Why Your Reputation Is Your Most Valuable Business Asset

Have you ever met someone who explains complex ideas so clearly that it feels like a lightbulb turns on in your brain?

That’s how I feel about my friend Rory Vaden. And I’m not just saying that because we’re friends—I’ve actually paid him to consult on my brand messaging.

So when it came time to host my mastermind for seven-figure founders scaling to eight figures, Rory was the first person I invited to speak.

In this episode, I’m sharing the powerful conversation he led about personal branding—and the insights were so good I knew I had to bring them to you.

Because here’s the truth: personal branding isn’t about your logo, colors, or Instagram aesthetic.

It’s much deeper than that.

Rory explains that a personal brand is simply the digitization of your reputation—what people think of when they think of you.

And whether you like it or not… you already have one.

The question is: Are you shaping it intentionally?

In this conversation, Rory breaks down:

• Why most personal brands fail
• The biggest mistake entrepreneurs make when building visibility
• Why reputation always precedes revenue
• How to position yourself in the top 1% of your industry

Plus, we wrap the session with a Q&A from the mastermind members that expands the conversation even further.

If you're building a business and want a brand that earns trust, stands out, and drives real growth… this episode is a must-listen.

Click play to hear all of this and:

[00:00] Why Rory Vaden Is One of the Most Trusted Voices in Personal Branding

[02:54] The True Definition of a Brand: What People Think When They Think of You

[10:00] The Three Topics That Determine Whether a Personal Brand Succeeds or Fails

[13:17] Personal Branding Explained: The Digitization of Your Reputation

[28:07] Sheehan’s Wall: Why Most Personal Brands Never Break Through

[33:53] Diluted Focus = Diluted Results (The Biggest Mistake Entrepreneurs Make)

[45:56] The One-Word Problem Every Personal Brand Must Solve

[59:43] Why Your Personal Brand Should Start With Who You Serve (Not Your Why)

Listen to Related Episodes:

• How to Get the Most Profitable Leads for Your Business with Rory Vaden
• How to Discover Your Uniqueness and Gain the Recognition You Deserve with Rory Vaden
• How I Scaled My Personal Brand to 7 Figures

Connect With Rory Vaden:

If you’d like to connect further with Rory and his team, visit freebrandcall.com/jasminestar to sign up for a free call. You can also follow Rory on Instagram at @roryvaden and @brandbuildersgroup.

For full show notes, visit jasminestar.com/podcast/episode629

Transcript

Jasmine 00:00:00  Have you ever had an industry peer who consistently blows your mind? Oh, there's like a person that always will. You trust them? They're gonna hit the ball of the park when it comes to building a brand. Rory Hayden is that friend and that peer of mine. I've never met somebody who can speak so clearly, so effectively and teach the how of building a brand so well. And I'm not being just a nice friend. I'm not here to pump them up. I've actually paid to spend time with him, to consult with my brand messaging, my speaking messaging, and how that relates to my brand as well as building frameworks for my brand. I am so thankful to have Rory in my life, which is why I am thankful to have had him fly from Nashville to Newport Beach to have him speak at my mastermind. Okay, so here's a little bit of context. My mastermind is for seven figure founders who are scaling to eight figures, and we focus on branding and marketing. Rory wrote down the essence of what's needed for brand development, and he also broke down focusing on the most important things to build your brand.

Jasmine 00:00:56  I couldn't imagine a better guest speaker to join us for a session, and I couldn't be happier that he allowed me to share his incredible conversation on this show. So before we get into it, I want to note that at the end, Rory and I hosted a Q&A session that really expanded the room, and I hope that it expands for you too. So let's dive into that right about now.

Rory Hayden 00:01:17  Hello, ladies. I don't know that AJ realized that I was going to be in a room full of brilliant, beautiful ladies by myself, but, so great to be with you. I'm pretty sure we saw each other at the gym this morning. Were you in the gym? Yeah. so I'm so excited. And, you know, I have to tell you, I love being around, all women. I was raised by a single mom, and my mom sold Mary Kay cosmetics. So I literally grew up in rooms full of entrepreneurial women who were teaching me about goals and success and time management.

Rory Hayden 00:01:56  it also means I know more about makeup than I do about cars. so, you know, like Max over there, he won't appreciate this. But, ladies, every morning you wake up, you stand in front of that mirror and it goes. Wash, toner, moisturizer, foundation, wrinkle free eye cream, base eyeshadow, dark eyeshadow, blush, eyeliner, mascara, lip liner and lipstick. You see, Max is over there. Like, you know, this dude was a high school cheerleader. but I am. I am really excited to be here. I have so much respect for Jasmine. obviously she is one of the best, most influential and most powerful women, I think, in the world. And it's an honor to know you, Jasmine, and to get to be in your presence and to just get to be here with your with your people. And, yeah. So, we talk about personal brands and we work with some of the biggest personal brands. The people that you saw in that video are clients of ours, and they are doing really, really big things in the world.

Rory Hayden 00:02:59  But most of our clients are not the Ed millets and the John Maxwell's and the the Amy Porter Fields and the Jasmine stars of the world. Most of them are hardworking entrepreneurs, professional service providers who are using their personal brand to drive leads for their business. They're not all trying to sell books or coaching programs or masterminds. Most of our clients are trying to sell a service or a product, and they're just trying to understand and leverage their personal brand to do that, and also to maybe recruit and attract team members and that kind of thing. So, you know, I think we're going to start with today, like what is a brand. Just super fundamental. What does that even mean. Like what is a brand. And my my favorite story about this is about my wife AJ. Okay. So so just by show of hands, how many of you are happily married? Okay. How many of you are just married? Okay. Don't know. Just kidding. Don't. Don't share. but I'm very, very happily married.

Rory Hayden 00:04:02  AJ and I have been married since 2010, and we started as business partners, actually in our first company together. And we had a mutual friend and we started a company together. And then it was a year later that we started dating, and then we fell in love. Then we got married. then we had kids, sold our first company. Our first business was, eight figures. It was we had 200 people on our team. We sold that in 2018. And then we started Brand Builders Group in 2018. Brand builders is also back to eight figures. We have about 50 employees now. And but when we first got married. Okay, so most of you have been married, so you've been through the process. You know, what makes the marriage official is not the ceremony. It's the piece of paper. Right? So AJ is a a hard driving, red headed, fast moving checklist or Taskmaster runs the house, runs the business like, runs the kids like, does, coordinates everything in our life.

Rory Hayden 00:04:58  And she is a chronic overachiever. Yeah, she is power pop power woman. Like my guess, as many of you are. So when we go to the county clerk's office, they slide this clipboard across the desk and to fill out the paper for the marriage license. Well, the top half of the paper is all about the wife's information. Right. So she's writing in her name, her birthdate, her social security number. She gets down to the bottom half of the paper, which is all about the husband. And rather than giving it to me to fill out, she naturally decides she's going to fill this out for me. So that is faster. And nobody makes a mistake, right? so she's writing in my name, my birthday, my social security number. She gets down to the last question on our marriage license form, which asks about ethnicity, and she writes in for me, Caucasian And I looked at her and I'm like, honey, what are you doing? And she goes, what? I said, you just wrote down Caucasian.

Rory Hayden 00:05:59  She goes, yeah. So I said, honey, I'm Mexican. And I think it was the first moment it dawned on her. She was actually about to marry a Mexican man. I legit wondered for a split second if she was still going to go through with the whole thing, because it was like she it totally caught her off guard. But she she knew that I was Mexican. Like she knew my grandmother was born in Mexico. She knew my mom's maiden name was Real Vazquez. Like she knew that. But she didn't think of me in that way. And that is the definition for what we offer as what is a brand? A brand is simple. Well, simply what do people think of when they think of you? Right. And the various clients that we've worked with, we've worked very hard to get people to think about Lewis Howes in a certain way, or Eric Thomas, the hip hop preacher, in a certain way. we we construct things to try to because you don't control your brand.

Rory Hayden 00:07:03  The market controls your brand because they're in charge of what they think. But you influence by how you move and operate and talk and shape, you know, through, through the world, that people will think about you in a certain way. Well, that is the simple definition. Now, best part of that story. Fast forward a couple nights later. So we were getting married in Nashville, which is where we live in Nashville, Tennessee, and I grew up in Colorado, and, AJ grew up in Georgia and AJ was a debutante. Do you know what a debutante is? This is like a very southern cotillion. It's like a southern ball. Like literally like a princess. Her family is like southern royalty. She is cousins. She's fifth cousins with Dolly Parton. If that tells you just like her family is like well-to-do and proper and polished and put together, my family is what you would say from the other side of the tracks. and so they were meeting each other for the first time at our wedding or like our rehearsal dinner, because they had never met, because we're in a different state.

Rory Hayden 00:08:11  So they'd all traveled to Nashville, and it was so awkward. Like, you had these two groups of people that were, like, not the same. And I know what my family was thinking. I mean, my my whole side of the family was looking at her family like, do these people know how to party like we know how to party on, you know, now, her side of the family, I'm pretty sure, was looking at my family like, was there a jailbreak or what? What has happened? So AJ says she's like, you should stand up and tell that story about the other day at the county clerk. They'll think that's funny. So I was like, all right, I'll do it. So I stand up, I tell the story exactly as it happened, which is exactly as I told you. As soon as I tell the story, my whole side of the family starts cracking up. They think it's hilarious. They are, like, doubled over with laughter. They're like, oh, she thinks he's gringo, baby.

Rory Hayden 00:08:57  Like, there they are, laughing. Her whole side of the family all look at each other at the same time and they're like, He's Mexican. So they were like, I thought he was Cuban. I thought he was Puerto Rican. Like. Like I thought he was Italian. And all this, all this. So anyways. Well, our families get along great. Now, we've been married for over 15 years and life is good. But this is a question to think about for yourself. What do you want people to think of when they think of you? And from a business perspective, what do you need people to think when they think of you? And also when do you need people to think about you? Right. So those are some of the fundamental questions about personal branding. So what we're going to cover. this morning, Jasmine asked me to kind of like, share some ideas and some of our, some of our frameworks. and so we're going to do that, you know, for the next little bit.

Rory Hayden 00:10:00  And then I think we'll take a break. And then Jasmine, I'll maybe do some like combined Q&A and whatever, I'm here all morning and I'll fly out to this afternoon. So we're just going to kind of riff later on. But but while I've got you this morning, I'm going to establish the conversation talking about three things. So first of all, we're going to look at what is really what really is a personal brand according to data. Then we're going to talk about why most personal brands fail. And if you can just avoid the one mistake that I talk about in that section, you'll be exponentially more likely to succeed. And then number three, we'll talk about how to separate yourself from the crowd and really how to sort of establish and go, all right, how do we move into this like top top 1%. So first of all, what is a personal brand according to data? So people who know me or or become, you know, brand builders or part of our community, they know that I am a I'm a nerd.

Rory Hayden 00:10:56  I am a data nerd. My undergrad was accounting, I love spreadsheets, my brain sort of thinks in like frameworks and acronyms and things like this. And we invested over $100,000 to conduct a national research study that was weighted to the US census. It was a PhD led. We followed traditional academic rigor and to understand really what is personal branding according to the general population. So I'm going to walk you through some of those some of those findings. And here is one of the most important parts. Three quarters, almost three quarters, 74% of Americans say they are more likely to trust Somebody who has an established personal brand. They're more likely to trust you. Now, you'll notice that whenever we present data and whenever we analyze data, we look at what the actual question is. But the other thing we do is we stratify by the age of the respondents. The reason that we do that is when you stratify data by the age of the respondents, we can pretty much guarantee that we can predict the future.

Rory Hayden 00:12:11  Why? Because as these people age out, these people move up. And so whatever these people say is how it's going to trend in the future. And that's one of the things that we analyze data. Well, look at this. Older millennials who are 35 to 44. Over 85% of them say they are more likely to trust someone who has an established personal brand. So this is not a fad. You know, social media like kind of came on and was like, oh, is this a fad? And we kind of like this, and now we're all annoyed with it. and it's all kind of consuming and oh, it's oh, it's kind of cool. And I find some cool. This is a fundamental part of how business will continue to be done in at least the next 20 and 30 years and probably longer. Okay, so that's just trust. But what does trust mean from a business perspective. So we dove in deeper. and the, the, the synthesis of this entire study, I would summarize by saying this personal branding is simply the digitization of your reputation.

Rory Hayden 00:13:17  So when we hear the term personal brand, people tend to think like, oh, it's your colors, oh, it's your fonts, like your typography or it's your, it's your logos or it's your, your photography or it's your website or it's social media or it's podcast and it's it's not it's none of those things. It's way more fundamental than those things. When you hear the term personal brand, your brain should think Reputation. This is not a new concept. It's a new expression of a very, very old concept. And we know that reputation precedes revenue. So sometimes people will say, you know, like they'll say, Rory, you know, I'm thinking about joining Brad Miller's group because I'm thinking about maybe I should maybe I should build my personal brand. But you can't think of it like that way. That'd be like saying, you know, I'm thinking about building a reputation. No, you already have one. Like, whether you like it or not, you have one. You don't get to choose whether or not you have one.

Rory Hayden 00:14:17  It's just. It's just what is it? What is your reputation and how well are you known? Right. So we all have a personal brand. Now, when you look and you translate. Okay, how does this affect business? It gets, it gets it gets really interesting. But before we look at the professional aspects. I want to make an important point about the personal aspects. One of the things that we've come to believe is that it's not only reputation from a from a principal stake, but from your a character perspective. We've seen time and time again that your influence will never grow wider than your character runs deep. Your influence will never grow wider than your character runs deep. So while we are a personal brand strategy firm, and yes, we're going to talk tactics and yes, we do add strategy and funnel optimization. And we do, you know, videos and book launches and speaking and storytelling and all of these, these things about personal branding. The foundation is still reputation, personal development and character because you've all seen examples of where this is collapsed, right? We've seen major celebrities.

Rory Hayden 00:15:35  We've seen online influencers, we've seen big authors. We've seen people who have come into this space blown up and then completely crashed. And it's because of this. So you can fake it for a while. But eventually the truth comes to the surface. And I think that's a beautiful thing for real entrepreneurs like you, because it's like you are women of substance, you are women of character, and you don't have to make. You don't have to have millions of followers to make millions of dollars. We'll talk we'll talk more about that. But, from a professional standpoint, this is pretty compelling. 63% of Americans say they are more likely to buy from someone who has a personal brand versus just a corporate brand, right? They're more likely to recommend you do business with you. They're more likely to work for you. They're more likely to vote for you. Check this one out. This is one of my favorites. 30% of people say they're more likely to go on a date with you just because you have an established personal brand.

Rory Hayden 00:16:41  Right. Like you used to have to be smart, funny, charming. Now you just have to have a Canva Pro account. Like, that's that's it. So, but it's we. Everyone tends to think, well, yeah, of course, you know, podcasters and course creators and authors and speakers would have to have that. And that is how we started, by the way. We we coach many of the the most successful speakers and authors and coaches in the world. But what's happened is part of why Brand Builders Group has grown so fast is because of this next slide. See, we wanted to understand how does personal brand affect real entrepreneurs? I say real quote unquote real entrepreneurs, real business owners and traditional business owners. And so we asked Americans about other professional services. And here's what we found. The number one profession that Americans said they want to have a personal brand is doctors. 61% of Americans want to know who their doctor is. Are you doctor? Everyone's like looking at you like what a doctor you are.

Rory Hayden 00:17:51  Okay, okay. Okay. So so this has been huge for us. So I'll talk about a few doctors, but like doctor Josh axe is one of our clients. He'd be an example of someone we worked with for years. That was a chiropractor who has, like, grown really, really, really big nine figure business. So, lawyers, financial advisors. Right. And then you get down into like coach. Right. Okay. So you have this at first was shocking. We didn't expect to see this. And then when we started to go, what is the pattern here? It's a very simple pattern. The higher the requirement for trust. The more important having an established personal brand becomes right? Like if you're going to cut me open. I kind of want to know, like, where did you go to school? Like, how long have you done this? How many times does this happened? Right. Pretty big deal. Now, if you're Mo in my yard, maybe doesn't matter so much, but still a little bit because you're in my home, right? So the question again, think just to yourself, how much do you think trust matters in your particular space if it matters a lot? I wouldn't contend the data contends, that your personal brand is a really significant, important, empirical, objective driver of your business success.

Rory Hayden 00:19:19  Okay. so doctor K study, this is one of my favorite case studies. So this is a woman who we started working with in 2021. And she's a doctor. Like a real doctor. Like medically trained practitioner. She was a private practitioner. She still has a private practice. And when we met her, she had less than 100,000 social media followers. She had never written a book. She she wasn't a podcaster. She wasn't a YouTuber. She had little to no public speaking appearance and had no really, like, scalable monetization strategy other than just like, serving patients. well, we started working with Doctor Gabrielle Lyon in 2021, and I don't know, did any of you guys recognize her? She has blown up and she is. If you've never met her, the coolest, smartest, hardest working, most humble woman who just wants to change the world. She doesn't want she's not trying to be famous. She's already rich like she. It's just she wants to change the world. And a part of what her messaging was was that we're not.

Rory Hayden 00:20:27  We're not overweight. We're under muscled. That was a part of the clarifying message that we said, let's take that little message, broadcast it to the world. Right. So she has Ted talk goes out. We helped her with the book launch. She is, you know, now scaling 2 million social media followers. She's on Huberman and Jocko. She spoke on the stage with me and Mel Robbins and Tony Robbins at Keller. Williams was 17,000 agents at this conference. sold over 100,000 books. She hit number three. Her first book, First Time, hit number three on the New York Times. So this is listen to this a little bit. Pull this off. Number three, New York Times. You hit multiple weeks, which is extremely difficult to do. And you know, all the bestseller lists. So just how did you do it? How the heck did you do that?

Multiple Speakers 00:21:17  Number one, the material was really big. I spent 17 years becoming expert, trained by one of the world's leading experts to the material and the evidence and the message was authentic to me and real and aqua science.

Multiple Speakers 00:21:31  Number two, my relationships. And number three, you guys. That's it.

Rory Hayden 00:21:35  So notice the order that she says them right. Number one is her expertise right. Like that has to be there. We don't help people with their expertise. They have to they have to be an expert. When they when they come to us, we do help them conduct national research studies like the ones that we did that I'm citing. That's a really common thing we do to help someone bolster or establish their expertise as we conduct these national research studies. But separate of that, like we don't advise people on their expertise. Second is their relationships, right? We teach the same thing to everybody. Right? But Ed Millett has a more explosive result than a brand new brand builder. Not because we're teaching them different things. It's because it's it's what we're teaching them multiplied by their relationships. So you're the power of your network matters a lot. And then third is strategy, which is what we really, really, really dive in on.

Rory Hayden 00:22:28  But it's you've got to have the expertise and you've got to have really good relationships. It doesn't mean you have to have famous, no famous people. It means people have to genuinely trust you. And then if so, we can we can really activate activate that. So, AI obviously is now a really interesting conversation that is now kind of like coming into this space and going, all right, how then are we taking the humanness of an individual and blending it with AI? So a lot of what we do is our strategy is we take the LMS like ChatGPT, cloud, perplexity, Gemini, etc. as a base. Then we take our proprietary intellectual property and we layer it on top. So we create custom bots where we layer in how we do things, which now that you can't get it anywhere else. So we closely guard those methodologies and they're not in the public domain. So someone just using ChatGPT by itself can't access that because ChatGPT doesn't have access to that. And then the third part is we, our our members come in and they interact with the bots, applying their expertise and their relationships.

Rory Hayden 00:23:41  And that's what makes the magic happen. And that's what makes the magic happen fast. Is this sort of intersection, right? So, you've got the LMS, you've got the brand bot, and then really the magic ultimately is you and you, you kind of determine your own success. But, a good example is like this book launch bot. So we've done so many of these launches that we now have built these bots that will literally write all the sales pages, all the email sequences, all the social media posts, 30 days of what to put in your launch team, how to draft for endorsements. You know, the the a custom talk track to book speaking engagements because it's We've we're using it again and again and again and again. Right. I would encourage you to also think about what are the processes that you have that are unique to your business. Can you systematize them and gate them? So where it's not just people using AI, they're using your AI, they're using own. They can only get that experience, from you.

Rory Hayden 00:24:43  So yeah, we've had over 100. So so we've had 100 national bestsellers. and 22 of our clients have hit the New York Times bestseller list in the last two years, and it's just the same process again and again and again and again and again. So we're systematizing, speaking, coaching, etc.. By the way, I put a little reminder in this, if at any point you want to talk to us, you can scan. Jasmine has a QR code, where you can request a call with our team. And if you do it, we will give you our audio book. The one agent I just wrote for free. So if at any point you guys are curious about talking to us, we do the first call with everybody for free. We talk to them one on one, and then we'll give you the audiobook as well. So you can kind of like learn more about us. But that is what is a personal brand and how we see the intersection of AI and personal branding happening really right now.

Rory Hayden 00:25:43  now let's talk about why most personal brands fail. And, here's, here's what I want you to do. And and. Okay. Yeah, here's what I have everyone do. Everyone, if you don't mind, just stand up, just for a second. Just really quick. and don't worry. I'm not going to make you touch anybody or do anything. You don't have to jump or stand on your chair or anything weird, okay? All I want you to do is everyone turn and face the person to your left. Everybody look at the person to your left. Okay, great. Now turn back and face the person to your right. Now look at the person on your right. Okay. Very good. Now, this is the tricky part. And here's where the choice comes in. I want you to think very hard. And then I want you to turn back and face the better looking of the two. So awkward. I know. It's so mean. And by default, all of you are looking at me.

Rory Hayden 00:26:45  Thank you. Thank you for that. You can sit back down. Why would I do something so terrible? The reason why is it demonstrates an important, important principle of what? What we're about to talk about. There is a big, big difference between simple and easy. Huge. Right. Left and right is a simple choice. I asked you to make a simple choice. But when I change the context on you, it becomes a difficult choice to make. And a huge part of your success is being able to make simple choices in moments where the context changes. So it's much easier to be in a room like this, or among other ambitious, focused, successful people saying, I'm going to commit to do these things. But then when you leave this room and you go into the context of the world and the craziness of kids and family and customers and team members and the news and. Da da da da da da da. The context shifts and it becomes much harder to execute, even on the simple things.

Rory Hayden 00:28:00  What I'm going to share with you right now is extraordinarily simple. Like, it's so simple. You're probably not going to believe that this is the one thing that separates the biggest personal brands in the world from everybody else. But I'm telling you, it is. And it's because even though it's simple, it's very, very hard to execute on. this is something that we call Sheehan's Wall. Okay. Now, Sheehan's wall is a visual framework that we've created that is meant to codify sort of the large landscape of personal branding. And there's basically two groups of people in the world. So there are those who are unknown. Okay. And this could be in any industry, any geography, any sort of vertical market. There are those who are unknown. They have they're living in obscurity. Right. Not super recognizable in their space. And then there are those who are well known. And and in between those two groups is this huge invisible wall that we call Sheehan's Wall, because I named this after a gentleman named Peter Sheehan, who was a colleague of mine who I originally learned this from in a corporate environment, and we've adapted it to personal brands, so we named it after him.

Rory Hayden 00:29:23  But what tends to happen, particularly in the world of personal branding, is those of us who are unknown tend to look at the people who are well known, and we say, I'm going to emulate what those people do, and I want to do what they do, right. And so if you look at Tony Robbins, Tony Robbins talks about lots of topics, right? He talks about money and health and date with destiny, and he has business mastery and he has life mastery. And he has unleashed the power within. And he's got all of these different topics. Or Gary Vaynerchuk talks about, you know, music and sports and entertainment and crypto and, and wine and, you know, social media and marketing and, and you know, you look at somebody like Oprah and she's involved in all these different things, has a production company and, you know, she has a magazine, which, by the way, she made the cover of Oprah Magazine again this month, which is incredible. she makes it almost every single month.

Rory Hayden 00:30:22  And, she does all of these things. Or the Rock is a great example of someone right now who you go, oh, he's got, you know, a clothing line and sports drink, and he owns, you know, the X portion of the XFL. And now he's got men's facial products that are in target and all of these different things. And so what we do is we look at those people and we make the mistake of going, well, I'm a multi passionate person, which is not a mistake, but we try to talk about lots of different topics because they talk about lots of different topics. and then we try to address lots of different audiences because they address lots of audiences. And this is also a poll that you probably feel right now. Right. Because even on social media you're like, well, who's my audience? Well, like grandma is following me. And like the parents of my kids, best friends and the people I go to church with and then like my entrepreneur friends and my customers.

Rory Hayden 00:31:18  But I'm really trying to attract prospects. And I've got, like, all of these audiences that I'm catering to, and they were trying to manage lots of different profiles. Right? Were on, you know, Twitter X and meta, Facebook and Pinterest and Instagram, Snapchat and YouTube and podcasts and okay, so we're doing all of those things. And then every time you scroll, somebody is like pitching a new business model. Like, did you know that you could make millions like do an Airbnb. You could fix and flip like you could do investment properties, you could do stock trading, you could do a course, you could launch a membership site, you could do a mastermind destination retreats, be a speaker, become a coach, like, like publish a book. And so there's like lots of different revenue streams. And then what's happening is we're talking to too many audiences about too many different topics, trying on too many different places trying to monetize too many different things. And what happens is you bounce off the wall, and the reason you bounce off of the wall is because of something we said all the way back in my first book, Take the Stairs, which is so simple that people overlook it.

Rory Hayden 00:32:27  When you have diluted focus, you get diluted results. Period. Period. Most of you, I'm guessing, are fairly small businesses. You have less than 200 employees. Does anyone in here have more than 200 employees? Okay. Does anyone have more than 20 employees? Okay, so we have 50 and we had 200 with our first business, right? And that's a truckload. You know, everything is fun until people get involved. And, you know, it's like, yeah, it's not it's complicated. But but if you're a small business okay. So even under 200, we're all small businesses. Just think about this logically for a second. If you have ten units of resource. Okay. Now what is a unit of resource. We think of it as time, attention, technology, teen capital and prayer. Right now, whatever your units of resource are. Okay. But let's just say you have ten units of resource and you have ten different initiatives going on in your company. Okay. On average math majors, if you have ten units of resource for ten initiatives, how many units of resource on average does each initiative get? One unit of resource that is the entire world.

Rory Hayden 00:33:53  The entire entrepreneurial world is people who are taking ten units of resource and spreading them across ten initiatives. When somebody hires us, I'm almost embarrassed to admit how ridiculously simple our strategy is. Our strategy is simply to go. What if you took all ten units of your resource and you put them on one initiative? What do you think would happen if one person put ten units of resource on that one initiative? What do you think the likelihood is that they would outperform everyone else on that initiative? Pretty strong right? That is exactly what we do. By the way, this is my real life. This is my kid, and this is what I'm dealing with every day at work. Can you relate? Right. Like, I'm literally on a zoom meeting. I look over and this is what I'm dealing with. Okay, so we have two boys, and they're crazy. They are. I love them, they're maniacs. They are maniacs. And so I know what it's like to deal with distraction. Okay.

Rory Hayden 00:35:04  I feel this too. And the best example? The best personal branding advice I've ever heard was from this gentleman, Larry Winget. And Larry said, the goal is to find your uniqueness and exploit it in the service of others, find your uniqueness and exploit it in the service of others. And that's all we did for my career. And then now. But but see, Larry never developed a system for how to do it. He said, that's what you should do. What Brand Builders has done is we've just created a system for how to find your uniqueness, and then how to do that over and over and optimize the heck out of that thing really, really well. Visually, it looks like this. Okay, so so imagine this wall back here. Okay. So imagine you just have like a big wall and you take a sledgehammer and you're trying to break through the wall, right? Now, if I'm trying to break through this wall and I'm hitting here and here and here and here and here and here and here.

Rory Hayden 00:36:06  And nothing's going to happen to that wall. But what would happen if I hit the same spot on the wall? Over and over and over again? At first it would feel frustrating because I'm still not getting anywhere. That's just the nature of starting something. But if you kept hitting the same spot again and again and again and again, eventually the paint would would crack and then it would peel and then it would chip, and then there would be a hole and then a divot, and then finally you would punch through to the other side, and then you pull that sledgehammer back and the entire wall would come crashing down. That is our strategy, because that is the strategy that we noticed that people who are wealthy and well known, all of them, emulate all of them. Like we have not really found a great example of one super rich or one super famous person who didn't break through the wall initially by becoming well known for one thing. One thing. Right. If you if you think about the rock.

Rory Hayden 00:37:13  Yes, the Rock owns a bazillion different businesses. But in the beginning, what was the one thing the Rock became super famous for? Can you smell what the rock is cooking? He was a wrestler. Yes. Gary Vaynerchuk talks about a million topics on a million platforms. But in the beginning, how did Gary Vaynerchuk, what topic did he become? World renowned, well known for wine and on one platform. Do you remember what it was? It was YouTube, later was Twitter, and now it's everywhere, right? Right in the beginning. Right. Oprah was a a host in the beginning. Ellen DeGeneres was a comedian in the beginning. Wolfgang Puck was a chef in the beginning. Alex Rodriguez was a baseball player in the. There's not a counterexample. They all Jennifer Lopez was a dancer and an actress. Like one thing at a time. They break through the wall. And by the way, so I coach. This is crazy to say. I have seven billionaire clients that are private clients of mine that I coach, which blows my mind because they're like way, way, way rich.

Rory Hayden 00:38:20  None of them got rich from multiple streams of income. Multiple streams of income is some of the dumbest advice that you will ever hear. Because nobody gets rich from multiple streams of income. Every single person who got rich got rich from one freaking amazing stream of income, right? Jeff Bezos, his money comes from one primary place where Amazon Bill gates made his money from one company. Which one? Microsoft. People say, what about Elon Musk? Yeah, what about Elon Musk? I know he has Tesla and SpaceX, but where did he make his money in the beginning? Do you know PayPal? He made all of his money from PayPal. Jamie Kern Lima is a good friend of mine, so she's doing all sorts of stuff in the beginning, IT cosmetics Sara Blakely met her money from Spanx. These are not people who got rich from doing ten different things, or even five different things. They broke through the wall on one thing. Now, once you break through the wall, then you get to the other side.

Rory Hayden 00:39:33  Then you can expand into lots of other things because now you have more units of resource. You have more time, team capital, technology, attention that you can deploy and you so you don't get rich through diversification. You don't you get rich through concentration. And then once you're rich, then you diversify that same a principle of money applies to branding and messaging and operating small businesses. So here's a good here's a great example. Okay, so Louis Howes was our first customer. We've been working with Louis since 2018. I met Louis because my first book from our first company, Take the Stairs, hit the New York Times, and I was on his podcast and everyone was like, hey, there's this new up and coming podcaster. His name's Louis, and he's got this show. And, at the time he had like 8 million downloads on his podcast. And so we became friends and I was like, oh, he's really cool, and we're the same age. And so I told him, I said, hey, you should write a book one day.

Rory Hayden 00:40:37  And he's like, funny. I'm actually thinking about it. And so we I helped him casually, not as a client, just as a friend. And we kind of built this relationship. Well, fast forward like six years, I'd kind of lost touch with Louis. and his podcast had grown to be about 30 million downloads. And he called me in 2018. We had just exited our former company and he said, Rory, the podcast is growing, the team is growing. I'm doing multi seven figures in revenue, but I'm spread really thin. I'm stressed, I'm overwhelmed a lot. I'm spending all the money on staff, I'm not keeping much money and he's like, is there any chance that I could borrow your brain and like formally work with you? And we said, great. So he comes over to the house. We spent two days together. The very first thing we did, we took him through an exercise that we take all of our clients through. Right. They all have access to this exercise called the Revenue Stream Assessment, where we asked them to list out all of the different revenue streams.

Rory Hayden 00:41:33  And Lewis proudly lists out the fact that he had 17 revenue streams. And I said, Lewis, why do you have so many revenue streams? He's like, well, you know, I mean, all these masterminds and all these guys are doing free plus shipping and they're doing courses and they're doing like podcasting and they're doing ads and they're doing speaking, and they're doing one on one coaching and and all of this stuff. And he's like multiple streams of income, baby. And I said, Louis, I got to tell you, I think that's terrible advice. And at the time his podcast was a traffic source. It wasn't even really a moneymaker. But one of the things we look at is what revenue stream has the most natural momentum for you? Which one has the highest potential with the least amount of energy? That also is the most like life giving for you. And that for him was podcasting, even though it wasn't a lot of money. And I said, Louis, what do you think would happen if you shut down all of these revenue streams and just went all in on the podcast? And that was basically the main, pretty much the only thing I've ever really done for Louis was I encouraged him to do that.

Rory Hayden 00:42:39  And much to his credit, Louis took 17 revenue streams and immediately shut them down to three. That's actually how I met Jasmine. Jasmine was in a mastermind that Louis was hosting and that was a multi seven figure revenue stream, and we decided to shut it down overnight. After one conversation he walked away from over $2 million in revenue. Now where I come from, that's called big cojones, but and and so he went all in 17 down to three all in on the podcast. So it had taken him about seven years to get to 30 million downloads in the next two years that we worked together. He went from 30 million downloads to 500,000,000 in 2 years. Today he has a billion. So he's now added another 500 million. he's getting $150,000 to speak. He sold the rights to the podcast for eight figures just for a few years. we've hit the New York Times three different times. You know, the following is blowing up. And the main strategy was not trying to like hack the algorithm or whatever.

Rory Hayden 00:43:51  It's just focus is putting all of the resources on fewer things, and most people don't have the discipline to do it. Now sometimes people think, oh well, great, Rory, that's great for like people with millions of followers. But I told you, those are not most of our clients. We tell those stories because they're the most familiar people. But this is a great example of someone we worked with named Tyler Bloom. This guy was an executive search. Like a headhunter, right? Like a recruiter. And he was he you know, I don't know if he got fired or he left. He had he was a search he had issues with, like his job. And he's like going into business for himself. And he's trying to search and do all these like different placements. And we're like, but he's super passionate about golf. And it's like, all right, Tyler, what if all you did was go all in on doing executive search just for golf courses? So Tyler does this two years later, he's making over $1 million a year more than he was before that, a super narrow niche in a very, very, very specific industry.

Rory Hayden 00:44:57  Right. So here's, he says himself a client that we have worked.

Multiple Speakers 00:45:01  With, has grown their revenue more than $1 million in a year. And we want to hear the story of how that happens. You do that.

Multiple Speakers 00:45:09  So your decision was actually granddaughter's right. I was I was someone I was struggling with just differentiating myself, maybe understanding what my unique position was in the market, even just from a simplicity of platform, this sort of format, what you're offering or say, staying focused on what you do best. And don't get distracted by the shiny objects that I bought to do. Like, I would absolutely love to do all these different things, but it was really diving into like that one singular thing that we do and what drives our revenue, what drives everything and focus on that.

Rory Hayden 00:45:43  Now once you break through the wall, Then you can expand into other things. You can hire people. You can do, you can do, you can do more stuff. So here's the genesis in our world, in our universe.

Rory Hayden 00:45:56  The very first question that every personal brand must answer, and you must be able to answer this question with one word. And most people can't, which is what problem do you solve in one word? In one single word? And most people can't do that. But the reason it matters is because customers don't really buy like we think. People spend money on luxuries like vacations and cars and homes, but people really only spend money on luxuries if they have the money. But people always have money to solve problems. So if you can articulate what you do in the context of a problem that you solve for somebody, then they will always find the money, right? Like if you get a flat tire, you find the money. If you're a hot water heater goes out, you find the money, your kid gets sick. You find the money. People always have money in any geography, in any economy, in any industry, to solve problems. And what most personal brands do is they try to position themselves as just the solution.

Rory Hayden 00:47:03  And really what you want to do is broadcast the problem. You want to promote the problem. You want to celebrate the problem. You want to study the problem. You want to draw awareness to the problem because people don't know that they need that solution, but they know they have the problem. So when you talk about the problem, they pay attention, right? So, if you aren't crystal clear on what problem you solve, there's no way your customers ever will be either. So what is what is that problem? Let's look at some examples. Okay. Now these are not clients of ours. So Brene Brown, one of my favorite examples, Brené Brown has become one of the most influential women in the world. Not just influential influencers, not just influential authors. Time magazine one of the most influential women in the world. But Brené Brown is not a podcaster. She's not a she's not an author. She's a researcher. She's a professor at the University of Houston. But Brené Brown dedicated decades of her life to studying one thing shame.

Rory Hayden 00:48:06  And she became the world's most renowned leading authority. On the topic of shame. You can't have a conversation about shame without somebody bringing up Renee Brown's name. When that word comes up, they think of her shame and then shame as the problem and vulnerability is the solution. Another good example. This is a friend of mine, not a not a client. I may have spoken for their team internally three times. Dave's given me a couple endorsements for my books, but Dave Ramsey. Love him or hate him, I happen to love him and think he's quite entertaining. Solves the problem of debt. Now, if you know anything about Dave Ramsey. This guy has been saying the exact same thing on the radio every single day for three hours. The same exact seven baby steps over and over and over again for three hours, live on the radio for 30 years. Again and again and again. It never changes. It's never different. It's never a new problem. It's the same thing. Debt is dumb.

Rory Hayden 00:49:14  Cash is king. And that is his brand positioning. Debt is a one word problem. He solves. Cash is the solution. By doing that, do you realize that Dave Ramsey has over 1000 employees now? They reach 17 million people on the radio every single week. 1 billion podcast downloads, $300 million in annual revenue. Over and over and over again. If you have diluted focus, you get diluted results. right. Tony Robbins has dedicated his life to ridding the world of pain. Right. And he's struggled with food insecurity as a kid. And he talks about eliminating pain. Mel Robbins is having a big moment right now in the world, like just killing it. Mel Robbins helps people overcome their anxiety. That is a big part of what she struggles with with Lewis. All we did was sort of narrow the brand orientation down to self-doubt, that Lewis helps people overcome self-doubt. That's what his his brand is all about. And greatness is the one word that he owns. But even beyond business, right? Mother Teresa dedicated her life to ridding the world of poverty.

Rory Hayden 00:50:28  Martin Luther King Jr literally gave his life to fight for inequality and racism. And so part of the question is, what problem would you dedicate your life, to solving that is part of where your uniqueness lies. That is what we got to get to. Now we built my career. These days, people tend to think of us as, you know, personal brand and branding because that's what we've been doing for eight years. But previous to that, eight years ago, we didn't do any of this. I broke through the wall and built my career as an expert on procrastination, and I invented and studied two new terms. I invented the term creative avoidance, which is unconscious procrastination and priority dilution, which is the chronic overachievers procrastination, which is that the same net result is that chronic overachievers don't procrastinate out of laziness, but out of interruption. They get interrupted all day, and so their most important tasks are left incomplete. And that was how I built my brand originally. And I broke through the wall when I was 29 on my first book, Take the Stairs, and then had a TEDx talk go viral on overcoming priority dilution and how to multiply time.

Rory Hayden 00:51:37  And that was the second book today at Bram Builders Group. We only saw the one word problem obscurity. That's our problem obscurity. We help people become wealthy and well known people who are mission driven messengers who have expertise and deserve to be more well known, but who are struggling with obscurity. What problem do you solve? In one word? You got to. You've got to really think about owning that and dominating it and then becoming an ambassador of the problem. You celebrate it, you study it, right? Our research study is all around personal branding and obscurity. Now here's the question. Okay. So this is the question is what problem should you solve. Now normally when we work with clients, we take them the very first stage as we take them through a two day experience called finding your brand DNA. And we help them get clear on four things. What problem do you solve in one word? How do you solve that problem in one sentence? Who do you solve that problem for in one phrase? And what one revenue stream matters in your business above all others? Those are the four things.

Rory Hayden 00:52:45  I'll say them again. What problem do you solve in one word? What? How do you solve that problem in one sentence? Who do you solve that problem for in one phrase like ours is mission driven messengers. And what one revenue stream matters above all others. We have found. The sooner you get clear on those four things and you focus on them, the sooner you're going to have success. And by the way, so on this note where we're doing this a lot going, you don't need to have 50 lead magnets necessarily. What you really want is one lead magnet that converts, that drives people. We call them trust soldiers. You have one trust soldier. Then you have one trust. Accelerating experience, like a webinar or a challenge or it doesn't matter. There's all these different formats, but we go one lead magnet, one trust accelerating experience to one offer. And then it's again and again and again and again and again. And you can tailor the front end to different audiences. But the back end is just that again and again and again.

Rory Hayden 00:53:59  Right now, people always want to know, okay, we don't have two days here. How do you find your uniqueness? So I'm going to give you the biggest secret that we've discovered. I'm going to share it with you now. we didn't know this when we started Brand Builders Group. We never expected this. We discovered this after we took a couple thousand people through the process. And here's what we learned. And we found to be true for all of us. For every single one of you, you are most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were. Your most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were. The reason that self-doubt is the problem that Lewis solves is because that's what Louis struggles with. That's what he's struggled with his whole life. It was made fun of as a kid, and then he found an identity in sports, and then he lost that identity and he struggled with that, right? Mel Robbins struggles with anxiety. Mel is not a client of ours. She's a casual friend, but she's not.

Rory Hayden 00:55:04  She's not somebody that we've worked with. But you can look at her and go, she has panic attacks, right? She struggle with getting out of bed. It's her whole story. She created a five second rule to help her take action in those moments of anxiety. And she's breaking through. Breaking through the wall. so what problem have you overcome? That's who you're most powerfully positioned to serve. It doesn't mean that's the only thing you can do, but it means that's where the most natural momentum is going to lie. And so the answer to your uniqueness is somewhere connected in into this. all right. So again how are we using AI human principles. And then we're just putting the technology behind it. Right. So we have brand positioning bot which you sit there and you chat with it. And it has all of our coaching, all of our training, all of our feedback kind of wrapped up together in, in one, one place so that it's like you're coaching with rip. So if you're not in the world of custom bots, I would highly, highly, highly encourage you to do that.

Rory Hayden 00:56:13  so again I mentioned, I mentioned this. So we're going to land a plane here in just a second. So, if you want to talk, you guys can scan that code. Let me

Multiple Speakers 00:56:25  Jasmine, I'm going to fast forward here a little bit. And

Rory Hayden 00:56:33  Now one of the things I want to, I want to share is that a little disclaimer. So people want to know who you are. They want your real expertise. But it.

Multiple Speakers 00:56:48  Is true.

Rory Hayden 00:56:50  That if you suck in real life, you will suck online. And I'm sorry I cannot help you with that. Okay, so just like a disclaimer, there is like, we can't just, like, take anybody and be like, right, you you have to like, have some substance. But, but but the thing of it is, is you don't need millions of followers to make millions of dollars, right? None of you have ever heard of Tyler Bloom. None of you have ever heard of Tyler Bloom. Right? These these are these are 12.

Rory Hayden 00:57:25  Now there's 11. And then we just had our 12th, which is a guy named Blake Erickson and Doctor Ben Hardy. that have made over $1 million more a year since we started working with them. Some of these people you recognize, a lot of them. You don't. You don't need millions of followers to make millions of dollars. Why, most of you, if you had a couple dozen of your perfect customer this year, you would explode. Like you could have your best income year ever if you had 20 of your perfect clients. And so you don't have to always play the game of like, how do I get millions of people? You don't need millions, you need 20, right? Like, what's the how do I get my next ten customers? that is what matters. And so you don't always have to chase like the vanity of of the big, the big, the big, the big things. Right. And more followers now. So this leads me to the great irony of personal branding, right? The great irony of personal branding is that your personal brand is not about you, Your personal brand is about.

Multiple Speakers 00:58:27  Who.

Rory Hayden 00:58:28  You serve. And I will say I love Simon Sinek.

Multiple Speakers 00:58:35  I'm a huge, huge.

Rory Hayden 00:58:36  Simon Sinek fan. We read his books, we believe in what Simon Sinek teaches, but when it comes to building a personal brand, I think start with why is the wrong advice? Because when you start with why, people tend to get very nebulous in their like, why am I doing this? My encouragement to you would be to not start with why? Instead, start with who? Who are.

Multiple Speakers 00:59:09  You.

Rory Hayden 00:59:10  Serving? I promise you. The more clear you get about who you're serving, once you're clear about who you're serving, every single other tactical downstream business decision becomes clear. You know where to advertise. You know what words to use. You know what offers to put together. You know how to price it. Because you know what they can afford. You know how to structure your things because you know their lifestyle. You know where you should speak, where you should show up, which podcasts you should go on, who you should be networking with.

Rory Hayden 00:59:41  Every other downstream tactical business decision becomes clear if you're clear on.

Multiple Speakers 00:59:47  Who.

Rory Hayden 00:59:48  You serve. If you're not clear on who you serve, you're just shot and you're just shot gunning out there in the space and you're likely to bounce off the wall. Right. We serve mission driven messengers. It's a very narrow specific. It's not just like it is experts, speakers, authors, coaches, but it's someone who specifically says, I care more about impacted income. I care more about money than or more about mission than money. I care more about reputation than revenue. It's not that they don't care about money. We like money. We care about money. It's just not their number one thing. So we know how to talk because we're talking to that person. And that's what building a great personal brand is all about. Building a great personal brand should not be self-centered. It should be service centered. And if some of you have been reluctant to it, my guess is it's because you're like, well, I don't want to be vain.

Rory Hayden 01:00:40  I don't want to look like I'm trying to get attention. I'm not trying to like, tout my accomplishments or I'm not trying to look like I have a no at all. Like I'm a know it all. All of those things are self centered. Service center just goes, how can I help? What content can I create that is useful for other people? Figure out what are all the questions your avatar has and answer them one at a time, and focus on being useful. It may not be what goes viral, but it will perform well and most importantly, it will convert is going. I don't have to be the most entertaining, but if I'm the most useful, it will convert. your highest Itself, I would argue, is to be your highest value to others. And to the extent you can be valuable to more people, then you're not just building a great personal brand. You're making a bigger impact in the world. You're making a bigger you're making a you're making a you're making a bigger difference.

Rory Hayden 01:01:38  You're doing.

Multiple Speakers 01:01:39  You're.

Rory Hayden 01:01:39  Doing bigger work. see, we love selling. Selling is fun. Selling is how you make money. Selling is an important part of business. But when you are selling, there are wins and losses. However, when you are serving, there are only wins, right? Like if the goal wasn't, how many followers did I get or how many leads did I capture? If the goal was, how do I create content that's so useful to people? They would miss it if it was gone. How can I create insights and inspiration and education and encouragement that's so valuable to people that it would help them, even if they never bought anything from me. You cannot lose when that happens. It's different from how most of the world is operating. But this is the truth. And if it is true that you're most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were, then some more tactical questions you have to ask yourself is simply what challenges have you conquered? What obstacles have you overcome? What setbacks have you survived? Right? And also what gets you emotional right? Like what makes you mad? What makes you sad? What breaks your heart? It's not just like the things that are all kind of like, you know, hunky dory.

Rory Hayden 01:03:01  But what's the thing that you look at in the world and you say, I'm not okay with that. I don't want anyone else to have to experience that heartbreak because I can do something about it. And we believe that the calling you feel on your heart to build a personal brand is the result of a signal that's being sent out by somebody else who needs you, and that person needs you way more than you need them, right? For you, it's another customer. It's a it's another email. It's another contact in your database. It's another another lead. But there's people out there right now who are begging and pleading and seeking and searching and could quite possibly be on their hands and knees praying for answers to questions that, you know, like the back of your hand. And the only reason you wouldn't go and find them is because you're scared, right? You're scared about you know, I don't want to say the wrong thing. I don't want to do the wrong thing. I don't want to look, I don't want to look silly.

Rory Hayden 01:03:58  I don't want to. I don't want to be somebody who is vain. I don't I don't know about the technology. I don't know about the lighting, I don't know about my makeup. And we're so scared about what people will say about us or what they're going to judge, and that what's wild about that is you only feel fear when you're thinking about yourself, right? Do I look the right way? Am I saying the right thing? Am I doing. It's all I, I, I I but there is no fear. When the mission to serve becomes clear. When you let go of. How do I look? Am I doing it right? And you just go all in on who can I help? How can I serve? How can I create the most impact in the shortest amount of time? That is how you build a great personal brand and a huge business. Ladies, thanks for having me this morning.

Jasmine 01:04:58  A couple of people came up to me during the break and they're like, so, did you tell Rory to stay focus? I was like, no, I didn't.

Jasmine 01:05:06  I believe in divine alignment. I don't think that things just happen. I create the This space that I have been called to create, and then it gets filled with the right things at the right time. I had no idea that Rory Vaden was going to come in and wrap this three day event with a red bow. No idea whatsoever. I had no idea that the hunger in this room to get and do it. A new commitment, a fresh commitment, the permission, dare I say it, to step into their personal brand. And I'm like, Thank God this is happening now. What an honor to have spent the afternoon with Rory in this incredible room. I especially love the questions that were asked because they added a lot more context. It makes it feel richer and they hey, let's be real. It allowed us to see how brilliant his answers were. And so I'm having a question for you. Do you want to chat more about building your brand? You can connect with Rory and his team at Free Brand.

Jasmine 01:06:02  call.com to sign up for a free call. I'm going to add that link to the show notes. And like always, thank you for watching and listening to The Jasmine Star Show.