Why Going Viral On Social Media Will Not Make You Rich

Speaker 0: The fastest way to double your revenue is actually just to increase your conversion rate. I realized that every revenue problem in the business is actually a brand problem. My brand isn't what I say it is. It's what you say it is. Right.

It's ignorance on fire is way better than knowledge on ice. Don't wait to find the perfect idea to execute. Find the idea you can execute perfectly. It is not impressive, but we built a company that valued at 8 figures off of a YouTube channel where there's less than 200 videos, there's less than 200 subscribers, and most videos have less than 500 views. Yeah.

Content can never be too long. It can only be too boring. No one's coming to save you. No one's coming to lift your load. We guarantee that Spiffy will out convert any other checkout platform by at least 10%.

Speaker 1: Welcome and thank you for joining

Speaker 2: us for today's episode of disruptors where millionaires are made. Today, we have Michael Hunter with personal brand. And Michael drove up here from just literally up the street. Talk about the biggest lie about making a million dollars as an influencer. Guys, Guys, I'm on a mission to create millionaires.

Information on the show alone is enough to help you become a millionaire in the next five to seven years. If you'll take consistent action, you'll become one. And right now, you've got a $100,000,250,000, probably even more sitting inside your CRM. Revitalize all your old and dead leads inside, your CRM with objection proof AI calling agent. Text cash to the phone number 33777 to unlock the money that's just hanging out right now inside your CRM.

You ready?

Speaker: I'm ready. Let's do this.

Speaker: Alright. So I'm I'm really, really looking forward to to this personal brand. It's such an important thing. I think it's been really, really important for a long time, but maybe even more important right now is even harder to break out through the noise today has been the last few years. But before we get into all that, let's talk about what was your life like before you got into personal branding?

Speaker: I mean, this has been something that I've dedicated my life to. So right now, everyone's talking about personal brand, personal branding. And in this, conversation, I'm really excited to just cut through a lot of the noise and the confusion because if you ask 10 different people what a personal brand is, you're gonna get 10 different answers. And there's so many people out there in the marketplace and it's not, anyone's fault. We're just being force fed, these confusing confusing messages down our news feeds.

People are conflating brand with branding and branding with content marketing. And they're saying, hey, here's how to build a personal brand. Here's how to podcast or here's how to blow it up on YouTube or here's how to blow it up on Instagram. And, I'm really excited to to get into that. But to answer your question specifically, you know, today, I'm the founder of personalbrand.com, and my journey started when I was 17.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: At 17, I had my first taste of entrepreneurship through direct sales. I was one of those young kids playing Cutco kitchen knives.

Speaker: You're selling Cutco at 17?

Speaker: At 17. Yep. And I was fortunate because my mom bought Cutco kitchen knives from some kid ten years before that. So I was using the product every single night at dinner. Okay.

And my belief in the product was 12 out of 10. Mhmm. You know, it's something as simple as a kitchen knife, but they worked. They were amazing.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And so I had a lot of success with that. That success put me in my first seminar room at 17 years old. I was on the fast path to opening up a branch office, and I got put into the leadership, development, track. And, Albuquerque, New Mexico, I remember like it was yesterday. I'm sitting in my first seminar room with my first, exposure to public speakers, books that changed my life.

Rich Dad Poor Dad, Think and Grow Rich, How to Win Friends and Influence People. Those books I was consuming at 17 and at that event That's

Speaker: crazy that you're reading those books at 17.

Speaker: Yeah. That's almost twenty years ago. Yeah. Believe it or not. At that event, someone on stage said that the highest paid profession in the world was to be a public speaker and most people would rather die than speak on stage.

And my little 17 year old brain was like looking around the room was like, did did everyone just catch that dichotomy? Like, that's a massive opportunity. All I have to do whether it takes me five years or fifty years is just have to crack that code and I can live like an awesome life. Shortly after that, got introduced to Tony Robbins' work, his books, his, you know, audios, videos, things of this nature and I just saw like like, how cool is that? That you can get paid to change people's lives.

Speaker: You can get

Speaker: paid just to be a positive impact in the world. Like, that was a It's not

Speaker: a tangible product. You're just talking to people. Yeah.

Speaker: And it was just like a cool concept. I thought you had to work for forty years to go out there and, you know, you know, make a living. But I'm 17. Who's gonna listen to me? I don't have a message.

I don't have a book. I'm afraid to stand in front of a room and convey my message at that point. Right? But I knew that was something I wanted to do. So throughout college, I was start started in side hustles and creating the gig economy before the gig economy was even a thing.

You know, now you just open open up an app and you can be a u an Uber driver. That wasn't how it always was. Right? And and every six to eight weeks, I was putting myself in a seminar, a business seminar, a personal development seminar. I was learning so much more outside the classroom than in the classroom.

Going into my senior year, I saw all of my friends that graduated earlier that spring not getting jobs. And I was like, I don't wanna be in that situation.

Speaker: What was this?

Speaker: This is 2010.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: So bottom of the recession. You know, o '8, obviously, everything fell apart in in real estate. O '9, o '10, bottom of the market. No one's getting jobs. I don't wanna be in that situation.

So my little, you know, 21 year old brain, like, I'm gonna create a job for myself. You know, I kinda got the sales thing dialed in. Even to this day, I don't think I'm a great salesperson. People way better at it than me. But at that point I was like, what other skill do I need to learn in order to do that someday?

The speaking thing, right? I need to learn marketing. Like, unless I'm at that point in my life, unless I was across the table from someone or talking with someone one to one, I didn't understand how you could make sales.

Speaker: And

Speaker: so this marketing thing was new. So I was like, I had the awareness to say, I'm gonna have other I'm gonna have other people pay me to learn how to do marketing for them.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: And so quickly, I just started working with anyone, everyone that was willing to pay me. And within one year, I networked my entire book of business to work with author, coaches, speakers, thought leaders, and personal brands. So since 2011, my entire life has been focused on how do people with a positive message make money? How do you build a scalable and sustainable profitable business with what you know, with your expertise, with your life story, with the message that you wanna have that impacts the world? And so That's what you were teaching

Speaker: at 21.

Speaker: Yeah. So, I mean, I wasn't teaching it back then, but I was, imp I was the person behind the scenes, building the funnels, running the ads, helping people build their their businesses.

Speaker: I see.

Speaker: In 2013, I bought the domain name personalbrand.com.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: I saw the future. I saw where things were going. I recognized that, you know, fast forward, you know, a decade or two, every single person in the world is going to need to be able to communicate their value

Speaker: in our Well, before we get there, so Yeah. In 2013. But, like, in 2011, I'm trying to think, like, what what were you market what what what services specifically were you a marketing agency? Were you, like, I'm trying to think, like, was even Facebook advertising even around

Speaker: yet in 2011? The Facebook advertising was and I recognized an opportunity when Facebook opened up their platform for businesses. So you could now set up a business page. And I recognized, like, you know, I'm 21 at the time. I've been using social media since, like, you know, started using a computer basically.

I realized I had a skill that was valuable in the marketplace and so I, you know, I was naive. I thought that, you know, people that own businesses, you know, of course they have a website. Of course they have their their customer list. Of course they have a marketing strategy. It's just this new social media thing that they don't quite understand yet.

So I started the marketing company as a social media marketing company, but I quickly learned that businesses didn't have a CRM. They didn't have automated systems in place. And so back then, the Ferrari of online marketing was this tool called Infusionsoft. And so I started implementing Infusionsoft and doing marketing campaigns. We got known for doing big product launches, helping people sell their books, their courses, their masterminds, their online programs.

And we worked our way to the top of that industry working with, you know, some of the biggest names in the industry. Technically, we were, you know, he was a client, but we kind of came in as an external CMO role for Brendon Burchard. Me and my business partner, Jeremy, we came in and built out his first internal, marketing team.

Speaker: Oh, wow.

Speaker: Hired his entire team, ran all of his launches for two full year between 2015 and 2017. And even before that, we worked with people like Jim Kwik, Harvey Mackay, Pete Vargas. These are all, you know, pretty, big big names in the industry and and others as well.

Speaker: Before we continue, tell me Brandon Burchard. He's the reason why I have this podcast.

Speaker: No way. That's amazing. Yeah.

Speaker: Because, like, was at a Dean Graziosi event.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: And Brandon Burchard is on stage. He's like, hey, people wanna hear your story. Right? Like, you gotta write a book. You gotta start a blog or you have a start a podcast.

I was like, well, you know, my book didn't do really well. I got a blog that nobody reads. Right? Let's do a podcast. See what happens.

And that was in 2018. Started this podcast and

Speaker: That's amazing.

Speaker: Yeah. Changed my life.

Speaker: Crushing it. So cool.

Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. So I mean,

Speaker: yeah, Brendan's single handedly had probably the biggest impact on my life, out of any other person in the industry as well. Like, owe a lot to him. And our our last project with Brendan was launching his, book High Performance Habits. Mhmm. So he built out that whole book launch and and executed that.

So I know that's been a a powerful force out there in the market as well.

Speaker: Yeah. Okay. So you're, the driving force behind the scenes executing, getting these brands out there.

Speaker: Yeah. And I I wanna make one thing very clear. Like, Brendon was massively successful before we started working with them. Right? So, like, I definitely am not taking any crap for Brendon's success, but on the journey there, we were absolutely playing a critical role.

Speaker: But someone needs to do operations.

Speaker: Yes. Yeah.

Speaker: Right? Like, for sure, Brandon gets credit for everything Brandon's at. Yeah. A 100%. Yeah.

He's gotta put the right people in place. Right. But someone still needs to, like, drive the ship.

Speaker: Yeah. And and for those two years, we allowed him the freedom to step away from the business to write the book. And so, you know, we were filling the rooms at his events, putting tens of thousands of people, butts in seats at his events. And he stepped away, to to write high performance habits. And so, you know, that that was that season for for that.

Speaker: So, you bought personalbrand.com in 2013. Yep. Mind sharing what you pay for that?

Speaker: I mean, I I don't ever specify the specific dollar amount because it's kind of irrelevant, but a VC owned it. And the the domain was just redirecting to his personal website.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: And I had no money and I reached out to him and I said, hey, I'm serving authors, speakers, coaches, thought leaders, personal brands. This is what I wanna do for the rest of my life. I just recently graduated college. Can you sell me this domain name? I'll give you $300 for it.

Needless to say, he didn't take the $300, but he immediately put it up for sale with a buy it now price on cdoo.com which is a domain registry and anybody could have bought it. I got that email, when I was actually, you know, speaking at at an event over at GoDaddy at the time. I left that event immediately, raced home, grabbed my credit card, just maxed out my credit card. I was like living on ramen noodles for the next like two or three months. And immediately after I bought it, I had this whole like like oh shoot moment.

Like did I do the right thing? And it and a little bit of of buyer's remorse there for a split second, but I just felt that that calling. And, my my wife, who's over here in studio as well, she works in personalbrand.com as well. One of the things that she's known for for saying and says a lot is sometimes when you're working on the dream, the dream's working on you.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: And so even though immediately I didn't do anything with personalbrand.com, I I had a vision. And at that point, I didn't have the marquee clients. I didn't have the reputation. I didn't have the skill to bring the vision that I saw into reality, and having that domain name in my account was something that was kind of a forcing function or refining function Yeah. For a decade, that you know, because when you're on personalbrand.com, like, you can't be the Walmart of personal brands.

Right? Like, you kinda have to be, like, the best. I I wanted it to be the best. I wanted to be the the the absolute best at what we did. You raised

Speaker: us the standard.

Speaker: Yeah. And and it took me a while to find the right team. And our our, partner and our agency, Jonathan Gray, he's got Fortune 500 brand experience bringing that level of creative talent. He was a creative director at a an agency working with, you know, household name big brands and we're bringing that billion dollar brand campaign strategy to personal brands. And so we just have assembled the best team in the industry to get predictable and repeatable results for our clients, which is the most important thing.

Speaker: Well, I bring that up because, like, I I'm a domain junkie also.

Speaker: Nice.

Speaker: Right? And so, like, you know, I bought, like, when I had my brokerage, you know, I bought stunninghomes.com, you know, around here as a realtor. You know, I used to wear that hat. Yeah. And I bought tempehomes.com, gilberthomes.com, channellinghomes.com.

Speaker: Yeah. Disruptors.com, I noticed. Yeah. I was like, dang.

Speaker: And disruptors.com. And, like, for me, it's like an investment. But, like, so many people look at it, treat the domain as, like, well, that's really expensive. I don't know how we can justify I'm not gonna get an ROI on it. It's like, are you crazy?

Like, you just tell them, like, this is your domain. Like, it's instantly memorable. Yes. Yes. Right?

Speaker: It's one of the most critical things. Right.

Speaker: Because of us, like, you know, like, it it's it's it's Michael with personal brand dot com. It's like, oh, getpersonalbrand.com. But it was like, it's Michael with personal dash brand dot com. It was like, it's michaelwithpersonal-brand.com.

Speaker: I was like, it's just Yeah. Yeah. Or Blue Cup brand agency, you know. It's like like it's something that's easily forgettable. But Right.

You know, and it's something that's

Speaker: No offense to anyone that owns Blue Cup brand

Speaker: Man, I I I gotta better be careful. There's thrown out random random domains there. I probably should go buy it if it's available. But yeah. When you when you own a domain name, like, the domain itself can be positioning an authority.

It is. Yeah. I can't tell you how much easier it is to attract premium clients owning personalbrand.com versus a decade ago when we were running our agency under the name paper plane. Yeah. You know, it's like it's just completely different.

Speaker: Sure. Okay. So moving forward. So, you start landing big names. You mentioned, Jim O'Quic, Brandon Burchard, and a few other names.

Yeah. How did you I guess there's two different things here. A, how did you do it? But b, like, how did you work up the courage to get those connections?

Speaker: I mean, one of my deepest passions is really helping people understand it takes a long time to become an overnight success. There was no shortcut. There was no hack. I wish there was. It was just getting outsized results for clients and working with c level clients, b level clients, a minus level clients working all the way up to like the marquee clients that that we get to talk about today.

It was just progressively honing our craft, building the skill set, and getting results for clients. We got known for driving outsized results for these launches, and word just spread like wildfire.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: We were doing mobile optimized and conversion optimized checkout processes back in 2013 and 2014 when no one was doing it. Mhmm. And so we were able to just drive significantly better results than our competitors were and word travels traveled fast. And so we took our, you know, our our marketing agency services doing a lot of different things to turning it into a productized service, doing product launches for the biggest names in the industry, and then taking that productized service and turning into a software product. And I think that evolution, people can navigate much faster today with the technology that's available, and the resources and the the the skills and the training.

Like, you can just learn so much more just on YouTube listening to this show. Like, I had to go spend time, energy, effort, a ton of money traveling to all these different conferences because this type of information wasn't readily accessible just ten,

Speaker: fifteen years ago. 2014, 2015 is when I started paying, you know, Facebook marketing gurus. Right? Yeah. Going to events, going to, you know, private masterminds and, like, learning, like, here's this cool thing now to increase conversions.

Like, that's all this information is so readily available right now. But, like, you had to be in, like, you had to get on the plane. You had to take time away from your main business to go learn, like, the latest hacks.

Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. And, you know, nowadays, the I I would say there's almost an equal but opposite problem.

Like, information's so readily available, it becomes overwhelming.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: Technology is so easy to implement. You have so many options that people are jumping to building an AI app before they really understand the problem. Mhmm. And so that was the thing that led to our success, specifically with Spiffy and our our our our payments platform. We've processed over a billion dollars worth of payments over the last decade, specifically last like seven years, but we built the product because we knew the problem so intimately.

Mhmm. Like, so many people are taught, don't, you know, do thing, you know, scale scale scale, you know, don't start doing any action. Don't build a business unless you understand how it's gonna scale. Mhmm. But we built a scalable business because we were willing to do things that didn't scale.

We were willing to put our hands in the trenches, build the campaigns, use all the existing tools out there in the marketplace, see all the limitations, understand from our clients and our customers like why they're using that tool. Oh, they're actually like really not happy with that tool. They're just using it because it's the best in the industry and there's no other options. Like, oh, there's an opportunity there. And so I think now the tendency is just to jump to some, you know, fancy AI app that can do a million different things versus really taking the time, energy, and effort to solve a real problem in the real world that people are willing to pay for, and that's how you build a business.

Speaker: Yeah. So, so you start working when I start working so you're you've helped, Brendon. Right? Take time away from the operations, like, write a book. You're scaling with these, big authors.

Is this at the time where you get you launched Spiffy?

Speaker: Yeah. So Spiffy started as a little side hustle on the side of our agency. We bootstrapped it. It's profitable, debt free, no investors, still to this day. That might change in the in the near future.

But, we started as a little little side hustle app on our agency. Our first customers were our current and past clients. And so literally from day one, we were able to launch the software product to paying customers that already knew, liked, and trust us. And then naturally, over the course of several years, Spiffy got to a point where it just made sense for us to start to wind down the agency and put all of our time, energy, and effort into the software product.

Speaker: What was the problem that you were solving?

Speaker: With the software?

Speaker: With Spiffy. Yeah.

Speaker: So it was conversion optimized checkouts. Mobile optimized, conversion optimized. Still to this day, there's a lot of platforms out there where payments is the secondary or tertiary feature of the software. Mhmm. You know, like Kajabi, great platform.

Courses that also kinda sort of take payments. ClickFunnels, great funnel builder that kinda also sort of takes payments. And I kind of realized, like, the whole reason why we have an online business is to make money online. Like, why do we make it so hard for people to give us money? And even tools that are pretty good at it, they don't do a good job of passing sales data back to your CRM.

And so you have your sales data in one system and your, and in all of your marketing and and customer information in in another system. And so we just solve all of those problems. The highest converting checkout in the industry, we have the who's who on our platform, everyone from Jay Shetty to Matthew Hussey, Amy Porterfield, Darren Hardy, Jefferson Fisher, on and on and on. People that, like, have teams that, like, geek out over these small nuances and can choose any tool but choose spiffy and so

Speaker: Well, Darren Hardy is a mentor. Right? So, like, I paid I paid him a lot of money Yeah. Over the years. And I remember one of the things, he talked about I think it was at the high performance, forum.

Talked about what's really important as a business owner is you have to make it really as easy as possible for them to give you money.

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker: Right? Like, he was talking about that in in the forum. And his example of that was, like, you know, when he wants a MacBook, he'd go to Best Buy, he'd drive there, he'd do this and that, and then, like, there's no one in the checkout line. Right? So now, like, his time is valuable, and his patience is definitely not very high.

Right? And so, like, he just, like, hands it to an employee and then just, like, goes, like, calls, has an assistant order from the Apple Store. Right? And then it's just gonna be delivered to his office, and it's done. But, like, it's really easy to give Apple your money.

But for whatever reason, Best Buy makes it really hard to give give them your, give them your money.

Speaker: Yeah. Right? Yeah. For sure.

Speaker: So how much revenue is lost out the door and that's the problem that you solved?

Speaker: 100%. Time and time and time again, you know, up until last year, we had only worked with people that were already generating 7 and 8 figures. They have teams. They've kind of dialed in the making money aspect of things. But leading up to that and then also last year, we started doing live events, working with people earlier on in the process.

And time and time and time again, people are, you know, they're struggling to make money. They're not making the money that they want to make. They think that their offer isn't working. And the question the first question I ask is over the last ninety days, how many people have you actually gotten in front of the offer? Not qualified people, not even people that you know are interested, just breathing human beings.

How many people have you told about your offer? And usually that number consistently that number is a very very very low number. Somewhere less than 10 usually. The number one reason why people don't make money in their online business or in any business, they're simply not getting enough people in front of their

Speaker: offer. Mhmm.

Speaker: So first and foremost is make sure you get people in front of the offer and then make sure that it's really easy for them to pay.

Speaker: Yeah. So then right now, I use GoHighLevel. I think right now, they're, like, the probably the biggest. I think they just consumed everyone else's audience, or user base. So I use GoHighLevel, and then I have whatever the checkout thing and then with Stripe.

Yeah. So then would you be replacing the Stripe part, or you'd be replacing the GoHighLevel part?

Speaker: We so we integrate with HighLevel.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: We're not the payment processor. We're strategic partners with Stripe and PayPal for the actual processing. We're just a more performant, version of HighLevel's checkout, solution or Kajabi's checkout solution

Speaker: Let's just not talk about Kajabi because it's I've used it. Yeah. It's been it's been

Speaker: I just don't wanna go too hard on on on high level. Right? And and again, it's like those tools are really good at doing a lot of different things. And for people that are just starting out, the the conversion rate really doesn't matter.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: And so if you're doing less than $200,000 in revenue, like, keep everything in one system. If you're doing more than $200,000 in revenue, you're leaving a lot of money on the table, and that's where Spiffy comes into play.

Speaker: So then it's like a like, they go from the landing page to a different site, a URL to check out.

Speaker: Yeah. So, I mean, it they can go to a spiffy page. We we recommend that. You can also embed a spiffy checkout right into a high level landing page. So you could, there's several different ways that you can build that flow.

Mhmm. But spiffy integrates with high level to start tags, start automations, send sales data back to custom fields. So it there's a a nice synergy there.

Speaker: And that's one of the most important things, like, you know, you know, if you're not doing that much much revenue, it doesn't really matter. But, like, when you're spending a lot of money on advertising dollars

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker: The the data needs to go back.

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker: We need to tell Facebook, here's the people that checked out. So having a a, consistent or a breadcrumb where we can track all the way back is so so paramount.

Speaker: So paramount. Yeah. We guarantee that Spiffy will out convert any other checkout platform by at least 10%, and that's a very, very, very conservative number. So especially when you're spending a lot of money on ads, it just makes your ad budget go further.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: Most people think in order to double their business, they need to speak at twice as many events. They need to increase, you know, double their ad budget or, you know, go to twice as many networking events. The fastest way to double your revenue is actually just to increase your conversion rate from 1% to two. First step is just to know what your conversion rate actually is. Step one.

But then usually, it's a pretty light lift to go from 1% to 2% conversion rate. That's only 1%, but it's a 100% increase. Right? Or to go to 2% to 4% or from 4% to eight. Like, wherever you're at, you have like, that's really where a very very very undervalued and high leveraged aspect of of people's businesses that is just found money.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: You don't need to get any more traffic but you can get a lot more revenue from the traffic that you're already getting.

Speaker: Gotcha. Okay. So that's you said it was spiffy.

Speaker: Yeah. Spiffyspiffy.co.

Speaker: Alright. So you launched at you said '20

Speaker: So the first version of it was and this is a a huge lesson too, especially one of my, one of the messages I I wanna get out there into the world is so many people think that they have to raise money in order to start a business or to start the business that they have envisioned. We envision building the number one checkout platform in the market, which is what Spiffy is today, but we didn't start building that. Version one of Spiffy was an app for an existing ecosystem that that had a problem. They were vocal about their problem. They were begging for a problem, and we knew that they were willing to pay for a problem.

And all we had to do was create that solution.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: And within our first two years of Spiffy, we, we accelerated to $500,000 worth of, you know, recurring revenue with zero marketing just by solving a problem in an existing marketplace where there with which there was demand. And so we started building that first version of Spiffy back in 2016, and then what Spiffy is today. So, again, we built that, accelerated revenue, hired the team, and then built the platform that we wanted without raising any venture capital. Yeah. So today, we the the version of Spiffy that people are using today, we started building in 2019.

Speaker: Gotcha. So this was a side hustle to your existing agency. Was this paper plane, or was this personal brand, the agency?

Speaker: So at that point, it was paper plane. And I owned the domain name personalbrand.com, but the vision was bigger than what we were implementing at that time. And at that time, like, personal brand, like, it was only a thing for authors and speakers and thought leaders. Like, it wasn't what it was like today.

Speaker: Gotcha.

Speaker: And so, in about 2018, 2019, we started, to move everything over under the personalbrand.com name. And, Spiffy started taking off working with, you know, huge, huge companies and, you know, just understand the valuation of of companies. Software companies are have much more enterprise value than agencies. And so it it made sense to start to wind down the agency and focus on spiffy. Going back to, you know, needing a world class team in order to, realize the vision I had for personalbrand.com.

We started up personalbrand.com in, I believe, '20, 2023. So partnered with Jonathan Gray and started again working with household names, and then last year, adding live events to our business model in 2027 is where we're going to scale with our online community and our live events. So the goal isn't to build a massive agency. The goal is to work with a couple dozen of of really high profile clients, and then scale through live events and through community.

Speaker: So you had an agency. It was working well. You start a side hustle, which became

Speaker: The main thing.

Speaker: The main thing. Yep. And then once you got the main thing going and you're not as involved day to day anymore, then you say, hey. There's a problem. Now is the time to revitalize personal brand?

Or was it, like, we have this thing here? Like, what what was the thought process?

Speaker: Yeah. I wanna be, like, very clear here, and this is one of the things that, I I one of the biggest mistakes I see people make is trying to copy what people that are more established are doing today not how they got started. Mhmm. I don't believe that a path to success is trying to do multiple things at once. Spiffy was established.

It was stable. We have team, and personal brand is very synergistic. Like, it's the same ideal customer profile. Mhmm. And so we wound it down.

We focused on Spiffy, got that to a great point, and then recognized, like, hey. There's a massive opportunity to really lean into personal brand, live events, and have that be how spiffy gets introduced to people as well. And so we're kinda, like, monetizing our pipeline with software on the back end. So it might appear like we're doing multiple things, but it's more of like a vertically integrated, business model where, you know, we have the podcast, the six week podcast at the top, kind of top of funnel awareness. We have the agency services and software all serving the same ideal customer profile.

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Speaker: Gotcha. Okay. But you said 2023 is when you revitalize personal brand.

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker: Why in 2023?

Speaker: So it's one of those things where, especially when you're a software founder with recurring revenue, like, you really don't have to do anything and especially when you're trying to, like, come up with a better idea or a better business model. Usually agency work isn't the answer.

Speaker: But No. It's it's the opposite.

Speaker: It's the opposite. And it it's it was really me going back to my roots and going back to why I even became an entrepreneur in the first place. Me in that conference room at 17.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: And then reigniting that passion. And so I didn't have to do it, but I had to do it. Like a sole mission calling purpose. Like I built skill sets. I have perspective.

I have data. I have information that can be extremely helpful to people who are mission led, heart centered entrepreneurs. And I would be doing the world a disservice of like not sharing that information

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: And really like leaning into that calling mission and purpose that I like I still feel to this day. Like I have like full body tingles right now just because like like that is my purpose in life is to spark and inspire entrepreneurship and to help mission led entrepreneurs who wanna have a positive impact, have a bigger impact, create a sustainable business model that fuels the mission. You know, we have no interest in helping someone build a personal brand just so they can buy a Lamborghini. You know, like, that that's like the only thing. Obviously, if you have so much, you add so much value to the world and you have, you know, over over life's, over your life's work for a decade or two and and out of fun and why not because we're only here, we only have one life once.

You buy a Lamborghini, like, cool. It's not about the material possession. It just can't be the the sole reason for it. Right?

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: And so we really wanna, rally around mission led, heart centered entrepreneurs who their first and foremost metric is having a positive impact, getting compensated well for it so that it can fuel their mission.

Speaker: So it sounds like spiffy was like business, but personal brand lights you up.

Speaker: Both. I mean, you know, like, I still love the impact that we're having at at Spiffy. And Sure. Of course. Personal brand is is definitely, more of a a soul calling mission and purpose than it is necessarily a smart business move.

Speaker: Okay. Yeah. Alright. So what problem are we solving with personal brand?

Speaker: Oh, I mean, where do we even start? Yeah. The problem that we solve with personal brand is what we call the invisible tax. So for our high end agency services, the invisible tax is the price you pay from good enough. What we've found, the invisible tax is the price you pay for good enough.

Speaker: Okay.

Speaker: So most people have a good enough website. They have a good enough, you know, social media presence. Their content's good enough. Mhmm. We typically work we we almost exclusively work with people who have some sort of high ticket offer.

Some sort of offer where, you know, a client to them equals at least $1,015.25, $30,000, maybe real estate deals, 6 figures, you know, 7 figures. Right? Like like people where they're they're not looking to sell a million things. They're looking to sell something high ticket to a premium buyer because a premium buyer is making a buying decision on a completely different level of psychology than somebody who's looking for a deal. Premium buyers are are, you know, selling a high ticket service.

Premium buyers are willing to pay a premium because they want the best. And if you don't look like the best, then your those leads, they're not showing up in your CRM. They're not showing up to a sales call. They aren't showing up anywhere in your data. They're flying, you know, sailing by you like a ship in the night.

You don't even know that they were even on your website because they don't engage. So that visible tax is is the gap that we close where most people's online presence is speaking to the bottom 80% of the market, and we speak to the top 1% of the market. Because what happens when you talk to the top 1%, you get the bottom 99% as well. Mhmm. And so, when we again, we don't manufacture anything.

We work with clients who have spent the last decade or two out there building credibility, building authority, getting results for clients, and we just ensure that their level of credibility, authority, and expertise is being accurately conveyed through their online presence. Time and time and time again, we close that gap and our clients have massive success and, you know, we charge quite a bit for our services and within ninety days, they make a return on their investment because they're already getting the exposure. They're just missing their biggest and best opportunities.

Speaker: Yeah. That in invisible tax, I love the way you position that, because it's true. Like, there are people that are, like, checking you out and, like, not quite it. Right? But, like, there's a reason why, you know, Mercedes, trying to think, like, the other major brand, like, you know, Lamborghini, Ferrari, Rolex, like, they they go the extra mile, like, you know, the brochures are always a little bit thicker.

Right? The the gloss is a little bit different. Everything. Every detail matters. Right?

I mean, I was watching I can't remember what was a I think it was a Ferrari's, like, painting. Right? The way they paint the logos on the cars. Right? It's not just a sticker.

It's like it's like someone took the time to hand paint every single one of these things. It's crazy. Yeah. Right? But, like, you were talking about that.

You want that premium buyer. They want that extra touch, and they're willing to pay for it, and they have the money to pay for it.

Speaker: Yeah. Totally. I mean, think about it. As a keynote speaker or as an author or somebody influencer, like, you're wanting to come in and, like, get paid a $25,000 keynote. Does the corporation really care whether your keynote's 25 k or 35 k?

It's like, they don't care about that 10 k difference, but they they want to they they know that speaker lineup is going to be announced. They're trying to get people excited to come to this internal, external event, whatever it is. And so, like, when you you're able to understand how the game is played and, like, make sure that you're packaging and presenting yourself, again, not in a way that is inauthentic or or manufactured. It's just conveying what's already there, but you're elevating yourself in a way that is putting your best foot forward that people will will are willing to pay a premium for the best. And so that those are the the types of clients that we work with.

I can give an example if you if it's helpful but Yeah. Please. Yeah. So one of our clients, Eliza Van Cort, she had a best selling book and she was getting booked as a keynote, all across the country. The universities, organizations, corporations, her book is called A Woman's Guide to Claiming Space.

So it's kind of, in the women's empowerment professional, arena. Mhmm. And, she was trying to raise her keynote price, but she was stuck at a five k keynote and every time she tried to even raise it to 6 or $77,500, she stopped getting booked. And she was doing the second pass at all of the same, you know, places that hired her and loved her talk, and they're bringing her back. And she kinda knew there wouldn't be a third pass.

At her speech at at her talks, she'd have men come up to her afterwards who saw that she was speaking, bought her book, read the book, came up to her after the talk, say, hey, your talk was amazing. Your message isn't just for women. It's for men too. Don't leave us out. And so her, you know, PR strategist was guiding her to move from, like, this women's empowerment positioning to strategic communication as her positioning.

She didn't know how to bridge that gap without sabotaging her momentum, and that's when we got the call. She engaged our services through our process. We start to get to know Eliza. We start to kinda figure out how we're going to bridge this gap. And she was excited about her book.

She was excited about her keynote talking, but her keynotes we we we found that her keynotes weren't actually translating into her deepest passion, which at that, you know, at that time was, her leadership, workshops. Like, not just inspiring people from stage but actually like in a in a bigger container, creating transformation. Through this process, we learn about her childhood and that she actually loves acting. And so we started to, like, we we noticed first, like, she was excited about her book, she was excited about her talk, but she started talking about acting and her whole energy shifted. She was so excited about this thing and really started, hey, tell us more about that.

She's like, no, no, no, no. I gotta hide that. That's something I've hidden from my corporate career. It doesn't, you know, it kind of detracts from my credibility of this, you know, know, prestigious corporate career that I have. You know, that that's nothing.

Oh, okay. Just just play with us. Like, tell us about this. We found out that she owns an acting school in New York for the last twenty years and dozens of successful actors have come through her school to go on to Broadway and musicals and independent films. And so we knew we had to incorporate it.

So we tasked ourselves with finding the through line between women's empowerment, strategic communication, and acting. Three puzzle pieces that don't seem to fit. Without communicating the entire process because that would take a little while, We get down to one word that is the through line between all of them. We call this the golden thread. The golden thread between three parts that don't seemly fit together and that golden thread was the word confidence.

Speaker: Mhmm. And we

Speaker: came up with the brand positioning statement, act with confidence. That for anyone else is a cliche throwaway phrase, but for Eliza, it's her entire life story in three words.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: And now, she gets paid a premium for bringing the exercises from her acting school into the boardroom.

Speaker: Oh, okay. And she

Speaker: is just like absolutely thrilled. Shortly after that, opportunity comes. She got paid three times her keynote previously. Went from 5,000 to $15,000 in a big huge corporation, the name of which we've mentioned earlier on this podcast, so we can kind of read between the lines here, contracted her for $500,000 worth of workshops at their headquarters. So all of last year, twenty twenty five, she was, you know, implementing these workshops, getting them to do the work that she wants to do and incorporating aspects of herself that she didn't think were were valuable.

And so, you know, she's living highly compensated, deeply on purpose, all because we were able to close that gap and, help her stop to pay the invisible tax.

Speaker: Yeah. That's that's incredible. So, let's see here. We talk about the invisible tax and why it's important. I guess going back to it, if we were talking about the problem we're solving, you know, in 2023.

Yep. But, like, what inspired you to, like, hey. We need to do this. Because, like, I don't know when exactly the influencer thing took off. I think for sure during COVID

Speaker: Yes.

Speaker: It really popped. Yep. But I think it was kinda, like, trending before COVID. Yep. Right?

So, like, did you see, like, hey. Everyone's doing this wrong. We need to do this the right way. Like, what was the, like, the catalyst?

Speaker: I mean, I I think a part of it is my own, progression as an entrepreneur. When I got started in direct sales, I thought marketing was complete b s. I definitely thought brand was complete b s. When I learned marketing, I still thought brand was b s until I learned that brand is actually everything.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: You know, kind of following, you know, traditional logic standard, you you know, a common thing out there in the marketplace or common phrase. I I don't know who said it first, but so every problem in your business is actually a revenue problem. Because if you had the revenue, you could hire the consultant, hire the team member, hire the executive, hire the team and solve it. So just make more money and solve all the problems. Well, okay.

Easier said than done. I realized that every revenue problem in the business is actually a brand problem. So if a equals b and b equals c, then a must also equal c. That means every single problem in your business is actually a brand problem. Most people going back to what we were saying at the very beginning of the episode, most people conflate brand with branding and branding with content marketing.

And this is the problem that I saw. It's just so many people not understanding what brand actually is and talking about brand as if it's content marketing. Hey, I'm gonna teach you how to build a personal brand. Here's how to YouTube. Right?

Brand, you actually don't have any control over. Branding is the process to influence your brand, and then content marketing is just amplifying your message. Brand, and branding. The the analogy I like to use is like fish and fishing. Just because you're fishing doesn't mean you're gonna catch fish.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Just because you're branding doesn't mean you have a brand.

Speaker: Mhmm. And

Speaker: there's so many people out there talking about the influencer. The the the the number one biggest lie about building a million dollar influencer is that it's a social media game. This is where being in the industry for so long, I just have so much perspective. I've seen under the hood of 8 figure businesses. I've seen I've had conversations with people that have millions of followers.

You can, you know, millions of followers, hundreds of thousands of followers. Time and time and time again, people that have the most followers are simply publishing content. They're entertaining to the masses. Mhmm. It's indirectly correlated to revenue, but it's not directly coordinated to revenue.

Most people think to build a personal brand, you have to have a million followers online, and nothing could be further from the truth. There are so many people out there that have the millions of followers or hundreds of thousands of followers, but as soon as they stop posting, no one's talking about them. They actually have no brand. Branding is what you say about you and brand is what your customers say about you. The work that we do at personalbrand.com is brand strategy.

So we want to get everything you do down to a the fewest words possible to be powerful, memorable, repeatable so that you can spoon feed your best customers powerful language to talk about you. And so at the end of the day, branding is what you say about you, brand is what your customers say about you, and the whole goal of brand and business is to simplify that message so that people are out there talking about you in a powerful and accurate way.

Speaker: So then branding, the verb of creating of of, crafting, manipulating, not influencing Yeah. What they say about you. Content marketing, is it basically, like, a one of, like, many tools that's involved in branding?

Speaker: Yeah. I think content marketing is a spoke on the wheel of branding. Mhmm. You know, at the end of the day, there's a lot and then I think this is one of the biggest things that prevents a lot of people from stepping into building their personal brand because they just see so many people out there. They're like do it building a personal brand in the cringiest way or just like faking till they make it and they don't wanna be seen as that.

But at the end of the day, it really comes down to what other people say about you. You know, branding is is what you say about you. Brand is what your customers say about you and what you say about you might be true. Your social media content might be true, but what someone else says about you is almost certainly true. Mhmm.

You know, the analogy I use all the time is like, if I own a restaurant and I sell a cheeseburger and I put a big billboard all over town that says best cheeseburger in town and you come to my restaurant and eat my cheeseburger and it sucks. My brand isn't what I say it is. It's what you say it is. And so at the end of the day, most people are so focused on having the outward perception of a polished personal brand and they're so focused on closing a high ticket offer and and seeing the close of the sales, the finish line when that's the starting line.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: You wanna build brand, if you wanna build a successful business, you need to be architecting all the way through to a raving customer. And that entire customer experience from first time they hear about you on social media all the way through to a successful raving fan client needs to be intelligently and artfully crafted, and that's what we help our clients do.

Speaker: So I'm gonna go on a quick tangent here. Yeah. Please. But then we'll go back to this.

Speaker: Okay. Cool.

Speaker: So I wanted your take. Maybe this would be the polarizing take on this on this episode. Your thoughts on dancing realtors.

Speaker: Dancing realtors.

Speaker: I see. I saw the eye roll.

Speaker: Yeah. I mean I mean, dancing in general. I mean, this is also my own bias. Right? Again if you wanna go viral and if you wanna build your followers, it's easy.

Be entertaining to the masses. Yeah. Just because you're dancing on TikTok and you're getting likes, comments, and engagement, and followers like that doesn't mean that people wanna buy from you. It might. I think this is where things are going with AI too.

It's just like people want to buy from people they know like and trust and share their values and share their overall attitudes towards life and so I I I think we're early I think you know historically, that's been super cringe. I think going into the future, it might be what actually is a competitive advantage. Like Yeah. People aren't going to be hiring people for what they know. We're leaving the information age and we're entering the age of transformation.

Speaker: Mhmm. And

Speaker: we, people are going to be compensated for getting clients, getting customers a result. And they're going to hire people that can get a result that they align with. Right? So Right. The values, the, you know, the the quirks, the things that you're interested in, showcasing those in your personal brand is how people are going to get paid in the future.

Because people are gonna buy from people that share interests, likes, values, and overall, you know, attitudes towards life.

Speaker: Yeah. And I've I brought this up. I can't remember which episode this was. It was recently, but, like, I've got, like, 85,000, I think, followers on Instagram. Right?

Which is, like, I've been stuck in that number for, like, two years. Like, I can't get above 85. I can't get below.

Speaker: Hell, you just need to do some dance videos.

Speaker: Maybe. Maybe that's what it is. Joking. But, like, I have, like, you know, it's been stuck in that number for a while. And, like, the engagement just goes down because, like, you're rewarded on the algorithm.

Like, what percentage of your followers actually engage with your content? But, like, if you had a bunch of followers from, like, eight years ago, like, your your your your social media brand, the the content marketing component is kinda stale. And so, like, you know, have you seen people, like, relaunch a different social media profile to deal with that, or, like, do you have any opinions on that? Yeah.

Speaker: I mean, I've definitely seen it. Even though I started my marketing company as a social media marketing company, like, the game has changed so much. Mhmm. And, so there's way more knowledgeable people that can talk about, like, ins and outs of the algorithms. I hire those people.

But I have seen that quite consistently across a lot of my friends and clients where, like, they kind of have this profile that's a little outdated or maybe they, you know, did some, things to, like, try to, you know, force grow their followers, but they, you know, it was like I don't know. I've heard a lot of crazy things. When people like, you know, using ads to target people from other countries that are real people, but to, like, blow up their followers, but they actually have really no interest. They're never gonna buy. And so like like like you're saying that can negatively impact your social media account.

So friends have literally take, you know, sunset, you know, still there, but they're just not actively posting profiles that have tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands of of followers to, like, start over brand new and fresh. A lot of those experiments I've seen people just start recently within the last year, and so I don't know you know, obviously, the numbers aren't, you know they're they're not at a 100,000 followers yet. But, again, it's not about the number of followers. It's about the quality of followers.

Speaker: Right? It's the activity from the followers. Top one of the rating fans, which I I wanna get to next. So I just want other thing. So, you know, we have a podcast.

We've been doing this eight years now. Right? So we have, our chief marketing officer, and he's run ads. He's run agencies for a long time. He works full time here now.

But one of the things he talks about, like, the reason why he enjoys running our ads is because I have a brand. Now I didn't intentionally create this brand. Right? I just knew, like, I have to get a bunch of followers, if I want to get more sales. Right?

Like, that was just the activity. Yeah. Right? So social media content marketing, you can't find a bunch of people, but the brand is, like, you know, this is what they said. But there was no articulation.

There was no, like, intentionality. It's just like, let's just do a bunch of stuff.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Right? But we we've been able to generate a lot of sales even though we weren't intentional with it, but but it's translated really well, which is kinda like a testament to, like, what you're what you're doing.

Speaker: Yeah. Totally. And and that's a natural progression. You know, me this is like me kind of thinking my own way through a lot of my struggle of of going from, you know, working inside these 8 figure businesses being an absolute weapon using all of the, you know, most cutting edge, most expensive software to then turning my skill set back on me building my personal brand. Yeah.

Speaker: Where,

Speaker: like, I it's not smart for me to use the tools I know how to use. Like, it doesn't even make sense financially to, you know, pay for those tools. And so we this forced me to codify the four different stages of a personal brand business. And in the early innings, you have to just get started. You have to take kind of like rogue inspired action just to like know one, just to get in the arena.

Like, you have to be in the arena.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: You you yes. You can research and try to figure all this stuff out before you ever get started, but more times than not, that just leaves you with a whole bunch of information pinging around your head and no action taken. It's so much better to take, you know, ignorance on fire is way better than knowledge on ice. And so the four different stages of a personal brand business

Speaker: I like that saying.

Speaker: The the the first the the the first stage is is, is calling. Usually, from a revenue perspective, that's like your first 6 figures, zero to a $100,000. Usually, you're a solopreneur, maybe you hire some part time help, but really it's just you in the business. You have this calling. You're still trying to figure out your offer.

You're still trying to figure out how to monetize. The next stage is called opportunity. That's usually when you have your first couple hires like more full time. You've found a product or an offer that works. That's usually between a 100,000 to to $500,000.

And then, the next stage is traction. That's about $500,000 to about $3,000,000. It's when you finally get something that really hits, it's when you kinda feel the flywheel effect where you're getting for the effort you're putting in, you're getting more results than the effort, that they're you're putting in. There's there's there's more results being generated for the effort. And then the fourth stage is what we call scale.

And that's usually 3,000,000 plus. That's where you have I I equate that stage to like a formula one pit crew. Right? You have specialists at the dials of analytics and funnels and ads and and you're starting to, like, really fine tune to to really get the maximum performance out of your business. But to your point, so much of those early stages especially stage one and stage two, it's just about getting in the game and seeing what works and figuring out where, it makes sense to apply even more focus and attention.

And that's really like what we do with our clients is like they usually have a business, you know, in the early innings you create an offer and it works. You make money

Speaker: and

Speaker: then you get some feedback and you create another offer and it works and you make some money and you create another offer and it works. And all of a sudden you have, your your your business is actually a collection of offers not a sound business model.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: And that's the the chasm that we help our clients create. It's like really figuring out where what can we cut? What can we strip away? There there's a a a term that we use called ROE. You know, obviously real estate you're you're from the ROI.

ROI return on investment. ROE return on energy. There's often areas of the business where you're putting time and energy and effort and you're even making a profit but the the profit you're making isn't worth the effort. Mhmm. And it's much better to, simplify and stop taking those actions, put more effort into things that are, actually working really well in the business and compound results there.

And so that's kind of the process and and the framework of how we think about it.

Speaker: So you mentioned earlier, when you got a brand, then you create rave raving fans. Maybe I kinda butchered that. So, like, walk me through, like, you you talked about, like, you know, the the the mechanics, what the organization looks like, what the offers look like. But, like, talk to me about, like, intentionality between content marketing leading to branding to ultimately having a brand that has raving fans.

Speaker: Yeah. So the the most critical aspect of building a true brand is the fulfillment side of the business, which I think doesn't get a lot of airtime because it's not sexy. You know, everyone wants to talk about ads and sales and revenue, top line revenue. There's so many businesses that I've seen, my friends that have did their first million dollar launch. They built a $30,000,000 company.

As soon as they hit $30,000,000, they wanted nothing to do with that business. So top line revenue numbers are impressive, but you can have a $30,000,000 a year business that's actually losing money. Not suggesting that that that's that case in that example, but just generally speaking, that, like, the top line revenue doesn't mean anything. So at the end of the day, brand is built based off of creating a fulfillment mechanism that gets predictable and repeatable results. And it's not about adding a whole bunch of bells and whistles.

We call we call this part of the business the engine. The engine, I'm not a huge gearhead. I do like cars, but, I know one thing about an engine. It has as few moving parts as necessary to get the output it was engineered to get. But first and foremost, you have to have a goal.

You need to figure out like what what revenue are are you needing to hit and you need to develop an engine that fits the output that you're trying to get. If you're metaphorically speaking, if your end goal, if your destination is London, England and you're sitting here building a really nice Ferrari engine, a Ferrari is not gonna get you to England. Right? Like, you need an airplane. And so so much of of of businesses is building that fulfillment mechanism, building the engine of the business, so it has as few moving parts as possible.

More moving parts mean more complexity, more wear and tear, more maintenance, more opportunity for things to go wrong. Same in a car, same in a business. Right? And so it really is a process of the early innings are are casting a wide net, you know, getting out there, trying a lot of different things, seeing what works, and then quickly simplifying down. And and that is how a brand is built.

You cannot build a brand if you're not getting predictable and consistent world class results for your clients.

Speaker: Yeah. And I think that's probably something that is you were saying not talked about because it's not sexy, but I think not only not talked about, but, like, completely overlooked. I I can say my own personal journey. Right? Like, I, you know, started as a realtor, did the broker thing, started wholesaling, flipping houses, this and that.

But once I got into, like, coaching and consulting, like, we delivered results, but we didn't take effort to ensure predictable what was what did you say?

Speaker: Yeah. Predictable and repeatable world class results. Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah. Like, we didn't take the actions to make sure that happened. And so we have in coaching, right, is, like, you just know that, for every 100 people that come in, like, five will actually do the work, and then you work with those five. And the people that came through, I would argue like, I would put my results against anybody else in in in the coaching industry. But even though I would put my results, like, happily, aggressively, right, against anyone else, I took zero effort on this part right here of the coaching.

I just relied on, like, our stuff's good, and it provides results. Yeah. But what I've learned now that we do software that, I wish I applied, like, maybe I regret perhaps. If I could do it over again, I would do this, is ensuring that people are doing everything they can to get the results. So before, it was like, hey.

Like, you paid the money. Make Make sure you show up on the calls on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. We're good. I do my part. You do your part.

Everyone's happy. On the software side, it's like, hey, Michael. Thanks for signing up. So our onboarding call is on Monday. Right?

And on Monday, I expect you to bring this, this, and this, have your operations person available for this, this, and this, and then we're gonna execute all this. And by the way, after we execute all this, in seven days, we're gonna check-in and make sure you did all these things. And on day 14, like, hey. You've done all these things. How is it going?

And on day 30, it's like, hey. How's it really going? We're doing all these things now because we had to. Because in coaching, if 5% do the work and the other 95% is like, you can't really get mad at me. You didn't get the results because you didn't do the work.

On software, if you're not doing the work, you're blaming me. I have to do everything I can to make sure you're doing all the work. So, like, for me, like, you're talking about the brand. Like, that is the thing that I was missing for all these years. And I think for a lot of people, I didn't realize it because that it wasn't necessary for me before.

Because I'm also that 5% that would do the work. Right. Right.

Speaker: Yeah. I paid you a lot of money.

Speaker: I'm gonna do the work. Yeah. But most people don't. Yeah. And so, I I think what you're talking about here building that brand is so so key that, you know, I love that this is, like, your thing and also no one talks about it.

Speaker: Yeah. For sure. And and the crazy thing is that since 2011, this is how Jeremy and I have been operating our business. These are like the principles that we, like, we're trying to instill in our clients. And now we have the data to prove it.

Like with spiffy checkouts, we've we have a billion dollars worth of data. We just published our 2026, creator trends report. And the data actually shows that companies that are indexing on follow through or fulfillment, and they're communicating that in the sales process that there is actually an accountability mechanism, a follow through mechanism that's engineered to get a predictable repeatable result. It's it's equal to 2.4 grade 2.4 x greater lifetime value.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Like, across all of our Point four.

Speaker: Customers, 2.4

Speaker: x greater lifetime value. So, you know, what we've seen is that there's a lot of burnout between people, like, selling AI stuff, like, things overtly AI. Like, obviously, AI that gets a tangible result, like, that that I'm not talking about that. But people don't want more AI. People want more results.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: People want results faster. AI can support that. So, but but ultimately, people want are are are buying an outcome even when they're buying a service. And the more you can communicate that you can get that outcome predictably and repeatably, it translates into, higher conversion rates, more short term revenue, and more revenue from each customer long term.

Speaker: Yeah. And going back to you again, I'm not trying to make this about me. I'm not trying to hijack this podcast.

Speaker: I love it. Yeah. Good.

Speaker: But, like, you know, I was talking to an investment banker and they're like, you know, like, why should someone buy your company versus, you know, your competition, this and that. I was like, because I know we have a world class fulfillment team now, which a year ago was the furthest thing from my mind. Never thought was necessary. Right? But now I was like, man, like, this was a major problem, and we've fixed this problem.

Right? And now that we've fixed this problem, like, clients are happy. They're not we're not getting random angry emails on the weekends like we used to. Yeah. Right?

So Yeah. Yeah. Like, the the fulfillment part is is is so so critical. Anything else you wanna talk about that? Because I think it's it's what you're saying is, like, it's so obvious when you say it.

You know? It's one of those things, like, it's, oh, yeah. Of course. Yeah. Right?

But, like, no one takes the time to actually think about it or talk about it.

Speaker: For sure. I think especially if you're in a coaching capacity, this is something that took me way too long to figure out. Our philosophy at personalbrand.com is the philosophy that is the infrastructure for a live events and our, private client services is that building any business but specifically a personal brand or a coaching business, there's three legs of the stool. It does not work if you're missing one of the legs. The three legs are brand, business, and being.

Brand is your messaging, your positioning, the words that you're using to communicate, you know, through through writing, through through verbal communication and visual communication, which is the biggest one that's overlooked. That's where kind of branding comes into play. But if if all we do is is focus on your branding and call in more higher paying clients, but you as the founder in your team, you're already operating at a 110% capacity, more higher paying clients isn't going to help. It's actually gonna burn you out and it's gonna destroy the business. So we have to address the business model.

Well, that's what I've been doing for a long time is the brand and the business. And it wasn't until, Natalie came back into my life. We have the most epic love story. We'll have to say that for another time. Natalie is our chief transformation officer at personalbrand.com.

And she handles the being part. What I realized is that although we're rendering business and brand services, we're actually creating our our service is a transformational process. When we dial in our client's brand and put their best foot forward, not something that's inauthentic but something that really, like, amplifies their, their message and puts their best foot forward and then we help them down their business model, down their offers, there's only one variable left. They have to be willing to step into their next level of being seen, of being heard, of wealth, of responsibility, of leadership. And you can spend all the time dialing in the perfect website, the perfect messaging.

You can spend all the time hiring the best funnel builders and ads people. But if you're not ready for your next level, you're gonna hesitate, sell sabotage, and delay. And so now every single one of our clients get supported in all three of those areas. So if you're a coach, if you're leading, some type of product or service that's either directly or indirectly transformational, you have to treat it as a transformational container and hold space for the humanness that happens in that container.

Speaker: Yeah. And that's such, again, point not really spoken about a lot. Right? Because we talk about, like, the Lambo, the private jets, you know, all all these other things, the the watches.

Speaker: By the way, you don't even need to rent them these days. You just use Chad g p t, like, let's throw them up on Instagram. Like, back in the day, you could just rent the Lambo or rent the mansion. Right? Yeah.

Yeah.

Speaker: Now you could just use the ad to put your Lambos on your yacht.

Speaker: Yeah. Exactly.

Speaker: And so, but the the part that gets missed is, like, can you actually handle it? And, like, for me, I thought mindset was, like, kinda like like something that weak people talk about. Like, this is kinda where my head was at. Maybe I was broken, perhaps. No.

I agree.

Speaker: Like, mindset only gets you part of the way there.

Speaker: Yeah. But what I what I've seen is, like, there are plenty of people that know what it takes, but self sabotage over and over again. Right? Like, hey, this funnel is working really well. Let's completely change directions.

And I and I've done that. Right? And it's not because I was afraid of success. It's just I couldn't focus. Right?

But, like, hey, this business is doing really well. Let's start another business. Right? There's all these things that we we do to self sabotage. And so I think it's really important, like, what you're talking about here.

Like, what you guys do. Yeah. It's, like, how do you, like, make sure you're you're you're you're doing all of it, because you mentioned multiple things, all the right things to make sure you can get that success.

Speaker: And, like, mindset is a portion of it, and we go deep into this in our three and a half day workshop brand and business breakthrough. Psychology is a thing, but it's also biology. It's like your nervous system. And obviously breath work and all these like somatic healing things are are like mainstream these days, but like they're still missing the point. Like people are trying to use breath work or yoga or these different practices to try to regulate a a a dysfunctional nervous system.

So they're trying to they're trying to regulate a I'll try to go back and like get a clean clip. So, you know, there's all these practices breath work and yoga and and, that the people are trying to to utilize as as kind of cutting edge things. And so going to from like psychology to biology, people are trying to use these somatic healing practices to to go from regulated to unregulated, but they don't realize that there's something a layer deeper than that. There's functional and dysfunctional. And so if all you're doing is regulating a dysfunctional nervous system, it's still not solving the problem.

And so we need to go from dysfunctional to functional and then start to regulate a functional nervous system. Because if you your body, you might know what you need to do, but if you can't get yourself to do it, why can't you do it? If you know what to do, why don't you take the action? And so your next level of success, of wealth, abundance, leadership needs to feel safe. If if your body isn't able to handle the pressure, then you're not gonna take the actions required in order to achieve what you know you're meant to achieve.

And so that aspect of things of of it's it's not just regulated, unregulated. It's going from dysfunctional to functional and figuring out how your body can support the mission that you're meant to, achieve in this lifetime.

Speaker: Can you give distinction between dysfunctional versus functional?

Speaker: Yeah. I mean, I I can just speak from my own, like, personal testimony. Right? It's like I spent all of this time, energy, and effort building the skill set to build an online business. I made millions and millions and millions for my clients.

Like, literally hands on the keyboards, campaigns I strategized and led the team or I built myself. I've generated $44,000,000 for my clients. Why couldn't I do it for myself? So ultimately, I realized that there was, you know, some some things hardwired in my nervous system

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: That I had to, like, unpack and then and figure out that were preventing me from taking the action that I even knew how to take. I was taking for others but wasn't willing to take for myself. And so this is like the humanness. This is the being. It's not just a psychology game.

It's actually a biology game too. And, this is one of the biggest unlocks where I've put my butt in the seat at personal development. So I've had more, you know, hours in a seminar, personal development seminar room than probably just about anyone on the planet. I am a self proclaimed seminar junkie. I love that stuff and it's like information was never the answer.

No. Like we're moving out of the information age into the age of transformation and so it's just making it more obvious that the information isn't the thing. Mhmm. Because otherwise everyone that goes to a marketing conference isn't here's a Facebook ads guru speak would all all of a sudden be a Facebook ads guru. It's not about the information.

It's about taking the action. It's about crafting a product or service that creates a transformation, that creates a result. And people that are doing that now are going to be have a massive competitive advantage, in the future.

Speaker: How did you personally remove that dysfunction?

Speaker: Yeah. That's a good question.

Speaker: Because a lot of people, like,

Speaker: I have a lot of

Speaker: friends in marketing. Right? I mean, salespeople I think sales salespeople are phenomenal at self sabotage. But then marketing is, like, you can produce these results. I have a lot of friends that can produce these results for other people.

Yeah. But they will not do it for themselves. So, like, what you went through, I know a lot of people going through that.

Speaker: Yeah. A couple of our clients were, just in the Oval Office with, you know, a a bill that was passed around PTSD for, for, you know, helping veterans navigate, you know, PTSD. And so, I used to think that and this is something that, like, my wife pursuing her own healing, and and pursuing working with a specific expert, that disseminate this information. It's like I used to think that PTSD was 100% about a peak near life death experience occurring. Something like height highly, heightened emotion, nervous system, like, very in, like, fight or flight and very negative.

PTSD symptoms can be triggered with three identity altering events happening in close succession, and they don't have to be negative. So, ultimately, you know, I kind of realized that there was aspects of PTSD around, operating a business, operating you know, it was me stepping out on stage, me wanting to do, you know, my deepest calling in life. And so I had to, you know, pursue my own healing and navigate unwiring some of those, negative past experiences, you know. Like, frankly, our agency, when you're doing big product launches, million dollar prod product launches, millions of dollars on the line in ten days, like there is no room for error and you're doing that back to back to back year after year after year like we burnt out. Right?

Speaker: And

Speaker: I didn't wanna go do that again and so there was I had to get to the realization is is that my body would not allow me to recreate that. But I knew where that road ended. Right? And so I just had had to really figure out just because we're starting agency doesn't mean it needs to look the same way. It can be done very differently.

And so a lot of it, you know, again, there is a a mental component to it, but so much of it was was not mental. It was it was deep hardwired nervous system, like, reset and regulation.

Speaker: The gap between wholesalers who are winning right now and the ones who aren't is growing, and it's getting worse every single day. And you're not gonna like the reason why. It all comes down to how they're actually using AI. Because the information alone is not the problem. It's the time to figure it out that actually is, and we solved it.

Three days in Dallas, September 19 through the twenty first with myself, Stephanie Benters, and Jordan Fleming, we're gonna show you exactly how we built AI into our businesses and how you can do the same thing in yours. You come in unsure exactly where to start or what to do next, and you walk out with AI actually running inside your business and all the confidence to keep it going. And we don't just tell you how. We will be sitting next to you, building it with you live and in the room. And we got an amazing keynote speaker, the author of Second Command and Vivid Vision, Cameron Herold himself, who's built $300,000,000 companies like one eight hundred Guy Junk.

And on top of that, we got Facebook, Slack, and Salesforce, and they're gonna be sharing what they only talk about in their private meetings. So if you wanna find out more, comment REI Tech, and we'll get you signed up for a live event.

Speaker: Yeah. One of my coaches, what he talks about is, like, all that trauma that you had before was a version of you that is not as powerful as the version you are today. Mhmm. The person you are today wouldn't have those issues. Right?

So you just experience it differently. But we when we remember it, we act as if, like, it's our conversion going through them. But, no, that was a version of ourselves that didn't really know what we were doing. Yeah. But we we we were we made it through, but we didn't know what we were doing.

Right.

Speaker: Right.

Speaker: Right? So, so I wanna, pivot here talking about AI. AI is this fun stuff. Right?

Speaker: I think,

Speaker: I don't I think, like, every offer today you see on Facebook is like like this, but, like, AI. Yeah. Right? And so you were saying earlier, like, you know, there's no better time to get into, how was it, entrepreneurship? Yeah.

Speaker: Like, I I fundamentally believe that now is the best time in the history of life on earth, in history and in the future, like, right now. If if if we cast out a hundred years in the future and a hundred years back, like, a thousand years, any direction, like, right now is the best time in the history of the world to start a business. Mhmm. I'm not saying it's easy, but it's way easier than it's ever been.

Speaker: Oh, yeah.

Speaker: All you have to do is figure out how to convey a message more powerfully, more concisely, more, you know, with with with more entertainment and you can cut through the noise. Like, the only problem now, the only thing holding people back is not time, it's not resources, it's what is your message and can you convey it to people in a way that makes them care to listen? And then can you monetize that with a product or service that gets them a result and they send their friends? Like, that's all that's the whole game. You don't have to worry about technology.

Like, yes, a little bit. Like, but now you have you know, go high level. Like, I can't tell you how many people are overwhelmed with the technical complexity of high level. Like, I had to learn how to manually set up a database and manually install WordPress and I custom you know, I taught myself custom HTML and CSS. Like, it took me a long time to develop the skill set in order to get just a basic website up.

And now anybody, if they really dedicated themselves could do it in a weekend. Yeah. Now even with cloud code, you can Couple hours. Couple hours. Right?

Like without knowing anything, just watching tutorials online. The technical

Speaker: We don't need tutorials online. Claude would just do now. Yeah. It's just nuts.

Speaker: Right. Well, I mean, and you might even need a tutorial on how to use Claude is what I was, you know, is what I'm saying. Right? It's like, like, how do I use Claude and how do I connect it to, you know, Vercel or how do I, you know, connect it to a server? How do I set up GitHub?

You know, like Yeah. Just basic stuff. Like, you don't actually need to be technical to do quite technical things. The technical aspects of building an online business are the easiest that they're ever are the easiest that they've ever been, and it will just get easier. The cost of starting a online business is virtually zero, Maybe a few $100 a month.

So it is the best time in the history of the world to start an online business right now, especially if you care about getting people results and you have spent the last five, ten, fifteen years, dedicating yourself to some sort of craft. Yeah. And so yeah. It's like now is the time to take massive action. Three years from now, it's not the same opportunity.

Three years from now, it's gonna be way harder. There's gonna be it's kinda like social media today.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: You know, was, you know, the best time to get really active on social media was like 2018, 2019. Now there's just so many voices and and so much chaos, like, it's going to be the same thing three years from now with people starting businesses. And so it's time right now to take massive action. One of the biggest challenges I see people make is they're looking for the perfect idea to execute against and they're kind of sitting back and resting and ideating and playing with ideas and, you know, consuming, you know, like, just trying to find their their their best idea. Right?

Trying to find the perfect idea to execute against is not the path. You need to find the idea that you can execute perfectly. So don't wait to find the perfect idea to execute. Find the idea you can execute perfectly. That is the best next step.

Take inspired action with the resources that you have available in front of you and with the skill sets you have and grow as you build. There is no other way that is the path to success.

Speaker: It's It's so funny. Like, everything you're talking about is, like, my Lyft journey. Right? Like Yeah.

Speaker: Mine too. It's like

Speaker: Like, the, our offer right now is an AI that books appointments for you. Right? And all it is is, like, what we train salespeople to do. Now we just train AI to do it. It's not like, I wouldn't sit around.

I was like, what's the perfect idea? It's like, we had a pro we didn't have a problem. Sorry. Our clients had a problem, and they asked me to solve it. And, like, every iteration, every improvement to our existing product is, like, our customer is now saying, like, hey.

Like, it'd be nice if we did this. Like, great. We'll do it. Hey. Wouldn't it be great if we did this?

Perfect. We'll do it. And we're just consistently evolving and improving their product based off what problems our customers have in their existing business, like a real business. So it's funny you say, like, what can you execute? Not what's the perfect problem or what's the perfect price.

Like, what problem can you solve that you're uniquely qualified to solve that other people cannot solve necessarily?

Speaker: For sure. 100%. You know, like, spiffy is a great example. What it is today, if we would have ideated it to what it is today, we would have never started. Yeah.

Like, it was way harder, way more complicated than we could have ever imagined. And we just kept solving the next problem that came up. And so, even if you came up with the perfect idea, you wouldn't be able to execute against it. So just execute against what you can execute against and iterate and improve along the way.

Speaker: Yeah. And I think, like, you know, you're talking about WordPress and Infusionsoft. Like, that was also my background. Right? Like, you know, using Infusionsoft.

Like, I I signed up for Infusionsoft right when you could, like, drag the workflows. Yeah. Yeah. Right? Like my builder?

Yeah. Campaign builder. Like, my nightmare situation was, like, I was doing an automatic texting campaign in Infusionsoft. Like, you know, they opted in to your website and, you'll send a text notification, like, you know or a text to them, like, hey, you know, thanks for filling out the web form, blah blah blah. Yeah.

And this is, like, I don't know, like, 2015, somewhere around there. Right? And I was testing it. And if you remember, Infusionsoft had this thing where, like, everyone that's in this bucket right here, when you add a new module, they immediately go to this next bucket. Yep.

So this is me at 02:00 in the morning building out this texting node, and then I hit publish. And I texted 200 people at 02:00 in the morning. It's like, thanks for opting into the website. And, and what was fascinating, like, I had a dozen or two of f u this and that, which deserved. Was not mad at those people.

But I had, like, three people, like, hey. I've been meaning to get back to you.

Speaker: Like, at 02:00 in the morning.

Speaker: I've been meaning to get back to you. I started having to get back to you. Right? So it's just like, you know, your journey is is is just brings back a lot of memories for myself because, like, it's building out Infusionsoft, building things on WordPress. Right?

And then, like, eventually Leadpages and ClickFunnels and all these other things.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: But, yeah, like, you had to put in all this grit and fire and and, trying to figure out HTML code. Right? And realize, like, you know, looking for the brackets.

Speaker: Yeah. For sure.

Speaker: Yeah. Yeah. And now it's like, all you need all you need today to start, only thing you need is Claude and a credit card. Right? Like, everything that you don't know how to do, you just ask Claude.

Yeah. And Claude just does it. You can have, you know, you you can have, like, you can talk to Elon. You can talk to Mother Teresa. You can talk to Jesus.

You can talk to Abraham. Like, like, there's literally any resource you want. It's right there. It's nuts. Right?

They could talk to you. They could talk to me. Based off the content, like, you have your podcast. Yeah. What will Michael say about this?

Right? He's like, hey. What was the like, we have enough content out there. Like, I'm not suggesting they use us, like, probably, like, Jesus and Elon's probably better resources, but they could. There there's no shortage of resources available today.

Yeah. I completely agree with you. Now's the next time.

Speaker: I'm I'm so grateful you brought Jesus into the conversation too. I mean, it's one of my missions as well is just, like, helping faith based founders, recognize that, business their business can actually be their ministry, and that's what personalbrand.com is for us too. So many times people think that, you know, you know, worship and their spiritual life has to happen at a specific day of the week, at a specific time, at a specific location with a specific person in front of the room and their business is like way over here and it's like it's it's, you know, blasphemous for, you know, making money to be part of your ministry. But I think nothing's further from the truth that your business, especially for entrepreneurs, are heart centered, that care about getting their clients customers. Your business is the the the the two most spiritual things you can do are are start a business and have a family.

Right? There's nothing that will reflect back to you all of your inadequacies more than those two things and put you on the path to becoming the best version of yourself and I I don't think there's anything more spiritual aligned than that.

Speaker: Yeah. I completely agree. There's no way to test what you're really made of Mhmm. Your your character Yeah. Than running a business.

And, like, you were saying earlier, like, you know, every problem was a revenue problem. Right? It's like

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: It's a brain problem.

Speaker: Yeah. Like, every problem you have is, like, just really just this these are your efficiencies at this moment. Yeah. Right? And this is what you get to work on Yeah.

As as as a leader. So, you know, right now, I mean, you're you've got spiffy, you got a personal brand. What do you ultimately want to be remembered for?

Speaker: I would say, you know, a a force that inspired a generation of entrepreneurs.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Yeah. That's, like, my deepest passion is just, like, it's not supposed to be easy. Like, this game of entrepreneurship is supposed to be hard because it's supposed to pull the best version of you out in this lifetime. Yeah. And, I think so many people wish it was easier.

They're trying to find the hack. They're trying to find the thing that makes the most money, and a lot of people are successful at that. And, you know, setting up a funnel, doing a launch.

Speaker: It's a

Speaker: marketing strategy. It's not a business model.

Speaker: Mhmm. You make

Speaker: a lot of money short term, but how do you actually, like, create a body of work, a life's like, like, your life's work, something you can dedicate yourself to for a decade, two decades, three decades, and just actually create so much change in the world that it ripples through generations.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Not because you're the greatest but because the work that you did in other people changes how they parent people, it changes how they lead their teams, it shifts the frequency of how they greet the person, at the cash register. Like like there there is significance to helping a 10,000, a 100,000 people have create change in their lives so that it just ripples throughout the world, throughout generations and and that's really I have a deep understanding and and and, like, you know, prolific understanding of of the impact a human can make. Mhmm. And I I think that we're, in a period of awakening, of revival, and more people are recognizing the power that they have to shift the trajectory of of, you know, the future of of humanity.

Speaker: So I would say this podcast overall has been really good so far, but I would say, like, that last statement right there is, like, is, like, the ultimate qualifier. Like, why you you're the guy someone should go to for personal brand. Right? Because I asked you what you wanna be remembered for, like, that was perfect. That was, like, the perfect answer.

What would you say is your, your biggest struggle today?

Speaker: I I got quite a quite a few struggles, but I I would say, like, one of my biggest struggles that has come into my awareness recently is is actually, like, I've realized I care about other people's money more than they care about their money, and that has significantly limited, the amount of revenue that we're able to generate in our businesses.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: You know, there's times where I'm privy to someone's financial situation more than expected, and I advise them to not do business with us at this time. And then they just go and turn around and spend more money on some other offer somewhere else, and then they come back to us asking for us to fix it. And so, yeah, I think it's it's there there's there's still something for me to navigate around around money and and, you know, really stepping into this next level of leadership to, again, create the revenue that I know is is required in order to fill the fulfill the mission that

Speaker: I

Speaker: feel is on my heart to to, execute this this lifetime.

Speaker: I could say that's a struggle for so many entrepreneurs. Yeah. Right? Like, why do I want this for them more than they do?

Speaker: Yeah. And I think it's like an overemphasis on doing the right thing. I was just on, William Lamb's podcast. You know do you know William Lamb?

Speaker: I don't. I'll

Speaker: I'll need to introduce you you guys. And, he it was actually like a coaching conversation. So he was kinda, like, coaching me through, and and I realized that I do have some sort of of tie towards, between, wanting to be liked Mhmm. And wanting the people to to like me before they do business with me. And he, helped me unpack that what if them doing business with you was the signal that they liked you.

And so that is something that's a a relatively new shift in perspective. And so again, he kind of coached me through a conversation and helped me unwind some things from my past as to why that was a frame that I had. And so, you know, things have been better since that conversation, that's for sure. But, yeah, I I think I think there is this this desire, like humans largely and and specifically myself, like, we we wanna be liked. We we don't wanna be disliked, and so we don't wanna become we don't wanna come off as, overzealous or pretentious or Yeah.

Like we, you know, or or arrogant. And so sometimes we overcompensate and we talk too much in the sales conversation. Mhmm. Ultimately, especially going into the future in the wave of AI, people are going to do business with people they like. They are going to give you money if they like you.

And so, having that reframe of people of making the sale and the sale meaning that they like you, it it was a big breakthrough for me.

Speaker: Well and I can say it was a massive struggle, not just for other people, but, like, for myself. And the thing that is maybe awful, but, like, the thing that gave me permission to give up on people, that sounds terrible. But, you know, the the people in your organization that, like, just don't want it, you know, you want it more for them. It was it was, Jim Collins from Good to Great. I believe it's Good to Great.

Yeah. Which is basically, like, you know, stop trying to motivate people and just hire motivated people. Mhmm. Yep. I was like, oh, obviously, that makes sense.

Right? And so for me, it's like, okay. I no longer want it for you more than you want it for you. It's like, I'm just gonna find the people that want it, and I wanna help them. Yes.

Yes. What would you say is your, what is your superpower?

Speaker: I think my superpower is making complex things simple. I I really enjoy, helping people navigate strategy

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: Developing good strategy in their business. Oftentimes, people, especially nowadays with social media and building a personal brand, there's a lot of overwhelm. There's a lot of anxiety. There's a lot of, like, overthinking. And, one of the, metrics or signals of good strategies that should feel easy.

And so if growing your business feels overwhelming or complex, you're probably trying to implement a strategy that's not at the right stage of business. The four stages that we talked about earlier in the podcast, all of the stress, all of the overwhelm, all of the anxiety comes from trying to implement a stage three or stage four strategy when you're at stage one or two. Mhmm. So again, you got Hermozy coming down her news feed. Gary v, post 17 pieces of content on five different platforms every single day.

That is a stage four strategy. Mhmm. If you're at stage one, it's not even possible. You could spend all day every day trying to create social media content and you would not be able to do that output. That is squarely a stage four strategy.

And so I really like helping, people understand what stage they're at and what is the right strategy to implement at the right stage of their business.

Speaker: Yeah. I'm not trying to put words in your mouth here and I promise you guys are listening. I I'm not teeing them up for this. But, the struggle today, I think, for a lot of people that are trying to create content is cutting through the noise. Mhmm.

Is then building your personal brand, how you cut through the noise.

Speaker: I I do think so. And it's just reorienting towards what your goal is. Mhmm. If your goal is to cut through the noise to get followers, that's easy. Be entertaining to the masses.

Or about your goal. Yeah. If your goal is to build a business, it's not about number of views.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: This is how we built spiffy. We built spiffy on the back of YouTube. You go to spiffy YouTube channel, it is not impressive. But we built a company that valued at 8 figures off of a YouTube channel where there's less than 200 videos, there's less than 200 subscribers and most videos have less than 500 views. Yeah.

So there's if you're building a business, you're not looking to be entertained to the masses, you're looking for people that are looking for you. Mhmm.

Speaker: You

Speaker: wanna when people are looking for you, the problem that you solve, you wanna be there and that's the for us, that was the fastest way to get on page one of Google was to create a YouTube video with long tail keyword rich content.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: So when you look for Stripe integration active campaign or Stripe integration Kajabi or Stripe integration HubSpot, our videos showed up on the first page of Google for the longest time. And so, it doesn't need to be fancy content. You don't I I always say that the content doesn't need content can never be too long. It can only be too boring. And and there's a difference between social media content, and the content that actually drives revenue.

Too many people are trying to create shorts that create sales, but the shorts on social media are just selling them on engaging, selling them on following, selling them on get coming into your world. Once they're in your world, then you nurture them to a sale. So a lot of times people are trying to sell from social when social media is just the tip of the iceberg.

Speaker: So you're saying there's difference between content that, attracts and then was it content that converts?

Speaker: Yeah. Content that that attracts and content that that converts is a great way of putting it.

Speaker: So then what is the content that converts?

Speaker: So, again, there's no way to, like, really communicate your value in a thirty second reel. So, again, it's just trying to, like, communicate one point in a very short period of time and guide them to join your world, join your newsletter, give some sort of, you know, free download, access to a free webinar, what whatever whatever modality it is, just like getting them into your world. It needs to be something compelling. It needs to be something that, most other people would charge money for. It needs to be something high value.

And again, this is kind of, goes back to us fighting our nature and how we were brought up. You know, when we were brought up, knowledge was power.

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: You went to university, became a lawyer, a chiropractor, a doctor because people sought out those professions because of their specialized knowledge. Well, then we went into the the era where knowledge was no longer power, sharing knowledge was power.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: And now it's not even about sharing. It's not about knowledge at all. It's about trust, transformation and entertainment. And so if you can in your social media content create trust, demonstrate and and and communicate that you have the ability to create transformation and you can kinda make it a little bit fun because this world is way too serious. Yeah.

That is how you play the social media game and get people into your world. Once they're in your world, that's when you can kind of demonstrate in more long form content, again, through a series of emails, through a recorded webinar, a live webinar, a live workshop, or virtual workshop. You just have a little bit more of a captive audience to actually convey how you understand the problem that they have and how you can help. And then the next logical step is to buy your product or service and sales are made.

Speaker: Gotcha. We talked about a lot of different things. What is a a last message you like to leave all the listeners with?

Speaker: Yeah. We covered a lot of ground on this podcast. Yeah. I mean, I I I think the biggest thing that I wanna highlight is that taking inspired action is is everything. I mean we we talked about a little bit earlier but no one's coming to save you.

No one's coming to lift your load. You have to be willing to do the messy work. You have to be willing to make some mistakes. You have to be willing to post a video that might not be the best video in the world. I think way too often we look at someone's, you know, we look at the big names in the industry, the household names, and we try to imitate what they're doing today.

And we judge what our, you know, the the video that we created against Gary V's video that he just created. That's his seven seventieth thousand video that he's ever created. Of course, it's way better than we can create. We over index. We we think that people are way more attuned or remember what they see online.

Like I don't remember what I was looking at on social media yesterday. No. Right? None of us do. None of us remember what we had for breakfast last Friday.

Right? And so just kind of taking an approach that the journey is the process. Like, posting on social media, creating social media content, doing a podcast, getting into the arena is how you build. It's how you become better. It's it it is the the path.

It like, there is no other path. You have to get in the game. Get in the game. People need you. People need to hear your message.

You have a calling on your heart. It's not an accident. You actually don't have a choice. Like like, you you can choose to do it but you really can't. Right?

Like, kinda like my my whole story. Like, I like I didn't have to but I had to.

Speaker: Mhmm.

Speaker: You have to get your message out there. That's what you're here to do. That's what you're meant to do in this world. That's why you were incarnated on this planet with a billion other people to serve. So just get in the arena, do the reps, do it messy, constantly improve.

That is the path.

Speaker: Yeah. So I wanna connect with you. What's the best way to connect with you?

Speaker: The best way to connect, is through Instagram at Michael r Hunter. My personal website, michaelrhunter.com. Obviously, check out personalbrand.com. There's information on our live event, three and a half days brand and business breakthrough. It is the best event on the topic of personal brand you've ever been to or ever heard of or your money back.

We're that confident that it can get a result. 20 people in a room, to ensure we get a breakthrough for every single person in the room. So if you're a heart centered mission led leader, you've already generated 6 figures and you're looking for more clarity and more direction, more focus, that event is for you. And then check out the Six Fig Podcast. I'd love to have you on my podcast as well.

And, so we'll make that happen. And then shout out to Cameron Herold too. So

Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker: Cameron Herold, made this possible. Go check out Cameron's episode on disruptors as well. Thanks, Cameron, for the intro and connecting me and Steve.

Speaker: Absolutely. Thank you so much.

Speaker: Absolutely. It was a pleasure. Thanks, Steve.

Speaker: Thank you

Speaker: guys for watching. Shout out to Steve train. Jump on the Steve train. Disrupt us.