mission.

• 35:43Rory Vaden?

  Of solving a problem and you go, what problem can I solve? And think about all the great guests that you have. I mean, not so much the celebrity guests maybe, but like, you know, the doctors and the, you know, the psychologists and these people dedicate their life to studying this area of going, I want to help, I want to help people with this. And that's where you, that's where you start. So you got to, you have to find your uniqueness.

• 36:12Lewis Howes?

  And what's that question? What is my uniqueness?

• 36:15Rory Vaden?

  Well, yeah, so the branding A helix is six questions of the uniqueness lives at the intersection of those six questions. So just to rattle them off, what, what problem do you solve?

• 36:27Lewis Howes?

  Yep.

• 36:28Rory Vaden?

  Okay. And then what are you passionate about? So you brainstorm the answers to all these questions. And then at the intersection is where the uniqueness is. So what am I passionate about? Then what do I research? Which is what do I have academic or head knowledge of? And then what do I have results in? So that is what do I have experience doing? What have I done? That one kind of points to the, your most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were. And then the last two questions address the business model, which is, what are the things people would buy from me? Which are the paid, you know, those five different basically things you could make.

• 37:10Rory Vaden?

  And then you, you, you compare that with what business do I want to be in?

• 37:17Rory Vaden?

  And that's where we talked about dares. Do you remember the dares?

• 37:20Lewis Howes?

  Yes, I love the dares.

• 37:21Rory Vaden?

  So the dares is a checklist.

• 37:23Lewis Howes?

  What business do I want to be in? That's the last question.

• 37:25Rory Vaden?

  What business do I want to be in? So the dares is a checklist of characteristics that sort of describe, I guess, you know, the closest thing to a a perfect business model, I guess, if there is such a thing.

• 37:36Lewis Howes?

  These are dares.

• 37:37Rory Vaden?

  You're looking for dares. So you're looking for things that are digital.

• 37:41Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 37:42Rory Vaden?

  Automated, recurring, evergreen, and scalable.

• 37:48Lewis Howes?

  Mm-hmm.

• 37:49Rory Vaden?

  So when you go look for dares, you go, okay, it's digital. If it's digital, that means I don't have manufacturing costs, I don't have shipping, I don't have warehousing, I don't have logistics, I don't, like, it's digital. If it's automated, it's self-service. It's like, I don't have a bu- I don't need a bunch of staff to like, service people.

• 38:06Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 38:06Rory Vaden?

  It's automated. It's recurring, which is, they keep, they pay and they keep paying.

• 38:12Lewis Howes?

  Uh, Netflix.

• 38:13Rory Vaden?

  Yeah, Netflix, yep. And that recurring revenue also affects the overall valuation of a company.

• 38:19Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 38:19Rory Vaden?

  So that can have tremendous, you know, long-term financial impacts. Uh, evergreen means it never needs to be updated, right? So you never have to do, you build the thing and then you never have to update it. And then the S, scalable, means, scalable means that you can add um, a lot of customers without adding a lot of infrastructure.

• 38:41Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 38:41Rory Vaden?

  And so there's a, there's a difference between growth and scale. So growth is, I can grow revenues, but I kind of have to like grow expenses.

• 38:51Lewis Howes?

  Build a team and all this other things.

• 38:52Rory Vaden?

  Build a team to go with it. Scale means I can grow revenues and the, the, the fixed expenses, the team don't have to grow proportionately.

• 39:01Lewis Howes?

  Small amount maybe of growth, yeah.

• 39:03Rory Vaden?

  Yeah, uh-huh. It's not like a variable cost kind of a thing.

• 39:05Lewis Howes?

  So you want to ask yourself these six questions, and the last one being, what business do I want to be in, figuring out, what's the business model?

• 39:12Rory Vaden?

  What's the perfect business model?

• 39:14Lewis Howes?

  For me.

• 39:15Rory Vaden?

  Yeah, and, and um, there's many different business models, but it's, it's, there's not a best business model. There's only a best business model for you.

• 39:25Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 39:26Rory Vaden?

  And so when you're trying to figure out what is my best business model?

• 39:29Lewis Howes?

  Like, I don't want to build a software company.

• 39:32Rory Vaden?

  Yeah.

• 39:32Lewis Howes?

  Because I don't understand building programs and managing it and software. Like, that's not something I understand and it doesn't excite me, it doesn't light me up.

• 39:42Rory Vaden?

  So those are-

• 39:42Lewis Howes?

  I'm not researching it all day, I'm not passionate about it.

• 39:47Lewis Howes?

  All these things. I haven't gotten people results in this software. Maybe in the future I could do it if I had the right partner, but it's not-

• 39:53Rory Vaden?

  Or you could just be an investor.

• 39:55Lewis Howes?

  Exactly. I could invest in it, but it's not the one thing I want to drive every day with my time and energy.

• 39:59Rory Vaden?

  Because you would, if you did it, it would be, oh, because building a software company has, you know, top line valuations, I could get a huge multiple, have a big exit, make money and be happy. And you go, no, I'm miserable doing this thing.

• 40:10Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 40:11Rory Vaden?

  Because it's not your uniqueness, it's not the design of your life, it's not the reason that you're here.

• 40:17Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 40:18Rory Vaden?

  Because we believe that the things that you've done in your past are hints and evidence and clues as to what your uniqueness is.

• 40:30Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 40:30Rory Vaden?

  But also, the calling of your future is a hint and clue to what your uniqueness is. What you feel called towards gives us evidence of what your uniqueness is. And so it's like, if you don't feel a compelling call there for any reason other than like money or something, that's not in the direction that we would advise you go because it's just not worth it.

• 40:52Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 40:53Rory Vaden?

  And so when you're looking at what is the best business model, you take in factors like what you said, like, what is my education? What are my passions? The question's right out of the brand DNA helix here.

• 41:05Lewis Howes?

  What would I want to spend my time doing every day?

• 41:07Rory Vaden?

  Yeah. Like, what would you, what would you do Saturday afternoon at 2:30? Like, if you, you know, just, you could do anything, like, that could be a thing. That's a place that you look. Now, that might not be the answer by itself. You have to factor in, how would you make money? And that's why it's like this, these six questions overlap. But that's what you're, you're looking for. Because it's, it's truth, there's not, there's not a, a right answer. There's just a right answer for you.

• 41:40Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 41:40Rory Vaden?

  It's not truth, it's just what's your truth.

• 41:43Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 41:44Rory Vaden?

  So, you pick a problem, you pick an audience, you pick a business model, and then you said like, how do you build a personal brand after that? So from there, usually what you do is you would extrapolate this into a body of work. If you were going to kind of build it, like more of like that expert business, that's how you would do it. But part of the realization, again, coming back to the study is going, so many people have already built the thing that they should use their personal brand to drive towards.

• 42:22Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 42:23Rory Vaden?

  They should just, they just need to focus on leveraging and building their personal brand to drive towards that thing. It's a formula that we talk about called the reputation formula. Results times reach equals reputation. Results times reach equals reputation. Let's take financial advisor, okay? So financial advisors have all of this education, you know, they're the CFP and a CHLC and you get all these.

• 42:52Lewis Howes?

  Series seven.

• 42:52Rory Vaden?

  Series seven, all these licenses. They have all these results, all this knowledge. The problem is, if I don't know about you, I cannot buy from you.

• 43:03Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 43:04Rory Vaden?

  I can't do business with you. So reach matters and your personal brand is the fastest way to get that reach. And a lot of the top advisors in the world, at least in the country right now, are building their personal brand and they're driving leads that they're just passing to their team.

• 43:24Lewis Howes?

  There's so many, when people think about personal branding and creating content online, there are so many different things that they could do to build their personal brand. Podcasting, YouTube, Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, Snapchat, white papers, infographics, photos, speeches, books, courses, there's all these things they could, press, all these things they could do. What should they be thinking about first?

• 43:51Rory Vaden?

  Yeah. So the number one thing to think about is, how can I add value to the audience? Right? That's what it ultimately comes down to. The strategy is much more important than the technology. How can I add value to the audience? How can I, and your social media strategy is one of the three Es. You're either going to educate, encourage, or entertain.

• 44:15Rory Vaden?

  And usually it's some mix of the three. I happen to not be super entertaining. I live more in the educating and, and you know, with bursts of encouragement that kind of come in there. But you're going, how can I teach what I know? And here's the other thing, we all take for granted what we know. We have the, something called the curse of knowledge. If I'm a financial advisor, I assume, well, obviously everybody knows what a 401k is. Nobody knows what a 401k is. Like, nobody understands any of that stuff. Like, nobody understands your industry terms. This is for every industry. Like, people go, oh, well, you know, of course, everyone knows about gut health. People don't even know what the gut is.

• 45:00Rory Vaden?

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

• 45:43Lewis Howes?

  What does that mean?

• 45:44Rory Vaden?

  It means that I could teach you how to, how to eat healthy. It doesn't mean you're going to go to the grocery store, buy the right groceries, cook up the right food and then eat and, you know, weigh yourself every week and da, da, da. You need the application. You need someone to help create a custom meal plan, hold you accountable, you know, track, track you to the thing. You know, we, we all know to lose weight, we should exercise more, but we don't actually do it. Like, we need, we need, we need someone to help us apply it. Brand Builders Group is a great example, right? Like, here we are, we're teaching you all this, like, we're teaching you all these concepts. There's a lot of people out there listening right now that are still gonna go,

• 46:26Rory Vaden?

  "Okay, I need someone to help me walk through and apply the brand DNA helix to my situation." "I need someone to help me apply this data to my business." "I need it like, it's the application part that is the hard part."

• 46:41Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 46:41Rory Vaden?

  And I think actually, this is again, a trend that's changing in personal branding. Personal branding started early on, very much in that kind of info marketing kind of a space.

• 46:52Lewis Howes?

  Nice.

• 46:53Rory Vaden?

  And I would even say, there's some negative connotation and a little bit of scamminess that has, you know, probably caused some people to be reluctant to kind of like, get into personal branding or online marketing. But it's changing because information is commoditized. You give away the information for free, but people need you to help them apply it.

• 47:16Lewis Howes?

  It's the packaging of it and the application. Or would you say the application and the what?

• 47:20Rory Vaden?

  The organization.

• 47:21Lewis Howes?

  The packaging, the organization, yeah, yeah.

• 47:23Rory Vaden?

  And the application, and the application of it. So that's what they need.

• 47:27Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 47:27Rory Vaden?

  And that is the best way to garner attention is to be useful. Is to share what you know, to teach what you have. The goal is not, "I will share a little bit and then you gotta pay me for the goods." That's a scarcity mindset based on information.

• 47:50Lewis Howes?

  Share the goods and pay me for the packaging. Yeah, yeah. The application, the packaging, the holding your hand, the walking you through it, the accountability, all that stuff.

• 48:00Rory Vaden?

  Right, yeah, and if you're, again, just I'm using the financial advisor just because I'm using it here, right, it's like, you're teaching people, and if you're doing a good job, like, you're teaching people, "Oh yeah, here's how to evaluate mutual funds and here's things you can do." And like, there's gonna be a few people that would do it on their own, but most people, the more they learn, the more they're gonna go like, "This is crazy, I need an expert, like, can you just do this for me?"

• 48:22Lewis Howes?

  Yeah.

• 48:22Rory Vaden?

  That's what you want, right? Like, when somebody sees, "Oh, you know, there's a whole strategy to launching books and to getting keynotes and to, you know, building this stuff out." And they go, "Yeah, I think I'll give Brandbitles group a call."

• 48:37Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 48:37Rory Vaden?

  Like, some of them will go do it theirself, that's fine. The worst case scenario there is you're helping people and you're impacting the world. But more people than not will go, I like you, I trust you, I've learned from you. I see the value in what you're offering. I would like to hire you. And that is true whether it is hiring you as a professional service provider, an expert, or hiring you for the company, right?

• 49:03Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 49:03Rory Vaden?

  If I'm gonna hire you to the company, guess what? I'm gonna look at your LinkedIn profile.

• 49:08Lewis Howes?

  Absolutely.

• 49:08Rory Vaden?

  I'm gonna look at your Facebook page. I wanna read, and the most important part on your LinkedIn profile, is I wanna read the endorsements of all your past employers.

• 49:18Lewis Howes?

  Interesting.

• 49:19Rory Vaden?

  And what they said about you.

• 49:20Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 49:21Rory Vaden?

  That's what I wanna see, testimonials.

• 49:23Lewis Howes?

  And you said it's, the first thing we wanna think about is the strategy, not the platform. Is that what you said, think about the?

• 49:28Rory Vaden?

  Strategy is more important than technology.

• 49:30Lewis Howes?

  Than technology. Cause a lot of people will say, well, should I launch a YouTube channel? Should I do a podcast? Should I be on Instagram? Should I do Facebook Live every morning? They think about the platform, the technology of where they should be or what they should be creating. And that's probably not the best question to ask first, is it?

• 49:48Rory Vaden?

  No, yeah.

• 49:49Lewis Howes?

  It's strategy. How can I be most useful?

• 49:51Rory Vaden?

  How can I be most useful? Where are my people at?

• 49:53Lewis Howes?

  Where's my audience? And not, oh, Sally Jo is doing YouTube videos every day, so I should do YouTube videos because it looks cool and this is happening over there.

• 50:03Rory Vaden?

  Don't do that. Don't do it because Lewis does it.

• 50:06Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 50:06Rory Vaden?

  Don't do it because, you know.

• 50:08Lewis Howes?

  Is my audience on YouTube? Is my audience consuming this content? Or do I enjoy, am I passionate about being on video? Do I enjoy this process? Is this something I'd have fun doing, like you said in these questions? Then maybe YouTube's the place to go.

• 50:20Rory Vaden?

  Yeah, now what's cool, this is something I don't think we've ever talked about here, is the content diamond. So the content diamond, what's really cool about media? Media is a multiplier, right? And so, you know, you mentioned procrastinating on purpose in my TED Talk, how to multiply time, right? You multiply time by spending time on things today that create more time tomorrow. Well, what we're also just kinda realizing is going, oh, media is one of the great forms of multiple, is a multiplier. Because if I create a video today. Then every day that video is out there, that video is like an employee. It's working for me to find new people.

• 51:01Lewis Howes?

  Getting audience, getting attention, getting leads, getting traffic, getting trust.

• 51:05Rory Vaden?

  Trust.

• 51:06Lewis Howes?

  Reputation.

• 51:07Rory Vaden?

  Reputation.

• 51:08Lewis Howes?

  For you without you doing any more extra work.

• 51:10Rory Vaden?

  Right.

• 51:10Lewis Howes?

  I was mentioning to you this beforehand that I think it's three or four of our top viewed videos in the last 30 days are from videos that are one, two, three years ago.

• 51:20Rory Vaden?

  Amazing.

• 51:21Lewis Howes?

  That keep getting views that we spent an hour or two hours doing years ago and they're getting hundreds of thousands of views right now this month, working for us. So that investment in media is paying dividends years later and will continue to. And it becomes a flywheel, whatever platform you're building on, the more consistent you are with time, usually it pays off dividends the longer on there.

• 51:46Rory Vaden?

  Yeah, and you're, I mean, you're just, you're such a rolling stone buddy. I mean, you know how much I believe in you and it's, you've done all these things and now you've got multiple media assets that are all synergistically.

• 51:56Lewis Howes?

  Working together.

• 51:57Rory Vaden?

  Feeding each other and it's like, it's a snowball that gets bigger and bigger and faster and faster. It's incredible. So coming back to the content diamond, so the way the content diamond works is pretty simple. We encourage our clients, like, here's the whole technical strategy. Shoot one five-minute video every week. That's it. On your five-minute video, answer one question. Teach one tip. That's it. It could be less than five minutes, but five minutes. And then here's what's amazing about video. You're gonna take that video and you're gonna split it. This is how the content diamond works, okay? We're gonna split it on two paths.

• 52:38Rory Vaden?

  One path is what we call the text and imagery path. The other path is video and audio. Okay, so someone from your team, you know, if you don't have a team, it's you, but if you have a team, they're gonna take that video and they're gonna upload it to a tool like Temi, T E M I, or Rev.com, or SpeechPad, there's a bunch of these, which is an automatic transcription service. And they're gonna transcribe that article. From that transcription, someone's gonna edit that article into a full-length post for like, that you can put on LinkedIn Pulse and Medium. But it's in your voice, because it was literally your voice.

• 53:19Rory Vaden?

  Then they're gonna select like two or three catchphrases from the article that they're gonna turn into image quotes for Instagram and Pinterest.

• 53:28Lewis Howes?

  And Facebook or whatever.

• 53:29Rory Vaden?

  And Facebook and whatever. Simultaneously, while that's happening on the text and imagery path, someone's gonna take the raw video and they're going to add a little polish to it. Lower thirds, a little bit, maybe of some B-roll, some stock imagery, some stock, you know, music. Maybe they drop a fancy bumper, like an opener and an outro. And now all of a sudden, you've got this like semi-polished, nice YouTube video that you post in full on YouTube. But then you could post a 60-second version of that on TikTok, a two-minute version of that on IGTV.

• 54:09Rory Vaden?

  And you disassemble this one five-minute video into all of these mini assets. So the five-minute video is like your main asset, and then you disassemble it into mini assets. And then the diamond comes together, so you start here. The diamond comes together at the bottom. Post all of it on your blog, your website. So the one place where people can get all of it. Oh, by the way, your video, you can strip the audio off the video. And now you have a short-form podcast. So now you're a podcaster, you didn't even know it.

• 54:45Rory Vaden?

  But the one place to go to see the full-length video, the full-length article, an audio player, the pull-out, you know, the two or three pull-out quotes, is on your blog, which is traffic you own, where you optimize it for Google and SEO, and you build subscriber base. And in addition to supporting the social media sites and building an audience there, you also are curating an experience on your website, which matters tremendously long-term for search results and things like that.

• 55:19Lewis Howes?

  So a lot of people think, "I've got to work on all these platforms and create content for all these things." But really, what you should be thinking about is, how do I create a great piece of content for five minutes, or roughly around there,

• 55:31Rory Vaden?

  Yeah.

• 55:32Lewis Howes?

  once a week? And really think about that piece of content.

• 55:34Rory Vaden?

  Yes.

• 55:35Lewis Howes?

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

• 55:54Rory Vaden?

  You've got a team.

• 55:54Lewis Howes?

  video, audio, text, image, you know, graphics, all that stuff. And we've built a team to do that. There are services out there that can do this for you, too.

• 56:01Rory Vaden?

  Yep.

• 56:01Lewis Howes?

  Do you guys do this at Brand Builders?

• 56:03Rory Vaden?

  So at Brand Builders, we do exclusively personal brand strategy, right? So we kind of, we're, what a CMO is to a company is what we are to a personal brand. So we only work with people. We don't work with companies. Now, we work with executives and, you know, service providers that work at a company, but we work on that person's face. It's personal brand strategy. But we have a whole trusted vendor partner network, and we've got a bunch of them.

• 56:29Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 56:29Rory Vaden?

  You know, you need a video editor, you need a book editor, you need a, you know, like, we connect the clients to all those people.

• 56:34Lewis Howes?

  What's the biggest problem that people have when they come and work with you?

• 56:42Rory Vaden?

  It is dilution. It is diluted focus.

• 56:46Lewis Howes?

  They have too many opportunities. They're not sure where to put their time. They want to do a book and a course and a TED Talk and social media content and a podcast and they want to do all of it and they're not sure where to start.

• 56:57Rory Vaden?

  Yeah, and when you have diluted focus, you get diluted results.

• 57:00Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 57:01Rory Vaden?

  That's right. Good old Take the Stairs book, which has been out for years now, but the, um, yeah, they, people struggle to get clear on what is their uniqueness?

• 57:12Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 57:12Rory Vaden?

  Who do they serve?

• 57:14Lewis Howes?

  Uh huh.

• 57:14Rory Vaden?

  What is their business model? And, and, and what is their methodology, right? So Brand Builders Group has a curriculum. We actually have one curriculum that's divided into 12, 12 like courses, but in our, our, our phase one, um, which is like our first three courses, really help people just get clear on what problem do I solve? Who do I solve it for? How do I solve it? How do I make money? They gotta select and be clear on that uniqueness first before you try to add scale. What people do is they go out and they try to build audience right away. They do it completely backwards. Because what you have is you have a way to make money and then you have your, your online presence, like your website, and then you have traffic sources.

• 58:00Rory Vaden?

  The proper way to build it is get clear on how you're going to make money and what the product offer is. Then build your, your reputation, your website, a professional presentation, then worry about traffic.

• 58:13Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 58:13Rory Vaden?

  People do the opposite. They go straight to social media and go, how do I get a lot of followers? And then I gotta try and, oh shoot, I need to build, I need to shoot, I need to build a website. And it's like, oh, okay, how do I turn those people into money? And so their strategy is

• 58:26Lewis Howes?

  Backwards.

• 58:27Rory Vaden?

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

• 58:55Lewis Howes?

  For ten years.

• 58:56Rory Vaden?

  Right?

• 58:56Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, yeah.

• 58:56Rory Vaden?

  And, and, and some of us have been watching and been like, okay, that's kind of cool. And gosh, I see what it's meant for him, but, you know, I don't have his style and I, you know, I don't cuss like that and I don't, you know, I don't want to-

• 59:05Lewis Howes?

  I'm not a big personality.

• 59:06Rory Vaden?

  I don't want to write a book. Yeah, I'm not a person, I don't want to be a speaker. But it's like, if, if that, if you've been thinking that, you missed it. Like, he'd been talking about it and now I'm here telling you, the data is here saying, the time is now. Like millennials, older millennials, younger millennials and Gen Z, this is what they look at to build trust.

• 59:30Lewis Howes?

  And buy from.

• 59:31Rory Vaden?

  Which means that's who they buy from, that's who they hire, that's, that's who they refer, that's who they-

• 59:36Lewis Howes?

  That's who they date.

• 59:37Rory Vaden?

  That's who they date, that's who they, they recommend, that's who they share.

• 59:40Lewis Howes?

  And here what you say, if someone is not on social media, even with a small little personal brand, uh, you might wonder like, I don't know who this person is at all. I can't find them online. Now it's like, if they don't have LinkedIn, if they don't have Instagram or Facebook and you can't see anything, what are they hiding? Is there something, can I really trust this person? Again, like you said, if you can't see them, it's hard to trust them. And the people, the person you see more, you learn to trust more.

• 1:00:06Rory Vaden?

  Yeah, you just, yeah, that, that, that, we, we, we don't, we, we dis, we trust the familiar and we distrust the unfamiliar.

• 1:00:15Lewis Howes?

  The unknown.

• 1:00:15Rory Vaden?

  The unknown, whether, whether it's online or it's walking down the street. If somebody, if it's nighttime and someone's walking at me, I don't recognize them, I distrust them. Not because I'm racist or a scaredy cat or a coward or anything.

• 1:00:29Lewis Howes?

  Right.

• 1:00:29Rory Vaden?

  I just, it's just unfamiliar. Like, I don't know who you are, you know, like, I, I distrust that. And, and this is part of the big point, right? Is that you cannot think of personal branding as online marketing. It's not. Personal branding is the digitization of reputation.

• 1:00:48Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:00:49Rory Vaden?

  It is building trust, making impact, growing your influence. And it is the future and it is profitable and you can use it to monetize the thing you're already doing.

• 1:01:01Lewis Howes?

  Yes.

• 1:01:02Rory Vaden?

  And that is how you build a seven-figure personal brand.

• 1:01:04Lewis Howes?

  We covered a lot today. We covered the data around personal branding. We've covered the elements that are important to personal branding, how to build the million dollar personal brand. We talked about reputation, testimonials, paids, the different revenue streams. We also talked about the questions you need to ask yourself in order to figure out what your uniqueness is. Talked about dares. We've talked about all these different things and formulas, the content diamonds, so many things. And for people that are wanting more, I want you to know that Rory is a partner of mine.

• 1:01:45Lewis Howes?

  And I only have a couple of people that I do partnerships with on stuff that I don't think I can do as well. And you have Brand Builders Group. I think we've sent over a thousand leads to you plus. And hundreds of people who've gone through your trainings, your strategies and helped execute on what their uniqueness is. How to figure out their revenue streams, how to help them build their TED Talks, their book proposals. All these different processes for building personal brand. And we created a little video for you guys. If you want to learn more, you can go to lewishouse.com/brandcall to get a free call from someone on your team, just to ask them about their goals.

• 1:02:27Lewis Howes?

  Ask them about their goals, what their future looks like, what they're trying to create. And if it might be helpful for you or your team to support them in building their personal brand and executing these things. So if you guys are interested, go to lewishouse.com/brandcall. You can schedule a time with someone on Rory's team to learn more. We, I don't know, so many people that are influencers or friends of mine have been through the programs and the processes you guys created. And rave about the results they get. So many people you've had have been New York Times bestselling authors.

• 1:03:00Rory Vaden?

  Yeah.

• 1:03:01Lewis Howes?

  From this process, people have built multiple million dollar brands.

• 1:03:05Rory Vaden?

  Viral TED Talks.

• 1:03:06Lewis Howes?

  Viral TED Talks, big book launches, course launches, all these things.

• 1:03:09Rory Vaden?

  Social media follower growth.

• 1:03:11Lewis Howes?

  Yeah, so you work with the best of the best in this space. And there's only one person I recommend, and it's Rory. So make sure you guys check it out, LewisHowes.com/brandcall. We're gonna be doing a series around personal branding, productivity, confidence and mindset. Because I think a lot of it, when people have the strategy and the tactic, even if you have the best strategies and tactics, you still need the belief in yourself. You still need the skill set in order to have the confidence to put yourself out there. Because when you put yourself out there, you're gonna get negative comments, feedback, hate. People trying to tear you down, and that holds a lot of people back.

• 1:03:52Lewis Howes?

  So we're gonna teach you through this series with Rory that will be dropping over a few months, more of these things, and more on how to monetize with your personal brand using these other skills and mindset strategies. So make sure you follow Rory. What's your best place to follow you online? Is it Instagram right now?

• 1:04:11Rory Vaden?

  On social, yeah, but if you go to RoryVadenBlog.com, but I would just say, go to LewisHowes.com/brandcall. Request the call. You do that, you'll get connected to me.

• 1:04:22Lewis Howes?

  There you go.

• 1:04:23Rory Vaden?

  But yeah, you know, I'm out there on social.

• 1:04:25Lewis Howes?

  He's out there, Rory Vaden everywhere. You can check out one of his books, Take the Stairs, or Procrastinate on Purpose. If you want to learn how to multiply time, make sure to check these out as well. Rory Vaden, we're gonna be doing a series, so we'll see you back here soon. And thanks so much for being here and teaching us these strategies, man. Appreciate you.

• 1:04:42Rory Vaden?

  Always appreciate it, brother. And just remember, the calling that you feel on your heart to go out and do this is the result of a signal that's being sent out by someone else who needs you right now more than you need them.

• 1:04:56Lewis Howes?

  My man, thank you. Appreciate it.

• 1:04:57Rory Vaden?

  Love you, brother.

• 1:04:58Lewis Howes?

  Love you too, man. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. If you got value out of this, make sure to share it. Spread the message of greatness to a few friends of yours. Post it on social media. Make sure to tag me, Lewis Howes, and Rory Vaden as well. And if this is your first time here, click that subscribe button right now on Apple Podcasts or on Spotify to stay up to date because this is going to be a part of a series that I'm doing with Rory over the next few months. So you've got to stay subscribed so you can see when this is coming out and all the other great interviews and episodes we have coming on the School of Greatness. You do not want to miss this, I'm telling you. If you want inspiring messages sent to your phone from me every single week, then text the word PODCAST to 614-350-3960.

• 1:05:39Lewis Howes?

  And also make sure to sign up for your brand call, that free strategy call with Rory. Go to lewishouse.com/brandcall and learn how you can really build your personal brand with someone on Rory's team who's trained in helping you grow your personal brands. Check out that brand call as well. Sign up for that if you're interested. Again, thank you guys so much for listening. I hope you enjoyed this episode. And I want to remind you, if no one has told you lately that you are loved, you are worthy, and you matter. And you know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.