How to Get the Most Profitable Leads for Your Business with Rory Vaden

0:0010 years ago, I made the decision to build my personal brand that was elevated, yet approachable, and reflected who I was, not just what I did. I created my website with ShowIt because it's true drag-and-drop freedom, so you can easily build and update your site. Plus, their real human support team, game changer. Want to try it for yourself? Head to jasminestar.com forward slash showit for a 14-day free trial and first month free when you subscribe.

0:37Welcome back to the Jasmine Starr Show. I have to tell you, friends, I have to tell you that recording a podcast in real time around live coaching is something I have never done before. and I was not prepared for it. So if you are listening to this podcast episode without any context, let me bring you up to speed. I invited my good friend and mentor, Rory Vaden from Brand Builders Group to come in and I had invested in what he was doing because I wanted to help him really help craft this new iteration of my brand. And so I had this idea, I'm going to bring Rory on my podcast and we were going to talk about things that are preparing for a two-day coaching mentorship session in Nashville, Tennessee.

1:21Well, 30 seconds before I'm about to press record, Rory's like, Hey Jasmine. So instead of talking about how to prepare, let's just start the session. Like let's coach you right now to which all of a sudden I'm like, we're about to jump off a cliff here, bro. And he said, yes. And then I agreed. And the feedback from the podcast has been so amazing. And so with that, I want to say, Rory, welcome back to the podcast because we spilled the tea the first time I cried, Rory, I cried on the, I cried. I just, well, it was like a gangster tear. Cause it got my eyes welled up, but the tear didn't fall.

1:52So I could still hang on to that like gangsterness. Um, but yeah, I got a little emo. I felt very exposed and vulnerable and it brought people into the process of that is when it's a creative artistic process, you feel very exposed and you feel like there's a right answer and a wrong answer when there's not. And you guided me through that and people heard, and then I have heard that people are listening to it two or three times. And then they're actually taking away the questions and the frameworks that you helped me with to apply to their business. And so first and foremost, thank you for that episode.

2:20Welcome back. Happy to have you. Yeah, this is so cool. Yeah, I've never done that where we kind of like did a live coaching session. Then you came to Nashville. We spent two days together. And now this we're doing like, I guess we're just kind of like the debrief, recap and application for everybody of where do they go after the first episode? Absolutely. I want to focus on the whys. I like when good movies start with the end at the beginning. And you're like, oh, I like, like, I'm interested. Like, pique my interest. And so let's start with the end now. The end is, how does one, after doing the work to build their brand, actually make money?

2:58Like, how do we get new leads? How do we convert those leads? How does this actually become a force of nature within our business? Hey, did I hook you? Yeah. Okay. So now we're going to get into the middle part of it. So we'll have like a little bit of time to actually talk about what happened in Nashville. Because a couple people were saying, okay, Jasmine, so what happened after getting coached, after discussing this idea that you really want to start building a brand and talking about resilience? What happened? So Rory, instead of me telling it from your perspective, what was really happening for us as we deep dove into the process?

3:31Yeah. So what you came through was our signature sort of flagship experience called finding your brand DNA. And you remember that the single best piece of personal branding advice that I've ever heard was from Larry Wingate, which is find your uniqueness and exploit it in the service of others. And so we developed a process called finding your brand DNA, which helps you extrapolate your uniqueness. We believe that you are most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were. So before we can build a speech, we have to understand your identity. We have to understand who you are. We have to understand God's divine design of your humanity.

4:10And it answers the question, why have you experienced the pain you have experienced? Why have you had the challenges and the setbacks and the obstacles? It's because those things have prepared you to go back and serve other people, right? So we start there. And then what we did when we were together is we then extrapolated that. We started the process of our next stage, which we call captivating content. Okay. Can I pause here? Can I pause here? Captivating content, put a pin in that. So let's actually distill down what actually happened is Rory said two really powerful things to exploit your uniqueness in the service of others.

4:50Yeah. To exploit your uniqueness in the service of others. And number two, which is what a lot of the people are tagging me in stories or sending me DMs. And they had said that it was really powerful for them to hear that we are best suited to serve a version of who we once were. And so in the coaching, what I didn't realize, which is the alchemy that like Rory and his team does, was there was a time in my life where I was powerless and I felt like a victim of my circumstances. And it wasn't until I decided to become resilient, but at the time I wasn't making the cognizant decision, oh, I'm going to become resilient.

5:26It was just get back up. And it was in the process of doing the work that I look back and I say, oh, that is me. And if I can help people get back up, if I can help people keep going one more day, that I could put my head on my deathbed and be like, I lived a great life. And so when I am able to connect the dots here for listeners, I want listeners to have that same experience. If you take nothing else, if you take nothing else to use your service, to use your skillset in the service of others and to serve who you once were. So I wanted to connect the dots there. So now we can move on to the point where I asked you to put a pin in it.

6:09All right, yeah. So once we find a person's uniqueness, then we extrapolate it into a body of work, like intellectual property. So this is a process we call captivating content. So then it's like, we have to then go, okay, now we got to get inside Jasmine's head and we have to pull out everything she has learned about how to develop resilience and how do you coach yourself and how have you coached other people and what are the stories, the signature stories from your own life that taught you the lessons that you know. So you're not regurgitating other thought leaders. You're not repackaging things.

6:43You're forwarding the thinking that has been done and we're creating your own trademark worthy frameworks, your own intellectual property, your own visuals and things that we call pillar points, which are basically these quotable moments. And there's the six pillar point formulas that we take people through to help them figure out. It's sort of like, you could think of it as a book, right? You'd be going, this is the journey of sort of writing the book. And we go, okay, what is the method for how someone who feels powerless, how someone who feels like a victim, how do we educate them? Why do they feel that way?

7:21We call that the cause, right? So the problem is powerlessness. but then there's the cause of why do they feel that way? And then we have to build the system to go, how do we move somebody from powerlessness? How do we move them from that all the way to resilience and teaching them how to get back up in the moments when they feel weakest? And so we create that content. Okay, can I pause here? Can I pause here? Sure, it's your show. You can do whatever you want. So what happens is like you, sometimes when you speak to people who are so passionate and clearly, clearly like leaders in their field, you use language and nomenclature and a cadence, which feels very normal to you, but to an outsider who's like nowhere near your league, I'm like, oh, slow down, slow down, I have a special spoke in the back.

8:07So I wanted to say like, he says, oh, we're creating this content and these quotable moments. And to me, this was very foreign language, but all he is simply saying is, we're taking what you already know. We're taking who you are. And then we're just creating banks of content. Hey, Jasmine, what are you about? What do you want people to say about you? How do you want people to feel? Okay, these are all things that if we are not in control of that, somebody else will write our story. And so for a while, I hate even admitting this, that I got caught up in editing somebody else's story about me instead of writing my own dang story.

8:51And so up until this point, I became a really great editor. And as I'm at this inflection point in my life and my business and my word for the year is rebirth, which means I have to do things differently. And this meant investing with Rory and saying, I need help figuring out how to write who I am to become. Now, there's people here. I'm like, I don't want to write a book. I don't want to become a speaker. I don't want to have a podcast. No problem. But let me just tell you this. I'm also in the process of rebranding my website. And I started the process rebranding my website after having conversations with Rory because I didn't want to go into my website saying, this is how I've always done it.

9:30No, no. So now that I know what I want to be about and now that I know the frameworks of who I am and now I'm ready to write my story, my website becomes the story I am to tell. And I wouldn't feel as confident about it when he talks about this quotable moment. I would feel like that sounds intimidating. But actually in the process of working together, we started creating like these, my beliefs, my mantras. And guess what? On my website, I want to put one of my quotable moments on my website that wouldn't have happened if I was editing a story that I had told myself or editing a story that somebody else had said about me.

10:04I'm writing the story now. And that's just a key point that I want people to actually say, oh yeah, this is actually for my business. This is not like a, oh, I want to be famous or I want to be great or I want to feel good about myself. This is actually business foundational stuff that will actually make me money in the future. Totally. Okay. Totally. Cool. So, and then in our case, we then moved into one of our curriculums called World Class Presentation Craft, which is then taking that content, polishing it for the spoken word. Because we believe there's two ways, and this is where you start to move out of the art, like the identity piece into the very tactical.

10:41And we start teaching like practical, tactical techniques that can transform your charisma, transform your ability to present, not just as a speaker, but somebody who is on camera, on podcast interviews. And we believe that actually the fastest way to generate leads for a personal brand are referrals from people you know and presentations, going out and doing presentations. But presentations doesn't mean you have to get on an airplane and stand on a stage. It's going live on social. It's doing videos on YouTube. It's going on other people's podcasts. It's doing 60-second reels. But people have to experience you.

11:23In order to buy you, they have to have an experience with you. First, they have to know you. They have to find you. Then they have to have an experience with you. Then they trust you. And then once trust takes place, then a transaction can take place. And so we spend a lot of time crafting your actual presentation. In your case, which is very much being designed for stage, right? It's really stagecraft. But all of the same mechanics apply to anybody. And going out and speaking and doing presentations is the fastest way to build trust. I mean, you can think about this. Think about your favorite speaker, right?

11:58Like you can, or a YouTube or a podcast interview, right? You could have never have heard of somebody before, never have heard their name. and the shortest distance between a complete stranger and someone becoming a lifelong fan is a one-hour world-class presentation. You could hear one interview of someone on a podcast and go, I've never heard of that person before, but I am in, I am buying what they're about. I believe in what they're saying and I want more. And that's what you have to be able to do. But you can't be sort of just spontaneously throwing out random quibs and quotes and ideas. it's got to be tight and polished and clear and clean and crisp because attention is so sacred and so scarce that when you get somebody's attention, whether it's on a webinar or it's on a social media live or a podcast or a TV interview, or it's an actual stage, you want to be sharp and tight and crisp so that people go, I get it.

12:58I'm experiencing the value. And then I want more. So, um, okay. Can we pause there? Don't forget the next thing that you're going to say. So Rory had said, the quickest way to do this is a one hour presentation. There might be people being like one hour presentation. This is the craziest thing I've ever heard of. I want to reverse engineer what this actually looks like in a practical way. Cause you know, your girls from the hood. So it's just like, I'm trying to make a dollar out of 15 cents. So if I'm going to be investing something, I'm not going in being like, great. I have a one hour keynote.

13:27No, no. I'm going in to be like, this is the foundation. Now my job as a creative chef is to break it up in as many ways possible to start practicing. And so what we have is like this idea of this presentation, right? Like we've worked on it and slowly building out a presentation, but I cannot stand on a stage and give that yet, period, the end, because there's this art and science of understanding what my new voice, what my new cadence and what my new beliefs are. So I thought to myself, myself and the team came together and we thought to ourselves, how can we start splicing up pieces of this content so that you could start testing it and see what's resonating and how to shape what you're going to say to different audiences.

14:10And so right now, and this is the messy middle and Rory, I feel so intimidated, but one of the things I'm really excited about is I want to go in and teach 20 minute segments of the presentation inside of the social curator group as a value add. And I want to be doing this. And so I'm going to be standing, I'm going to be on Zoom. I'm going to be standing up as if I'm giving a virtual presentation. And then what I'm going to do is I'm like, what feedback? Where did people pop? Where did it get really quiet? Then I'm gonna say, and then I'm gonna go to them and be like, this was a practice. What was really good?

14:39What was not better? What kind of examples can I be using? So I'm gonna go into a community that really already knows me as their coach, as a business strategist. And then I'm gonna put myself in front of them and say, help me get better. Because when I get better, we get better. And when we get better, we change not just our businesses and not just our lives, we change communities, we change where we live and we change the world that we dwell in. So I want people to take apart. I'm not paying for a 60 minute keynote. I'm paying for a way to learn how to speak differently to grow my business in a new way.

15:09So. Yeah, totally. And I think a great book or a great speech or a great course or a great one hour presentation should not be a hypothesis. It should be a conclusion. Oh, say it again. Meaning, right? Like when you write a book, it shouldn't be, here's some thoughts I have. It should be, I've tested this out. I've shared this content. I've taken clients through it. I've lived it myself. I've created it. I've adapted it. It's gotten feedback. And by the time you get it in a book, it's not a hypothesis. It's a conclusion. By the time you see me on stage, you know, when people go, oh my gosh, that was incredible.

15:51You go, yeah, I've spent 12 years. Amen. testing out everything, the content, the jokes, the frameworks, the stories, and what you're experiencing is a finished product. And that's what it takes. So there is that art form piece, which is your identity and who you are. And then there are technical pieces in terms of presentations, which we talked about. And then we need to get to money because that's where this all starts to come together. But I'll just give an example that people underestimate how much charisma is manufactured. People don't realize that charisma and emotion and being compelling is something that you can learn.

16:39And so we went through several of the techniques, but I'm going to share one of them right now that's just really, really quick. And this is just called the power pause. And it is the single simplest, fastest, most effective technique there is. And what people don't realize is that you can change the way the audience is feeling by a mechanical change in your delivery. And there's several different techniques around that. But one of them, the easiest one is to use pauses. And I can illustrate this just by saying, like if I say, Jasmine, pauses are powerful. That's how most people would say it. But if I say it to you, I say, hey, Jasmine, pauses are powerful.

17:34You have a completely different experience, right? Like you feel this. And that's just an example. You know, those are little tricks I learned on my way to the World Championship of Public Speaking and all that, where you go, I was an introvert. Like I'm a nerd. My undergrad was accounting. Like I was the shy kid. I'm not the one to go, oh, I'm going to stand on stage in front of thousands of people. And you might not be either. But when somebody buys from you, okay, there's two things that have to happen. First, trust must take place before there's a transaction. Trust must take place before there's a transaction.

18:06So they have to trust you. So they have to learn something. The second thing that happens before there's a transaction is there must be emotional buy-in. You have to move people emotionally. they have to have an experience right where they go i love this person i believe in this person i want to be a part of what they're doing if they're going to be a lifelong fan and a lot of that is are things that you can do just through learning a few polished presentation techniques which ultimately are in some ways just sort of like show business and really it's just on the way of leading us to how do we make money how do we how do we monetize a personal brand and i keep on pausing you like to get to that point people like jasmine stop talking like no wait wait wait so rory okay now this is time like i didn't actually think i was going to share the story but we had about 45 minutes left on day two and rory had said okay jasmine based on what we've gone through we can do x y or z and one of the options was for him to look at what do we call them like just videos, videos of me speaking.

19:12And I said, I would really love, I've never had somebody go through my content and give me feedback. Because one of the things that Rory explained to me was the power of the pause and what he was doing when he was looking through my video, he would say, pause it. And then he would say back the thing I said, exact same thing. And all I did was pause because what happens, and I know that it was happening, but Rory called it out and said, when you get nervous or when you want people to pay attention, you speak fast. And that's fine. There is a time for that, but you're not counterbalancing it by talking slowly.

19:47Now there's somebody here who's just like, I'm not going to be a public speaker. No problem. I am going to start leveraging this tool in video because what happens is I've trained myself to speak so fast on TikTok in reels because I want to get attention. I don't want people to peel away, But to understand that my goal isn't just to get more views. My goal is to get a future client or customer, period. So even if I have a video that performed the worst, but it got me a client, that's the win. That's the reason why I'm doing this. Now, as one of the things that we were watching in the videos was that he was pausing and he was talking about a different thing.

20:27And I want to talk about this because it pertains to content specifically, not just the stage performance. that oftentimes I stand on a stage and I talk and things happen naturally. I don't have a scripted thing. And so I was talking and I made a comment that I said, sometimes we come to these conferences and we want to use exterior things to validate who we are. And oh, have you seen the size of my newsletter list? And then I went on with the rest of the story. Now, Rory said, pause that, Jasmine. He's like, there is the ability to change the energy in the room if you were okay and confident enough to stick in the joke.

21:04And I was like, oh, Rory, but that wasn't planned. I was just like, have you seen the size of my newsletter list? And Rory had said, well, what is something that you could say on the back of that? He's like, that was an innuendo. We talk about, have you seen the size of, in a different way? And then you said newsletter list and you're in a room full of big business people. It's like a little chuckle. Ha ha. He's like, but you could actually sit in the humor to get people back captivated. He's like, no, obviously this is just coming off the top of my head, but you know, it's like, have you seen the size of my newsletter list?

21:31The curves on that thing, the way it moves. And I mean, obviously that joke is kind of like, but he's just, what he was saying was just stick in it that you don't have to talk fast and you don't have to be extra and you don't have to be the most confident. You could just be okay sitting in the pockets that people rush through. And so you might not want to get into public speaking, but doing that in regards to content, written, audio, and visual are powerful things to build trust. Why do we want to build trust? We want to build trust so people go on the journey. When they're on the journey, they are most likely to become a future customer or client in the future.

22:11Rory, thank you for allowing me to extend that so that we're making it applicable not just to public speaking. Yeah, totally. And you made a good point there about the purpose of the video, right, is to generate a client. And I think this is right where we start to cross over into monetization. I think too many personal brands are consumed with the width of their reach that they are forgetting about the depth of their impact. Say it again. You don't need to be so focused on the width of your reach if you're focused on the depth of your impact. For most personal brands, they're going to make money not by having more and more followers, but that's what everybody is consumed with.

22:55How do I get more followers, more followers? But there's two ways to make impact in the world, right? There's width and there's depth. You could have a lot, you could have a million people, you know, watch a 60 second reel, or you could adopt a child, right? One is width, the other is depth. And the depth of impact is really how you transform the world, is through depth. It's also how you make money. This is something we call the law of AJ Vaden. So AJ is my wife. She's our CEO. AJ took an assessment one time, her Bible study did this assessment about what is your spiritual gift. And she found out that her spiritual gift is making money, which is awesome.

23:39Like God, give me that gift, please. Sugar mama. Like that's what I'm saying. Right. And, um, we call this the law of AJ Vaden because one of the things she says is she goes, y 'all, you don't need millions of followers to make millions of dollars. Amen. You do not need millions of followers to make millions of dollars. Even today, like brand builders group, we're, this is our fifth year business. We're likely to hit eight figures this year, get really close to it. We don't have millions of followers. We don't like, I think a lot of times people are super impressed by like, look at all the followers this person has.

24:14What you really would be more impressed by is look how few followers they have and how much money they made from them. Right. As CEO of Social Curator, I have to tell you that I talk to business owners with tens of thousands of followers who can't break six figures. And then I see people with hundreds of followers who are doing multiple seven figures. It has nothing to do with the follower count at all. So out here, just co-signing on that. So please take it away. Sorry. No, I love that. So that's it. And you go, look, I mean, we pay more money for specialists, right? We pay more money. So this is, here's a content marketing strategy thing.

24:55So, you know, We're starting to move into what we would call phase two, which is our marketing phase. I mentioned on the first one, we have four phases and there's three stops in each phase. Well, when we get into marketing, our entire content marketing strategy is so simple. Here's what we do. We teach our clients to give away everything you know for free, but in small bite-sized chunks and in all random miscellaneous order. You can teach everything you know for free, but in small bite-sized chunks and in all random miscellaneous order. And here's why. Today, there's so much information in the world.

25:32People don't pay for information. They pay for organization and application. They don't pay for information. What they're paying for is organization and they're especially paying for application. It's not just, what do you know? It's help me apply it to my life. Just like what you did with us, right? It's one thing for me to teach it to you. It's another to come spend two days and we take you through the entire process. That's helping you apply it to you. People pay more for application because it's the application of that knowledge and that wisdom customized directly to them at their specific moment in the specific way they need it at that time.