WATCH THIS To Manifest Anything YOU WANT In Life! | Lewis Howes

Do you believe you deserve to make more money?

Like my palms are sweating thinking about it.

You're laughing, but you know what's not funny? What's not funny is 17 years of a dream dying inside of you. What's not funny is you making an excuse. I think you gotta have a dream. The School of Greatness.

Really? Yeah. Please welcome Lewis Howes.

Before we get into today's video, I wanted to announce that I've launched my new membership community for growth minded entrepreneurs called Greatness Academy. and we have over 45 trainings from myself and other industry experts dedicated to helping you increase sales, grow your social media platform, master public speaking, launch your books, build email funnels that convert, and so much more. And if you're ready to take your business to the next level, then visit us at lewishouse.com/academy now. And today's video is a little bit different. Last week I put on a five day challenge where I got to answer your biggest questions from some of you. So I wanted to share a few moments from these conversations where I did this live coaching because some of you are really struggling with self-doubt and getting in your own way. And this is what's holding you back from actually launching your dreams. So if you want to launch your dreams right now, make sure to dive into this entire video.

I'd like to ask you more around the psychology of kind of getting out of your own way. Because something that I found every day, I show up and like, I love what you're sharing. And when we're here and we're in this group, I feel super inspired and motivated to take action. But then the next day, I'm like, oh, wait, I'm still me, I'm still shy, I'm still so scared of judgment. And then, like, reality kind of kicks in. And it's something that's frustrating me quite a lot because it's almost like this analysis paralysis where, Okay, I find myself always learning. I love learning, which is fine, but the proportion of learning to action, I'm not really happy with. So I just feel that I get in my own way.

You keep learning and learning and learning and learning, but then you don't act.

Yeah, and I think it's also because learning is so humbling. So when you learn something, you realize how much you don't know, and then you're like, okay, actually, I know nothing. So I shouldn't try to put anything out there. I should try to learn more.

Ah, interesting. because you're learning so much, you realize, well, I actually don't know as much as I, there's so much more to learn. So why should I put something out there?

Yeah, it's kind of like a pointless way to be because then you just, it's like that analysis paralysis that I'm saying you don't end up taking action.

Your question is how to take action when you feel this way.

Honestly, even the question overwhelms me. And I'm so glad to see that other people feel the same way because I know that it's not a, Here's my question. Give me the answer and it's going to fix it. I know this is like such a deep inner work issue, but I didn't want to not bring it up. So yes, it's great. Basically, you know, any advice and as I asked you this question, I've personally already done a lot of coaching and inner work around this issue, this fear of judgment, fear of not being smart enough, who am I to say this, all of this. But it's just such a big, big issue. So yeah, just your advice on...

I remember a lot of it's between.

Learning and taking action.

Well, okay, I'll share that answer there, but I'll talk about the money. The money, like, do you believe you deserve to make more money?

Yes, I... Yes. And when the more that I educate.

Myself.

The more I do feel like I have invested in myself and I do deserve to make a bit more money.

Yes. So because you learn more, so because you learn more you feel like you deserve to earn more money. Is that what I heard you say?

Yes. But then definitely the block comes at that fear, that fear of judgment. So in my mind and maybe to the people closer to me, I can say that I see my self-worth or deserve level increasing the more that I do educational things. But when it comes to sort of putting that out to the world or going outside of that circle that you're comfortable in, I don't take action that helps me to earn more money. I don't take the action.

There's a lot of people a lot smarter than me, I'll tell you that, who are way, way broker than me. There's a lot of people that learn more, have more credentials, more skills, more degrees, PhDs who are making a lot less. And I learned early on, a mentor of mine when I was extremely broke about 11, 12 years ago when I was broke, a mentor of mine, I was struggling and I was just like, Man, I don't know what else I need to do. Like, I'm working hard and the money's not coming in. What do I do? And he said, Money comes to you when you're ready for it. And I was like, I'm really ready to make some money right now. I'm pretty broke. Like, I could use this money. And he just kept saying, money comes to you when you're ready for it. And there are certain things we need to overcome and certain actions we need to take in order to be ready to receive the type of money that we are then not going to blow and mess up and spend on stupid investments that we lose it all. So if you get money when you're not ready for it, you'll hoard it. You won't use it and multiply it. you'll spend it and you'll lose it, or you'll feel like, you'll just feel anxious 'cause people want it from you and you don't know how to manage it. So there's a process that I've learned the hard way that is, okay, money comes to you and you're ready for it. So when I know that like, okay, if I really wanna make more money, there are certain actions I need to take in order to come from that space. I need to focus on it, I need to pay attention to it, I need to learn something that I haven't learned around money. I need to overcome some type of emotional blockage that I'm holding on to. I need to look within, you know, can I look myself in the mirror in the eyes for 10 minutes and love myself fully? Or is there something I have yet to address? Is there something I haven't talked about that I'm afraid to talk about? Am I blocking myself in intimate relationships? Am I not being vulnerable with family, friends, whatever it is? Am I lying to myself? If I look myself in the mirror for 10 minutes, do I feel comfortable with me? And if I don't, why? And lean into that. That's phase one. Another thing is, the amount of money you make is directly related to the amount of value you add to others and your ability to package position and receive the money from the value offer. So someone might say, well, Louis, teachers in America are offering a lot of value. they're teaching these kids, but they make whatever, 40 grand a year, right? I don't know what the average salary is, $50,000 a year, right? They've been working for 10 years and they make $50,000. Is that fair? And it is fair because they haven't learned how to package and position their value. And so then you hear stories of teachers who say, okay, let me package and position the skills that I have and create an online course and teach it in a unique way and learn marketing and learn how to package and position so that I can deliver the value and receive more money from this other skill. So if we're not learning how to position and package the value we offer and we're just learning, learning, learning, you have a lot of value to give because you learn so much. But the thing that I'm hearing you say is you haven't learned how to package a position. and overcome that inner fear or doubt of embarrassment or judgment or things like that. This is a real fear because most of us have this. I was at the point where I was so broke that I was just like, I don't care if the world laughs at me. I just need to figure this out so I can get off my sister's couch. So I almost had an advantage because I was so broke and had nowhere else to go. My back was against the wall for a year and a half. I was just like, I'm already embarrassment to my family, to society, like girls laugh at me because I'm living on my sister's couch. Like I'm already being laughed at. So I might as well try something, see if I can get out of this position. It's when life is good is when it's really hard for most people. It's when you're making, you know, 80, 100, $120,000 a year for a, you know, a number of years. You've got a steady thing going on, you're comfortable. That's when it's actually really hard. When there's a massive breakdown, it's easier because you're already in breakdown. You're already going through so much. You're like, well, let me just take action and get out of this. It's when life is good is when it's hard because you're comfortable and you've got to constantly put yourself in uncomfortable situations in order to grow. It's extremely challenging. you're educated, you're smart, you're attractive, you're talented, you have good friendships probably, you are constantly investing and learning. It's going to take you putting yourself through a number of challenges to get extremely uncomfortable for you to want to really start to grow exponentially. And this is why I always tell people, whatever the thing you're most afraid of, you want to create a 30, 60, or 90 day challenge every single day putting yourself in the most uncomfortable, scary situation to face that thing until it becomes second nature. And I don't know what that thing is for you. I don't know if that's you going live every day on Instagram and teaching what you're learning. If that's super scary to you, I don't know if it's you putting on your own event. I don't know if it's you putting out a pot. I don't know. We all need to figure out, okay, what is the thing that I've been resisting doing? for a long time. And me just saying that, it looks like that's something that would be scary for you, right?

Like sweating just by you proposing that idea.

So you need to think like, is that the thing that scares you the most? Is there something else? Is it interviewing people? Is it you going live? Whatever it is, you need to think about the scariest thing for you and you need to create a 30-day challenge for yourself. I can give it to you, but you've got to be the one to accept it and take it. And if it were me, I would say every day for 30 days, you need to go live for 10 minutes on whatever is the biggest platform you have. And you need to teach what you're learning. You need to actually offer value in a scary way. For me, this was public speaking. 10 years ago, I knew that if I wanted to impact more people, I needed to learn how to communicate with my voice because I didn't want to speak. I didn't want to stand up in front of people. I could not do it. I was terrified to speak in front of three friends. I could do one-on-one, but if there was like two people looking at me saying, Louis, what's your thoughts? Like, I just couldn't do it. And you may think that's crazy because I'm here doing this in front of thousands of people and I speak in front of thousands of people on stage. And it's literally, I found a mentor. I think I mentioned this yesterday or the day before. I found a mentor with a model that I can mimic. and I do this in every different stage of my life. What's someone who I'm inspired by, who's done something that I haven't done that I want to do? So there's a mentor with a model similar to close to what I want to create for myself that I can then mimic and learn from. And I invest in those people or invest in those books or those programs or courses or whatever it is. And I learn the model and then I mimic for what works for me. So when I did this, I could not speak, I kid you not, in front of a few people. And if I did, it would stutter for a few seconds and I just couldn't think, I couldn't create my thoughts and organize them in a way to deliver a cohesive message. So I met a guy when I was doing another challenge for myself. I was doing a three month every day immersive salsa dancing challenge for myself because I was terrified. Terrified to get out of the dance floor. Terrified. I could not step a toe on the dance floor without freaking out. I was just like, I can't do this. I cannot do. I physically, emotionally will die if I'm on the dance floor. That's how I felt. It was such an irrational fear, but these fears consume us. They're like, ah, I will die. That's how it feels. And I was in the middle of an immersive three-month challenge myself. I was 23, 23 years old, terrified of salsa dancing. And I was like, damn it, that means I have to do this. And I finally, it took me a few months to actually get the courage to do it. But then when I started it, I was all in for three months. And I actually did it for a year pretty consistently, but it was a three-month journey I gave myself where I said, every day I got to do this. until I'm not afraid. And I made a fool of myself and it was embarrassing and I stumbled all over myself and it was miserable. But now I have the skill and the confidence to go anywhere in the world at any moment and go to any salsa club anywhere in the world and go. And every time I do this, I've done this for the last, I don't know, 13, 14 years now. travel the world and find salsa clubs. I will go. I can't speak the language. I will look after the first song that I'm there, I'll look for the best female dancer. And I go, that's where I'm going first. I'm going for the scary, most intimidating place that I don't know, no one knows me. I don't speak the language. I'm gonna go ask them to dance. And half the time I get rejected and I think, good, this is still scaring me. I gotta keep going. I gotta keep putting myself out there. and then I go find some other girl and I dance with her right next to the girl who rejected me and I wait for her to ask me to dance with her. I say, I'm good, thank you and I leave. I'm just kidding. I don't do that anymore. I did do that though for a while. So one of the things I did during this time of salsa dancing was I met a guy who was a professional speaker. I had multiple fears, so many fears I was afraid most of my life. And I learned from him on how to do public speaking. So every week I was public speaking to learn this skill. For a year, this was a year long challenge because I knew it was going to take me more time to master this. I couldn't speak in front of a few people. This wasn't going to happen overnight. He told me the model. He had a lot of success as a public speaker professionally. I said, what's your model? He told me the model. He said, you need to join Toastmasters every week for a year. You need to do this and you need to put yourself through the discomfort. and you need to record it and you need to watch how embarrassing you look. And this is the worst thing, to watch yourself stumble like a fool in front of people. It's horrible. It's miserable. But now every week I had a Coach. I watched myself back. I practiced and I showed up. And at the end of this year, I became a confident communicator. I still had a long way to go. I was not where I wanted to be. I was not perfect. but I could stand in front of an audience for 10 minutes and deliver a message. And that was phase one. Then it was, how do I do this for an hour? Then how do I get paid to do this? And how do I do this in front of a thousand people? How do I do it? It's like always a different level of growth around our fears. But if you're not putting yourself through massive action on a daily basis for 30 days with this, it will always cripple you and you'll never get the results you really want. It'll be slow growth. And so each one of us in this group right now, I dare you, dare you to write down the thing that would be the scariest thing for you to take on for 30 days. Maybe it's for Taz, maybe it's going live every day on Instagram or Facebook or wherever is terrifying to me right now. In this context, I'm not talking about like, going and grabbing a snake out of the tree or something like that type of fear. I'm talking about the emotional fear of judgment, of criticism, of whatever that is for you. I dare you to write it down and I double dog dare you to do it for 30 days. I would bet that 90% of you will not do this for 30 days in a row. I would bet, I would put money down on almost everyone. maybe 10% of you will every single day. Maybe some of you'll do it for a few days, but I wholeheartedly believe if you do this thing for 30 days, Taz, 30 days. By the end of 30 days, you'll be like, oh, this is not that big a deal anymore. And maybe you won't get any sales and maybe you won't get results, but you'll build a belief that you haven't had before within yourself that'll help you do the next thing. And that's what everyone else here, I believe, will support you in learning how to package and position your value. Cause you have value, Taz, you've got a lot of knowledge, but you haven't figured out the courage on how to package and position and put yourself out there. I had something that I'm grateful I learned how to develop, which was when I had nothing, I realized I have nowhere else to go backwards. Like I was already broke, I was already in debt. I already didn't have, you know, I was just like, I'm not living my dream anymore. I'm injured. I'm like, I was already like so many things that weren't going my way. I was like, well, let me get some courage then, you know, let me just do something. And it's when things are good is when it's actually the hardest. So I challenge you and that's why I invest now because things are good for me. I've got a good life. I'm grateful. I'm blessed because I've worked extremely hard to overcome my insecurities and my fears. And this is why I push myself with coaches. I hire the best coaches with a model that I can mimic that I want to continue to prove in. And I invest in them. I pay them and I say, man, I don't want to face this thing today, but I know I need to. Coach me. Ah, my therapist. Oh, you're right. I need to speak about this. I need to resolve this thing with my family member. I don't want to do this, but it always brings me more peace by taking the hard, challenging action. Health. Oh, gosh, I just want to have more donuts. Oh, no. Let me keep on with the accountability with my nutritionist. It's like, that's why it's important to invest, especially when things are going well. So, I don't know if this is helpful. I'm just kind of rambling now, but it says the key for me has been going all into my fears. And it gives me the courage to package and position my value. And this is why I'm not afraid to charge $150,000 for a speech for 60 minutes now. This is why I'm not afraid when people want one-on-one coaching. to say it's $250,000 for the year for one call a month for me. I'm not afraid to do this because I know my value. So I've learned to package and position these things because I've also backed up my value by years and years of results. I continually show up and deliver the value so that there are results for my clients, customers, my audience, followers, whatever it is. I'm creating value so people are impacted in a powerful way. And I try to overdeliver. Would you say this $49 has been a worthwhile investment for you?

Yeah, 100%. Definitely.

Do you feel like you've gotten more than $49 worth of value?

On day one, yes.

And that's interesting you say that because for my mastermind, which was $50,000, which we did a few years ago, we stopped doing. I said to, they got a year, they got three in-person events with me, they got a coaching call in the beginning and then a coaching call at the end. And I said to myself, from our first hour coaching call, I wanted it to be worth $50,000. Then the weekend, I wanted it to be worth 50,000. Like every moment they interacted, I wanted it to be worth the $50,000. and so I learned how to deliver and execute the value so that every time I charged it, it was worth it. If they were willing to invest in actually doing the things that we were communicating and they took the action, it was worth the money. If you just sit here and learn and you don't take action, then maybe it's not worth it because you're not applying. So you have to apply what you learn. And everyone would say on the first coaching call, this 60 Minutes. I would have paid $50,000 for this call because I know after a decade, what people need when they're already making a million dollars in a business, I can easily get them to $3 million in the next year. Just because that's what I did and I learned the process from tons of mistakes. And so it's easier to go from 1 million to 3 million if you've got a little team, if you've got your business, if you've got an audience, it's super easy actually. Now it took me a long time to figure it out. But it's easy for me to show people the exact steps on a 60-minute call and actually help them do it in half the time that they normally think they'd be able to do it. Because I am perfectly positioned to help the person I once was. Just like I said here on this call, you become perfectly positioned to help the person who once were. And so because I'm able to see result after result with the clients we have come in, when someone says, Louis, can you do one-on-one? I can say $250,000 for a one-on-one client. I know within 60 minutes that they would get their money back times 10 within a first 60-minute call. And then they would have the rest of the year to have accountability. So you got to look to see like, are you doing the work to overcome your fears enough so you believe you are worth the value you're charging? Because if you don't believe it, then you're not going to be able to receive it. and money comes to you when you are ready for it. So what is the challenge that you've got to prepare yourself for and take on so that you feel ready to receive the money that you want? You're worth it, you're valuable. You don't need the money to know you're valuable, but money comes to you and you're ready for it and you have to learn other skills in order to get it. Some people get it, not by doing those things. They get it inherited, they win the lottery. But those are the people that you heard from study after study are the most unhappy, or the ones that blow their money, they get into drugs, they haven't learned the step of overcoming the fear, whatever their fear is for them. You got to become the Batman for your life. You know, the Batman was afraid of bats and he said, I don't want to have this fear anymore. I'm going to go live in the cave. I want to surround myself with these bats. They scare the crap out of me. I don't want to be in the darkness, but I need to be comfortable in this space constantly. And you know what? I'm going to make my identity the thing that I'm the most afraid of. So let me become a bat and embrace the fear and actually live the fear daily so that it doesn't affect me anymore. And when you do that for 30 days, or three months or however long you need to do it, the fear will start to disappear and you will start to see incredible shifts in your life. I'm not just speaking to you, Taz, I'm speaking to everyone here. So hopefully everyone is listening as if I'm speaking to you because this is the secret. This is the key to unlocking incredible growth and financial abundance. It is going all in on your fear until the fear disappears. That makes sense?

Yeah, that makes total sense. Obviously it's a little bit scary right now, but I think it is definitely what has to be... Like my palms are sweating thinking about it, but I know it's what has to be done.

And.

I am going to do it, and I'm going to set myself a deadline. I'm definitely going to do it. But also when you were speaking, what came up was a book that really helped me dealing with being uncomfortable. which was David Goggins book, Can't Hurt Me.

Can't Hurt Me. Yep. Yep.

So I read that and I opened my first business after reading that book. And yeah, so I just wanted to share that actually if it could help anyone else because it really, really shifted things for me. Because I had kind of curated this life of comfort. And reading that book just, it got me doing things. So that helped.

And here's the thing, like, Living a comfortable life is great. Like, I'm not saying you have to like go on in your fears and be uncomfortable every day. Like, you don't need to do that. If you are happy with your where you're at, then keep living the way you want to live. But if you feel like something is like calling you to create something more, but there's a fear blocking you, then that's the time to address the fear. Because if there's something calling you that you're doing, that you're not putting out into the world and you're allowing some fear to hold you back from delivering value to more people, then you're doing a disservice to your creator, in my opinion. You know, if you are happy with where you're at and you're comfortable and you love your life and you don't feel that calling, then cool, like keep living your life. But all of you are here to learn to grow in a different way. And so I'm assuming, Taz, there's something that you want to express to the world that you haven't yet expressed. There's a reason you keep learning and developing because you want to help people. You want to add value in some way, right?

Yeah, I definitely have a message that I want to share and I think what resonates so strongly with me is I think I've heard you say twice during this training that if you were to die tomorrow, you'd feel happy that you feel you've done the most with your skills. And at this moment, I just feel I don't feel that way about myself. So I just don't feel that I'm do doing my absolute best with my skills and talents that I've been given. It's like a little bit of a hard thing to obviously express and say.

But if you look yourself in the mirror for 10 minutes and stare into your eyes, what would you say to yourself at the end of the 10 minutes?

Like what would I say?

What would you say that you haven't done, you're not proud of, or that you feel like something's missing, or you feel like something's lacking, or you're not on the pursuit or Creating something you want to be doing what would you say to yourself if you looked yourself in the eyes for 10 minutes in the mirror at the end of that 10 minutes, what would be the thing that comes up for you that you're not proud of?

Just not being as useful as I feel I could be with the skills and knowledge that I've firstly been given and secondly been acquiring. Yeah, it's that like not doing your best. I don't mean this in a competitive way. I mean as in not being of service to people as much as you can, not bringing your message to the world as best you can because, well, I'm speaking in third person, but as best I can because of these limiting beliefs. It's quite upsetting. It's not really worth It's not worth getting the fear get the better of you there.

It doesn't mean we all need to like go after all of our fears all the time. And like, it's not, I'm not saying you should do that. I'm saying you should feel at peace within yourself. And if you look yourself in the mirror and you feel like you're not at peace, what is the thing you need to address? That's what I'm saying here.

I want people to feel fulfilled and peaceful. Yeah. So like with what you're saying for me, I just want to every single day, I want to feel like I've done my best. And because I feel like I'm holding part of myself back, I can't, with an open heart, say that I did my best today.

So what would it take for you to actually give your best?

I think that a big thing that sticks out, I've heard it before when you said it in this training, is to not focus on myself. So not worrying about, oh, I'm not smart enough for him. I have to say this, but trying to shift more to how I can add more value to other people. This is the theory, but obviously I've not mastered it.

How long have you been thinking about this? How many months or years have you been thinking about this?

10, 12, like a long time.

12 years you've been holding on to something and thinking about this.

Yeah, in different mutations, I would say, yeah, different.

How much longer are you gonna hold back from sharing your gifts with the world.

Why don't we start with the 30 day challenge? And after that, I'll either totally regress and just go back to, I'll just delete all my accounts or we'll have a breakthrough and then so let's like.

Maybe like, what's your intention? With what in line? What you want to let go of, what you want to create, how you want to impact people, what's your intention?

As in a mission?

What'S your intention? Do you want to let go of this fear or shame? Do you want to serve more people?

Yeah. So in terms of letting go, I definitely want to let go of judgments, self and others. In terms of sharing, I just. I kind of want to share the message that you get to create your dream life. regardless.

Are you doing it for yourself?

I believe I am.

Okay.

Compared to, like, where I started. Yes.

Right.

So I. I'd love to show people that, regardless of your background, upbringing, circumstance, you don't have to be a victim of your history. You can. To coin a phrase from another mental, be a master of your destiny. You can. create the life you want to live. It's up to you to really create that life you want to live.

There's a common fear that a lot of people have. And it's one of the biggest challenges we all face is like, what is that thing each one of us have that we're critical of, that we're afraid of, that we're insecure about, that we're shameful of that keeps us for months, years, decades holding back for you 12 years in some way you said. holding back from fully giving yourself of service to whatever your mission is, whether that's, you know, and that's if this is you not building a business and you building your family, if this is you in partnership with people, if this is you with your family and friends, like, are you being in service with whatever it is you want to do that brings you joy and fulfillment at the highest level? There's no right or wrong, good or bad here. It's are you at peace with yourself? Can you look yourself in the eyes in the mirror and say you're proud of you? And that's where a lot of self-worth comes from. That's where a lot of self-worth comes from is when you can look yourself in the mirror and say am I proud of me? Am I showing up for what I feel called to do? And your calling is going to be different than mine. So it's a personal feeling. So hopefully that's resonating with you.

Thank you very much. Thanks everyone. I'll go read these comments now. Thank you. I really appreciate it.

Before you bounce, what resonated with you from this time together? What didn't resonate? And share that first.

I think what didn't really resonate at this point was the sort of the monetary thing. It's not that it didn't resonate, but it's just, it's not the biggest issue for me right now, if that makes sense. Yeah. Sort of raising the self-worth in that, I've kind of done that to quite a large degree over the last year. so it's not that it didn't resonate. It's just, that's not like the deep issue right now.

What resonated?

I think you speaking about like what you're called to do if you feel that calling and like facing the fear, just taking that like a boot camp approach almost to just face the fear rather rather than maybe getting too caught up in trying to work through it in your mind, maybe getting like out of the head a bit and getting more just going for it.

So that resonated.

I think yeah there was a lot. I was like, I think I'm gonna go watch the replay to be honest. Okay.

Because for 12 years you've been doing, what have you been doing for 12 years? You've been in your head about it.

Yeah and like I say, learning more which is fine. Benefits to that. I'm glad that I'm learning, but almost like using the learning as the, the crutch, putting it off as the crutch or putting putting off the action in a way.

Well, I want to see you create the growth that you want to create and have the the inner peace that you're looking for with the impact you want to create as well. And I don't want you to wait another 12 years to do it. So that's my intention is that I want you to wait 12 years. I don't want you to wait 12 months. I don't want you to wait, you know, a month.

Yeah, and I think also what resonated was where, like you said, you don't have to do that. So I get that it's not right or wrong. It's not that if someone like doesn't face their fears and doesn't do this, they're not wrong, they're not like less of a person or whatever.

But.

In terms of what is important to me, it is very important to me that I can overcome this and take this action. So, Just seeing that also like, no, just seeing that it's not someone who doesn't do it or someone who's not taking that hard road, it's not wrong. Or when you said you can live a comfortable life, that's fine. Absolutely. I realized like, oh, you can, I guess. That's fine too. So not having that judgment around that, but just really following what you feel your soul wants, what you feel called to. What do you feel you want to share?

Yeah, and we're all at different seasons of life too. Like, you know, in 10, 20 years, maybe this isn't my mission anymore. Maybe I don't feel like I'm supposed to do this. There's something inside of here that's like, ah, you're supposed to do this. And then I asked myself, okay, am I supposed to do this? Is that calling coming from ego? Because I feel like I want to make more money or I want people to love me or I want a bunch of followers so I can feel good about myself. or is this becoming from a place of, no, I don't know. I just feel like I want to serve at a higher level. I feel it keeps coming to me over and over. I keep hearing this voice for years, decades, whatever it is for some people. And I just, I gotta do this. We don't know the mystery of why we're supposed to be here and what we're supposed to do sometimes, but that's what my calling is to me. And I cultivate that by listening to it, by meditating, by reflection, by feedback, by therapy, by processing, by dealing with shame. Like I process things so that I get rid of the noise in my head so I can hear what I'm supposed to create. If I wasn't processing those things, I'd be chasing money to feel good. I'd be chasing whatever girls to feel validated. I'd be chasing followers to feel like I'm enough. okay, like, because I'd have the fears in my head and be like, ah, I need to calm this. Let me just go make something and have it. Now I can feel better. And then I still don't feel better. Let me get more and more and more. And this is why it's important to be able to process our emotions, to process our pain, our shame, our insecurities, to face these things so that we can hear whatever is coming through us. For me, that's very important to do. and when I feel overwhelmed and stressed and confused and in fear mode, I know that's time for me to reflect, to go talk about it to someone, to work out, to meditate, to take a walk and be alone and listen. And what is it that I need to hear? What am I not doing? You know, why am I not feeling good? Why can't I look myself in the eyes right now? Is there something I'm not saying? Is there something I need to be doing that I'm not doing? Am I out of integrity? it's a process of reflection, a process of communication and action. And it's never going to be this perfect thing and you always have it figured out. Like there's always some breakdown somewhere. But at the end of the day, I look myself in the mirror and I'm proud of who I am at this moment. Am I proud of who I've always been? No. Is there stuff I'm ashamed of? Absolutely. I wish I didn't do all the time. But I don't hold on to them. I don't beat myself up about it because I'm proud of how I continue to evolve and grow. process today. So that's the process that I think is important for each one of us. And I know this was about monetization and this was not supposed to be figuring out self-worth conversations here, but unfortunately they're all connected. Unfortunately they're all connected. And so I can tell you the strategies of packaging and positioning and all this stuff, but if you don't believe you are worthy, the money will not come to you until you're ready for it. and that's why for me, for many, many years, I put myself through these challenges of, okay, what is my fear right now of this season of my life? What is my insecurity? What am I ashamed of? What am I worried about? The judgment of other people? Dang it. That means I need to go do this. Okay, what's my challenge? What am I going to give myself? What feels really scary for me? I really don't want to do this because it's so uncomfortable. But that's when I know I need to lean into that thing. you get more comfortable doing it once you've done it once. I've done so many of these challenges for myself. They're second nature for me now because I am comfortable being uncomfortable. It's something that I've built the muscle around, like putting myself through embarrassment, putting myself through humiliation. Because I know on the other side of that is freedom and fear is not freedom. So I put myself through whatever I need to to feel free. and feel peaceful. And, you know, courage is a muscle. I haven't always been courageous my entire life. It's a muscle and there's always a different area of your life you got to learn to be courageous in. So I could stop right now and just be like, you know what? I'm happy with everything. I just want to like stop creating so much and stop being curious about people and interviewing people and stop, you know, shut the business down and just, you know, live life of my relationship and work out and do that stuff. And I can live a great life, but that's not what's calling me. So I'm listening to my calling and I'm acting from that space. So hopefully this was helpful to us. I appreciate you for being here and sharing so openly and vulnerably. So many comments have come in about how a lot of people are saying that, you know, they're not speaking up and they wish they could speak up like you and you're so composed while you're talking about all these things. So it's, I really acknowledge you for sharing. So thank you for sharing and I think you helped a lot of people in their own discovery through this process together. So I appreciate it.

Thanks so much. Thanks everyone. I was not composed at all, but thank you.

You're great. We appreciate you and yeah, reflect on this. and if you want to do a 30 day challenge for yourself, then feel free to post in the group. When you're ready and comfortable to do that, then do it. No pressure either way. I want to support you. I want the group to support you just as I want you to support everyone in the group. And I mean, I hope all of you, honestly, I hope all of you join Greatness Academy if you're not already in there, because it's a monthly accountability like this. and there's gonna be a lot of great people in there. So if you haven't signed up for that yet, guys, I highly urge you to do it. Again, you're gonna get access to my team talking about these different strategies. You're gonna get access from me. There's gonna be a community of people. So if you found this valuable in any way, go to lewishouse.com/academy right now. Get signed up. We're doing a special offer. We just opened it back up. today for the first time, I think eight months. So get yourself in there because that's where I'm going to be the most active in there and in our Greatness Coaching Group. So if you want coaching like at a different level, more on the emotional side of things like this, we do this in the Greatness Coaching Group as more for people that are really the six figure earners and up. There are some people that aren't at that level, but it's really for the higher earning group that is trying to scale business more and things like that. So, either way, join Greatness Academy, lewishouse.com/academy. If you found this valuable and impactful and if you've seen that you're going to see growth and results, then join that and have monthly accountability with my team and a community of other people just like you. Taz, I'm not sure if you're seeing the chat in here of how much people love you and how much they appreciate you but a lot of people are saying, that what you shared was very helpful for them. I'm assuming that you are not alone and that there are many people who have had this fear or shame or insecurity that has held them back for a year or five years or 10 years or 12 years. And I bet there's even more who've had it for longer that haven't put out that thing they want to put out because of that insecurity. Go ahead and type in how long you've been thinking about doing something, the book, the project, the content, launching something, how long have you been thinking about it that you haven't put it out for. Someone's saying one year, 30 years, 20 years, two years, five years, three years, 17, 18 years, five. So you see you're not alone. That there are people who have had dreams, who have had something that keeps speaking to them in their core. in their heart, wherever they're hearing this calling, to do something, to try something, to put it out there. This is not like you're alone in the world. This is majority of people. I have that for certain things that I want to put out that I haven't done yet. I just act on them pretty quickly. If I have it for a year, I'm like, okay, I need to do this. And I start taking action on it. It's also matters of how much time you have and It's like some things I hold to do, but I'm not afraid to do them. I might say, okay, I want to do this thing, but it's been two years since I've been thinking about it, but it's really a bandwidth thing. It's not like I'm afraid to do it. I would do it. It's like, okay, I gotta get the resources, then I can do it. Most of you make that excuse and say, I don't have time. And that's not the excuse. It's really you're afraid to do it. And so you make the excuse of time or the excuse of money. I'm taking on so many things that are my dreams right now and I'm doing it consistently and showing up at a big level to my ability. It's just a matter of like, how can I do it faster for all the other things that I have as well? So don't use the excuse of time or money or family or this or blah, blah, blah. Those are excuses that after 10, 20, 30 years do not hold up. It's the fear holding you back. And you've got to create that challenge for yourself. No one can help you out think this fear. It's not something you just say, I'm not going to be afraid of this anymore. And I just move on. Like it's, this is your own hero's journey. This is the part of the process for your life that you've got to figure out how to overcome. And if you don't, then you've got to figure out how to deal with 5, 10, 20, 30, 50 years of having something festering inside of you and not come out. And are you going to be okay with that? And maybe that's okay. But for some of you, that's not going to be okay. And this is going to be your journey and your process. So can you look every night at the end of the day in the mirror at yourself for a couple of minutes and say, I'm in the journey. I'm working on the thing I want to do. Or at least I'm strategizing it and I'm executing on a small level. Am I processing? Am I doing it? Am I Like, doing the fears that I need to overcome. Like, you're the only one who can really look yourself in the mirror and ask you that. It's a conversation with you and you. People can coach you, but you've got to be willing to do the work. So I hope this was a helpful session. It seems like it was very therapeutic for a lot of people. It seems like this struck a chord with more people than most of the topics. And usually when you get into money and you face yourself and your self worth, A lot of stuff comes up. I love you guys. I appreciate you guys. I feel like we should all do like a group hug or something after this conversation, this vulnerable emotional conversation. So I'm hugging you all. I'm appreciating you all. I appreciate you being there for Taz as she opened up and she communicated with a big heart, a huge massive heart and really revealing herself. So big hug to Taz and to everyone here as well. You guys are amazing. What are we going to do next? What's the action plan? Because we've learned, you know, Taz is really good at learning, but now we're going to act, right? Taz, we got to start taking action and everyone here, I want you to as well. And one of those action plans I'm telling you is accountability and coaching. So go into the link, lewisowens.comacademy and just sign up for that so you're good for the year there.

I didn't think the Academy was actually going to be relevant to me because I'm not an entrepreneur and, you know, so but you mentioned today that you guys actually have a section relevant to, you know, publishing books, writing books, marketing your books, etc. And I have, I've already got enough content of original quotes and poetry and everything, so I can probably get three books published before the end of this year with my own photography as well. And, but I'd also, I haven't got enough of my own personal story, which is another you know, thing that I would like to actually get started, but I could probably write, I'm a very, I'm a, I'm a writer as well. Like I was a high school teacher and then because of my health, I had to, that ended in 2008. So I've been on Long-term Disability for a number of years. But I, writing has been a passion since I was like a wee little thing.

So what's that, what's the goal and what's the question?

I want, well, I want something published before the end of the year. I just can't decide.

Okay, okay, stop. Stop. Have you published something before?

No.

Okay, so for 17 years you've wanted to publish something?

Yes, yes, no, no, I have written any online magazines.

Have you published a book before?

Never published a book before.

Okay, so you want to publish a book. That's step one, right?

Yes.

Why do you want to publish a book?

Because I feel that what I have to say can help people. Whether it's my who do you want.

To help and how do you want to help them?

My stories and or my inspirational writings will make a difference in people's lives.

With whose life? Who are you? Who do you want to help and how do you want to help them? So who are you? Is your story and your expertise? Who you want to help are the exact specific audience of people you want to target. and then how you want to help them. You're delivering the met, you're using a mechanism to deliver a solution. I'm hearing that your mechanism, you wanted to be a book. So that's your mechanism.

Yeah.

So what are you going to be offering as extreme value for those individuals and who are the specific individuals?

See, I like the word that you use, conscious achievers, because I deal with I'm an empath. I'm always, you know, dealing with positive gratitude.

Okay. And who, and what are you gonna help them overcome?

Life challenges, loss, love, life lessons.

Something specific, something specific is too broad. You don't have a personal brand to go broad right away. You can try it, but it's too broad where you're not gonna make the biggest impact. You can try it and maybe you'll get a few sales, but it's, they want to talk about so many things, it's hard to really put that out there. Again, I don't want to say you shouldn't do it, but I want you to get maximum results if you're going to do it. And if you're just like, I don't care if anyone buys it, I just want to do this for me, then do it. So don't think that I'm trying to tell you not to do something, but if you're asking me what's going to support you, it's you getting very clear.

On who you are, who you help and how you help them. I've been listening to you. That's the thing. That's the problem though, is that if we're talking about my quotes and my poetry, They're all encompassing.

Like they're all different. So which book do you want to write first? Do you want to do a quote book or do you want to write the Transformational Journey story book with a.

Methodology about your life?

The quote book could be done tomorrow. Why have you waited 17 years to.

Do a quote book? Well, I guess, well because, well, I don't know.

I've been doing other things. Well, if the quote book can be done tomorrow, and it's something you want to do, then why are you not doing it?

Well, no, I've been dealing with other things. I've been doing other things. Okay.

I have been doing other things. So this isn't important enough for you. It's not a big enough, it's not calling at you enough, then I guess. If you cared about it, why would you keep resisting it?

I guess now, because now is the time that I have finally decided that this is what I want to do.

Okay, so you've gotten clarity now? Yes. So it wasn't always clear before. Got it. No, you're clear that you want to write a book. and you wanna help people with your books.

Yes.

You've got a few different options for books, so you're trying to figure out which book to do first. Yes. Are you asking for a permission or an opinion?

I'm asking for an opinion because all I kept hearing from you the whole time this week has been, near your audience, near your audience, near your audience. And when it comes to even the.

Book.

It's broad as well. And I think that it still will be conscious achievers, but it'll deal probably more with overcoming an obstacle and loss and just keep persevering, you know, regardless. You know, like just don't give up.

Okay, that's the other book, not the quote book, right?

No, no, that's the personal, yeah, just don't give up no matter what.

Gotcha. Okay, so So which one do you want to do first? Quote book, which you could do tomorrow or hearing you say, or the other one where you got to figure out how to really craft and write the story.

Well, I guess if I were to join the academy, then I'd need, I.

Would want assistance with the personal story. Well, you can do this with or without the academy. You can write your story. You know, we're not a, we're not a book process, you know, accountability for writing your book. Yeah. You're an accountability for helping you accomplish your goals. And you stay accountable towards the action steps you need to take. Okay. We have a process for how to write your book in 30 days, but I'm not here walking you through step by step and holding your hand every day. Did you do the book yet? Did you write the chapter? This is something you got to do. This is for you to invest in yourself to say, I'm going to show up in 30 days and I'll have this much more done on my book. As opposed to you say, well, I'm going to wait another 17 years until I actually launch this. So it's do you invest to pay attention? Because you paid investment in something. to actually stay accountable towards your goals. That's what this is about. Whether it be building, and then you're gonna need to build your personal brand to sell your books. You're gonna need to build audience. So this is gonna help you on all these things, building audience, staying accountable with your goals. But you need clarity on what you want and why you want it. And that's the work that you gotta do. I can't answer this for you. You know, you've gotta figure out within you, you gotta clear your mind and say, what is it I truly want? And you can start with either book. It really depends on what matters most to you. If you want to get started on a quote book, and I think you need to publish something. If you're asking my opinion, the quote book seems like a great place to start. It's less scary. You have all the material. You can put it out there. You can reach a broader audience right away. Or you could narrow the audience and say, this is for women going through tough times. you can do anything you want there and you can go broad if you want to with a quote book. But then you got to figure out how you're going to sell it and you need an audience or you need collaborations, you need partnerships, you need to learn all these things. We teach all those steps in the academy. We've got every lesson you can think of on how to do any question you have already. It's already there. And if you have a question and we haven't answered it, then we will answer it. and we'll create a training around it. So that's what we're here to do. Our team is incredibly talented and will provide the information you need on how to execute. It's up to you to show up every day for yourself to execute. But if you want to write a book, you need accountability, you need some deadlines and some goals, you need support. And if you want to build an audience, then you need to learn how to build your personal brand. And it's still not clear to me who you are, who you help and how you help them back to day one. I'm not clear. so why would I follow you if I don't know you can support or serve me or inspire me or entertain me of one of those categories? Or I don't know how I can refer someone to you. You know, I know you've been through a lot and you've overcome a lot, but I still don't know what it is exactly. So that's going to be the work that you got to figure out for you. Again, we have the processes for discovering that in Greatness Academy and all these things. But you've got to execute and show up. And it doesn't mean it's set in stone for life. I've reinvented my personal brand four or five times in the last 12 years. So just because it's this season doesn't mean it's all seasons. And just because you're putting something out there now doesn't mean you're tied to this forever. But you haven't put anything out there in 17 years in terms of a published book. I'm not saying that's right or wrong, good or bad, but it's been inside.

Of you and it's something you wanted to do. Is that right? Yes, but I was also, but I've been doing other things. I get it.

You've been publishing online and all these things, but you've had this thing that you wanted to do that you've been resisting for 17 years. You said maybe unless you, unless it's only been five years. Well, how long have you been thinking about doing a book? I guess I always thought I wanted.

To write books, but I've also been, I was like an online writer and interviewer. I've done, you've been creating.

Yeah, you've been creating, but you just haven't done, you just haven't done the book yet.

I just haven't done the book yet.

So it's not like you haven't done anything.

You've been doing a lot.

I've been doing a lot.

But now this is still showing up inside of you and it's calling you.

It's been calling.

So you just got to ask yourself, are you going to be happy until you put that out there?

No, that's why I think that this is this is why this has been the timing now. Everything is coming to alignment now.

And the time is what it takes for you to launch your quote book by Christmas.

I just need to get figure out exactly what it What I need to do. I have to, I've got all the, I have enough to do three separate books. I mean, you could publish a book.

Today with all this stuff on Amazon. If you really wanted to, you could put this on Amazon. That's the thing.

And I've even got, I've done the research too. I mean, I've got some stuff that I mean, you know, like online.

So what is holding you back from putting it out there? You're extremely smart. You've been talented. You've been creating and writing online for years. You have all the materials. You know exactly how to publish a book on Amazon, it sounds like, because you can Google how to upload on Amazon and print and publish today. You've done that work. So what is holding you back from actually publishing it?

Oh, no, I said, I've just, I've downloaded, I haven't read on it yet because I just did it literally.

I've just been doing this this week. Well, I mean, you can go on YouTube and you can go on YouTube and say how to publish on Amazon and there'll be a five minute tutorial that'll actually show you step by step. how to upload a PDF to Amazon and press publish and start making money right now in five minutes. So the step-by-step is there. You can Google anything.

Okay.

You have the materials. Yeah. You have two decades of experience of effort, of results. So what is holding you back now from printing a quote book?

No, nothing. That's the thing is I'm just speaking to you now.

Give me a date. that you want to publish this by?

My birthday, October 22nd.

Okay, so one month essentially, right? Less than a month.

Okay.

Okay, so what's it gonna take for you for the next whatever, 30 days to make this happen? Every day, what action are you gonna take? That's what I want you to do right now is write step by step, every day, one action. One action a day for the next 30 days from it being published by that day and think, what do you need a day before, the day before, the day before until today? And all you're going to do is one action a day. It should take you 30 minutes a day.

Okay.

And you'll have this thing published. So your next step is creating the game plan, like we talked about here on day five. You've got a clear goal now. You want to go with this quote book. You want to do it by October 22nd. Now you just got to figure out the pieces on how to get there by writing down the action plan. You know what to do. So would there be any reason why you wouldn't be able to do this? Any other excuses that would come up, any other distractions or fears that would come up in your way? Yes. Because you need to address those right now. You have a game plan for when you get afraid, for when something happens with health, for when you get distracted, for when you get tired, because that will happen. Most people don't prepare for those things. So I want you to write down also what you will do when every fear comes your way and why it's important for you to keep moving through it.

Yeah, there could be some blocks I might have to, you know, or some hurdles I might have to jump over.

But that may- so write down exactly how you're going to jump over those hurdles. Yeah. So when they do come, 'cause they will come and they will be bigger than you think, you have the game plan on getting over them.

Some things are out of my control legally, legally.

So you couldn't publish a quote into a book today.

I'm going to do my best, but I may be denied. That's all I'm gonna, that's all I can say.

So here's what I'm gonna tell you right now. A book can be anything you want. You can take one page of a quote and you can upload it to Amazon right now and print it. into a book and call it a book. Are you legally allowed to put any quote of yours and put it up on a PDF into a book on Amazon? It takes five minutes and say, here's my book. It's calling it the quote book of Shannon. Are you legally not allowed to do that for some reason?

I should be allowed to.

Okay.

So.

If you're not allowed to do something, then don't create the goal around that. But if I'm hearing that there's some other legal stuff that you're not allowed to publish your own work, you're not allowed to publish it from a pen name, like there's so many workarounds to what I'm hearing this potential excuse. And I don't want this to hold you back.

Well, this is why I'm working through, like I said, I was pushing through the three major fears. And it looks like things are gonna be progressing in the in the positive.

Right, yeah. Sounds good. Well, I would love for you to challenge yourself and put up one page book tonight on Amazon. A one page book. One page book. Because I'm just hearing more and more excuses and hurdles that are coming your way. And if you could overcome this by saying, I published a book today. It's a one quote book, your favorite quote, You're laughing, but you know what's not funny? What's not funny is 17 years of a dream dying inside of you. What's not funny is you making an excuse for, well, I'm gonna do this date in 30 days, but then maybe I'm gonna, ah, there's gonna be some challenges, and maybe I'll push the date. That's not funny to me. It might be funny to you, but that's not funny to me because you've got a gift inside of you that you're making excuses to not give the gift out. or at least progress on putting it out there. And I don't want you to keep holding back for you. It doesn't matter for me, it's for you. So whatever you need to do, strategize or execute to start putting yourself out there, a one page book for me is a brilliant idea because it'll actually give you the courage to say, I did the action. I put out one page book. I don't know anyone who's got a one page book. Maybe it's the greatest idea in the world of book marketing. and you get one sale, get one page book and get one person to buy it. I bet 10 people here would buy your one page book if you did it today. I dare you, dare you to do a one page book on Amazon and call it Shannon's Book of Quote. Shannon's Book of Quote. There's one page and one quote.

Okay.

I dare you. I challenge you to print it today. I will. I challenge you to go on YouTube and type in how to upload my book to Amazon and see a million tutorials and then actually print it today. I dare you, I dare you. I don't think you can do it. I don't think you have the courage. So I dare you to do it. Let's see if you can. All these people are saying send it to me, I'll buy the book. I don't know if you're seeing this chat here, I'll buy it, I'll buy it, I'll buy it. You can list it for 99. You can put it for 99 cents. This doesn't have to be some grandiose thing. Your fear is actually taking action and just doing it. Okay. And you got 50 people that say they'll buy it. I accept that. Put a 99 cent, 99 cent one quote. Your favorite quote. One quote. Shannon's Book of Quote. Shannon's Book of Quotes.

Okay. Shannon's Book of Quotes.

And it's gotta go up by tonight at midnight, Pacific Standard Time.

Okay.

Yeah. Because Shannon's book-- we just need some momentum.

Shannon's book of quote, one quote, one original quote.

Right?

My original one quote.

And you can put the thank you from Lewis Howes if you want to, you know what I'm saying? Okay, thank you. Just add a little thank you for Lewis Howes and the VIP Greatness Challenge Group for pushing you and buying your book of quotes. VIP challenge. Here's the thing, Shannon. Here's the thing, Shannon. I don't think you're gonna do it.

Oh, you've got all, look at all.

You'Ve got hundreds of people saying they'll buy your book and they're encouraging you. I am 100%-- I don't think you're.

Gonna do it by tonight.

Oh, no, this is on, I don't.

Think you'll do it.

I'm doing it. Here's the thing, I want you to message me on Instagram, the link to Amazon where I can buy your book by midnight. Okay. If it's not to my Instagram DM by midnight Pacific Standard Time, Then I was right.

No, no, I'm doing this. No, that you should do it.

See, people talk big all the time. People talk big and say, I'm gonna do this. I'm gonna do this in a month, but maybe I'll push the dates. No. You just said already, I'm gonna push the date. Ah, I'm gonna push the dates. It's gonna happen, but I'll push it. If you don't do it tonight, I don't think you'll do it by October 22nd.

So, no, I'm doing this.

That's my challenge to you. That's my challenge to you. And then, then quote.

Thank you to Lewis Howes.

You don't need to thank you in there. Just put a quote and print it. Anything that's going to distract you or limit you from putting it out there, don't do it. Put one quote on a PDF, Shannon's Book of Quotes. Okay, and this- Midnight.

Send it to me.

Put a link in the Facebook group. And this is you being in integrity with yourself and you challenging yourself. I'm offering the challenge, but this is you doing this with you. And I want to just say this to Shannon, because a lot of you are going to have similar excuses. A lot of you are going to say, well, I want to do this by now, but I'm not sure, blah, blah, blah, and I have this excuse for 17 years or seven years or three years in this challenge and this hurdle. You got to take action and do something. I took my iPhone and I said, I'm not going to allow technology and equipment that I don't know how to use and being an interviewer that I've never done hold me back. I'm going to press record and I'm going to sit it down on a table and ask someone a question. I'm going to publish it. and it was bad. It was bad. But I published it and then I built momentum. I didn't wait five years and say, well, I'm gonna wait till I'm ready until I get the equipment until I know exactly what to do until someone's not gonna make fun of me. I just took action and it didn't work out perfectly, but look where it is now. So this will be an amazing story that you wrote a one-page book and then you write the next book. and then the quote book and then your story. You're building experience. And I'm not just speaking to Shannon, I'm speaking to everyone here, because I know this is going to be a similar thing that so many people are thinking about with your own thing, with your own dream goal project. There's been a hurdle. There's been obstacles for 5, 10, 15, 20, 30 years for some of you. And there's been excuses. And maybe they're valid. I'm not saying these aren't valid excuses. But now you're here.

Yeah.

Some are valid, but it shouldn't still.

Hold people back from putting something out there. No. Yeah. You could have written a book 17 years ago. I didn't write it. I'm not saying it's been Shakespeare, but I'm saying you could have written a book. My first book, you think I'm super proud of my first book when I look back 12 years ago and look at my LinkedIn book. McKenna, will you grab that book on the shelf, the LinkedIn book? book real quick. This book I wrote 12 years ago is not my best work. I'm telling you that right now. But I think I sold like 7,500 copies and I printed it on Amazon 12 years ago. I was 24, 24 years old. I had never, I should have no business writing a book as a 24 year old who took seven years in college. This is a stock image. that I got, I probably stole this image, if I'm being honest, or maybe I paid 20 bucks for this. Look how horrible this image is. Do you see this? This is a crappy $20 image from Google Stock Image. A horrible font. And that's it. I even put the logo thing in the last part of my name. Do you know how tacky and lame this is? Do you know how horrible? this is. You know how ugly this is? Do you know how.

Not on Amazon now?

You know how not cool this is? I put like a little photo myself down here. Look at this. This is like, I got a little barcode. This thing is not fancy. It looks like a cheap PDF, but. And I sold 7, 500 something copies. and it's not even 100 pages. It's big font. It's like massive, like taking screenshots in here. It's not even 100 pages long. Okay? But you know what? Of all the people talking about LinkedIn, I had the courage to put something out there. It wasn't perfect. It wasn't amazing, but it had great value inside. I'm proud of the value. I'm proud of the content. It was powerful and it established me as a personal brand. And if I didn't do this, I wouldn't have been able to write the New York Times bestseller. I'm telling you right now, if I didn't do this, the New York Times bestseller wouldn't have happened. This gave me a step with the size of audience I had to put myself out there. I was taking boxes and boxes of books around the country on buses, on middle back seats of Southwest planes for $47 a trip. and carrying boxes and taking them to events and selling them one at a time, because I didn't have the audience then, to try to make a little money. And I'm building reps that way. So this was not perfect. It's not fancy, but I printed it 2009, 12 years ago, when I shouldn't have been able to be a writer. I didn't have skills. I was flunked English. You understand this in high school. So I have every excuse that I could have said as much as you. The difference is I didn't let those fears hold me back from doing this and then it allowed me to write two other books and I'm going to write more books. And I'm not a writer. That's not how I identify as. You are. But there's something holding you back. Just like there's something holding everyone back from whatever it is they want to do in this group. and it's not okay for you anymore. Not about me, it's not okay for you anymore and everyone on here. And again, whether you sign up for Greatness Academy or not, it's kind of irrelevant to me. I want you to because I want to be able to scream at you in a loving way every month and be like, what are you doing? Step up. You said you were going to do this. Now, where is it? You're out of integrity with yourself, not me. This is you. against you in a way and your fears, just like everyone here. So that's what Greatness Academy is about, is to support you and say, well, I don't know the steps to do the book. We've got a 30 day plan to help you write and print the book. So you could do that challenge that we already have stepped out for you step by step. So there's no excuses. Just you got to show up and do it for yourself, just like everyone here. So hopefully that makes sense.

Yeah, it does.

And so, I don't even want you to speak anymore because if you're actually gonna do this challenge by tonight at midnight, you need to go right now and do it.

How am I supposed to watch the rest of, I got another hour with you guys.

Then you gotta do it right after this.

Okay, no, you're right.

You're right, I can watch the replay. You can watch the replay, you can watch the replay. So whatever excuse you're gonna make for the rest of this day, oh, I've gotta do this and I've gotta pick up this and I've gotta do this. It's just the same thing in a different disguise. So this is an exercise to see if you can actually do what you say you want to do in one day and half a day. Okay. And I hope you do it. I hope you do it. But 17 years of you making excuses is a lot of proof showing me that you're not going to do it. So I'm going to put a, I'm going to put a waiver down. I'm going to, I'm going to do a $100 Amazon gift card that, that, if you do it, I'll give you a 100 Amazon gift card. And if you don't do it, you sign up for greatness Academy.

I take that challenge. You take the challenge. Okay.

Yeah.

Go and do it right now. And by midnight you're posting the group and you're sending me a DM. And if it's not in there by midnight, exactly before midnight. It can't be 1201. No, no, no, no, no. It's got to be before midnight.

We're in the same time zone, so it's all good.

I'm actually going on a flight, so I'll be on the East Coast. It'll be a 3:00 a.m. my time. Okay. Okay. So make sure that you make sure that you put it in there. I'm gonna see the time stamp. And if you do it by 9:00, even better. This should take you an hour right now.

Okay. So you don't need seven hours. It's, I go to, you know, is it an Amazon link? Figure it out.

Figure it out. I'm not gonna tell you anymore. Okay. I'll see you in the DMs. before midnight. And if not, then I'll see you in Greatness Academy and you can spend more months trying to figure it out. But either way, you got to show up for you.

Okay.

Thank you so much.

Awesome.

All right.

We'll see you, Shannon. Bye. Thank you. Everyone's giving you the link on how to upload stuff. This should take five minutes. Thank you so much for watching. If you enjoyed this, again, leave a comment below and make sure to check out Greatness Academy in the description where you can join the community of growth minded entrepreneurs. and really support you in accomplishing your goals faster. And if you like these conversations around building your personal brand, then I know you'll love this next interview with Rory Vaden, diving deeper into building and monetizing your personal brand. 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, 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. 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 bitter. And then, you know, we built a sales coaching company to eight figures teaching salespeople 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, 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 this is true about sales. I mean, 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 it, no matter how bad you are or how crappy your thing is.

Right, right, right.

You don't 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 people think of it as combat. I either have to put the magic marketing words on the page or I need to say the voodoo mind trick to 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 desert 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 gonna 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? You know, how do I convince people? And it's, 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 the fact that we're afraid of people saying no and how to make 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 gonna 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. -Right. -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's your hair look and, you know, are your clothes or your, you know, is your outfit cute? You're going to help somebody. We're always at our best when we're serving others.

Yes.

And one of the magic, one of the magical powers of service is that being focused on service releases our insecurities.

It's 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- Toastmasters.

You famously bring that up every time we talk about second place in the world.

Second place at 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. 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. 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 that.

Value, value, value, value, value, value.

Give out, and 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 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.

Yes.

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 you know like a membership site. But applications up here at the top, which is like a coaching program or consulting, you know, like 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 and in the right sequential order. People pay for the right order. That's organization. I mean, we tell, 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 launching Facebook ads the first month, and it's like, that's step 76.

You're skipping 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. So the first thing is find your uniqueness, figure out what you're good at, then extrapolate that into a product, create your service, your product offer, you may already have that. And then after that, it's like, okay, how do I drive traffic? And there's two worlds here. When I think of marketing and sales, I think of the online world and the offline world. 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. 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.

He sees candy, gets me every time. If you're a free piece of candy just going to the store, 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-- Mobile events. This is what Jim Rohn did, and Tony Robbins, and Brian Tracy, Tom Hopkins and like everybody in the personal development industry, they used to go do, which this is how we built our former company.

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, right? as I give to you before instead of ask. You don't... The way you make sales is by giving so much that at some point they like ask you to buy versus showing up and asking all the time. In fact, we use a rule called... We call it 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 to collecting a credit card 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 is 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 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 $10,000 worth of value, then charge a thousand, right? Is that right? And if it's $1,000 worth of value, charge $100. It's $100, charge 10.

So you always have, you know, if it were a bank account, you always have this balance with people. 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 and the egg. How do I build an audience? 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 is cool. Okay. Yeah, yeah.

So let's talk about that. So, you know, it starts, 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 going to go out and provide value. So you start put 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, 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 happen on social media. 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're... 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 yours. And it's like, if you're too 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 want to really impact lives, impact lives. Like that's what pisses me off as people are like, I want to 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.

Like, 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. 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.

Right?

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 DM, I sent you a message. Okay? And then here's, we call this the four F's. Super, super simple. Yep. Okay, so here's the four F's. The first F is, How did you find me?

And that's it.

I just say, oh, Louis, yeah, 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 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? Or 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 salespeople 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 gonna 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 the game. 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 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, 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 about your future? 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 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. Because if they say 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, 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. 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.

Yes.

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.

Yes.

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 partners for all the time.

Time.

How can I help? And this is, you know, this is the problem is, is people go, how can I make money? Don't ask how can I make money? Ask how can I help?

Yes.

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 compromise. It's not that money's bad. I mean, We love money. 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 fourth F is where the 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 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 demo. Yeah, demo like we do. a lot of evergreen type stuff where it's just like there's just this video out here. Check it out. It's a hidden video. 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 going to want to take the next step if you do a good job. 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, we actually, 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, it was five and a half years. And then we asked, okay, who is here in this event that just found out about Brand Builders Group recently. And there was a woman that was like, I heard you five days ago on a podcast, requested a call.

I'm here.

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. Like 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. Like, you know, 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 when maybe they wouldn't do a call?

Yeah, okay. So great. So these are where you get in the different mechanics of 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 doing a one-on-one call.

You're trying to sell merchandise or a hat or something. 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. We've got a whole formula for this. We call it the 15 Ps, which is 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 a copyright. copywriting is would be the word for this. When you are doing copywriting, the number, there's two, there's a few main things to focus on, okay? 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 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 specific, get there. You know, brand builders, we've got a curriculum that is a four-phase process, and 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, to, to, they are to buy. So you want to talk about the, 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, the way that you do taxes or the way that you do health or 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. All right, 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 want to grow your following.

Book deal, you know, 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 mint, 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.

Yes.

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. 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 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, 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. 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 gonna help them.

Server 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 wanna do is do my thing and I just hope people like it and buy it. It's just 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 going to 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 got to be willing to push yourself out there if you want to grow.

Absolutely. I mean, it sounds like a lot. Yeah, it is a lot. Like, yeah, welcome. Like, 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 never get there. Like anything worth achieving is worth working for. 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. 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. I want to talk about the 11 habits to change your life. And these are really the habits to help you increase your happiness. Now, some people like to wait and see if happiness will ever just happen to them. Maybe one day they'll wake up and suddenly be happy and everything will be fantastic. But unfortunately, that's not just how life works. We all know.