Building A Powerful Personal Brand w/ Rory Vaden

Ask yourself this question…WHAT DO PEOPLE THINK OF WHEN THEY THINK OF YOU? Like it or not, that answer is your PERSONAL BRAND. The rules have changed, and it's no longer an option not to have a personal brand. More than ever, your BUSINESS BRAND and your PERSONAL BRAND are becoming the same. With the explosion of options on how to promote yourself and your business, you need to be SMARTER THAN EVER to get the attention you need to succeed. If you're success-driven, chances are you've already figured out that you need to grow your brand and use it for maximum effect. THE BIG QUESTION IS "HOW?"My guest and friend, RORY VADEN, will give you those answers this week. He is also a New York Times bestselling author of TAKE THE STAIRS and PROCRASTINATE ON PURPOSE, a Hall of Fame speaker, and co-founder of the BRAND BUILDERS GROUP, where he and his team teach and implement personal brand development. He's helped several people, including me, LEWIS HOWES, ERIC THOMAS, TOM AND LISA BILYEU, LUVVIE AJAYI JONES, and many others take huge leaps forward with building our personal brands. Some of you may not fully understand personal branding, and that's where we start, digging into why TRUST is closely linked to personal branding, no matter how big you are or how big you want to be. Rory also explains how to start personal branding with practical advice you can easily implement almost immediately built around this KEY TAKEAWAY…THE GOAL IS TO FIND YOUR UNIQUENESS AND EXPLOIT IT IN THE SERVICE OF OTHERS. Many of you want to find ways to monetize your personal brand, and Rory gives you some insights using his D. A. R. E. S. (Digital, Automated, Recurring, Evergreen, Scalable) strategy. Rory will also explain what a BRAND DNA HELIX is with 6 QUESTIONS every brand builder should ask themselves. One of the most important keys to a personal brand is figuring out how you can monetize it. Rory lays out those avenues by getting you to think about P. A. I. D. S. (Products, Ads and Affiliates, Information, Deals, and Services). We'll also spend a lot of time discussing how to find your UNIQUENESS. Nobody talks about this enough, yet it's so critical to your personal branding success. We'll wrap up by talking about the three forms of PROCRASTINATION, multiplying your time, and why our brains aren't wired for success. You owe it to yourself to start THINKING about and ACTIVATING your personal brand. And Rory Vaden is the guy to help you do that. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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

• 0:00Ed Mylett?

  I hear so many small business owners say the exact same thing. They just never have enough time in the day. Well, I measure time differently. I've compressed, condensed, heck, I've bent time. My first day is 6:00 a.m. to noon. My second day starts at noon and goes till 6:00 P.M. And my third day, 6:00 P.M. to midnight. I now get 21 days a week. Stack that up over a month, over a year, over five years, and my life's completely different than it would have been otherwise. And if you want to win as an entrepreneur, you have to compress your time, too. And you definitely can't afford to waste it. Waiting weeks on a big bank for capital? Your best bet's to work with my friends at Cardiff. They know how to compress time for entrepreneurs. They get your business approved in minutes and funded the very same day. They're America's favorite small business lender, and for good reason.

• 0:45Ed Mylett?

  Over 20 years in business, over $12 billion deployed to small business across America. Stop letting bank delays slow down your momentum. Head to cardiff.co/ed. That's cardiff.co/ed. Cardiff.co. Real growth, fast funding. Cardiff. Borrow better.

• 1:01Speaker 01

  Mr. President, my company, for me, of the explosion on our rig. On October 2nd. Causing massive water displacement and triggering a tsunami. They all heap the blame on me. Tom Cruise is. Digger got us into this mess. And Digger's gonna dig us up. From the director of Birdman and The Revenant.

• 1:18Rory Vaden?

  What would happen if I stopped drilling? You stop, you freeze to death, that's what.

• 1:22Speaker 01

  With great power comes great deniability.

• 1:25Ed Mylett?

  I'm not the first nanny.

• 1:27Speaker 01

  Digger. See the trailer online. Only in theaters October 2nd. Rated R. Under 17. Not a middle without parent.

• 1:36Speaker 01

  This is the Ed Mileage Show.

• 1:39Ed Mylett?

  All right, welcome back to the show, everybody. I have a friend here today who's brilliant. And we're going to talk about some things I think today that you've probably never heard before as it relates to personal branding. And even if you don't have one, why you should have one. My guest is a part of my family and my team now. And if you thought my book launch was very successful, this is one of the people that should be credited with the success of that book launch. He taught me so many things that I did not know prior to meeting him. And he's going to do that for you today as well. He's a New York Times bestselling author. He's an eight-figure entrepreneur, Hall of Fame speakers, TED Talks have millions and millions of views. And he and his wife are co-founders of Brand Builders Group, which is the organization that has started to help me with my work and reaching more of you. And he's a friend of mine. So Rory Vaden, welcome to the show today.

• 2:23Rory Vaden?

  Brother, what an honor. What a, what, working alongside of you has been one of the greatest privileges of my career.

• 2:30Ed Mylett?

  Oh, wow.

• 2:30Rory Vaden?

  And I'm a, I'm, I mean that, and I tell you why. Because you, you have the money, you have the followers, you've done the stuff. And yet you are still on fire about the mission. Like, you don't need anything else, and yet you wake up every day and you hit it hard because you are so passionate about reaching people. And like, that's who I want to be in the foxhole with, man. Like I, you know, people who, if you're just chasing dollars, like, eventually you go off track or you burn out, but it's like,

• 3:01Ed Mylett?

  Thank you.

• 3:01Rory Vaden?

  You are on fire for the mission, brother, so.

• 3:03Ed Mylett?

  Thank you. Well, so are you, and I want to surround myself with people that can help me reach more people and also share my values. And you do that, I mean, right instantly when we first met, I go, okay, this guy's special, this guy's special, big, big, big, big brain. And I was going to share some information with you guys today that's going to, just going to really change your business, your life, potentially even your family. So what we're going to cover today, just to set the stage, we're going to cover a little, we're going to cover a lot on personal branding, that we're going to shift into just what I would call optimization of your life, personal success strategies, how to be happier and more successful. And Rory just has this very interesting perspective, and a lot of people that you respect and admire, kind of behind the scenes, Rory's been responsible for you respecting and admiring them more, just so you know.

• 3:48Ed Mylett?

  And so how he's going to help you today too. So first things first, personal branding, you did this giant study.

• 3:53Rory Vaden?

  Yeah.

• 3:53Ed Mylett?

  On it, right? And I think most people here, personal brand, they go, okay, I get it. That's why an entrepreneur would need it, or a big time influencer. But me, I've got a job, or you know, I've kind of just, you know, I'm working every single day of my life. I don't really focus on, I use social media to kind of show people what I ate for lunch and

• 4:08Rory Vaden?

  Yep.

• 4:09Ed Mylett?

  Interact with friends. What did this study reveal a little bit? Tell us some of it. And then what about that? Who should have a personal brand and why?

• 4:16Rory Vaden?

  Yeah, so, great, great one. So yeah, so we, we, we had this PhD-led research study. It took us over a year to complete. It's weighted to the US Census Bureau, so the, the data points will come, would be based on the US, but. The long and short of it is that when most people think of personal branding, they think of like social media, or podcasts, or being an author, speaker, or like, you know, whatever, websites. And you have to change the way that you think about it. And what this study revealed is that personal branding is really the digitization of reputation.

• 4:50Ed Mylett?

  Wow, that's good.

• 4:51Rory Vaden?

  The digitization of reputation. So 74% of Americans say they are more likely to trust someone with an established personal brand. Right? So the reason this matters is not because of vanity. Like, not everybody needs a lot of followers. Not everybody cares about a book deal. Like, you know, that's our world a bit, and some of our clients. But what we all care about is trust. The trust of our colleagues, the trust of our family, the trust of our peers, like our peers, our bosses, the people who work for us. And 74% of Americans say they're more likely to trust you if you have a personal brand, which makes sense, because we trust people that we see.

• 5:30Ed Mylett?

  Isn't that true? Like, stay on that. Like, celebrities, right? Like, we don't even really know them. In some cases, it's a stage name, almost, right? And like, but we, because we see them all the time, we actually form an opinion about whether they're trustworthy or not. And we've never even met them, probably will never meet them, in most cases.

• 5:46Rory Vaden?

  We don't even know their real name, like, a lot of times.

• 5:48Ed Mylett?

  It's crazy, right? So, so, so this matters for everybody, you're basically saying?

• 5:54Rory Vaden?

  Well, yeah. Let me, let me point out some specific ones. I brought the study just because I thought we might grab a few points. But, but when you, when you look specifically at, we asked the question, like, who does this really matter for? And we, we said, like, okay, do you care, the average American, do they care if, like, their business coach has one, or their insurance agent, or like, who are the people you care about having a personal brand? And the number one profession out of all of them was doctors.

• 6:23Ed Mylett?

  Wow.

• 6:24Rory Vaden?

  61% of Americans say they want their doctor to have an established personal brand.

• 6:30Ed Mylett?

  Oh, my gosh.

• 6:31Rory Vaden?

  59% said their employer, 58% said their lawyer, and 55% said their financial advisor. And here's, so here's what we started to realize. The more, the higher the requirement for trust, the more having a personal brand matters.

• 6:47Rory Vaden?

  If you're gonna cut me open, I need to trust you.

• 6:51Ed Mylett?

  Right.

• 6:51Rory Vaden?

  Like, I can't just meet you and in five minutes be like, "Okay, let's do this." And so more and more, that's happening. And I have to tell you, Ed, like, I was late to social media.

• 7:01Ed Mylett?

  Me too.

• 7:02Rory Vaden?

  Social media, yeah, you were, but you've done better with it than I have. But I, for a long time, didn't understand, why would you post what you're eating? And like, what you're doing all day? Like, why would anyone care about that? And then I realized, for many of us, that the people that you trust the most in your life, like, if you just made a list, who do you trust the most? It's gonna be people that you see most often, and it's gonna be the people you know the best. You know what they like to eat, you know where they live, you know their kids' names, you know where they go, you know who their friends are, you know what they do for fun, like, you know how they spend their time on their weekends. And then the other one is that we trust people that we learn from.

• 7:45Ed Mylett?

  Ooh.

• 7:46Rory Vaden?

  And that becomes the big door opener for the business aspect of all of this, but not to discount the personal sides, those things really matter. Your book launch was incredible. I mean, 100,000 copies of a book sold before the book comes out is like, is not something that we've ever seen, that we've ever been a part of. And it's because you have so much trust with your audience, you have so much reputation. We've never worked with someone that had as much reputation and as much reach as you did.

• 8:19Ed Mylett?

  Thank you.

• 8:20Rory Vaden?

  So, while we maybe taught you a couple things, you're super gracious about that.

• 8:24Ed Mylett?

  You did.

• 8:25Rory Vaden?

  It was your reputation, our systems, but it was just amplified because, at the end of the day, it's about trust.

• 8:32Ed Mylett?

  So good, the digitization of your reputation. And that, you know, I've noticed that play for me in different ways, too. So, yeah, it helped move my book and other things that I do, it helps move this show, obviously, having a very significant following. But the trust part of it is more important than even how big the following is. But then there's been other things that have happened for me where, different businesses I have, someone's got involved who didn't know me, but then checked me out and went, "Oh, he's legit." Because he has a personal brand. So I think a lot of people think, well, I don't have, I've got 2,000 followers or 800 followers. I don't have to have a personal brand, nor do I have one. Incorrect, because it's almost like a validation of your reputation. It can happen in reverse. So maybe they don't find you, but after they find you, now they're going to confirm you.

• 9:14Rory Vaden?

  Totally.

• 9:15Ed Mylett?

  Right?

• 9:15Rory Vaden?

  And that's what they're doing. That's what employers are doing. I mean, one of the things that we say a lot now is we say, reputation precedes revenue. Reputation precedes revenue. People think, oh, I have a revenue problem. You don't have a revenue problem. You have a reputation problem. Not enough people know about you, or they know about you and they don't trust you to get the job done. So when you look at like the business world, it is that. But even if you're an employee trying to get a job, their, their, their companies are, their formal hiring process is go look at them on Facebook, go look at them on Instagram, go listen to what they have. And, and here's another thing that the study showed. People don't care about how many followers you have.

• 9:55Ed Mylett?

  Wow.

• 9:55Rory Vaden?

  People don't care

• 9:56Ed Mylett?

  Wow, wow.

• 9:56Rory Vaden?

  across all generations. It is one of the, the least significant factors of credibility and trust is, is how many followers you have. You know what else people don't care about? They don't care if you have a New York Times bestselling book. We, we can prove empirically that people don't value, that the public doesn't. Now, the industry does. But the average person on the street, we can prove, doesn't know the difference between a Wall Street Journal bestselling author, an Amazon bestselling author, a self-published author. They found blogs to have as much credibility. If you have a blog, you have as much credibility as someone who is a New York Times bestselling author with the average person on the street. They don't care about followers, but they do care about when they see you, what do you project?

• 10:41Rory Vaden?

  What do you believe? What are you about? What are you teaching and promoting? And who are you?

• 10:47Ed Mylett?

  Yeah, and I think we're going to talk about how to create that too, because I, I look at a lot of people's stuff that follow me, and I'll just click on their profiles and I'm just confused. You know, there's not a narrative there. It's, it's very, uh, it's hit and miss. I don't understand it. You know, when I was growing up, my dad always said, hey, Eddie, it's not, it's not what you know, it's who you know. And I now tell my kids, it's not really what you know or who you know, it's who knows you now. Who knows you? And this applies, what you just said that was so relevant is if you have a job. The likelihood of someone hiring you, or you getting promoted, or finding upward mobility where you are, is now connected to that brand. So this is not just an entrepreneurial thing to some extent. So you also said it's sort of like a trust accelerator for people too. How so?

• 11:30Rory Vaden?

  Yeah, absolutely. Look, we buy from people that we trust. We recommend people that we trust.

• 11:36Ed Mylett?

  There you go.

• 11:37Rory Vaden?

  We know that 82% of Americans say they're more likely to buy from a company, and they find a company more influential if they recognize the founder, and they align with the founder's personal brand and values. But 30% of Americans in this study said they're more likely to date somebody who has an established personal brand. Because there's validation to who you are, right? You don't want to get catfished. You can, it's one thing to kind of like fake a profile on a dating site. It's another to go, oh, you have a website and you're on social media. You have all of these different things. And by the way, coming back to the business thing,

• 12:20Rory Vaden?

  you know, the number one thing that drives credibility for businesses is testimonials from your customers.

• 12:27Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 12:28Rory Vaden?

  It is not your credentials. It is having other people who have said you are good at what you do.

• 12:38Rory Vaden?

  That's how it's done.

• 12:38Ed Mylett?

  It's interesting because on social media, it's funny. And a couple of businesses that I own now, I'm always telling our folks like, hey, when you help somebody, whether it be with a financial thing or a real estate transaction, or one of our products, like if you could get that put on video where they're thanking you, or they're watching the process, because that for me is credibility too. Like that thing about cutting me open, the surgeon, I don't want it to be your first procedure.

• 12:59Rory Vaden?

  Yeah.

• 12:59Ed Mylett?

  So if I feel like you've helped lots of people, and by the way, lots of people in a personal brand, it could be five, right? It could be eight reviews. It could be eight video testimonials. It could be written testimonials. Like, okay, this isn't their first rodeo. They've done this before. So what would you say to someone who goes, okay, you know, I probably should get better at doing this whole personal branding thing? Where does one begin if they've not begun? Or what should they adjust if they've started and it just hasn't been effective for them yet?

• 13:23Rory Vaden?

  Yeah, I mean, here's the whole secret to personal branding in one sentence. And this is not a Rory Vaden quote. I wish it was. But there was a guy named Larry Winget who told me this early in my career. And 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 when you go look at someone's social media profile and you go, I don't know what this person does. They haven't clarified their uniqueness. They're not, they're not clear about the role they play in the world. And, and this ties more to just personal brand. It's not social media and it's not logos and colors and graphics. It's your purpose, right?

• 14:07Rory Vaden?

  It's, it's being clear about how can I serve? How can I be of value? So many people are trying to find their purpose. And I think the wrong question is, don't ask, what's my purpose? That's the wrong question to ask. Instead, ask, who can I serve? How can I be of value? And as you get clear on that, that is your uniqueness. Our lives have meaning in the context of our relationship with others. And there's nothing like the feeling you get when you serve another person, when you help another person. There's, there's no replacement for that feeling.

• 14:41Ed Mylett?

  Very good, Rory.

• 14:46Ed Mylett?

  You know, do you think that that, by the way, this is where sort of personal optimization and personal branding begin to converge too, right? So this is why they're the same thing to some extent. But do you think that that also involves what problem do you solve? Meaning that when I go look at your personal brand, I, I understand your purpose and your mission and all of that. But for me to really connect with you, don't, isn't there sort of an embedded command in there to some extent? Like this is a problem I can help you solve.

• 15:12Rory Vaden?

  Totally. Yeah. That, that when you, when you kind of make it tactical, you know, like when we first sit down with a client, the genesis of building a personal brand is answering one question with one word. What problem do you solve? And if you aren't, if you're not clear about the problem you solve, no one else ever will be.

• 15:31Ed Mylett?

  You nailed it. Yep.

• 15:32Rory Vaden?

  They never will be because there's so much noise. There's so, I mean, there's, you know, millions and millions of people out there. There's so many people who do something similar to what you do and. The real reason why people don't grow more on social media, or they don't get hired more, or they don't get promoted, or they don't attract more customers, or they don't get more donors for their nonprofit, or more members for their church, or whatever the thing is, is because they're not clear.

• 15:57Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 15:58Rory Vaden?

  And it's because they have too many different things going on. And if you have diluted focus, you get diluted results.

• 16:06Ed Mylett?

  Very good.

• 16:07Rory Vaden?

  If you have diluted focus, you get diluted results. But if somebody comes and says, "Hey Ed, who helped you launch your book?" And you go, "Oh, I got a guy like Rory." Like, you know, "Who helps you clarify your position in the marketplace?" "Oh, yeah, Brand Builders, Rory." Like, "I got a guy who solves that." Now, the problem we technically solve is obscurity, which is to be unclear, untrusted, or unknown. But for each individual person, it is answering that question, "What problem do I solve?"

• 16:39Ed Mylett?

  Well, the specificity part is big. So even when I met you, and even like other guys that I know that are good friends of mine that you've also worked with, like Lewis Howes, for example.

• 16:47Rory Vaden?

  Yeah.

• 16:47Ed Mylett?

  It is even making us at our level more clear, more specific. When I go look at most people's personal brand, to me, it's confusing. I said this earlier. I do believe, tell me if you, and by the way, correct me if I'm wrong. I think it's good to show a diversity of who you are. In other words, if you're just one thing all the time, I think your social, your blog, your life can be somewhat, I kind of know what I'm going to get when I go see you. Maybe I'm not likely to see it all the time. So I think showing, "Hey, I'm a mom. I also work out. I'm also a Realtor. Here's some testimonials. Here's people I've helped." One thing that does confuse me sometimes is I'll watch someone's brand, and I'm thinking, "Oh, this is a professional, let's just say, I use the term Realtor."

• 17:26Rory Vaden?

  Okay.

• 17:27Ed Mylett?

  And, "Wow, what a great mother and an unbelievable person. And she's funny, and she's completely competent, and has done this kind of a deal, another kind of a deal." And then maybe like the next picture is her sort of like... You know, in a bikini in some salacious environment and I'm like, what part of that do you think is gonna make me or my wife be comfortable with doing business with you? In other words, they do things in their brand, one or two things that is either A confusing, or I'm like, what were you thinking about yourself when you were, I'm not saying that you can't post, listen, post, you're flexing with your shirt off, I work out in a tank top sometimes. I'm not saying that, but do you agree that sometimes I'm like, what are we doing here? This seems like an unfocused person on their brand.

• 18:07Rory Vaden?

  Yeah, that, that, that's it. And I think you, you, you really do need to sort of decide like, am I using this as a mechanism for attracting business to me, right? If you're a Realtor, um, now I think you can have one profile and you can do it, but you have to do it tastefully and you have to kind of go like, alright, you know, grandma is watching and my colleagues are watching and my prospects are watching. And so I have to play, I have to play to that audience and be mindful of it. Or go have a private account that you do, you know, like some people aren't comfortable posting pictures of your kids. That's fine. You don't have to post pictures of your kids to be successful. You can, and people get to see that other dimension of you, but when you, when you, a, a, a brand is what do people think of when they think of you?

• 18:50Rory Vaden?

  And so you don't control that, but you influence it. And you have to be deliberate about it and mindful about it. And you have to, you have to craft it because it's your reputation. I, I think people get lost when they think, the moment we say personal branding, they go, oh, social media, I don't understand it, technology, graphics, I, you know, video, I, I don't know. They get lost and just go, reputation.

• 19:15Ed Mylett?

  Very good.

• 19:16Rory Vaden?

  Reputation. Curate your reputation. What do you want people to say about you? What do you want people to think about you? What do you want people to know about you? And be mindful.

• 19:26Ed Mylett?

  And it needs to be authentic too, right? Like it can't be orchestrated. So for example, in my case, I think probably people think about me as an entrepreneur or a speaker, hopefully an inspirational guy, but I'll also post a, hey, last night I had a cigar and a glass of tequila. That's part of my life, right? So, but within reason, I, by the way, this stuff is not gen, I said earlier bikini. I've mailed guys that I watch on social media, I'm like, brother, you've got this entire insurance operation you have. You've got this wonderful family. Why are we posting you completely drunk on a boat on a Sunday afternoon where you're slurring your words? Like maybe that's not part of the reputation you want to put out there. Having a cocktail, of course, that's part of what you do. It should be, you should be open about it. I just feel like. And again, we're going down to social media now, but as you said earlier, branding is all over. It's not just social media. It's everything about you.

• 20:11Ed Mylett?

  What are dares? And how does that sort of fit into a little bit about what we're talking about? I love things that you can just remember. That's what you're great at doing. Cause with me, you know, some really complicated things we went through and I'm like, okay, I can remember dares. I can remember XYZ. I can remember the helix, which we'll talk about in a minute. So go ahead and tell us what dares means.

• 20:30Rory Vaden?

  Yeah. So, so dares is an acronym that is represents

• 20:36Rory Vaden?

  how to select the, the, the best ways to monetize your personal brand. Right? So that's where reputation, when you turn your reputation into revenue and you make, you turn that corner to say, I want to monetize this. We say, okay, we got to figure out a business model. And just like if you have diluted focus with your message, you get diluted results. If you have diluted focus with your business model, you also get diluted results. You and I are totally in a line. In fact, you posted something recently that I was like, amen about the multiple streams of income. You don't get rich by having multiple streams of income. You have one really freaking awesome stream of income. Diluted focus, diluted results. So when we are working with a client, there's not a one size fits all, right?

• 21:19Rory Vaden?

  It's your uniqueness. So we're trying to figure out what are you best positioned for? And so we look for the dares. So the acronym is things that are D-digital.

• 21:29Ed Mylett?

  D-digital.

• 21:30Rory Vaden?

  A-automated. R-recurring. E-evergreen. And S-scalable. Digital, automated, recurring, evergreen and scalable. So if there was a perfect business model, it would have, you know, no manufacturing costs, right? It's digital. So you don't have to ship anything. You don't have to store it. There's not like tariffs and, and boats and, and delays. It's automated, meaning.

• 21:56Rory Vaden?

  People can completely self-serve.

• 21:58Ed Mylett?

  Very good.

• 21:58Rory Vaden?

  You don't have to have a huge army of people to deliver it. It's recurring, so people are paying not just once, but again and again and again. And when it comes to the valuation of a company, recurring revenue is tremendously valuable. Evergreen means it never needs to be updated.

• 22:14Ed Mylett?

  Ooh.

• 22:15Rory Vaden?

  Never needs to be updated. You do it once, and then scalable is you can add an infinite number of customers without adding additional infrastructure.

• 22:22Ed Mylett?

  So that's the ideal.

• 22:23Rory Vaden?

  That's the ideal, but it doesn't exist.

• 22:25Ed Mylett?

  Right.

• 22:25Rory Vaden?

  Because some of these work in conflict. So like, for example, recurring and evergreen tend to work in conflict because recurring revenue means I'm going to pay you again and again and again. But evergreen means you never need to update it. So you're not likely to pay again and again for something that doesn't need to be updated. By the way, Netflix is the closest business that I've found that has all of these. But even Netflix has to always add new content. So it's evergreen in the sense that you have access to this library, but they're always adding new content. But it's not that one is better than the other, right? I mean, Sara Blakely sells Spanx. Our friend Jamie Kern Lima, right, does it cosmetics? Those are physical items. They made tons of money.

• 23:10Ed Mylett?

  Of course.

• 23:10Rory Vaden?

  And then you've got other infomarketers who sell courses or whatever. And a lot of our clients are professional service people. They're lawyers and they're accountants and they're doctors and they're chiropractors. So they're selling a service.

• 23:25Ed Mylett?

  Let's talk about them for a minute and a little bit of this brand DNA helix. Because this is like, this is why you're so great. So there's six parts to it. Let's talk a little bit about that. This has helped all of you to go, okay, what do I do?

• 23:36Rory Vaden?

  Right? How do you figure this out?

• 23:37Ed Mylett?

  Why don't I figure this stuff out? So go ahead.

• 23:39Rory Vaden?

  Yeah, so if you say, okay, the goal is to find your uniqueness and exploit it in the service of others. Then the question is, how do I find my uniqueness?

• 23:46Ed Mylett?

  Yes.

• 23:46Rory Vaden?

  And that is literally a million dollar question. I mean, that is the thing people, the first thing everyone hires us to do is go. And so we have this brand DNA helix, these six questions. And if you were to answer these six questions and you just sort of like brainstormed them and put them all, all the answers on the table. The intersection of the answers is your uniqueness lies at the intersection. So the first question we already talked about, which is what problem do you solve? Okay, so.

• 24:17Rory Vaden?

  What are the problems you can solve for other people? You make a list. The second question is, what are you passionate about? Like, what are you on fire for? That's how we started, right? Is, I love you because you're on fire. You, you, you're not just on a mission, you're on a crusade.

• 24:32Ed Mylett?

  Stay there. I want to stay right there, because this is brilliant. I bet no one's asked you this before. Do those have to necessarily be connected? In other words, the problem I solve, what if, what if what I'm passionate about is slightly different than the problem I solved? I'm going to scramble you here a little bit, because I've thought about this. When I started in the business, I was solving financial problems for people.

• 24:52Rory Vaden?

  Yeah.

• 24:53Ed Mylett?

  But my passion was actually to help children, because I was working in an orphanage. But when you would get around me, you'd say, this guy's unbelievable solving these financial problems, and he's doing it because everything he does, 20% of it's going to help these orphans and these kids. And so, the convergence of those two things, even though they were different, worked incredibly well for me. I know ideally, the problem being solved would somehow be correlated to the passion. I get that. But does that necessarily have to be the same thing?

• 25:21Rory Vaden?

  I think that it almost never is in the beginning.

• 25:25Ed Mylett?

  Great, okay.

• 25:26Rory Vaden?

  In fact, the fastest path to cash is to figure out what problem can you solve the fastest for somebody else? So I'll give you an example. I started my speaking career. The very first way I made money was, I was in a contest called the World Championship of Public Speaking, and I was 20 years old, and I thought, hey, if I win the world championship, maybe that'll launch my career. The problem was, I wasn't funny. And so, I spent like 18 months learning the psychology of laughter and humor. And so, the very first courses I taught was the psychology of laughter and how to be funnier. And that was how we started. And then, you know, I had, I had gone door to door, 14 hours a day, six days a week, on straight commission for five summers in college.

• 26:11Rory Vaden?

  And so, I knew something about sales. And so, we started a sales training business, and we coached salespeople. So, they lead to one another. But, but- Look at what you're doing now, Ed. You are, you are living the convergence of those two now.

• 26:27Ed Mylett?

  Correct.

• 26:27Rory Vaden?

  But the way to make money fastest is to go, what tactical problem can I solve for people?

• 26:32Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 26:33Rory Vaden?

  Right? And do that. And you go, if people pay for solutions to problems. So if you need money, it's because you're not solving enough problems. You're not adding enough value and you're not clear about what you do. And that's why nobody's hiring you or they're not paying you enough money.

• 26:47Ed Mylett?

  This is exactly right. By the way, listen, this just flies by people's ears. They're driving or they're on the treadmill right now or they're walking and they're like, yeah, yeah, yeah. Listen to what he just said. If you don't have a lot of money, more than likely, it's because you don't solve or people don't believe you can solve problems. And you haven't got clear, everybody, my, my, my family here in the audience. You must get more and more clear about what problems it is that you can solve and being better at communicating specifically that you can do it. And the second one, and I took you off track a little bit, was what are you passionate about? So I want you to stay on this helix a little bit, the six parts. But listen to this, everybody. This is the thing. This is the path. And yes, it's a broad concept, but the more you begin to contemplate this idea of, you know what? He's right. I'm not completely clear or nor are other people in my brand, what problems I solve.

• 27:32Ed Mylett?

  Whether you're an electrician apprentice who's looking to get hired and into a union job, all the way to I'm an entrepreneur trying to scale a cannabis business. I don't know, right? Like this applies to everybody. It applies, heck, I think it applies to what kind of a great father or mother you are.

• 27:50Rory Vaden?

  Totally.

• 27:51Ed Mylett?

  Right? My mother's amazing at this, right? This is the problem she solves for our family, right? My mom's so passionate about our family or this or the other thing. So keep going on the, on the six parts of the helix.

• 28:02Rory Vaden?

  Yeah. So just, and I would say to wrap that, those first two questions up, you make a living from the problem you solve, but you make a life from the passion that you chase. Like the, if you make money and you just make money, eventually you're burnt out. That's a great place to start because you gotta pay the bills. Like you need money to be able to do stuff. But then ultimately you gotta chase the passion. And it's not just like the, oh, this fires me up. But also what pisses you off? What breaks your heart? Like what makes you cry? What makes you, you look at it in the world and you go, I'm not okay with that. I'm not, I'm not comfortable with that. I won't accept that. We believe that is God's divine design of your humanity.

• 28:47Rory Vaden?

  That what breaks your heart, breaks your heart for a reason. Because you were created to do something about that problem. And, and your real magic will come from living in the passion. But you have to earn your right to get there first.

• 29:00Ed Mylett?

  That was my, one of my top things ever said on the show. Everybody go back and rewind about a minute and a half and hear that again. That's one of my favorite things ever been said on the show. Keep going. Unbelievably great.

• 29:09Rory Vaden?

  So the, the next two questions, okay? So you got what problem you solve? And then what, what are you passionate about? The next two questions are, what are your, what do you research? Okay, so your uniqueness will be tied to things you learn. Not just what you have a degree in, but what would you spend a Saturday afternoon learning about? Because you're gonna have expertise in that. Like you're going to be drawn to that. That, that's a hint towards your, your uniqueness. Like this stuff for me, all this stuff, I mean, this is fun for me. Like I love studying speakers and book launches and social media and funnels and like messaging and positioning. Like reputation, it's what I would do for free.

• 29:47Ed Mylett?

  Yeah.

• 29:48Rory Vaden?

  So what do you have academic head knowledge of? That's what do you research? The, the fourth question is though, a big one. What do you have results in? So this is the companion and the reason this is a helix is because each of these questions work in tandem. Which is not what have you learned, but what have you actually freaking done? What path have you walked down? And, and I'll tell you, Ed, because it normally takes us, it's normally a two day experience to help someone find their uniqueness. But I'll give you the shortcut. And this is something we didn't know four years ago when we started the company. But now we've had over 600 clients. And this is what we train our strategists to do when they're working with somebody to go, how do we find your uniqueness quickly? And, and this is it.

• 30:34Rory Vaden?

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

• 30:42Ed Mylett?

  Oh wow.

• 30:44Rory Vaden?

  You're most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were. And so, when you look at the problem you solve, right? It's going, what, what challenge have I conquered? What obstacle have I overcome? What setback have I survived? Whatever that path is, that is the shortest, clearest path to changing a life and making a ton of money and being full of purpose and just being on fire because you're living your divine uniqueness.

• 31:11Ed Mylett?

  Oh my gosh Rory, that's so freaking good.

• 31:13Rory Vaden?

  And that's what you do, right? That's what, that, the reason people respond to you is because you're, you're taking people on the path. You, you know, you, I love when you tell the stories of like your childhood and growing up and Eddie and like, you know, looking out for your sisters and, and then becoming wealthy and successful and paying the price. And you, you are this living model, an example of how anybody, anybody can do it.

• 31:38Ed Mylett?

  Thank you.

• 31:40Rory Vaden?

  You know, through the power of one more and you, you know, all, all the things that you, you talk about. But you're taking people on the journey and, and so that is the, the shortest, that's the shortcut, if there is one, is to ask yourself, what challenge have you conquered? What obstacle have you overcome? What setback have you survived? You are most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were.

• 32:01Ed Mylett?

  That is incredibly profound, man. Like, cause that's, I listen to things sometimes in life and I go, okay, let me just, let me put it through my application test of my own life. That's exactly what I did. I didn't know I was doing it. I wish someone earlier on would have said what you just said to me. But, and by the way, I've done that all along the way in my life. Even now, people say, well, you coached some really affluent people, very wealthy people. I was once at their level of affluence. I was once at their level of confusion. I was once at their level of, you know, achievement without fulfillment. You know, I understand these different elements and so it's so, so good what you're saying. You want to finish that helix up. I want to make sure we give them the little.

• 32:36Rory Vaden?

  Yeah, okay, good. Yeah, so we'll leave you hanging on, on, on five and six. So the fifth and sixth questions are related to how do you monetize a personal brand? So this is where we start to step into that. So the fifth question is, what are all the things that people would buy from you? And so you go, alright, how do I, how do I make money from this? The sixth question is what business do you want to be in? And that's what the dares is all about. Yep. Okay, so we already talked about dares. So if you back up and go, alright, we're looking for the dares. That's like, what business do I want to be in? Look for the dares. Like, that's the great, those are the great businesses. But then if you ask yourself the question, what are all the things people would buy?

• 33:16Rory Vaden?

  This is where you go, there's a big difference between a pile of followers and a pile of cash. And there's only five vehicles that we have really found, I mean, that will convert an audience or fan base or people into a pile of money. And we call these the paid, so it's another acronym. So P-A-I-D-S. So the P is product, physical product, right? So that's Jamie Kern Lima, that's Sarah Blakely. You create a product. If you're Elon Musk, it's a car, right? Like, you create a product and you sell it to people. The A is ads and affiliates. It's part of how you make money on this show, right? You got, you got, you know, shout out to our sponsors, right? For the Head and My Led Show. That, they pay the bills. And you're not actually selling your audience anything.

• 34:00Rory Vaden?

  You're selling other people access to your audience. And those are, if you're really good at throwing a party and if you're really good at getting people together, ads and affiliates are a great business model. The I is information. So you go, alright, I have this audience, I'm gonna offer them information. So that's why there's been the explosion of video courses and membership sites and certifications and assessments. And a lot of, a lot of our clients are experts and entrepreneurs who have either some information product or a vision for one. And then D is deals. Okay, P-A-I-D-S, deals. Deals are usually more advanced. So that's book deals, movie deals, TV deals. It's when a third party is paying you a set fee for the creation of something,

• 34:44Rory Vaden?

  regardless of how it performs, it's usually tied to royalties. But then the S is one that everyone should pay attention to. The S is services. So you go, I, I am going to offer a service. You got it. And services are the fastest path to cash. The fastest way to make money is to offer your time to help somebody do something. That's the good news. The bad news, it's the least scalable.

• 35:11Ed Mylett?

  Yep, because it involves you.

• 35:12Rory Vaden?

  Long-term, because it involves you. So you're trading time for money, which is why, you know, my Ted Talk that went viral and my second book is all about how to multiply time. And we talk about.

• 35:21Ed Mylett?

  We're gonna talk about that in a minute.

• 35:22Rory Vaden?

  Okay, we'll talk about that in a minute. So how do you sort of break free from that? But, you know, a lot of the clients we work with, and here's the thing. So this is something we call the law of AJ. So AJ is my wife. She's our CEO. She's our, we, her and I have been business partners. We were business partners in our former company. We started as business partners, then we started dating, then we got married, then we grew the company, sold the company, and then we started Brand Builders. But AJ is, she has this thing, because she sold over $2 million a year by herself.

• 35:55Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 35:56Rory Vaden?

  One person generating $2 million in revenue a year. You probably never heard of AJ Vaden. She doesn't have millions of followers. And that's why she calls it the law of AJ Vaden, which is, you don't need millions of followers to make millions of dollars. Most of us, if we had a couple dozen of our perfect client, we would double, triple our income.

• 36:16Ed Mylett?

  Totally true.

• 36:16Rory Vaden?

  So, service is a great place to start. So the brand DNA helix, those are the six questions. Normally, you know, we have white pads up and we're drawing stuff on the walls and we dump those out. And then the, your uniqueness lives at the intersection of those, of those six questions. And, and there's hints, right? Like, you're most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were. So we're looking at your past. Another way we describe it, Ed, is we sometimes say that your uniqueness is at the intersection of who you have been and who you feel called to be.

• 36:52Ed Mylett?

  I love this. By the way, I'm just thinking of people that I know, you know, that we've talked about. I think about Janie Kern Lima. We've brought her name up, so might as well stay there. This is someone who really struggled with insecurity about her skin condition that she had and wanted to solve that problem. And then she goes on to help millions of women feel more beautiful that were not feeling that way prior, potentially. I think of someone like Andy Frisella, my partner in my coaching program. This is a guy who was, you know, 150 pounds overweight and. Know what it felt like to feel good about himself and struggle with that. And now he's powerfully positioned to help people get fit and healthy in their life. I think of someone like me. I struggle with self-confidence. I come from a place where I didn't have a lot of inspiration in my life. I was broke. I'm powerfully positioned to help people who lack self-confidence or lack self-esteem

• 37:34Ed Mylett?

  or need inspiration or want to become wealthy or want to live a better life and a more functional life. And so this is just brilliance, bro. And it's like if someone would just listen to the show and go, you know, I'm giving myself the gift of just contemplating some of these questions that Rory's asking that the two of them are talking about on the show. There's at least something so far we've covered and we're only halfway through, but that we've covered that would change your whole life. Your business life, your emotional life, your, your purpose in your life, how you feel when you get up in the morning, et cetera. Did we go through all six or were we missing?

• 38:06Rory Vaden?

  Yeah, we did. We hit all six.

• 38:07Ed Mylett?

  Okay, I want to make sure, because this other little thing you say here, it's not little, but I, for me, it was huge. But it's this, how do I become known as a leader in my space? And you call it Sheehan's Wall.

• 38:16Rory Vaden?

  Yeah, we, we.

• 38:17Ed Mylett?

  This has to be talked about.

• 38:18Rory Vaden?

  Yeah, we have to talk about this. So, so this is actually, we call it, we named it Sheehan's Wall after Peter Sheehan, who was a colleague and a mentor that originally taught it to me and we've adapted a bit. But basically, in any industry, in any vertical, in any market, there's two groups of people. There are people who are unknown, they're struggling with obscurity. And then there are those who are known, they're recognizable, right? They have the reputation, they have the reach, they, they, they're, they have notoriety. And in between obscurity and notoriety is a huge wall, an invisible wall that we refer to as Sheehan's Wall.

• 38:56Ed Mylett?

  Okay.

• 38:57Rory Vaden?

  And what most people do is most of us who are in obscurity, we look at the people who are in notoriety and we go, ooh, I want to be like them, so I'm going to do what they do. And so we have lots of different topics, lots of, you know, and you go, okay, Tony Robbins, you know, he talks about money and he talks about relationships and he talks about business mastery and he talks about, you know, walking on fire and unleash a power within and, and health, right? Now he's got a book on health. Or Oprah has all these different things or Gary Vaynerchuk, like all these, all these different things. And what happens is we bounce off the wall. We have too many messages to too many audiences, too many business models. And when you have diluted focus, you get diluted results. And so you bounce off the wall. And so the key to breaking through she hands wall.

• 39:42Ed Mylett?

  Amen.

• 39:43Rory Vaden?

  Is to find your uniqueness, find the one thing that you can do is good, if not better than anyone else in the world. And you break through that wall. I mean, if you think about breaking through an actual wall, if you just took a sledgehammer and you were hitting all over, like you wouldn't do anything. You have to hit the same spot over and over and over and over. And eventually there will be a little crack. And once you get that little crack, then the next, then it opens and then it opens and then you burst through and then the whole wall comes down. But you have to find that area of specificity, which we believe is in everybody. We believe it is a part of God's design for your life, that you have that uniqueness, but, but you

• 40:23Rory Vaden?

  can't be all things to all people yet. At some point you can, like you'll get, you'll break through bigger and bigger wall. You're, you're an example, right? You're, you're going mainstream right now. So you're going to be breaking through bigger walls.

• 40:34Ed Mylett?

  Yeah, but you're a hundred percent right. Like all, you know, people I watch constantly sort of trying to replicate what I'm doing. And I'm like, no, I'm 51 years old. I built a bunch of businesses. I've had a pretty diverse life. I've had, been blessed to be successful in some different areas and also failure in certain areas. And I'm now at the point where the breadth of my message can be this wide. I can talk about health and wellness and emotional health and business and entrepreneurship and relationships and emotions and all these other things. You need to hit that same spot on the wall because for me, that first wall was in the money business, was in the financial business, kept hitting that wall, the real estate and financial business. And I broke that wall down. That is absolutely one million percent right. I think people fatigue on the repetition of it.

• 41:14Rory Vaden?

  They do.

• 41:15Ed Mylett?

  And they, there's invisible progress. I talk about in the book, as you know, the pinata analogy where you're hitting this pinata and there appears to be no breakdown where all the candy's coming out of the pinata. But compound pounding matters. You're making more progress, even if it's invisible than you think you are. But most people will quit hitting that spot on the wall because it doesn't look like it's breaking. And they get tired. They go, no, okay, now I'm going to start to talk about this or I'm going to be the motivator on Instagram, right? And it's like, no, your space is here. Stay there. Keep pounding on the wall. Become great and a leader in that space. I like one billion percent agree with you on that.

• 41:49Rory Vaden?

  And, and here's how you know when you broke through the wall. That's, that's the question. How do I know when I got there? Simple. When you're on the obscurity side of the wall, everything is push. Everything is hustle. Everything is fight. It's claw. It's persistence. It's just like, go, go, go. Once you're on the notoriety side of the wall, everything is pull. Everything, all this stuff is coming at you. You have more than you can keep up with. And now you have a new problem, which is too many opportunities. And you're going like, now I still need to sort it. So you still need to have a level of focus to some extent.

• 42:19Ed Mylett?

  The depth of your wisdom, brother, is so profound to me because that's exactly right. It's then the problem is the latter. And I'm struggling with this. Like, what do I say no to? There's all these different things. There's a thing that just occurred to me as we were talking. It occurred to me about 15 minutes ago, but I wanted to wait because I wanted to stay in this flow, which is that I'm beginning to really believe that there's a correlation between this idea of personal branding and beginning to just understand who you are as a person, that there's a correlation. Forget the business stuff, the money flow, the funnels, all these other things, you know, your career. It's like the work you would do to get good at this is the work you should do to improve as a human being. Right? That'll make you happier to know, this is who I am. This is what I stand for. This is what I refuse to let stand in the world. These are the things I'm passionate about.

• 43:01Ed Mylett?

  This is what I'm angry about. This is what I'm strong about. This is what I feel good about. This is what makes me feel alive and home. I for the, you know, I'm going to discover why I was born. And they're correlated. There's a connection between all of these business things we're talking about and your spirit and your well-being as a, as a human being, as a soul on this earth. There's a correlation between, which is why it is so profound. Do you feel that way?

• 43:27Rory Vaden?

  Totally. And when you, when you're sitting in your uniqueness, like when you occupy that space, you can't be stopped. You're, you are, you are put here on this earth to do something that nobody else can do. And once you find it and you're sitting in it and you occupy it, you're activated. You are lighting up and that's what it takes to break through the wall. Right? It takes that passion. It takes that fire. It takes the divine. Like I tell you, you know, I text you this all the time. I'm like, Ed, you're anointed. And, um, you know, you don't even know this story, but we, in January, in January of this year, there was a church sermon and we were leaving church and the pastor asked us a question.

• 44:10Rory Vaden?

  What do you feel God prompting to you to do that you're not listening to? And so we're leaving and AJ asked me, and she says, what was your answer to the question? And I said, this is so weird, babe, but I feel God telling me, go all in on Ed Mylett.

• 44:27Rory Vaden?

  And I was like, but it doesn't, I don't, I don't, the problem was I didn't know you. I, I, I had just, John Gordon, our mutual friend, you know, had just email introduced us, but it was just a very casual thing. And I said, I don't know, but I, and then, you know,

• 44:41Ed Mylett?

  That makes me feel wonderful.

• 44:42Rory Vaden?

  A few days later, well, that is what happens. I'm, you, when you find your uniqueness, you make yourself available to be used in the way that you were intended. And, and look, here's the, here's the thing about service, right? That remember that the second part of what Larry said, exploit your uniqueness in the service of others. When I'm achieving, like when I'm, when I'm competing, there's wins and there's losses. But when I am serving, there's only wins. I cannot lose. Like when I am here available to be used, and look, I didn't know if Ed Mylett was gonna say, oh, I like this Rory guy. I'll talk to him, right? You have access to anybody in the world.

• 45:28Rory Vaden?

  But you said something about it, said, I'm gonna invite you in. Maybe because I was there available to be used, maybe it was divinely orchestrated, maybe you just had a practical problem in the world at one specific moment in the time, and I happened to show up and be someone who had the practical solution. Whatever it is, it all works together.

• 45:47Ed Mylett?

  It was all the above, and it was also, um, I sort of know when I'm with someone special. I think all people are special, but some people arrive and own it. And they exude that energy and other people that are just as special, they just haven't accepted it about themselves yet. Like just watching you talk about this, I'm watching your eyes, you know, like there's a emotion tied to it for you. Because our, our convergence of our spirits together has already helped millions of people. Had we not met, some of those people would have never been reached before. And I'm like immensely grateful for it. I'm also sitting here thinking, you know, I only do 52 of these shows a year. And I'm so grateful that I get to do it and that we're, that you and I are sitting here right now, like this is awesome. I'm so glad you showed up this freaking good today.

• 46:32Ed Mylett?

  You know what I mean? Like it's so good and it inspires me and I I said we're halfway done and we're almost three quarters done, just simply because it's flown by for me. I assume, I thought we're only talking for 20 minutes. It's been like 45 minutes already. So I want to talk a little bit about getting started on this because one of the things you talk very eloquently about is procrastination and you have another term for it, which I really love, which makes people feel a lot better about the fact they do it. But here's why I want to attack this next. Okay, I gotta get on this.

• 46:59Rory Vaden?

  Yes.

• 46:59Ed Mylett?

  I'll do it later. Okay, I know I need to do it. I need to do a little bit more research on this. Okay, I, I know I need to do it after the summer's over when my kids go back to school. I know I need to do it, but right now I'm just really unclear about it, or I'm not feeling it, or I've got to wrap up this project. And it's just, we just get around to getting around to being the best in our life. And so it's a major factor and to me, it's one of the very few certain things that blocks people from ever experiencing their potential is this notion of, okay, it's delayed procrastination. First off, I love what you call it. Do you suffer from it? And what can someone do right now to stop doing that?

• 47:37Rory Vaden?

  Absolutely. So, so this is great because this takes, this takes me back to how I broke through the wall. So my very first book, Take the Stairs, you mentioned, so it hits the New York Times. This is how I broke through the wall was, and that book solves the problem of procrastination. And there's actually three types of procrastination. Okay, so the first one is classic procrastination. That's what we all think of consciously delaying what I know I should be doing. Okay, I know I should go to the gym. I don't want to do, I know I should pay my taxes. I don't want to do, okay, that's classic procrastination. That's not the most dangerous type though, because we know when we're doing it. The second type of procrastination is a term that I coined, that we, we coined called creative avoidance. And creative avoidance is different because it's subconscious.

• 48:21Rory Vaden?

  It's subconsciously filling the day with trivial work or menial work where you, you get the payoff of feeling busy. Like you're, you're in a lot of meetings, you're moving a lot of paper, you're answering a lot of emails, you're doing a bunch of stuff. But yet, when you get to the end of the day, if you're honest with yourself, you realize that actually you were nothing more than busy, just being busy.

• 48:39Ed Mylett?

  The millions of heads are nodding right now going, yep, I got that one.

• 48:42Rory Vaden?

  And, and a better word for that would be distraction. Right? You go, "I'm just gonna pop on, you know, and check Instagram real quick." And then, you know, whatever. Three hours later, you're on YouTube like searching about how to how to drop an egg from a two-story building and not have it crack. Like, whatever happens. So, it happens. But then there's a third type of procrastination, which we identified in the first book, but we didn't know it would be such a hot button. And that's what actually became the second book. And so, the third type of procrastination is what we call priority dilution. And priority dilution is fascinating because it has nothing to do with being lazy or apathetic or disengaged like the first two types.

• 49:28Rory Vaden?

  But it's the same net result, which is that at the end of the day, your most significant priorities are left incomplete, not because you're lazy, but because you have allowed your attention to shift from less significant to more urgent tasks. Somebody struggling with priority dilution is living in a constant state of interruption. They're always dealing with fires, is the word that they use. And it affects the very people you wouldn't think to be procrastinators. It's the do-gooders, the checklists, the taskmasters, the owners, the executives. And so procrastination is something that all of us struggle with. The answer is, I definitely struggle with it. I struggle with all three types of it. That's why I wrote the book, right?

• 50:11Rory Vaden?

  Because I was most powerfully positioned to serve the person I once was, which was trying to understand the psychology of how do ultra performers overcome procrastination?

• 50:20Ed Mylett?

  So good.

• 50:25Ed Mylett?

  One of the things, I want to keep going. We're gonna go a little over. It's too good. I wrote The Power of One More. You know, in my mind, had the chapters in there I thought that would resonate the most.

• 50:36Rory Vaden?

  Yep.

• 50:37Ed Mylett?

  And probably I was right on some of them. But the one that I had on there on time, multiplying time and efficiency surprised me at the diversity of people that it resonated with, the different strategies that I teach. I thought that was gonna be more-

• 50:50Rory Vaden?

  Like your three day day? Your three day day?

• 50:51Ed Mylett?

  My three days in a day. And I thought to myself, that will resonate with only really high achiever entrepreneurs, right? That'll be that one chapter that they'll all get. But the people that aren't certainly in that space, it won't resonate. Actually, not true. It really resonated with a lot of people. And it's not the most resonating chapter in the book, but it's one of them. And you talk about this idea of sort of multiplying your time.

• 51:13Rory Vaden?

  Yeah.

• 51:13Ed Mylett?

  And I'm just fascinated with your take on this because it's, you've got this idea of procrastination, or creative delaying, or whatever the heck you're gonna term it. The three types is brilliant, by the way, as always with you. But what about this idea of multiplying the time? Because someone's saying, okay, I gotta do this personal brand, but my kids are in soccer.

• 51:29Rory Vaden?

  Yeah.

• 51:29Ed Mylett?

  Or, you know, I'm getting my degree right now. I'm a junior in college, or I'm getting my MBA, or I've got my main business, my husband works as well, I've gotta make sure that I at least work out, you know? And I'm just like, wow, there's like, there's four seconds left in the day for me to do this.

• 51:44Rory Vaden?

  Yeah, let's be real about it. So that's the struggle, right? It's like, and what's crazy is you go, how is it there's more books written on time management than ever before, right? There's more courses, and yet we all feel more busy, buried, and behind. One of the things that was in our research study, 38% of people are checking their email and social media in the bathroom. Like, what could be more efficient than that? Like, there you are doing two things at once, sometimes three. And like, you're just, like, you're using every single second.

• 52:14Ed Mylett?

  Yes.

• 52:14Rory Vaden?

  But, but we're still never caught up. We're still overwhelmed, we're still buried. And it's because we don't understand how to multiply time. And I think the biggest reason we don't know how to multiply time is because you've been told your whole life, the one thing that is impossible to create is time. And it's wrong.

• 52:34Ed Mylett?

  It's totally-

• 52:34Rory Vaden?

  Everything you know about time management is wrong, but this is above all. Now, here's the thing. So- When we say multiply your time, Ed, I mean it literally. It's not a superlative. I'm not exaggerating. I mean it literally. Now, there's nothing I can teach you that will create more time inside of one day. So, we all have the same 24 hours, which is 1,440 minutes or 86,400 seconds. I can't give you more time in a day. But that's exactly the problem is that most of us live in the world with a one-day paradigm. We wake up and we say, "What's the most important thing I have to do today?" It's a one-day paradigm. That's not how the multipliers think. That's not how ultra performers think. What we noticed is they're not thinking about today.

• 53:17Rory Vaden?

  They're thinking about tomorrow, and the next day, and the next day. And we call that the significance calculation, right? So, Dr. Covey introduced importance and urgency, and we added a third dimension of that, which is significance. So, importance is how much does it matter? Urgency is how soon does it matter? But significance is different. Significance is how long is this going to matter? And when you make the significance calculation, you break free of the paradigm of one day. You start thinking about the future, and this is how it's possible to multiply time. I can tell you in one sentence. This is a whole book, my whole TED Talk in one sentence. You multiply time by spending time on things today

• 54:00Rory Vaden?

  that create more time tomorrow. You spend time on things. There are certain things that you can spend time on today that create more time tomorrow. And this is a whole nother subject that we're kind of breaching here. But like, you know, like, online bill pay is a great example. You would go, you know, if I said, "You have two hours in your day. You should set up online bill pay." People would be like, "What? That's stupid." Like, what a trivial insignificant use of my time. And I'd say, "No, no, no. That's not how a multiplier would look at it." Because a multiplier knows that if you spend two hours today setting up your online bill pay, and it saves you 30 minutes every single month from paying your bills, then after just four months of time,

• 54:43Rory Vaden?

  you will have broken even on that investment of time. And every month thereafter, you will be getting something that we call ROTI, return on time invested. It's creating time. Another flagship line, so the book's called Procrastinating on Purpose. The TED Talk's called How to Multiply Time. One of the other flagship lines is, "Automation is to your time..."

• 55:07Rory Vaden?

  Exactly what compounding interest is to your money.

• 55:12Ed Mylett?

  Outstanding. It's, uh, ugh. While you were talking, I'm like, this is the difference between spending time and investing time.

• 55:21Rory Vaden?

  Yes.

• 55:21Ed Mylett?

  And that's, then you come up with compound interest, right? Like, there are some things you're gonna do where you're spending time. You have to have parts of your day and your life where you're investing time. This time I'm investing is going to pay a return for me at another point. Most people just spend their time. What's incredible is Rory and I had not met when I wrote my book, but in the book, as you know, I use the term multiplier over and over. I even have a chapter called, what's a one more multiplier as a person? You can add people to your life who are multipliers also, to your organizations, to your personal life. To, if you're a coach, to your sports teams, et cetera. I, uh, where'd someone begin on this, Rory? So, let's go to social for a minute. Give me a little bit of your vision. You're a visionary dude when it comes to this stuff, because I'm in it.

• 56:05Ed Mylett?

  Sometimes you, you have the ability to be above it. So I'm in it, I'm operating every day. I've got a podcast, I've got a YouTube, I've got a TV show, I got Instagram, I got LinkedIn, I got Twitter, I got Facebook, I got, you know, my personal interviews that I do, I got my speaking, I got all my businesses. So I'm in it a lot. It's important to have people around you who are above things, or at least listen to a show like this. Okay, I want to build my personal brand. I know some of it involves social media, at least some of it probably does, right? If I'm gonna have it, I mean, in some way, shape or form, probably going forward.

• 56:31Rory Vaden?

  That's the, that's the current, the current mechanism. That's one of the current, modern day mechanisms.

• 56:36Ed Mylett?

  Where do I go? Do I go, so, A, do you like TikTok, Instagram, LinkedIn, YouTube? You don't care about the profile? And what would I just do first? Like, okay, I got an Instagram account, I got 1,700 followers. You know, I post once a week, I post some stuff on my story, you know, uh, and I know it's a broad question for a real diverse audience between, we have people here that are welders, fitness models, high-end CEOs of companies, influencers, I've got, you know, everybody on the planet. So, or different, not everybody on the planet listens to my stuff, but diverse backgrounds on the planet. What would you say?

• 57:08Rory Vaden?

  Well, straight up, I mean legitimately, the first thing I would tell you to do is go to freebrandcall.com/edmylett and request a call with our team. Because the first thing you need to do, like, people ask all the wrong questions, which is, should I be on social? Should I write a book? Should I be a speaker? Should I do a podcast? Right? And we're all lost in the tactics. The first thing you have to do is find your uniqueness. You have to zero in on your purpose. You have to get clear on your identity. Identity is another thing that you and I share a lot in common. Like, the power of knowing who you are and why you're here and who you're meant to serve. And, I mean, as, you know, forgive the humble brag, we're the best in the world at helping people find their uniqueness.

• 57:53Rory Vaden?

  Like, there's just not, our uniqueness is helping people find their uniqueness. So there's just not anyone better. So, I would say, check out freebrandcall.com/edmylett. Now, separate of that, you know, you could take what we've talked about here, you know, whatever, and kind of try to take yourself through it. Then you go, you pick a vehicle to, for that self-expression to take place. Self-expression, okay. Right, yeah. But here's the thing, to this whole conversation about multiplier, reputation is the ultimate multiplier. Reputation is the ultimate multiplier, right? Like, when John Gordon introduces me to you, or you go, oh, you worked with Lewis Howes, or, oh, hey, you know, like, there's these other people that I know that you've worked with, that matters. And then, you know, we develop a relationship.

• 58:38Rory Vaden?

  I mean, one of my favorite concepts that you talk about in The Power of One More is how you're not as far away from success as you think. You're not. You're one more attempt, right? It's one more strike at She-Han's wall. It's one more hit at the pinata. You're one relationship away, right? And what I'm realizing is that, in a way, you needed me. I was that relationship for your book launch. Absolutely. And I need you, right? Yes. So, it can be that fast, but your reputation matters. So, in an all-practical sense, it doesn't, the platform doesn't matter. It's not, is it Facebook? Is it TikTok? Is it LinkedIn? I don't care. Pick one, and- Focus on it, right? If you have diluted focus, you get diluted results.

• 59:21Rory Vaden?

  Pick one and do it. And people are like, oh, well, like, what technology? Like, what CRM tool should I use? Doesn't matter. Like, it's the best answer to that question is not what's the best technology? It's the one you're most likely to implement.

• 59:35Ed Mylett?

  You're right.

• 59:35Rory Vaden?

  That's all that matters.

• 59:36Ed Mylett?

  You know, the one thing on that, too, is like when we met, so how much what you've said today is valid. We met, I saw your uniqueness, right? Like, okay, this guy's different. This guy's special. I believe this guy can help solve my problem. But it was confirmed, frankly, when you said, by the way, and this is just the one person, there's lots of people you've worked with, but you said, actually, there were two. You said, you know what? I've helped Eric Thomas and I've helped Lewis Howes. I said, cool. And I, we hung up and then I confirmed. And that

• 1:00:02Rory Vaden?

  Oh, I didn't know that.

• 1:00:02Ed Mylett?

  That reputation was confirmed. So that's why that, that what you said earlier, that endorsement from someone else, it doesn't have to be a well-known person.

• 1:00:10Rory Vaden?

  I don't have millions of followers, but it was testimonials.

• 1:00:13Ed Mylett?

  Testimonial is what confirmed what I already felt. I saw the passion. I saw the talent. I saw that you could solve some problems for me and the testimonial confirmed it. So like, we are literally a living example of the things that you've, I don't care if you have a gardening business. You're a landscaper. You had better have a couple testimonials that I can call or that I can interact with or that you can show me that tells me you can solve my problem or help my family be happier by having a more beautiful landscape designed at my house or whatever it might be in your life. You're 1 billion percent right about this stuff. Okay, last question for you. First off, I want to thank you for today. So we, I know it flew by, didn't it? Can you imagine already?

• 1:00:49Rory Vaden?

  So fast.

• 1:00:49Ed Mylett?

  I want to thank you because there's a million podcasts that you and I can do together. And I'm going to have you back because I know everyone's going, Hickey, I didn't know this guy before. And man, I like this dude. This dude is special. And we've got all kinds of diverse stuff that you and I can cover. But the last thing I just want to do is on success overall.

• 1:01:05Rory Vaden?

  Yeah.

• 1:01:05Ed Mylett?

  Okay. There's a profile. You talk very eloquently about how our brains are not really wired to produce success.

• 1:01:14Rory Vaden?

  Yeah, not.

• 1:01:15Ed Mylett?

  Right? And so this is something that gives everybody kind of a break mentally. So like, wow, he's right about this. So I just think this is, I wish we kind of stuck this in the beginning because I think it's such a great point that you make. Hopefully everyone's still here listening because it's been so valuable. So the last part is about success and how we have to sort of almost overcome our nature in order to become successful. So I'll let you have that.

• 1:01:36Rory Vaden?

  Yeah, so the classic take the stairs stuff, right? So the human brain is not designed for success. It's not. It's designed for survival. The primary function of the human brain is to keep you alive. Keeping you alive, survival is about conserving energy. Success is the opposite. Success is about expending energy. Success is about doing the uncomfortable. It's about pushing your limits. It's about doing things that are new. And so our natural default is not to be successful. But we are fortunate that most of us like live in a world where we have the luxury of being able to pursue success because most of us don't have to worry about survival on a daily basis.

• 1:02:21Rory Vaden?

  It's something that we take tremendously for granted. But if you're going to pursue success, you have to rewire your brain neurologically. You have to understand the way the ultra performers, ultra performers think. So if you, if you have struggled with procrastination, if you've struggled with taking action, if you've been distracted, if you've had diluted focus, those things don't mean you're doomed for failure. They don't mean that there's anything wrong with you. They don't mean you're lazy. They mean you have a perfectly functioning, healthy, normal, human brain. Like, but the problem with normal is that it's normal.

• 1:02:54Ed Mylett?

  Yes.

• 1:02:55Rory Vaden?

  If you want to be successful, if you want to like, you have to be extraordinary. If you want to be successful, you have to do something different. And, and here's the problem, you can't just do it once. This is probably my most famous quote, and you see it ripped off on the internet all the time, but it's from my Take the Stairs book. Success is never owned. Success is only rented and the rent is due every day. Why? Because our human nature for indulgence and temptation and sin never leaves us. We default to the escalator mentality. We default towards the easy, safe, comfortable thing. And success is about taking the stairs and doing the things you don't want to do and doing the things you know you should be doing each and every day, over and over and over again.

• 1:03:40Ed Mylett?

  So good, Rory. So good, man. I just love you. I'm so glad we did this today. I'm so glad you're in my life. I have to tell you everybody, one thing about taking those stairs, stay with me on this last, and then I'm gonna tell you where to go find Rory one more time. Here's the thing, the thing I know about ultra performers is their threshold for what they must know before they act is lower.

• 1:04:00Speaker 01

  Hmm.

• 1:04:01Ed Mylett?

  And for people that struggle in life, they've got this huge threshold, I've gotta know so much before I will take action. And the higher that threshold is of what you falsely believe you need to know to take steps, is what holds you back. Ultra performers have a lower threshold of what they have to know before they begin. They know most of it will happen through experience, through being in the space, and figure it out when they get there. It's a huge separator in order to take the stairs. You have to take the step before you know every single step in front of you. You can't wait to know all the steps and all the information, or you'll never get going. So, great, great communication between the two of us today. Where do they go to get you?

• 1:04:38Rory Vaden?

  Yeah, so freebrandcall.com/edmylett, like if that is where we wanna get to know you, right? We work with people one-on-one, like we're a human-based, like that's how we work with people. So, I would say just check us out there and, you know, again, your, your character, your personal development is the foundation of your personal brand. Your integrity is the foundation of your reputation, like who, your uniqueness is connected to how the world is gonna know you. So, if you wanna learn more about that, would check that out. And, and the last little thing I would just say here, Ed, is that another reason why people sometimes don't take action is because they convince themselves that it doesn't matter.

• 1:05:19Rory Vaden?

  They tell themselves, "Somebody already did that, like somebody already wrote that book, or why would anyone listen to me, or I don't have millions of followers." But I'm telling you, that if you have a calling, like if you feel some type of an urge to be like, "I feel like I have a message, I'm supposed to share with the world." We believe that the calling that you feel on your heart is the result of a signal that's being sent out by somebody else. And that person needs you more than you need them.

• 1:05:50Ed Mylett?

  Very good.

• 1:05:51Rory Vaden?

  And they only can get it from you, right? It's the law of frequency. They are tuned into your frequency for whatever reason. They don't need whoever that other famous person is. They need you. They connect with you because for some reason you're like them or you connect with them. And so if you feel that calling, I'm telling you, it's because somebody is out there right now begging and pleading and perhaps on their freaking hands and knees praying for answers to questions that you have already solved. They're looking for a path that you have already walked down. And so it is your obligation to exploit your uniqueness in the service of them.

• 1:06:28Ed Mylett?

  I also think you can document you walking down that path to inspire people, even if you're not finished with the path.

• 1:06:33Rory Vaden?

  Yes.

• 1:06:34Ed Mylett?

  That connects with people. If you're starting to lose weight, document it and say, "I'm beginning this process. I'm going to take you on my journey with me." You're amazing Rory. By the way, I want to recommend to everybody again, Get the Power of One More, written by Ed Mylett. I hear that guy's pretty good.

• 1:06:46Rory Vaden?

  Do it.

• 1:06:47Ed Mylett?

  And follow, if you're listening to this on any audio platforms, go subscribe to YouTube so you get some of my video content. If you're watching this on YouTube, go subscribe to Spotify or iTunes or Apple or one of these places where you can get audio on podcasts. Follow me on all social media platforms as well. Share today's show. And I want to remind you, you were born to do something great with your life and there's power in doing one more. God bless you. Max out. This is the Ed Mylett Show.