Master Branding With Jeffrey Perlman - The Brand Architect Of Zumba and @Mindvalley

Sam.

Every now and then, a brand comes along that completely changes the world. Such a brand is Zumba. At any given moment, there are 100,000 people taking a Zumba fitness class somewhere around the world. Not only did it become a fitness dance race, but get this. According to Billboard magazine, Zumba became the biggest radio station in the United States because so many people were dancing to Zumba music. This allowed Zumba to not only become one of the greatest health fitness brands in the world, but a brand that helped turn musicians famous. Remember the song Despacito? It became the single most watched video on YouTube. But it was Zumba that helped launch Despacito into the stratosphere. Today's guest is the mind behind the Zumba brand. Jeffrey Perlman was the chief marketing officer of Zumba. And it was Jeffrey's nuance and genius for developing branding that helped Zumba become the company it is today. Today, Jeffrey is a strategic advisor to Mindvalley and my go to guy when I want to understand and master the art of branding. So please give a big, rousing mindvalley welcome to Jeffrey Perlman.

Thank you, Vishen. I work with very few brands. My, my skill is deep, but not very wide. And I look for companies that have the ability to become cult brands, basically what I call transformational brands. And that is why I am working with Mindvalley, because I believe that Mindvalley can become or is a transformational brand. And I believe that Mindvalley is going to be one of the most important brands.

Thank you. And with your brain, I hope we get there as soon as we can. So whether you're running a business or you're building one or you're looking to brand yourself, in this episode, you're going to learn the science of branding in a way that you've probably never read about or learned before. Geoffrey, what are some of the things people are going to get out of today's training?

So one of the things that I want to talk about is the. The process of deep branding. See, most people think that branding is logos and pictures and stories and graphics that you slap on a product to sell more products. Great brands know that brand dictates the direction of the product design. So, for example, Harley Davidson doesn't release a scooter, because Harley Davidson is about irreverence, and a scooter is not irreverent. So in this case, the brand irreverence is dictating the product design. And. And that's what great brands do. Now, stellar brands take it many levels deeper with Stellar brands, the ethos. Not only does a brand is the brand wallpaper, and, you know, all of that, it's also. It also dictates product design. But not only that, it dictates the ethos, the culture of the company. Every single thing that you do, every single thing that you don't do, how you run your meetings, how you talk to your investors, how you dress, everything is brand. It resonates. There's a resonance that happens. It's an ethos that happens. And then finally, the. The leaders, the stewards of the brand, they need to go through an internal shift where they devote themselves to the brand. They have a conviction to the brand. They see the potential of the brand, and they commit to that potential. And once you have that huge conviction, at that point, you know, you're able to have so much more clarity. Your decision making becomes very, very clear. And so those are the principles of deep branding. Another thing that I want to talk about is Personas. So there are a handful of brands in the world that create a new Persona, a new icon in pop culture. So before Nike, the Weekend Warrior didn't exist. You know, seeing somebody jogging on the streets, you didn't see that. That was for crazy people jogging on the streets. Nike created the Weekend Warrior. We don't remember that, but they did that. Before Apple, if you showed up to work wearing a hoodie and a T shirt. Remember the Apple Switch campaign? The guy with the hoodie and the T shirt? Right.

The Mac vs. PC campaign.

If you showed up to work looking like that guy, you got fired. But Apple created that person.

Wow.

And the way Mark Zuckerberg dresses and the way his entire generation of entrepreneurs, their entire disposition towards business was, was created by Apple. Before Harley Davidson, there are motorcycles, there are people that drove motorcycles. But that Hell's angel type of person.

You know, that was created by Harley. That was created by Harley, and it was by design. And people started trusting that.

And it was by design. Yes. So brands, great brands, give permission for a new human to exist. Before Airbnb, this concept of a global citizen, a digital nomad, did not exist. Now, look, there's a confluence of technology that had to take place in order for that to happen. Right? For the digital nomad to be able to live anywhere. But Airbnb was the brand that gave them permission to belong anywhere. Belong anywhere is the slogan of Airbnb. Belonging is what they sell. So we're going to talk about the Persona. And the other thing that I want to talk about is the neurology of Branding. In the end, what great brands do is they create a neural connection between an emotion and a brand. And then finally, the last thing that I want to talk about, or actually the first thing that I want to talk about, is the different types of brands. There are functional brands which sell a function, so Microsoft sells software, whatever, a word processor. There are experience brands which sell an experience. So Disney sells magic. And because Disney sells magic, it is able to rise above any product category and sell in multiple product categories. So Disney sells magic, whether it be in a theme park or in a cruise or in movies, it's the same thing. And then there are transformational brands, and these brands create new human beings, as I mentioned before. So I kind of went in a circle.

Well, you have a really dramatic and beautiful overview of what we're going to be talking about. And I just want to state that mindvalley's evolution as a brand over the last two and a half years has been guided with Jeffrey. He attended one of our events, a fest. And I believe you told me there that you were surprised to see people who were so passionate about a company. And you said you had only ever seen that in Zumba. And that's when we became friends. You came on as one of our advisors, and you've kind of been holding my hand and helping me figure out the mindvalley brand. Everything from the way this office space where we are filming this is set up, you will notice certain nuances about this office space that emerge from Jeffrey's mind, from the colors to the style to the visual, all the way to the feeling that the students get when they use mindvalley products. Now, we're not there yet. We have a long way to go. And one of the things that I've learned from you is just how deep branding can go. But let's get started. What is the first thing that someone watching needs to understand to go on this journey, to take their company or their job and turn it into a transformative brand.

So the first thing that you need to understand is that there are three different types of brands. So the first type of brand is a functional brand. So, for example, you know, Microsoft sells a word processor and many other products, but they're functional in nature. The second is experiential brands. So Disney sells magic, and because it sells magic, it's able to rise above any particular product category and go into multiple product categories. It has permission to do that. So Disney will sell magic, you know, in theme parks and in movies and in, you know, cruises, etc. And then there is a transformational brand. The transformational brand is a brand that creates a new type of human. It's the reason I'm sitting in this chair today. It's the reason I love Mindvalley. So these brands, very few, I mean, I can only count them in one hand. They create a new type of human. And I'll tell you, I will die complete. As you know, as an artist, I will die complete. If I have been able to work on such a brand, on a brand that moves humanity forward, truly creates a new type of human. And so that's why I'm at Mind Valley.

Amazing. So does this apply to every product, every service? Should everyone be aspiring to become a transformational brand?

No. But I will tell you this. There are years where I spend $100 million on media and traffic and I would brag about that. And I think it's ridiculous. I kick myself now because that's not what matters. You should be spending as least money as possible. That's not what matters. In the world today, we are seeing that buying eyeballs is not. Not enough buying. There's a. It's like a seesaw. The, the, the less brand you have, the more your. Your acquisition cost is going to be. The more brand you have, the less your acquisition cost is going to be. So we live in a commoditized world. Everything is commoditized. And, and only the only true differentiator is how a product makes you feel. And that's largely informed by brand. Let me explain that to you.

So the brand is how the product makes you feel. Would that be a definition?

Yes. So one of my methodologies is that we look for the peak experience of your product. So at Zumba, we used to sell weight loss. That's what we used to sell. And one day we were looking at a Zumba class and we noticed that 20 minutes into the class, something shifted. This woman just totally lost her inhibitions and she lost herself in the music. And we freeze framed and we said that that's what we want to sell. And that was an experience, you know, that's an emotion. And we said, okay, let's call this something. We called it freeing electrifying joy. And let's stretch it across the entire realm.

You said you called it something, you called it freeing electrifying joy.

Yes.

And that was the emotion that that lady was feeling.

We wanted to make a neural connection between freeing electrifying joy and Zumba. Whenever you feel that feeling, we want you to think about Zumba. And so the challenge, the creative challenge was how do we stretch that feeling across the entire. Before you've even taken a Zumba class, just by logging onto the website or seeing an image, you know, an ad or something, you get a hit of freeing, electrifying joy, you know, and so the product is in the service of deepening that. That emotional experience. And that's what great brands do.

And I noticed that when I go to the Zumba website or if I look at Zumba clothing, everything has freeing, electrifying joy. If you look at the website, you look at the expression of the imagery and the website. When I look at Zumba clothing, it's electrifying. It's orange and yellows, there's tassels, which kind of feel freeing. The imagery of the clothing is always people in these peak states of joy. So that's a brand filter. Correct. Now, I remember you helped mindvalley find its brand filter, and I believe the brand filter is not something that we publicly say. It's an internal vibe. Right. It's something that we speak about internally. But we try to make sure that everything across mindvalley meets the filter. Now, one of the elements of the mindvalley filter that I can share is lit or light. Right. You'll notice that across mindvalley, if you look at pictures of our events, you'll see these, like, these bizarre light streaks across the events. We're filming this in Mindvalley's auditorium. Do you notice the lights projected behind me? That, too, is a reflection of that filter. The filter is not just on our website or our imagery. It's actually in our physical space as well. Our office just below here. We, which is an ink magazine Top 10 World's Most Gorgeous office is called the Temple of Light, because as the sun rises and sets, it paints the walls of that office with a unique light. So what I learned from you is to take that emotion of the brand, what you call the brand filter, and apply it everywhere. But my question is, how do we find that brand filter? Is it a word? Is it two words? Is it a combination of the word? Where does that essence come from?

Yeah. So, first of all, the words don't matter, because what you're looking for is an emotion. And words can never define an emotion. They can point to an emotion, but they can never be the emotion itself. So one of the things that I would say is don't get caught up with the words. But the methodology is very simple. You look at your product experience and you look at where's the peak experience of the product. So for Zumba, it was that moment 20 minutes into a class. So for Mindvalley, the, the peak experience experience was the moment where, where people just are in awe. They feel lit up wonder. For, for Wildfit, the peak experience is that moment where you're free from, from having to eat that cookie. You, you feel free. It's freedom, you know. And so, and so you find that, you look at your product experience and you find that peak experience and then you turn that into your brand filter. You call it something, it doesn't matter what you call it because remember, we're talking about an emotion, we're not talking about some words. And then your aim is to stretch that across everything. Because I'll tell you something, when the reason we started investing so much in the build out of the mindvalley office is because once you're in it, once you're in that emotional place, you start projecting it trains you on how to look at it. So the Zumba class became much funner when we said we're about freeing electrifying drug when we emoted that. When people, you know, people have now a lens by which they can look at it and it makes it more.

Fun that that concept almost messes with your mind because when you speak about branding, it's almost metaphysical. You live the brand, you immerse yourself in the brand and then the brand becomes, the brand becomes more tangible, it becomes more real.

I mean it starts with the leader really. You have to get to a place where you see its inevitability. When we think back, you know, 20 years, fitness used to suck. You know, fitness was, you know, there are slogans like no pain, no gain and sacrifices grace and ah, people. You'd hear people moaning and grunting in a gym. That was fitness. And, and we all of a sudden saw that fitness didn't need to suck, you know, and, and that we could. That it could be a liberating experience experience of freeing electrifying joy. And so once you see that really clear, you can't help but create that. And so that's why it's so important to dress, you know, to immerse yourself.

So you came up with a completely new feeling and associated that with fitness. And I believe the Zumba tagline became ditch the workout, join the party.

That's another thing that we do in branding is, is. I call it the contrarian. Actually Peter Thiel calls it the contrarian question. I call it the contrarian world worldview, which is what Brule? What rule thing are you does exists in the world that you're gonna break, and that wins brand love. So for us, it was, you know, that idea that, that fitness is painful. You know, we said, we called bullshit on that. And so we positioned against that and we said, ditch the workout, join the party.

I love that. So the first rule is the brand filter.

Yeah.

The second rule is the contrarian rule.

Yes.

You. You call out the BS in the world that you're seeking to disrupt and you make that the essence of your brand.

You make that the, the. So that would be the vision of your brand. Okay, so the brand filter is the emotion of your brand. It's what you emote. That's why you never tell it to someone. See, brand marketing is what you say. Brand is my body language. So you know, and brands have that. Brands have body language. Apple doesn't need to say anything. Apple could just say, shot on an iPhone and it's one of the best ads ever because it is emoting so much.

So what then would be the contrarian question for Apple?

That computers are supposed to be complex. Apple positioned against complexity, if you think about it. So Apple positioned against, you know, the computer and it was getting more and more complex and frustrating.

Right.

They said, no, we're going to simplify it.

You're right. Before Apple computer ads look like this, it spoke about RAM and hard drive memory and terabytes and all of these words that would confuse your mom.

Exactly. Apple is about delightful simplicity. Apple is about an emotion that, that emotion of delight. And, but, but hold on. Before, before the iPhone, Remember smartphones, remember BlackBerry? It was complex. It was frustrating. Before itunes, do you remember digital music? It was Napster. It was in insanity. Apple had permission to go into these places, into these different verticals because like Disney, it sold something that was beyond the vertical and so it had permission to go there. Look, Microsoft, IBM, they had the same engineering, engineering prowess that Apple had. They could have gone into music.

So what do you think is the contrarian question for mindvalley?

Oh, wait, but before we get to the contrarian question for mindvalley, there's something really important to, to understand about Apple or about the, the system. So we've got the brand filter, right? So that's what, what connection, what emotional connection you're trying to create? So it's a neurological thing. You're literally creating an, a neural connection of neural pathways way in the brains of people. Then the next thing that you want to create, that you want to understand is what's your anti filter? I call that the Trigger. So for Apple it was frustration. Frustration is what they positioned against, right? And then you want to create what you want to understand. What's your trigger crystal? The trigger crystal for Apple was the trigger. What crystal?

Crystal.

How do you crystallize frustration? So the trigger crystal for Apple was the error message. Every time you heard somebody, you hear somebody have an error message, like, you.

Should get another screen of debt that Microsoft users were so, so familiar with.

Right? So, so it's like every time you, anybody gets an error message, you're like, you should have had an Apple. Like Apple comes to mind every time, right? You. You see that? And so they created that by design.

Okay? So there's the brand filter, the emotion of the brand, the body language of the brand. There's the contrarian question, which is what the brand is positioning itself against. There is the trigger crystal.

Okay, the trigger and the trigger crystal.

The trigger and the trigger crystal. So the trigger for Apple is frustration. The trigger crystal is the error message. Okay? So let's take one step back because I can see that like many geniuses, your mind moves really, really, really fast. What would you say is the contrarian question for mindvalley based on what you've seen?

Yeah, that education is a drag. That education is extrinsically rewarding. That you go to college so you could get a degree, so you could get the right job, so you could, could, you know, and, and that's all crap.

It's. I love that you're calling it right.

Education can be.

And growth, it can be fulfilling, it can be powerful, it can truly bring happiness into your life rather than just keep you safe.

I went to a fest, you know, three years ago, and I thought I was going to a personal development, you know, right. Weekend seminar or something. And, and I thought it was gonna look, it was gonna be a boar, basically. I thought it was gonna be a drag. And instead what I found was that it was an incredible experience, full of wonder and awe, and it was beautiful. And so that education has never looked that way. So there it creates the dissonance. So you know when you show a close up of a person totally lost in the music and you say, that's fitness. There's a mental mind, if you will. Right. And, and with mindvalley, it's the same, the same thing. Education has never looked this way. Personal growth has never looked this way. And now because personal growth looks this way, because personal growth, we've created that emotional connection that broke brand filter. Now we have permission to go into other verticals and that's what we're trying to build out in Mindvalley now.

So that was the contrarian question.

Yeah.

Now what is the trigger?

It's when you're sitting in a class and you can't wait for it to be over. You know, it's when you're memorizing something that you, you're only doing it for the grade. You don't. You know, it doesn't matter. It's when, when you're checked out throughout your education.

Interesting. And the trigger crystal, the trigger crystal.

We have to define. But for me, it's, it's, it's that, it's that moment when you're, when you're, you feel like you're, you're. You're lying to yourself.

Right.

Spending all these hours in front of you in a book or something, and you don't really. You forget it the next day you're.

Doing it for a piece of paper or, or for a degree that you think is going to buy you safety. Okay, so let's quickly recap. So the first thing is you want to figure out the brand filter, the emotion behind the brand. Now, what I learned from you, Jeffrey, is that you don't want to pick a common emotion, such as bliss, because bliss already has mind share. So with Zumba, you strung three words together. Likewise with mindvalley, we strung three words together. So your brand filter is a series of words that, when strung together, becomes unique to your brand.

Yeah. Yeah. Well, look, Coca Cola has owned happiness for a long time. First of all, there's a, there's a problem because the actual product doesn't deliver happiness.

No.

You know, even though, remember what I.

Said, it delivers diabetes.

Right. But remember what I said, that, that sometimes a great branding is able to give you a filter by which you project on the product.

Right.

And so you can change the product. But Coca Cola is sugar in a bottle. You know, that's all it is.

But it's brilliant even. It's, it's. Instagram says, spreading positivity.

Yeah, but Coca Cola has had to bankroll happiness, Right? Because it's a really broad emotion and the product doesn't deliver it. So it's handicapped in those two ways. If you make the emotion a lot narrower, something that is more specific, it's easier. Easier to own. Right. That.

And this is why with Zumba, you strung three words together.

Right. We wanted to make it really narrow.

Okay. And then the second thing is the, the contrarian question.

It's the contrarian worldview.

Yes, the contrarian Worldview, it's what is your brand? What, what does your brand stand for and stand against?

Yeah.

Would that be a way of explaining it?

Yeah. So, you know, in another, another way of, of saying that it's very similar to why. How Simon Sinek talks about your why or your vision. You know, it's, it's, it's. We believe that blah, blah, blah, and we're going to change the world in blah, blah, blah. We're going to, it's, it's, it's what you want to gift to the world. What br do you want to break so you can gift it something to the world? A little bit more truth to the world. That's the contrarian.

I see, I see. So let's look at a couple of other things. So you're wearing tigers, right? So those. That's a very unique shoe from Japan. Phil Knight, if you read his book, his, his book on the story of Nike Shoe Dog, Right. He started out reselling those in Oregon, I believe, and there was some dispute with the makers of Tiger, which are great shoes. I own a pair of Tigers as well. He went and started his own brand, Nike, and then came to dominate the landscape. And so you have two brands of shoes. One remained relatively obscure, popular in Japan, but relatively obscure. One became a global phenomenon. What did Phil Knight do differently with Nikes that made them different from Tiger?

I love that you asked that question, and I just want to rephrase the question. Can we just compare Nike and Reebok?

Yes, let's compare Nike and Reebok, because.

I don't know enough about this brand. So I know Reebok very well. Reebok wanted to license the Zumba brand. We worked with them for a year and then the deal fell apart. And when you walk into the Nike campus, you get something that you don't get when you walk into Reebok. You get soul, you get heart. See, the problem, the problem with most branding experts out there is that they brand by formula. They, they know a bunch of concepts and they have a lot of book, you know, concepts like brand, filter and contrarian worldview, even though those are mine. But, but they're trying to be formulaic about it. And that's like creating an artistic masterpiece by formula. You know, there are many studio musicians that can play any song you want, but only a handful of stage musicians can actually connect because they have something beyond the craft. They have soul. And so that's what Nike has that Reebok doesn't have. And also Reebok has an Identity crisis. Nike is about victory. I mean, even the word, the goddess of the goddess Nike is victory. It's that feeling that they sell. You walk into the Nike campus, you see these amazing athletes, these pictures of, you know, the Air Jordan, and it's massive. It's all victory that they're selling. It's an emotional thing. Nike, Reebok is selling you a shoe. Nike is selling you an inspiration, a vision.

And you're saying it's the. It's the intersection of these four ideas that is giving Nike that soul that its competitors don't have. It seems that the contrarian question leads to a deep conviction within the company or the brand.

Yes, yes. But there's a moment, I call it the shift. When you see it and you devote your life to it. You know what I mean? It's. Think about an artist, Michelangelo, chipping away at the statue of David, and he's bleeding. He hasn't eaten in three days. He hasn't slept. His wife hates him, and he's willing to die for that. You can put yourself there, right? You can put yourself in that moment where nothing matters except releasing David from that marble. If you look at great founders, you look at Phil Knight, you look at Steve Jobs, they had that. As a matter of fact, I believe that Apple killed Steve Jobs at 56. And you know what? You might not agree with this, but that's the disposition that it takes. And by the time.

What do you mean by Apple kill Steve Jobs?

Apple killed Steve Jobs. Steve Jobs was a stress, you know, angry guy, artist, genius guy. And. And he. He died likely from the stress. I mean, I believe Apple killed Steve Jobs. I don't, you know, from being.

From having to. To. To keep pushing and pushing and pushing for that brand.

Yes. But let me tell you something. By the time death came around, it took nothing but a dead man, an empty man, a man that had left everything on the canvas. And I can't think of a better death than that. A death where all the music is out of you. It takes that level of conviction to create a masterpiece, to create a. You know, whether it's an artistic masterpiece or a brand. And brand is art. Amazing brands are art. Amazing brands move. The definition of art, to me, is something that can move people. Right. You know, and if you're tattooing the Zumba logo or the Apple logo or the Harley Davidson logo on your body, it's not because of the functional benefit that it delivers. It's because it's moved you. Right? It's moved you very deeply. And and so we must acknowledge that that brand is art.

Right? So really this, this is such an interesting conversation because we're attempting to define the soul of a company, of a product. We're attempting to define how great artists like Phil Knight, like Apple, like Walt Disney created companies that are essentially works of art. We're trying to do the same thing with Mindvalley and perhaps you want to do that with your company. So again, let's, let's, let's try to repeat what we know thus far. And again, because so much of this, and I suspect this is true for you, Jeffrey, you built a household name in Zumba. Right. It's become this incredibly valuable Company. Inc. Magazine 2012 Company of the Year. It's just the world's America's largest radio station. Zumba had the power to take a song like Despacito and make it the most watched video on YouTube. Now, I believe a lot of these insights, when you talk about them, they almost seem intuitive. Not. It doesn't seem that there's a manual for it.

Yeah. So there is one very important thing that every artist has. You know what I mean? If you have that level of conviction to your brand, you're going to listen to your brand more than you're going to listen to the experts. You're going to listen to your brand more than you're going to listen to your customers. Customer research.

Right.

You know, if they, they asked, if you've talked, you know the saying, if Henry Ford asked, were to ask.

Right.

Customers what they wanted, they would have said faster horses. Right. Customers don't know. Experts don't know.

Right.

This is akin to you becoming obsessed with parenting experts and not seeing your kid.

Right.

You know, your, your job is to, to find his truth and to help him be the most true to himself he can be. Or her. And so, and so, so the brand is going to. And, and this is what I mean by the conviction that the leader needs to have. The brand is going to take you and to places where often you don't want to go. Like your kid. Our friend Dr. Shefali talks about your kid comes into this world to grow you, while your art does the same thing. It has a way of staring you in the face.

So that's a really interesting idea. One of the biggest disagreements I sometimes have with my team is my team is that, okay, we need to build this, but we want to look at the data. We want to do customer research. And I have to tell them, don't, don't do customer research. I've seen this in my soul. Now this is actually true for all great inventions. All great products. Inventions app come first from intuition and then are refined by data.

That's right. They're validated by data. So what, what you want to be doing is you want to. Let's demystify intuition, because intuition is such a mystical word. So what are you actually listening for? This is the art of listening. Right. What are you actually listening for? You're listening for problems. Whenever you have a problem, you're listening to resonance, serendipity, whenever something makes sense from several angles. So let me give you an example of a problem. At one point, 2008 or something, there is a pirated Zumba DVD on every street corner in Mexico City. And we were like, this is awful. This is killing our business. We don't know, should we pull out of the market? Should we take some sort of legal action? Yeah, we didn't know. And we sat with the problem and all of a sudden the problem revealed to us everything, our entire business model. We realized that if we put a call to action in each one of those DVDs, find a Zumba class, we would turn the Pirates into a street marketing team for free. And all of a sudden, we start creating a ton of demand for free instructors, which meant that we start creating a ton of instructors. And Mexico is now one of our biggest countries because of that. And our entire business model was built on that. We called, we call it the feeder system. We're trying to make our instructors successful, feed people into their classes, and as long as that happens, the entire ecosystem is healthy.

Right. And you speak a lot about looking at the synchronicities in the world happening, connecting the dots and letting that help you discover the next iteration of your product or service.

Yeah. So the first thing in listening is that you need to honor your brand like you would honor your child. So, so the. I think we can all agree that forcing your child to become a doctor is not honoring your child, is. Is looking, not looking at your child. I think we can all agree that there's a certain level of respect so that you can see it, you can honor it, and you can have a relationship with it. As a matter of fact, I think you have a relationship with the mindvalley brand. You told me the other day that you talk to it, it talks to you, and it takes that level of honor to the brand so that it can show you the serendipity, show you where it needs to go.

The, the. The way of describing it is almost mystical. I feel that the brand has an energy of its own and the brand calls for certain things. And sometimes I have to go against what seems like common sense business strategy or what seems like marketing data to follow what I feel the brand is calling me to do. And you've always pushed me to do that. For example, we know that digital revenue, people learning online is the bulk of revenue for mindvalley by a long shot. But the brand has been calling us to create events, to create opportunities for people to connect. We haven't figured out how to fully make this profitable yet. So we are pumping money into it, but we keep doing it because we feel this is what the essence of mindvalley is saying we have to do, get people to connect. So we are investing in technology for connection, we're investing in events for connection. And this currently is a money sink, but we keep doing it anyway because we feel that. I feel that this is what needs to happen. And you've noticed that same thing because we are both operating on that base of intuition.

Yeah, look, mindvalley wants to be a cult brand. A few minutes ago you had a Freudian slip and you, you, you said, instead of saying these entrepreneurs, Steve Jobs, Phil Knight and Walt Disney, you said these artists, Steve Jobs, Walt Disney, you know, and, and I thought it was just such a brilliant thing. I, I had a little inward smile when you said that because, yes, all, every one of these entrepreneurs has felt the same thing that you're feeling, where it's like they're just being called by the brand to go somewhere, like an artist like Michelangelo had to liberate David from the marble. He was being called to do that. It's coming through them, not from them. And their job is to devote themselves to that, to commit themselves to that. If you go through a shift where, where you as the brand steward, as a leader of the brand, can, can honor the brand and devote yourself to it. The brand is going to take you to places, to the, to where it needs to be. And often that's the place where you don't want it to be. Right. And so, so the brand wants to take us there. But the problem is, as the founders, as you know, we have to put aside our, our pretense. We have to put our side, our, our self consciousness and, and we have to become vulnerable. And so it stares us back in the face and we're like, ah, we don't. This is, this is scary. Brands have a way of doing that to you the way kids have a way of doing that to you. If you're truly branding like an artist, I'm saying that you need to believe in yourself. You need to. As an artist, you need to. To follow that intuition. You need to validate it right after.

Yeah, because you can't be delusional. Right. You need to validate it. But often the clues are there within you.

Yeah, but, but by the way, the, the, the infamous or the famous reality distortion field that's created by the shift. That's created by you seeing it so clearly. So the first, the first thing that we spoke about is you have to respect it. It has to be a separate entity to you. Right. The second thing is you have to listen to it. And the third thing, and then, and then you see it, it reveals itself to you as, as a complete picture. And then you're in the distorted reality field and then you can't unsee that.

That's amazing. So let's do a quick recap. So the first thing is defining. Defining the, the emotions of the brand. What was the word you use? The brand filter. Yeah, the brand filter. The second.

Well, but, but there's something before that. First you look for the peak experience in the, in the product, and then that helps you define the peak experience.

Gives you the brand filter. And the second component was the peak.

Experience can also be a negative experience. It just has to be a peak. So for example, you, Jagermeister is a horrible. I don't know. Have you ever had a shot of. It's, it's awful. Right, right. But they've created an entire brand around that moment when you're like, your face is all weird. And that's the, that's the moment.

Right.

That's their peak experience.

Wow. Okay. And then the second thing is.

So the second thing is the trigger.

The contrarian.

I know, yeah. The second thing is. Actually the first thing would be the contrarian. The second thing would be the brand filter. The third thing would be the trigger, and the fourth thing would be the trigger crystal.

Okay, so the contrarian is what you. Sorry, it's the contrarian question. Right.

The contrarian worldview.

The contrarian worldview. That's what you stand against or what you stand for. And then there is the trigger. The trigger is that frustration in the world that you want to eliminate. And the trigger crystal is the representation of that frustration. In the case of Apple, it is complexity, the frustration of using these complex computers, Microsoft machines, and then the error message. And I used to work for Microsoft, so I can vouch for that. Like Microsoft Word. I was a bug Tester for Microsoft Word. I was told this was 1998. I was told there are 100,000 bugs in this product. You got to find as many as you can. And it was so complex to use, and it would crash. That would be the, the error message, right? The. The trigger crystal was to crash. And then finally, like holding all of this is this act of looking for the. The seeds of the brand within your past history, the founder's past history. What, what were the life moments that you went through? What were your interests? What were your passions? What were your frustrations? What were you truly good at? And those often become the seeds, the edge that give that brand its unique flavoring. Every brand is art, and every founder is an artist.

Yes. And there's also the new human, right? The new human, the identity. So the weekend warrior for Nike. The.

Right. And that's the advanced. That's an advanced level tip.

That's the transformational brand. Very few brands get there, right?

And when you really get good at it, you create a new type of human, such as the Nike weekend warrior or the Harley Davidson irreverent biker.

That's right. And, and, and so if you look at. So. So Apple celebrated, you know, the, the creative genius, right? And Apple was, was inspired to celebrate the creative genius by Nike. Nike celebrated the. The. The victorious, you know, person that is about to dunk the ball, you know, like victory. Nike celebrated the creative genius. And Mind Valley celebrates the. The people that didn't let education, the educational system rob them of their growth. So Steve Jobs is one of those. Elon Musk is another. Mark Zuckerberg, all of these college dropouts that took their education upon themselves, took their personal growth upon themselves, loved it. They had. You know, Elon Musk was landing one of his rockets the other day, and I saw him look at the sky with a glint in his eye, and I recognize that glint. My son has the same glint in his eye when he plays with his toy rockets. And I hope to God that the education system doesn't steal that glint from his eyes like it does from so many. For so many people. And that's why mindvalley is gonna. That's what mindvalley is gonna gift the world.

And we are still figuring that out, right? Is it the glint in the eye? Is it. Is it the personal growth lifestyle? Is it the person who has that discipline to dedicate to their own practice? We're figuring that out. But that's another powerful aspect of developing a brand. So thank you, Jeffrey.

It's been a true pleasure. Thanks.

And where can people learn more about you?

Jeffreypearlman.com awesome.

Hope you guys enjoyed this episode. I know this episode wasn't in a usual structure, right? But that's how Jeffrey's mind works. And this is like a really powerful genius who has been helping me out for the last two and a half years and I really wanted to bring him for all of you who are entrepreneurs and have some growth, great gift that you need to bring to the world. So I hope you enjoyed this episode. And as you see the mindvalley brand evolve over the coming years, know that it is this man's mind that is guiding us.