[00:00:00] Hala Taha: Young and profiters, welcome back to the show. And today we are talking brand building, time management, and so much more with one of the world's leading experts on the psychology of influence. Rory Vaden is the bestselling author of Take the Stairs and Procrastinate on Purpose. His insights have been featured on Good Morning America, Fox and Friends, and in the Wall Street Journal, just to name a few.

And today he and his wife, AJ, serve as the co founders of Brand Builders Group. Where they teach their clients how to build and monetize their personal brand. Rory, welcome to Young and Profiting Podcast. Yes! 

[00:01:50] Rory Vaden: I'm so excited. I'm so excited. I think you're like my newest, coolest friend. Thank you for having me. 

[00:01:57] Hala Taha: I think the same. I'm really excited for this conversation. Way to bring some great energy to the conversation already. So Rory, you are super well known for actually building brands, but before you started building other people's brands, you were, of course, building your own brand.

And in the past, you said success is never owned, it's rented. And the rent is due every day. So my first question to you is a softball. Do you still feel like success is never owned? Do you still feel that way today? Like you're renting your success or do you feel like you've owned some of your success now?

What 

[00:02:30] Rory Vaden: a good question. Also, you guys went into the backlogs. You did, you went to the back catalogs. So that was from take the stairs, which was been out over 10 years. So success is never owned. It's rented and the rent is due every day. I do still feel that way. I feel that way. And I feel like the people we work with exhibit that you're still hustling.

I'm still hustling. Ed, my let Lewis house, our clients, Amy Porterfield. These people are still hustling. Some people might look at them and go, Oh, they're at the top. Like, why are they're hustling? But they don't look at it that way. They look at Jay Shetty and go, Oh, they're always pursuing somebody or the next level.

And the other thing about that holla is. If you take out that word success and you put in for it, whatever really matters. Financial security is never really owned. It's rented and the rent is due every day. Like if you start making stupid financial decisions, you can blow a lot of money quickly. Being in great physical health, certainly never owned that's rented and the rent is due every day.

A great marriage or a happy relationship. It doesn't matter if you've been married 20 years, if you don't treat your spouse or significant other in the way that they deserve 20 years can disappear in. One moment or, you know, a few minutes of bad decisions. So I do agree with that. And I think I look at people like you constantly leveling up.

You blew my mind when you came on my podcast and I was just like, gosh, there's such a next level for me and podcasting. And I got to do the work if I want the results. So what a great question. And yes, I would emphatically say there are some things I've changed my mind on, but that's not one of them.

Success is never owned. It's rented and the rent is due every 

[00:04:19] Hala Taha: day. I love that. I resonate with so much of what you're saying. And I align with so much of what you're saying. So when you actually wrote those words, like you said, that was decade ago. Now you were in grad school living in a crappy apartment.

Can you tell us about that period of your life and how you ended up starting 

[00:04:36] Rory Vaden: to speak? It really started even before that. So I was raised by a single mom and my mom sold Mary Kay cosmetics. So my mom had my brother when she was 17 years old and then she was divorced from his father a few years later and then she had me when she was 22 and then my biological father, they were divorced six months after I was born and I never really saw him again.

And so she was a single mom. And she got into direct sales. So I learned about direct sales. And then when I was in college, I got involved in a company. I actually went door to door, 14 hours a day, six days a week on straight commission, just so I could pay my way through school. And there was a speaker who came and spoke at that company.

And I was, I thought, man, that's my dream is I want to speak. And so I went up to him. His name was Eric Chester. And I said, Eric, one day I'm going to do what you do, but he had mentioned that he had a son in college. And I said, right now I need your son's phone number because I'm going to recruit him to come with me and do this next summer.

And we made like a pact. He said, if you mentor my son in this program, then when you graduate, I'll mentor you. And so he did, I did, and his son, Zach worked with me for two years, we became really good friends. And then when I finished my undergrad and was in graduate school, Eric was the one who, he was a Hall of Fame speaker.

And, you know, I asked him, I was like, okay, I'm ready. What do I need to go do? And I, and I'll never forget how the very first time we sat down, he said, Rory, the difference between a good speaker. And a great speaker is 1, 000 speeches. So the first thing I want you to do is go out and give 1, 000 speeches.

And just a couple of years ago, I became the youngest person in U. S. history to be inducted myself into the Professional Speaking Hall of Fame. Oh, wow. You know, I've got a viral Ted Talk that has like 5 million views. And I have to tell you, Hala, I'm still excited to go back and see Eric Chester and find out what step two is because there's been so much speaking.

So that was how I got my start early 

[00:06:57] Hala Taha: on. Amazing. And I learned that you spoke over 300 times for free in your first 18 months. So a lot of people aren't willing to roll up their sleeves, do free work like that. What was the logic? I know you were building your reps, but how did you decide, okay, now I'm going to get paid and I've got enough experience.

Uh, so tell us about that. 

[00:07:18] Rory Vaden: What actually happened was Eric said the fastest way to get stage time is to join a group called Toastmasters. And so it's this worldwide organization that's been around for decades and they had a contest called the World Championship of Public Speaking. And so I thought. Gosh, maybe, you know, at the time I was 22 years old.

And so I had no credibility. This is long before social media, you know, it was like ever really out. And I thought maybe if I could win the world championship of public speaking, maybe that would give me the credibility to like launch a speaking career. You know, it was all adults who were in this competition.

And I thought if I just got more reps and I practiced harder. And so I did, I went out and I spoke 304 times for free. The first year I made it to there's 25, 000 contestants. I made it to the top 10 in the world and I lost. And then the next year I got more coaching. I spent more time, thousands of hours studying film, made it all the way back to the world championship.

And then I lost again, actually, but I came in second. So I lost better than the first time I was the world champion first runner up. And that was just my strategy that had been my strategy for life. In school and in knocking door to door was like, I'm just going to do a higher quantity than everybody else.

And I had this belief that if I did more quantity, eventually that would lead to quality. And that's what happened. And then that's what led us to start our first company. 

[00:08:50] Hala Taha: That's amazing. And what do you feel speaking did for your personal 

[00:08:53] Rory Vaden: brand? So one of the things that we say at Brand Builders Group, we tell our clients.

The shortest path between turning someone from a complete stranger into a lifelong fan of yours is a world class one hour presentation. Somebody can go from, I've never heard of you. Now they can do that in a book too, but it takes longer. It takes four, somewhere like four hours. But if they see you on stage, if you've ever seen Ed Milet on stage, You could go, I've never heard of this guy and you walk in, you know, another one of my good friends is Jamie Kern Lima.

She right now, I think is one of the best speakers in the world. If you've never heard of Jamie Kern Lima and you step into a room after a one hour experience with her, you become a lifelong fan. And so that's the power of the spoken word is it is just a trust accelerator and they don't really teach it in schools and they don't really teach it in business.

If you don't study it or get coaching on it, a lot of people think they're good speakers. In reality, they're good talkers and there's just a big difference. But, you know, we define personal branding, which is most of what we do now as simply the digitization of your reputation and reputation has been around since the dawn of time.

And the spoken word is like before there was going live and before there was webinar and before there was podcasts and before there was YouTube, there was just the spoken word in front of live audiences. I think the reason why social media and the reason why YouTube and podcasting is so valuable is because if you have the ability to speak, if you have the ability to communicate with authority, if you have the ability to make an audience laugh, if you have the ability to articulate points eloquently, then you can create the same level of trust, except now you can do it at scale.

You can automate trust at scale when you combine some of my superpowers with some of your superpowers and really like growing your platform. I 

[00:10:56] Hala Taha: agree with everything you're saying, because I've been doing so much more speaking in the last two to three years. And the types of fans that I get after these types of speaking engagements, like they're waiting in line to talk to me, then they're reaching out to me on DM on LinkedIn and Instagram.

Then they show up to my course and they say, Oh, and then they write me an interview. And it's just a way more passionate type of fan because they feel like they really know you because there's just so much transparency and authenticity when it's you in the flesh. Being yourself and being on stage, right?

So I totally agree that it creates superfans. 

[00:11:28] Rory Vaden: Well, and ironically, I think as AI takes over more and more, people are going to gravitate towards that human experience. And I think people are going to gravitate back towards live events because It's not that far away, in many ways it's already here, where you can replicate a video of someone, a voice of someone, you can use Mid Journey and create an entire person that's fake and turn them into an influencer, but what you can't really do is have someone stand on stage in front of a room full of humans and move them Emotionally create that human bond.

And I think as AI takes over content more and more digitally, I think there's going to be a return of this skill coming back for humans. 

[00:12:21] Hala Taha: Totally. It's like humans are going to be the rare thing that everybody wants. Yeah. Okay. So there's so much to cover. I want to get into all of your personal branding strategies, but first.

We thought that it'd be really fun to uncover some of your greatest hits from all the different books that you wrote of time management, focus, procrastination, and just talking about all these topics that I know my listeners are really curious about. So I'm going to rattle off quotes and then you can just elaborate.

You're going to rattle off my quotes? I'm going to rattle off your 

[00:12:50] Rory Vaden: quotes. That's so interesting. You're going to quote me to me. That's kind of awkward for me, but I love it. I love it. I did it with 

[00:12:58] Hala Taha: James Clear when it was on and it was fun. So we'll do it. We'll see. Okay. Success is not about taking the escalator.

It's about taking the stairs. What did you mean by 

that? 

[00:13:08] Rory Vaden: Yeah. So that actually really should be given appropriate citation to Zig Ziglar. Okay, good. Zig said that differently. Zig said there is no escalator to success. You have to take the stairs. And after my world championship of public speaking, I was at an event of the national speakers association event.

And we're sitting in this huge convention and it's lunch and I'm sitting in this cafeteria and I knew nobody, right? I'm this 20 something year old kid and I'm sitting by myself and this guy walks up to me and he says, Hey, you're Rory Vaden, right? And I said, well, yes, sir, I am. And he said, I heard about you.

You're the Toastmaster kid, right? Like you made it to the Toastmaster thing. And I said, well, well, yes, sir. I, that's me. And I said, I'm sorry. I don't know. I don't have we ever met. And he reaches his hand out and he says, my name is Zig Ziglar and. People today may not even know who Zig is, but Zig was an absolute legend for decades in this space.

And he sat down next to me, uh, with his wife, who he used to call the redhead, if you've ever seen any of his old videos. And we became personal friends. He was a personal mentor of mine for several years. I used to travel with him to like these big, huge arenas. You know, he passed away several years ago.

But anyways, he was the one that said, There is no elevator to success. You have to take the stairs. And so even the whole take the stairs concept was a bit of a homage to my mentor, Zig Ziglar. 

[00:14:39] Hala Taha: I love that. So next one, a key to self discipline is of course commitment. And you said the more we have invested in something, the less likely we are to let it fail.

What did you mean by that? 

[00:14:51] Rory Vaden: Anything that matters to you is going to be hard to let go of. The things that matter to you are the things that you've put the most time And love and energy and money and prayer into. So you go, if you lose a loved one, why is it so hard? It's because we've spent so much time together.

We have so many shared experiences. We have so many interests and stories. The irony is that the more we have invested into something, the less likely we are to let it fail. Well, what most people do is they keep their commitments conditionally. They keep their commitments. As long as they're convenient to do so, but the moment it becomes inconvenient to keep that commitment, we typically question the commitment or we challenge ourselves to go, Oh, you know, maybe I'm not cut out for this, or maybe it's not worth it.

And so they go in search of something easier. reality, they find that there's not anything easier. They keep showing up and the same issues replicate again and again in their life because they struggle with commitment and the real thing to do. When you are kind of tested to go, I'm not sure if this is going to work out.

I'm not sure if this is the right thing is to increase your commitment. You increase your level of investment, right? If you're struggling on social media and you just go, well, gosh, maybe I'm not cut out for that. Well, of course, then it's not going to be successful. The people who are successful at it are the ones that go, no, I'm going to figure this out.

I'm going to spend more time, more energy. I'm going to hire coaches. I'm going to hire an agency. I'm going to learn. I'm going to figure this out. So, I think the difference here is going, you don't have a plan B. You only have a plan A. Now, you have to be flexible to adapt what plan A is. Leaving, or quitting, or escaping is not one of the options.

And that is one of the secrets of ultra performers, right? They lock in on a goal, and they go, I am going to achieve this. How or when, I'm not entirely sure, but I'm target locked. And I'm going to find a way other people go, I'll do it if it's comfortable, I'll do it if it's safe, I'll do it if it's easy, not ultra performers.

[00:17:04] Hala Taha: Yeah. This reminds me of something that Marie Forleo says, everything is figure out of all. So it's like figuring out how, what, what are the ways that you're going to figure out how to do whatever goal that you set out and instead of contemplating what is the exact right thing I should do, how do I actually do the thing that I want 

[00:17:20] Rory Vaden: to do?

Yeah. And there's always a way. So that's another thing. Is that what most people ask when they reach this decisional threshold of deciding, should I continue forward in this commitment or should I not? What most people ask is should, as they say, should I do this? Should I do this? Do that? Is it possible?

Do I like this? And what the ultra performers do is only one degree different. They don't ask, is this possible or should I do this or can I pull this off? They simply ask, how is this possible? How could I make this work? What would it take in order for it to come true? And the moment you ask this question, how it's like your mind transcends all limitations and you break free of these preexisting belief barriers and these mental prisons of our own construction of what we think is possible and what isn't.

And your creativity engages. And the human brain, this is where you get into the neuroscience, well, the neuroscience of this is that the human brain cannot delineate between positive or negative. It simply does whatever you tell it to do. The human brain also cannot delineate between true and false. It simply believes whatever it is told most often.

So If you tell yourself, this is hard, and I don't know if this is right for me, your brain is going to process and find evidence and documentation and examples for why it's too hard and why it won't work out for you. And it will process until it finds a rationalization that is comfortable for you to accept so that you can quit and you can stay safe.

But, similarly, if you ask the question, how is this possible? Your brain will process indefinitely on that, and it will process and process and process until one day you'll wake up, you know, in the middle of the night and boom, the answer comes. It's not that most people don't have the talent or the skill to succeed.

It's that they don't have the resolve or the commitment, and so they're not able to see the solutions because their brain is not actually being programmed to look for solutions. Their brain is being programmed to look for excuses. 

 That's so powerful. 

[00:19:44] Hala Taha: And I think all of us have these big dreams, big goals, but a lot of us have a problem with time management, actually focusing on the things we need to focus on, prioritizing.

And you actually talk a lot about creative avoidance and procrastination. So my first question to you on that is why is that so personal to you? Why have you wrote so much about procrastination? 

[00:20:04] Rory Vaden: Yeah, my first book, Take the Stairs. And my second book procrastinate on purpose, five permissions to multiply your time.

So really the way this fits in is I have always been fascinated with success and really if you look at the arc of my whole career, holla, I bucket it with something very simple called the four levels of influence. And so level one is influencing yourself to take action. You're influencing one person yourself.

And all of my early work is about level one influence, which is basically the enemy of influencing yourself is procrastination. And so we talk about creative avoidance and priority dilution, these terms that I invented for different types of procrastination that people aren't aware of. So we can talk about those if you want.

And level two influence. is influencing one other human. And so that is all of my work in sales. And our first company was a sales coaching company. We started that in 2006. We grew that to eight figures. We sold it in 2018. We had 200 people and all we did was sales coaching. That's influencing another person.

Also relationships and one on one communication is level two influence. How do I talk and listen and interact with. An individual in a way that creates influence, it moves them to action. Level three influence is influencing a group of people or a team. So this is all the area and the work and the study and the writing we've done on leadership is going.

How do you act, talk, behave, operate, and create systems in a way that activates a small group of people to take action. So that's leadership. And then level four influence is really what we're doing now, which is personal branding. And that is inspiring and moving a community of people. It's creating a movement.

It's activating and influencing people who you may never actually meet face to face. But you impact them through your writing, your videos, your podcast, et cetera. So that's most of where we spend our world now. But my early books and my early work really stem from learning how to influence myself and to battle my own beast of overcoming procrastination.

And one of the things I think not enough people understand that you can't build a great personal brand until you build strong personal character. 

[00:22:34] Hala Taha: Yeah, you need strong core values that you yourself align to before anybody wants to follow you because if you're not an impressive person or a well rounded person with good character, no one's going to want to follow you or be a fan of yours because you're only fans of people that you look up 

[00:22:50] Rory Vaden: to.

Totally. And my pastor said this to me one time. He said, Your influence will never grow wider than your character runs deep. Your influence will never grow wider than your character runs deep. And if it does, that's when the implosions happen, right? That's when the celebrities and stuff, they have these implosions because they have wide influence in the public, but they have personal lives that are a mess.

And that's what causes implosion. So you have to build a strong personal brand on a foundation of strong personal character. Because the reality today is. It takes serious muscle. I mean, you look at the people who are crushing it on YouTube. These are not people just pushing record and throwing it up there.

They have teams of people. They have editors. They're thinking of hooks. They're very intelligent and sophisticated. You look at the people who do marketing and funnels. I think a lot of times people go, yeah, just build an online business, like throw up a website and make millions. It's like, no, that's not really how it works.

It takes extreme discipline, focus, commitment, intelligence, strategy, and that's true about anything. I mean, excellence is never an accident. And so I think we hear a lot more about personal branding these days, and we need to hear probably a little bit more about personal character. 

[00:24:11] Hala Taha: It's such a strong point, and it's such a great tie in to everything we're about to talk about.

But since I brought it up, what is procrastinating on purpose? Feels like you're speaking directly to me because I am this type of person where I love to work under pressure because I know I can do things fast, especially if I know what I'm doing, if it's boring. It's more fun for me to procrastinate on purpose.

But what did you mean by that? Give us any sort of guidance you have about time management and procrastination. 

[00:24:37] Rory Vaden: Real quick, there's three types of procrastination. There's classic procrastination, which is consciously delaying what you know you should do. Right? I know I should pay my taxes. I know I should work out.

I know I should make this difficult phone call, whatever. But most of us, while most of us do struggle with classic procrastination, most of us are aware of that. Where we're really losing is to the two types of unconscious procrastination, one of which is creative avoidance. So creative avoidance is a term that I coined that is unconsciously creating stuff for yourself to do so that you can achieve trivial things which make you feel productive because dopamine is released and That chemical is released from your brain into your body.

Every time you delete an email or you cross something off your to do list, dopamine is released. So it makes you feel good. You feel productive. But really what's happened is you're addicted to accomplishing the trivial. You're addicted to completing the insignificant. That's what creative avoidance is.

Then there's priority dilution, which is the chronic overachievers procrastination. They're not lazy. They're not apathetic. They're not disengaged. They're not even distracted. What they are is interrupted. So you're building a team. Now you've got dozens of employees as you become more influential, more and more people are vying for your attention.

You get higher and higher profile clients, higher and higher profile opportunities. And so everybody is coming at you with their agenda. I think of an inbox, an email inbox as a great literal illustration of this, because What is an inbox other than a mechanism for prioritizing other people's requests?

Your inbox is none of the things you want to do everything. Everybody else wants you to do. And most of us sort even our inbox from what has come in most recent. And we just see what is most recent. Well, often the most recent request is not the most significant request. And so priority dilution is living in a constant state of interruption.

Ending your day with your most significant tasks incomplete, not because you're lazy, but because you've allowed yourself to fall victim to whatever is vying for your attention, rather than the things that you know you need to do. So, that was introduced in Take the Stairs. Well, When we studied ultra performers and we started to look at how do they get past this, that was when we invented the system of multiplying time.

Well, we didn't really invent the system. We just put a vernacular around it, which was what my Ted talk was. So my Ted talk that went viral is called how to multiply time. And all we were doing is we were putting a vernacular and semantics around the unconscious. Thought process that the world's ultra performers use when it came to managing their time.

And people, of course, say time is the one thing you can never get more of. Well, that's not actually true. It is true inside of one day, right? There's nothing you can do to get more time in a day. We all have 24 hours, which is 1440 minutes or 86, 400 seconds. But that's exactly the problem. Everyone believes they cannot get more time because that's what they've been told most often.

So your brain believes it. In reality, you can create more time. You say, how? Simple. And this is the premise of the TED talk and the whole second book. The way that you multiply time is by spending time on things today. That create more time tomorrow, while there's nothing you can do today to create more time today, there's all sorts of things you can do today that if you do them today, they will create time and space tomorrow that you would not have otherwise had.

We bucket those in something called the focus funnel, which again is sort of the flagship framework of the Ted talk in the book. Well, it's eliminate, automate, delegate, concentrate are four of the five. The fifth one is procrastinate. And procrastinating on purpose is about procrastinating on purpose with the insignificant tasks, the trivial tasks, and ultimately, when you become an ultra performer, you ultimately will have to say no to some things.

You will ultimately have to ignore some things because there are too many applicants for your time, too many applicants for your podcast, too many emails that you can ever respond to. And so you become an ultra performer. Not by being a master of what you say yes to, but more of being a master of what you say no to.

And if you procrastinate on the trivial things, then that suddenly creates a margin or a pocket of time that you can then reinvest and reallocate into the things that multiply your time, which are things that you spend time on today that create more time tomorrow. So that's the whole book as fast as I can give it to you.

[00:29:36] Hala Taha: That was so good. What is the name of the TED talk? Cause I know that went super viral. It's evergreen content. So what is it called? So people can check it out. The 

[00:29:45] Rory Vaden: TED talk is called how to multiply time. And by the way, this is my greatest, my most painful, most expensive marketing mistake I've ever made when Ted asked me for.

The talk, they didn't ask me, what do you want to call your talk? They asked me, what is the talk about? And I said, Oh, the talk is about how to multiply time. And so they titled it for me, how to multiply time. And it went viral. Well, when I wrote the book, I had a chance to select the title. And I thought procrastinating on purpose was so catchy and unique and clever.

And people had never heard of it. And people have never heard of it. And maybe it's intriguing. But the problem is. It's confusing and it's not enticing. Nobody wants to procrastinate on purpose, but everyone wants to multiply time. And so this is one of the other really big personal branding lessons that we teach people is that clear is greater than clever.

Clear is greater than clever. So my Ted talk is clearly titled how to multiply time. My book, which is on the same topic, has a crappy title of Procrastinate on Purpose. The subtitle is Five Permissions to Multiply Your Time. It's the same content, the TED Talk went viral, that second book doesn't sell that well, and I'm convinced it's because of this painful mistake that I made of mistitling the book.

Oh, well, hopefully 

[00:31:12] Hala Taha: you never make that mistake again. And now we will never make that mistake because we know that clear is better than clever. So that's our first personal branding lesson from you. I'm sure we're going to learn many more. So let's talk about your business brand builders group. What are the types of things that you do for your 

[00:31:27] Rory Vaden: clients?

We are a personal brand strategy firm. Think of if you were building a house, you could go to Home Depot, grab some tools, grab some supplies. Roll up on some pile of dirt and start building a house. You probably would do better if you started with an architect. And you had an architect that understood everything about zoning and permits slope and grading and everything about structural engineering and someone who could design something for you that could hold a skyscraper and not just a shack that you kind of threw up.

Well, that's what we are. We are the architects. We work with several of the biggest personal brands in the world. You know, some that I mentioned at my let Lewis house. Amy Porterfield, Tom and Lisa Bilyeu, Eric Thomas, E. T. the hip hop preacher. It goes on and on. Amazing people. So many you've had on your show.

So many you, I know that you are friends with. So what do we do for them in a tactical way? We tend to help people get really, really clear on their uniqueness and figuring out what's the thing that only they can do and talk about that nobody else in the world can talk about. So we do a lot around identifying their uniqueness and the identity of their brand, not the visual identity, but the actual personification of their message.

We do a lot around the art of speaking, the business of speaking, live events, monetizing live events, putting on live events. We do a lot around book launches. That's one of the things that we probably do as good, if not better than anyone else in the world. We have helped 29 people become New York Times, Wall Street Journal, or USA Today national best selling authors.

We don't game the list. We don't let authors buy their own books. We're not tricking the system. We just have really proven ways to get real humans to buy books. So we do that. And then monetization strategy. So if I had to say You know, it'd be messaging and positioning, speaking books, and then monetization strategy.

We get into various components of that. But the single best piece of personal branding advice I've ever received, and this is not a Rory quote, I wish it was, but it came from a guy named Larry Wingate. And I heard Larry say this early in my career. He 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. The first time I heard Larry say that, I was like, Oh, that is it. That is brilliant. That's exactly what it is. Now, the thing was, he never had a business teaching people or helping people find their uniqueness. So we developed a methodology, a process that we take people through.

It's a two day experience. It's this whole set of introspective questions. We could touch on some of them now, if you want to help people figure out what is the thing that only you can do? What is the divine calling on your life? What is your uniqueness? And once we help people find that, that's a huge, huge part of everything else falling in place.

Why is it so 

[00:34:47] Hala Taha: important for somebody to focus on one thing, one expertise? Why is that so important? 

[00:34:53] Rory Vaden: Great question. It's because of a concept that we refer to as Sheehan's wall. And I named this concept after a colleague of mine named Peter Sheehan, who showed me a model that we have since kind of adapted to personal brands.

He, he works more in like the corporate space, but I saw his sort of model and here's how it works. In any industry, in any vertical, in any market, on any platform, there's two groups of people. There are those who are unknown. They're living in obscurity. They're yet to be discovered or found or popularized.

And then there is a group of people who are well known. They don't have obscurity. They have notoriety. They have trust. They have recognition, they have reputation. Well, in between being unknown and well known between obscurity and notoriety is this huge invisible wall that we call she hands wall. And what most people do who are living in obscurity is they look at the people in notoriety, right?

They look at Tony Robbins or Gary Vaynerchuk or whoever, and they look at what they're doing, Oprah. The rock and they go, I want to do the things that they do. And so they go, well, Tony Robbins has all these different topics, right? Like he talks about money and he talks about health and he talks about, you know, unleashing the power with wind and date with destiny and relationships and spirituality.

Well, I have all these topics. And so they talk about lots of different topics. And then they are like, Oh, I got to be on lots of different platforms, right? The whole thing is you got to be on LinkedIn and you got to be on tick tock and you got to be on Instagram and YouTube and X, Twitter, whatever. And then every time they go on Facebook or something, they see a new ad for a new business model and it's like, Oh, the way to get rich is doing webinars.

No, it's live events. No, you should publish your own book. No, you should become a speaker. No, you should do masterminds. No, you should do retreats. No, you should do one on one coaching and all these different business models. And then they have all these audiences, right? And it's like, well, I'm really passionate about talking to stay at home moms, but I want to help kids who are like high school and college age, but I kind of live in the corporate world.

And, but I also get sort of entrepreneurial. So they have too many audiences, too many messages, too many platforms, too many business models. And what happens is they bounce off the wall and the reason that they bounce off the wall. Is because if you have diluted focus, you get diluted results, period. If you have diluted focus, you get diluted results, you know.

And so if you look at Lewis Howes as an example, so he was our very first client. I had met him at our former company. We had been friends. I had casually helped him with his first book launch. And then when we sold our first company, Lewis and I reconnected. He actually called us and said, Hey, I'd love your brain on my business.

And he's the whole reason we started brand builders group because we weren't planning on doing this and we didn't teach Louis podcast tactics to grow his show. We didn't teach him any of that stuff. What happened was we took him through this process and we found that he had 17 revenue streams and he had always been told by his friends and community like multiple streams of income.

Well, multiple streams of income, is crappy advice. It is terrible advice. When you're just first starting out, nobody who got super rich got super rich from multiple streams of income. They got super rich by being amazing at one thing. What you need is not multiple streams of income. You need one freaking amazing stream of income.

One brilliant stream of income. One monetize the crap out of that does really, really well. That's how you break through the wall. Once you're sitting on a pile of money, then you diversify. Sarah Blakely didn't have multiple streams of income. It's not how she got rich. Even Warren Buffett, even though he invests in a lot of things, investing is the only thing he does.

You look at athletes, all of these people, they had one stream of income. Well, Lewis had 17. One of the exercises we take people through is called the revenue streams assessment. And we just look at how long have you been doing them? What's the total revenue? How much stress is it causing you? How much natural momentum does it have for growth in the future?

And it's like, you know, the scoring system. And he had this podcasting thing, which at the time was like a side hustle for him. He was really a course company. Most of his money was selling courses. And we said, well, this little exercise says that podcasting is the thing that is most taking off with the least amount of energy, causing you the least amount of stress.

That is the most fun. And has the biggest opportunity for future growth. What would happen if we shut everything else down and just went all in on this one thing. And so he's been so generous about his praise of us, but really that's pretty much the only thing we ever did. He's been through, I think, nine of our 14 curriculum.

So we have worked a lot with their team, but like the main thing was just going. If you're a small business, just think about it. If you're a small business and you have limited resources, right? You don't have hundreds of employees. You don't have millions of dollars. If you just have those few resources spread across 20 things, what's the likelihood that any of them is going to take off versus going, if you take those resources and you put them all in on one thing, the success is inevitable.

It almost doesn't matter what the one thing is. It just matters that there's one thing. This is where too many people try to make the right decision. And what ultra performers do is they make a decision and then they make it right. 

[00:40:28] Hala Taha: This is so, so smart. And I feel like it's reminding me a lot about social media strategy too.

You don't see somebody blow up on social media where they're blowing up on every channel at once. Somebody blows up on LinkedIn or somebody blows up on YouTube TikTok. Then they move on to other platforms. So it's like you also have to build leverage on the social platforms as well. Not just the revenue stream.

So I think going deep and not too wide is the key when you're first starting out. Yeah. 

[00:40:55] Rory Vaden: You're breaking through the wall. Gary Vaynerchuk is my favorite example. Everyone says, well, Rory, I think your whole finding uniqueness is stupid because Gary talks about a million things. Yeah. Omni channel. Yeah.

Omni channel. And, you know, he talks about rap music and sports and web three and social and business and whatever advertising and all this stuff. And he tells people, you know, talk about all the things you're passionate about. Um, yeah. Except that's not how he got there. You can't look at what those people are doing today.

Look at how he got there. Gary Vaynerchuk in the beginning talked about one thing on one channel. Wine on YouTube. So I love Gary. I don't know him personally. I have so much respect for him. I've learned so much, but I go, he did not get there by doing what he's doing now. You can't get to where he is by doing what he's doing now.

You have to look at what he did. And you break through the wall on that one thing or one channel, one topic, and just go, what's the likelihood of success talking on Instagram about 25 different things or going, I'm going to dominate the topic of wine on YouTube.  

[00:42:14] Hala Taha: so let's talk about why personal branding is not just for influencers. Why is personal branding something that's important for anybody who's in business?

I'll 

[00:42:23] Rory Vaden: start with the common sense part first. The reason that it applies to everybody is because when people hear the word personal brand or personal branding, they think the wrong things. They think social media, they think it means podcasting or social media or speaking or writing books or creating a course.

That's not how we think of it. That's not how we defined it to us. Personal branding is not a new concept. It's a new expression of an old concept. Personal branding is simply the digitization of reputation. The digitization of reputation, right? Reputation has been around since the dawn of time. What do people know you for?

And what do they know about you in real life? And do they trust you? All we're doing with personal branding is digitizing that and automating trust at scale. So I'm not saying those things aren't valuable. They're super valuable, right? They're super valuable. Many of the most influential people you meet and many of the most influential relationships also will come offline, not online, right?

I mean, even you and I, right, you've got this great following. I've never had a huge social media following. We've always been like offline people and we're a coaching company. So even the service we provide in the world is very human. One on one human to human kind of thing. But I met you because Julie Solomon introduced you to me.

And then I recognized, you know, Jenna and Amy and a lot of our other friends. And it's like, it was your offline reputation that really caught my attention and then supplemented by your online reputation, which is clearly super impressive. So I think the reason it matters in business, I mean, the reason I know it matters in business is because reputation matters in business.

Today, reputation is determined at least as much by what your online reputation is as your offline one. And if you don't have one, it's just like going, well, would you want to not have an offline reputation? You would never say, I don't need a reputation and I don't need people to say good things about me or to know about me.

That's vain. You would never say that about an offline reputation, but those are the things we sort of errantly say about. personal branding online, just because it's newer and we don't understand it. And because business people don't want to point and dance and do trending songs and spend their whole day trying to deconstruct an algorithm, right?

That's not how they spend their time, but it doesn't change the fact that it's super important and becoming more and more and more critical. So that's the common sense part. Now, if you look at the data, okay, so if you're going to talk about business people, we're very, very data driven as a company. Part of why.

We do the various things we do is because it's data. And one of the things that we, we led a PhD led academic research study, weighted to the U S census, a statistically valid, and it's a national to the U S we didn't do it for the whole world, but we spent tens of thousands of dollars on this. In fact, if you want to go download the study, if you go to free brand study.

com forward slash profiting, you can download a copy of the full study. One of the things that we found is that 74 percent of Americans say they are more likely to trust somebody who has an established personal brand. 74%. That's across all ages, income ranges. We trust people who have an established personal brand.

And when you look at the professions, one of the things that we asked, so one of the questions is how important is it to you that each of the following people have an established personal brand? And so we asked the general public. Which careers, which professions does it most matter to you that your provider has a personal brand that the top ranked spot 61 percent of people said they want their doctor to have a personal brand.

58 percent of people said they want their lawyer to have an established personal brand. 55 percent of people say they want their financial advisor, their banker, their business consultant to have a personal brand. 53 percent said they want their insurance agent to have a personal brand. 52 percent said they want their real estate agent to have a personal brand.

This goes on and on and on. And here's what we found. The higher the requirement for trust, the more the general population cares that you have a personal brand. So the question is, how much does trust matter in your business? If it matters a lot, you probably need to take this thing seriously because Reputation precedes revenue.

Reputation precedes revenue. That's why it matters to business people. And some of them have caught onto it, right? Ed Milett, Jamie Kern, Lima, Elon Musk, like Richard Branson. I mean, these people have caught onto it early and it's made a big impact. Other people have not yet and they're falling behind. As 

[00:47:20] Hala Taha: you're talking, what I keep hearing is the opportunity for people in professions like doctors, lawyers to really step in and dominate their niche.

There's really not that many people in those types of professions. And you do see the people that do have a personal brand. They're traditionally like on billboards or buses. I feel like they probably make way more money than the average person who's not doing those sorts of things. Imagine if they just built their personal brand on social media.

Because I'm getting more and more like doctors wanting to be on LinkedIn, so I am seeing this as a really big trend. So you brought up trust. Why is trust so important and what are the tangible ways that people can build trust online? 

[00:48:01] Rory Vaden: In order to answer that question, you'll see this recurring theme in what we do to answer the question, How do you best build trust online?

We would say, How do you best build trust offline? Well, if you made a list, if you made a list of the top 10 people you trust in your life, like would trust with your life or with your kids, right? Like I've got two toddlers. So like to go, who would you trust? There's a good chance that the people on that list, like you would trust with your banking information or that kind of stuff.

There's a good chance you know those people intimately. You know where they eat. You know where they live. You know about their families. You know where they went to college. You know where they grew up. You know about their siblings. You know maybe some of their fears. You know some of their mistakes. You know those people intimately.

And when I first got on social media, I was like, Oh my gosh, this is so stupid. Why is everyone posting pictures of what they ate? And then I realized, Oh, because we trust people that we know intimate details about their life. Now that doesn't mean you have to post pictures of your kids, right? There's a lot of reasons why not to, and a lot of fears, why not to AJ and I happened to do it a lot.

AJ is my wife and she's also my co founder. And the CEO of brand builders group, by the way, we were business partners in our former company that we sold. And then we started brand builders group, just the two of us. And she's the CEO and I'm the CMO. So, and we're married, right? So we got two kids. So we post, we happen to share those things occasionally.

So we trust people that we know details about their life, right? If I see someone walking down the alley, I've never seen them before. I don't know anything about the person. If it's dark and it's an alley and I've never seen the person before,

My Spidey senses go up. I'm in an alley with a stranger and that's how it is, right? Who's going to buy from a stranger? Nobody. They got to know something about you. Who else do we trust in real life? Well, we tend to trust people who we learn from. We trust pastors. We trust lawyers. We trust accountants.

We trust doctors. We trust experts. We trust teachers. We trust mentors. We trust counselors. We trust people who teach us things. Who else do we trust in real life? We tend to trust people who entertain us. They make us laugh. They make us inspired. They're musical or they're entertaining. We see them on movies.

I mean, think about that. We trust movie stars who we've never met, but we see them a lot. Who else do we trust in real life? We tend to trust people who encourage us in our darkest moments. The people who were there when you had your heartbreak, when you didn't get into that school, or you didn't get that job, or the relationship fell apart, or you lost money on that deal, the people who were there to encourage us in that moment, those are the people we trust.

Cause it's like, we've been through the fire, right? I know you, you got my back. So when you roll that forward to online, we have three simple strategies that we teach, we call them the three E's for content marketing. First of all, educate. Encourage and entertain, educate, encourage, and entertain. And we typically say your feed is, should be more of what you do and it should educate, encourage, or entertain.

Cause strangers don't care about your cat. The only people who care about your cat typically are going to be once they're intrigued by you and they want to kind of really vet you out. That's where they go. Who are you really? Right? So I'm a hardcore Bible thumping, Jesus freak. I post Bible verses every day in my stories.

Cause I read the Bible every day. I started a whole podcast just looking at the academic and logical scrutiny for the evidence of Jesus of Nazareth. It's called eternal life. This was a huge side project. I make no money for it. It's not associated with any churches. There's no sponsors or anything, but it was a huge personal project that I did.

I shared all of that in my stories. Occasionally you see it in my feed. Occasionally you see me talk about my kids in my feed. Most of my feed is. Education and encouragement because I'm not that entertaining. But if I was, I'd be entertaining too. 

[00:52:19] Hala Taha: This is such great advice. I aligned with everything that you say.

And I think the biggest takeaway that I had from what you just talked about was the fact that we trust people. That we know personal details about. So, I get a lot of clients, you know, I do social media for folks. And a lot of people are really like, I don't want to talk about my kids. I don't want to talk about private life.

I don't want to talk about politics. I don't want to talk about this, that, that. And I'm like, well, we're not going to need to talk about something that's personal to you so that people feel connected to you and can relate to you and feel like they know you. So, I'm, I'm so aligned with everything that you're saying.

Okay, so one of my last questions for you on personal branding, and we're going to start to close out this interview. Is, what are the common mistakes that you see people make with their personal 

[00:52:59] Rory Vaden: brand? The number one mistake we already talked about is diluted focus, diluted results. Too many messages, too many audiences, too many platforms, too many monetization streams, just too much stuff.

You need to find one thing, I mean if you think about breaking through the wall, right? Literally think about trying to knock down a concrete wall. Even if you took a sledgehammer, if you hit all different spots on that wall, you're not doing anything to it. The only way is to hit the same spot over and over and over and over.

And eventually it'd be frustrating at first, right? It would feel like nothing's happening, but it would chip a little bit and then it would chip a little more and you hit it over and over and over. And it's like, this is how it is. You're doing it a consistent, consistent, consistent, same message, really dominating your niche.

And then eventually you would crack through the wall. And once that first hole opened up, then the whole wall would collapse. The mistake is they're doing too many things. They don't have focus our entire methodology. Our entire curriculum is actually 14 different two day experiences. That's like our full, like if you did the full, everything we do, there are 14 different two day experiences.

Well, the very first question in the first experience is a super simple question. Which almost nobody can answer and it is what problem do you solve in one word? What problem do you solve for the world in one word? And most people cannot answer that question. If you cannot answer that question in one word, there's no way your audience is ever going to be able to answer that question.

So how are they going to refer you? We buy solutions to problems, right? I get a flat tire. I have a flood in the house and I call a plumber, right? We buy solutions to problems. You have to be able to articulate the problem you solve. If you can't articulate the problem you solve in one word, this game's over before you even started.

that's the thing is just too much. And honestly, that's the only mistake. Holla, that really matters. Probably that and consistency, right? Like once you get it, everything else is a tactic that can be tweaked or figured out. Somebody brilliant like you's got, they got the answer for how to do it.

You just got to find it. 

[00:55:12] Hala Taha: You are like a wealth of information. First of all, I want to invite you to my mastermind to talk about branding. I talk a lot about branding, but I feel like you know so much, so I'd love to invite you to my mastermind and I know that you actually do free coaching calls at your company.

Can you tell 

[00:55:25] Rory Vaden: us about that? Yeah, totally. We, as I mentioned, we're very human experience, so. We do the first call with everybody for free. If you go to free brand call. com forward slash profiting. So free brand call. com forward slash profiting. I mentioned free brand study. com forward slash profiting. If you just want to download the study, you can go just get the data, but free brand call.

com slash profiting. You can fill out a form and we will do the first call for free with everybody. And we just want to hear your story. We want to hear who you are and what you're about. Yeah. And most of the clients we work with are not the celebrities. Like a lot of my private clients, like you are people that are pretty well known, but our company, we work with people just starting out to intermediate to like advanced, but all the above.

But if there's a shortcut to finding your uniqueness, here's the pattern that we noticed. We didn't know this when we started the company, we figured this out after about like 1500 clients. You. Are always most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were your most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were.

So on our first call, that's what we usually ask about is who are you? Who have you been? What challenge have you conquered? What setback have you survived? What obstacle have you overcome? What tragedy have you triumphed over? We want to hear your story. We want to know about you because we know that if we can.

Really understand your story, put a little strategy behind it. Then we can set you on a path and reconnect you with people like holla that can give you more and more of the tactics and you're going to blow up. But we got to find your uniqueness. We got to know what is the divine design of your life.

What is the calling? Why are you here? And for most of us, at least for our audience of mission driven messengers, it's not to be famous. It's about serving and serving the person that you once were your most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were. 

[00:57:27] Hala Taha: Well, young and profiteers, I think you should definitely take Rory up on his offer.

We're going to stick all those links in the show notes. You should book a free coaching call Rory. I and my show with two questions that I ask all my guests. The first one is what is one actionable thing our young and profiteers can do today to become more profitable tomorrow? 

[00:57:46] Rory Vaden: Other than requesting a call with us, which is an actionable thing you can do.

I would ask you specifically when it comes to making money. I would say, look at your business and your life and go, where do you have the most natural momentum? Where are you winning the most while trying the least, the more that you can lean into that faster, you will make money. Oftentimes it's doing the thing you're already doing, but doing it better and letting go of the other stuff.

It often is. Serving your current customer in a deeper way. Everyone's so consumed with millions of followers and more people and more reach, they're overlooking the people that are right in front of them. Most of us do not need millions of customers to double our income. Most of us would double our best year ever.

With a couple dozen of our perfect clients. So you don't have to chase the quantity of everything. Serve the people who are in front of you. Look at where you have the most natural momentum. Double down on that and say, no, at least temporarily procrastinate on purpose to everything else. 

[00:59:01] Hala Taha: So good. Such great advice, Rory.

Very impressed with your interview today. My last question for you is what is your secret to profiting in life? And this can go beyond 

[00:59:10] Rory Vaden: business. It's interesting. So I mentioned my wife, AJ, right? Who's now been my business partner since 2006. Also, she took a spiritual assessment, like your spiritual gifts one time.

And she found out that her spiritual gift is making money. And I'm like, yes, that's what I'm talking about. I want to be a kept man, you know, high roll and wifey. So in all seriousness, I think that a huge key in someone's ability to attract to money. is for them to develop a healthy relationship that includes a comfortable separation from money.

People who think of money as a shield or a defense or something that they have to hold tightly onto, they never get much more than they have. It's sort of like a closed fist, right? You get to keep what's in your hand, but you're never going to get more than what's in there because nothing can get out, but nothing can get in.

The people who have the most money Think of money, not as like a shield, but as a tool, a tool to invest and to use and predominantly to give the reason why as a Christian, I want to make loads and loads of money. I don't need private jets and private islands and all that sort of stuff. For me, there is some amount of money that I needed first to get debt free, then to have the lifestyle that I wanted to have, which mostly included hiring the staff to do all the things.

That I wanted to do so that I didn't have to do them. But after that, you find that that much more money is not really going to satisfy you. The truth is peace is the new profit. So good. Peace is the new profit and giving money and using your money to help other people or investing money into your platform in a way that serves people.

That's, what's really going to give you peace, not some number in a bank account. It just won't. And I know, I mean, we had four billionaire clients with a B last year, four billion. We work with a lot of really wealthy people and I'm telling you, it's not the amount of money they're all chasing peace and more money won't give you peace.

More fame won't give you peace. For me, the greatest source of happiness and peace is service. As a Christian, it's love God and love others. That's the whole message. It's service. That's where you'll find peace and peace is the new profit. 

[01:01:35] Hala Taha: So beautiful. Peace is new profit. I love it. Okay. So where can everybody learn more about you?

I know that you've got a podcast. Remind us about the call. 

[01:01:45] Rory Vaden: Let us know. Honestly, if you're interested in learning about us, I would just say, go to one of the two places I mentioned freebrandstudy. com forward slash profiting. Or free brand call. com forward slash profiting. Whether you, if you want the study or the call or, you know, you could do both, but I would just say, go there.

You can learn all about us. You can learn about our clients. That'll point you back to me in other places. So I would just say, go there and let's be friends. 

[01:02:11] Hala Taha: Awesome. Rory, thank you so much for joining us on young and profiting podcast. 

[01:02:15] Rory Vaden: Holla. Thank you so much for having me. I'm so impressed by you and thus very, very honored to be a part of this.

So appreciate it. 

[01:02:22] Hala Taha: You know, sometimes guys, it's really just all about the reps, just putting in those reps, putting in those reps, putting in those reps, and just ask our guest today, Rory Vaden. He wanted to get better at public speaking. So he just went out and he spoke 304 times for free. And it was perhaps the best investment he could have ever made in himself and his abilities.

And as I've learned over the past years myself, speaking engagements are such a powerful way to connect with your audience and to make super fans. And as Rory says, a great speech or performance is the shortest path between turning somebody from a complete stranger And to a lifelong fan, if you have the ability to communicate effectively and to show off your authentic self, then you can create trust at scale.

And this kind of trust building is essential to building a strong personal brand today, both in person and online through social media. And we tend to trust those who we learn from, who entertain us, who make us laugh, who inspire us. But to build this trust relationship, you have to be forthcoming.

Sometimes you need to talk about things that are personal to you so that people feel connected to you and can relate to you. Something that Rory said in this interview that I think I'll never forget is the fact that the people that you trust the most know personal details about you. They know the names of your siblings or your kids.

They know your favorite hobbies. They know your nickname. They know these personal things that your friends know about you. And when it comes to branding, you want strangers to think of you as an old friend, to know you so well that they feel that you're an old friend. Sharing personal details is what allows you to have that magnetic personal brand where people feel like you're an authentic human that they can trust and relate to.

And finally, you can't build trust in a strong personal brand until you build strong personal character as well. Remember what Rory's pastor said, your influence will never grow wider than your character runs deep. And that hits deep, young improfiters. Thanks for listening to this episode of Young and Profiting Podcast.

If you listened, learned, and profited from this conversation with Rory Vaden, and I feel like we've all earned your trust over the years, then please take a moment and share this episode with your friends and family. And drop us a five star review on Apple Podcasts. That's the number one way to thank us.

I love to read our reviews and I get sad when I don't see a review in a day or two. And if you prefer watching your podcast as videos, you can find all of our shows published on YouTube. You can also find me on Instagram at Yap with Hala or LinkedIn by searching my name, it's Hala Taha. And this is your host, Hala Taha, AKA the Podcast Princess, signing off.