RV (00:02): Oh, we have a special edition today. Super special very uncommon format where you actually are going to get to hear from our CEO AJ Vaden. My co-founder my wife, of course, and she is actually going to be our guest. So obviously, usually either her or myself are leading the interview today. I get to play the role of interviewer. AJ is going to play the role of interviewee and our guests, because we’re gonna talk about something that is really, really important and really, really powerful, which is how to double your business in the next 12 months. AJ, as you know you probably know many of her credentials for being with brand builders group, but one thing you may not know about AJ is that she also is a million dollar producer. She is someone who spent personally produced over a million dollars a year in revenue by herself, many years in a row, both in as a in a speaking business, a consulting business, a coaching business. And so she just has a lot of experience growing businesses, coaching businesses, consulting, speaking. And that’s what we’re gonna talk about today. Specifically, she’s gonna share some tips on how to double your business in the next 12 months, AJ made and welcome to your own show. We’re glad to have you, AJV (01:23): happy to be here. Happy to be here on the other side of the mic today. RV (01:29): So yeah. So talk to us just a little bit about, I mean, obviously most of the people listening here know about brand builders group, right. They know what we do. But tell us a little bit about your past like pre brandand builders group. What were some of the types of businesses that you built? How were you a top producer and, you know, just what were some of the different business models that you were involved in? AJV (01:53): Well, it’s not me. It’s not just me. It’s us. It was our I think most of you probably know that brand builders group is Roy and I second business together, but a little known fact, I’m not sure how many of you listening know this, that we were actually business partners before we fell in love and got married. And so we started as business partners and then broke the Cardinal role fell in love, got married. Luckily 15 years later, it’s it worked out, it worked out in our favor. But prior to brain builders group, you know, we spent the first 15 years of our professional lives building a coaching speaking consulting, training business, but it actually started as a seminar business. So in the first four years of our very first business we lived on the road full time lived in 14 cities and five years was moving pretty much every 16 weeks for the better part of four and a half years putting on large motivational sales conferences. AJV (02:57): And that naturally involve evolved into a one-on-one coaching business, which then involved into a consulting practice. We started a speakers bureau brew. It, it was very successful. And when we departed from that company and sold back our equity to our former partners we had over 200 coaches. It was well into the eight figures business. On the coaching side, we had a healthy, a seven figure consulting business, a healthy seven figure speaking business. And so there’s lots of different components of, of what we did, but it naturally evolved over time from large public seminars to one on one consult or one-on-one coaching to full service consulting. Did training as a part of that, and then also built a speakers bureau. RV (03:44): Mm-Hmm , I mean, it’s, it’s sort of wild, even just walking down memory lane here a little bit, and hearing you talk about those that, you know, for most people, you know, building, building a seven figure business is not easy. And we’ve done that in many different formats between the seminar, the public seminar company, and then coaching of course, was the eight figure business consulting with seven multi seven figures, multi seven figure speaking business, and then brand builders group, which is very much on its way. I would, I feel comfortable saying very much on its way to eight figures here in the next couple years. And so recently you kind of decided you wanted to put together a training on how to double your business in the next 12 months. So talk to us about what that is, and, and I know we’re gonna talk a little bit about it, but let us know where we can, where we can go to get it. AJV (04:36): Yeah, well, it’s not just double your business. It’s really niche down to a really important sub segment of all the audiences we serve, but it’s one that’s really near and dear to my heart and it’s coaches, speakers, trainers, and consultants. And part of why that’s really important to me is I could still consider myself one of all those things. But that’s really where I started. It’s where I grew. It’s it’s challenging, it’s hard and it’s as everything is challenging and there’s pros and cons to any business out there. I know this business, this world inside and out, and as a part of brand builders group, a huge part of our community find themselves in one of these categories. Even if it’s not their full time right profession, but they do consulting, they do training, they do speaking, they do coaching, they do all these things. AJV (05:28): And many of you want to figure out how to make it your full time gig, or maybe you’ve gotten into one of those. And you’re like, oh, I do not want this one particular piece to be all that I do, but I want to do these other pieces. And I think this is a really interesting, unique part of my life and my past and my expertise that I can really lend some really good solid tips and techniques. But also mindset to help any of you who are in that particular business model of a coach consultant, speaker trainer really truly help you amplify your business and, and double it in the next 12 months. And I think those are the things that are really unique. But I think they’re applicable to any business, as you said, it’s how to double your business, but we put together this training webinar hyper specific to that niche group of individuals, trainers, consultants, speakers, coaches to help them leverage five simple ideas, five simple. And I didn’t say simple, not easy, but five simple things that you can do to start doubling your business. But I do think there’s universal appeal and I think anyone can do that, but this specific training is really unique to that. So that’s what it’s all about. RV (06:40): Mm-Hmm and if you, so we’re gonna, we’re gonna do a little bit of a preview of it right now, but if you’re listening and you wanna watch the full training, it’s free. If you go to double dot brand builders, group.com, so go to double dot brand builders, group.com, you can watch the whole training you know, AJ sharing your screen and showing, showing different things. So before we jump into some of the five ways to do it, talk to me about what are, what are some of the reasons why people fail at this, or why some of the people that struggle, obviously we struggled for several years. You know, it was, it really wasn’t until I feel like maybe four or five years into our last company, that it started to finally scale and grow. We got a pretty fast start, but then we sort of stayed stuck in plateaued for a while. Brand group has been a rocket start, but then we’ve had, you know, hundreds of people. I mean, thousands of people that we have coached collectively in our, in our teams, what are some of the reasons why you think that these I’ll just use the term experts? Like you say, coaches, speakers, trainers, consultants, but like the experts really struggle to grow their revenue. AJV (07:44): Yeah, it’s, it’s a really simple answers. They try to do it all and there’s just so much of you and there’s just so many hours in the day. But for most people in this profession, you’re a solo entrepreneur, right? Which means you are the salesperson, the marketer, the accountant, the operations person, the HR person you are the bill collector. You are the bill payer, you, and also you deliver all the client work. So you do all the customer service work. And even if you bring on a staff person or an executive assistant and you start outsourcing some of those things, it’s typically not in the beginning. And I know many people who are very successful in this, or they’re six figure seven figure businesses, and they’re still trying to do it all with one, maybe one and a half staff, people, and some outsource vendors. AJV (08:27): And at the end of the day, what, what happens and what I find so often for so many of these individuals, is that the reason you started this is cuz you loved doing what you wanted to do. And now it’s the least amount of time that you do it. It’s like what you did is you loved coaching or you loved speaking and you loved this, but it’s like, that’s not the only part it’s like, you gotta have contracts and agreements and signatures and sales calls and follow up emails and, and interviews. And you track people down and there’s customer service issues. And it’s like, there’s all the different things that start distracting you from keeping the main thing, the main thing. And that’s, that’s the biggest thing. And I find it’s distraction it’s that your, your attention is pulled in so many different areas so quickly, cuz there’s so much to do. And then in really in order to be really good at any of those things, you have to practice your craft, which means you need to be reading and learning and going to conferences and getting coached yourself and networking and learning in all these different atmospheres. And guess what? That takes time too. And let’s not forget any amount of time for yourself, your spouse and your families. Oh yeah. That’s important too. And so I think time distraction is really the number one thing that gets in the way of people scaling this kind of business. RV (09:48): Hmm. Yeah. That what you just said there, I think is absolutely true. Right? You start because you go, I wanna help people. I wanna make a difference in the world. Like I wanna change lives. I wanna meet people. I wanna like, see, look people in the eye and like share with them what I know and how I’ve helped. And then it’s so quickly can turn to invoices and bills and taxes and technology and operating systems and payroll and, and you know, documents and all of that stuff. Like this is a little bit of a dis a little bit of a disheartening reality, I think in, in, in many cases. So, so what are, what are some of these things that you’re talking about in terms of how to double the business or, or, or what are some of the tools that you think can help alleviate some of that pain and help experts, coaches, consultants, speakers, authors, help them actually make more money, faster, get back to spending more time doing what they love and, and return to the original reason they started in this space. AJV (10:48): Yeah. So in the training webinar that I host, there’s five things that we talk about that will help you double your business. I won’t probably have time to go into all five of those today, but we’ll cover as much as we can, but here’s one of the things that I thought was really interesting when putting together all of this information, which really just started as some value add for our brain builders group, community, our audience people like you who are listening. And I started looking at all these different research reports that were out there about the coaching industry and I found some really staggering statistics that made me stop in my tracks and go, I’m gonna spend a little bit more time here because I really just naturally got curious about, wow, like I wanna learn more about this phenomenon that is coaching training consulting. AJV (11:33): And where is it trending? And how does that relate to what we do in personal branding? Right. and I just think personal branding is applicable to anyone who has a reputation. All of you, everyone who is listening has a reputation. But there’s, then there’s a really unique group of people where the more dependent your business is on your reputation, the more important it becomes and being intentional about that reputation, which is personal branding. And so I was spending some time looking at some of these stats and here were a couple that really stood out to me that I thought were fascinating, is that right now coaching, the coaching industry is the second fastest growing industry in the world. Wow. It’s the second fastest growing industry in the world. And some of the backup statistics around that I thought were equally as interesting this year alone it’s, it is expected to exceed a 20 billion industry. AJV (12:33): Wow. And I thought, well, that’s a lot of money out there. How many people are involved in this? Right. And so on LinkedIn, and now this is just on LinkedIn, right? I thought this was so fascinating. If you just type in coach as a title on LinkedIn, there are more than 4 million people just on LinkedIn that have the title as coach. Wow. And then I narrowed it down to just the United States and in just the United States alone, it’s approximately 1.8 million people who have the title of coach. And so I got really sucked in one day like really sucked in and I probably spent an hour scrolling all these titles, scrolling all of them. Because I wanted to know like, what kind of coaches are these? Like who are these 1.8 million people? And how come I’ve been in this industry for this long? And it doesn’t seem that prevalent. AJV (13:31): Now I know there was a season a time where it’s like, everyone was a coach, right? You’ve got spiritual coaches, dating coaches, marriage, coaches, life coaches, business coaches. In fact, I remember being at a networking meeting. This was probably, gosh, it has to be 10 years ago. Right now has to be 10 years ago. And I remember being at this networking meeting, I think it was like a BNI meeting. I used to be like at every single BNI meeting I could go to. And I remember introducing myself and someone said, well, what do you do? And I said, I’m a consultant. And they said, oh, you mean you’re unemployed? And I was like, am unemployed. And they said, well, I just figured like most people who say that don’t have jobs is that the reputation that coaches and consultants have is that they couldn’t cut it at what they’re doing. AJV (14:27): So they go off and do something else, like the old saying, it’s like those who can’t do teach. And I was like, that’s some serious BS. Right. I was like, no, I’m employed. And I’m doing really well. And I’m a consultant. I was so offended. but then it really got me thinking over those next few years of what causes that trigger. Right? And then for a really time, I didn’t have a large network of coaches and consultants outside of the team that we were building at our former company. And I thought that was really interesting. And I’m a part of different associations and different groups like the national speakers association and do tons of work with different franchise groups that sell coaching franchises. And we have lots of friends who do this. And what I found is like, there’s not a lot of deep, well now, well networked community driven groups in these industries. AJV (15:19): And so when I saw that number 1.8 million people, I was just fascinated around who are all these people. And so I started going through there and, and where are they? Yeah. They’re apparently they’re everywhere. Apparently they’re everywhere. But then it, it was really interesting cuz I was scrolling through all these titles around, this is why people think we’re unemployed. And I looked at those titles and they were so vague and so generic and so general that as I was scrolling, even someone who was in this industry who dedicates her life to helping people in these industries grow and build their businesses, build their reputations in these fields. I was really thinking through here would never hire. You don’t even know what that means. And I was like, whoa, pause right there. And that was like one of the biggest aha moments of going, I’m putting a training together. AJV (16:15): I need to talk about this because these are the same problems that I suffered from our team member suffer from our clients are friends suffer from, is that someone says, what do you do? And he says, I’m a life coach. What is that? And what do you do? And you hear that term so often, or I’m a business coach, I’m a sales coach. And those were these like wide broadening terms that I kept running into. And then it just started like triggering the triggering, that old experience that I had from this BNI meeting where they go, oh, that means you’re unemployed. And then it just all hit me at once. It’s like, yeah, like that is the problem. It’s because we’re not clear on what we do and who we serve as the coach, the consultant, the trainer, the speaker. And instead we go, I can help anyone with anything which why they have this, these ridiculously broad terms like life coach, like what can you help me with exactly in my life? AJV (17:14): Like, what is it exactly, same with business. There’s so many different things. And we try to be, you know, the master of many thus while mastering nothing. And then I tie that on all in with what we do at brain builders group. And that’s one of these things, all these dots started connecting for me and it’s like really, truly to break through. She hands’ wall. We talk about this all the time. Like to break through the wall, you need to become known for one thing. Yet most of us try to do everything we say yes to everything. Right. I did that for years as a consultant, they were like, well, can you help me with this? Sure. Can I’ll figure it out before I invoice you. Right. It’s like I said yes to whatever it was leadership. Sure. Marketing, sure. Sales, sure. Retention. AJV (18:01): Sure. Can you help me with collections? I think so. Yeah, sure can do that too. It’s like, did it matter what it was? The answer was, I’ll figure it out. And I think there’s a time and a place for that and that’s really short lived and then you need to figure out what exactly am I supposed to be doing and who am I supposed to be doing it with? And for, and then I ran into a few of these titles as I was having, like these revelation moments of these are all the mistakes I made. Right. I did it for years and it was really hard and it was exhausting, but it doesn’t have to be that way. It really doesn’t. And then I started running into some titles that said this high business growth coach for young CEOs. And I was like, BA click. AJV (18:47): I wanna see what you do, why I’m in a high growth business. And I’m a young CEO. It was so clear. It was so clear. They had niche down so much that I could literally just read their title and go, I think they could help me. Right. And then I saw other ones that were like, you know, a financial growth coach for small businesses. I was like, what do you do? I wanna go to your website. And then I started like paying attention to which ones caught me. And the ones that caught me were really, really specific. This is actually something you say all the time I steal it, but I always give you credit. Oh, okay. It’s the more specific, the more terrific, right. It’s like, however cheesy that is. I have never forgotten it. The more RV (19:33): Cheesy, wait a minute. We weren’t talking about cheesy. We were talking about brilliant, but okay. I’ll take cheesy. AJV (19:39): Brilliant. Yes. But the more specific, the more terrific. And that’s a huge part of this. It’s like, if you really want to double your business and double your income, if you really want business finding you, if you want other people to explain what you do in layman’s terms, without them having to go to your website, it needs to be that clear. You need to be able to niche down so that anyone who knows you, who has heard of you, who has worked with you can say exactly what you do and who you do it for in one sentence. It is so important for the ability for other people to think of you and to refer you to people because they think about what you do and who you do it for. Right. And I think about like us at brain builders group, like we see all the time, it’s like we help experts become more well known. And then I thought about the first decade of my life as a consultant coach speaker, I had no clarity. I was like, I can help any sales team grow revenue. Oh, well how specific is that? And it was like, then it just dawned me as I was reading through all of is like, they aren’t clear on what they do. And for someone who’s just scrolling of going, what do you do? It’s gotta be that clear in your title. So it’s, it’s ne it’s, nicheing down. It’s getting so specific that someone can read your title, read your business card, right. Scroll through literally a one line statement on your LinkedIn profile and go, I want to learn about how you could help me. RV (21:15): Mm-Hmm yeah. And that’s a good formula. Like a, I, I help who to what, like, that’s a really simple, we, we, we, that’s part of our formal curriculum, the elevator pitch formula, just, I help blank to blank. We help experts to become more well known in our case. And I, I mean, I, it’s a, it’s amazing how, you know, like people talk about how focus is power. We’ve written about that as time has gone on, I have realized that precision is power mm-hmm like the more narrow it is. It’s like, you could be in this crowded room full of people talking. But if someone just tings the side of a glass, it like cuts through the whole noise. And that’s what I, the, the visual that made me think about when you were talking about nicheing down and going, there’s 1.8 million people in the us alone that are coaches on just LinkedIn, how are you differentiating? How are you differentiating? And it’s just specificity. Like the specificity does a lot. AJV (22:15): Yeah. Like one of the things it’s like, and I think about this in my own life, it’s like, I have, as you know, I have a business coach and I have a life coach. Right. And it’s like, both of them, their reputation preceded them. Right. And it wasn’t like, I probably would’ve just picked a random business coach or life coach off of a LinkedIn title. But it’s enough for me to go. I want someone like that. And so I always think about it. It’s like, do my friends, family, acquaintances, you know, people that I’m in the community with. Do they know what I do that specifically? And it’s part of, it’s a conditioning. Like people ask me all the time. I get asked this all the time. How can I help you? And I’m like, the next time that you hear someone say this, refer them to me. And it’s like, you gotta help people think about you. It’s like, when they say this, refer them to me, that’s how you can help them. RV (23:12): Yeah. That’s really good. Those literal like kind of triggers like yeah. And I think about like our speaker friends, like when someone comes up to you after you’re on stage and they say, how do I get to be you mm-hmm that’s when you need to like send them to us. That’s a really good, a really good conditioning point. So so that helps. Okay. So I, you know, when I hear you talk about that, you go, Hey, the like one of the key things here in terms of doubling your business in the next 12 months is being clear on exactly what you can help people with and who you, you can help specifically it’s AJV (23:47): It’s speech down. Do not in general, do not be broad. It’s like, you are not a life coach. You are not, you, you focus on some component of life. What is that? Is it spirituality? Is it health? Is it mindset? Is it nutrition? Is it relationships? You do not talk about life. There are so many things to life. It is impossible, right? So it’s like, tell me exactly what you’re gonna do for me in my life, in my business, with my financials, with my team and with my leadership potential, like it’s not a leadership consultant. Like what part of leadership, what part of sales? What part of marketing, what part of business get so clear that it’s polarizing? And that, that is like, it’s not just get clear on what it’s like, be so clear. It’s polarizing. People need to say, I don’t need that. Or where have you been my whole life? Right. It’s like, here’s my money. Or I’m just keep on going. It needs to be that clear. RV (24:45): Yeah. I love that. And again, so the, the URL is double dot brand builders, group.com, double dot brand builders, group.com. You can watch this whole free training. We got a couple minutes left here still. AJV (24:56): I got two more. I got, I’ll go fast. I got two more. All RV (24:59): Right, go AJV (24:59): For it. I’m gonna start, I’m gonna start the second one with a story. So about a month ago, I was on a podcast with this amazing interview with Mo tepo right. And we were talking about negotiation and sales and mindset, right? And the reason that people aren’t sometimes considered good negotiators mainly by themselves or good sales people. And the reason is why. And we have a, a a distorted view of what is negotiation and a distorted view of what is sales. And that’s really true, right. I used to be embarrassed to tells people that I was in sales because I didn’t wanna be viewed as you know, that old cliche, a used car salesman today is the proudest thing. I tell people I’m like, I might be a CEO and I might be these, but at the end of the day, I’m a salesperson. AJV (25:47): And I now hold it in such high regard because it’s a skillset that’s so few really possess. And I have come to learn that over the years. And I really took for granted the sales skills and sales training that I was able to get at a really, really young age and just get beat around for a really long time. And really build up this Rere, this rejection proof mentality of it’s not a no, it’s just not right now. And those were decided mindsets that I learned over time. And, and then I realized it’s like, most of the reasons why people don’t grow their business has to do with one thing they don’t sell, they don’t sell. They don’t tell people about what they do. They don’t market what they do. They don’t quote unquote self promote. And here’s the reason why they don’t want to be seen as salesy or markety or self promotional. AJV (26:42): So they don’t talk about it. And instead of leveraging the people who know us and trust us and like us the most to help us grow our business, we somehow think finding strangers on the internet is what’s going to be this, the solution. How bizarre is that? Just stay with movers for a second. Just take a moment and think about the people who love, trust and believe in you more than anyone else. How much time do you spend with them talking about what you do? Do they know what you do? The clients who serve their results, do they know? And then think about how much time and energy you spend on trying to attract complete strangers who have never met you before to buy your products and services. RV (27:28): Mm AJV (27:29): It’s bizarre. Y all it’s crazy. And it’s because we don’t wanna come across as salesy. We don’t want to rub anyone the wrong way or offend anyone. And here’s the real problem is you’re only concerned with yourself. You’re so focused on what, how I don’t wanna look, you pay no attention to, are there people right in front of me who need what I do or do they know someone who needs what I do? And so I believe in something called the six foot role and the six foot role means that you have to be willing to tell anyone within six feet of you about what you do it is that simple, not always easy, but simple. And that is because you feel compelled to talk about it because you were that passionate about it, because you believe in what you can do so much, that you cannot contain it because you have seen lives change. AJV (28:25): You have seen businesses change, you know, the transformation that will happen with the work that you do with people. So you feel compelled to share it. It’s not about a sale or marketing or being self promotional. It’s about being of the belief and of the mindset that I do. Something that has the power to change your business and change your life. So, yeah, I will tell any single person who is in six, within six feet of me, about what I do, because I believe in it. And that’s a di a slight shift in mentality. And I’ll give you two quick examples about this. And and then we can just like, kind of go from there, but there are two things that I have found RV (29:00): In that that was fired though. Like just to put a punctuation point on like that little clip, like we have to cut that clip for social media, like rewind that and listen to it. Like that was so powerful. And, and you nailed it. Like, we’re so afraid of how we don’t want to look to people that we are ignoring all of the people who are right around us, who need what we do like that is that so sorry to stop you. But that was just like, AJV (29:31): Why preach RV (29:31): It preach it? Vaden AJV (29:32): Believes that some sort of digital marketing tip or some social media formula somehow going to help your business grow it ain’t let me just be honest with you. It’s not, what’s gonna make your business grow is getting incredible results for people and having the courage to ask them to share it and having enough courage and belief in yourself to talk about it and to put yourself out there, right? You don’t need clients from around the world. You need clients in your own community. It’s amazing to me that some people and it’s amazing to myself, right? Our, our, our mindset is so limited. It’s frightening. And we were at a, a recent brain builders group event that I had the privilege of MC and one of our customers was in there. One of our clients and actually has a very expensive package. AJV (30:19): It’s a six figure package. And she needs like 12 clients who are willing to pay a hundred thousand dollars with her on retainer for what she needs to do to hit her goals. And and I just, I paused and I said, you know, Joe, can you just listen to yourself for one second? And you’re like, I need 12. And I’m like, no, you only need 12. There are 358 million Americans. You need 12. What’s keeps for some perspective here. Y’all and it’s like, we get so consumed. Where am I gonna find the next person? And it’s like, let me say that one more time. There are almost 360 million Americans. There are almost 8 billion people on planet earth. Most of us are looking for 30, 40, 50, a hundred clients. That’s it? Y’all, that’s it. You do not need to look outside of your own, you know, zip code to find 10 clients you don’t, but somehow we’re trying to far reach far and wide, and we’re not looking right in front of us. AJV (31:21): It’s a huge miss. And I just one I’m super passionate about the second thing that I was gonna share is that most of us miss opportunities, because we’re not present in the moment. And I’ve got two stories about this. I wanna share. We’re so sucked into our devices that we can’t see human beings all around us. We’re so sucked into catching up on texts and emails and posting on social and trying to get ahead that we forget the people who are willing to buy our products and services are sitting right next to us on the bleachers. So what if we’re a second, you actually engaged in human conversation? What would that do for you? If every single time you had a spare moment in line or sitting, or on an airplane that you weren’t sucked into some sort of technology and you actually engaged in actual conversation, how much business could you get from just that? AJV (32:09): And it’s free. Y’all two quick stories. One of the best consulting clients I ever picked up, I picked up at a softball game brewer. You should probably remember this story. Mm-Hmm, kinda, we flew to Las Vegas to watch Rory’s niece, Peyton plan, a softball tournament. And it was hot in July in Vegas. And my nephew was there and they were really young at the time. And so I had my phone in my back pocket. But I wasn’t on my phone. I was just chatting. I was, you know, getting icy with Carter. I was watching Peyton play. And I noticed this book of a sales book that I had read sitting next to this gentleman. And I looked over and I said, have you finished it yet? And he said, oh, I’ve got like five pages left. And I said is your daughter on the same team or the competing team? AJV (32:51): And he said, oh, they’re on the same team. And he goes, what are you doing here? And I said, oh, I’m here to watch my husband’s niece, Peyton play softball. And he goes, no kidding, Peyton, Gale. And I said, yeah, Peyton, Gale. He goes, that’s my daughter’s best friend. And I said, no way. I said, hi, my name’s AJ Dayden. I said, so what do you do that? You’re reading this book. He goes, oh, I’m the VP of sales for this, you know gifting company. And I said, really, he goes, what do you do? And I said, oh, I actually help individuals. Like you build and grow their sales teams. He goes, what do you mean? And I said, I work with a company that does sales consulting. That specifically is looking to help improve their sales team and their sales processes and sales philosophies. AJV (33:30): And he goes, can you tell me more about that? He ended up being one of my best clients of all time, that one conversation at a softball game because of a human conversation led to a book, being sent a conversation, being had a proposal being accepted and more than $350,000 in business, because I was willing to have a conversation with someone sitting on the bleachers at a softball game. It would’ve never happened. If I was stuck in my phone, texting, emailing it, would’ve never happened if I wasn’t just willing to say hi, how are you doing right? More recently we were in The Bahamas for mother’s day. I told my husband here on this interview with me. I wanna go to The Bahamas from mother’s day. So that’s what we did. And we were our second day and our also our second trip to the water park. AJV (34:18): And it was at the end of the day. And it was a long day. And so I walked over to the Dery shack because that’s what I’m gonna do on mother’s day. I’m gonna get myself a Dery. And there was this very sunburn gentleman in front of me who was very hot and sweaty. And he had his two daughters and he was like, had a whole tray of drinks. And he was getting these lemonades for his kids. And he looks back at me and he could tell, I was also really sunburn sweaty. And at the end of like the five hours at a water park, and he said, you’re having fun. And I said, I am sits in a long day, but I’m having fun. I said, how about you? And he goes, yeah, we’re here on a big family trip. And I said, that’s awesome. AJV (34:53): And I said, your, your little girls are so cute. And he said, thanks. And I said, I do have kids. I know I’m by myself. They’re over there in the pool. He said, where are you in from? I said, I’m in from Nashville, Tennessee. And he goes, let me guess, you’re a musician. I said, I’m the least amount of musical talent on planet earth. He goes, wait an actress. I said, Nope, definitely not that. And he goes, well, what are you doing in Nashville? And I said, oh, my husband and I have a personal branding firm. I said, we help entrepreneurs build their personal brands. And he said, no. I said . And I said, why, what do you do? He goes, I’m a restaurant here. He goes, I have 73 restaurants all over Florida. And I said, really? He goes, yeah, I get asked to speak all the time. AJV (35:38): And I said, guess what? That’s what we do. We help people actually build their speaking business, craft their content and become better speakers and get booked to speak. He goes, you do that for people like me. And I said, I sure do. And I said, do you have your phone on you? He goes, yeah. And I said, pull up your phone type in www dot brain builders, group.com. So he pulls it up and I said, go to the about S page. So he pulls up the about S page. I said, scroll down. He scrolls down to the very end. You see that person right there. He goes, yeah. I said, that’s me. I said, that look really different. Not in a baby suit. I said, that’s me. I said, that’s me and my husband. This is our company. And so I took him to the next page and I said, scroll down. AJV (36:13): You see that little button where it says, request a call. I said, click that button. And I said, there’s a little form there where we’ll actually give you a free call to see if we can help. And if not, we’ll send you a bunches of free resources. And if so then we’ll, we’ll, we’ll help you build your personal brand and we’ll help you go speak all around the world. And he said, are you kidding me? I can’t believe I’m staying online. And I just met you. I was just telling my wife about this. And I was like, I don’t believe in coincidence. So click that button. Y’all wow. You have to be welling to tell anyone about what you do. If you believe in it, the person sitting next to you in the bleachers or the, you know, sweaty sunburn person and head of you at line at the Zachery, you know, at the Dery shack at the beach, it’s gotta be compelling. It’s gotta be just coming out of you. And it’s like, maybe he got a call. Maybe he did. And I haven’t looked it up. The point is, is I’m not afraid and I’m not ashamed cuz I don’t find it as self promotional. I’m like, I believe it. So I’m gonna tell you about it until the point where you go. It’s not a fit and then that’s cool too, but you cannot be embarrassed or ashamed about it. You wanna know why your business isn’t growing. You’re not telling anyone about it. That’s why. RV (37:26): Hmm. Wow. That is so good, babe. Like you all need to go watch this training and spend time with AJ double dot brand builders, group.com. She’s gonna walk you through this and just give us like 60 seconds this free training. One of the reasons that we put it together is we, we are launching a program, something we’ve never, ever, ever done before. Just give us a little 62nd hint on, on what, what that is. AJV (37:58): Yeah. I mean, this it’s part of the webinar too. Is this doing all this research? And again, coincidentally running across this research report, which I truly don’t believe in coincidence. I believe God puts every single thing in my path. It’s just, am I alert and aware? Am I present enough to see what he’s doing in our life and in our business? And I don’t believe coming across that study and getting sucked into this deep dark hole of wow, like that is what I struggled with. I just don’t think that was on accident. I think it was well intended. And a few of the things that I think are really unique is that one of the reasons that people really struggle with this is they don’t solid content to jump off of. Right? It’s like they know that they wanna help people. They know that they wanna coach or train or consult or speak, but creating content is freaking hard work. AJV (38:46): Y’all like, let’s just like, it is, it is work. And it takes energy and time and resources. And personal branding is a really popular topic right now. And we get approached all the time by individuals who are going, man, I don’t wanna be like a personal brand strategist with you, but I wanna be able to teach personal branding to my executive clients. Right. And they’re, everyone’s asking about like, do I need a personal brand or what is it? Or you know, how do I become more well known or in this age of there’s a lot of distrust in the marketplace, how do I create more trust? And so one of the things we said is like, well, we may not be able to do everything for you, but what we can give you is a really solid set of content that we know works. AJV (39:27): And that we wanna be a launching pad for people who claim themselves as consultants, speakers, coaches in this world. And we wanna be a launching pad of giving the tools and the resources. We’re not gonna give it all to you. Right? Part of this is like your own unique twist, but we’re gonna give you the, the certification and a personal branding curriculum, finding our brand DNA to give you that launching pad of content where you can take someone through a really secure methodology and a process of helping them identify their reputation and use it to help ’em grow their business. For those of you wanna be speakers, it’s like some of the, the hardest work is like, how do I get everything I wanna say about something into 60 minutes, right? It’s easy to talk for hours. It’s really hard to talk for a little bit of time about something really important. AJV (40:10): So we’re gonna give you a keynote. We’re gonna give you a webinar. We’re gonna give you all these different tools to be a launching pad for your business. Now for us, it’s unique in that personal branding reputation space, but I really do believe it’s like everyone has a personal brand. If you have a reputation, you have a personal brand. It’s just a matter of how we, we leverage that to help you become an expert or be known as an expert in your space. And that was the Genesis for all of this. And then along the way of going, maybe our curriculum isn’t for you, but you just need some, you need some insights of what really works and what doesn’t. And that’s why we put this training. You know, this free training together for you whether or not ever licensing our content or being a part of, you know, our community is a fit for you. AJV (40:54): We wanna give you free resources. And I’d say, that’s one of the things we talk about in the webinars, don’t be afraid to give it away. People are like, I’ve had a few people who are really close friends of mine who were coaches watch this. And they’re like, aren’t you afraid that you just gave it all away? And I was like, no, no, absolutely not. I was like, I’m gonna give it all. If I had two more hours, I’d give away some more stuff. It’s like, don’t be afraid to give it all away. This is, if you, like, there are two simple formulas to building relationships, give value, build trust at the end, give so much value that the person says, oh my gosh, I feel like I have to pay you for this. Right. Give so much value that they feel compelled to go. AJV (41:35): What can I do for you? Like I just learned so much, like I cannot believe how much you gave away in 60 minutes. Like, why would you do that? That’s how I want you to feel. Cause that’s how you should feel. That’s how you garner trusted followers and you don’t need millions of ’em. You need a few, remember you don’t need millions of clients. You don’t need thousands of clients. You don’t even need hundreds of clients. Most of you just need dozens of clients. Right. and it does, you don’t have to do a whole lot of work to get that, but you gotta, you gotta do some right. You gotta do some strategic things to help minimize the distraction that you’ve got in your business. And so this webinar’s gonna give you five of those. RV (42:11): Oh, so good. Again, check out the webinar, double dot brand builders, group.com. AJ goes through us whole training about how to double your business in the next year. Also you know, at the end of that, she’ll talk to you a little bit more about kind of our licensing pro program and what we’re doing. And there’s so much it takes to start a business. Creating content can be one of the things that we can take off your plate. I mean, our content has been so proven and well utilized the last few years by very, very recognizable personal brains. And also those just starting out. So we’d love for you to be a part of that. And we have AJV (42:43): No shame in saying we believe it is freaking awesome. We have awesome contents. RV (42:49): Our content is awesome. You AJV (42:51): Should not be ashamed either, right? It’s like brag on yourself because you believe in what it does. I got no problems bragging on Roy Vaden, who is the mastermind behind most of our content. It is life changing. It works. It’s methodical, it’s systematic. It’s all the things it’s entertaining. I will, I will happily sing our contents phrases and yours Rory because I believe that’s, if you believe in what you do that much, that’s what you should be doing. I believe in ours that much. RV (43:21): Well, thank you, babe. And, and thanks all of y’all. If you, if you are interested in that you wanna go straight to learning about the licensing. If you go to license dot brand builders, group.com, license dot brand builders, group.com, you can go straight there and start learning about that right away. But if not go to double dot brand builders, group.com. Listen to this training with AJ. Thanks for being here. We love you. We’ll catch you next time on the influential personal brand.