A Masterclass In Monetizing Your Side Hustle & Personal Brand w/Rory Vaden EP 1148

This is episode number 1148 with New York Times bestselling author Rory Vaden.

Welcome to the School of Greatness.

My name is Lewis Howes, former pro athlete turned lifestyle entrepreneur. And each week we bring you an inspiring person or message to help you.

Discover how to unlock your inner greatness.

Thanks for spending some time with me today. Now let the class begin. Jim Cathcart said, become the person you would attract the results you seek. And Og Mandino said, always do your best. What you plant now, you will harvest later. And my guest today is my dear friend Rory Vaden. He's a best-selling author and co-founder of Brand Builders Group, which is one of the leading personal brand strategy firms that focuses on helping people become the type of person that everyone wants to do business with. And this is our final episode in the series we've been putting out, so make sure to check out the three episodes previous with him if you haven't already seen them. But today we're talking all about how to monetize your side hustle and eventually go all in on your dream. And in this episode, we discuss the biggest mistakes you're making on social media when it comes to monetizing the process for monetizing your personal brand, how to generate leads and get over the fear of selling what most people get wrong about sales and marketing and so much more. And again, if you're enjoying what Rory has to say and are looking to take your personal brand to the next level, make sure to go to lewishouse.com/brandcall for a free brand strategy call with his team. It's going to be extremely powerful. So check it out at lewishouse.com/brandcall. And make sure to share this with someone that you think would be interested in learning about how to build and monetize their personal brand as well. And a quick reminder to follow us here on Apple Podcast or Spotify or wherever you're listening to your podcast, just click the subscribe button right now and leave us a rating and review. And I want to shout out some of the people who've been leaving some feedback recently over on Apple Podcast. This one's from Josephine who said, I've struggled with my mental health my entire life. The last few years spiritually has made a giant difference in how I see the world. It has opened my eyes to a different way of being, a feeling of acting. And throughout the journey, I've had the pleasure of stumbling across this podcast. Your way of explaining and teaching how to truly reach your highest potential while being your most authentic self has been life-changing. So from the bottom of my heart, thank you. And Josephine, we appreciate it. Thank you for leaving the review. And this one is from Sally, who says, Louis, I can't tell you how much I value your podcast. The science-based ones are brilliant and your skill of questioning questions posed is always so timely as I think of them as you say them. I'm 62 and not liking early retirement at all. Your podcasts have helped me reframe my whole life, which is going down a steep incline. Thank you so much for your help and being there this last year. Again, big thank you to Sally and everyone who's leaving reviews every single week. You can leave a review right now over on Alpha podcast, or let us know at the end of this episode what you think over there, your feedback and your thoughts. Okay, in just a moment, the one and only Rory Vaden.

Welcome back everyone to the School of Greatness podcast. Very excited about our guest, Rory Vaden is in the house.

My man.

Man.

Excited about this. We're talking about how to monetize your side hustle, how to turn a side hustle into something much greater than a side hustle, hopefully. And there are a lot of people listening or watching who have the dream or the goal to turn a skill set into something that could be financial success. Even if it's a few hundred dollars a month, and eventually thousands of dollars a month, or potentially millions from building their personal brand around their side hustle as well. So, once you figure out what your side hustle is, and you say, well, I don't have that big of a following. I don't have anyone following me on Instagram or social media. I don't have a lot of money to buy traffic, paid media. How do I get leads and sales without being this begging sleazy salesy person.

Oh, man.

Needy, please buy from me. How do we start the process of monetizing our side hustle?

Dude, this is such a good, that's such a good question. Because that's the thing, right? It's like we want to make money, we want to help people. We don't want to be the desperate salesperson.

Please buy my thing out of pity.

Yeah, we don't want to be the needy guy and you know, and this is something I've spent my whole life doing. I went door to door. So I worked in retail sales when I was like, from my time, I was like 16 years old. And then I spent five years going door to door, 14 hours a day, six days a week, interrupting people.

14 hours a day, door to door.

14 hours a day, door to door, you know, interrupting people and like, you know, pretty intrusive, as I sometimes say, that being a door to door salesperson is like being the human version of email spam.

Right. Telemarketer.

Yeah, telemarketer. Yeah, it's like telemarketers are, you know, then us. We bug telemarketers when they're eating dinner. And then, you know, we built a sales coaching company to eight figures teaching sales people how to sell, how do you generate leads, and then brand builders, we do more like marketing and digital lead generation. But whether you're like, A Fortune 100 company, a personal brand, a professional service or just a person with a dream for a side hustle. This is the question. How do you make that first sale? Like how do you get money? Where do you find the people?

-Before you answer that.

-Okay.

-What was the greatest lesson you learned going door to door for 5 years? -About yourself and about selling in general.

- You know, there was this thing that we used to say all the time, that the answers behind the next door.

You never stop. There's always another door. You'll find the answer in the next place.

Yeah, it was always like, but that part of it, I think actually is good. Because this is true about sales. A part of the good news for both marketing and sales. is that they are both a numbers game. They are a numbers game. It's not like it won't work, right? Like you have the fear like, is anyone gonna buy this? No, somebody will buy, no matter how bad you are or how crappy your thing is.

Right, right.

If you talk to enough people, which is not what the goal is, but that people will, they really will buy if you keep going. The truth about most sales is it's, people think of it as like, combat, like, you know, I either have to put the magic marketing words on the page or I need to say like the voodoo mind trick to like convince you to buy something. And then it's kind of like this battle. And it's more like an Easter egg hunt where it's like there is some number of eggs out there in the field that have candy in them. And no matter if you did anything or not to dessert candy being in there, they're just there. You just have to go find them. and there's a lot of empty eggs along the way. There's a lot that you're going to open and it's empty. And so that is one part of it. But the biggest problem, the biggest problem that people have in selling is that they're self-centered. The reason we don't sell more is because we're focused on how do I make money? How do I convince people? And it's It's we approach it wrong. And I would say that sales has been taught wrong, done wrong, promoted wrong. I mean, you know, we're big fans of cleaning this up and changing the way that people think.

I think we're also self-centered in the fact that we're afraid of people saying no and how to make us feel about ourselves when they say no.

Absolutely. Yeah. When I say self-centered part of that is kind of like the, you know, I don't necessarily mean selfish, like I'm going to take in for me instead of you, although there's a part of that where it's like, you know, the sale is convincing people to buy something they don't want, right? That's not what we're into. But it's also fear is self-centered. Fear is extremely self-centered.

Oh man.

You only feel fear when you're thinking about yourself. You know, we say there is no fear when the mission to serve is clear. When you're focused on helping someone else, you're not worried about it, right? I mean, it's like if there's a car accident, someone's on the side of the road, You run up to them, you're not thinking about how does your hair look and your clothes, is your outfit cute? You're going to help somebody. We're always at our best when we're serving others. And one of the magic, one of the magical powers of service is that being focused on service releases our insecurities.

So true. This is something I learned speaking on stages. I say there's different levels to my speaking life. There's the 13 years ago being terrified to speak in front of three people without stuttering and sweating and being nervous. And me saying, okay, I need to go learn how to get some reps speaking in front of people so I'm not nervous. So I joined Toastmasters, which you famously got second in the world for.

I love that you. I famously bring that up every time we talk about second place in the world.

Second place at the world championship of public speaking.

True story.

No big deal. And I did that for a year and I gained confidence through the actions of repetition, of showing up, of preparing, of reviewing my speaking film and just improving through reps over time. And I remember for about seven, eight years, I was getting now paid to speak for my credibility, for my expertise through LinkedIn and everything else.

And.

I would still get nervous for a week before a big speech. Then I got better over time and it was like, okay, it's only two days before, I'm nervous. Then it was a day before and I remember it stayed a day before, but it wasn't nerves of excitement, it was nerves of insecurity. It's like, I'm afraid of what people are gonna think about me. And I remember asking a coach of mine that I had hired for a while, it was a good friend of mine, and I said, I'm about to go on stage in an hour. I don't know why I'm still so nervous. Like, I've been doing this for 10 years. Shouldn't I be over this by now? And he said, Because you're focused on the way you look, not on serving other people in the audience. And the moment, exactly what you said, the moment you start focusing on service, knowing that you will probably forget something, you might make a mistake and not worrying about those things, know that something might happen that's not perfect, But when your heart's on service, it's hard to be nervous, as you say.

Ah.

Isn't that something you said?

Uh-huh. Yeah, years ago on our very first interview together. But yeah, that's it. And so, you know, somebody watching right now could be like, okay, well like, how do I make the money? You know, like, how do I get the lead? But this is how you get the lead, is you serve first. So, in a digital world, you provide value for them. Value, value, value, value, value, value, give out. It's the three E's, right? You're putting out content, that is either educational, encouraging or entertaining. And typically some mix of all three. Educational, encouraging or entertaining. And your... The digital marketing strategy that we employ at Brand Builders Group for Rory Vaden Personal Brand and for all of the clients that we work with, that we teach these personal brands is teach everything you know for free. One bite at a time, but in all random order. Right?

So it's not packaged in the right order as you would have in a book or a course or a workshop or an event.

Right. You know, we've said this before, people don't pay for information. They pay for organization and application. And we have a thing called the services spectrum, which basically says, you know, information is down here, it's free. Organization is here in the middle. You can charge a little bit, like in a course or a book or membership site, but applications up here at the top, which is like a coaching program or consulting, done for your services application. Information is social media, podcasting, blogs.

YouTube, videos.

YouTube, people don't pay for information. But you're just giving them bite-sized chunks of information. You're teaching everything you know, but not all at once in the right sequential order. People pay for the right order. That's organization. I mean, one of the reasons people hire us at Brand Builders Group is because we have a very set curriculum, the Brand Builder Journey, and we say, Look, one of the biggest problems with personal brands is that people do the right thing, but in the wrong order. They're like launching Facebook ads the first month, and it's like, that's step 76. You're like skipping all the steps.

They don't have a funnel yet.

They're launching it to nothing. Yeah, you're driving it back to nothing. You're spending all this time on social media driving back to nothing. The first thing is find your uniqueness, figure out what you're good at, then extrapolate that into a product, you know, create your service, your product offer, you may already have that. And then after that, it's like, okay, how do I drive traffic? If we're, and there's two worlds here. When I think of marketing and sales, I think of the online world and the offline world. And we've done both, which is rare. Most of the people have done one or the other. You know, and it's like, we, I've done the door-to-door thing. I worked for a startup IT company doing inside corporate B2B phone sales. Then when we started our former company, we did phone sales like B2B for like small businesses and we did free presentations and we sold. But the fastest mechanism to generating a lead is to do a free presentation. demonstrating your value, your expertise, it's giving people a sample and then offering them the next step. Yes. Here's what it is. It is the food court. When you go to the food court... Want some orange chicken.

And the orange chicken on a stick.

Man, tastes good.

I want the whole thing now.

It's a sample and if you want more, I'm right here.

See's candy gets me every time. Get you a free piece of candy just going to the store and you're like, Ooh, I want the whole box.

Yeah, I mean, it's a free presentation.

You could do this through many different mechanisms. It used to be free workshops in person. And by the way, when I say local events...

This is what everybody does. This is what Jim Rohn did, and Tony Robbins, and Brian Tracy, and Tom Hopkins, and everybody in the personal development industry, they used to go do... This is how we built our former business.

This is what people in real estate industries do. They do it. They teach at a free seminar. Free seminar.

A 90-minute live free training. Financial advisors do this. Come to my free dinner presentation on 10 Keys to Retirement. Why? Because it works. Like you're giving value and you're leveraging the law of reciprocity. As I give to you before, instead of ask, the way you make sales is by giving so much that at some point they ask you to buy versus showing up and asking all the time. In fact, we use a rule called the rule of 10. and this is a pricing, this is more of like a pricing thing. But you know, people get really weird around price and asking for the money and you know, when it comes to collecting a credit card and or if you're on like a webinar or a Facebook Live or if you're, it doesn't matter if it's Facebook Live, it's a webinar, it's a video funnel or it's standing on stage or it's talking to one person, you got to be convicted in the value you're bringing and the way you do that is by over delivering. The number one way to drive your own conviction is over delivering. And everyone teaches sales as like, you know, the voodoo mind tricks on the person you're talking to. The real game is the mind is winning the battle in your own mind and being convinced that what you have is valuable. And the rule of 10 helps you do that. So basically, when people are putting together their first offer, they tend to like swing for the fences and go, I'm gonna charge for 2,000, a $2,000 video course or something. And they say, well, I saw a video and my coach told me, Charge what you're worth. That's terrible advice. Don't charge what you're worth. What should we charge? When you're starting out, don't charge what you worth. Charge what you can get. Charge what you're convicted on. Charge what you can massively over deliver upon. If I'm charging what I'm worth, there's gonna be a bit of reluctance when I deliver the price. They're gonna feel it and it's going to massively reduce the percentage conversion.

Yeah, someone once told me, Charge what 10x the value.

Yeah, that's the rule of 10. Right.

It's like if it's a charge one.

Tenth of what it's worth.

Exactly. If it's a thousand, if it's ten thousand dollars worth of value, then charge a thousand, right? And if it's a thousand dollars worth of value, charge 100. It's 100, charge 10.

So you always, you always have, you know, if it were a bank account, you always have this like credit, this balance with people and, and you go, And it starts for free. It starts on social media, which is amazing. Like the power that social media gives us, it's not that you have to reach millions of people. It gives us a mechanism to push a button and deliver value. Because it's like people go, it's like a chicken or the egg, how do I build an audience? You know, I want to provide value but I don't have an audience. No, you provide value first. If nobody is watching, you record and you teach value, you deliver it and people will engage with that. Now we have a process, which I'm happy to talk about, of converting comments into customers. So, you know, I don't know if you want to take this more like online or if you want to do like more offline.

I think online's cool. Okay.

Yeah, yeah. So let's talk about that. So, you know, it starts with the mind, okay? Self-centeredness is the problem. Service-centeredness is the solution.

Yes.

You never feel fear when the mission to serve is clear. You get your mind right. Then you go, okay, I'm gonna go out and provide value. So you start pumping out value. We have a thing called the Content Diamond, which I know I've talked about on other episodes. We can touch on that. But anyways, you're putting out value. And now what happens is people like and comment. And what most of us do is we go six views. Right. And it's just like, I mean, and we get self-centered again. And we go, I only have six views. Jay Shetty gets like six billion views. And it just makes me feel awful because I'm thinking about myself. And there's like a comment. And then you're like, I don't have a time. And then what we do, we're like, I don't have time to deal with these comments. Or someone sends you a DM and you're like, I don't have time to deal with these DMs. And you're missing it. Comments and DMs are where the sale happened on social media. Right. Like the dollars are in the DMs. Ooh. The dollars are in the DMs because when somebody leaves a comment...

They're saying, Hey, I'm interested.

I'm interested.

I want to know more.

I like you.

Whether they're not saying, I want to know more or not, they want to connect.

They want to connect.

They're coming to your door. They're knocking on your door, you gotta open it.

Bingo, yeah. That's a great way of thinking it.

You're not going to their door, they've come to you.

They have come to years. And it's like, if you're too busy to interact with those people, don't be on social, period. I mean, unless you're just doing the thing where you're gonna do it for years and years and years, and one day you'll have more audience, but even it's like, if you wanna really impact lives, impact lives. Like, that's what pisses me off, is people are like, I wanna impact lives. And it's like, great. Okay, let's put a video out there. Well, I don't have any followers. Well, I don't care.

I'm not getting paid to do it.

Focus on one at a time. One person. You said you wanted to impact lives. Impact lives. There's no barrier to impacting lives. There's no barrier. It's easier than it has ever been in history to impact lives. And you can do it with text, you can record and make it a podcast, you can do video. But you are a button from impacting, I want to change the world. Great. you're one button away. Get busy. The truth is we want to have millions of followers, we want to feel important, we want other people to respect us, and you go, let all that crap go. Just focus on what you originally said. Impact lives. And then, so anyways, so we use a little formula here when someone comments. Usually we will try to move the conversation from comments into DMs. If it's a sales conversation, if it's just chatter, We'll do it in comments. But when you go, I want to convert comments into customers, you do that in the DMs. So, you move them over to your DMs. -Send me a DM or you message them.

-You message them and then you come.

And you say, Hey, I just... You know, thanks for this. I just sent you a DM. Now, you might comment back on their comment related to what their comment was and then you say, By the way, I sent you... You know, check your DMs. I sent you a message, okay? And then here's... We call this the 4 Fs. Super, super simple. Yep. Okay, so here's the four Fs. The first F is, how did you find me?

And that's it.

I just say, oh, Louis, man, thanks for leaving a comment. How'd you find me? And they're gonna say something, right? They're gonna say, whatever, I saw your, I don't know, I stumbled across organically or a hashtag I was following or whatever, right? And it's like, cool. Then the second F, the school of greatness.

Yeah, school, I mean, yeah, a lot.

Of people find you if you get on the school of greatness, that's for sure. They'll say, what was your favorite part? Right? So like, what was your favorite part of that video? So wherever they found you, I read your book, I saw this video, I read your blog, I saw you in an interview, I saw you speak somewhere, I saw your ad, I mean, if it's an ad, it's probably not the favorite part thing doesn't work. But usually, well, we said you're not running ads yet because you're just starting out. So you just said, what was your favorite part? Or what's your favorite thing you've seen me teach? Or what's your favorite thing to talk about? Even if you don't have that, you could say, what's your favorite thing to learn about? Which leads to the third F, which is, Tell me about your future. Tell me about your future. So in other words, what are your goals? What are you working on? Like, before you try to sell somebody something, figure out what they care about. Spend time learning about them. Ask them, and this is what's so cool. And if there's one defining point about our sales philosophy, and I would say specifically AJ, so my wife, she's our CEO at Brand Builders Group, her and I were business partners in our former venture, and she is the greatest salesperson that I've ever seen. And I mean, she outperformed three to one record-breaking sales people in 100-year companies. And her and I have a departing philosophy, a defining philosophy about sales that has caused us to separate from other people and constructs because we believe that you should always win the relationship even if you lose the sale.

That's good.

You should always win the relationship even if you lose the sale. And if you focus on making sales, you're going to feel pressure. If you focus on building relationships, man, it's gonna be great. Here's the other thing. If you focus on making sales, there's wins and losses. If you focus on building relationships, there's only wins.

Yeah, the interesting point to that, the longer you've been adding value, whether it be online or offline or whatever, just in the world, without needing to win the sale, the longer you'll have the ability to have someone buy something from you later. in your life. Yeah, you're in your 20s. I've had multiple people on webinars when I'll say, you know, how long have you known me for? I'll just ask people, how long have you known me for? And when did you first find out about me? And people will say, I've watched your webinars back in 2009, 10, 11, 12, whatever it is. And you'll always get a comment, the same as saying, I've never bought anything until now. Like, I've always just been a fan. I've always gotten great value. I've always learned and applied it. But I've never bought anything until now, until it was the right time for me, it was the right season, until I was ready for this, or until something you said clicked with me. And I finally was like, okay, yeah, now I'll buy. But if I was just like, Leave my life if you're not going to buy something now, as opposed to saying, I'm here to add value. I want you to succeed whether you buy or not. But we can support you in this process from our application, from our service, whatever it might be from our program. We can support you if you're ready for it. And if not, then hey, We've got other great free content here for you as well. I think when you have that mindset, you win long term.

You win. I mean, you're such a great example of that and you have to be that. And people don't. It's just a win-lose. It's a combative, you know, most people do combative selling and it should be collaborative. It should be, you're discovering them. And this question, tell me about your future. What, like your future goals, your future plans, your future dreams? What's so cool about that question is almost nobody ever asks you that question.

Very few.

Even when you meet a stranger, we always ask them, Where are you from?

What do you do?

What's your past? What do you do? We ask them about their past and their present. Almost nobody ever asks us, what's your hope for your future? What are you working on? What's your dream? That's so inspiring, exciting, uplifting. And by the way, it's a great way to create a context for a sale to happen.

Absolutely.

Because if they something. Gosh, I really want to blank. If their answer to that question is something that you have done or you have a service for or you know something about, right? Like when somebody tells me, I want to be a speaker, I want to be an author, I want to, you know, I'm like, oh my gosh, can I change your life? I mean, I spent my life learning exactly a roadmap that you can follow like a step-by-step for that dream to come true.

And one of the things to add to that is if you can't sell them something, if they can't buy something from you or become a customer of yours through your products and services, you want to, I always try to ask people this question, like, what's your, what's your goal? What's your dream for this next 12 months or the next year or whatever? And if I can't help them in any way through my business, I always want to become the champion of an introduction to them who could help them.

Amen.

Whether, and that could be an affiliate partner or not. It could be, well, I don't do this, but Rory's team does this extremely well. Let me connect you and he can accelerate this goal for you. But I've had that champion introduction mindset of like, let me just introduce to the person who I know can help you. And that always pays dividends in the future as well. You may not get the sale, you may not sell them something, but you help them accomplish their goal and they'll always be grateful.

And they trust you. And more and more, this is interesting, even if you don't have a product to sell, You can earn referral fees. Absolutely. I mean, any of us can go to Amazon and sign up for a link to like have affiliate links for everything. And lots of people have, I mean, our whole business runs on referrals. We actually pay our clients to, if they introduce us to somebody and they sign up, we pay them. Right. And that's becoming really, really common. That's actually a great tool. Referral partner marketing, if it's not slimy, like you don't want it to be slimy. Again, Another thing that's kind of similar in this vein is never compromise long-term reputation for short-term revenue. Don't compromise long-term reputation for short-term revenue. Just because I can increase my conversion rates by adding a widget that makes it look like there's a million people commenting even though there's not actually anybody there, you know, I'm not saying that's right or wrong. I'm saying you should think about that. You should make a decision consciously to go, Play the long game. Just play the long game. Like you're saying, even if you don't, I mean, we refer people to stuff that we don't have referral partner all the time. How can I help? And this is, you know, this is the problem is people go, how can I make money? Don't ask how can I make money. Ask how can I help? I'm telling you, if you ask how can I help, you'll make a lot more money. If you ask how can I make money, you may end up doing some things that are compromised. It's not that money's bad. I mean, we love money. Like, money is good. We're fans of money. We want lots of money. We're good at making money. We're good at making other people lots of money. We enjoy money. But money is not the goal. The mission is the goal. Service is the goal. Helping the person is the goal. And you make money as a byproduct of that. It's solving a problem in the world.

Yes. and that's the third F. Oh yeah, about your future goals.

Okay, great. Yeah. So then the fourth F is where the close happens, the conversion, the sale. Is a free call to action. So free call to action, which is like, what's your next free step? The next free step is request a call. The next free step is check out this full-length training I did. The next free step is, Step is subscribe to my blog. What is the next free step? We always want to give them a free step, a free download, a free training, a free call, and then eventually you'll move, after that you make an offer. But whatever that free step is, typically it's going to be a free call or it's going to be a free training. So, you know.

A webinar, a training, a webinar, yeah.

Or just an online.

A demo.

Yeah, a demo. Like we do a lot of evergreen type stuff where where it's just like, there's just this video out here. Check it out. It's a hidden video.

Right, right.

Here's a link to it. And they watch an hour-ish. It could be more, could be less, but let's call it an hour. And what do we do on that hour? We drop massive value bombs on them. We're delivering value. We're teaching as much as you can for free in the time you have. And then they're gonna wanna take the next step if you do a good job. Right. Now, the timing matters too. Some people say no because of timing. We actually had an event recently. There was a woman that was there. This came up as a topic of conversation and we asked them, we said, okay, who's been following me for a really long time and this is the first time you bought? And it was like a woman that was five and a half years. And then we asked, okay, who is here in this event that just found out about Brain Builders Group recently? And there was a woman that was like, I heard you five days ago on a podcast, requested a call, and now I'm here. Wow. And it was such a great testimony of that, when we don't make sales, again, a lot of times we are self-centered. We process it as I did something wrong. A huge part of whether or not they buy is the timing for them. It's not about you screwing up. Like your job is give value, teach, and then make an offer, which we can talk about the mechanics of this, all the way down to collecting the credit card. I'm very comfortable talking about the nitty gritty of the sale and you should be able to do that without pressure. We call it pressure free persuasion. The pressure free persuasion method is, but just look how you're setting this up. If you're delivering value, you're teaching, you're helping, you're solving problems, there's so much less pressure when the time comes to ask for money because it's like, I'm just here to help, I'm here to serve, And I've got this great balance built up with this person of trust because they're like, wow, you're awesome. I've watched a thousand episodes of the School of Greatness podcast and never had to buy anything. Right.

And what if someone's not selling something that requires a call or a demo? What if it's a physical product or a lower price point of a course where maybe they wouldn't do a call?

Yeah, okay, so great. So these are where you get in the different mechanics of sellies. selling, which is like there's a one-on-one sales conversation. We've spent a lot of time with that. Then there is one to many sales presentations, selling on a webinar or in a video funnel or on a live stage. We've done a lot of that. And then there is a zero to one selling, which is you're not even there and they're on a sales page. So usually if it's if you're trying to sell a widget and it's fairly low priced usually.

You're not doing a one-on-one call. You're not doing a one-on-one call.

You're trying to sell merchandise or a hat or a t-shirt. Yeah, I mean that a lot of.

Times, you know, merchandise stuff.

Artwork or something, you know? Yeah, I mean a lot of that is creativity and how cool it is. But selling through the written word is a skill to learn. Yeah, we've got a whole formula for this. We call it the 15 Ps which It's basically in a, you have to understand the psychology of the decision-making process that in the absence of a dialogue through a conversation, I have to guide people through some steps.

A process, yeah.

And the biggest thing to know, it's basically copywriting would be the word for this. When you are doing copywriting, there's a few main things to focus on. What most people do is they focus on the features of their thing. It is this size. There are this many units. They're telling them about the thing. Sales is never about the thing. Sales is about what the thing does for the person. What the thing allows the person to achieve. What we call the promise and the payoffs. You think about it like this. There is, if we're going on a trip, There is the vehicle that we are in and then there is the destination we are going to. Copywriting specifically and sales but in specifically copywriting, the words that we use should be more about describing the destination than the vehicle.

Interesting.

Okay, so the vehicle is how I get there. You know, brand builders, we've got a curriculum that is a four-phase process and there's 12 courses that we move people through. Right? And it's like, nobody really cares about that. If we're working with them, it's because they want to grow their brand. They want to get more speaking gigs. They want to get book deals. They want to grow their social media following. They want to build their email list. They want to make passive income, right? Those are destinations. So the more you talk about the destinations and the less about the vehicles, the more likely there is to sales, to, they are to buy. So you want to talk about what we call the promise and the payoffs, which are the destination. The other thing that you want to talk about in your writing, if you're selling through the written word, i.e. copywriting, whenever you're writing a feature for the purpose of persuasion, in addition to promise and payoff, you also want to describe the problems and the pain, which is basically like, if you have the vehicle and the destination, the problems and the pain, are staying stuck where they're at now. Which again, is not about the vehicle. The vehicle is your widget, the vehicle is your thing, your service, your program, your, you know, the way that you do taxes or the way that you do health or like whatever your company, everyone talks about their thing. Sales isn't talking about your thing, it's talking about their payoffs and then their problem and pain. And people really struggle when it comes to writing problem and pain, and it's super simple. Here's how you write great pain language. Describe their life as it exists, a day in their life as it exists now in the absence of your solution. Alright, so let's use personal brand since that's like what we do, right? I would say, you know, payoffs, promise and payoffs. You want to get You want to--.

A book deal, you're following.

Book deal, online passive income.

Stick on stage.

But every day you're frustrated because you're consumed spending hours on social media and no one is listening. You are frustrated trying to write email copy and to find the words to describe what you do so that people will buy. You are overwhelmed at all the different technology pieces you have to integrate. together. You are concerned that your brand isn't unique from other people's brands in the marketplace and that no one's going to notice your stuff. You don't understand how to drive traffic to your website in a predictable way. And it's called pain because to the person that you are built to serve, When they hear it, they go, oh, oh gosh, yes, oh, that's mitt, you get it, you get it, you get me. That is what I want, this is what I'm struggling with. And the more you can do that, here's what's amazing, the more accurately and viscerally you are in your ability to articulate the problem in pain, the more naturally and likely they are to trust you that you have the solution. not because you have the perfect widget, but because you proved that you understand their pain. And if you understand their pain so well, we automatically assume you must also understand the way out. Which many cases is true. The more adept someone is at empathizing and understanding and articulating and expressing the frustrations that you are dealing with, it is likely because They have been there themselves. They've worked with a lot of people who have been there, and they have absolute clarity about what it takes to get out of that situation to get over here. But all of marketing sales, getting people to buy is actually pretty simple. Where do you want to go? Where are you now? That gap is the sale.

Yes.

If I can get them to tell me where they want to go and the frustration they're experiencing now and trying to get there, They sell themselves.

And in the 4F process, you're getting them to already share where they want to go. You're already getting some of the data, the information, and then in the free call, you can start to ask them questions, I'm assuming, of what's keeping you from being there? What's the biggest challenge you're faced with from getting there right now?

Yeah, see, the beauty about sales and a human conversation, sales, people have this all screwed up. Sales is not about being a smooth talker. It's about being a master listener. In a sales conversation, I don't even have to tell you what your problems and pain are. I can ask you.

And you'll tell me.

I say, Louis, what are you struggling with right now? What's the most frustrating thing you're experiencing? Where are you losing time? Where do you feel like you're underperforming? Where is your team not executing? Literally, I don't have to say a thing. You say it. But, If you're talking, you're also buying. The more you're talking, the more likely you are to buy. And I don't do anything. I ask questions. Now, in copywriting, it's a little bit different because there's not a dialogue. So, I have to create the dialogue on the page as if we were talking, which means I have to understand what's going on in their mind without being able to ask. so sales is way easier. Marketing, you actually have to like, you know, copywriting, you have to get really good and you have to really dial this in, but it's still not that hard. Describe their life, describe a day in their life as it exists in the absence of your solution.

Yes.

Those, that's the pain. And then by the way, when you get to the payoffs, all you do is the inverse of that. So pain and payoffs are inverse. So pain Pain is, I'm spending countless hours, you know, posting stuff on social media and nobody's watching. Payoff is, my content creation process is streamlined and my audience grows effortlessly.

Mmm, sounds good.

It's the same thing, just turning it inside out.

Yes.

But in sales, again, all I have to, I just ask, I just go, Louis, where do you want to be? What are you struggling with? How does that make you feel? If I could show you a way to go from where you're at to where you want to be, is that something you'd be interested in? What are they going to say? Yes, of course. They just spent however much time telling you, I want this, I have this, and you say, if I could show you how to get there, would you be interested in that?

Yes.

The answer is yes. I already told you this, you know, their conversation. So it's not, And once they say that, I haven't even said anything about my widget. My widget is insignificant. It's just a vehicle to get them from here to there. Now, please don't hear what I'm not saying. Don't build a crappy widget. Build a freaking awesome widget. Find your uniqueness. You're most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were. Build something amazing. Do good work. I'm just saying, That's not why people buy. Right. So do both. You should create a great product and create great marketing and create great selling. And most of all, it's about being service centered on what's really going to help them.

Service centered in your side hustle and in sales. The challenge is when someone might hear this, they might be saying, this sounds like a lot to do. learning marketing, learning personal branding, all I want to do is do my thing and I just hope people like it and buy it. It's hard to scale and grow your side hustle into a business, into a profitable seven, eight figure business without doing marketing and sales. You can't just make a product. It's like the starving musician who wishes that someone would just recognize them at home playing the guitar in their basement that they're the greatest in the world. No one's gonna come find you unless you're putting yourself out into the world consistently, marketing, promoting and selling yourself, whether that's your talent, your skill, your product, your solution. You've gotta be willing to push yourself out there if you wanna grow.

Absolutely. I mean, it sounds like a lot. Yeah, it is a lot. Like, yeah, welcome to the club. Like, success is not easy. That's why not everybody does it. Like, greatness is not easy. that's why most people never get there. Like anything worth achieving is worth working for.

Yes.

But if this is your art, okay, if your craft is your art, very much at Brand Builders Group, I think AJ and I would consider this our craft. We have spent our life understanding the psychology of influence and helping people become more influential and helping them build their own influence, personal, you know, call it personal brand. So this is our art. It's our craft. When we create the 4Fs and the Content Diamond and the Brand DNA Helix and all these things that we the 15Ps, all these frameworks. It's our art. It is our craft. And here's what people don't, here's what artists don't understand. Marketing is art. Marketing is part of your art. Like there is the creation part which is art but marketing is art. Marketing is an art form. Sales when done right is an art form.

Beautiful.

It's beautiful. It is beautiful to sit down and have a conversation with somebody where you go, Man, I feel like I just talked to a therapist and I'm signing up for your thing. Right? It's not, oh my gosh, what you don't want people to feel like is, oh my gosh, I just got beat down by a car, used car salesman type. Not all used car salesmen are this way. They just get the bad rap.

You don't want buyers remorse.

No. You don't want to win the sale and lose the relationship.

Yes.

Win the relationship always, even if you have to lose the sale.

Yeah, that's good.

But if you win the relationship, you serve the person, you provide value, teach, they will buy from you. You don't even have to sell. They will buy.

Yes. And for those that don't know, Rory is my secret weapon when it comes to scaling my personal brand. and really around the strategy of influence, personal brand, and messaging with everything. For the last few years, I've worked with Rory and his team on how do we really scale School of Greatness, scale my personal brand, scale the team, scale the messaging, scale the content, the courses, the programs, how do we scale it and monetize it all better? And so I've done many two-day sessions with you, I think three or four now, two-day intensive workshop sessions on a lot of these things that you teach your clients at Brand Builders Group. And so if anyone's interested in launching a New York Time bestseller, a viral TED Talk, launching a course, and just getting their ideas out of their head with some clarity and focus and a process on how to scale their personal brand over time, along with many other things that you guys do, if you're thinking of doing that and you want to build following, you want to create content, then make sure you check out what Rory is up to. Your team is offering a free call for anyone that wants to go there. If you go to lewishouse.com/brandcall, people will get on a free call and then they're gonna ask you these things. What are your goals? What are your challenges? What are you... You're gonna see this. That's what we're gonna ask. You're gonna see this in action by them trying to see like, how can they help you? How can they support you? Maybe there's something they can support you with. Maybe not, but they wanna support you in making sure that even just getting on this free call will support you in getting clarity on what you want, whether you work with them or not. So if you are interested in having greater impact in the world, greater influence, you want to earn more around your skill set, your uniqueness, and you want it to become more effortless in the act of consistently showing up on a daily basis with your business or brand or side hustle, go to lewishouse.com/brand call. You'll see a little video with us. It'll be a free call you can sign up for. Check it out. Rory, anything else you want to add here to bring this to a close for people who are on the mission and the path of building a side hustle, potentially turning it into a bigger personal brand and business for themselves?

Yeah. Well, just on the thing of the free call, number one, I would say we do have several clients at this very moment on the New York Times bestseller list, which is cool. most of the clients we work with are not at that level. Yes. 97% of the clients we work with are not Lewis Howes. They're getting started. They are just getting started. They are in the beginning stages, intermediate stages, like you're, you know, more that intermediate exploration. We do have a client also that has a viral TED Talk that's going viral right now. That's right. But it's, most of the people are just, I'm trying to build my side hustle. I'm trying to make impact. I'm trying to help grow my business. Yeah. I think we can help you. We won't, we won't, I want to say to them the same thing I would end this on. Don't sell someone something they don't need. And we won't. Like if you do the call and we don't think we can help you, we will be the first to tell you. Because this is what we believe. We're playing the long game. Right. And I know that your sales managers, some of your sales managers probably would never say that. And I may never get hired to do a corporate sales training again. But this is what we believe. Don't sell someone something they don't need. Put their need first. And we've done that and it's worked out really freaking well for us. And we're very young and we're not the richest people in the world, but man, we feel so lucky and to get to work with people like, I mean, for you to even say that, we get to be on the inner workings of your strategy and stuff. It's just an honor. So serve people. Serve people.

You should always win the relationship even if you lose the sale. Something that you talk about.

How to be.

There is no fear when the mission to serve is clear. It's hard to be nervous when your heart's on service. All these things that Rory says always rings true to me. So Rory, appreciate you. Make sure you guys check out lewishouse.com/brandcall. Even if it's getting on a call, maybe it's not for you. but see what the process is like for you to implement this for yourself. But if you're looking to build your personal brand, I guarantee he's got a lot of great stuff for you. So check it out. The reason I keep coming back to you every year for some strategy on how can we continue to grow and scale and have more clarity around the next stages of our personal brand. So make sure you check out the call, losehouse.com/brandcall.

Rory, appreciate you, man.

Thank you, brother. Thanks, man. Love you. Thank you so much for listening to this episode. I hope you found it valuable in learning about the process. process of you building and monetizing your personal brand. And if you enjoyed this and you know someone who's got a side hustle or has been talking about a side project they want to launch, make sure to send them this link right now wherever you're listening to this podcast. Just copy and paste the link, text it to them or post it over on social media for them or use the show notes link lewishouse.com/1148 and you can text that to a few friends or post it on social media. Make sure to tag me and Rory as well over on Instagram if you're going to put it on your stories right now. And again, if this is your first time here, click the subscribe button over on Apple Podcast or Spotify so you can stay up to date on the latest and greatest from the School of Greatness podcast. We've got some of the most incredible minds, leaders sharing about how they've overcome challenges, research they've learned, the science behind the mind, all these different things. And, I want you to have access to it every single week. We drop new episodes. So, subscribe. Make sure to go to our YouTube channel and subscribe. over there as well. Just type in Lewis Howes on YouTube. You can see our YouTube channel over there. And I want to leave you with this quote from Michelle Obama who said, Success isn't about how much money you make. It's about the difference you make in people's lives. And I'm all about that quote. I think we have an opportunity every day to make a difference in someone's life. You don't have to change their life forever, but you can always show up with a positive attitude, with a smile, and be of service to someone else in some way. So make I'm sure you're doing that today. And I want to remind you, if no one has told you lately, you are loved, you're worthy, and you matter. I'm so grateful for you. You know what time it is. It's time to go out there and do something great.