10x Your Profit. 10x Your Pricing. 10x Your Business. [Here's how]

You can get people to pay you 10 times more than they pay somebody else. You can get customers to convert on ads 10 times higher than they normally do, which means it cost you a tenth to get ten times more. That's a hundred x differential. And that is how massive brands print money over time. And so I want to give you the six steps to building a personal brand or business brand that you can follow. And over the last 40 months, I went from 0 to 8 million subscribers across all channels. One, we built our portfolio from just starting out to doing over $250 million a year by understanding this thing that took me way too long. So let's get into it. The first two steps are conceptual. The bottom four steps will be tactical. And the nice thing is that I'll give you a framework and a few stories to kind of like work through so you remember it. And I think this is going to make a lot of you a lot of money and will finally bring to reality what so many people have struggled to do. It's like, I get that Nike is this big brand and if they just put the swoosh on a T shirt, they can sell for 20 times more. Wow, that's really valuable. Yeah, but how they do that, right? How did Apple go from just some, you know, just a mediocre company to becoming the titan that it is? And so, if anything, even the Apple example should give you a little bit of hope that even if you are not premium today or you're just kind of figuring it out today, you can absolutely become a juggernaut in whatever industry you're in. Okay, so there's six steps we're going to go over and I'm going to walk you through each of them right now. All right, so step number one, step number two, three, four, five and six. All right, so the first one is just what is branding overall? Alright, so let's talk about that real quick. So branding is this big fancy word, but all it means is the association between two things. All right? All we do is we pair. So pairing is the active verb that you do as an entrepreneur to build a brand new. To build an association between two things. Now, ideally, the thing that we pair our thing, the thing that people don't know about with the thing they do know about, is that the thing they do know about is good. Right? Something that they like. And so step three we'll get into, which is gonna be about talking about the right customer. But for now, you have to understand what it is that we're gonna be doing. To begin with, which is repairing the thing they don't know, our business and or us, our personal brand with the thing they do know and like, which is the good thing. Now, if we do this over and over and over again, eventually you can remove the other thing and the association, the likingness kind of rubs off on you. All right, now let me show you how powerful this is. If I got up on stage, right, and next to me is all the Republican candidates, that would make. That would shift your perspective of me a lot. Because there'd be a lot of associations, strongly held associations, either positive or negative, with that group of guys or gals. Now, on the other hand, if I stood, same guy, stood up on stage, same me, same message with all of the Democratic party, it would give a very different perspective on who I am. Now let's do door number three. I stand up on stage with all porn stars, very different association. And so the idea is a lot. And the thing is, is that this association, these pairings are happening every day, all the time in your business, but most of the time they're being done haphazardly. And so building a brand is a lot like making a garden Inside in the front of your house, right? There's a lot of weeds that want to grow there. It's natural for there to be disorder, for there to be chaos. And so a chaotic brand is basically a meaningless brand because there's so many things that are not associated that makes sense, that it means nothing to nobody, right? And so what you have to do is you have to prune the tree, you have to pull the weeds from the garden. You have to control what associations, what flowers you want to be there and to proliferate. Because imagine a garden of flowers where it's all roses, all red roses. It'd be a very strong association with that one type of flower versus somebody else's, where, like if there's one or two roses, but then there's also some yellow flowers and some daffodils and some sunflowers, it's really tough to say, well, what's that we. What's that garden about? I don't know. And so that's what most people's branding looks like. And so number one is understanding what is branding and building a brand overall. It's just an association that we build that over time, once it's strong enough. If I appeared 100 times in a row with porn stars, eventually you would just assume I'm in the porn industry and I could remove the porn stars and I would still remain. And people would make that association, that would be part of my brand. All right, so that's number one is what is brand? If we're going to build it, we got to know what it is. The second is why should you bother? All right? And this is important. So fundamentally, if we think about what makes money in a business, you've got the fundamental arbitrage of business is how much it costs you to make money. Alright? So what that means is cac the cost you acquire a customer against ltv lifetime value, which is how much you make over the lifetime of that customer in terms of gross profit from each customer, alright? And so let's say if I spend a dollar to get a customer and that customer is going to make me $10 of gross profit, then I have a 10 to 1 LTV to CAC ratio. And this is the fundamental economic unit that exists in every single business. Like if you boil every business down to this one fundamental thing, it's how much does it cost you to make more money. That's fundamentally even what investing in big businesses drives down to the fundamental economic exchange that occurs within the business. How much does it cost you to make money? Now the reason branding is so important and why you look at the most valuable companies in the world, or said differently, the most valuable brands in the world, what do they have? They have customers who it costs them less to get them. Number one, people are willing to pay more higher lifetime value and they don't buy from anyone else, which means they buy over and over and over again. And so if brand can allow you to convert a higher percentage of your audience, get those people to buy more times from you, get them to not buy from anyone else and get them to do that at a higher price than the commoditized price of the marketplace. Those are some very powerful things for a business, arguably the most important things that can happen in business. And having a brand or a strong brand, strong positive associations with your ideal audience, one of the fastest and most powerful, not fastest, excuse me, the most powerful ways to accomplish that. And so if I told you you could do that, well, why would you not if it's the most valuable thing you can do in a business from a dollars and cents perspective. Now the thing is that building associations, teaching people what you are and what you're not takes time. But once you do accomplish that teaching, which is fundamentally what branding is, you're teaching someone a pairing. Same thing like you teach a kid that don't touch the stove, it's hot, you're trying to associate the thing you don't want them to do with something that they don't want to have happen. Works the same way. We're just doing in reverse. Okay? So number one, what is brand? It's the association between two things. We do it over and over again to make sure that it's only the stuff that we want. And then people say, oh, this guy is the business guy, which is for me. Now, why does it matter? We get more customers, they buy more times, higher conversion percentages, lower CAC as at higher prices, and they buy again and again and again. Great. So I understand why I want to do this. Now let's actually start branding. So this is going to come down to who. Okay? So whenever I have this conversation with a business owner or somebody who's a personal brand, and to be clear here, I could say, hey, six steps to build a personal brand. I could also say six steps to build a business brand. Believe it or not, it's the same six steps. It all depends on who you're trying to sell. But. And so if you're building your own brand, if you're trying to sell a certain avatar, then it's going to depend on that. So I'm going to use a very boring business. So let's say I'm an accountant, okay? I'm a cpa and I have an accounting firm, all right? Now, if I want to brand my accounting firm, I'm going to start with who do I want to attract, right? Who do I want to attract? And so these are the qualifications that I think through when I'm thinking about my whole. Now I have a whole chapter in this book, $100 million offers, that talks about this, but I'm going to give you the crash course. So number one is I want the audience to be growing, right? Because if I have to pick between an audience that's shrinking and getting smaller, one that's maintaining, one that's growing, well, shoot, I'd rather go after one that's bigger because even if I stay the same size, I'm still going to grow because the market's growing, right? So, number one, I'd want them to be growing. Number two, this is going to sound obvious again is I want to make sure they can afford my stuff, right? I want people who are making money, because if I want to charge a lot of money, they got to have the money so I can charge it, right? Again, if I could go after poor people, medium people, or rich people, well, I'd rather go after people who are rich and can afford it. So that's the second qualification that I have that I look for for my who. Remember, I'm an accounting firm. I've got this skill set, but I need to zero in a little bit. I don't want to be a generalist. I want to serve a specific marketplace so I can charge a premium, and it makes it more operationally sound for me because I have to do the same thing over and over again rather than come up with custom solutions over for every different customer who walks in the door. All right, the third thing that I want is, hey, I want people who are very easy to target, because if I can't find my customers, I've got people who are really easy to find and really hard to find. Well, hell, I'd rather have the one that's really easy to find. And so we're thinking about this in terms of basics, but this is real stuff. It's like, I want them to be growing. Duh. I want them to have the money. Duh. I want them to be easy to find. And finally, I want people who are in pain. I want people who actually want what I have to sell. If they are, let's say I'm going after a marketplace and everyone's all wifed up. Right. Not necessarily a bad thing, because it means that there is demand there. As a side note, but if no one wants the service, you have tough to sell. And so these are the four basic things. Growing, they can afford it, easy to find, and. And they're in pain. Okay, fantastic. So let's walk through this. If I'm an accounting firm, so if I'm an accounting firm, I want something that's growing. So I think health trends. Let's do this together. Live. I think health trends, anti aging boomers. Like, this is a big market. They have a lot of money in terms of easy to find. Okay, so what's a business that's hopping on this trend? So that would be like, med spas, semaglutide clinics. Cool. So let's start with that. Let's just say, like, med spas and clinics that are dealing with anti aging for boomers. And obviously they're in pain from getting old, because who isn't in pain from being old and doesn't want to be old? So great. So this checks all the boxes. All right, so we found our who. So that is step number three that meets all four of our qualifications. Great. So now let's talk about step number four, which is now we have to figure out what they like. Now remember we're an accounting firm and we're trying to find med spas and anti aging clinics to do their accounting for them. Okay, so what do med spas. So we're going to say med spas here. Med people, Right. What do they like? What do those business owners like? Well, they probably like making more money. Number one, they probably want to get more customers. Number two, they probably want to make more profits. They probably want to build a sellable business. Those are all things that they find. They probably want to have some help recruiting talent so that they don't have to work as much inside the business. They probably have some issue retaining talent because finding high quality like nurses and nurse practitioners ain't cheap. And there's a lot of demand for them right now, especially in the private market. And so it's like, okay, so these are some of the things that they like and these are some of the problems they're struggling with. And so if I want to build a positive brand with these people, I have to find the things they like and the things they're struggling with. So we just listed that out. Okay, so now what we need to do is in step five, we associate, which you can say code for advertise. Advertise. Oops, there you go. Advertise ourselves with the solution, right? We want to pair ourselves with the things that they like. They like solutions to their problems, but everybody wants to be in less pain. And so that means that I'm going to probably start making content and picking off piece by piece here. I'm going to say, hey, here's some things that we see across our firm. For the med spas and anti aging clinics that have helped drive profits. They actually can, they can combine this stuff in their refrigerator and they pack it this way so they can actually fit more in and have more stuff, more room for services. Great. Here's the second thing is how people set up their lobbies. This actually makes it more efficient so they can see more patients in less time. So I'm gonna start making content in terms of videos, in terms of blogs, in terms of written format, cheat sheets and PDFs. I'm gonna start giving this stuff away. I'm gonna start associating myself with the things they want and the things they need. So when I start doing this, people are like, wow, I start to like this guy cause he's making my life better now. I keep making these associations me they don't know with things they do know and the problems they are suffering from that they Like I keep making this association over and over and over again. Right now what happens is, is that we have, as we build this brand, we have to think about it from the perspective of the med spa owner. Okay, now this is a simplified version of what I talk about in the leads book in the Core 4 in terms of advertising. But I like this as an even easier way to think about it is that at the top level you've got, you tell people. And so me right now, this is me telling you. This is me advertising my stuff. This is me making my stuff known. That's what we mean. You tell them. That's the first level. It's also the least influential, right? Like if you don't know who I am, then you might believe me to some degree. Maybe the content that I have will speak more to you than who I am. And that's why the quality of your stuff matters so much. Because every single time there's somebody who's brand new who doesn't know you, they're going to make 100% of their judgment off of this first exchange. And I always try and keep that on the top of my mind that some of you guys here who are new have never heard my stuff before. It's like, I got to be good, right? I got some good stuff. And if you're struggling to figure out who you want to sell to, I wrote a book, $100 million offers, that has several chapters dedicated to just helping you solve that problem. And if you're struggling with the association step, which is figuring out how to actually advertise this thing, how do I let people know about it? That's what my second book, $100 million leads, helps solve. And if you're absolutely broke, then you can go to my podcast. They're free. Episode 579 is where they start. You can check them out there if you like watching. Instead, you can go to my site, akron.com and I have video courses on this. They're free, you don't even have to opt in for them. And if you like the physical copy, you can go check them out on Amazon. We've sold over a million copies of these books. They have over 25,000 five stars. So give them a gander, you probably won't be disappointed. Let's get back to it. So think about it like a movie. Just to give a simple example, the movie company tells you that their movie is great, so they make a movie trailer. Alright, so you watch the movie trailer. Do you immediately go see a movie when you see A great movie trailer? Probably not. Sometimes they're like, well, that looked interesting. That looked good. So what do you do next? Number two is you. Your friends tell you, you say, hey, that new Godzilla trailer you see, that looks pretty cool. And your friends say, dude, I went to go see it. It sucked. And you're like, ooh, just like that. That movie doesn't get my business right? Now, the last time I saw a movie that really took over from word of mouth was Maverick, which was the Top Gun movie. I don't know if you guys saw that. When it came out, I feel like I got 10 different people who were like, dude, it's the best movie I've seen in two years, right? And I was like, wow, strong. Now, I saw the trailer and I was like, this looks cool. But when 10 people told me to go see it, I was like, all right, I'm gonna go see it, right? And so this one, far more powerful. What people say, what others say. I should just say others, sorry, make this easier for you. What other people say, what other people say to them matters way more than what you tell them. Now, the third level here is what they experience themselves, right? So you make your promises what they experience themselves. So at the top level, you've got a movie trailer. The level underneath of that, the people are like, hey, this is good. This is bad. This is mediocre. The level underneath of that is that I go see the movie and I make my own decision for myself. Now, a movie is a great microcosm example of what a brand is in a very short thing, it's only one product, the movie. You go see it or you don't, and then they generate cash. It's actually not really a business. It's fundamentally one chunk of media that has a ton of marketing behind it, and then that's it. And then they try and make another movie. Right now, for us as business owners, we're not in the movie business. We're in the we want them to buy again and again and again business. So what we do is that when we make our promises, what we tell them, we have to deliver on the promise so that when they see our movie, they go to our restaurant, they use my accounting services. People are like, wow, this guy really is good, right? And so when that occurs, this completes the loop because they get this amazing experience. They believe me the next time I make a claim. And they become the people who tell other people, hey, these guys really are good. And this creates what I call the virtuous cycle of branding. Is that you make a promise, you keep that promise, and then people tell other people that you kept that promise, and then other people try your thing, and then you keep your promise to them. And. And then around and around it goes. And it just takes time to get this second level where other people talk on your behalf, which matters far more than what you say. Because anybody can get somebody to buy one thing one time, but it takes a business who can keep their promises exceptional, who can get them to buy again and again and again. So if we're going through the steps in branding, first off, you understand branding is making associations between things they don't know and things they do know, which is hopefully something they like. So they make that likingness rubs off on you. You do it because it helps you get more customers for less, convert at higher percentages, at higher prices, and get them to buy again and starve out your competition. The who is when you start this process, you think, who am I trying to be the ideal? Who am I trying to provide liking this to? And so if I were trying to go to MedSpa owners, it might be very different in terms of the type of content that I'd be making if I'm an accounting firm than if I was going to homeowners. Right. If I want residential homeowners to be my target market or just normal W2 employees, I'd be making entirely different content and associating with very different things for that audience. Right now, I'm still an accountant as a business, but who I'm trying to make the positive association with has a very different feel to it. Right. I could even decide I only want Republicans. It's not a protected class, by the way. You can say you only want Democrats, you only Republicans not protected on either side. Political parties are not a protected class. And so I could say I'm only going to make content that appeals to this demographic. And I know that I'm going to ward off all the people on the other side of the aisle, figuratively. Now, you might also ward off anybody who doesn't want political stuff in their accounting, which is a third bucket. The point is that you get the who, which in our example was med spots, because it satisfied the four things. They're growing, they're in pain, they have the money to spend, and they're easy to find. Cool. So we have the med spas. Now. What do they like? They like getting more customers, they like making more profit, they like making their lives easier, they like saving money, they like making their company sellable. Okay, so I'm going to start making content on all of those topics. And if I succeed at teaching that stuff, then they're going to make that positive association with me and they're going to like me. I'm keeping a micro promise within my content, which increases the likelihood that they think that I'll keep my macro promise, that I can help them as an accounting firm, drive more profits, make better decisions in the business, and then ultimately, when they want to come to transition or sell the business, I might be the one who can. My financials will help them make that transaction and steward it over to a new owner. Now, the fifth step was associate or advertise. Now, I just talked about there's three levels there, what you do, which is the core four. So you either make content, you reach out to people you don't know, reach out to people you do know, or you run ads. There's the four ways that you can do it, right? So you make the associations through the advertising. So I want to be clear here. Advertising is letting people know. The branding is what you let them know. So people get this big, this whole thing mixed up. They're like, advertising, branding, what's the difference? Advertising is the process of making known. Branding is what you make known. It's the content of the advertising. It's what associations occur while you are making things known. Right? And so you can have exceptional advertising and terrible branding happen at the same time. The Budweiser campaign was exceptional advertising. They let the whole world know they were making association with Dylan Mulvaney, the trans person. Now, for their audience, for their who, that was a bad association. And so it was bad branding, but it was good advertising. And we have to make sure that we can break those things apart. And to be clear, for a different who, that pairing with Dylan Mulvaney might have been really good for a different company that had a different whole. And so if you had a business that served people who were super, super left and very progressive in terms of all that stuff, then that would be a pairing that might drive sales, and it'd be both good advertising and good branding in that subset of audience. But for Bud Lights or Budweiser's core audience, that was an association they did not like and did not want. And so it drove down sales. It was bad. It was a bad thing. That's why we have to know what do they like so that we can pair with that as hard as we can, and we advertise the hell out of it. So as many people as humanly possible can find out about that pairing. And then finally, this is the last step of branding, which is the most important step. The most important step is keeping your promises. Okay. Which it comes down, comes down to production, Meaning that the thing that you said, what you said it would do, does it the way you said it would do it by the time you said it would get done. Which very easy to say, very hard to do. But fundamentally, the biggest businesses in the world, like the reason Apple is Apple is because the products are exceptional. Now they've had, now I'm going to talk about the last 20 years has been now obviously different times and they're trying to figure out what their next big Jesus product's going to be now. But fundamentally they have the brand they have because they have made the association with elegant, simple, easy to use design that makes technology accessible for everyone. That's fundamentally what they've done, right? That is what they stand for. And in the beginning it was being not a suit. But the thing is, at this point, the vast majority of people associate with not that. And so they actually bet on what would eventually become the majority of people. And so they fulfilled their promise because their products are elegant, they are easy to use, they are sleek, right? They have all of those elements. And once people do buy from them, what happens? And I'll tell you the story of what it feels like. So the first time I ever had the experience of good brand, good reputation, I had positive associations with an audience. I launched something called lns, which became like the first beta version of what would become Allen, my software company. So I did this webinar to just my existing audience and a bunch of people weren't able to make it on because they're gym owners and they're, you know, they're business owners, they're busy and. But they knew that we were going to be doing the build outs for automated lead nurture for their gyms in order of the order getting received. And so we had people calling in saying, hey, I missed the webinar. I have no idea what Alex is selling, but here's my credit card. Just bill me, I'm in for whatever it is. And so think about the power of that, is that the only reason someone would behave that way is because they have a strong history of positive reinforcement with the brand. Is that every other promise that I had made up to this point for those people, I had delivered on more than they had paid. And so if someone just says, listen, I just, here's the card, I know I'm gonna get My money's worth just charge me so I can get in line sooner. That's. That's where you want to be. And that's where all of these other kind of like, you hear these, like, direct response marketing hacks and tricks and whatevers, they become irrelevant because you have the thing that matters most, which is a strong positive association that orient someone's behavior towards you with a higher likelihood of purchasing more frequently exclusively from you at higher prices. And this is why it's so important. The problem is that it's hard because it takes time and you have to be deliberate with it. And there's a reason that I haven't taken a black pill or red pill podcast. There's a reason I haven't done that. Believe me. I get fucking asked. Right. I don't want the association. There's tons of people in the porn world that reach out and say, hey, hop on our podcast. We get so many views, we get all this stuff. Sure. And the thing is that I personally, you guys know my views. I'm nihilistic in general. I don't think anything has inherent meaning. So I don't care what anyone does in terms of how they choose to make their money or how they choose to make their income, provided it's legal. Right now it is legal. But I also know that there's a big segment of my audience that does care. And so I don't want to disenfranchise those people. That trade isn't worth it for me. And so I don't want to make that association. Not that I have any issue with it. It's just not a trade I'm willing to make. And so whenever you make an association, you trade a certain percentage of your audience for ideally a. A greater percentage of the type of people you want. Right. And so the Dylan Mulvaney move, to go back to that did strengthen Bud Light for a subsegment of the audience. They had some people that might have actually started drinking Bud Light because they did that. Now, they might have lost those people because they basically backed off on the position very quickly. But for a moment, they made a bet with the move and they got some segment to like them. There was just more of them that hated it. And so they lost overall. And so you're going, whenever you make any change, when you make any new association that's different than what you have done in the past, you are going to lose some people and gain others. The point of good branding is that the ones you gain are more of the who you want. And the ones you lose are the people you don't want. And so every day, you're basically pruning this tree. You're weeding the garden, you're planting the right flowers and taking out the wrong ones. And here's an interesting point. Let's say we have this thing of roses. And this is something I think that will really drive home for a lot of you. If you've got this row of flowers and that's your whole garden, it's just all red roses, right? And then a white rose pops up in the middle of the red roses. There's nothing inherently wrong with a white rose. There's nothing inherently wrong about me talking about my relationship with Laila, right? But for my audience, for my who, it's business first. And so, like, I made this tiny mistake within our, you know, our own business or learning, whatever you want to call it, was that there was a. There was a period of three to six months where I started experimenting with some wider topics. The thing is, is that I lose some audience who isn't married, who are business owners, but why would I not want to appeal to them? I'm business first. And so I got this question, and I want to hit on it because I think it's really good, is that I have said before that you are the niche, right? All the unique things about you create the thumbprint of your personal brand. So how do you contrast that with saying, hey, you want to just do the stuff that your who or your audience likes? So this is how I explain it is that. Let's think about this as a central pillar. See this marker? This is the central pillar of my brand, which is business. That is the central pillar of what I have. Now. Some people are going to be business and married. Some people are going to be business and fitness. Some people are going to be business and philosophy. Some people are going to be business and marriage or whatever other ones I have, you know, dessert. Okay, fine. The thing is, is that business always has to be first because that's the common thread of the whole community. If I make marriage first, then I will lose everyone that's not marriage first. And so you can sprinkle in your uniqueness of identity, but around the core value proposition that you have for your who, Mind you, this is if you have the desire to monetize a brand and do it for a specific avatar. And so if you have the accounting firm and you're making content about how to do your books and how to be more profitable and how to set up your lobby and how to generate customers. All that stuff that you might do to help attract more med spa owners to you, you might, as a business owner of the accounting firm, be married, and that's fine, but you're still going to make the accounting practice and helping med spa owners be the core. Because every one of them, when we talk about what do they like, all of them like that. All of my audience likes business. And so you keep the one thing that you know, they all like that you have the strongest positive affinity with, with the most percentage of your audience, the key core thing. And so if you're going to go through this and you want to build your brand, you know what it is, you know why it's important. You figure out who you're going to go after, you're going to make sure it's growing easy to target. They got the money to spend and they got the problem to solve. You figure out the things they like. You associate yourself with those things through advertising. So that's making content, reaching out to people and running ads, appearing next to people and with things that they find positive in general for that audience. You do that as much as you possibly can, and that will allow you to get the purchase. Now, once you have the purchase, you either break the cycle of branding or you create a virtuous cycle of branding, which means the branding reinforces itself. And you do that by keeping your promise with the product. Not over promising, under promising, over delivering, and doing exactly what you said you were going to do, the way you said you were gonna do it by the time you said you'd get it done. If you do this over time, a larger and larger audience will be customers of yours and tell other people to become customers of yours. You will be the Godzilla movie, You will be the maverick movie where you say you're great, but then 10 other people tell people that you're great. And then everyone wants to buy and then they do see the movie. They do go to your restaurant, they do use your dry cleaning, they do go to your gym, they do, they do try your agency services, they do sell a house with you, they do work with you. And then they become a larger part of that pool that compounds and says they are who they say they are.