Money Making Expert: How to Turn Attention into $$$

Rory Vaden 0:00 Automation is to your time what compounding interest is to your money.

Codie Sanchez 0:06 If you have ever wanted to grow on social media, to be seen as an expert in what you do, to leverage audience to make more money, to get more sales, and to figure out how the biggest names in the world actually got there, this interview is for you. This is an interview with Rory Vaden, who is a multiple times New York Times best-selling author himself, and he has created what I would say is the formula for growing online, growing audience, and then figuring out how do you make more money in your business and your life once you become an expert.

Rory Vaden 0:38 When you have a genuine passion f- for helping other people, and if you can obsess about it the way that Dave's obsessed about getting people out of debt, the way that Lewis obsesses about helping people overcome self-doubt, your world starts to change, and you start to change the world of people around you.

Codie Sanchez 0:54 You have a lot of systems and ideas for how you get people to think in frameworks.

Rory Vaden 0:59 Think about it like a rocket. Your personal brand should be the sort of side boosters that you use to get the business off the ground. But then once you get it launched out into space, then your personal brand falls off, and the business can just s- sort of follow a trajectory and live on without you.

Codie Sanchez 1:16 Interesting.

Rory Vaden 1:17 The best form of marketing in the world is a...

Codie Sanchez 1:23 This is The Big Deal podcast, and I'm Codie Sanchez. This interview is really interesting. It's hyper tactical. If you don't want to learn about how to make more money online, and you don't want to learn about how to grow online, you're gonna hate this interview. But if you do like that, I would sit down, grab a pen, listen up, maybe listen to it twice, because this man has not only done this for himself but for many, many others. Without further ado, I want to bring you my dear friend Rory, and I want to get into it. So when I was thinking about writing my book, and then I was thinking about marketing my book, there was sort of one human I called all the time, which was you. And we talked about, man, you know, how do I get on the right stages? How do I make this go really viral? You know, who are the people that are behind sort of the biggest names in the world? And your name obviously came up, and we've shared many a stage now across the country. But, you know, today I, I thought we could start-

Rory Vaden 2:14 By the way, that book went New York Times best-seller, baby, didn't it?

Codie Sanchez 2:17 [laughs] It did. We-

Rory Vaden 2:18 It sure did. It sure did

Codie Sanchez 2:18 ... and you said we were going to, too. I was like, "I don't know. Is it?" [laughs]

Rory Vaden 2:22 It, it was, it was awesome. I'm proud of you, dude.

Codie Sanchez 2:25 Well, thanks. You helped a lot. We, um, many a late night, uh, text, and we were joking, but I hate voice notes.

Rory Vaden 2:31 [laughs]

Codie Sanchez 2:31 You love voice notes. So I had to outlaw them.

Rory Vaden 2:33 We have conflict.

Codie Sanchez 2:34 I know, exactly, except they were so good that I had to listen to them, which was so annoying for me, too.

Rory Vaden 2:39 And then you... I learned a lot because you were like, "Hey, I need you to communicate with me in writing." And I was like, "Okay. That's good."

Codie Sanchez 2:45 [laughs]

Rory Vaden 2:45 "I will write it, I will

Rory Vaden 2:46 write it out for you, Codie Sanchez."

Codie Sanchez 2:47 Codie is honest. Codie is too honest. Um, but where I thought we could start for people today was, um, I believe that the internet and attention is the most powerful weapon that you have today-

Rory Vaden 2:58 Mm-hmm

Codie Sanchez 2:58 ... in the 21st century. And if you have money, you can buy attention. Uh, but if you don't have money, you can't buy attention. And so for people today, I was kind of thinking, if we could break this down from, let's say right now you have no audience, no followers. Where would you start?

Rory Vaden 3:16 Yeah. I, I mean, you, you have to start by changing how you think about online. I mean, I think when we talk about personal branding, people, their mind goes crazy to, like, TikTok and, and, and algorithms and brand guidelines and colors and logos and fonts. The way that we define it is that personal branding is simply the digitization of your reputation. So what I would want... If you're just starting out, what I would say is remember that this is reputation. It is as old as time. Like, what matters more than the number of followers you have is the depth of trust that your followers have with you. And so people get all freaked out about, like, who they're gonna be on camera and what they're gonna say, and it's like, be who you are in real life. Be someone that is an expert. Be someone who adds values to pe- to... that... Be someone who adds value to people's lives and, and build trust first and foremost.

Codie Sanchez 4:12 Love it. So if we were gonna get super tactical-

Rory Vaden 4:15 Yeah

Codie Sanchez 4:15 ... so first we gotta start out with getting an online following is really just reputation increase, right? But if, if somebody came to me and they were like, "I want to grow my personal brand fast, and I want to follow your system, Rory," what would be the first couple of steps that you would tell them? Do you have, like, a steps one through 10?

Rory Vaden 4:32 Sure. Let's... Here's what I would say. Don't start with why, start with who.

Codie Sanchez 4:36 Mm.

Rory Vaden 4:37 So I love Simon Sinek, and, uh, but when you're building a personal brand, what matters most is being clear on who you're talking to.

Codie Sanchez 4:44 Mm-hmm.

Rory Vaden 4:44 The sooner... Once you're clear on who you're talking to, every other downstream decision becomes clear. What are their problems? What content will attract them? What can I sell to them? How much can they afford? What do they need? Where are they? How do I reach them? If you are unclear on your who-

Codie Sanchez 5:00 Yeah

Rory Vaden 5:00 ... every other decision becomes fuzzy. Like, what do I say? What do they want to hear? What topics? What... It's if you have diluted focus, you get diluted results. So you have to get crystal clear on who you're talking to. Now, the shortcut on this to figure out who is your who, what we realized is that for all of us, you are most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were. You are most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were. That's the fastest path to get clear on your who, and once you nail that, now all of a sudden I go, "I-" I can serve that person in the deepest way.

Codie Sanchez 5:38 Yeah.

Rory Vaden 5:38 And now all of a sudden you have a, you have a chance to make content that breaks through the noise. So that's the first place. You start with who.

Codie Sanchez 5:44 That's so true, which is basically just like in business, you build an avatar. You build your digital avatar who's gonna be the person you sell things to.

Rory Vaden 5:51 Mm-hmm.

Codie Sanchez 5:51 And if you're selling attention, it's the same exact thing, right?

Rory Vaden 5:53 Absolutely.

Codie Sanchez 5:54 And, and the biggest problem I think most founders have is they think, "Oh, it's my product. You know, I need to sell this coffee. The coffee's not selling 'cause the coffee's not perfect enough." But often your problem is actually you don't know who you're selling to, and so you never can.

Rory Vaden 6:06 Yeah, absolutely.

Codie Sanchez 6:06 Okay.

Rory Vaden 6:07 And look what you're doing. I mean, you, you are, you are serving the person you once were. You're teaching people how to do all of the things. Same with us, right? What are we doing? We're helping experts, entrepreneurs, speakers, authors, coaches, whatever, because we've been in this space our, our entire career. That's the shortcut.

Codie Sanchez 6:22 Let me guess. You've got one tool for email, one for SMS, and another for forms, maybe a separate dashboard for analytics, and somehow you're still not sure if anything's working. That's, I think, the reality for most e-commerce brands. Bloated tech stacks that eat time, wreck your margins, and require a full-time ops person just to function. Omnisend changes that. It's a single platform where email, SMS, signup forms, automation, segmentations, analytics all live in one clean dashboard. You get powerful tools without the learning curve or the price creep. You can launch campaigns in minutes, not hours, and you can buy customer journeys that trigger automatically based on behavior. And the data, it tells you what's working, what's not, and where to double down. Whether you're running lean or managing a growing team, Omnisend makes your marketing operate like a real system, not a to-do list. So if your stack feels like duct tape and prayer, it's time to upgrade. Omnisend was built for brands that are serious about scale. So after you've figured out your who, what is next if you wanna grow online?

Rory Vaden 7:19 Be able to answer this one question in one word. What problem do you solve for that person? If you look at some of the biggest personal brands in the world, you know, I think of, like, Brene Brown. Brene Brown owns the topic of shame. She has studied shame for decades, and she became one of the world's leading thinkers, one of the most influential people in the world, because she owns that topic. Uh, you look at Dave Ramsey. Dave Ramsey owns the topic of debt. Like, he owns that. He owns that word. Um, this is part of how I broke through the wall originally in our first company. All I did was study procrastination-

Codie Sanchez 7:56 Yeah

Rory Vaden 7:56 ... was the psychology of getting people to do things they didn't wanna do, right? My, my first book was Take The Stairs, and it was just a metaphor for how to get yourself to do the stuff you hate doing. Brand Builders Group now, the word that we solve is obscurity. All we do is help people become more wealthy and well-known. So most personal brands cannot speak with a level of clarity about what is the problem they solve for people, and in order for people to pay attention, I have to be able to solve a problem for them, or I at least have to be useful for them. So I would try to narrow that down to one word, and then I would also make a list of maybe 52 questions that your prospect has about the problem that you solve for them.

Codie Sanchez 8:39 Mm-hmm.

Rory Vaden 8:39 And I would start systematically addressing them.

Codie Sanchez 8:41 Mm.

Rory Vaden 8:42 And I'm just trying to go, how can I be so useful that they can't ignore me? How can I be so valuable that they have to pay attention? Uh, you know, when I got introduced to you, that, i- it's like when you get, when you meet high-profile people, you can't just jump in and sell them stuff. The goal should be, how can I be so useful they have to pay attention to me? At least that's, that's the goal. That's our strategy.

Codie Sanchez 9:08 It,

Codie Sanchez 9:09 it's actually so true. A lot of times people will say, "How do you get a mentor? How do you get a mentor?" And I think the answer to how you get a mentor is exactly that. Make yourself so useful that you become so valuable to them for $0 that they end up eventually wanting to pay you a lot of zeros. And it, it is this weird flip, and I think a lot of people struggle with that early on because they're like, "Well, I don't know anything. How am I gonna be useful to a Rory," right? Or, "How am I gonna be useful to a Dave Ramsey?" But they don't realize that all of us, we have actually just massively more needs. The more successful you become, the more holes you have to fill.

Rory Vaden 9:43 Totally.

Codie Sanchez 9:43 And so anywhere that you find some curiosity for a super famous person or for a super successful person, and you think, "God, I just wanna go down this rabbit hole, and I looked at their website and I found all the spots that I didn't understand, and I went to their social media and I created, like, three ideas for videos that they didn't have, and I just gave them the scripts," it's almost like this upfront work gives all of this back-end opportunity.

Rory Vaden 10:05 Absolutely, and I would say philosophically, that's another thing that, that the best personal brands in the world do, is they, they give first, they serve first, and they allow the money to show up second. It's like paying in rears versus paying in forwards, right? So there's some services we pay and then we get the service, but in the online world, it's like I have to automate trust at scale.

Codie Sanchez 10:27 Mm.

Rory Vaden 10:27 I have to be, I have to, uh... One, one of our, one of our f- our, uh, mantras that we say is save the best for first. Save the best piece of content you have for the very next thing that you teach. Like, the, the, you don't have to be scared about giving away all your good stuff and, and then no one buying. You have to be scared about not giving away anything good enough that nobody ever comes back. So you have to always push yourself to be like, again, it's just that, it's that value throttle, and it's like how can I increase the throttle here on adding value to everyone around me? And that applies, I think, offline and online. But, I mean, the reason people pay attention to you is your content is so freaking good. It's so useful. Um, and I think when you're picking your content strategy, I mean, high level i- it's one of the three E's. We call it the three E's. You're either entertaining And I'm not that entertaining. Um, but some of, some of you are, some of you can be. You have encouraging, so you can be inspiring and uplifting and, and, uh, I try to be a little bit about, of that. But for most of our clients, it's educational, and it's going, "What can I teach?" And y- everyone thinks, "Oh, I don't have anything to teach." And like you go, "Unless you're serving the person you once were." Then all of a sudden, all of us are qualified to teach because we've experienced the pain. We've overcome the obstacle. We've walked through the setback, and now all of a sudden, that's all the credibility that I need.

Codie Sanchez 11:56 Yeah, it's such a good point. You know, and it's... You know, one of my mentors said to me, "When you get in rooms with people who have more zeros than you, they can actually see into your future because they've been there." And so it's the same idea of, you know, I remember the first time before I was making a million dollars a year, before the business was making eight figures, before the business hit nine figures, I just got lucky in being in rooms where other people already had the business that I wanted.

Rory Vaden 12:19 Hmm.

Codie Sanchez 12:19 And it, you know, what was wild is because I got to sit next to, you know, John, who had a business that was already doing, you know, $8 million a year back when mine was doing $1 million a year, John basically said, "Oh, here's gonna be the next five issues that you have." And so because I knew that, since he had already been through it, I got to steal his 10,000 hours. I got to compress seven years into one year from his interaction.

Rory Vaden 12:41 Yeah.

Codie Sanchez 12:41 And so it, it is, it's a real value, I think, that people don't realize, that if you have something to share from your historical lessons, you know, you're doing the world a solid when you put it out there. And I, I didn't realize that at first because I thought people who taught just couldn't do. We've all heard that ad- adage. And I also thought, "Well, God, if it works so well, why are you telling other people? You know, why wouldn't you just go do it yourself?" And I remember seeing, like, a clip. We could actually play the clip here, which is from Mi- Mark Cuban. And his clip basically said, "If they're telling you about how to do it on the internet, it doesn't work because if it worked, they'd just go do it."

Rory Vaden 13:15 Hmm.

Codie Sanchez 13:15 And I thought that was so funny. Sounds great, except it's wrong. Because what actually happens is when you give more, you get way more in return, you know? And why do you think some of the richest men in the world, Ray Dalio, for instan- instance, are out telling his theory? 'Cause he gets more clients from it. He gets more deals from it. He gets more hires from it. So I think it's super, super powerful to do, uh-

Rory Vaden 13:35 Well-

Codie Sanchez 13:35 ... all of this.

Rory Vaden 13:36 Yeah. Well, and I, and I would, I would purport that there's another massive piece of the transaction that you don't hear enough about, which is-

Codie Sanchez 13:43 Hmm

Rory Vaden 13:43 ... yeah, you get money. Yeah, you get followers. Yeah, you get influence. The other thing you get is significance.

Codie Sanchez 13:49 Yeah.

Rory Vaden 13:50 You get purpose. You... There is nothing like the feeling you get when you help somebody else succeed, right? And you go, "Well, if you're so rich, why don't you go do it?" And it's like, well, there's a point where you go, "I'm not playing because I need more money." I get my thrills... Like, no kidding, when I walked into your office downstairs, the thing I was so excited to see was right next on your wall is a picture of your book cover that says New York Times Bestseller.

Codie Sanchez 14:15 Yeah.

Rory Vaden 14:16 I get... I'm so much more excited when a client has a level of success than even with our own these days.

Codie Sanchez 14:23 Yeah.

Rory Vaden 14:24 Because you climb that ladder enough times and you realize it's great, uh, and it's, and it's, it's worth doing, but it's still... There's always you're moving the goalpost. There's always a, there's always someone bigger than you, something better. There's, there's, there's something, you know, ahead. But when you help somebody succeed, it's not just the f- It's, it's a feeling you get. It, it creates context and value for your life, and I think that's what not enough people are talking about with the internet. The, and the other thing is you also don't need to have millions of followers to make millions of dollars.

Codie Sanchez 14:56 No.

Rory Vaden 14:56 Uh, one, one thing that the people watching this need to, need to understand is very few people are gonna

Rory Vaden 15:01 be you. They're gonna... The- very few people are gonna reach millions and millions and millions. The good news is you don't, not everybody has to. It's actually a lot... It tends to be easier for the average person to make more money by serving fewer people-

Codie Sanchez 15:17 Yep

Rory Vaden 15:17 ... in a deeper way, right, than it is to serve lots of people in, in a very shallow way. It's, it's like you have to... Don't be so focused on the width of your reach that you overlook the depth of your impact. Because just because you have a cat video go viral and you get lots of followers, that doesn't mean that people are gonna trust you and buy from you, right?

Codie Sanchez 15:40 No.

Rory Vaden 15:40 Just because a lot of people are watching doesn't mean they're gonna give you their money. Now, you might make money from the platforms, but even that tends to be pennies on the dollar.

Codie Sanchez 15:50 Pennies, yeah.

Rory Vaden 15:51 If I can serve a really small audience in a deep way, if I can be their favorite, if I can be their most trusted, if I can be the, the person that they look forward to consuming their post, that they don't just look in their feed, that they search my name, then I go, "That person is likely to hire me," and not just buy a $20 book, but someone who might spend a few thousand to tens of thousands of dollars in a program. For most people watching, that's the actual path to get rich is to serve a smaller audience in a deeper way. At least I think that's the more scalable way to do this.

Codie Sanchez 16:26 Give some examples of that because I totally agree with you, and I think actually there's a lot of downsides to super big reach, which is you have to almost water down your message slightly-

Rory Vaden 16:35 Mm-hmm

Codie Sanchez 16:35 ... to go so wide, and it has a direct anti-correlation to conversion, AKA getting people to buy things from you.

Rory Vaden 16:42 Yeah.

Codie Sanchez 16:42 And so, um, there's plenty of people who make way more money in their businesses with much, with a much smaller audience set. But, like, give some examples. Like, what would that be?

Rory Vaden 16:50 Well, one example would be us, honestly.

Codie Sanchez 16:52 Yeah.

Rory Vaden 16:52 So, you know, m- many of the... A lot of people have heard of our clients, right? You know, like Ed Mylett, Lewis Howes, and Amy Porterfield, like these really amazing clients that we work with. A lot of them have millions of followers.

Codie Sanchez 17:02 Yeah.

Rory Vaden 17:02 We do not.

Codie Sanchez 17:03 Yeah.

Rory Vaden 17:03 Right? But we're, we're generating m- multi eight figures, and you're going, "How?" We only have 1,000 customers. Um, and it's actually because of a technique that we call fractal math. Have you, have you, do, have you-

Codie Sanchez 17:15 No.

Rory Vaden 17:15 Okay, we need to talk about this.

Codie Sanchez 17:16 [laughs]

Rory Vaden 17:16 Okay. So for those of you that aren't numbers people, just stick with me for a second. I'll, I'll keep it simple. Fractal math is a strategy that we teach that says 10% of your customers will invest at a level 10 times more than they just did if you give them more intimacy.

Codie Sanchez 17:35 Yep.

Rory Vaden 17:35 Um, so let's say you have 1,000 customers and a $30 product. Okay, that's 30,000 in revenue. If you said, "How

Rory Vaden 17:46 can we double our business?" Most people would think, "Go get another 1,000 customers." And that's not wrong, but that is the most expensive way to double a business, because the most expensive customer is a new customer.

Codie Sanchez 18:00 Mm.

Rory Vaden 18:00 So it's not that you shouldn't do that or that you can't do that or that it doesn't work. It does work, but there's another way to do it. The other way to do it is to use fractal math. So if you had 1,000 people give you $30, fractal math says that 10% of those, which would be 100, will give you $300 if you give them a level up in intimacy. And then 10% of th- which is, by the way, that's another 30,000.

Codie Sanchez 18:25 Yep.

Rory Vaden 18:26 And then 10% of those, which would be 10, would give you $3,000, and 10% of those, which would be one, would give you $30,000. Here, you've quadrupled the revenue without a single dollar in customer acquisition cost. That's what I mean by going deep. It's by serving a smaller audience in a deeper way. And again, there's nothing wrong with wanting to serve millions of people, but the very definition of reaching millions of people means you have to create content that is applicable to millions of people.

Codie Sanchez 19:01 Yep.

Rory Vaden 19:01 Which means it tends to be money, relationships, spirituality, health, politics, right? Like, it, y- and you tend to kind of have to stay high level. To play that game, it's hard to also serve people in a really, really deep way.

Codie Sanchez 19:18 Yeah.

Rory Vaden 19:18 Um, it takes a lot of resources to play that, that width game. So anyways, it, it's y- it's, it's just realizing that there is another way to do this. So you could be a, a, a chiropractor and go, "I'm going to service a small number of clients in a deeper way." You could be a counselor and say, uh, or, or you know, think, say you're a marriage coach. It's one thing to have v- viral videos about marriage. You also can sell books. But you go, "Are there a few couples that I could truly counsel and go deep with?" And, you know, as intimacy increases, price increases.

Codie Sanchez 19:54 Yeah, you know, it's wild. So basically, if you wanted to quadruple your business with one move, it would be that. And, and it's not so much more sophisticated than pricing. Um, but it's really understanding that there's this correlation between pricing and intimacy when it comes to, let's say, knowledge products. You know what's wild? Over the last two weeks, you are the only reason this podcast has grown. I don't know if you're new here or you've been here for a while and y'all just started sharing more, but you are the only reason that we continue to climb the charts and hopefully provide more and more value for you. We just moved up from top 100 to top 50 in biz on Spotify, which is cool. So thank you for sharing with your friends, and thank you for sharing with your employees, and thank you for sharing in your Slack groups and social media and everywhere else. And if you like this podcast, please do send it to another human that you care about, because you are a big deal to me, and I know they are a big deal to you, too, so it's a beautiful thing to do. Thank you for sharing the pod. I know you have something special for anybody that's listening today. If they wanna go and get a

Codie Sanchez 20:54 free...

Rory Vaden 20:54 Yeah, absolutely. So, so we do, we work with people one-on-one.

Codie Sanchez 20:58 Uh-huh.

Rory Vaden 20:58 We work, we work in a very intimate way. So if anyone is listening to this and they, they feel the calling to go, "I wanna share my expertise with more people. I wanna share my story with more people," if you go to freebrandcall.com/codie, you can request a call with our team, and we do the first call with everybody for free.

Codie Sanchez 21:17 And you'll tell them if they're, if it's not a good idea for them to do a personal brand.

Rory Vaden 21:19 Yeah, I mean, the first thing, honestly, what we are gonna wanna do is we're just gonna wanna hear your story.

Codie Sanchez 21:23 Yeah.

Rory Vaden 21:23 We wanna go, "Tell us your story. Where are you at on this journey? How fresh is this idea? Do you have a team? Do you not?" And we can work with people at all different levels. Not everyone we work with is Codie Sanchez.

Codie Sanchez 21:34 [laughs]

Rory Vaden 21:34 Most of them are, like, start- starting out.

Codie Sanchez 21:35 You don't want more than one of those. She's a handful.

Rory Vaden 21:37 [laughs] Um, but the, uh, yeah, and we will tell people, we'll say, "Hey, we feel like we can help you."

Codie Sanchez 21:43 Yeah.

Rory Vaden 21:43 And there's, there are certain people that we go, "We can really, really help you." We call them mission-driven messengers.

Codie Sanchez 21:48 Mm.

Rory Vaden 21:48 It's the people who are not just trying to make money, not just trying to, to grow their reach, the people who are on an absolute crusade to go, "This isn't, this is a calling for me." Those people culturally are gonna be the best fit for us. Um, and you know, there's certain parts that we can really help them with, and if we can't, we'll point 'em, we'll point 'em somewhere else.

Codie Sanchez 22:08 I wanna talk about, um, you've worked with, you know, a million different celebrities and sort of online influencers. Um, you run the real, real gamut. Who do you, what celebrities do you think are nailing personal brand the best today?

Rory Vaden 22:22 Mm. Well, so I, I think I, I'll use the two of our, our most flagship clients would be Lewis Howes-

Codie Sanchez 22:29 Yeah

Rory Vaden 22:30 ... and Ed Mylett. And I, I'll tell you the story about Lewis, okay? So one of our central philosophies, I've, I've said this already, is if you have diluted focus, you get diluted results. When we first started working with Lewis in 2018, we took him through an exercise that we call the revenue streams assessment, and we listed all these revenue streams on the board, and he had 17 revenue streams, and he was, like, really proud of that, 'cause he's like, "Multiple streams of income." The problem is that he only had like 12 people on his team. That's a lot of revenue streams to manage with only 12 people. And so the only thing we ever did for Lewis, I mean, Lewis gives us a lot of credit publicly. Like, frankly, we have not done much for him. But the one thing that I did kind of do for Lewis, I said, "Lewis, what would happen if you shut all of this stuff down and just went all in on this podcast thing?" Because for him, at the time, he had about 30 million downloads, and it took about eight years to get there.

Codie Sanchez 23:26 Wow.

Rory Vaden 23:26 And it was, the podcast was a traffic source. He was really making money from courses at the time. But the reason I mention him, Codie, is because he had a, a mastermind that was generating multi-seven figures in revenue. And in one conversation, he, he told me, he said, "Look, my, my real vision is I wanna impact 100 million people every week." And I said, "Well, if that's true, and this focus thing is true,

Rory Vaden 23:52 what if you went all in on that?" And he, out of one conversation, walked up and shut down a two million-plus revenue, $2 million revenue stream in one conversation, and he went all in on the podcast. And what happened was he went from 30 million downloads in the next two years to 500 million downloads. That is a decision about purpose. That is as, is a decision to stay true to what the vision is.

Codie Sanchez 24:21 Mm.

Rory Vaden 24:22 To say, "I care more about making a difference than I do about making a dollar." Now, they're not mutually ex- exclusive.

Codie Sanchez 24:28 Mm.

Rory Vaden 24:28 Lewis has made plenty of money, but he did make a short-term financial sacrifice to go all in on the vision. That is, I think, an epic story that is not something that data could really tell you to do. It was an instinct, an instinctual decision. So I love that. The other person that I'll use is I'll use Ed Mylett. Um, uh, I've gotten a chance to know Ed. We got to work with him a little bit over the years. Ed Mylett does not need any more freaking money. [laughs]

Codie Sanchez 24:58 No, he doesn't.

Rory Vaden 24:59 I, I-

Codie Sanchez 24:59 I've been to his house, one of them.

Rory Vaden 25:00 Yeah, well-

Codie Sanchez 25:01 And they're very, very large.

Rory Vaden 25:02 They're very large, and, and lavish, and, and amazing. Why is Ed Mylett speaking on stages? He doesn't need the money. He's doing it because he actually gives a crap about helping people, and this is what I believe is the future of the online influencer. It's not just so much what's the algorithm? How do I test the thumbnails? How do I split... Those are tactics that are important. They're like fundamentals of the business. But in a world of AI that solves those problems, that can generate thumbnails, and can split test things, and can optimize ad spends, and, and landing page conversion, what's going to separate is actually the humanity of the messenger.

Codie Sanchez 25:45 Uh-huh.

Rory Vaden 25:45 The person who goes, "I'm here because I actually give a crap about making your life better." By the way, this is the thing that attracted me to you-

Codie Sanchez 25:54 Yeah

Rory Vaden 25:54 ... um, was that when I saw you, I saw someone who didn't need money. Uh, I know that you're financially motivated, which is great, but what really attracted me to you was that you said, "I want to help Main Street America. I want to take the money f- uh, not just take s- steal money from people, but I wanna teach the principles of Wall Street, and I wanna take that to the people on Main Street." I think the reason you succeed, Codie, is not just 'cause you have a great team, and you guys use data, and you're smart, and you're intelligent, and you do all the systems. The reason you succeed is because people can tell that you care about helping them. You're actually on a crusade, and I would suggest that the more that AI levels the playing field of the tactics, the more that that human energy matters. That's what I'm drawn to, and that's what I think people are, are drawn to. So I, I go, who are the people that genuinely care? Um, Dr. Gabrielle Lyon, another client of ours.

Rory Vaden 26:55 When Dr. Lyon, we first started working together, I don't know, she had 100,000 Instagram followers? I don't know what she has now, but it's many times over that. I don't know how much money she's making. I know that she's impacting lots of people, and I know that when we first started working together, that's what she cared about.

Codie Sanchez 27:13 Yeah.

Rory Vaden 27:13 This is Dave Ramsey, right? I, I introduced you to Dave Ramsey. I've known Dave Ramsey since he had 100 employees. Like, uh, he has 1,000 employees now.

Codie Sanchez 27:21 Yeah.

Rory Vaden 27:21 He, uh, they do multi nine figures a year in annual revenue. There's a lot of people that don't like Dave Ramsey, and there's plenty of things he says that are controversial, but Dave is on the freaking radio every day for three hours, 30 years later still. Why? He didn't need money two decades ago.

Codie Sanchez 27:40 Nope.

Rory Vaden 27:41 He's on the radio because he gives a crap about helping people be out of debt because he tells the story of what it was like to go bankrupt and have somebody come into his home and take his daughter's crib. Like, that matters to him. That's what a mission-driven messenger is, and I think that's the part that AI can't replace. That's the part that, that's the part that we can only feel as humans, and I think that that is the part that is gonna matter more and more and more. And I'm not anti-AI. I love AI. I'm just saying I think this is the part, I think this is the future. It's the, it's not the vanity stuff. It's the h- it's the humanity stuff.

Codie Sanchez 28:19 It's so true. Well, and even, you know, I remember when I was in Dave's, uh, headquarters after you introduced us, and, um, what blew me away and, and I think transcends if you want to build a big company that lasts forever, and also if you want a lot of people to care about you on the internet, and also if you wanna have a huge impact, like, obsession is really hard to beat. And so-

Rory Vaden 28:39 Mm

Codie Sanchez 28:39 ... you know, people might think we're being touchy feely by saying, "We care about people, and if you care more, you'll get more." It's like, it's not enough to just care. You've gotta obsess. And when I walked into Dave Ramsey's headquarters, and the first thing that you see is, like, an ex- an example of the old car that he used to have that he sold books out of the back of. You know, it's an entire huge wall and almost, like, museum exhibit of every single person who's now debt-free. You know, it's, the, the public is allowed in every single day and given fresh cookies if they wanna come and listen to Dave talk.

Rory Vaden 29:11 Mm-hmm.

Codie Sanchez 29:12 And it's that he brings in his family. You know, it's that he, he... And then he's so obsessed that he, like, squeezed every bit of productivity out of me in that day [laughs] that he possibly could have.

Rory Vaden 29:22 [laughs]

Codie Sanchez 29:22 I think I did three podcasts. I met with his team. We had lunch, like, uh, because he just, he's obsessed about, about his problem set. And so I think the other thing, if you wanna be really successful on the internet and you wanna grow online, um, it's the most competitive game you could play because anybody can do it. And so the way that you win is by being obsessed about the thing that you're really interested in. And if you're more obsessed in something small, even better. So I, I totally agreed with that.

Rory Vaden 29:50 Yeah. I think I, I, I, I love that, and that is, he is a great example. And that is, you know, people, like- I'm so nerdy about book launches, and the art of speaking, and the business of speaking, and copywriting, and like... And it's like, but this is my uniqueness. And, and, uh, I'll share with you the best piece of branding advice I've ever received. It... This- I wish this was my quote. It's not. This, this came from a guy named Larry Winget. He said, "The goal is to find your uniqueness and exploit it in the service of others."

Codie Sanchez 30:23 Yeah.

Rory Vaden 30:24 To find your uniqueness and exploit it in the service of others. To figure out that thing that other people would think is so weird. They'd be like, "Rory, why do you care so much about, like, books?" And, and it's like, "I don't know. It's just who I am," right? It's the reason why Codie cares so much about laundromats, and, like, buying boring businesses. It's, it's just who you are, but you go, uh, that is... You lean into that. You become more of that. Um, here's another great quote. This one's from Sally Hogshead. She's my friend, and she says, "The world isn't changed by people who sort of care."

Codie Sanchez 30:55 Yeah.

Rory Vaden 30:55 Right? Nobody changed the world who sort of cared. You c- you change the world by caring so much that it's like you'll endure tremendous pain and tremendous sacrifice. But I th- I think that y- you know, there is a certain amount of money for most people that it starts to lose its drive. There is a certain amount of followers at some point for most people that starts to, like, lose its drive. There's a certain am- amount... Once you've spoken on stage in front of 10,000 people 100 times, it's not that you're not, like, excited to do it, it just... It's not the same. But when you have a genuine passion f- for helping other people, it's this insatiable desire that's healthy.

Codie Sanchez 31:39 Yeah.

Rory Vaden 31:39 And, and if you can obsess about it the way that Dave's obsessed about getting people out of debt, the way that Lewis obsesses about helping people overcome self-doubt, the way that Dr. Lyon obsesses about people being healthy and getting accurate health information, the way that, the way that Ed o- obsesses over helping people realize that they're capable of doing more, then your world starts to change, and you start to change the world of people around you. And, uh, anyways, I don't know. I'm just, I'm a geek for this game.

Codie Sanchez 32:06 Yeah. Well, I also think it's the way... Like, the way that you never lose money and the way you don't lose everything is you make sure you really know who you're serving. You know, I think a perfect example of, like, an anti-goal would be, like, the Hawk Tuah girl, right? Like, so she got super famous on the internet on Twitter for kind of, like, a, a goofy thing that she said that was kind of [laughs] a little, little sexual about, and she was this cute little girl from Alabama. And, uh, she went viral everywhere, and she got a podcast deal. And then what did she do? She confused virality for actual direction, and she ended up going i- all in on this crypto coin. And, uh, and her followers lost tens and tens and tens of millions of dollars. That won't happen to you if you know who you're serving, because you'll remember what you're actually trying to accomplish. And I think a lot of people blow up spectacularly online and lose their focus, because once you do start getting a little bit of success, you'll get a lot of optionality.

Rory Vaden 33:00 Mm-hmm.

Codie Sanchez 33:00 And you'll have to make really hard decisions that make people don't like you by saying no to things. And you have... I mean, we just had this conversation actually not too long ago. There was a, a thing we were both gonna g- uh, kinda knew about a person that was doing something online. That's, like, the most nondescript thing ever [laughs]

Rory Vaden 33:16 [laughs] There was a thing that came up.

Codie Sanchez 33:18 But there was a thing that came up, and, you know, found out some information that just wasn't ethically aligned with me to stand on that person's stage. And so I ringed you, and I was like, "Did you know about this? Let's talk about it." And it wasn't 'cause I don't wanna be next to that person. I don't know them. It was because I know my audience is trying to figure out how to get financially free, and they trust me, some of them, [laughs] and they want to move to the next level. And if I put them in any situation which might not give them the best advice or the best trust from another human, that's breaking my mission. And so if you don't really stand up for something, you'll fall for anything. And, uh, and those are the hard decisions I think you have to make as you build a business and get a personal brand.

Codie Sanchez 34:01 One, one other thing I, I wanted to actually talk about with you here is, um, you have so many frameworks and tools and, and resources that you u- You, you talked about one, which is this revenue stream breakdown.

Rory Vaden 34:15 Mm-hmm.

Codie Sanchez 34:15 Can you run us through that in, like, 30 seconds?

Rory Vaden 34:17 The Revenue Stream Assessment?

Codie Sanchez 34:18 Yeah, yeah. How do you figure out what revenue streams you should be doing and what you should not be doing using your Revenue Streams Assessment?

Rory Vaden 34:24 Yeah, so simple. All you do is you, you list out all the, all your revenue streams on the wall, and, um, you, you... We just put them through a simple scoring process, and you go, okay, what... how, how many years have you been doing it? How much revenue is it? How stressful is it for you to keep up, and what's the DARES score? So DARES is an acronym that we use. It's, uh, five criteria that make a great revenue stream. We're looking for things that are digital, automated, recurring, evergreen, and scalable. Digital, automated, recurring, evergreen, and scalable. So basically, like, how scalable is this revenue stream, uh, and then how life-giving is it to you.

Codie Sanchez 35:04 Yeah.

Rory Vaden 35:04 And you basically just fill in those numbers, and you kinda look at it, and a lotta times what'll happen is you'll... things will jump off the page. Like, oh, we're doing this just because it makes a lot of money, but it's actually really hard. Nobody likes it. It's sucking the life out of our team. And, um, other things, like in, in the case of Lewis, where the podcast wasn't making a ton of money, but it... Oh, the other one is which has the most natural momentum.

Codie Sanchez 35:27 Mm.

Rory Vaden 35:27 That's one of the other big ones. Um, and it was like, it had so much natural momentum, and it was so life-giving, and it was low-stress, and it was like, all right, well, what would happen if we did that? So, you know, w- we, we tend to not be fans of multiple streams of income early on.

Codie Sanchez 35:46 Yeah. Agreed.

Rory Vaden 35:46 I, I think m- most of the people who I know who are rich or filthy rich, they didn't get rich from multiple streams of income. They got rich from doing one thing really, really well. They had one business that really blew up. They, they, they focused on concentration first, then they broke through the wall and then did diversification second. So it's like, yes- Many millionaires have many streams of income, but that's not usually how they created the first... Usually they create one stream of income. So most of our clients that we're working with are, you know, they're personal brands or they're s- they're small businesses or they're s- they're executives of small companies, and so we're trying to go, if you don't have a huge staff, then you need to figure out what one revenue stream is most likely to succeed and go all in on that one thing. So the revenue streams assessment is just like, helps us sort of spot the winner.

Codie Sanchez 36:40 Yeah, it's true. I often think, it's, I'm tortured on that advice because I think you won't know what to go all in on until you try a few things.

Rory Vaden 36:48 Sure.

Codie Sanchez 36:48 And so I think there's this, like, middle ground. It's almost like you have to actually do a bunch of revenue streams to start.

Rory Vaden 36:54 You're testing them out.

Codie Sanchez 36:55 Yeah, you have a test period. And during that test period, you will actually, you'll, you'll think that one does really well, and then you'll realize, oh, wait, it's actually missing core components. And you'll have to do that for a bit of time until you do another analysis where you say, "Oh, man, of all of these things that we have, it's really one or two that matter," and then you double down on those.

Rory Vaden 37:14 Yeah. I-

Codie Sanchez 37:14 And then you hit this, it's, it's, it's like, is it like a, I think it might be three steps. It's like first step, revenue stream test and proliferation. Second s- test, second step is, like, revenue stream divesting. And third step is-

Rory Vaden 37:28 Meaning getting rid of streams

Codie Sanchez 37:29 ... correct.

Rory Vaden 37:30 Yeah, that's what I think it is

Codie Sanchez 37:30 And then third s- step is revenue stream diversification.

Rory Vaden 37:34 Yeah.

Codie Sanchez 37:34 And you kind of, like, do a circle all the way back to diversity. You start diversifying, you end diversifying, and in the middle you win by picking winners. [laughs]

Rory Vaden 37:43 By focusing, yeah.

Codie Sanchez 37:44 Yeah.

Rory Vaden 37:44 And optimizing. O- optimizing one thing, right?

Codie Sanchez 37:46 Yeah.

Rory Vaden 37:46 And even, even, like, investors, right? It's like they go, "Well, that's multiple streams." But it's like, well, if you're an investor, like, you're just investing.

Codie Sanchez 37:53 Right.

Rory Vaden 37:53 Like, that's the only thing you're doing. You're not often balancing a whole bunch of stuff until you break through the wall-

Codie Sanchez 37:59 Yeah

Rory Vaden 37:59 ... and you have a team. Once you have team, time, talent, like, technology, capital, then you can do all sorts of things, right? But in the beginning when you don't have a lot of resources, if, if I have 10 initiatives and I have 10 units of resource, then on average, each, each, e- each initiative gets one unit of resource.

Codie Sanchez 38:21 Yep.

Rory Vaden 38:22 Once I become wealthy, and then I can hire people to do stuff, now I can h- I can put more resources on more initiatives. But early on, it's like more, more people lose because of a lack of, of focus in that kind of like, I think in that scaling phase of going... You know, I think a lot of small businesses, like, they're, they're quick to add 70 revenue streams instead of figuring out, let's, let's keep the main thing the main thing. But I do agree with you. You gotta test early on to even know what works, what feels good, what is your audience responding to.

Codie Sanchez 38:52 Yeah.

Rory Vaden 38:52 Uh, so I like that. I like that evolution.

Codie Sanchez 38:53 But I like the DARES analogy. I would totally use that on top of a business analysis. We use RICE often.

Rory Vaden 38:59 Oh, tell me.

Codie Sanchez 38:59 Which is, so typically it's reach, impact, cost, and, um, ugh, what's the last one? Oh, that's bad. Um, there's one that basically says, like, I can't remember what the word is, but it's like how much time it takes for your team, and so it's a literal formula. And, but I changed mine from reach, which is like, I think could be touchy feely, to revenue, so how much money do you make? Impact to the business, which might mean, like, how many people need to be on the assignment for it? Cost, how much is it gonna cost you? And then how long will it take you?

Rory Vaden 39:33 Mm-hmm.

Codie Sanchez 39:33 And so you actually lay out this, this revenue model that at the end gives you a number, and the number, uh, then you can stack rank them and decide, okay, what's the next thing that we're gonna do? And every time I come up with a new idea now, I try to make myself run it through a RICE model, because otherwise you have too many, too many brilliant ideas that turn out they're not so brilliant when you compare them through your opportunity cost. You know what I mean?

Rory Vaden 39:56 Yeah, opportunity cost is, is huge. It's like the, it's like the biggest inv- the biggest invisible cost that people don't pay enough attention to, is just going like, "Well, I could do that, but what does that pull me away from?" Like, that, that, being able to, being able to calculate the opportunity cost, I think is one of the-

Codie Sanchez 40:16 It's hard

Rory Vaden 40:17 ... the, it's hard, but it's one of the things that people like you do. And, and going back to what, our conversation about trust, it's like never doing anything that compromises the trust of your audience, because that trust is the big opportunity cost. It's like, even if I could sell you something, right? It's like, sure, we could sell them some T-shirts. Is that, is that the right thing, though, at this moment? And it's like, we can make a quick buck doing this or that or whatever, but it's, it's going, don't ever compromise that trust of your audience.

Codie Sanchez 40:46 Yeah. Let's talk a little bit about, um, so if I want to get paid for my expertise-

Rory Vaden 40:52 Mm

Codie Sanchez 40:52 ... what's the roadmap? Like, how do you go, "Okay, I right now am a chiropractor. I do wanna become an expert-"

Rory Vaden 41:00 Mm-hmm

Codie Sanchez 41:00 ... uh, that is known publicly. I want to break out of obscurity. I run a, maybe I even run a, a service business, and I want people to know who I am." What, what is the process that you take people through?

Rory Vaden 41:11 Yeah, so the-

Codie Sanchez 41:11 So we've gone through the first two steps, I think.

Rory Vaden 41:14 Yeah, finding your who.

Codie Sanchez 41:15 Uh-huh.

Rory Vaden 41:15 Right? And, and then you gotta figure out what problem do you solve, and then you figure out how do you solve it in one sentence.

Codie Sanchez 41:19 Mm-hmm.

Rory Vaden 41:19 It's really tough. It's going, how do I solve that problem for that audience in one sentence? The next thing we do is we figure out what one revenue stream matters above all in my, in my business. Then the next thing is we create, we, we, we take people through a process called captivating content. So we then extract out of their head what is their system that they use for solving that problem, and we wanna create original thought leadership, truly innovative intellectual property. Um, you know, my, uh, my TED Talk that went viral was called How to Multiply Time. There's thousands of books on productivity, and tons of people who talk about time management, but the focus funnel, uh, which was the, the thing that went viral, my talk, you have to get that from me. Why? Because it came out of my head. So we really work on that to go, you, you can't be someone, you're not gonna be paid at the highest level if you're playing cover tunes.

Codie Sanchez 42:14 [laughs]

Rory Vaden 42:14 [laughs] You know?

Codie Sanchez 42:16 So good.

Rory Vaden 42:16 Like, it's, it's, it's not wrong to play cover tunes. Like, that can be fun, but don't expect to be the person that sells out arenas if you're playing cover tunes.

Codie Sanchez 42:26 Yeah.

Rory Vaden 42:26 You gotta learn to write your own music, and expertise is the same way. So we teach you how to create- ... uh, you know, quotable moments. How to create visuals, we call them frameworks, you know, charts, tables, diagrams that are unique to your, your methodology, y- the way that you do it. And, and this is why, again, we come back to serving the person you once were, because the credibility is not that you get somebody else out there who waves a wand and says, "Oh, you're credible," or, "You have a designation." The credibility comes from you've walked the freaking path. Like, you've overcome that obstacle, and you go, "This is how I did it."

Codie Sanchez 43:00 Mm-hmm.

Rory Vaden 43:00 And as long as you're teaching people how you did something that you actually did, or how you helped other people to overcome that, we bottle that up. Then we put people through something called world-class presentation craft, which is preparing their content for the spoken word.

Codie Sanchez 43:15 Mm.

Rory Vaden 43:15 So in our universe, the spoken word is the fastest path to cash. To take someone from-

Codie Sanchez 43:21 Hmm

Rory Vaden 43:21 ... an absolute stranger, I've never heard of you, to a lifelong fan, can happen in one hour if you have a world-class one-hour presentation, which can be a podcast interview, it can be a webinar, it can be on stage, it can be a breakout workshop. But if you do it right, and you structure your content, someone can go like, "How have I never heard of you before?" To all of a sudden, I am binging every book you've written, every podcast episode. Uh, then in phase two, we do all the digital stuff. That's social, funnels, y- you know, copywriting, et cetera, uh, podcasting, ads. And then you get to phase three, which is, uh, often a book. A book, still to this day, is the primary way that you break through the wall of the mainstream to become recognized as a true thought leader. Um, so we do a lot with that. Also, the business of speaking, and then, and then we really focus on sales-

Codie Sanchez 44:19 Yeah

Rory Vaden 44:19 ... and how to have a sales conversation. And then phase four is scaling, scaling the infrastructure of the team you need to, like, pull all of this stuff off.

Codie Sanchez 44:26 It's so good. I mean, the... You know what the funny part to me is, is one, books suck to sell. So I think the [laughs] s-

Rory Vaden 44:34 They're hard to sell.

Codie Sanchez 44:35 They're hard to sell, and yet I think a lot of people want to hit The New York Times. You and I both know what it took to hit that, even with a giant audience. It's a lot of work.

Rory Vaden 44:44 Right.

Codie Sanchez 44:44 And, um, and anybody who says that it's not a l- not a lot of work, by the way, is lying.

Rory Vaden 44:49 Lying.

Codie Sanchez 44:50 Can we talk about that? I mean, se- like, I'm s- I, I giggle so hard. It's like, "Oh, I don't care that much." And then I talk to you, and you're like, "Well, I know what they're really doing," you know? [laughs]

Rory Vaden 44:59 Yeah.

Codie Sanchez 44:59 It's so good. Um, but, but the interesting part about books is you don't have to sell a ton, and that was one thing that, you know, you opened up my eyes for a lot of our portfolio companies and our CEOs who are the best, you know, painting company in the world, that one painter, you know, who run an incredible franchise company, Resibrands, that we run. And I'm talking to him about a book because I'm like, "Man, you know, you don't need to sell hundreds of thousands of copies, actually. You just need people to know that they have an opportunity to go deeply into your mind and decide that they wanna trust you on your venture." And a book does that in a way very little else does.

Rory Vaden 45:36 Absolutely. Absolutely. One of our m- m- other mantras around books is we say, uh, "Best seller lists don't change lives."

Codie Sanchez 45:43 Oh, yeah.

Rory Vaden 45:43 But books do.

Codie Sanchez 45:45 Yeah.

Rory Vaden 45:45 Books change lives. Books automate tr- books automate trust.

Codie Sanchez 45:48 Yeah.

Rory Vaden 45:48 Just like content automates trust, but it's a deeper, it's a deeper level. It's a, there's a more intimate experience when you're, you're holding the book or you're listening, you're writing somebody's here. And, you know, they're hard to sell, and yet you pour years of your life into, like, ca- get it captured in the book. Um, and so, and by the way, that's also how you, you, you speak, is like, people have either seen you speak or they've read something you've written. Those are the, the t- two reasons why you, two, two ways you get booked to speak. So I think books continue to stand the test of time. Ironically, as it becomes easier to post social content and faster to just fling something up, it still takes muscle and hours and hours and hours to edit a book, you know, to write the book, edit it, pore over it. And so when you're reading a book, you're getting this concentrated, you know, this most concentrated bit of wisdom. Um, and it demonstrates your credibility. It demonstrates your credibility. You go, you know, you know, "Want to know who I am? Read this."

Codie Sanchez 46:48 Yeah.

Rory Vaden 46:49 And some people will, will look at it and go, "Oh, yeah, I'm not interested." Great. Other people will read it, and you go, you cannot read that, this entire book and not want to do more, right?

Codie Sanchez 46:59 Yep.

Rory Vaden 46:59 You cannot read Main Street Millionaire the whole way through and go, "Oh, my gosh," like, "I, I n- I wanna work with these people."

Codie Sanchez 47:06 Yep.

Rory Vaden 47:06 Um, so it's, it's still super, super powerful. And, uh, you know, I love books. I hope they're around forever.

Codie Sanchez 47:13 Yeah, me too. Um, I wanna talk really quickly about some more of your frameworks and systems. You talked in the beginning about, you know, creating graphics and named frameworks. I think this is super underrated. We call it productization of services.

Rory Vaden 47:24 Yeah.

Codie Sanchez 47:24 So, like, when we buy a company, um, one of the first things that we do is we teach them about how do you turn even a service into something that is a product.

Rory Vaden 47:33 Yes.

Codie Sanchez 47:33 Because otherwise it's not repeatable. And so this weekend is our, our, uh, scaling workshop where we help people build companies. And

Codie Sanchez 47:40 one of the biggest things we take people through is, like, everything that you do that you think is a service is actually not, in fact, a service. It's a product. And if we can get you to think about how the fact that it would be really bad if every time I bought a coffee cup like this it looked totally different, and they didn't match, and they weren't the same, and they had different quality levels. That would mean that I had a bad company, and yet we allow that in service businesses, and we don't name and frame them. You have a lot of systems and ideas for how you get people to think in frameworks.

Rory Vaden 48:08 Mm-hmm.

Codie Sanchez 48:08 Can you talk through some of your favorite systems and frameworks you train people through?

Rory Vaden 48:12 To, to help them come up with frameworks?

Codie Sanchez 48:14 Could be that, and also what you take them through to create this personal brand.

Rory Vaden 48:18 Sure.

Codie Sanchez 48:18 Because you're kind of the framework guy.

Rory Vaden 48:20 [laughs]

Codie Sanchez 48:20 Like, you have one for everything, I feel like.

Rory Vaden 48:22 Well, yeah, so we do believe in that. S- so, so o- one of... This is actually from the, my, my How to Multiply Time, the TED Talk. Uh, one of my favorite lines in that book is, uh, a concept that came to me while I was writing that says, "Automation ... is to your time what compounding interest is to your money.

Codie Sanchez 48:44 Mm. Yes.

Rory Vaden 48:44 Automation is to your time what compounding interest is to your money. Inside of commoditizing a service-based business is the way you automate it.

Codie Sanchez 48:52 Yeah.

Rory Vaden 48:52 You make it replicatable, duplicatable, scalable, repeatable, right? So for experts, we have to be able to do that. It's, it's... If, if my expertise lives in my head, the only way you can get it is from me. If it lives in a book, it's scalable. It also, you know, we have strategists at Brand Builders Group, right?

Codie Sanchez 49:10 Mm-hmm.

Rory Vaden 49:10 So we have about 50 employees, and our strategists can teach and expand because they're, they're teaching a body of knowledge. So the, the, the biggest trick to this is very simple, is you first have to clarify the idea. Um, and we say say it ugly first. Always just say it ugly first. Uh, you know, write... The, the first rule of writing is to write. Then you edit and get clear on what you're trying to say. Once you then say it clearly, then you go say it with a picture.

Codie Sanchez 49:40 Mm.

Rory Vaden 49:40 So say it ugly first, then say it clearly, then say it with a picture. So once you're saying it clearly, you go, "How could I show this visually?"

Codie Sanchez 49:49 Yeah.

Rory Vaden 49:50 And if you train your mind to, to, to think in that way, I mean, then all of a sudden it, it, it, it resonates with, with people, and it becomes more transmittable, which is a part of virality, right, is it's going... In order for me, in order for it to transmit, someone has to be able to share that idea.

Codie Sanchez 50:10 Mm.

Rory Vaden 50:10 So anything that makes that idea more shareable, either the way you package what you say or the visual representation of what you say, makes that idea more transmittable. Um, and, you know, we're as concerned in going viral offline as we are in going viral online. And so if, if you can, um, ask yourself that. The other question that we always ask is, how can I forward the thinking of what's been done?

Codie Sanchez 50:37 Mm.

Rory Vaden 50:38 So there might be an, an existing visual or framework that's out there, and you go, "Okay, w- how can I add to this?" That's what a thought leader does in the, in the true, positive f- f- uh, sense of the word-

Codie Sanchez 50:50 Mm-hmm

Rory Vaden 50:50 ... is to forward the thinking that's been done. How can I add a layer of usefulness or utility on what else has been written in my space?

Codie Sanchez 51:00 Yeah.

Rory Vaden 51:00 Um, and that's why it's like we can all talk about topics that other people have talked about, but don't play cover tunes, right? Advance the thinking. Do the work for the people. The, um, this is another framework, is we try to, we try to go, how can I do more of the thinking work for my customer?

Codie Sanchez 51:20 Mm.

Rory Vaden 51:21 So if you use the revenue streams assessment, it's one thing that'll say, "Hey, go think about your revenue streams and think about which ones are the ones you should focus on." But if I turn it into a tool and I, I do the thinking for them, I create a tool that forces them to think in the sequence in which I would think or a- another successful client of mine would think, that's where great visuals and frameworks and tools come from.

Codie Sanchez 51:44 It's so true. You know, it's, it's wild because it's personal brand, all of this personal brand is exactly related to building a business. I mean, if you want to be a leader in a business and you don't wanna hate your business and hate your life, you have to name and frame everything so that you can automate things, and then eventually delegate and outsource it. Otherwise, you don't have a business, you have a job. And so [laughs] it's, it's actually kind of the same. You know, I think about it with some of our businesses. It's like, um, we have something called the rule of three, so every time you do a task that has more than three steps and you do it more than three times, it needs to become an SOP.

Rory Vaden 52:18 Mm.

Codie Sanchez 52:18 Right?

Rory Vaden 52:18 Mm-hmm.

Codie Sanchez 52:18 And so rule of three. And so I don't have to say, "Hey, remember that you need to create an SOP on this X, Y, Z thing." I just go, "Rule of three?" And they go, "Yeah." And so then you get to say less words, and your, your people get to be an extension of your brain, which is, which is so smart. And I... It's funny because I never thought about it in that way, but if you could think about building your business the exact same way as building a brand, it would be so powerful. Like, we have something called the

Codie Sanchez 52:43 Empire Builder Survey, which basically, um, takes people who own a business through a series of about 13 questions to tell them what value their business has and what areas they could do to make their business more valuable. And the reason why is because we did all these consulting calls [laughs] with people for, like, okay, you wanna come in. You might be a fit for us to help you by investing. You might be a fit for us to help you by coming to our workshops. But it was all this one-on-one consultation until originally I was, and until finally I was like, "No, no, no. We can... Here, here are the questions. Here are the buckets of answers. If they answer this way, I wanna talk to them about investing. If they answer this way, they need to build the business first. Let's put them to-

Rory Vaden 53:23 Mm

Codie Sanchez 53:24 ... to our build." And so it's, it's really applicable not just for a personal brand, but across just about everything.

Rory Vaden 53:30 Yeah.

Codie Sanchez 53:30 And you also have, like, a survey or a, some tools and resources for them-

Rory Vaden 53:36 Oh, the study?

Codie Sanchez 53:36 ... don't you? Yeah, okay.

Rory Vaden 53:37 Yeah, absolutely. Yeah. So, so we invested about a, over $100,000 conducting a national research study called the Trends in Personal Branding National Research Study. So it's weighted to the US Census, right? It's statistically valid. Uh, you know, we followed all, you know, traditional academic ri- rigor, it's PhD-led, to understand how much does this personal brand stuff matter to businesses.

Codie Sanchez 53:57 Mm.

Rory Vaden 53:58 So it turns out 74% of Americans say they are more likely to trust you just because you have an established personal brand.

Codie Sanchez 54:06 Attraction.

Rory Vaden 54:06 Um, 63% of Americans say they're more likely to buy from you because you have a personal brand. 58% of Americans say they're willing to spend more money on the products and services that come from founders where they know the personal brand and the values of the founder. I mean, this, and, and if you stratify the data by generations, like the age range of people who filled it out, all the trends show that in the next 10 to 30 years, it's gonna matter even more.

Codie Sanchez 54:32 Interesting.

Rory Vaden 54:33 Even more. Now, it's ironic, where our worlds collide is to build a business that has value, you want it to be independent of a person.

Codie Sanchez 54:42 Yeah.

Rory Vaden 54:43 That's the whole thing that gives a business value. But ironically, what attracts people to a business often is a personality that they can attach to, right? We don't do business with- ... well, companies, we do business with people.

Codie Sanchez 54:55 Right.

Rory Vaden 54:56 But the way that I think about it for small businesses is I think about it like a rocket, is going, your personal brand should be the sort of side boosters that you use to get the business off the ground. But then once you get it launched out- out- out into space, then your personal brand falls off, and the business can just s- sort of follow a trajectory and live on without you. But it takes a, a, a, a personal brand can help tremendously early on. So, uh, there's a bunch of data. If you go to freebrandstudy.com/codie, freebrandstudy.com/codie, we actually give the whole, uh, research study away. Um, you can-

Codie Sanchez 55:31 That's cool. I wanna check that out

Rory Vaden 55:33 ... you can print that out. Yeah, it's- it's- it's powerful stuff.

Codie Sanchez 55:35 You know, I, I didn't, I didn't start a personal brand to have business success. I think I just was curious about what's happening in the world, and I wanted to write a newsletter, and I like writing, and so that's sort of how it started. And I thought we weren't talking very much to each other, and this was in 2020, so I was like, you know, here's a way that we can maybe start having some conversations. But now that I think about it, it's, it's pretty pivotal to a lot of our portfolio companies.

Rory Vaden 56:01 Mm.

Codie Sanchez 56:01 I don't think every human needs to have a personal brand, but I think there needs to be a brand that is associated with you because in the age of, of AI and in the age of mass commoditization of content creation-

Rory Vaden 56:14 Mm

Codie Sanchez 56:14 ... um, you gotta have something that feels human, to your point, and you gotta have something that feels unique and high trust because I think going forward, AI isn't gonna make us have to do less work and for things to be easier. It's actually going to mean that everybody is able to be pretty good, and you're gonna have to be great to stand out. And one of the ways that you do that is, is by being, you know, weirdly, authentically you. And your brand can be that, too. Like, we have a, we have a portfolio company, Pinx, um, that's a window cleaning company, and they're just, they're two young guys who, uh, they're uniquely them. They're kinda hipsters. You know, they're really faith-based. Um, they're fun, they're energetic, and they, they attract... All the rest of our, uh, franchise owners at, at Pinx are very similar to them, a lot of, like, ex-vets. They're like these, like, young, kinda clean-cut, wholesome, good-looking dudes. And they don't have a very big social following, but they have a pretty big social following for a cleaning company.

Rory Vaden 57:13 Mm.

Codie Sanchez 57:14 And so if somebody wants to go start a window cleaning business, and they want all the systems and processes, these guys have earned a lot of their trust. And so even for window cleaners, I think it's something relevant.

Rory Vaden 57:25 It, it absolutely is. So let's talk about trust on a data point really quick.

Codie Sanchez 57:28 Ooh.

Rory Vaden 57:29 So one of the things that we a- we- one of the questions we asked in this study is which piece of marketing collateral matters the most in influencing a purchasing decision.

Codie Sanchez 57:40 Okay.

Rory Vaden 57:41 And we asked things like, they have a large, uh, social media following. They have a, a, a large YouTube channel. They have a polished, like, a podcast. We said they have a blog. They have a nice website. They have a book, a bestselling book, a New York Times bestselling book. And we wanted to, we had people rank them, and none of those things were the top on the list. 62% of Americans say the single most important piece of marketing collateral that will influence their purchasing decision, testimonials from other customers.

Codie Sanchez 58:16 Yeah, [laughs] that tracks.

Rory Vaden 58:17 It costs nothing. You can have it by this afternoon. It costs nothing. What, what do they want? They want human validation.

Codie Sanchez 58:25 Yeah.

Rory Vaden 58:25 They want some- a human that they can trust to say, "If a, if a human said it, then I can believe it." Not just it's pretty, not just there's lots of, lots of people saying this, but, like, show me individual people and what they have to say about you, and I thought that was super powerful. The other, the other top, the other top ones are that they've been featured in media and that they've been paid, they've been paid for their expertise.

Codie Sanchez 58:49 Interesting. You know, it, it, it actually tracks 'cause I was just talking to one of the members of, of one of our companies, and they have testimonials on the website, but they made a fatal error, and the error is says this nice testimonial, no picture, no name.

Rory Vaden 59:02 Mm-hmm.

Codie Sanchez 59:02 That could be, no, tha- tha- that's almost as bad as not having testimonials on your website. And now there's a lot of ways you gotta make sure compliantly you, you share them-

Rory Vaden 59:11 For sure

Codie Sanchez 59:11 ... which is a whole other issue. But, um, I, I, we have a, a segment that we do for our build group that is all about exactly that. We ta- we think about them as reviews because a lot of these are service businesses. But, um, you know, there's a lot of data that shows people won't buy from you if you have less than three and a half stars-

Rory Vaden 59:28 Mm-hmm

Codie Sanchez 59:28 ... which is crazy, and they will pay more money for you if you have more than three and a half stars and more than 100 reviews. And so, um, that's really interesting. Probably a great way to get more testimonials and reviews is basically being online and having and sharing other people's.

Rory Vaden 59:45 Yeah, it is, and, and there's, there's online, and there's o- there's online and offline, too, right? I mean, i- if you look, [laughs] look, I believe that the best form of marketing in the world is a changed life.

Codie Sanchez 59:57 Yeah.

Rory Vaden 59:58 Right? You change someone's life,

Rory Vaden 1:00:00 they'll tell people. You don't even have to ask them. You don't have to incentivize them. You don't have to send them a coupon. If you change someone's life, you know, they'll tell people about you. Now, when you're cleaning, you know, doing laundromat, and you're washing windows, like, are we changing people's lives to the... Well, maybe. Maybe there's ways that we can do that. But, uh, the, you gotta have your customers... You, you should, uh, strive to be so good that your customer force becomes your sales force.

Codie Sanchez 1:00:24 Mm.

Rory Vaden 1:00:24 Um, right? It's one thing for me to go, "Hey, I know what I'm talking about." It's another when Codie Sanchez says, "Hey, Rory is someone that I've hired for time to time to help me." Like, that's freaking powerful, right?

Codie Sanchez 1:00:36 Yeah.

Rory Vaden 1:00:37 Be- because y- you trust that there's that tr- transfer of trust.

Codie Sanchez 1:00:41 Yeah.

Rory Vaden 1:00:42 Um, and it, and it's human, and, and I think, I think it's gonna just continue to matter, to matter more. And I actually think video testimonials are gonna matter a lot. I mean, you know, you can already fake, you can already deep fake a video. So, you know, e- even as that happens, you go, what matters the most? What matters the most is someone in real life coming up to you and saying, "Have you read that book?"

Codie Sanchez 1:01:03 Yeah.

Rory Vaden 1:01:03 "Have you been to that restaurant? Have you watched that movie? You need someone to clean your house? I have the person. You need someone to fix your car? Like, you want s- your HVAC broke? Like, I, I have the guy." Nothing will ever be more powerful than that. So yes, online. Yes, social. Yes, AI. But don't forget, at the end of the day, this is about reputation, and reputation is about trust, and these concept are as old as time. So the medium is changing, but the foundation is the same.

Codie Sanchez 1:01:34 Rory, you're the man. Uh, follow Rory on all... Where do you like people to follow you the most?

Rory Vaden 1:01:37 Well, the, so the one place I would say, go to freebrandcall.com/codie. So i- i- if, if, if you're serious about building this, and you, you know, you really wanna be an expert entrepreneur, build your brand, request a call with us, freebrandcall.com/codie. Uh, if you're not so serious about it, but you want the data, just go to freebrandstudy.com/codie, uh, and then we'll get connected from there.

Codie Sanchez 1:01:59 I love it. Rory, I really appreciate you. You really did help me a lot. I'm not just saying that. So, uh, I can't wait for the next book so I can put you again through more text as opposed to voice note misery.

Rory Vaden 1:02:10 [laughs]

Codie Sanchez 1:02:10 And I hope you guys listening out there take this to heart. I think there needs to be more good humans who are willing to share their expertise and actually do the thing that most won't, which is teach and not just take. And so thanks, Rory. You're the man.

Rory Vaden 1:02:23 Thanks for having me. [outro music]