Creating a Personal Brand with Rory Vaden

0:01 Welcome to The Coaching Equation, brought to you by Empire Partners and hosted by Ryan Lang and Brooke Bishop. Our mission is to help you build a profitable and impactful coaching business by cutting through the noise and all the expert advice to deliver tried and true, actionable insights that you can deploy in your business today. Each week, we bring on expert guests, unveil cutting-edge tactics and strategies, and share the secrets and stories that we've gathered from working with the most successful coaching companies on earth. Welcome into episode one of the Coaching Equation podcast.

0:43 I'm your host for today, Ryan Lang, CEO and co-founder of Empire Partners and Whole Performance Coach. My partner in crime, co-host and co-founder, Brooke Bishop, off for today's episode. But holy cow, you are gonna wanna stick around as I have got an incredible interview for you today with none other than Rory Vaden. Now, if you're not familiar with Rory, He is an MBA, CSP, CPAE. He is the New York Times bestselling author of Take the Stairs, Seven Steps to Achieving True Success and Procrastinate on Purpose, Five Permissions to Multiply Your Time.

1:23 He's a recognized expert in business strategy and leadership. His insights have been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Forbes, CNN, Entrepreneur, Inc., and on Fox News National Television, in addition to several other major media outlets. As a world-renowned speaker, Rory's TEDx talk has been viewed over 4 million times. He is twice, two times, a world champion, a public speaking finalist. He has been called one of the top 100 leadership speakers in the world by Inc. Magazine and was recently inducted into the Professional Speaking Hall of Fame. He is the co-founder of Brand Builders Group, the host of the Influential Personal Brand Podcast, and...

2:09 as I have dubbed him, the king of personal branding. Now, in this episode, we are going to get into why it's important, why it's vital in today's day and age for you to have a personal brand, how to go about building a personal brand, what a personal brand is not, and how to build a personal brand. And I dug in with Rory with some questions that nobody else has asked him before. This is an interview you will not want to miss. Get ready. It's episode one of the Coaching Equation podcast with Rory Vaden. Okay. Rory Vaden, welcome. What's up, brother? Not much, man.

2:50 I'm so excited for this. And by the way, you're going to have to excuse my awesome and hokey background, but I'm going I am actually recording this from a small town in South Dakota right now. I've got some close family friends that own the radio station here. So I'm here at a radio station, a really small town in South Dakota. Broadcasting you from KWSP Live in South Dakota. It's Ryan and Rory. Yeah. So fun. So man, I'm so excited to dig in here. This is going to be a really, really powerful episode for people because number one, there's a lot of misconceptions around personal branding. And I don't know if anybody has dubbed you this, but I'm just going to call you the king of personal branding.

3:34 Oh, that's what I think you are. But we're going to get into personal branding. We're going to get into a lot of things about content. And we'll talk about speaking. We'll talk about books, all of that good stuff. Before we dive all the way in here, man, first of all, there are plenty of places that people can find your stuff. And you've been on all of the biggest podcasts, especially in the last year and a half. You've been everywhere. And as opposed to starting where most people start, Before you and AJ started Brand Builders, you guys had a sales consulting company. And one of the things that we both have a deep background in sales and love sales.

4:17 One of the things that I'd love to hear about is... You have the story with Lewis, which I'd love for you to tell. And I've got some questions around that. But before we even get there, how did sales morph into personal branding? Yeah. Well, so I was raised by a single mom and my mom sold Mary Kay cosmetics when I was young. And so part of my story is I talk about being raised by women. So I know more about makeup than I do about cars. So I was around direct sales from the time I was young. And also, obviously, in direct sales, it's all about goals and motivation and time management and all of these principles.

4:57 So I got exposed to it early. Then I was in martial arts for several years. And then when I was in college, I got recruited for a direct sales company. And so for 5 summers in college, I went door to door, 14 hours a day, 6 days a week, on straight commission, paying all of my own expenses, 20,000 doors slammed in my face, yet I made a quarter million dollars during five summers doing it because I was an amazing recruiter. I was actually the all-time record holder in recruiting. I was a top salesperson, but I was always like the top 20. I was never like the number one sales jammer, but I was the recruiter. And so I had built a team.

5:39 But what happened is that company hired speakers to come in and speak to us. And that was a big part of where I was like, that's what I want to do. And so a lot of times, the reason why I wanted to break the records was just so I could get a chance to speak on stage. So then what happened was after I graduated, so I got my MBA and my undergrad at the same time. from DU, Denver University, DU, Dollars Unlimited, as I like to call it. And I started to pursue my dream of being a speaker. And so one of my mentors told me, hey, you should join Toastmasters. And I joined Toastmasters to practice speaking. And then I found out they had a contest called the World Championship of Public Speaking.

6:20 And so I thought to myself, maybe if I won the World Championship, that would give me the credibility to go out and start a career in speaking. And so I pursued that full force. I mean, there's 25,000 contestants who compete. And the first year, I was 22, I made it to the World Championship, which is the top 10 speakers in the world, and I lost. And the next year, I came back even harder. I mean, I spoke 304 times for free. I watched over 1,100 hours of film. I received 2,200 written evaluations. It was madness. I read dozens of books. And I made it all the way back to the world championship.

7:00 And then that year is the year that I... Well, I lost again, actually. But I lost higher than the year before. I was the world champion of public speaking first runner-up. So technically, I was second place. And then what happened was the company that I had been involved with in college, they approached me to say, Hey, we see you're starting a speaking business. We've been thinking about starting something. Could we join up on this, basically? And... So I agreed. And the only thing we knew how to do really was sales. And so we were selling sales training to salespeople. And we were using public speaking as the vehicle. So what would happen is we would call on companies.

7:41 And so the way we started our first company was completely from scratch, like literally, so this is 2006. I just got my MBA, just qualified for the World Championship of Public Speaking, and then start this business. And we take a Yellow Pages phone book, and we ripped it into fourths. And we said, you call these people, you call these people, you call these people. And so my buddy that I had met in college, he was that I was starting this company with. So it was me and him. And then this company that we had both worked with in college. He was the one who said, we have to recruit my best friend, Amanda. She's the smartest person I've ever met. And. And so he is how I met AJ, who is now my wife and business partner.

8:24 And so me and him and AJ and one other gentleman started the company from scratch, calling out of the phone book. And we cold called companies and said, let me come in and do a free sales training presentation for your team. Yeah. And I will do it for free. And if I blow their minds, then at the end, let me tell them about our one-day event coming up. Our one-day motivational sales training conference. So we would go do presentations for free. We would then sell tickets at the back of the room. So we were closing rooms full of people. And we generated... The tickets were, I don't know, like $300 or $400 each. And we sold 750 tickets in the first three months and generated...

9:04 $250,000 in revenue in the first three months, a million dollars the first year. And we were putting on these conferences. And that was because the one thing we knew how to do was sell. So we were selling sales training. And then from there, we did those events for like five years that became a multi seven figure business. And then we figured out how to sell sales coaching, which is one-on-one long-term coaching And that was much more profitable than trying to put on these events. And so we would do one-on-one coaching. And then we scaled that business to eight figures. We then started a consulting division, which did like consulting with... Google and Bridgestone and huge companies.

9:47 Then we also started a speakers bureau. And that was one of the... AJ started the consulting division. She also started the speakers bureau. She was a top producer in coaching and everything and was helping us run the company. But then my speaking career started to take off especially around the time we published my first book, Take the Stairs. And that became a New York Times bestseller when I was 29 years old. And AJ built the Speakers Bureau. And so then we were selling speeches, right? We were selling speakers to companies. And so all of that became one big machine that, That grew to where we had about 200 people and we were a healthy eight-figure company. And then we exited in 2018. And so when we exited, we had a non-compete in the sales training space.

10:33 We didn't want to go back into that space. We didn't have any desire to go back into it after we sold the company anyways, but we couldn't go back into that space. But that was when Lewis Howes called. So literally the day we exited the company, we were talking to Lewis. And he was saying, hey, you know, I had met Lewis when Take the Stairs hit the New York Times bestseller list. Lewis had me on his podcast, which was this brand new podcast called The School of Greatness. So we became friends because I said, dude, you should write a book one day. And he's like, I'm thinking about it. And I said, well, I'll tell you everything that we learned about hitting New York Times, like just as friends. So we became friends. Fast forward to 2018, his podcast had grown to about 30 million downloads. He was now a multi-seven-figure business, but he was overwhelmed, spread thin, working like crazy, not making a ton of money, not keeping a ton of money, and had a lot of stress.

11:24 And he said, Hey, I really feel like I could use your brain. You happen to be available. And it was like, Well, turns out we're completely wide open. And so Lewis, he became our first Brand Builders Group client. thing I've ever experienced in business. And he said, I want to help you. And we said, we don't have a company, buddy. We don't have any employees. We had sold my podcast, my social media, my email database, all my past speaking clients, our team. We had nothing. And he said, that's okay. I'm going to have you on my podcast. And we're going to tell the whole world that this is your new business. Yeah. And that is how Brand Builders Group was born.

12:05 And we had over a thousand requests for free phone calls come in from Lewis within a few months. And then we started ramping back up. We've now been working with Lewis for the last several years. We've helped him grow his podcast from 30 million downloads to 500 million total downloads. He's now an eight figure business. So he went from multi seven figures. We helped him grow to eight figures. He introduced us to a ton of folks. Brand Builders Group, is now an eight-figure business ourselves. We should hit eight figures this year. We have got about 45 people on our team. As of yesterday, we just helped our 23rd client become a New York Times or Wall Street Journal, USA Today bestselling author. We've had six clients that we've helped create TED Talks that have gone viral with over a million views.

12:49 And we've had nine clients that we've helped grow their annual revenue by more than $1 million per year in annual revenue. And now Brand Builders Group exists. And it is largely because Lewis Howes told us this was what we were meant to do. Oh my gosh. First of all, thank you for tying all that together because I've heard you tell the different pieces of that. Yeah, the different pieces. But I don't think I've ever heard it as a cohesive unit like that. It makes so much sense. I love that. And by the way, just congratulations on all the success. You guys are so deserving of it. I just love both you and AJ and you're doing amazing things in the world.

13:29 And we'll talk more about it. But a couple questions that I've got for you. First of all, around the Lewis thing, because I think this is a really interesting thing. You and I are both spiritual people. And I think that often... I'm a hardcore Bible thumping Jesus freak, baby. I'm not just spiritual. I'm a Jesus freak. So I think one of the things that can be hardest, and I'd love for you to talk about this for any of us, is that I think we develop these ideas about what our life is supposed to be and where we're supposed to be headed and all of those things. And so often, the greatest gifts that we find in our lives are when we're willing to take our hands off the steering wheel and go, okay, God, you know...

14:14 Tell me where you want me. Help me understand what I'm supposed to be doing here. I know that it wasn't necessarily an easy exit for you and AJ out of the company. And I'd love for you to share what was going on for you internally. Because I know a lot of people that are going to watch this and listen to this, have been or are in places where there's a transition that's either coming or it's upon them and they don't necessarily know how to navigate it or navigate their emotions or thoughts or feelings around it. So I would just love to hear from you what was going on for you internally when you guys left the previous company that you built and fast forwarding to the moment where Lewis told you, hey, you got a company and you had to go, okay.

14:58 Yeah. So there's a lot swimming around there, but it's at the transition point, right? And here's what it is. It's kind of like what happens when a dream dies and we've had it multiple times. So that company that we sold, the true story of it. So we did sell the company because we owned part of the company, but AJ was fired. AJ and two other female executives were all fired on the same day. And then when that happened, I resigned from my post We sold the company and I followed the three women. And so I believed in them and I shared the same values and beliefs they did. And I was like, I'll go with not just AJ, who was my wife, but also Isla and Elle. And I was like, I'll go with these ladies.

15:40 So it was a tumultuous time and it was very unexpected. But I've had other dreams too that have not worked out. Like the world championship is a good example. I felt God telling me you're supposed to pursue this. That was not my idea. I felt God saying world championship public speaking is what you're supposed to do. And then it was like, I went all in. I mean, all in. I told you the numbers. I spoke 304 times for free. I mean, it was all consuming. And then it was like, I got all the way there and I got second. I had a same similar vision with my book, Take the Stairs, right? I was like, I'm going to go all in. And then we hit the New York Times bestseller list, but we hit number two. So not number one, which at that point, it didn't matter.

16:22 I was never expecting to hit number one. It was a miracle to hit it. But anyways, if you're a person of faith, right, you go, well, how do you reconcile? Like, I thought this was God's will. He was telling me to do this, but then it didn't work out. The relationship fell apart. The dream didn't come true. The business didn't take off. And that's a lot to reconcile with because you go, hey, if there's a good God, And he wants, you know, like Jeremiah 29, 11, which, you know, I know the plans I have for you plans to prosper you, not to harm you plans to give you hope in a future. And it's like, okay, well, if that's true, then how come I'm experiencing this heartbreak and I'm doing that at the same times? I think it's, I'm not great at memorizing Bible, but I think it's like Proverbs three, five or something. That's like, lean not in your own understanding, but seek the Lord and all your ways.

17:06 And he will make your path straight. Right. So you had to like, how do you reconcile these two concepts? Yeah. And so I don't know that this is the truth, right? Like I'm going to share with you my personal opinion and how I've made sense of it, right? I don't pretend to go, this is the answer on this. What I will share with you, Ryan, is my answer. This is the way that I have reconciled a good God giving you dreams, but then those dreams not always working out the way you thought they were supposed to. So if I pursue a goal and I go after it with my full power and my full strength, if that goal doesn't come true, there's a tremendous payoff in that.

17:49 The payoff is the clarity and confidence of knowing that that's not the plan that God has for my life. Because if he wanted it to happen, he would have let it happen. Right? But if I don't go after a goal with my full force and my full skill set and all my relationships and time and resources and prayer and energy, if I don't go full force after a goal and it doesn't happen, I don't have the payoff of knowing, did it not come true because God didn't want it to come true or because of a more likely truth, which is that I didn't show up and do the work. Here's an illustration. Here's how I literally think of it. I think of it as if you're looking down a hallway and at the end of the hallway, there's a door and I can see the door.

18:35 And maybe there's like a window on that door and I can see through that door. It's like, ooh, there's something good back there that I want. The dream of become a world champion of public speaking, hit the New York Times, sell a business for $100 million, whatever that dream is. And I go, I feel like God is leading me towards that dream. I can see it clearly. And so I take off sprinting, right? And I'm running with everything I've got. And then I leap and I smash into that door. And one of two things happen. That door flies open and the dream comes true. And you go, thank you, God. You gave me this vision. I achieved it. It happened. You made it happen.

19:15 You brought me the people, the knowledge. And I achieved it. Or sometimes I launch full steam into that bad boy and I slam into it and the door is locked and I bounce off the door and I just like collapse on the floor in a complete pile of shit. of just mess, right? And disaster. And I'm like crying, like, what happened? God, how would you let this happen to me? I thought you wanted me to pursue this vision. You showed me this vision. How could you lock this door? What's wrong with you? And then what happens though, is when I look up, There'll be a door to the left or to the right that is open.

20:00 And the thing is, I couldn't see that door when I was back at the start of the hallway because that door was like perpendicular to my line of sight. So what happened was God was showing me that vision at the end of the hallway. And in that case, it wasn't so I could get that vision. Yeah. God never intended for me to become a world champion of public speaking. I know it because I did everything I could and my speech was good enough to win. Not the first year. It wasn't. But the second year, many people thought I should have won. And I was the first speaker out of 10 speakers, which is hard. You have to last nine of the best speakers in the world behind you and hold the scorecard for three hours of speakers.

20:45 And I got second, right? So a lot of people thought, hey, I could win. And I had the confidence of knowing my speech was good enough to win. It could have gone either way. But I slammed off that door, which in one way was heartbreaking. But if I had gone through that door, I likely would have spent my life as a speech coach. I likely would have... So now at Brand Builders Group, one of the things we help people with is speaking. And we have several of our clients, Ed Milet, Eric Thomas, ET, the hip hop preacher, etc., that get $100,000 speeches. We have clients like Brittany Hodak and Anton Gunn, who never really had a paid speech before they were working with us. And now they're getting $15,000, $20,000, $25,000 consistently. We're helping...

21:25 Other clients like Molly Fletcher go, you know, she was probably getting 35 grand when she first started working with. Now she's like going to 45, 50. Like that's a piece of what we do. But it's not the real thing to go, oh, Brand Builders Group maybe would have never existed. So what happens is God opens the door and he says, I showed you that vision at the end of the hallway because I knew if I showed you this other door, you wouldn't have chased it. You wouldn't have come. And I had to use one vision. to lead you to the other. And then what faith is, faith is the willingness to pursue a dream full force, but then having the faith, which is trust, to have the trust to let go of one dream so that you can grab another.

22:10 That is what has happened time and time again. But most people never run at the door. Yeah. I'm all about the law of attraction and vision and positive thinking and visualizations and stuff, but it's not ask, believe, receive. It's ask, believe, work your freaking butt off and then receive. Yes. So that's how I reconcile it. So I don't know if that's right, but that's how I think about it. I'll tell you one thing. I'm so glad I asked you that question because I've never heard anybody explain it that way, Rory. And I love it. I think it's a really good explanation. And one of the things that we talk about a lot with our clients is, I was saying that the magic happens when hustle meets flow.

22:54 I believe that, you know, you have the impersonal development, especially kind of have two camps. There's one side that's super flowy and it's like, oh, I'm just going to sit on the couch and think of everything that I want. And I'm going to do nothing and all of my dreams and money and everything is just going to fall out of the sky. And then you have the total opposite end that's like, grind, grind, grind. Rory, if you're not working 90 hours a week, there's something wrong with you and your competition is going to eat you alive. And one of the things that's so beautiful that I just heard from you is... is that you believe in taking inspired action.

23:36 And that is where I believe those two things meet in the middle. It's coming from that place of seeing the vision, feeling what you believe you want and what God wants for you and all of that, and combining it with... inspired action and working your freaking butt off. And I think one of the things that I took out of what you just said is sprinting towards the door, not walking towards the door, not sauntering, not taking a couple of steps and then sitting down and thinking about if you want to walk further towards the door. But it's running like with total abandon towards the door. And I love that.

24:16 Well, thanks, man. And the other thing is, you know, on this, like to your point about overwork, to me, this is a symbiotic harmony. It's a yin and a yang. Because underworking, if you're not working hard enough, that's a lack of faith. It's going, I think God is showing me a vision, but I don't believe it enough to take a chance. Right? I have a dream to become a New York Times bestselling author, but I'm not going to work towards it because it seems too impossible. I'm not going to step in that direction because it seems so unrealistic. That's a lack of faith that is going. I don't believe that God can fill in the gap for me. But to me, overwork is also a lack of faith is going.

24:59 If this is going to take place, I have to do it all myself. Right. I'm leaving no room for God to cover the gap. And so to me, the balance is sort of like, as you pray, move your feet. That is the sign of faith is to go. I have to show God that like, I'm willing to trust him and step in that direction just like children. And I've never felt closer to God than since having children, because now I understand that I go when my kids want something that, the heart of me as a father is to give it to them. I want them to have it. I want to bless them. And compared to my kids, I am freaking filthy rich.

25:41 I can buy them any toy they want. I can take them to Disney World. I can blow their mind. I can buy them a power wheel. I can buy them a bike. I can blow their mind beyond what they even realize. My kids have no idea... how many times I could take them to Chick-fil-A. They don't even fathom the magnitude at which I could bless them. And they don't fathom the magnitude at which I do bless them, right? I grew up in a trailer. We lived in a trailer. My kids live in a very different environment and they don't even have a wherewithal. And I go, hmm, that's probably a little bit. Again, I don't pretend to know exactly like how things are with God, but I read the Bible a lot.

26:22 Yeah. So I got some working knowledge and I know that Jesus talks about God as our father, right? That he is our father. And that parallel is used a lot that he's a father and go, oh, well, as a father, that's how my relationship is to my kids. I go, oh, that's how it is with my heavenly father. Yeah. I have no idea how, like, I underestimate how massively he could bless me. Like, he can snap his fingers and make any of these things that we dream or desire or we hope will come true. Yet at the same time, as a father myself, I know it's not actually best to give my kids everything they ask for.

27:03 I know they want to have, they want to eat candy for every meal. I know they want to eat pizza every day. I know they want to stay up late, right? Like I know they want to watch certain things. And I go, there are certain things that I'm going to deny you, not because my heart is to deny you, but because my heart is to protect you. And so that as your father, I am both providing for you abundantly beyond what you can even fathom. And I am protecting you in ways you'll never understand until later. One day my kids will understand why I don't let them drive the car. They ask me, can I drive? And I'm like, nah, I'm not going to let you drive, buddy.

27:44 You know, so one day they will understand that. And so will we. One day in heaven, I once heard someone describe heaven as a bunch of people walking around going, oh, now I see why God did that. Oh, now that makes sense. In fact, in my first book, Take the Stairs, we talk about the seven psychological differences between ultra performers and everybody else. And one of them is called the perspective principle of faith. And I use the illustration of a flat tire. And I say, if you're driving down the street and you have a flat tire, most of us, we're going to be pissed, right? It's like, I can't believe I have this flat tire. Now I got to get new tire. I got to pay. I got to get the truck. You know, someone's got to come tow me or I got to fix it.

28:27 And maybe I'm waiting in the rain and I'm late for something. And it's like, ugh. Ugh. And a flat tire in relation to that moment, like if somebody asked you, how was your day? You would say, you would tell them about the flat tire. That would be a big part of your day. But one day being in heaven, if I were able to see that flat tire saved me from being in a fatal car accident 60 seconds later. Now, all of a sudden, I'm not mad at God. I'm grateful to God. I'm so grateful that I got that flat tire. And that is how it is. That's what faith is, the way that I define it in my secular, right? I'm not a pastor.

29:09 I've never been to seminary or anything. But the way that I describe it in my secular book is that faith is choosing to believe that what is happening now is for a greater good later on. is choosing to believe that even though I don't understand why God gave me this flat tire, even though I don't understand why God locked this door, even while I don't understand why I didn't win the world championship, I didn't get number one New York Times, while this business I dedicated my life to for 12 years blew up literally in a matter of a few days, I don't understand at the time why that happened. But then... I have perspective. That's why we call it the perspective principle of faith. I can look back later. I can go, God, why didn't you make so-and-so fall in love with me in high school?

29:53 I had such a crush on her. And then you come back for your 20-year high school, your reunion, and you go, oh, thank God that I didn't end up with that person, right? I would be, I don't know, in this same town or doing this or whatever it is of like, oh, I'm so glad I didn't end up with that person, right? Right. I'm so glad that I didn't end up becoming a speech coach because then if I would have just been a speech coach, I probably wouldn't be working with Lewis Howes and Ed Milet and Amy Porterfield and Jasmine Starr and Boss Babe and E.T. the Hip Hop Preacher and all of these amazing clients that we work with, nor the Ryan Langs and all of the up and comers and the new blood, all the people who are going to be the next generation of thought leaders.

30:33 I wouldn't be working with them. I'd be coaching executives on how to use PowerPoint for their thing, which would be fine. But that's not what God had in store for me, even though it broke my heart. If our former company would have never blown up, which at the time was like, how does this happen? We're winning. Everyone's making money. Clients are winning. Companies making money. We're making money. Why are we not able to symbiotically exist that people are getting fired? And I'm going, well, I can't be here then. Because if that hadn't happened, there would be no brand builders group. If God had given me that girl that I wanted in high school, I never would have ended up with AJ. So it's all about perspective and we don't get to see it in the moment it happens.

31:15 So faith is choosing to believe that what's happening now is happening for a greater good later on. It's choosing to go, even though what's happening to me is bad, even though I don't understand it, even though it's not what I wanted, even though it didn't work out, I'm choosing to believe that God is good because the Bible tells me the character of God. The character of God is described. It's consistent. There's stories that demonstrate over and over that he's forgiving and he's abundant, but that he also lives by his word. He also stands by consequences and that there is also a judgment on our behavior.

31:56 God is perfectly just. And he says, we all fall short. And then he goes, even though I judge you and you all fall short, he goes, I'm going to take care of it for you. So I'm going to send Jesus to die and pay the price so that I can be with all of you, even though your imperfection doesn't allow you to be in the presence of my perfection. So I will send Jesus to take care of it, right? He is both perfectly just and perfectly merciful. Right. He provides and he protects, which is what a good father does. I have to discipline my kids. I have to tell them that was wrong, that I love them. I will always forgive them.

32:37 But I still have to, as a part of shaping their character, I have to step in and deny them certain things and train them and coach them. And so... The more that I've had children and understood that balance of both love and discipline, provision and protection, the more of like, oh, you know, I understand that relationship with God. And that also helps me understand the relationship with my goals and dreams and when they don't come true, how to process them. Oh my gosh. That is so good. And... We're going to get into... This is none of what we were supposed to talk about. I know. You know what, though? And we're going to get into that.

33:18 Before I do, though, I wanted to set the stage for this in a slightly different way, though, because so many people that end up getting in touch with us, there's so many coaches that are going to watch and listen to this who are either... at a crossroads right now where they're thinking about starting a coaching business and they're scared to do it and they're not sure that it's the thing or they haven't gone all in or they're in the middle of it and it's not going as well as they would really want it to go and they need to make some shifts but it's hard and so i love your guys story and i've never heard you dig into that before and i think it's really powerful because You guys have built such an impactful, successful business, which is exactly what any coach who really wants to do this, that's what they want at the end of the day.

34:05 We're heart-centered people who want to go out and serve the people that they're meant to serve and do it at a really high level and create abundance for themselves and their families and all of those things. And many of them are stuck right now. So I would be remiss if we didn't start there, to be honest, because the personal branding stuff, we're going to get to. But that was thank you for digging deep on that and giving such a thoughtful answer because I think for a lot of people, it's going to really resonate. It's going to hit home. And now you guys are on the other side and creating incredible things in the world. Well, thanks, buddy. I hope so, because the journey of entrepreneurship is a journey of heartbreak. That's right.

34:45 That's right. I mean, the journey of changing the world is a journey of heartbreak. The journey of doing anything significant is going to be fraught with rejection and setback and failure and being judged by other people. And like, if you don't know how to, that's why it's intake the stairs. That's why it's intake the stairs is to go ultra performers have developed a healthy relationship to process that that enables them to move forward, which most people haven't. But that's different from the tactics of personal brand strategy, which is really what our firm is about. Yep. Yep. And so let's get into that. One of the things that I want to ask you, because I think there's so many misconceptions about personal branding, what it is, what it isn't.

35:28 So you define a personal brand. Yeah. Well, here's what it's not. It's not what everyone thinks. People think personal branding is a logo, a color palette, a set of fonts or topography. They think it is a website. They think it is social media. They think it is a podcast. They think it is a course. They think it is a membership site. They think it is a book. Yeah. They think it is SEO. They think it is an event. They think it's these things. And it's none of those things. In a way, it's all of those things, but it's much bigger than that and much more simple than that. The way that we define personal branding is that personal branding is simply the digitization of your reputation.

36:16 The digitization of your reputation. It's taking a reputation, which is a concept that people understand and none of us ever hear about or talk about anymore. If you're a brand builder group, we talk about it all the time. It's really reputation. And then we're just translating that reputation online and making it scalable. We're just digitizing it. And then we're automating it. And then we're putting systems behind it. And what we're really doing is we're automating trust. We're creating trust at scale. We're going, you know, our whole content marketing strategy, as you know, and this is, you know, we have several of the biggest podcasters in the world, our clients of our, I mentioned some of them, Ed Lewis, Amy Porterfield, et cetera.

37:01 our content marketing strategy is exactly what all of them do, which is we teach everything we know for free, but in small bite-sized chunks and in all random miscellaneous order. Because we know two things. First of all, people don't pay for information. People pay for organization and application. People don't pay for information. We pay for organization and application. So one of our BBG mantras is save the best for first. Save the best for first. Teach the best that you got because that's what makes people want to come back. The other thing that we know is that trust must take place before there's a transaction. Trust must take place before there's a transaction.

37:42 What most people are doing is they're trying to transact. They're trying to just go online and start selling. What we know is you first have to bank trust. You have to make deposits. You make deposits by giving, by adding value, by teaching, by sharing, by entertaining. Well, we call it the three E's. We have the three E's of content strategy. You're either educational or You're encouraging or entertaining, educational, encouraging, or entertaining. You're either one of those three or some mix of those three, right? And if you're an expert and you go, I'm not that funny, maybe I'm not that inspiring. You go, great. You're educational. You go, maybe I'm not that smart, but you go, but I'm dang funny. Great. You should be encouraging. You go, I'm not that funny or that smart, but man, I know how to inspire someone.

38:24 Great. You should be encouraging, right? And some blend of those three. And so what we do is we add trust, we teach, we give. I mean, we give away so much freaking free content on our podcast and our free webinars and our summit and our study. I mean, our Trends in Personal Branding National Research Study, we spent $100,000 putting that together. We give it to people for free. All the data that tells you things like 74% of Americans say they're more likely to trust someone with an established personal brand. Yeah. And we do that because we want to create trust first. We go for trust first, the transaction second.

39:05 And that's backwards from what most people do. They try to create a transaction, pay me money, and then I'll show you how good I am. And it's like, no, you got to flip those. Yeah, I couldn't agree more. I love that. I want to stay on content. So explain, if you would, even at a very basic level, one of the things that I know coaches, along with just about anybody else who wants to have a quote unquote presence in an online world that we live in today, people get overwhelmed by content. And I love the way that you guys teach and structure content because I think, first of all, I want to just give you a major, major compliment, which is I think you are one of the best in the world at taking something that feels very complex and making it very simple.

39:51 you're as good or better than anyone I've ever met. Thank you. Or seen. So what is the modular content method at bare bones without giving away the farm? And how do you guys kind of organize that? Because people are all over the place. I'd love for you to just talk about that because I think it'll make it less overwhelming. Yeah, well, and we're happy to give away the farm, right? I mean, like, we don't have to hold back. Like, if you're a real expert, you don't have to hold back. Because, first of all, I can tell you what it is, but you're going to probably struggle that most people are going to struggle to implement it. And so they're going to hire you. hire us to do what we do, which is we do one-on-one coaching for mission-driven messengers to help them apply the things we teach to them, right?

40:35 So I can teach them what to do. That's very different from getting it done. That's what people need help with. Which by the way, we haven't mentioned this yet. If you go to freebrandcall.com forward slash empire, you can request a call. And our first call that we do with everyone is free. And we teach you the whole system. Like on the first call, We show the system for how we take people from being unknown to well-known, from obscurity to notoriety, from never being heard of to being world-renowned. And we've done that several times now at this point with many of the personal brands we've been a part of, several of the biggest personal brands in the world now at this point. So anyways, you can request a call, freebrandcall.com slash empire. But on this specific thing, the modular content method...

41:18 So the way that we create content, this modular content method is we create content in pillars. And you can think about this as like chapters, but it's more than just a book outline. It's an outline for your body of work. And it's super simple. We just bucket the content into pillars. And then each pillar is divided into five parts. Yeah. Story, point, framework, behavior, exercise. Story, point, framework, behavior, exercise. And so for each pillar, we want to create a signature story. So tell a signature story. Then you tell a story, you make a point, you teach a framework, you inspire a behavior, and then you give them an exercise. Tell a story, make a point, teach a framework, inspire a behavior, give them an exercise.

42:01 And then we just go deep on each one of these. How do you tell a signature story? How do you create great conflict? How do you develop characters? How do you do plot? How do you make the mechanics like engaging? So then there's like a whole bit on storytelling. Then you got to make a point. A point is something new for people to think. It's the thing that they must think that they don't already think. And so we have something called the six pillar point formulas. And we teach people how 99% of quotes you ever hear follow one of six sentence structures. And we identified that. We broke it down. Now that's a framework that we teach. Then you have a framework. You teach a framework. You give people a visual, a tool, a diagram, a chart to help them visualize what you're trying to communicate.

42:46 Okay. The modular content method, by the way, is our framework for teaching frameworks. I'm like, this is very meta conversation. Then inspire a behavior. If a point, a pillar point is what's the thing that they must think, the behavior is what's the thing they must do. So if you want to change your life related to this pillar... What is the thing that you must do? That's a behavior. So then you have exercises. So when you do exercises, it's just you're actually guiding them through an experience that helps the person, the reader, you know, whatever by, you know, consume whoever's consuming that information to apply it to their own life. So that's what an exercise is.

43:27 It's a vehicle to help them apply that knowledge to their own life. One pillar is a TED Talk. Two pillars is a keynote. Three pillars with exercises is a half day. Four pillars is a full day. Seven pillars with exercises is a two-day training, which is also the outline for a book, a six-month coaching program, a year-long consulting curriculum. And then we have content that expands and contracts for whatever the format is. And that's the method that I've used as a creator. And now we're doing it with folks and creating New York Times bestselling books off of it. And it's very simple. I just had to tell you guys, first of all, I'm so in love with this. And thank you for painting the entire picture because it really is not...

44:09 When you look at it through that framework... And that's another thing I love about your frameworks are just wonderful. I think that's the first thing that I said when I walked in the door was like, holy crap, these are the best frameworks I've ever seen. Yeah. But it really does make it simple at the end of the day. Oftentimes, people run around scrambling day in and day out. Oh my gosh, what am I going to talk about today? Oh my gosh, how am I going to figure out what's the next podcast that I'm going to do? What's the next book I'm going to do? And it's all one body of work. And I love that. And you guys are just brilliant at really drawing a person's life work out of them. And that's one of the things... Yeah, honestly, one of the things that I want to say is that brand builders have been able to pull out of me things that I have been struggling to message to people and the world for probably 15 to 20 years.

45:04 And it happened in a very, very short period of time, which was incredible. Well, that's amazing, Ryan. And I really appreciate that, buddy. Because it's like, the reason we're succeeding is because our clients are winning. And that's because our clients are amazing people. We teach them how to extract... We have a process to extract that from you. The magic is what you're doing, but it's like, it's awesome to get to be a part of that. And then, you know, we find amazing people and then we just teach them how to package it and wrap it and position it and commoditize it and then market it and sell it and put it on autopilot and build trust all along the way. And then we're just working with mission-driven messengers.

45:45 And when you add up all of our clients added together, it's there, we're making a pretty big dent in the world, which is pretty cool. Yeah. Amen. Brooke and I talk about it all the time at Empire. It's the ripple effect. And my goodness, you guys are making... Quite a ripple effect in the world with everything that you're doing and everything that your clients are doing. One of the things that I'd love to ask you about, and we'll start winding down because I want to be respectful of time here. But I've got a couple of other questions around branding that I think people struggle with quite a bit. At Empire Partners, we really exist to help coaches become profitable business owners. And in doing that, just like baking a cake, there's a recipe.

46:25 Yeah. And more often than not, people are pretty much trying to put the frosting in the middle of the cake instead of putting it on top and so on and so forth. So I would love to hear from you. Tell me about timing. When should somebody be thinking about really getting serious about building a personal brand? I mean, that's such a great question. The truth is you already are building one, right? Like you, it's what is your online reputation? What are you known for? It is just your reputation. So the truth is, it's like you either just don't have one because you're not building it well, or you have to get going immediately because it matters so much.

47:06 It's like, what's the level of trust that people have with you? And also for us, it's a service conversation. It's going... Yeah, we want to make money for sure. We love making money. Making money is actually one of AJ's spiritual gifts. Like she took a test and it's like one of her spiritual gifts. Sugar mama. That's all I'm saying, Ryan. This is not surprising. It's a great characteristic to having a spouse and a business partner. But like for us, we serve mission-driven messengers. So money is great. We need money. We know we need money to hire people and give them jobs and pay for stuff and get the message out and all that. But money is subservient to the mission. Yeah. And so the real question is, how much do you care about making a difference in the world?

47:47 And how soon does it matter that you start making that difference? I mean, are you okay knowing that you have expertise that can help other people out there who are struggling? And are you okay sitting on it while they struggle? Knowing that the reason they're struggling is because you haven't shown up and put in the work and gotten the coaching and built the processes to go reach that person and save them and help them and add value to their lives. I mean, if you had the cure for cancer and you kept it in your basement and never told anyone about it, how soon should you start telling people about it? Pretty freaking soon, I would think, right? Like you probably want to get on that.

48:27 And that yet is how it is. So many of our clients are like the world's best kept secret. I mean, a lot of our clients now are like the most famous people ever. But when we start working with them, it's like they're often the world's best kept secret. And it's like, that's not a good thing. That's an awful thing. That's a horrible, a horrible thing to go. I have the cure for cancer and nobody knows about it. What? That's such a disservice. That's such an incredible crime to hold that back to yourself. And so the best piece of personal branding advice I've ever received is from a gentleman named Larry Wingate. And I heard this early in my career. And the moment I heard this, I was like, bingo, this is it.

49:09 And he said, the goal is to find your uniqueness and exploit it in the service of others. find your uniqueness and exploit it in the service of others. He just never taught anyone how to do that. And that's what Brand Builders Group does, is we teach you how to find your uniqueness first and then how to operationalize exploiting it in the service of others. We do some of that, right? You guys do a lot of that too. You guys do a lot of things we don't do. And so that's why we're such a good partnership. But we're hiring you guys to help us with some of our sales processes and some of our stuff. So there's a lot to exploiting it in the service of others. But the point is like, someone's life is in danger. How soon should you start saving them? I would think pretty dang quick.

49:51 Amen to that. Amen to that. Very, very well said. And so guys, if you didn't catch it, basically, the point is at the end of the day, as you're building and growing as a coach, the best time to start really working on your personal brand is write the freak now. right now because they are tied whether you like it or you don't. And they're symbiotic in nature. And without one, it's very difficult to build the other. So I love that. It's really well said. I want to ask you a question on speaking really quickly because I know there are a lot of people in our audience that really have a desire to speak and speak at a high level. By the way, really quickly, I want to mention to you that I recently saw you in a talk at Texas A&M University when you guys were still with the consulting company.

50:39 That's funny. And you did this, it was like about a 90 second to two minute, I don't know even what to call it. It was like a rap where you rattled on... I found it ludicrous that I had to pay 50 cent for a Tupac of Eminem and some Black Eyed Peas. Yeah. First of all, I love that. And you got to see this. Rory is an incredible speaker. And you should watch all of his speeches, especially Take the Stairs. But please go on YouTube and check out Texas A&M University. So one of the funniest things I've ever seen anybody do in a speech was hysterical. So good. What don't people know about the business of speaking that...

51:20 The business of speaking? Yeah, that they should. Yeah. Gosh, great question. I'll tell you the number one thing that they don't know is if you want to be a professional speaker, what they don't know about the business of speaking, the key is to have one speech. And you do the same speech over and over and over. And it's 85% the same. And then 15% tailored, you know, maybe 80-20, but like probably 85-15. And the reason is you can't just be a good speaker. You can't be a great speaker. When you go out on stage, if someone's paying you a check, you have to bring the freaking house down. You have to make people laugh as hard as they've ever laughed and cry and blow their mind with content they've never heard before.

52:03 Right? So if you want to get paid 50 grand a speech, like myself and several of our clients and friends, that's what you got to be. Let me tell you the number one way that's not going to happen. writing a new speech every time. Like, are you kidding? You can't do that. You can't write a new speech every time and do that. No, no, no, no, no. And then what you want to do is customize it. So you're pulling from a bank, right? It doesn't mean that I have a canned speech that I say exactly the same way every time. I'm pulling from my modular content method though. I have a content bank that is these pillars, these stories. And it's like, when I stand on stage, just like all the comedians, by the way, Like you go watch Jerry Seinfeld.

52:45 It looks like he's telling that joke for the first time. If you think he's telling that joke for the first time, you're outside your mind. He's told that joke a thousand, at least a thousand times before you ever hear it, right? And you got to get really, really good. And the number one way you get booked to speak is because someone has seen you speak and you blew their mind. So if you're not getting booked to speak, it's only one of two things, I promise you. If you want to be a speaker, And you're not getting booked to speak. It is one of two things. Either you're not out speaking enough or your speech isn't as good as you think. That's it. So world-class presentation craft, of course, is one of our... We have 14 different topics that make up our full curriculum, as you know, Ryan.

53:31 We have world-class presentation craft. We have podcast power. We have bestseller launch plan, which is book launches. We have scale your sales, which is like driving free calls and our pressure-free persuasions, you know, service-centered selling stuff, finding your brand DNA, captivating content. These are all of our different topics that we teach, but they try to have a new speech every time and that's not going to fly. That is so good. For those of you that are wanting to speak, take that to heart and own it. We could be here for probably three, four hours doing this. So for the purposes of today, thank you for everything that you shared. I think this is really, really helpful. And for those of you that are... trying to figure out how to build a personal brand. Do me a favor, throw out the URL, please, one more time.

54:13 Because guys, I just want to say before Rory throws this out, it's not often that Brooke and I will recommend services to people. And those of us that know us well know that we only recommend the things that we can personally vouch for. And the experience that I've had with Rory's group and Brand Builders has been One of the single most powerful experiences I've had in my life, they are elite at what they do. And if you're going to be out there selling your services, like many of you are, you absolutely need this. And there's nowhere else to go than these guys. So go ahead and give them the URL. for it. Wow, Ryan, thank you, buddy. So it's freebrandcall.com slash empire, freebrandcall.com slash empire.

54:57 And that's what it is. It's a free brand strategy call. And we're going to teach you the strategy. Like, first of all, we're going to listen. We want to know about your vision, your dream, what's your goal? Where are you at right now? You know, we work with people who have millions and millions of followers. And we work with people who literally have zero followers. Like they literally have never posted online. But we work exclusively with personal brands. So we want to hear about your dream, your vision, your team, where you're currently at. And then we will show you on the first call, our whole system. It's a four-phase process that we have taken people through and the results that we're getting. And I mean, our clients are just crushing it left and right. I mean, every day I can't even keep up with the stuff that's happening.

55:38 So anyways, freebrandcall.com forward slash empire. All right. Freebrandcall.com forward slash empire. Rory Vaden, man, thank you again so much. I know this is going to be insanely valuable for so many people. I want to really honor you for the man that you are. You and AJ are two of the most heartfelt, hardworking, incredible people that I've known and met. And I'm grateful for you for our relationship. And I got my popcorn ready here, man. I mean, I know I'm in it with you guys. We're doing this together. But I got my popcorn ready because I just believe you guys haven't even scratched the surface of where you're going to go. And it's already an unbelievably impressive body of work. So thank you, man, for all that you are, all that you do, and for blessing us with your time.

56:20 Well, I really appreciate it, bro. And I feel that way about you. I feel like you are the epitome of a mission-driven messenger. You're why we started this company. We believe in you. We see it, right? You're doing all the things and going, getting the education and like, and you go, it can't not work if you do it. And that's what I want to leave you all with is just... remembering that as much as you want to build your personal brand, your personal brand is not about you. It's about the person that you were created to serve. And there are people out there who need you right now way more than you need them. Like there's people and Ryan is one of those people for us, right?

57:01 Is going like, he's got a certain dream and we just fit and we go, man, if somebody is like the aspiring speaker or aspiring author, it's just like, We'll rock your world. I mean, we will change the trajectory of your life and your family tree. Like that's just what we do. We can't do that for everybody, but we can do it for those people. Well, you are that for someone else. There's somebody out there right now who is begging and pleading and quite literally, possibly on their hands and knees, praying to God for answers to questions that you know, like the back of your hand. They're looking for solutions that you solved 10 years ago.

57:41 They're lost. And you're going, what? I can show you the straight line through this jungle. Yeah. And the only reason we wouldn't go after them is because we're afraid, is because of fear. Like fear is so self-centered. We only are afraid, am I going to, you know, do I have the right camera? Am I going to look the right way? Am I going to say the right thing? You know, do I have the right outfit? Is anyone going to listen to me? It's all self-centered garbage. But there is no fear when the mission to serve is clear. You don't have fear when you're thinking about helping someone. If there's a car flipped over on the side of the road and it's on fire and someone's yelling for help, you go to help them. You're not thinking about, how's my hair look?

58:23 Is my outfit cute? Like, does my breath stink? You're not thinking about that. You're going to help somebody. That's the place that we need to be in as mission-driven messengers constantly. That's the space we have to live in. It's not being famous and it's not being well-known. It's being of value. It's being of service. And if you live inside that space and then you apply the mechanics that we happen to do really well, you can't not win. So anyways, brother, thanks for having me. Amen. Amen. Thank you, Rory. Thank you for listening to this episode of The Coaching Equation. Please hit subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts. And if you got value out of this episode, we would be so grateful if you would share it out with a friend and leave us a review on iTunes or your favorite platform.

59:12 To learn more about Empire Partners or to inquire about working with Ryan and Brooke, please visit www.empirepartners.io forward slash go.