Jasmine Star (00:00:14) - Welcome to the Jasmine Star Show. You guys. My heart is beating on the outside of my body, and I'm watching it pulsate in front of me. Because not only do I have the gift, the honor, and the privilege to introduce to you Brandon Kidd, award winning, international acclaimed wedding photographer, but also a business consultant. And I say this because years of our relationship and friendship, I shot his wedding to his amazing high school sweetheart, best friend, business partner Kristen. We met when they were clients. We developed a friendship thereafter. We have traveled the world together. We have started families together. We have built, dare I say it, wealth together.

Brandon Kidd (00:01:01) - Yes, absolutely.

Jasmine Star (00:01:02) - And well, first and foremost, welcome to the Jasmine. Yes.

Brandon Kidd (00:01:05) - Thank you. Thank you, Brandon Kidd.

Jasmine Star (00:01:06) - He's here and we're going to be talking about a couple things, but I'm very open around who I'm bringing on the podcast. And I really want to focus on the watcher and the listener who is ready to take action to uplevel their life and business.

Jasmine Star (00:01:19) - And when I look back at probably the last decade around the biggest jumps that I've had in a personal level, on a professional level, but also on a income and wealth level, they've all had a through line of my dear friend Brandon. Now, Brandon and his brain have really challenged me over the years and lo and behold, what Brandon does with other people is like in the course of just talking to them, the thing you're most passionate about, the thing that is in your place of power, you begin to talk to other people about. So we start having conversations. We met in our careers, intersected as wedding photographers, and the thing about wedding photography that I think is very closely aligned with my plenty of years being a server, was that you would get large amounts of income at indiscriminate amounts of time, and it was not always predictable. And so you and I were building our businesses, our careers are taking off, and we're getting these nice little pockets of money. Now, here's the tale of the smart friend and the less smart friends.

Jasmine Star (00:02:18) - Okay, so Brandon, the smart friend, is looking at his money, putting restraints on that money. Yes, investing the money and then finding a way to live as nicely and simply as possible. And then there's the story of the person who said, well, I got the money. I want to live a little bit finer life. So you explain this once to me as looking at our business as a piggy bank versus an ATM. Yes. Can you explain those differences? Because this is so people who are watching and they're listening. I want you to determine, first and foremost, do you have a piggy bank business or do you have an ATM? Because that's going to radically change the way we enter in this conversation?

Brandon Kidd (00:03:01) - Um, I think the easiest way to know for sure whether or not you have either of those options is, are you obviously we work to live or you live to work. You have those two choices and how we fund our lifestyle. We all of those have chosen entrepreneurship.

Brandon Kidd (00:03:17) - We've chosen a different path. We've chosen to pave our own way. And so we we really want to figure out.

Jasmine Star (00:03:25) - Are you looking at my notes?

Brandon Kidd (00:03:26) - Are you.

Jasmine Star (00:03:27) - Are you? Look at my shoulder. I was like, oh no. Okay. So if you're listening to this on audio, I actually take notes during podcasts like avid. I can't.

Brandon Kidd (00:03:34) - Read anything that.

Jasmine Star (00:03:35) - You're writing so tiny, like because I have very tiny writing. But legitimately, the way that I learn and the way that I've always listened. So if you ever see me in real life, my finger moves, like if Brandon and Kristen and JD and I are at dinner, my finger will move because I'm actually writing out the things that he's saying. Okay, hold on before you get into this, before you actually get into that, can we go back to Goodness Gracious, what year was your first daughter, Mila born? She's five.

Brandon Kidd (00:03:59) - Now. 2018.

Jasmine Star (00:04:00) - Yeah. Okay. 2018. Yeah. Okay. So this is about two years before JD and I start a family and we go to Disneyland together.

Jasmine Star (00:04:06) - And I will never forget we're at Disneyland. We're so excited because we're celebrating how long it took for you to start a family. And we're sitting at this outdoor, that Carnation Cafe. Yes. And we're at Disneyland, and we're supposed to be talking about life. And what you sat us down and said to us in 2018, you had said, you guys have to start using your cash to invest in properties. Yeah. And you just laid it out for us in front of like, Disney boxes. And so even back in 2018, you were really trying to convince and change this idea of piggybank and ATM. So how do we know?

Brandon Kidd (00:04:42) - Okay. So yeah, so let's back up a little bit. So what we're trying to do with businesses that is our medium our vehicle for creating income. Right. Our lifestyle follows after that. So our lifestyle choices need to fall in line with where our business our business first personal second. Right. But most entrepreneurs will like a server. We make money.

Brandon Kidd (00:05:04) - We spend money every how. We've been conditioned growing up, unless we've had outside knowledge pouring into it is, you know, we lose a tooth. We? In the Tooth fairy. To forget this money. We spend it right as a kid. We sell toy or something. Lemonade. We have cash and we spend it. Unless someone teaches us. You have to set some of that aside to save and donate or invest it. We're always just going to spend. We earn to spend, we earn to spend. And that doesn't really change until adulthood when we figure out, I am out spending my life. I can't keep up because our desires as humans are consumers. We always want to make our life more comfortable, feel like we're rewarded for our hard efforts. And so the problem is, though, unless we set up the business in a way that can maintain and sustain growth, we were always going to take money out of that business, and it's going to suffocate the ability to propel that grow, to propel that business forward.

Brandon Kidd (00:05:59) - Meaning if we just say, I love I'm a numbers guy, so I my language is numbers and math. And so everything that I do just makes more sense if I can put it in an equation. That's just how finance major growing up in school like so my love language is math, right? And so for me, like what an example of that would look like is if Sally makes 200,000 a year, okay, you have operating expenses and all of your business expenses and then you have your take home. Okay? Okay. If you have, let's just say her take home is 50% of that. It's 100 grand.

Jasmine Star (00:06:30) - Right. So Sally at the end of year is looking at $100,000 in her bank account. And she's like, wow. Yeah, I had a great year.

Brandon Kidd (00:06:36) - Yeah. If she didn't take any money out. Yeah. Like she's obviously taking money throughout the year and she's spending it on her lifestyle. If she didn't have any, she's not going to end the year with 100.

Jasmine Star (00:06:43) - Right. So she brings in to 100,000 and then she's paid her bills and all that other stuff. And we're just assuming that Sally's just looking at her bank account from that year. Hey, there's 100,000.

Brandon Kidd (00:06:53) - Yes. And so what I like business owners to try to figure out is how much money are they allocating towards growth, how much, how much money are they allocating towards operating expenses. And a lot of times when you're most business owners, when they look at their operating expenses, most of those not most, there's a decent percentage of those expenses that are actually still funding the lifestyle, meaning you're choosing to use them as a right off. You're choosing to upgrade a plane ticket, you're choosing to upgrade a hotel stay, you're using a meal as a write off so that it's actually still funding your lifestyle, even though on paper you're the 100,000 take home is what her take home would be. Where you're choosing your business to be an ATM is actually using more siphoning from the operating expenses, which could have been deployed under the growth category.

Jasmine Star (00:07:40) - Okay. So okay, real quick, how many categories are there? There's growth for.

Brandon Kidd (00:07:44) - Ease. Yeah. We just can keep it as those three like.

Jasmine Star (00:07:47) - But what was the third one. You have growth. Oh just your take home. So take on growth.

Brandon Kidd (00:07:50) - Oh gosh expense and take it. So basically growth is anything outside of your business. Anything that you're going to choose to create more brand awareness, more income producing things. So your promotions, your giveaways, your advertising, your social media okay, anything.

Jasmine Star (00:08:03) - So the growth what I want to put towards growth could be investing in ads. Yes, it could be investing in a new software for my newsletter subscription. Yes okay. So growth is like saying this money I'm going to use to grow my business. Yes. And the more money we have in growing our business, the more opportunity we give for our business to grow. Correct. And you're saying, okay, but if you are taking home a certain amount, that's the amount that you want to take.

Jasmine Star (00:08:30) - But the operating expenses, you're saying, hey, let's look at the operating expenses and ask yourself, are you treating your operating expenses truly like a business? Or are you treating your operating expenses like it's business slash lifestyle? Yes. So the example that you gave, because I'm breaking this down because I really want to use myself as a personal example like JD and I fly and you're like, you guys, you could still get a great flight, but you're always upgrading. Is this a conscious decision or.

Brandon Kidd (00:09:01) - What's your return of investment on that specifically? And I like to look at every single business decision that you do as what's your ROI on that decision? Right. Because the more that you can stack a greater multiple of your ROI on that specific decision, the more you're going to be able to grow in scale and grow more exponentially is because now you can monitor the specific actionable steps of of what that business activity.

Jasmine Star (00:09:24) - Decision making.

Brandon Kidd (00:09:25) - Decision would be.

Jasmine Star (00:09:25) - Okay, so my friend was really freaking smart. So he uses a lot of finance terms okay.

Jasmine Star (00:09:31) - So I'm going to repeat it back in how my brain hears this. You're saying what is the ROI? What's the return on investment? You say Jasmine, you can get a flight for $500 and then you can get a flight. If you decide that same flight to upgrade for $2,000. You're saying the difference there, Jasmine, is $1,500. What do you get back from that $1,500? What do you get back from it? And I need to tell you, I get X, Y, and Z in order for it to quantify as a business expense.

Brandon Kidd (00:09:59) - Yes. And ways to be able to measure what that return would be is did you sit next to a person where you had a conversation where that led to an additional sale, a business where you can actually quantify. Right. So. The way that you're going to be able to know whether or not these decisions are worth it to me is by truly calculating what that return of investment is, either with money or with time. Hmm.

Jasmine Star (00:10:22) - And you're saying would a lot of business owners did, like, you could just call me out? Like for years I would be using my operating expenses as a lifestyle.

Jasmine Star (00:10:32) - Yeah. Because I'm like, I'm not just going to stay in that hotel. You see, Brandon, I need to stay in this hotel. Yes. And you're saying if you would just got that extra money, Jasmine, and applied it towards growth. Yes. You wouldn't just be looking at riches, you would be looking at a way to create long term wealth.

Brandon Kidd (00:10:47) - Yes, because on the outside it's lifestyle rich, but cash flow poor, wealth poor. And people wonder why they're stuck in the same position, or why they're constantly scrambling, trying to earn and grow and earn and grow. And that's why I said before, like you can't, it's very difficult to outearn your spending potential if you don't curb your expectations. Are set a parameter. Our budget of saying this is how much money I need to take away from the business. I'm not going to compromise my business growth because I'm continually siphoning money out of it from my own personal right. So set clear boundaries. Sally's taking 100 K out.

Brandon Kidd (00:11:23) - Okay, but of those operating expenses, those should not fund Sally's lifestyle at all. Sally wants to upgrade. I think that should be on her personal even though it's a write off, but she can upgrade these choices from the personal side if it fits within that budget, but keeping the operational expenses clean and optimized. So that way you can double down on the things that are actually going to be earning you money as opposed to you spending money. Yeah, that's how you're going to grow exponentially in the future. Okay.

Jasmine Star (00:11:49) - So there's a group of people right now who are listening and they're like, did he just use the B word budget? Yes, yes. The worst, the worst. And I'm like every time you hear it I'm like. Like don't, don't cramp my style, bro. Like, don't cramp my style. We're going to come back because that's where I believe. JD and I have had the biggest transformations, not in terms of our friendship, but and how you got things to click for us, you know, and a lot of the audience knows we started this business and it opened our eyes to what it meant to make money on the internet.

Jasmine Star (00:12:19) - And as photographers, we continued to grow year over year. And what we experienced was lifestyle rich and not cashflow poor. But it was just like, whoa, what were you doing with all of that excess cash? Because we ran a wildly profitable business. And I think that for a long time, you don't say you guys, but put a budget. I was like, why? Why? Like, we got it. We're going to pay for it. And if I can go back to my former self and tell myself, hey, Brandon is asking you to set a budget so that you use your riches and turn them into wealth. Yes. Before we do that, because if we start talking about budgeting too early, people are like, I can't hear it, I'm out, I'm out. Okay, so one thing that I felt was a pretty big turning point for the both of us, but you saw it much earlier, was the fact that you were able to change your prices. Yeah.

Jasmine Star (00:13:06) - Can we talk about that for a second? Yeah. Can we talk about press? Okay. So actually let me go back and give a little bit of clarity. But then I want you to fill in some gaps. So I stated that Brandon is a photographer. It has been something that you started before I was a photographer. You started your career with your wife. You still continue to do that. You shoot luxury weddings around the world, and then you also, in addition to that, help other creative entrepreneurs, specifically in the service based industry. Although you have plenty of experience in product, we don't have to talk about that. But he does so many things so well. When we start talking about these service based business owners, when we think about photographers, videographers, when we talk about life coaches, when we talk about people who are providing a service service. Yeah, I want to talk about who's determining their price. Like, how is one saying, am I making enough? How do you initially go out and start raising your rates? So this is why I'm asking this question.

Brandon Kidd (00:13:55) - I'm asking this is gonna ruffle some feathers though, because who determines your price? We'll start there.

Jasmine Star (00:14:00) - Okay. Right. Hold on. But wait. The reason I want to talk about raising our prices, yes, is because when we talk about budgeting at the end, we're going to talk about budgeting the money that you are making beyond cutting back your a little tighter because people right now are like, I'm barely making it.

Brandon Kidd (00:14:14) - Exactly. Which is why. Which is why you need to focus on the growth so that you have money to get there.

Jasmine Star (00:14:18) - But but ruffle some feathers. I am ready for it.

Brandon Kidd (00:14:20) - Well, who determines your pricing? Sorry to say, the market determines your pricing, supply and demand. If you don't have the demand, you increase price. As demand increases, you shorten supply. You shorten the amount of supply based on increasing rates. Right?

Jasmine Star (00:14:34) - So wait, okay, let me repeat this back. If you don't have a lot of inquiries, you charge me a very.

Brandon Kidd (00:14:39) - Yes. It's gonna be very hard for you to make the money that you want to make. I mean, that's basic, like economic formation, supply and demand. The market tells you what you're worth, not necessarily what you say you're worth. You can position yourself. You can build confidence. But if that doesn't lead to convincing other people that you're worth that, then you're just not going to have enough. You don't have enough increases. You don't have enough demand. You don't have enough brand awareness, clout, networking, relationships, past clients, anything that would. It's all based on leads. If you're not getting leads, what's your conversion rate on that? The more you increase your rates, the less conversions that you have. More people say no because your rates are higher. In wedding photography specifically, some people gravitate, you know, they want to buy a luxury good and whatever, but it's more specific.

Jasmine Star (00:15:22) - Let's go back to the early parts of your career, though. Did you ever lower your prices?

Brandon Kidd (00:15:26) - I never lower my rates, okay.

Brandon Kidd (00:15:28) - I've only increased, but I've only increased specific to my demand. So for me, I've well, no, I shouldn't say that. Year over year I've always raised. But there were times where I would take a big jump and then I would hear a lot of no's, and so I would do a micro adjustment and bring it back in line with supply and demand.

Jasmine Star (00:15:44) - Still more than the previous.

Brandon Kidd (00:15:45) - Year, more than the previous year. But yeah, maybe not every year. Yes. And so so you measure and you can calibrate your growth based off of your demand. How if you want to continue to increase your rates, continue to increase your demand.

Jasmine Star (00:15:58) - If you don't have demand, if you don't.

Brandon Kidd (00:16:00) - Have demand, you're not.

Jasmine Star (00:16:01) - Going to not justified for that. Yes you can price range. Yes.

Brandon Kidd (00:16:03) - And you may be able to charge more because you may still land a few of those people willing to get. But overall, you probably will make less that year than you would otherwise. Okay, so you have different goals, right? If you're overworked, if you're doing 50 weddings a year and you're okay taking on less weddings, right? So but it's finding the right balance for you of how much you want to work, how much you want to earn.

Brandon Kidd (00:16:26) - Some people have a dollar threshold that they want to make every year. Some people have amount of hours that they want to work. So if you know you're able to scale and charge 30,000 for a wedding, but you only book Three weddings at 90 K, would you rather that or would you rather book, you know, 20 weddings at ten K, so 90,000 versus 200,000, right? I mean, it depends. Do you only want to work three. Do you only work ten? It just depends on what your goals are. For me, I've always been I'm always I have a certain dollar amount of money that I want to make every year, and I adjust my pricing according to fit that.

Jasmine Star (00:16:59) - So first things first. When it comes to somebody looking at their prices, there's only 1 or 2 people who are listening. I am putting out an offer and it's never been out there. I don't know how to price it. And then two, I have an offer that's out there and I'm still not sure of the price.

Jasmine Star (00:17:10) - What you are saying is first decide do you want to focus on dollars or hours? Yes. Okay. Great.

Brandon Kidd (00:17:17) - Dollars or hours? I'd say set the number of hours that you want to work. And then from there you can determine how much is worth it. You drop your price in relation to so that they they meet up.

Jasmine Star (00:17:27) - Give me an example.

Brandon Kidd (00:17:28) - Uh, an example. Well, like like the wedding side. So like, I know I'm okay comfortable working 20 hours a week. I feel I want to do that. And so how many weddings would that look like in order to service that amount of fulfillment?

Jasmine Star (00:17:43) - Emails, all that other stuff.

Brandon Kidd (00:17:44) - Yeah. Like how many hours? Like. So I think, you know, okay, if I, if 20 hours a week and I want to do, you know, I say I do 20 weddings a year, that's about 20 hours a week work. Okay. So how do I get 20 weddings? Well, then you look at your conversions or see, like, okay, I typically book, you know, one and in every two wedding, every increase I book half, I convert half of my what my inquiries are.

Brandon Kidd (00:18:07) - And so you need to have 40 qualified leads in order to justify that. So you can fit it into an equation, which again is how I operate. Um, and so, so.

Jasmine Star (00:18:18) - I'm gonna, I'm gonna piece that back right now. Somebody says I like Brandon would love. Okay, I'm gonna use an example now of a life coach. So I actually had a conversation this morning with a life coach, and I want to use her exact. I won't talk about her business or her name, but she charges $12,000 for coaching three months, one hour a week per client. And she said, I have too many inquiries. I can't keep up with the demand. I. There's not enough hours in my day. Yes. In her particular situation, how does she determine what price she should raise it to? Are you saying? She should still say I want to work at just the same amount of hours? Jasmine.

Brandon Kidd (00:19:00) - It depends. On what? Her. It depends on what her financial goal is.

Brandon Kidd (00:19:02) - If it's because it sounds like she's maxed out of of her time and she doesn't know how to raise it. There's not necessarily an equation because there's so many variables involved. But raise it enough to where you see the amount of leads or see what your conversion rates are. I feel like every business owner should have a conversion rate based on how many leads they get, where the leads are coming from, and at what price point, what how those leads are qualified because you can have 1000 leads and, you know, 95% of them are not going to be qualified for you. So it's an artificial demand, right? Right. Just because I have so much demand, I don't necessarily I can't keep up with it. Well, maybe. Right. Like unless you know, this.

Jasmine Star (00:19:39) - Conversion, the conversion conversion conversion conversion.

Brandon Kidd (00:19:42) - Conversion and the price associated to each of those leads. Right, right. The value of each of those leads. Right. So how does she know how to increase her rate. Right.

Brandon Kidd (00:19:50) - She she would she could do it incrementally. She could charge an extra 500 after each booking. She can do it until she gets to. The point is, finding that perfect middle sweet spot is she raises the rates enough each time to where her conversion rate drops the other way to where now she's no longer booking enough. Then she can bring it back. That's where she knows if she finds the sweet spot. Not too hot. Not.

Jasmine Star (00:20:11) - How do people how do you respond when people are like, but wait a minute, like I can't change my prices so much.

Brandon Kidd (00:20:15) - Absolutely. Yeah. So we had we had the conversation before. So I call it like the airline pricing model. Like literally. Oh yeah I.

Jasmine Star (00:20:21) - Love this okay. Explain it, explain it.

Brandon Kidd (00:20:23) - So airline pricing model was like literally nobody paid the same dollar amount. You're all on that seat right? The person next to you didn't pay. See, this is the difference.

Jasmine Star (00:20:30) - Between me and you. You told me this, and I was like, poof.

Jasmine Star (00:20:34) - Like, I think I knew it. Obviously, we're not all paying the same price now. We're not talking about classes. We're not talking about first class business class. We're like, let's just say we're all in economy. Yes. Guess what? Boo boo. Nobody paid everybody. And I was like, he's right. And I never thought about it that way. So we know these massive airlines and companies are doing this. Wait wait wait why would we not? So explain that not everybody in economy paid the same price.

Brandon Kidd (00:20:56) - That's correct, because it also depends on the time of year. It depends on when they booked right. What your availability is. Yep. If your goal is a certain dollar amount right, and you want to hit a certain amount, then have a baseline of rate that you cover 50%. Once you get to 50% of bookings or fulfillment, then increase it 10% or increase it 20. So obviously, the more that that plane gets booked up, the higher the prices are.

Brandon Kidd (00:21:20) - So the same thing you apply that to your business. It's okay. Everyone says like a package and this is what it is. But in order to really maximize the amount of money that you can get out of each of those leads, then you're going to increase your rate proportionately as you fill up.

Jasmine Star (00:21:33) - That's so freaking good. Okay, can I peel back a little bit? Yes. And I was talking with a makeup artist and she was saying how people are booking her for the bride and for the bridal party, and she was expressing how exhausted she was at the end of the day. And she said, I just wish that I could just do brides. And then I asked, well, why don't you just do brides? I don't know who would hire me for that. And so then the suggestion or the advice I had said, well, what's your threshold like? How much do you need to make just to be like, I can pay my bills. And anything beyond this is going to be bonus.

Jasmine Star (00:22:05) - And she had said X amount of bridal parties like the bride and the bridal party. Okay. And then I said, well, once you book that, why don't you just change your terms entirely and say for the rest of 2024, brides only, brides only. And so for somebody in that situation and they're saying, okay, I'm ready to make this decision, is there like a mindset that somebody needs? Because oftentimes what happens is you get into panic mode. Well, what if I don't make the same amount? What if nobody books me for the rest of the year? Like, what's the narrative that's going on in your mind saying, I'm having the confidence to change this and I'm okay with it? What do we need to say to ourselves to get to that financial point?

Brandon Kidd (00:22:40) - Well, I think it depends on what else you have. Like if you have to meet a certain income goal, right? If you keep what you know you need to make. So that way your lifestyle and everything is not.

Brandon Kidd (00:22:51) - So hit that goal first. Got it right.

Jasmine Star (00:22:53) - So suck it up and do it for the proverbial bride and bridal party. Suck it up. Yeah, suck it up.

Brandon Kidd (00:22:57) - And so once you have your basic needs met to where you're not compromising quality work, you're not sacrificing major lifestyles, you're not disrupting, you know, you're not having to make major lifestyle changes in order to to make up for the loss of income. You have your basic needs met. Then be very aggressive towards growth. Or if you're not, or have another avenue or another project or something else that could supplement and fill in that would fulfill additional passion, right? That would fulfill additional income. Even so, a lot of times those things are the things that you're most excited about, are the things that you have exponential growth in, which is why, I mean, when we talk about business, it's like all these other businesses that I start, we can grow and scale and optimize, and then we have extra funds. So if I don't hit it, then that means I have more time.

Brandon Kidd (00:23:42) - So then I take that time and apply it and grow and scale a different business. And then what's the fun part of that is you can actually be a lot more competitive with your pricing, because not all of your income is dependent on that first. Thing in the first place, right? So it gives you a lot more confidence moving forward to take a big leap. So that's more for the people that are trying to take a big leap. That gives you a little bit extra confidence right. Obviously like we said you need to have the demand there. You need to have the leads, the qualified leads coming in. But you definitely just I think it's a great way of making you feel confident to take the next step without having to compromise anything else. Yeah.

Jasmine Star (00:24:17) - And so going back to this, this makeup artist, she covers her nut and then she, she covers it and says, okay, I'm going to suck it up and I'm going to do these bridal parties knowing that there's something else different.

Jasmine Star (00:24:29) - Now, in your case, I want to go back to this because there's probably a listener who's like, wait, he's a photographer and he's working 20 hours a week, like, what the heck? Like there are. Okay. And here's one thing. Like, if that and you are wildly successful, we're talking about like, your photography arm alone brings in multiple six figures. Okay. So people are like, he's bringing in multiple six figures. He's working 20 hours a week to. Yeah, I mean we're like right, right. So some weeks more depending on the seasonality. Right. So people are probably looking at this and being like okay. In your particular situation. You can say that with wedding photography, as long as I hit this, then I could be ultra competitive for booking any other weddings beyond that. And then as you are building out other businesses and let's just say somebody's booking you for consulting the rest of your hours, you can go towards building that other business and diversifying your revenue streams.

Jasmine Star (00:25:19) - Yes. Talk to me about the pathology. How did you start thinking, hey, I can do multiple things at once to diversify my revenue streams because I learned this big time from you.

Brandon Kidd (00:25:28) - Well, so for me to back up a little bit. Because when it comes to gig workers, right? Or where we get lump sum money. Yes. I think that it's important to know that getting those leads really matters when those leads are coming in, because if you have one lead and then you don't have a gig and you have nothing for three months. Yep. Well, now your cash flow that makes you have to take things on credit and makes you so you're spending more money in order to float until the next gig. So one way of hitting your quota is just doing your base rate for each month, or whatever it is that you feel like will float you to the next month. Does that make sense?

Jasmine Star (00:26:01) - Yeah, give it to me as an example.

Brandon Kidd (00:26:03) - Like like if I know my monthly expenses are 10,000 a month.

Brandon Kidd (00:26:07) - Okay, I need to make sure that I get a gig worth at least 10,000 a month. So. But if I if my rates are 20,000, then I can theoretically schedule book one wedding every other month and not have to worry about expenses. Everything is covered, right? But you have to know what that equation is, because if your monthly expenses and everything is more expensive than that, then you're going to feel suffocated and then you're going to start making poor choices on the business. Growth will be what's the word I'm looking for? Truncated. Yeah, truncated.

Jasmine Star (00:26:37) - Or maybe I should maybe use a different word. Growth will be unpredictable and slow.

Brandon Kidd (00:26:40) - Yes, yes. And diminished ultimately because you don't have the funds needed. So you have to make sure cash flow is still like cash flow is king, right? You still have to make sure that it's flowing in and through your business so that you can still.

Jasmine Star (00:26:51) - So let's go. Let's talk to this person. Because right now people are like, yeah, but the way that I was like the way that any life coach, the way that any lawyer, the way that any dentist, like when you are bringing in these people and it's lump sum like when people like when you said, oh, for gig workers, I'm like, there are so many creative entrepreneurs who are so offended by I'm not a gig.

Brandon Kidd (00:27:12) - I'm a gamer. Yeah. I mean.

Jasmine Star (00:27:13) - Yeah, we are, honey, like we are. We are dependent on the gigs, and the gigs are not guaranteed. Yes. And so then for the person who's just like, how do I predict that though, like with the cyclical nature of what it is that we do, how do I say like, I'm okay to either take on a different project for more revenue or raise my rates? Like, what's the mindset that we have to possess in these times of saying it is unpredictable?

Brandon Kidd (00:27:37) - So what your question is, is like, how do I know when to create a different source of income or what you're saying is.

Jasmine Star (00:27:43) - Like, so you're saying you're like, okay, so if you know that your monthly expenses are $10,000 and then you book a $20,000 wedding, well, then you bought yourself two months of time. Yes. But like, at what point does somebody say, okay, I'm good for the year, right? Because it's like.

Brandon Kidd (00:27:58) - You have to know.

Brandon Kidd (00:27:58) - So are we going back to the B-word? You have to know your budget. So like so if you know so 10,000. So we're at okay I have 120 k that I need. So yes. So you have to book that. You have to book that first before you can get super aggressive.

Jasmine Star (00:28:11) - What I hear you say is you better suck it up, work your tail off and do everything you can. You should not be distracted with another revenue stream. You should not be distracted about thinking about your expenses or expansion. All of your attention should be going, I hit my number. Yeah, I hit my number. Yeah. And so until you hit that number, we are having no other conversation.

Brandon Kidd (00:28:33) - No other conversation. Okay. You can optimize. You can figure out ways so that you can lower your costs so that you can get to your number faster. Right? You could reduce your lifestyle. You could maximize and optimize your business expenses. Either way, you're trying to get your income to be in line with what you're what you need, right?

Jasmine Star (00:28:49) - But because it is only that our minds, our bodies, our souls can be thinking about the next thing until we know we have covered our homes or families, our children, or apartment or car, whatever it is.

Jasmine Star (00:29:00) - Yes, we cannot think about anything else until we have said you can.

Brandon Kidd (00:29:03) - But you really shouldn't, shouldn't, you shouldn't. Because if you know that that's main source of income is where it's most statistically probable that you're going to get the income right? Rather, why would you start something new? That's baby form that you might not be able to. Right. Like go deep on the thing that you already know, like bet on yourself, right? If you're going to bet on a stock market, something that you don't know anything about, like why wouldn't you choose something where you have the greatest control over where you have the greatest input and force, and be able to steer that ship in the direction that you want versus right. So go deep, go narrow laser and hit your quota. Yep. Adjust everything accordingly so that you could be as flexible as you need. Because, you know, if you are the gig worker, that you have specific things that you need to hit that get. So like, yeah, if you have those specific needs, then you can't.

Jasmine Star (00:29:50) - Um, can I talk about how you do this? Can I would you mind if I, if I share something personal from my perspective on how you do this. So you have built. Such a successful business in a very competitive and lucrative market. But it doesn't mean that you rest on our laurels, because every year you have to hit that same quota. Your wedding money is the money. You say, this is what we use for our family. Yeah. And so Brandon is a luxury wedding photographer who shoots internationally with the top 1% of bridegrooms and specifically coordinators. And so I have seen Brandon year over year, take time out of your schedule to go to the most exclusive events for luxury wedding professionals. So you go hard, you make relationships, you follow up, you set up appointments with those clients like so. You are so focused, a very specific time of year, I would say. I see you do this twice a year. I see you do this in early spring, and then I see you do it in late fall.

Jasmine Star (00:30:48) - And you're saying I am covering my nut, I'm covering my nut, I'm covering it, and I see you so honed in on I'm going to pick these clients, I'm going to get these things. And the minute you do that, you're like, cool. Anything else that comes, that's gravy. But now I have the time to focus on other things. That gives you my 10 to 20 hours a week fulfilling on deliverables for these clients who are keeping my family afloat. And it's great. And then all of the other money that you are bringing in, I see you budgeting that not towards getting rich, but building wealth. That's correct. Okay, okay. So I want to go back to talk about in times where you have faced challenges financially because in gig economy work, I am talking about therapists, I am talking about videographers. There are times that the economy shakes and despite your best efforts, the market absolutely changes. So can you go back and give me a time where we hit a recession? We've we've gone through Covid.

Brandon Kidd (00:31:46) - For.

Jasmine Star (00:31:46) - Photographers.

Brandon Kidd (00:31:47) - I mean, it's the greatest loss 90% of photography income.

Jasmine Star (00:31:52) - So that year, when we go back to 2020 and we look at every wedding, professional DJs, venues, florists, makeup artists, hair artists, photographers, videographers, officiant, they all took a massive hit in our gig economy. What were you telling yourself and how did you use the money that you had budgeted? Yeah, to float not one year, but multiple years.

Brandon Kidd (00:32:18) - I mean, I think again, this comes in line. That's not what people want to do, but living and operating day to day life significantly below your means allows and equips you with the ability to draw back on. I had thankfully plenty of stock and had plenty of rental assets, people that were still needing to rent and things, you know, other income streams coming in, can you as a result.

Jasmine Star (00:32:41) - But talk to me about that because nobody is listening. Like, well, what does he mean? What does he mean? Like I want somebody to know when the entire industry took a tank, where was your other revenue coming in from?

Brandon Kidd (00:32:50) - Stocks.

Brandon Kidd (00:32:51) - Stocks dumped from March until May, June. But they rallied. Not only they rallied, they rallied like 4,060% more than where they were within a short span. So you're not able to get yourself into that position unless you are budgeting and saving and really investing, putting things away for a rainy day. Every business should have ideally, ideally six months of living expenses saved and banked. Right. You could be. There's all kinds of strategies of how, um, like risk adverse or risk tolerant. You can be like how aggressive you want to be with that saving. Keep three of months of it in actual savings. Keep three of it in high growth investment accounts. So that way you're actually earning money every year, you know.

Jasmine Star (00:33:33) - Now what about the worker who's doing well has a little bit tiny maybe over at the end of the month, but it's not as predictable. And they're saying where do I come up with this money to save like that? Money doesn't exist.

Brandon Kidd (00:33:44) - You have to make hard choices.

Brandon Kidd (00:33:45) - I mean, there's because no matter what, what's.

Jasmine Star (00:33:48) - A hard choice like moving.

Brandon Kidd (00:33:50) - Moving, moving, moving in with somebody, take on a roommate, sell, don't drive the nice car. Don't buy the nice clothes. Don't stay. And I mean make a short term sacrifice. One year build up. You could make hard choices for one year. I mean, we talk about this all the time. Like, like choose your hard, right? Like, what's harder? Making a sacrifice that really like trimming the fat off of everything so that you can save up a cushion for one year, or constantly living the rest of your life, maybe struggling to always make ends meet. Feeling stress about finances, always feeling like you can't catch up. Always feeling like you're overworked and underpaid, right? Like what's harder? In my opinion, it's the long term that that feels more weighty than choosing to just be like, you know what? I'm gonna take on a roommate. I'm gonna choose to move in.

Brandon Kidd (00:34:36) - I'm gonna choose to change my location in my house. You're right. Like those things because, you know, transportation, accommodation and food are going to be the biggest sources of income. You can change those three things. You're going to see significant amount of growth and what amount of savings. And what you're going to do with that savings is reinvest it back in your business in these growth categories that I would like to talk about. We can get there to how to really increase money because most people are struggling like I have no margin. I have no margin, how I have no time and I have no money. So how am I ever going to actually get ahead?

Jasmine Star (00:35:08) - Okay, I want to go back. I want to go back to the growth categories. But I know that people are listening because I was that person in your life for so long, and I would see you make lifestyle changes. Now, I'm not going to get into your business. You've built wealth, my friend has built wealth and it's incredible to see.

Jasmine Star (00:35:25) - But as of two years ago, when there was no reason why you needed to make this decision, and then you did, can you talk about the decision you made about your car?

Brandon Kidd (00:35:35) - Oh, I mean, yeah, for my car. I think for me, that was just more of a personal I felt like I was driving a nice BMW. I felt like I needed to have that car to represent my brand, to represent, to feel confident, to feel like I was, you know, when I would show up to a wedding that I feel like my clients made a good purchase on me, that I was an extension of their brand. And then I realized, like, it just didn't matter. It was like, that's just my my own personal reflection on what the situation is. So like one easy. You know, I had a coaching call, I think even you and I had talked about this, but it's like if you're really conscious of that, of what car you drive when you have meetings, depending on how many meetings you have, obviously, like real estate agents and things like that, use the car more regularly.

Brandon Kidd (00:36:15) - But for a photographer who's not super client facing, especially on a wedding day, they don't even see your car. Maybe at the valet for 10s, right? Right. But like talking about ROI, how much is that 10s? How much return you actually getting on that on that car? That's a thousand bucks a month like that you're using for 10s of your brand. Is that really worth it? So we would say like, okay, if that's the case, if the car is truly an extension of brand and it's truly valuable. Turo turo for the day. Turo a car that costs you 100 bucks for one day as opposed to 1000 bucks a month every month.

Jasmine Star (00:36:43) - Okay, I want to I want to pause here because I started drilling down when Brandon had said so. He traded in his BMW. And you got a truck? I got a truck. You got. It's beautiful. It's amazing. It's gorgeous. Like. Yes, it's very manly. I mean, bro, I like it.

Jasmine Star (00:36:56) - You.

Brandon Kidd (00:36:57) - Yeah.

Jasmine Star (00:36:57) - You're testosterone. You got a car, right? Woosh!

Brandon Kidd (00:37:00) - Immediately I love it. I had a truck when I first started driving, I loved it. And now that I have three small kids, like, you know, it's just convenient to have. I love having it. I love the way that I feel. It's more in line with the the trajectory and direction that I want to be.

Jasmine Star (00:37:13) - And you got to a point where you're like, it does. It just.

Brandon Kidd (00:37:15) - Doesn't matter. It doesn't, it doesn't matter. Yeah. So I love my truck. I love my car. It feels good. I mean, the thing the reality is like maybe a bad example because the car is as expensive as my BMW. But, but.

Jasmine Star (00:37:27) - But it's not. But it's like this notion. But it's the.

Brandon Kidd (00:37:29) - Mindset. It's the mindset that it doesn't matter. I thought that I needed the car for a brand and the reality is I didn't. And so how many things, how many choices do we make in our business that are that right.

Brandon Kidd (00:37:38) - And so I think when we look at our categories, our business of where we choose to invest, knowing your numbers like obviously the budget, but knowing true like a true audit of what is my ROI for each decision I'm making in my business, the car, the rent, like the equipment that I'm purchasing, the networking conversation like the networking events that I'm attending, track how much money you're getting from that. There's things that are going to be intangible, like your car or whatever. Right? So I think that there are activities that you can figure out that will have a growth multiple to it, so that you can double down and triple down on those areas of your business. But I think that it's just important to create that budget. First, know, live within your means and then try to fight to scale back on. Create more opportunities for growth by saving on expenses.

Jasmine Star (00:38:29) - Okay. We're going to talk about the growth categories and the growth opportunities. But before we do that, before we do that, there are somebody who's listening.

Jasmine Star (00:38:35) - And they have squirreled away some cash for the hope that they were going to do something. Yes, to be a brand extension, a visual brand extension, which is kind of now they're they're listening like, I don't know, is that really worth it? Number two, perhaps they've been driving a car that's just been like, uh, not all the best, but they said the minute I save this for my down, I'm going to be using this or perhaps saying, oh, listen, I'm living with four roommates and I'm going to move now just to have one other roommate. When you look at all of this and they have that money squirreled away and they're looking at you, what do I do with this money to build wealth?

Brandon Kidd (00:39:09) - Okay, so you have all these different avenues of where you can generate income from. The first thing is getting is your business producing as much money as you possibly need, right, to cover your expenses. And is it growing beyond what you need? Do you have a lot of margins? So that way you can continue, right? Going back to the notion of treating your business as a bank account, as a piggy bank, not an ATM.

Brandon Kidd (00:39:30) - You're going to store your wealth and grow your wealth from the thing that's producing you the income the most first. So build up the business. Reinvest into the business. You don't know what to do with that money until you know all of your business activities, what your ROI is on those things. Right? So if it's an email campaign, if it's advertisement, if it's creating a course, all of these things have time investment and money investment. And you need to calculate both of those things. So that way, you know, what do I do with 10,000. Right. If I have a. ROI of two checks on a certain activities, such as advertisement. Right.

Jasmine Star (00:40:03) - If I if I have a return on investment, if I invest $1,000 and that yields $2,000, that is A2X ROI. So I want to make walk us through. Exactly.

Brandon Kidd (00:40:13) - Okay.

Jasmine Star (00:40:13) - So so are we talking about the growth opportunities or the growth categories. Yeah okay. Great. I'm writing notes I want to make sure we're now talking about growth category because we're.

Brandon Kidd (00:40:20) - Trying to think you said what do I do to build wealth. What do I yeah. So to answer your question, I mean, it's a multi-part but okay, you have choices as the business owner, but I think that of all the choices available, choose to invest on yourself first, okay? Bet on yourself first because you're going to have the most exponential growth and the highest return on investment. Betting on yourself for sure, because you can control everything. Second to that would be like other income producing assets. But if that's not your wheelhouse and that's not your expertise, then give.

Jasmine Star (00:40:48) - Me an example.

Brandon Kidd (00:40:49) - Of, if you don't.

Jasmine Star (00:40:50) - Know, income producing assets.

Brandon Kidd (00:40:52) - I mean high yield savings account that takes little knowledge to know about, but it's going to increase. It's going to grow your money small 5% right now, but better than nothing okay. Other income producing would be real estate okay. Could be any kind of stocks any kind of ownership in companies. Right. Anything that can grow and appreciate okay.

Jasmine Star (00:41:15) - So there's somebody who's listening. And I would venture to say that the vast majority, not everybody, but the majority of listeners of the growth categories. Number one, invest in yourself. Number two, invest in other income producing assets like a high yield savings. Number three, investing in real estate. And number four, investing in stocks or finding a seat on a board or being a partner in a business. Yes. If we could focus on the first two.

Brandon Kidd (00:41:39) - Yes, I think the best information would be invest in what you know. Right.

Jasmine Star (00:41:43) - Like that's good because okay, if it's going to take.

Brandon Kidd (00:41:46) - You too much time and you won't necessarily know what to do with your money, like obviously everyone you know, it sounds fun to like own real estate and it's a whole other thing. It's a whole can of worms that you open and you get into, and which is great. I mean, it's an important thing to know and learn. If that is what excites you and what you know, because there's so many different ways to make money.

Brandon Kidd (00:42:03) - But I think it's important to know investing what you know. So that way it takes the least amount of effort to get the desired outcome. Okay, right. If you just don't know real estate and it just feels so overwhelming, well, your time investment, your ROI on what the actual gains that you're getting. If you're taking too much time to understand what that is, that time could have easily just been spent on your business and grown the same amount of money anyways. Okay.

Jasmine Star (00:42:26) - Freaking like this. Okay, so then talk to me. The one caveat when we talk about the growth categories and when people say I'm investing in myself as like.

Brandon Kidd (00:42:35) - As not myself, my business, I want I want everybody to to separate themselves from their businesses. So even if you're a solopreneur, you only have like you're not investing in yourself. Okay. Unless it's yourself. Is the education component, right? Everything else is like your brand, your identity, your awareness, how people view you. Everything is your business, not you.

Brandon Kidd (00:42:55) - Okay, okay, so so how do we invest in the business? Yeah. What are what are ways that we can invest?

Jasmine Star (00:43:01) - What I want to do is draw the caveat, because what I did early in my career, what I see a lot of people do is like, oh, well, I need to invest in this new light gear. Yes, I need to invest in this new special camera. I need to invest in that type of laptop. Like at what point? So if you have a light and you think, well, this light is going to be 50% better of light. Yeah. How do they say like when do you say that's a dumb investment because.

Brandon Kidd (00:43:27) - You don't know, like what is the return on that purchase. So how much. No, no.

Jasmine Star (00:43:31) - It's not even that. It's what's the return on the increase of a 50% better light. Yeah. Not even like you're going from zero light to light.

Brandon Kidd (00:43:37) - Correct. Yeah. But what whatever that delta is that change and what you're trying to make.

Brandon Kidd (00:43:40) - What is the return of that specific change.

Jasmine Star (00:43:42) - How do we determine that though okay.

Brandon Kidd (00:43:43) - So so easy I mean not necessarily easy but.

Jasmine Star (00:43:46) - Easy for you and for me I'm like home calculus. Yeah, yeah. True.

Brandon Kidd (00:43:50) - But if you just view your whole business as two main categories of of business effort, right? You have growth and then you have operational, you have the growth side of it. Is anything outside of your business anything that would be brand awareness. Right. Like anything that would lead you to create the sale okay. Get the sale. Okay. Then everything on the other side of the column would be to like fulfill that sell to service that sell. Okay, okay. So of all of those that would be outward facing, you're going to filter it through everything that is outward facing. We call that like in the growth category. Yes. So to I want to focus on this main kind of like the the for max growth. Right. For m would be measure. Is it is it.

Jasmine Star (00:44:30) - Measurable max growth. We're doing an acronym acronym acronym.

Brandon Kidd (00:44:33) - M for measure. Is it easily measurable. Right. You buying a light that has 50% more outward. Is that actually easily measurable? Not really. Right a so we'll go through the max M is it measurable a is it awareness is the main purpose of it to create and further your brand awareness to the the outside of the business. And then does it have a growth factor attached to it. Right. Is there a multiplier. So if you invest one, are you getting at least one or more as a result?

Jasmine Star (00:45:03) - And the x is x factor.

Brandon Kidd (00:45:05) - Yeah x is like is your multiple right. Is your stands for multiple growth right.

Jasmine Star (00:45:09) - Multiple growth. So go back to the light. How would you explain. Does it have an x factor.

Brandon Kidd (00:45:13) - So does it have so. Well one one is it even isn't even truly measurable. But if it is x factor. So we're going to calculate what that return of investment is okay. So if the light is $1,000 and I'm getting 50%, it's not about the the amount of output.

Brandon Kidd (00:45:28) - But how do you measure that light actually getting income. Is that light actually generating that light actually.

Jasmine Star (00:45:35) - Is that laptop really generating. Is that.

Brandon Kidd (00:45:38) - Camera. Is that car actually getting you income? Is that upgrade in flight actually giving you income? If it is, then you can you should be able to track it. If you can't track it then I.

Jasmine Star (00:45:48) - So this acronym Max, if you can't answer M.

Brandon Kidd (00:45:51) - Don't even go.

Jasmine Star (00:45:52) - Okay don't pass go don't go.

Brandon Kidd (00:45:54) - Because it can still fall like a new website, right? There's sophisticated ways of actually tracking like this was a good investment of, you know, faster load times and easier to navigate, easier to see call of action. So it led to conversions of X, right. So you could see that the $10,000 to purchase a new website led to an increased conversion based on what your last website did. Okay. But you're not gonna be able to figure out any of this until you know your numbers top to bottom. Your turn investment for every business activity that you do.

Brandon Kidd (00:46:24) - So, so so going back to that thousand dollar, can you see significant change? Can you see measurable change? Like you said, if it doesn't hit M it's out. If it's for rent, like me choosing a new office building. If it's only for yourself. Yeah. Is that outward facing. Yeah. Are you able to measure the actual gain that you're getting from that? Are you getting more foot traffic? Are you getting more conversions from that so you can measure these things if you take the time to do it. But you have to figure out where your leads are coming from.

Jasmine Star (00:46:52) - So if you can't measure it, don't even bother.

Brandon Kidd (00:46:55) - Don't even, don't even. Yeah.

Jasmine Star (00:46:56) - When you are.

Brandon Kidd (00:46:57) - For now, for now.

Jasmine Star (00:46:57) - For now, for now. When you are focused on growth, when you are focused on growth and increasing your rates, having more money, and you're going to use that money for growth if you can't measure it. We're not talking about it.

Brandon Kidd (00:47:08) - Right. Talk about it yet.

Brandon Kidd (00:47:09) - Yeah. We're gonna talk about the things that we can measure, and those are things that we're going to double down on, because then that'll give us the more time and more money that we can use to then streamline and optimize the rest of the efforts. Okay, okay. So a is for awareness and the exit. So how do we calculate x our multiple right. So that's ROI. ROI is return investment and return of investment. The eye can be either time or it can be money.

Jasmine Star (00:47:33) - Okay I have an idea. Can we use an example. Yes. And can I use a personal example for you? Yes. We're gonna get real. We're gonna get some some numbers. Okay. When I talked about how I see you indexing on putting on your. I'm going to get the revenue I need to make me feel safe. And I see you go hard twice a year. I see you do it specifically at a very exclusive. Can we talk about that event? Yeah, it is an event that I went to when I was in the wedding.

Jasmine Star (00:47:58) - Professional industry? Yes. And it's called engage. Yes. Can we talk about those numbers? Yeah. Great. When we talk, when you look at the price tag to go to an engage event, how much is that price tag.

Brandon Kidd (00:48:07) - Price tag for the event 7500. You have airfare. You have accommodation.

Jasmine Star (00:48:11) - Hold on. But this is not airfare to like Phoenix. We're going.

Brandon Kidd (00:48:15) - International. Yes. International airfare.

Jasmine Star (00:48:16) - We're to luxury.

Brandon Kidd (00:48:18) - Luxury. Yeah, yeah. So yeah. Flying to Paris. Paris, Morocco. Greece. Right. So all over the world. So expensive airfare, but expensive accommodations. Even more than that because they're at luxury places. Yes. Beyond that, you're paying for the food, the wine, the everything also. And you have all kinds of attire to match the mood boards of everything.

Jasmine Star (00:48:39) - Okay, okay. Read it. Read. No, but that's all right. Let me just say sign. You look fresh. When I saw you in Paris and I was like, is he wearing a tux? Is is wait, is that the trimming? Look at this suit.

Jasmine Star (00:48:52) - Oh my God.

Brandon Kidd (00:48:53) - But yes. Expensive. So what is the cost of 500? What is the actual cost of going 16 to 17,000? Okay. All in.

Jasmine Star (00:49:02) - So measurable. Can we measure.

Brandon Kidd (00:49:05) - What leads am I getting? Yes. What leads to my getting from there specifically where I wouldn't have gotten otherwise.

Jasmine Star (00:49:11) - So what.

Brandon Kidd (00:49:11) - New?

Jasmine Star (00:49:12) - Absolutely. What I know about you is we come back, I'm like, spill the tea. You know, I freaking love this event. I mean, I want to go back to this event, and I'm not even in the wedding world. It is over the top. It is freaking amazing. It's so well done. You leave there and you're like, the world is too beautiful. So we go back and like, tell me and you will say, I talk to this person. I talk to this person. We have a meeting, they have a client I've shot there before, blah, blah, blah, blah. You come back and you already have a lead list.

Jasmine Star (00:49:34) - Okay, great. That's measurable.

Brandon Kidd (00:49:36) - Yes, I have the leads because eventually I'll track weddings if anything came from them or if it came from a referral from them. Yep. So I know exactly who's talking about me, where that lead and that lead is one thing, but the conversion. Am I actually booking anything? Yep. Because you could put in growth and you can see because sometimes it's going to take time to put in money and investment before you start seeing return. Yes. It's not always 1 to 1. Right. So. When you finally get that sale of booking that wedding, where did it come from? And so you can easily track. So then now you have an ongoing kind of Excel spreadsheet of figuring out how to actually convert ROI, the amount of money that you invest divided by the amount of money that you get back, that's your return. That's how you figure out the money component. But the kind of like hack, which I don't we don't maybe we can talk about, maybe not, is how do you do this for time? How do you measure your time as a, as a way of getting a return of investment? Right.

Brandon Kidd (00:50:25) - Because so many things, so many tasks in our business is time and money, right? I'm going to create a Sally talking about she's created a newsletter like in a course for for her coaching, and she's trying to figure out what was like, what is she how much money did she invest in that? How much time did she invest in that? When you figure out how much you when you're trying to figure out your time, an easy way to do it is figuring out what your hourly wage is. So every business owner should know specifically how much they're earning per hour in their business, so they can measure that opportunity against other decisions.

Jasmine Star (00:51:03) - Okay, I know where we're going with this, okay? And I know that the audience is going to be like, I actually don't care. Okay. So because time is important. Yes. But this is going to be the most distilled version of Sally and also the most distilled version of you. You go, okay, going back to engage and you spend $17,000.

Jasmine Star (00:51:22) - Yeah. You also go and you're there about six days.

Brandon Kidd (00:51:25) - Yes. They're like three okay. Yeah. Traveling, getting there and stuff like that is more. But yeah.

Jasmine Star (00:51:30) - Well in totality because you're not working. Right. So we'll say six days, $17,000, six days. When it comes to measuring the ROI on that event, Brandon can ask himself, could I spend $17,000 on ads, not have to lose six days and six days of time and get the similar results? This is what I want people to start thinking about in terms of time. I know it's going to be important for the hourly wage. It's going to be important. But right now, yeah. Can we think very high level? Yeah. Could you do the same thing in a different way to get the same results. Right. So when we talk about building out leads, branding is building out leads with $17,000 and six days. If he decides in the future to test $17,000 and have it being automated, does it lead us in a different direction? But because Brandon is tracking his leads, he could say which one is better or not.

Jasmine Star (00:52:24) - So when we go back to the fact that it is measurable, you going to engage? Yes. Getting your leads, tracking them and figuring that out. And then you go towards awareness, you get more attention. Can you talk about the type of attention that you're getting, like in terms of that precise example.

Brandon Kidd (00:52:39) - So when it comes to attention is really deciding like this is trying to figure out where you should spend your most time. So that is all about expanding your network, right? Because in order to get a higher ticket value, you have to constantly going back to that supply and demand. I have to constantly raise the demand. How do you increase demand? How do you get more inquiries? You get more people to know about you, to inquire about you. Right. So this is just a way of getting building awareness. So it's measurable because I can see which leads are coming from it. I'm building awareness because I'm creating a whole new network of people that I didn't meet. Right.

Brandon Kidd (00:53:12) - And and so does it have a growth factor? Am I am I getting at least $17,000 back? Let's just say we don't account for our time at this point. Okay? Am I at least getting 17,000? It's a 1 to 1. Is that worth it? You can choose because, you know, in my line of work, like if it was just from the plant, it's just from the bride. Probably not worth it because I'm not going to get additional referrals from that. Right? Maybe.

Jasmine Star (00:53:34) - So hold on. Let me, let me let me peel that back. Okay. Brandon is saying he might not spend $17,000 to go to a conference where there's a bunch of brides because their awareness of him is great for that one year that they're getting married now Brandon is making a decision to say, I'm going to spend $17,000 with a group of people who are not just booking one wedding, they're booking multiple weddings for multiple years. So the awareness of where he's spending his time is going to be different based on how is he building out his lead generation? Yes.

Jasmine Star (00:54:06) - Cool.

Brandon Kidd (00:54:06) - Because because you're it's like the same thing with product is that you're talking about the lifetime value of the customer, right? Like you're you're banking on repeat purchases to offset. It's more complicated to figure that out later. But the main point is are you calculating it. Yep. Are you tracking it. So that way, you know oh that actually was worth it. And sometimes these investments in your business, you won't even see fruition three, 4 or 5 years down the line. Right? It could still work with the brides because at each each wedding that you go to now there's 200 referral potential referrals. So I'm not saying that it wouldn't be. But at our level of price, not every person in attendance is actually a referral. Maybe there's 1 or 2.

Jasmine Star (00:54:42) - That's right, that's right.

Brandon Kidd (00:54:43) - As a planner is going to have 8 to 10, I'm going to focus more on the planners than on the bride.

Jasmine Star (00:54:46) - Absolutely. So when we talk about the multiple, if you book one wedding from a lead that was derived at engage, you know, it's not.

Jasmine Star (00:54:57) - One wedding. It's awareness with the other people who you run with at that high level. Yes. And you also know that that coordinator or the DJ or the venue, because there's a bunch of people that are represented there could and probably likely will refer you again. Yes. That's right.

Brandon Kidd (00:55:12) - Yes. And so and that's what you're tracking though is because over time you'll see is that was that just a 1 to 1 exchange. Right. Right.

Jasmine Star (00:55:19) - Like I spend 17,000 and I got 17,000. Yeah.

Brandon Kidd (00:55:22) - If it's just a concentrate of 1 to 1 then I don't feel like that. Really. That activity belongs in the growth category of what we're talking about. It just belongs in the operational side.

Jasmine Star (00:55:31) - Mhm.

Brandon Kidd (00:55:32) - Right. Is things are not leveraging or you can't grow exponentially in your efforts then. That's not what we're talking about. That's not we're going to focus our time if we have five, if we're going back to our example where she has $5,000 to spend, where is she going to spend it. Probably not on something that she's just going to get 5000 back.

Brandon Kidd (00:55:48) - Right? Right. She's going to find something, an area where she has the advantage, running this math and knowing, you know, where she can have apply that money to that growth factor. That's where her unfair advantage is, right? Like that's where she knows she's going to get a two extra turn. Three extra turn. Why don't we always any time we have an extra money, why don't we choose a double down on what we know we can get back, or what has worked statistically for us in the past? So if that's the case, that's why we're saying, going back to the lifestyle choices, it's like, do we choose to sacrifice, you know, choose a different card and say 500 bucks a month? Well, if that if I were to spend that 500 bucks a month on something that I had two x return. Yeah, then that's a thousand bucks that I'm getting. I could buy the car anyways. So that's what we're doing with real estate. It's like, hold.

Jasmine Star (00:56:30) - On, let's pause and repeat that again. If I could save $500 and turn it into a thousand by tightening my belt now, why would I not do that?

Brandon Kidd (00:56:41) - Yes. Short term, short term sacrifice. Because now, once you have that money deployed on the growth side that's already earning that for you, you use the proceeds of your growth to jump back into the thing that you want originally. So you it's a constant short term sacrifice. Invest it. Take the earnings from that to fund that purchase rather than just purchasing it the first time.

Jasmine Star (00:57:03) - So freaking.

Brandon Kidd (00:57:05) - Good. So if you want a car, if you want the car earn, let your business do the earning or let the real estate purchase do the earning.

Jasmine Star (00:57:13) - So the stock investment, the earnings, whatever avenue.

Brandon Kidd (00:57:16) - Create the income to buy. Let your asset purchase your liability. Right. Like let those things fun because those things will be in perpetuity. Those things will be growing without siphoning money out. Right. You're not taking money out from that purchase or from that expense.

Jasmine Star (00:57:33) - So we talk about these things and a lot of this, we are focused on money. Riches and turning it into wealth for people who want to have a good, cold, hard look at their business and say, am I treating it like an ATM? Is this a bank account? How do I start growing it? How do I change my operating cost and how do I focus on growth? Where do people go to get more information about you? These conversations that you and I have had for over a decade that have radically changed the way that JD and I have been building wealth.

Brandon Kidd (00:58:05) - I mean, there's a lot of great resources. I mean, I'm happy to set up a call anybody to kind of help walk them through to see. But the easiest thing is just take an audit, take an inventory of your expenses, look to see are those expenses are those purchases justified? The goal is for you to be empowered so that you are in charge, and that you have the knowledge to know where you're spending the money and how much money you're getting as a result of that spending.

Brandon Kidd (00:58:25) - So if you need help with that, happy to help. There's tons of of resources available online that can help you create a budget, create an operational budget. But where it gets tricky is, well, how does this work for me? Specifically, how how can I take this is my business. This is my lifestyle. This is what I need. How do I make this work?

Jasmine Star (00:58:43) - How do people set up a call with you?

Brandon Kidd (00:58:44) - I have a free. I can include it in the show notes or whatever, but if you just want to book like a free 30 minute call or something, just to kind of chat and kind of help digest and figure out the process a little bit. Um, yeah, we'd be more than happy to thank you.

Jasmine Star (00:58:57) - Brandon. Will we sure to include those in the show notes for people who want to dive deeper and connect with you on social media, where do you point him to.

Brandon Kidd (00:59:04) - Uh, photography. So Brandon Kidd photo or Brandon Kidd, coach.

Jasmine Star (00:59:07) - Brandon Kidd coach.

Jasmine Star (00:59:08) - Let's go. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I, um, I'm gonna close and I don't think that I can talk about it without crying. So I told myself, I'm not gonna say it. I told myself I wasn't going to say it. And then here I am saying it because one of the things that mean a boatload to me is surrounding yourself, or people who challenge you to be an expander, to show you what is capable of, what you can do personally and professionally. And so for years, Brandon and Kristen have talked to us about taking our money and turning it into wealth. And one of the things that really stood out about our friendship was that they don't just look at money as wealth, they look at friendships, and they look at giving as wealth. They give so generously to charity and they let nobody know about it. In February of 2020, we got the word that we were placed with our daughter for adoption. We had nothing. We had nothing in our house. We had literally zero into.

Jasmine Star (01:00:04) - One of the first people I call is Brandon and Kristen. I was like, oh my God, you guys were driving to Las Vegas and I think we're going to start our family. And then there's Kristen and she says, before you go stop by Nordstrom, I got you a baby car seat. Do not go to Vegas without it. You cannot leave the hospital without a car seat. So I go to Nordstrom the pickup center. They give me this car seat and I was like oh my God. We threw it in the back and we drove to Las Vegas and we have nothing I have nothing Brandon and Kristen are celebrating your anniversary.

Brandon Kidd (01:00:32) - Yeah 14, 14 years.

Jasmine Star (01:00:34) - JD and I shot their wedding anniversary. They're celebrating in Arizona. In Sedona.

Brandon Kidd (01:00:39) - There's only 14 years this year. Oh, I'm sorry.

Jasmine Star (01:00:41) - Well, how many years was it? A decade? It was a decade. They were celebrating their decade anniversary in Arizona, in Sedona. And then we tell them we're going to go pick up our baby girl.

Jasmine Star (01:00:50) - They end their vacation early. They drive from Arizona to Las Vegas, and they stopped and they bought us everything we needed clothes, bottles, formulas, toys, onesies, blankets. I didn't know anything. They show up at our hotel with bags and bags and bags of stuff and they said, we got you, baby girl is going to be welcomed. And I say all of that not because they are rich in money or wealth, they are rich in human character.

Jasmine Star (01:01:26) - So I just want to say thank you friend. I love you man, I love you.

Jasmine Star (01:01:30) - And so for people who would like to have expansion around wealth and riches, not just in bank accounts, but in life and humanity and giving and charitable organizations, be sure to connect with Brandon and set up that call. If you would like to, um, change the way that you do business. Oh, man, I got through. I mean, I teared up like a gangster tear. It didn't exactly fall. My makeup is intact, y'all.

Jasmine Star (01:01:54) - Thank you for listening to the Jasmine Star Show. Uh, thank you, Brandon, for being here and giving so generously for your time. Be sure to hit him up on social. Thank you for listening to The Jasmine Star Show. If this show had an impact, please be sure to leave your review. They have a wild impact on what we do and the amazing talent that we get to attract to the show. Thanks for listening. I.