Using a Personal Brand to Build Your Business with Rory Vaden: An EOFire Classic from 2021

0:01Boom! Shake the room, Fire Nation. JLD here and welcome to Entrepreneurs on Fire. Brought to you by the HubSpot. Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals with great shows like The Hustle Daily. Today, we're pulling a classic episode from the archives, and we'll be breaking down how to use a personal brand to build your business. To drop these value bombs, I brought Rory Vaden into EO Fire Studios. Rory is a co-founder of Brand Builders Group, a Hall of Fame speaker, and New York Times bestselling author. And today at Fire Nation, we'll talk about how personal branding is the digitization of reputation.

0:35We'll talk about if you don't know what problems you solve. There's no way that your prospect or audience ever will. And so much more. And a big thank you for sponsoring today's episode goes to Rory and our sponsors. Sales Evangelist, hosted by my friend, Donald Kelly, is brought to you by the HubSpot Podcast Network, the audio destination for business professionals. Each week, Donald interviews the world's best sales experts, successful sellers, sales leaders, and entrepreneurs who share their strategies to succeed in sales right now. A recent episode you should definitely check out is the five ways to do daily outbound with LinkedIn.

1:08Listen to Sales Evangelist wherever you get your podcasts. Ever thought of giving a TEDx talk? It's one of the most powerful ways to share your message with the world and four-time TEDx speaker Taylor Conroy from Thought Leader can help you get there. Visit thought-leader.com to join Taylor's free training where he teaches you how to land a TEDx talk and spread your message to millions. Rory, say what's up to Fire Nation and what's something that you believe about becoming successful that most people disagree with? What's up, Fire Nation? Buddy, I think this is my third time back. You've been around for so long, though.

1:49It's been years. It's rare that you have people on like this. So I'm so honored to be back. It's good to see you all, to hear you all, to be with you all. This question, I love this question. You know, you always hear about the morning, like, you know, early to rise and wealthy, healthy and wise. AJ and I sleep in every morning. We do not get up early. We sleep in like we are even with kids, we don't get up until 7.30 and we have two toddlers and we have programmed our toddlers to sleep. So we are, we do not get up at 4am. We're not a part of the 5am club or, you know, whatever. Uh, you know, and we've, we've done, we've done pretty well.

2:37So I, you know, that is just something that I have found a lot of people do. That is so great. I think having a rhythm is important, but getting up early, not a prerequisite for success. I used to be part of the 5 a.m. club, like not like a technically part of that club. But I mean, I just would get up around 5 a.m. every day because I thought I kind of needed to. This was back in the day. And I will say over time, especially, you know, with my move to Puerto Rico and just Island Living down here, I'm much closer to what I call now like the 6.30 wake up, like just for me, because it's so much more about me getting eight plus hours than anything else.

3:08And if you're going to get up at five, that means you're literally having to go to bed at like 7.30. Like that's no joke. Like I have the aura ring that tracks. Like if you're in bed at nine, you get up at six 30, like you're lucky to get eight hours of sleep because of like little wake ups. And just because it takes a little while to fall asleep, et cetera. Or you sleep four or five hours. And it's like, that's your, it's going to catch up with you eventually. It is a path to ruin. It is a path to ruin. If you sleep, I don't care. Nobody out there is actually speaking the truth. And they say they can get by in four or five hours.

3:37They're just kidding themselves and they're setting themselves up for disaster. But Fire Nation, you need to do you. But man, myself and Rory, we focus on sleep for sure. So the audio match class today, we're talking about using a personal brand to build your business. And nobody is better to talk about than this. And I want to talk about something called She Hands Wall. So what is the real key when it comes to breaking through She Hands Wall and becoming known as a leader in your space? And let me just even back up one more time. What's SheHansWall? You know, if you think about personal branding, like if you hear that term, you might go, oh, that's not really me.

4:16I'm not an influencer or whatever, right? It's like I'm an entrepreneur, which I actually self-identify more as being an entrepreneur than I do an author or speaker or anything else. But what we've realized is that personal branding is simply the digitization of reputation. and we all understand reputation and we all go, yeah, reputation matters, right? To get investors, to get clients, to recruit people for retention. That makes sense. And so when we say personal branding, we just think it's like the evolution. It's the digitization or the monetization of reputation. And Sheehan's wall is a visual diagram that we use to illustrate the concept of the importance of a personal brand.

5:01And we named it after a colleague of ours, Peter Sheehan, who originally kind of we learned this concept from, and then we adapted it and applied it to personal brands, which is that in any business, in any vertical, in any space, there's two groups of people. There are those who are unknown. They're on one side of the wall. And then there are those who are known. They're the industry leaders or the world renowned or the celebrities or whatever. And in between is this invisible thick wall called Sheehan's wall. And we're all trying to break through this invisible wall. And the way that we do it is typically, you know, like we go and we go, oh, like, what's John Lee Dumas doing?

5:41And what's Gary Vaynerchuk doing? And what's Brene Brown doing? What's Simon Sinek doing? And we look at what other people are doing. And so what happens is we probably have a passion to talk about a lot of different topics. So we talk about all these different things. And then we look at people who all have successful business models. And it's like, oh, I need to have a coaching program. I need to launch a course. I need a membership site. I need to do live events. I need to do a summit. I need to have whatever, like a consulting program. I need to be a keynote speaker. And then we have to like manage all these social media profiles and like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, blah, blah, blah, whatever.

6:21And what ends up happening, John, is we have diluted focus. And when you have diluted focus, you get diluted results. You literally bounce off the wall. And the problem here is noise, right? The problem is separating yourself from every other entrepreneur who does what you do. But it's not just separating yourself from the noise because what most of us don't realize is that you are the noise. You're creating the noise. You are part of the noise because you lack focus and you talk about too many different things to too many different audiences. You have too many different business models in too many different places playing too many different roles inside of your company.

7:07And that's why we bounce through the wall. And the key to breaking through is to become known for one thing. And when you become known for one thing, that is how you break through the wall. Now, once you're on the other side of the wall, then you can expand into other things. Like once you're Oprah, you can do other things. Once you're Tony Robbins, you can have lots of different events. Once you're Gary Vaynerchuk, you can talk about all sorts of different stuff. But how did Gary Vaynerchuk break through the wall? He talked about one thing, wine, on one platform, YouTube. Amazon did the same thing.

7:48They sold one product, books. Now they literally sell everything. There's a big lesson to learn from that. You are part of the noise because you lack focus, Fire Nation. follow one course until success focus and i love how you put that rory become known for one thing one thing fire nation one thing and that should be a huge weight off your shoulders by the way because it's overwhelming to try to be all things to everybody all at once and be on all the channels do all the no become known for one thing so rory break down the brand dna helix what is it and walk us through its six parts. The best piece of branding advice I've ever received, and this is not a Rory Vaden quote.

8:36I wish it was, but it's not. This I heard from a guy named Larry Wingate early in my career. Larry said, the key is to find your uniqueness so that you can exploit it in the service of others. Find your uniqueness so that you can exploit it in the service of others. and that was so valuable. You know, I broke through the wall with Take the Stairs, right? That was my first book and we hit number two on the New York Times and it was like, I was all about self-discipline and overcoming procrastination and I had such clarity and such focus and it was just take the stairs, take the stairs, take the stairs, this metaphor for doing things you don't feel like doing, which I think the first time actually you and I met, I think we talked about that book, which would have been a long time ago.

9:23And that helped me tremendously. But ironically, even though Larry gave that great advice, he wasn't in the business of helping people do that. And so my wife, AJ, and I, we sold our last business. We exited our last business in 2018. So we started a business from scratch in 2006. We grew it to 200 people with eight figures in annual revenue. We sold that in 2018, and we had to be in a new space and wanted to be in a new space. And so we thought, hey, let's teach people how to build personal brands, like basically do the stuff that I've spent my life learning. And we invented the Brand DNA Helix as a six-part process for how do you find your uniqueness.

10:08So these six questions is basically if you were to answer, you just kind of brainstorm a group of answers to each of the six questions. And then what we teach our strategists to do when they're working with a client one-on-one is look for what we call thematic overlap. And there will be overlapping themes in the answers to each of these six questions. Where that thematic overlap lies points to what your uniqueness is. And so each of the six questions is kind of like a facet of your uniqueness. and I mean, we can run through as many of them as you want and as we got time for. Yeah, why don't you just run through all six just so we can hear them, just like the actual what that is and then maybe pick one we'll do a little deeper dive on.

10:54Okay, the questions like a DNA, like a chromosome, they work in pairs. So questions one and two, question number one is what problem do you solve? Question number two is what are you passionate about? And those work together. They kind of are corroborating and offsetting. And then questions number three and four, question number three is what do you research? Which is like, what do you learn about? What do you have formal head knowledge or education of? Question number four is what do you have results in? Which is more like street knowledge and experience. What have you actually freaking done?

11:36And then questions five and six, they address the issue of money. So the first four questions kind of point us to what you're uniquely designed to do and who the world needs you to be and who you were designed to be. But then questions five and six introduce money and help us start to make some strategic business decisions. So question number five is, what are all the things people would buy from you? And we talk about there's really only five ways to monetize a personal brand. And then question number six is what business do you want to be in? And we look for, we call these the dares. There's five characteristics of the perfect business model.

12:20And so we basically do an inventory to all of these six questions. And each question has a bunch of sub questions. And this is what we do. We only do work with personal brands and we only work with people one-on-one. So we don't do like video courses and membership sites. We do human to human work. And so you brainstorm these answers. And then there's some indicators of the thematic overlap, which would tell you this is your uniqueness. This is your uncopyable difference. This is the thing you were put on this earth to do, to solve, to help that nobody else can do. And if you live there, you will never burn out.

12:59You will accelerate through the wall and you will basically become everything you were designed to be. And Fire Nation, one thing that I refer to when I think about this process is like, what moat are you building around you and your business that's going to make it difficult for people to storm that castle? And I love this phrase, the higher the barrier, the lower the competition. Like why did Entrepreneurs on Fire win? Because it was the highest barrier at that time. It was a seven day a week podcast for 2000 days in a row. It was not the best podcast. I was not the best podcast host, but it was the only seven day a week podcast interviewing entrepreneurs is the only game in town, like Blockbuster back in the 90s.

13:38There was no other game in town. They had to rent from Blockbuster. They had to listen to my show if they wanted that daily podcast. So how can you build that mode? How can you build a barrier so high that your competition is so absolutely low? And we're going to hit up my favorite one of these, DNA Helix, right when we get back from thanking our sponsors. Happy 2024, Fire Nation. Q1 is here, and that means new goals, more growth, and upgrading your day-to-day workflow. While most sales folks are stuck in the mud of manual scheduling, digging into data, and tracking down leads. Let me share a better way to win so you can get a jumpstart on your year.

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14:48Close more deals and get on track for your best Q1 yet. Explore the new HubSpot Sales Hub and AI tools like chat spot at hubspot.com slash sales. Do you have a message inside that you know is meant to be shared with the world? Giving a TEDx talk is one of the most powerful ways to share your message with the world and Thought Leader can help you get there. Thought Leader is a speaker coaching company that has helped over 550 and counting coaches, speakers, entrepreneurs, authors, and experts land TEDx talks. Thought Leader is not affiliated with TED or TEDx, but they're able get these results because their founder, Taylor Conroy, is a four-time TEDx speaker himself and past EO Fire guest.

15:26You might be thinking a TEDx talk sounds great, but where do you start? Taylor has put together a free training that is going to teach you how to land a TEDx talk in as little as 90 days. Join Taylor to learn exactly what TEDx organizers are looking for in their speakers, how to write a talk that goes viral once it goes online, and more. Visit thought-leader.com slash fire. Join Taylor for his free training and get your message out of your head, out of your heart and out into the world where it belongs. That's thought-leader.com slash fire. So Roy, we're back. And obviously all six of the brand DNA Helix are awesome, but one that jumps out to me because it just befuddles my mind that so few people actually have a clue when I ask them this question.

16:13What problem do you solve? I mean, it's number one in your brand DNA helix. Nobody knows when I asked them that question, they, they sputter and they stutter and they just, they don't, they don't know. They don't have a clue. And I'm like, it's exactly why you haven't found any version of uncommon success, let alone common success. Let's talk about that one briefly before we move on to dares. Yeah. So if you don't know what problem you solve, there's no way in hell your audience or your prospects or your customers ever will. And people spend money faster to solve problems than they do to buy luxury.

16:45And so what we do, John, is we actually try to, not try to, we force our clients to go through this and to be able to answer this question in one word. So you have to be able to answer what problem do you solve in one word, because it has to be that clear. We're going for precision level clarity because that makes it easy to stand out. It makes it easier to go, oh, this is the person. And some great examples of this recently, Brene Brown, she spent her entire career studying shame. The problem she solves is shame. She researches shame and she has become one of the biggest brands in the world. Dave Ramsey has over like a thousand employees, a hundred million dollar a year business plus, I think it's closer to 200 million.

17:38And he solves one problem, debt. And he, for three hours every day on the radio for 30 years, has said the same thing over and over and over, seven baby steps to help people solve debt. You can build massive businesses if you do the work, the disciplined work of being clear on what problem do you solve. But most people can't do it. And I'll give you a hint. So it's hard to do this. And I mentioned that my original personal brand was all built around solving the problem of procrastination. And my uniqueness was about self-discipline. So that was Take the Stairs, my first book. My second book and my TED Talk, So I've got a viral TED talk was all about distraction, which is another form of procrastination.

18:29And my TED talk was called How to Multiply Time, which went viral. Now at Brand Builders Group, we had to do this same thing is go, what problem do we solve? The problem we solve is obscurity. So people who are either unclear, untrusted or unknown, right there on that side of Sheehan's wall. You got to be able to clearly communicate what problem you solve. And here's the shortcut. If there is a shortcut, you know, it is answering this question or it's realizing this principle. You are always most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were. You're most powerfully positioned to serve the person once were.

19:12So if there's a shortcut, I would ask you, what problem have you overcome? What question have you answered? What challenge have you solved? Because that is the shortest path to a clear audience that you can serve in a very, very deep and meaningful way. And that's one of the reasons why we chose this as our new space, because my dream was to be an author and a speaker. And I was 17 years old and I had no idea how to do it. And I spent 20 years figuring out like, oh, this should have been a lot simpler and more straightforward. So that's the path that I have walked. What path have you walked? That is a shortcut if there is one to figuring out what problem you solve.

19:58You always encourage your clients to look for dares when they decide on a business model. Why is that? All right. Yeah. So dares is an acronym and it represents what we think are sort of the five characteristics of the perfect business model. And I would say, I want to say this in advance. We've not yet found a business model that has all five of these. So it's really a matter of figuring out which ones matter the most to you and which ones are you best suited for and is your team best suited for. But we want to try to capture as many of these. So here's what the acronym is. The D in DARS stands for digital.

20:37The A is automated. The R is recurring. The E is evergreen. And the S is scalable. Digital, automated, recurring, evergreen, and scalable. So if there was a perfect business model, it'd be totally digital, which means you've got no warehousing costs, no manufacturing costs, no shipping and logistics. It is automated, which means customers can completely self-serve, which means you don't have to have a huge staff. It is recurring, so it means that people will pay for this every single month and just kind of continue to pay for it. It's evergreen, meaning it never needs to be updated. And then it is scalable, which means you can add an infinite amount of customers without increasing your infrastructure.

21:29There's a big difference between growth and scale. I learned this from some of my friends, AJ and Megan. And they talk about, you know, growth is just growing revenues and expenses a lot of times grow with it and sometimes faster. But scale is growing your revenue without increasing your expenses. And so those are the kind of five pressure tests that we're always applying to every business model to kind of optimize cash, if you will. DAIRS, Digital Automated Recurring Evergreen Scalable Fire Nation. How many do you check on that block? Like just think when you're trying to create this business model that you want going forward into the future to create that financial independence, that location freedom, that lifestyle freedom.

22:20Think about that. Now, Rory, as we kind of come to a close in our conversation here, I just have one big question. I teased it during the introduction, so I know Fire Nation has been waiting for it. Tell us, what is the single biggest secret to growing a large online following? Understanding the single greatest secret comes from understanding probably the single biggest mistake. And the big mistake that everybody makes with personal branding is that they talk about themselves. Your personal brand is not about you. Your personal brand is about the problem that you solve in the service of other people.

23:02And the sooner you get clear on that and the more you realize that your purpose literally comes from your usefulness, the value that you apply and pour into other people, the sooner that you will see success and engagement and growth in the personal brand. And it kind of points back to what we said earlier about how you're most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were. Because we believe, John, that there is actually somebody out there right now that if you feel the calling on your heart to share a message, and that's what we say at Brand Builders Group, we work with mission-driven messengers.

23:44And we believe that for a mission-driven messenger, if there's a calling on your heart to share a message, it is the result of a signal that is being sent out by someone else that there is actually somebody out there right now who needs you even more than you need them. Like there literally could be somebody out there who is praying and begging and pleading and like possibly on their hands and knees, like asking for answers to questions that you already know, you know, looking for solutions to challenges that you've already been through. And when you think about that person, you never feel fear.

24:26There is no fear when the mission to serve is clear. And, and if you stay focused on that person, you will, that'll give you the endurance. It'll give you the inspiration. Uh, it'll lead you to the education, the engagement, everything works when you stay focused on that person and everything starts to break down when you focus on yourself. There is no fear when the mission to serve is clear. That's a Keeper Fire Nation faux show. So Rory, give us the one big takeaway that you really want Fire Nation to walk away with from this talk. Then give us a call to action where we can connect more with you and your business.

25:07I know you have a great opportunity for Fire Nation, and then we'll say goodbye. Yeah, one of the things that we do for people, I mentioned we do one-on-one coaching, And so we offer people a chance to request a free call with us that we do for free. And if you go to freebrandcall.com forward slash fire, you can actually request to talk with one of our strategists for free. And they'll just want to they'll they'll walk you through some of these questions of the brand DNA helix, right? Like, what problem do you solve? What audience are you serving? How are you monetizing? And and they will try to, like, guide you towards your uniqueness and also help you see the big picture of like how you build the machine behind some of the biggest personal brands in the world.

25:48So, um, if you want to connect with me, just go there freebrandcall.com forward slash fire. And, uh, you know, I think that's, that would be the big action step, but in, in terms of leaving people with anything, John, you know, I would just say that, um, remember your mission matters because it matters to somebody else that is out there right now. and that person is looking for you. That person is trying to find you. And if you stay focused on it and you're looking for your uniqueness, you will find them. But if you have diluted focus, you will get diluted results. Fire Nation, you would be certifiably insane if you did not take this opportunity that Roy's gifting to everybody in Fire Nation here with a completely free brand call.

26:39This is a free call. You get to get on an actual chat with professionals and you can talk about your business, about where you're at, about how to improve. I mean, this is the type of thing that you need to take action on Fire Nation because unless you are exactly where you want to be in this world right now, in every way, shape and form, this is a must take action. Freebrandcall.com slash fire. You're going to see a co-branded site over there. It's going to welcome Fire Nation listeners. This is something that Rory's doing for you, Fire Nation, this free call. So please, please take advantage of this because I want you to win, Fire Nation.

27:17I really want you, my listeners, to win. That's why you listen. That's why you spend the time to listen to this information. Let's get some one-on-one for you. Let's get you on this free brand call over at freebrandcall.com slash fire. No, absolutely no risk whatsoever. You get on there, it's value only. So Rory, I just want to say, number one, thank you for joining us on EO Fire. Again, much appreciated hearing your value bombs after value bombs. Fire Nation, you know that Rory, his past episodes can be found. If you just go to eofire.com and type Rory in the search bar, the show notes page for this episode and all the others will be there.