Influencer Series: Behind Brendon's Career (Part 1 of 2)

Foreign. It's Brandon. And I'm excited for this special series we are beginning right now called the Influencer Series. If you're on my email newsletter, you know, I've sent out a few emails recently about how I do my career. You guys are always asking about that part of my life. You know, the part of my life that's more of the influencer side of things than just teaching the personal development, meaning my career as a coach, speaker, author, writer, trainer. Someone who's out there every single day, you know, sharing my message and earning income from it. And lots of questions always come up about that. In terms of marketing, you know, how do you create a massive online community around your passions, your mission, or your cause? How do you create viral videos? How do you host these events? How do you get sponsors? How do you get featured in the media or sell online courses and subscriptions? How do you launch these podcasts and these courses and these books and blah, blah, blah. I know you guys are always excited about hearing that. So I'm starting a series today that we're just gonna call the Influencer Series, where we're gonna really break down some very tactical things that I do in my business, but also some larger, practical things in marketing that will really give you insight into how this industry works. Now, when I say the of course not everyone loves it, we say just influencer. But really, that's what the industry's become known as. It used to be the expert industry, and then it became the thought leader industry. And now anyone who's really an author, speaker, coach, seminar leader, online trainer, social media thought leader is often bucketed under the influencer industry, which I'm totally cool with. And in fact, many of you know, we have launched Influencer 2019. That is where you can go for three days and learn from me. And really 10 of, I think, some of the greatest influencers alive today, how we built our business and how you can start from scratch, just like we did. If you're interested in that, just go to influencertickets.com to claim your tickets. We've got tickets coming up. October 10th through 12th in San Diego. Influencer will be an annual event, so that's your only chance to attend and learn from us. It's October 10th through 12th in San Diego, and just go to influencer tickets.com to get your tickets. Now, with that, this first kickoff, I thought I'd do something where I really get to share about my journey and what I've learned as an influencer through the rebroadcast. Of an awesome episode my friend Lewis Howes did on me. I was on Lewis's podcast called the School of Greatness and we did a special two part epic journey through my career, as well as what I would recommend to you on how to think about the career, but also how do you think about marketing in general? And it was so hugely popular on his podcast that we decided to play it for you here in case you're not subscribed. I hope you will really enjoy this episode. It's Lewis Howes, the founder of the School of Greatness podcast, walking you through my career. With that, it's gonna be a two part episode sequence, meaning this will be one episode here and then another episode and then we'll jump into some very tactical marketing episod. Coming up soon. Again, if you'd like to learn all of this type of stuff and you really dig it, make sure you go to influencertickets.com Louis will be speaking at our event as well. A lot of my friends, actually. Rachel Hollis will be there. Dean Graziosi will be there. Trent Shelton will be there. Tom Bilyeu from Impact Theory will be there. Anthony Trucks, you know, American Ninja Warrior. We've got so many unbelievably awesome influencers coming to teach you very tactical things. Again, that's October 10th through 12th in San Diego. Go to influencertickets.com that's influencertickets.com to get your tickets. Without further ado, here's my awesome interview with Lewis Howes.

Welcome, everyone. We've got my good friends friend, Brennan Burchard.

Let's go.

Yes, baby.

Thank you, brother.

Excited you were on here. Was it two years ago? When was it last time? I was two years ago, Year and a half. Two years ago, roughly.

It was two years ago.

Was that the first time I met you, like a month before then?

It was. I think that was the first time we ever had like a conversation.

Was it on the podcast? I think we met in person before, didn't we, at like Soho House? For maybe a minute.

That was the day of. Oh, like you took me to Sohouse. I had some, like, eggs and tea and we came over.

Here's what's funny. I feel like I've known you for, I don't know, like a decade. Even though we've only been really hanging out for a couple years. Yeah, I feel like I've known you for a decade because we've gone deep and done like intimate work together, collaborations together. We've done masterminds together, trips whenever you go on a trip with someone in a group of people and you share these unique experiences. You feel like you bond fast.

Yeah. I took you fishing and you beat me at it.

I beat you because I had a good partner.

That's true.

Who was just catching everything. I couldn't catch a thing. I would catch it, but I couldn't reel it in. We went to Wyoming, Jackson Hole together. You invited a group of about 10 to 15 high level influencers. So thanks for inviting me. We had an amazing time. Taking helicopters around the the mountains, fly fishing, freaking hanging out, barbecue, campfire, all that stuff. Then we just went to your new home in Puerto Rico.

Yes.

A week. Was that a week ago?

That's a week ago, man. It already feels like three weeks happened.

We went to Puerto Rico. You've got a new home there, right on the beach somewhere. Incredible. Some new people joined. The influencer mastermind that you have put together and you've had an incredible career. You know, you've been in this game for 15 years now. Yeah, 2006.

Crazy 2000. Yeah. 2006 is when I launched my first website. First book came out in 2001.

Right.

School leadership Guide.

Oh, different.

Yeah. I was still in college. I wrote a book for students and left it there called the Student Leadership Guide. And it became this big thing which, which is what helped me realize, oh, I could do books.

Interesting.

I took a corporate job after that, you know, like working for Accenture. So I did leadership development for about seven years. But that whole seven years, I wanted to write Life Score Ticket. And it was just kind of waiting and kind of maturing and getting ready and sometimes telling myself lies, you know, like, oh, I'm not ready, I'm too young. But soon the issue guide was kind of selling the background of colleges. And I get these checks every month. I'm like, wow, maybe I could do a real book and maybe I will write Life's golden Ticket. But I didn't have the hook or the angle yet. And so that book, 2007, Life's golden, came out. My first event was 2008. My first big seminar that I did. My first online course came out in 2008. And this is like 2008 doesn't seem that long ago. But our number one refund in 2008 was because people couldn't play a 45 minute online course because buffer speed.

Wow.

Like, no one even knows what that means. I mean, like the video wouldn't play. It would take like 20 minutes to watch, load a two minute clip and we were doing online courses in 2008. So it was like we were. We were early. I didn't know we were early, but looking back, like, wow. We were like, oh, geez, up in here.

Hosting video on, like, Amazon S3, like, uploading it. Like, it was all janky. There was no software systems. Then you have a multiple, number one New York Times bestselling books. I think you've sold a couple million copies of books.

Yeah. If you count digital.

Digital. How many millions of copies roughly, do you think? Range over 2 million. Of all your books, at least, if you count digital.

Four or five.

Four or five million. Yeah.

And partially, though, is because we also sell it on our own website.

You sell it?

You do. Like, one of the things we were really early on was taking the power back from the publishers. So even if we have a great deal with a publisher, I still might do a big promotion where I release the PDF, or I might do a big promotion, you know, with, you know, Kindle, that I don't have to worry.

About audio or whatever.

We'll do a big promotion on Kindle for $1.99. So, you know, we kind of were changing up the model because my, my ambition was I want people reading my book. I don't. I don't want to have to worry about the gatekeepers.

And you were looking to build a business through leads and.

Yeah.

And it wasn't just about the book. Was about the book. And then what's next?

Yeah, give me an email, I'll give you my book.

Yeah, exactly.

I mean, after. After the book's been out for seven or eight years, like, hey, give me an email. I'll give you this whole piece.

I want you to read it.

Yeah. Or buy it for $3 today for my website, like, whatever it's taken, like, to get people. That's great. The mission has always been change people's lives in whatever modality I could figure out or learn to do that.

Yeah.

That's what I had to do.

That's it. It's the key. And you've done, I think you said you did, like 15 or 17. Seven figure launches in a row online.

28.

20 numbers are off here. 28.

The only reason I do that, because we had to make a presentation for the influencer magazine thing and we're trying to, like, talk about it. And it was 28, seven figure online launches. 19 of them were in a row.

So that 19 in a row that.

2009 to 2015, we kind of defined the game for launching especially personal Development, online courses. There were a lot of people teaching marketing or launches or how to do a seminar or something like that. But we were like, personal development is harder to sell.

It's harder to sell, man. It's hard to sell. High ticket, too. It's harder to sell. So you've been doing that. You've helped so many people launch their brands from their influence. Because there's a lot of influencers in the world who are really great at building, creating content that goes viral, that or that attracts an audience, and then grow an audience. And they know they have no clue to make money.

That's it.

They're broke, but they're changing the world.

Right.

It's like they're broke, and they have millions of followers.

They think they're changing the world. It's like, you're gonna need a business and a movement to change the world.

That's true.

And that's what they. They're like, well, I'm changing the world. Like, no, you're popular.

Right.

But to actually change the world, change people, you need a curriculum. You need to be able to give them empowerment and tools to be able to help to do that. And if you're gonna actually make it, I always tell people, you can't sustain the mission if you don't make the money, which was a big thing for me because I came from nothing, you know. You know, my background a bit. Growing up in Montana, we just had nothing.

Yeah.

You know, we grew up in poverty. My parents working super hard between the, you know, two of them to raise us four kids. Literally till this day, I have no idea how they did it.

Yeah.

So my ambition was like, maybe someday I can make $40,000, because the richest people in our town didn't make that kind of money. But that also can get in the way because sometimes people set their ambitions or their financial hopes based on where they grew up. And they let their past or their current circumstances dictate the dreams for the finances they want in the future. And then what happens? They do something that becomes really popular, and they're like, oh, this is working. And the number count they're watching is the fans and the followers, which is great. But what I'm always saying is, like, please make sure you build a business, because if suddenly you're not as popular or you go broke or something happens, God forbid, if you haven't built the infrastructure to carry your message, then you're not being a responsible messenger. An influencer without a business is a popular person who's busy all the Time.

And stress because they're not making any money. They can't pay their rent. I was having a conversation with Jay Shetty about this about a year and a half ago.

Yeah.

Because he was. I was always trying to push him to earn more. He was like, you know, I'm happy with, like, just making. I don't know. I think it was like 100 grand or maybe a few hundred grand. Right. I'm not sure the exact number. But he was like, I never felt like I needed to make more money because I felt like, I just want to serve people. I want to give as much as I can.

Yeah.

And I said, well, you're really doing a disservice unless you start earning more because you can hire more people and transform those lives.

Right.

You can use the resources to create bigger projects, bigger production of movies and videos that can then infect people in a positive way.

Yeah. You have to. People have to get out of their way about money. And it's the hardest thing, trust me. It was like there were parts of. When we did our first launch, you know, when we did our first seminar afterwards, I went broke because I know how to do it. Didn't know so much. Just completely went broke. Had to live with my girlfriend, who is now Denise, my wife. And, you know, she was buying my groceries. She was supporting me. She was kind of the only person who knew what I wanted to do, and really the only person believing and cheering it on. I had that great support. I always say people say, you're so lucky, but I'm like, I am. I had a car accident that smacked me in the head. Made me say, I want to live my life. Luck number one. Luck number two. Great parents. Luck number three. A girl that believed in me when I didn't even quite believe in myself.

Wow. What year is this?

I Met Denise in 2003. Wow. So we were together five years. I never posed. So we've been together a long time. But I remember even sitting there when I was bankrupt, and she's sleeping in the bed, and I'm on this little desk next to the bed, and I'm writing, and all my bills and my paperwork and my vision boards were on the bed. And as I'm typing, she comes over and crawls under the covers to go to bed. And I look over, and my woman sleeping under my bells, like, literally. And I would say, none of us want to be responsible for the pain in other people's lives because of our own inaction. I just hadn't taken action. But I Also, didn't. I just didn't have any attachment to money my whole life, even now. I mean, you've seen what we do on our big trips. Like, let's go. I mean, I go crazy.

Helicopters and this, whatever.

It's like, have a great time. Because I don't have an attachment to it. But what I do have an attachment to is the mission. And I want to help people achieve their goals faster. I want to help people realize they have a second chance on this planet every day that they wake up. And if you have a second chance every day, that's like evergreen. Every day is your life's golden ticket. You get to choose when you woke up this morning, what's my attitude going to be, how I'm going to treat people, what I'm going to focus on, what I'm going to make happen, how I feel. We get to choose these things to an extraordinary extent. So my whole thing is, hey, you have a second chance. Use that. And this time, in your second chance, in your next relationship, in the next job and the next moment, be more intentional. Be more service driven. You know, lead with more heart. You know, make sure you're. You're doing things that bring you meaning.

Yeah.

And if you really. If, like, if I really believe that, as I tell it to you, then I would have to build the infrastructure to sustain it.

Yeah.

That's where the business thing comes in. I had to go, all right. And there was nothing about this business I was attracted to. Like, literally, you're very introverted. Very introverted. Like, I'm still. You know, I'm awkward. Even right now, I'm awkward in a meeting. Like, I'm just. I'm. You've been with me on a deck by a pool. I'm different. I'm more relaxed a little bit. But I had to learn everything. I had to learn how to speak. I was terrified of public speaking. I had to learn how to do video, which was a super awkward, hard thing. Now, we've had 250 million video views, but the number I'm really proud of is 15 million hours of my online training has been watched. Wow, 15 million hours. That's a lot of Brendan. That's annoying. But, you know, that's instruction. Not no cat videos, no memes, no reposting other people stuff. That's like online training content. 15 million hours. So that's a lot of teaching. We have 27 online courses. 27 I've done. And I was terrified of video. I had to learn podcasting. I had to Learn how to write books. But all I had was after my car accident, I said, I want to inspire people to understand we all have life's goal and we have a second chance. We can all live, love and matter if we make that our intention. So let's start measuring ourselves and being more purposeful. And then I had to figure out how to do it. Well, you have to master your mindset, you have to master your habits, you have to be better in your relationships. You have to live for something, optimize your health. Yes. So if I really believed in that, I had to step back at some point and not go, what are my strengths? Because my strengths were sitting on a couch and eating Cheetos. It's like at some point you go, no, no. What, what is? I want to be of service to high performers. Don't often ask just what are my strengths? I'll just do that. They say, what is required to be of service here? And let me grow into that. I had to grow into a business owner. I had to grow into a communicator. I had to grow into a writer or into a podcaster. I didn't know how to do any of that. I just had something I wanted to share and teach the world. I had to learn how to be a researcher and conduct like original full scale psychological research, which was high performance habits. I didn't know how to do any of that. But if you believe you have a message in your heart, you'll know that you have to build the infrastructure for it, because if you don't make the money, you can't sustain the message.

It's hard. Yeah, it's hard.

Your advising to Jay is really great because he's doing great now, because he's changed that approach.

Yes. And now he still cares about impacting as many people as possible, but he knows that the business model needs to be there. And he's been crushing it on both sides. He's been doing amazing. Now this is all about becoming an influencer. And you've got an event coming up and you've got a whole magazine influencer magazine influencer event in 2019 coming up in October. Yeah, October.

October 10 through 12. Big influencer event for our industry.

Now, who should be thinking about becoming an influencer and who is it for and who is it not for? Because you're the introverted guy. So if you're introverted and you're scared and you've never spoken before, you've never written a book, should you even be thinking, maybe this is for me? Or maybe it isn't.

Yeah, I'm just thinking in my head as you're saying that. How many of our friends and fans are like, brendan's not introvert.

I know you're.

But I always say, listen, you can't write six books and not be an introvert. You know, you can't sit and do the hundreds of hours of curriculum development without being introverted. But no, I think introverts can come, extroverts can come. It's somebody who says, you know what? I want to be a person of influence in the world where I'm affecting positive change. And you want to figure out how to have a career doing that. It's those two things. First is the heart and the soul of it is like, I want to create positive change. I want to be a role model. And I'll say, no one seeks to become an expert or a thought leader, which is what we used to call it, you know, now we just call it influencer. But no one seeks to become an influencer unless in some way they have the role model mindset, that mindset that says, you know what? I want to do good and have other people see that, maybe inspire them. You know, I want to lead my life in a way that's an example for other people. And as soon as you decide to adopt the role model mindset where you say, I want to be an example for other people, it requires you to do the hard stuff it does to.

Work out stuff you don't want to do.

So you don't want to do, you don't want to work out, you don't want to push yourself, you don't want to. But to be a role model, you have to demonstrate integrity and discipline and service. And most people, they won't challenge themselves that much. So I think first is the role model mindset. So first I have that. I want to affect positive change. I want to be a role model for other people. I want to inspire people. I want people to see the passions I have and maybe learn from those passions. And I want to give people empowerment. And then the other side of it is, oh, well, I wonder how I do that and get paid as a career. Because while influencer is like the popular word right now, this industry has been there for hundreds of years with publishing, right? It's just changed now. Influencers sit on top of more publishing platforms than we used to have access to. But at the end of the day, we're still publishing content, we're still promoting and pushing work out into the world. But people go, how do you make money? Well, now you can earn money in so many ways.

So many ways.

The problem is, most influencers coming up today think they're gonna earn money just by doing brand deals. And I'm gonna get popular and do brand deals. I'm like, oh, you're just. They're not. They don't understand the model. It's like, you know, we say in Montana, where I'm from, the time to have the map is before you enter the woods. And I'm like, if you're trying to figure out the influencer space and you wanna know all 12 major ways to monetize your voice, your. Your content, your message, your brand, you should learn that as a menu before you pick one. And most people are earning, like, this much when they could be earning 10 or 12 times more if they just understood the model. But they think they're so clever and they're inventing this. I mean, so many people think, oh, we're not. You know, I'm original. I'm doing this. I'm like, this was here before. You know what I mean? Just you and me too. Like, we rode in on giant shoulders. And so I think it's for people who really have those two things.

There's more money to be made now as an influencer than there ever was before. There's more opportunities, there's more models for making money, different methods. And you've got a couple of key themes and a framework on becoming an influencer, figuring out your message, the model, mechanisms, everything. And I want to kind of break them down. The first thing you talk about is the message is getting clear on your message. What? I'm swimming, right?

Yeah.

Influencer. Is it important to know what your message is and how do you find your message if you're trying to become an influencer?

Yeah, because the. The death of most influencers, they don't realize is their randomness. Right. You know, they're just excited. I'm gonna post everything, you know, and I'm gonna talk about everything. But they've never created a cohesive message that their audience goes, I get her. I understand her. It's not like you have to say the same thing over and over and over, but there has to be something that means something to you. Like, one thing I admire about what you do, buddy, is how you talk about greatness. That theme and that messaging is so tight. And honestly, over the last three years, when I listen to your show, I'm like, he's just dialing this in, right? You Know your word choice now. You know your phrases, you know what you're saying. It's not just being repetitive on those. It's just that's who you are. And that integrity of your message is being shown. So you better be intentional about the kind of person you're trying to become. Because most people think about message, they go, oh, so I need to have a mission statement, Brandon. I'm like, no, no, no, you are the message. The integrity of who you are and how you show up energetically and how you treat other people, that's the message.

The role model mentality.

Yes.

Become the role model of your message.

That's it. Yeah, yeah. Because that's what integrity is. It's like people are gonna watch you and go, are you congruent here and there? And if you're not, like, that message feels funny to them. But you and I both know a lot of influencers, they've never done any deep in introspection.

Yeah.

They put on 50 different clothes and, you know, beautiful Instagram things, but they don't know who they are.

Yeah. Or they got the mental health challenge, which is what we'll talk about later. Yeah. But the message. Getting clear on your message and kind of the theme of your brand, the theme of your influence, I think is key.

Yeah.

And this cannot. Listen, it doesn't mean you have to be a perfect human being. You're going to make mistakes, you're going to learn, you're going to grow. But it's like trying to be congruent with your message consistently for you. You know, it's. It's high performance habits for your book. You talk about it in your podcast, you talk about it in your events. You live that and you showcase that.

Yeah.

For me, with greatness. It's kind of like, what are the core themes of living a great life and business, health, relationships and everything involved? And it's trying to do the best to live that all the time and talk about it consistently.

Yeah. So including the failures.

Absolutely.

Like, that's part of it.

Showcasing the failures. I think when influencers showcase their mistakes and failures, it makes them more real, more likable.

Yeah. That's why everyone likes me, because I'm a hot mess all the time.

Exactly. So you gotta get clear on the message first. Do you have a mechanism for. It's like, well, I kind of like everything. How do you figure out what your message is? Is there a process or just like, some journaling that you could share with people?

I mean, first sitting down and saying, what do you want to be a role model on. Like, if you want to be a role model, what is it about? Is it? And how does that translate into a person's real life? Like, what would you say to an actual person to help them or inspire them? And you just have to start writing those words, like, what would I say? Like, what would I say? It's that old thing of like, if you could put a message on a billboard or if something was written on your tombstone, like, what, what are those things for me? Like, a lot of people know it's like, live, love and matter. Because when I faced my death as a 19 year old kid, I was like, oh, I learned. I really want to live life. I learned because I was a heartbroken kid, I wanted to love again and feel my heart again. I learned that life is super short, so you better make your difference. So live, love and matter became central to everything I did for 15 years. Like every message revolved around that because that was me and that was a unique experience I had. I think a lot of people have to go and dig down deep into their experiences, their life, and say, what were some of the gifts of the lessons that I learned? Some of the awful things that happened to us or the challenging things, those struggles. There's a story there, and that story can reveal some lessons or things that you might be a role model to for people. And it doesn't have to be so finite that it's like, this is it forever. Because you'll keep evolving, you'll keep learning. But there's hints there. And you can go dig in your past to find some of those hints. You can also just ask, well, what are the passions that I really feel in my heart that I just want to communicate right now? Some people it's like, well, that's fashion for them. Some people, it's health for them. Being a mom, being a mom, being an educator, just showing everyday life, that's fine because ultimately, again, you are the message. So the most important thing isn't to figure out, like, what am I gonna say? It's the most important thing is who are you?

Who are you? Is the key.

Dig deep, man.

Asking that question.

Yes, who are you? One of the things we do is I ask people come up with three words that describe the best of who you are. These are aspirational words. If you think of like three words, when I'm at my best, these three words really define me.

Yeah.

And then I say, okay, now figure out what are three words that really describe the best of you. When you're with other people, like, how do you treat them? And then what I have them do is I literally have them program in their phone as an alarm, right?

Yeah, I have that in my alarm still. 8:30.

You still do?

Yeah. I need to change to like 6:30, but it's like an 8:30.

That's it. Mine's still in here. You know, I've been doing this for whatever There was my 9am dynamic, bold and confident. And that was for today because I was like, you know, I'm usually a little more reserved in Lewis's interviews because he's the man, you know, be a little more bold and confident.

I have loving, giving, achiever.

That's it.

I love and giving achiever. So I could probably change that too. Yeah, yeah.

So I switch mine every week. But.

So three words that you would describe as yourself, and the three words that you would want other people to describe you as or that you would describe yourself.

Yeah. So three words. You describe yourself as, like, the best of who you are, and that's just you like your identity. And then the other one is more like relationships. Like, three words to describe how you are with other people. For example, my word there, bold, like, that can describe me as a person, how I think. But I wouldn't want you to ever go, well, Brendan, when he's with me, he's real bold. That's different. Like, how you are with other people should have a certain definition and description, and how you are by yourself should have a certain. And that's how you start to get to know yourself. Like, oh, I'm like this as a person. And with other people, I'm like this as a person.

And it's like shaping your own internal identity of your qualities and reminding yourself of who you are.

Labeling yourself a little bit in a positive way.

Yeah.

Because most people, they take the labels the world gave them. Oh, you're just the athlete, Louis.

Yeah, exactly.

Right. If you just took that and that was all you ever owned and you never explored beyond that, we wouldn't be here.

That's true.

Right. We're here because you explored who am I? And you are still doing that. So am I. Like, it's not like it's a thing that stops, but people want to see you working that through.

I think, like, 15, 20 years ago, like, in my teens, I used to say, like, man, you suck to myself all the time.

Yeah.

Like, you're a loser. You suck. I hate you. You know, I'd say these words to myself, like, you're Never going to do anything better than this person or you're never going to be enough. Whatever. I would say these things internally.

Yeah.

And those start to shape you as well.

Yeah.

And they start to shape how you treat other people, your reactions and how you treat yourself.

That's right.

So I think this is a very powerful, simple exercise that we've been doing for so many years now that we kind of forget the power of this.

Yeah.

But I'm glad you made this reminder, because I never saw this say those things to myself anymore. It's always like, you know, you're kind, you're loving, passionate, you're wise, you're giving, you're caring. I say these things all the time. I never even say anything negative. Yeah.

You give yourself patience on the days you're not. Absolutely. And that's a hard thing for people because they're supposed to be kind, and one day they're a jerk, and then they're like, I'm a jerk, and they go back to that old bad label. But it's like what your audience wants to see if you're an influencer is you working through the development of you. They want to be on that journey with you and see, like, oh, I see him or her becoming. Because they're willing to ask the hard questions about themselves and explore who they are. Because if you can't be an influencer, not explore who you are, I mean, even the great presidents of our time were always in motion of exploring who they are, the great business people. I mean, it's not like, you know, Elon Musk has been exactly. Elon Musk exactly 10 years ago as he is today. It's like you're seeing this evolution, this change, and sometimes it's a hot mess, and other times you're like, oh, this person's. You know, people want to be on the journey with you as you're exploring who you are. And if you're not exploring who you are, you're not growing. And if you're not growing, the audience is not growing.

Starts to die.

They're not interested.

So true.

All right. Hey, my friends. Are you enjoying this episode with Lewis? I hope you really are. We're going to really dive deep in this and the next episode for you on some tactics. But I really want to share the overall story and philosophy of how I approach this, because I think it has given me some untold advantages and success. And if you want to learn more about how to do this, do yourself a favor and go to influencer magazine.com because here's the deal. I know not everybody can attend Influencer event in the San Diego October 10th through 12th. If you can attend it, great. You can also get tickets there@influencer magazine.com but also we've launched the Influencer Business program, an online community and training that will also help you build your influencer career as an author, speaker, coach, seminar leader, social media thought leader where you can work really anywhere, just sharing your passions, your wisdom, your life story and really engaging an audience and earning an income and revenue from that. How do you have the Influencer career? Just go to influencer magazine.com and just choose how do you want to play with us? Do you want to come to the live event that's influencer 10-10-12th in San Diego or would you prefer just to learn from home online from us? You can click Influencer Business program again. Both those things are available@influencer magazine.com we are launching Influencer Magazine late winter this year and really going to be the voice of this industry which we're really excited about. So make sure you go check it out. Influencermagazine.com to either join us live at the event or join us in the online training program. That's influencermagazine.com no further ado. Back into my interview with Lewis House.

So get clear on your message, figure out your three words and that's a great start there. Now the next thing is figuring out your market.

Yeah.

What do you mean by that? What is a market?

Yeah, well, one, I don't like that term, especially for guys like you and me who we do like so many walks of life. Listen to your show and my show.

Multiple industries and markets.

Yeah. I look at like, you know how you look at the analytics of like when I look at like the Brennan show, podcast is like all these countries, all these like you can't, if you come to our events, I've gone to your events too. You can't do a demographic run of that audience.

Not like all 32 year old male sales executives.

The car industry, that's the old world of marketing. You had to speak to one specific person. What people don't understand if they've never studied the history of marketing is that the reason that niche marketing came out, that concept of just identifying one person to talk to and some people now say identify your customer avatar. I'm like, no, you're identifying avatars. It's plural. Because the reason that came so popular in marketing back in the day was only for one reason. Because in the 20s, sort of the golden age of marketing and advertising. You only had so much budget to run a certain ad on one platform, so you really had to get super niche and narrow. Now we're able to reach a couple billion people. Now we're able to have broader conversations. So what you want to do with your market is try to understand what are the aspirations of the people I want to serve. Looking like it's about the aspirations, not about the demographic.

It's the mindset.

Yes.

And I always talk about that. Like for me, school of greatness. Greatness is not about, you know, the 32 year old mom with two kids.

Right.

It's more of a mindset and a mentality.

Yeah.

And that's what we look for. Someone with a growth mindset, Someone, I call them conscious achievers.

Yeah.

People are looking to achieve in their life, but in a conscious way. They want to grow personally and they want to impact people around them.

I love that.

If they have that mentality, then you're a part of the community and that's who I try to speak to. Yeah, but it can be a 16 year old or a 60 year old.

Yeah.

Could be people from all over the world. But it's like this conscious achieving mentality.

I love that.

And that's what I focus on.

I love that. You got to have that. Yeah, you have to have that. And what I tell people all the time is like if you're not out with your students, your fans, your followers and you're not really getting to know them, at some point you're going to lose that audience because you just don't know them. You need to know what's in their heart, not their age. You need to know it in their heart, not, you know, every part of their background or where they were raised. And everything else like that of market analysis is overdone. And corporations love to pay for that. And when they do deals with me, they're always like, tell me everything about your people. And I'm like, they have the aspiration to go to the next level.

That's it for me.

That's it. That is my market. I have always, for the last 15 years, marketed and talked to people who were in that transition moment of their life and ready to go to the next level. I didn't speak to those who were just starting. That was my audience who didn't know what person. I always went high end in the sense of like, I speak to people who are ready to go to the next level. They've already got one level of, you know, Security or like sense of themselves or success. And now they're like, you know what? Next level time. So they're like in that phase where like gearing up, you know, they're like, here we go. They're not kind of like, oh, I don't feel motivated. I don't get that wasn't my audience. My market was an aspiration to go to the next level. And I was focused on that. And it's what made for me with our brands. Like, how did you do all those seven figure launches? 28 of them. I spoke to that aspiration specifically. So people knew this is for me.

So this is for me. So in like a 20 seconds, say you're doing a video to attract the aspirational mindset or the heart set of this individual.

Yeah.

And you have a video that spreads out to the world and you know it's going to attract a certain type of person to come into your offering.

Yeah.

What would you say in 15, 20 seconds, a few key words that would be leading people into kind of where you wanted them to go. So it was the right kind of mindset.

Yeah.

What would you say?

You're somebody who you've already, you feel like you've tried everything. You know, you've been at this for years. You don't feel like you've gotten that breakthrough just yet. You're doing good, but there's too many days you don't feel as motivated or as driven as you really want to, to go to the next level. And you feel like you need some more empowerment to really achieve that next level. Not kind of like just get inspired and motivated because that can come and go, but rather you're looking for real tactical solutions that will help you earn more, that will help you become more, that will show you like step by step, this is how you reach that next level. And not from my opinion, it's that I've spent 15 years researching the highest performing people on the planet. What they do is very specific. And if you're honest, you haven't been very specific. You've been random. And because you're good, you already have some success. You're able to just go through the motions. Yeah, but going through the motions is the killer of the high performer.

It's true.

Right. Because good to great. Yeah, you can be good, but that's not gonna take you to the next level. So I'm gonna assume you're already good. But you sense inside that there's a restlessness and there's a struggle there that you don't know what that breakthrough feels like. But you also, you're very aware of this next level. You have a dream, you have something you wanna achieve. So let's just dial in your motivation, let's dial in your habits, but let's give you the discipline and the willpower to make it happen.

So get clear on your message, the market. Then there's a method. What does the method mean?

I always love to talk about method.

With people, especially method acting.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, for real. It's like Picasso had a method. Van Gogh had a method. Beethoven had it. A method. Like they were thoughtful about the art of what they did and influencers needed to think about that. Like you thought about, like, I want a podcast that's gonna be like this. Exactly. And as you hone that in over the years, the podcast got better.

Yeah.

Because you brought more intention to the method. Right.

That's true.

Actors who just show up and kind of read the words, not good. But the greats, they're so thoughtful about the turn of the phrase and how they're going to do this. Right. The great musician, the great artist, they obsess about the actual art of the thing because again, just showing up, especially when you're good, it's going to limit you. Now you want to be more intentional and say, what is this? It's like I've shared with you before. You know, having the blessing of working with Oprah, she starts meetings by asking, what's our intention here? Greatness requires a lot of intention.

It does. It doesn't just happen by showing up.

Yeah.

You got to get clear on the results and the experience you want to create.

Yeah. You see a really high achieving influencer do a photo shoot way different than somebody who's not high achieving. The intention and the placement of things, of where this goes and how this goes, closing everything. That's method. That's like bringing art to the method. Like when I wrote Motivation Manifesto, I was like, okay, I'm gonna write a book that's never been written before in its tone, that hasn't been seen in hundreds of years. I was like, how do I figure that? I'm like, it was an art project. If what you are doing as an influencer doesn't feel like an art project, you're just simply doing it wrong and you're gonna burn out and you're gonna quit.

So give me examples of methods for someone like a Rachel Hollis and a Jay Shetty.

Yeah.

What's like their method from your point of view?

Yeah. Jay's super intentional about his videos. Like I sit them down and we did influe day with him and we said, I asked him like 40 questions. How do you do these videos? He's intentional from when the video is changing to the tone of the music and when it's lifting to when other people appear in the video versus just him. He's intentional about the length of the video. He's intentional about what day the video is posted.

He's made it time everything.

Because what most people do, slop it together, throw it up. He's like, really try to dial it down to a very specific process that draws emotion from people. And so that's a method.

And his thing is viral video. Yes, it's artistic viral video that creates an emotional feeling for someone. It's not just like this scientific videos or how to videos. It's like an emotional feeling that people want to watch and share.

And you've thought through that too as well. That's why you've got hundreds of millions of views. Absolutely. And it's just like versus guys like me who sometimes just put up a very inspiring video. But we didn't put the B roll in, we didn't put the musical, we didn't clip it at the right spot, you know, so that it's a different method. Same exactly. Different method results. Yeah. And to those who put more into the method, they win. They're the better artists. Like, an influencer has to understand you are in the art of impacting people. And if you're in the art of impacting people, you'd better focus on the art as much as the impact. You know what I'm saying?

That's really good. What about someone like a Rachel Hollis, someone who's skyrocketed over the last year and a half that seems like came from nowhere. We know that she's been working for seven years, really five or six books, and had a successful blog in a different space, but just boom, shot up one of the biggest selling books of the year behind, I think Michelle Obama kind of felt like overnight, like this influencer with millions of followers and huge business within a year, quickly, documentary books now.

She's great.

What would be the method for someone like that that you see? Or is it kind of more.

No, she again, it starts with being intentional about the art and what you're doing, you know, about your message. Yeah, I mean, she still. And every single morning she writes down, here's what my dreams, here's what my goal is, or here's what I'm gonna Do you know she came out to this before everything really, really took off. She came out to the house and we sat down together and it was so clear. She was asking me questions about the, like, where her career could go that were really thoughtful. And people don't see that all the times because she might just post, you know, here's what I'm wearing today, or here's a picture of the kids. But she's really thoughtful about where her career is going, and she's super thoughtful about talking to the women in her market from a place that she's been there. Like, she gets it. She knows that woman. She knows that person's experience, and she's going to verbalize that. And she's very thoughtful about the words she uses to connect. Because part of the biggest method in influencing is being very artful about your messaging. It's true, she doesn't say a lot of things over here, but she says these things over here all the time.

Over and over again. It's like a formula. It's like every six posts you see the. This, you know, another kid photo that's talking about this. Something different, you know.

Yeah. So she's always in the audience's mind and using the words they use and describing the feelings they have. She's also part of her method. Her real art is her vulnerability.

Yeah.

To say, you know, start a book. I peed my pants. Like, literally, you know, you know, this person dumped me. You know, I hated myself. Cause I was like this.

I almost got divorced.

That takes a lot of intention to go, you know, I'm going to reveal some things here that I'm not comfortable with. Just like you did with Mask of Masculinity. That was guts. That took a lot of art versus just saying, hey, here's a ma. You know, let me tell you guys this. No, I'm going to reveal this story and this vulnerability. That's art. And what people don't realize is the greatest artists of all time were incredibly vulnerable. As much as they were telling you what to do. We love Bob Dylan. Not just because he told us what to do and, you know, made us want to throw our hands in the air and, like, march or get fired up. It was the vulnerability of the journey. That's why we love Kerouac. That's why we love Emerson. That's why we love some of the real greats, is because they were thoughtful about sharing insight into their pain. Because people, the influencers who fail always are bright and shiny and they don't realize a Lot of art does come from pain. And a lot of the messages that actually does help people, you know, is acknowledging things. Like, for years, I didn't want to tell people that at the beginning of my career, I went bankrupt. I told them how much I struggled, and it was hard, and I had to get out of my own way and all these other things, but I didn't want to use the word bankrupt. I was like, oh, God. You know, because that was just like, here I am teaching people stuff that I had this huge struggle. And I was like, no. And one day I just said, that just happened. So let me describe what had happened and not be afraid of it. I wouldn't know from that moment, we would go on to build everything that we built by any means. But I wanted to avoid that because it was so painful to me. And at some point, real artists connect to the pain, and they give it voice, verbalization, or symbols.

The greatest songs are not just like fairy tales. There might be a beautiful ending, but it's also some darkness and struggle in there as well. And that's what you can do in your business or as an influencer.

You know what? The greatest art there always comes down to being. Almost always the method is you learning to fight for who you are.

Ooh.

Because right now, you think about the biggest memes that we see right now. It's always like, don't let them judge you. Don't let them tell you down. Don't let them tear you down. Don't let them hate on you. Don't let them stop you. And that whole. What's central to that, the architecture of that actual messaging is live your life, show your truth, be who you really are, not what everyone else expects you to be. And that's what always comes back to the message. Again, you are the message. And if you keep dampening yourself based on what other people tell you to be or how you're supposed to be, then all of a sudden, one day, you wake up unfulfilled. And you wake up unfulfilled. Guess what? Not easy to be motivated. Not easy to be motivated. Then guess what? You're not gonna create the content, the curriculum, the products, the programs, the business. Because, you know, some people look at us sometimes and they're like, oh, well, he just does a podcast. They have no idea. You have this empire behind that, right, people? Oh, Brendan does. What is he. He does some email. He's big on Facebook with quotes. Okay. And they have no idea of a huge. You know, we've 200 employees across my brands. You know, it's like the impact that we've had, let alone just what I do. It's all the other people we've mentored and like, inspired. That can't come from a place of me being unfulfilled.

That's right.

I have to work so hard to be a happy, fulfilled, motivated, disciplined man so that I can have that perpetuate across the brands and the business.

That's it. What would you say is your method then and has it changed over the last 10 years?

Yeah.

Is it okay to change your method?

Yeah, I think it always does. I mean, no actor does a movie the same way and if they do, you're tired of them. I think it's a tremendous amount of diligence in sitting down and asking what is it I want to convey here and how do I want to do it in a way that's unique to me and different in the market? So what do I want to convey? How is it unique to me? How is it different than the market? And so like my greatest art piece so far was Motivation Manifesto. You read that and you're like, I've never read a book like this my entire life. You know, it's written like it's, you know, from the founding fathers of our country kind of tone. You know, it reads a little like the 1700s, but it punches you in the face every page.

To be or not to be.

Yeah, it's like such a hard, like it's like you read it and you're like, whoa, I really got to focus on these words here. This guy. There's no fact in that entire book. There's not one word you could take out. It's just like I work so diligently on that. And I think what that was was an evolution of me saying, I don't want to just create books, to create books, to sell books, to make money and to inspire people in this specific way. I want to be challenged in my own artistic process. I want to push the boundaries of what my art can be. I don't know how to write a book like this. It's not even my tone. I'm going to figure it out. High forms habits. I've never done a full scale psychological science research based book. And I was like, you went deep.

In that, like two years of research. Three years of research.

Three years of pretty much every day of my life.

You didn't talk to anyone. You were just like, in the hole.

Yeah, in the hole. The largest study ever done on high performers, even to this day, no one's beat it. Right. Two million plus data points, people from 190 countries. We had all these academics looking at my research, trying to make sure that we got our correlations right and our. Our variables right. And all these other things. Like, I didn't know how to do that, but that was an evolution of me getting better and stronger and more nuanced at what I was doing. And I'm telling people, you know, you're in trouble if you keep going through the motions.

Yes.

The more you go through the motions, the more you get miserable about the work. The more you're intentional and you challenge yourself to push your boundaries, the more you'll stay alive.

Yeah. What's the personal development quote by every famous personal development person? Which is just like, everything great is on the other side of fear or your comfort zone.

Yeah, that's right.

So you've got to constantly. It sucks because you're gonna get. It's good and it's bad because you get in the groove, you build this momentum of something that you're good at.

Yeah.

And you're like, okay, I've mastered this skill, and look at all the growth I'm gaining from this. But over a certain period of time, you're like, this is getting easy now. And you have to constantly challenge yourself and force a challenge because, well, you could just live off of this easy money, this easy success.

Yeah.

And stay there for a couple years. But guys like me and you and the people that we hang out with are constantly reinventing.

Yeah. And pushing, pushing, pushing us.

And it's not easy. Yeah, it's not. And sometimes when you reinvent, this is the challenging thing that people don't realize. It's like you reinvent and put energy on something new. Then the thing that was doing really well and making money over here, it kind of goes down a little bit.

Yeah, that's right.

And you had something for years, you know, that was making lots of money, and now you're reinventing it into a new model.

Yeah.

With influencer event coming up. And it's like, well, this thing's been working for, I don't know, six, seven, eight years, like, making 10 years, making millions of dollars a year, impacting the lives of tens of thousands of people every year. Why change this?

Yeah. This is Experts Academy.

If not broke, why are you gonna fix it? You know what I mean? Like, let's keep just doing the same thing.

People think we're crazy doing this. A little bit. Like, yeah, of course he's referencing Experts Academy Academy. Experts Academy is the biggest to this day.

People love it.

Yeah, it's the marketing trainer. Love it. It's the marketing trainer for all thought leaders.

The biggest, the best people have built multimillion dollar businesses just off of coming there and implementing this information.

There were years where 65% of the new York Times bestseller list in the nonfiction category were Experts Academy graduates. It was like, we taught the whole industry. How do you do books? How do you do seminars? How do you do online courses? How do you do subscriptions?

How do you build your following?

How do you build the following? But we really focus on the business model. But we were talking to people who were experts or who identified as thought leaders. These days, people don't really see themselves as experts in many areas. And many people don't think of themselves as a thought leader yet.

They're like, oh, just a writer now.

I'm an influencer. It's like, great, okay, then I've got to change. Like, we have to adapt. Like, okay, it's a new phrase, it's a new language. But they have to learn the same business models and skills. So, yeah, we're changing it up. And I think that the willingness to change it up is so important in the method because I just tell people all the time, if you are miserable, you have to know that neuroscience, neuroscience lets us know that one of the biggest things that lights our brain up is novelty.

It's true. Like difference, mystery, novelty, something new.

And listen, anyone go through emotions for three or four years and be like, oh, phew. It's like, it's like sometimes when you make it, it's like, oh, let's just do this for a couple years. Let's take a breath. And I'm like, everybody goes through that. That's great. But if that goes on for too long, you become miserable. And then something has to break or challenge inside or in your market or in your business, and you go, we need to change, we need to grow, we need to transition. And that's when the next level stuff comes up.

That's it.

It's time to go to the next level.

That's why I think it's always important to be focusing and doubling down on what's working and also like working on things in the pipeline that are going to come out in a year, two years. I've been working on this documentary for.

A couple years, which is awesome, by the way.

Did you see the whole thing yet?

I was going to tell you that later.

They're amazing.

Thank you.

You're great in it. Right.

I totally didn't realize even it was great. I appreciate it. I was just there to compliment you. And they asked me all these other questions. I thought I was doing a testimonial for you essentially because I just wanted to speak and share how much I admire who you are and what you do. And it turned into this wonderful interview they did.

The story was powerful. You shared.

Thank you.

It's really powerful in the movie, too. I'm excited for people to watch it when it comes out. I'll let you guys know.

You stretching to do that. You stretch documentary.

It's just like you. You never did this like, manifesto book thing and you never did the high performance research thing. I'd never done the movie thing.

Yeah.

No clue what I was doing. But you find the right people, you find the experts, you work on your struggles and you become better at it. And that's what we've been doing, man. But I think it's important because it gives you something new to kind of reach for every couple of years.

Yeah, that's it.

But don't let go of everything right away and say, well, I'm just going to switch everything. Like, use the momentum you've been building to make sure that you can have the resources to keep impacting people and keep creating and things like that.

Okay. My friends, I hope you have enjoyed the interview here that Louis did on me and my career. I've just been so blessed to get to do this work. And I hope you heard that in the interview how just how much I love this industry. And I know not everyone calls it an industry, but I really feel like when you've got an entire community of 10 of thousands of people, you know, now our industry is valued at over a billion dollars every single day. People are spending literally tens of millions of dollars and learning from influencers or transacting through influencers. I think it's time for you to really question, could you do this? Is it time you take your life story and your life's wisdom and share it with others and get paid for it? Would you like to share your knowledge, your advice, your passions? Build a community, build a business, build a huge audience, build the ability to have lifestyle freedom. Well, then that's the influencer space. So just go to influencer magazine.com again, that's influencermagazine.com and choose how you want to play. Do you want to come to Influencer 2019? That's our conference in San Diego, October 10th through 12th. Or would you like to learn from home by joining the Influencer Business Program where thousands of up and coming and many of the leading influencers alive today have joined so they can learn from me every single month how to do better marketing, how to do better branding, how to start their personal brand, how to scale the business, how to do things like team and ads and affiliates and videos and everything that you see us doing. Just go to influencermagazine.com, choose how you'd like to play along with us and we'll get you the training and the support that you need need to build your personal brand, grow your audience, scale a business and achieve the impact and lifestyle freedom that you really want in terms of sharing your passion and your wisdom. Again, my friends, thank you so much for listening to this episode. Make sure you share this with somebody. If you know somebody who's really interested in this industry, please send it along and also tell them to go check out influencermagazine.com so they can be part of this community as it continues to scale and get better and better and better. Again, that's Influencer Magazine. Thanks for listening to this special series. Again, we'll continue dropping a few more marketing episodes for you so you can learn how the industry works and how you might get involved. Until then, go to influencer magazine.com ra.