How to Build Your Personal Brand Now (2025 Masterclass)

Why does personal branding matter in 2024? It matters because of trust. People are more likely to work for somebody who has an established personal brand than someone who doesn't. They're more likely to recommend them; they're more likely to pay a higher price for the same service from someone with a personal brand.

What if I give away my best stuff? Or what do I give away free versus what do I charge for? The short answer is: you give away the "what" and you charge for the "how." But when it comes to building a personal brand, the very first thing you've got to get clear on is: who are you talking to? To get noticed, you have to be a thought leader. You could take any picture in your phone, apply the science of Storytelling, and we can make it a great story. We discovered a shortcut for someone to help them find their uniqueness, and the secret shortcut that we found is this: 74% of people say they are more likely to trust someone with a personal brand.

However, there's a lot of hype and a lot, lot of misinformation when it comes to personal branding. And worst of all, there's a ton of bad advice on how to actually do it: how to stand out and what does it mean to create a meaningful personal brand and to package your ideas, your tips, your information, your knowledge into videos and media that actually breaks through the noise.

Today, we have an expert on personal branding joining us: Rory Vaden. He's a New York Times bestselling author, and he's actually the guru behind a lot of the gurus you probably follow through his Frameworks and through his company, Brand Builders. He really helps individuals like us create personal brands that cut through the noise so we can get paid what we're worth, get on stages, get in media, and he's really cracked the code when it comes to personal branding. He's not like a lot of these self-proclaimed individuals that just share some general ideas; he's got real tactics and Frameworks that work. So I'm super grateful to have Rory back on the podcast today. Rory, how's it going?

Thank you, Sean. Always good to be back, brother, and uh, let's do this. I'm excited because this is part two of our 2024 Series. In the first one, we talked all about killing laziness and procrastination, and so we'll share that in the show notes as the author of *Procrastinate on Purpose*. That's one of the most essential things; no matter how successful we may be, we still are probably dealing with distraction, with overwhelm, with all of that kind of stuff. But I want to get straight into personal branding in today's world, and I also am so excited to talk about your framework for how do we actually craft our intellectual property in a unique and sticky way. So first of all, high level: why does personal branding matter in 2024?

Well, I mean, you you you mentioned it in that stat that was from our Trends in personal branding National research study that we did that was weighted to the US Census. It was a PhD-level, you know, statistically valid, uh, academic research about how much personal branding matters. And like you can download that study and see all the data about people are more likely to trust someone who has an established personal brand. They're more likely to work for somebody; they're more likely to recommend them; they're more likely to pay a higher price for the same service from someone with a personal brand. They're even more likely—30% of Americans say they're more likely to date someone who has an established personal brand than someone who doesn't. So it it matters, and it matters *because* not because of trends; it matters because of trust. What people don't understand about personal branding is that personal branding is not about social media and number of followers and subscribers and likes and uh, you know, websites and all of this stuff. Those are all sort of tactical expressions. In a more fundamental way, what people need to understand is that personal branding is simply the digitization of reputation. The digitization of reputation. And so reputation is about trust, right? Not just how do I get the most followers, how do I get the most likes, how do I go viral? You can do that with a dancing video; you can do that with gimmicks, but that kind of thing maybe doesn't get you trust, right? In order to build a business, we have to have trust. And and what's powerful about the tools of the day—certainly YouTube, podcasting, social media included—is that the tools of the day allow us to automate trust at scale if you're really good at it. The problem that I would say you you used—you said 2024—so that that's what I would say that's been the storyline for like the last five years. I'll tell you the storyline that I see developing for 2024, which is should be scary for people: is that the new problem is noise and competition created not only by the other creators but powered by AI. As AI explodes onto the scene, it is now easier and faster for people to create content. One one of the one of the Frameworks that we use to help people understand this is something that we call "Shan's Wall," um, and I named this after Peter Shan because he was a colleague of mine who originally came up with, like, came up with the original concept. And I saw this from him kind of applied to a corporate environment, and and we apply it and adapted it for personal brands. But basically, in any Market, in any vertical, on any platform, in any industry, there's two groups of people: there are those who are unknown, and then there are those who are well-known. So there's those who are struggling with obscurity; they're not yet discovered; they're not yet trusted; they're usually unclear or untrusted. And then there are those who have notoriety, right? They have trust; they they have influence. And in between these two groups is this huge invisible wall that we call "Shan's Wall." And what most people do who are living in obscurity or who are unknown is they look at the people on the other side of the wall who are well-known, living in notoriety, and they go, "Oh, I want to do all the things that they do," right? And so they look at Gary Vaynerchuk, and he talks about all these different topics, and they look at Tony Robbins, and he's got, you know, events on money and Date with Destiny, and he's got stuff on health and, you know, all sorts of different, all sorts of different things, and so they have lots of topics. Then um, there's all these different platforms, right? And so they're like, "Oh, I have to be active on, you know, X and, you know, whatever Pinterest and TikTok and Instagram and Facebook's coming back and LinkedIn and whatever." So they have lots of platforms. Every time you scroll social media, you'll see an ad for a new way to make money with a personal brand, like, "You should do master classes. No, you should do a book. No, you should become a speaker. You should do Live Events. No, you should do Retreats. You should do destination vacations, like, you know, it should be a membership site. No, it should be a course." And so they have like all these different revenue streams, all these different topics, all of these different platforms, talking to all of these different audiences. And what happens is they bounce off the wall, and they bounce off the wall because they don't have focus. If you have diluted focus, you get diluted results. So again, this has been the narrative for the last couple years, which has been true. And some of the, you know, the real, you know, Blockbuster personal brands that we've been able to work with and try to help them break through the wall, it's about creating um uniqueness. So the the best piece of personal branding advice I'd ever received um is is a quote I heard from someone named Larry Winget, and he 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. Well, now with AI stepping onto the scene, there's this explosion of content, right? I mean, you can write a blog in 60 seconds; like, you can you can create video prompts and scripts and like so many parts of the process are going to become more and more efficient, even the video production itself um and the video editing, but even the video production itself is not that far away. So now there's more noise happening at more speed than ever before, and what happens, it's it's a giant, it's this just giant cloud of noise, and you go, "How do you break through?" Well, you break through the same way as you did when I heard first heard Larry Winget say that quote 25 years ago: you find your uniqueness and you exploit it in the service of others. You have to create unique thinking; you have to have unique thoughts; you have to have original ideas; you have to have the ability to articulate and say something that hasn't already been said, that isn't already out there in the nomenclature. A term that I used to love, and then I didn't love because it became super popular, and now I really love it again, is the term "thought leader," because at first it was like, "Oh, yes, thought leader" was like a name; it was like a name for an influencer um, and then it actually became like just an influencer, not an actual thought leader. And now I think it's coming back. To get noticed is is going to be that you have to be a thought leader; you have to advance the thinking of what's been done, and you have to advance the nomenclature of what's been said on your topic. If you are in any way regurgitating, repackaging, reformulating, consolidating, summarizing anything that's been out there, you are a commodity, and you're not only going to be killed by the creators, you're going to be killed by AI because it can do that faster than you. So you better have something unique, and that's the foundation and the first thing that we do with everybody at BrandBuilders Group is help them figure out and find their uniqueness. That was a lot. I want to unpack some things, and then I want to get into this framework, so how we can actually find our uniqueness. But we are fighting against noise and competition, but AI is kind of Enemy Number One and is also a tool to leverage, but is exploding onto the scene: a a lot of average content, a lot of echoed content, a lot of thought leaderless content that's just a lot of echo. And that's we don't want to be an echo; we want to be a voice. And what we want to do—you said Shan's Wall—the important thing is to niche until you're known, until you break through the wall. If you compare yourself to Gary Vaynerchuk, he niched at the start: wine only. And even his show was about wine. And with that authority, YouTube only in the very beginning: wine only led it, but success in business, success with the wine shop, success with a show about wine on social media was then leveraged to social media. But once you're on the other side of Shan's Wall, to your point, if you are passionate about the Jets, you're passionate about wine, you're passionate about social and business and NFTs and VR and friends, you're in an entirely different place. And so many people are comparing—our mutual friend John Cuff says, "Never compare your beginning to somebody else's middle." I think we could even add to that and say, "Don't imitate somebody's middle when you're at the beginning." Yep. You're not through Shan's Wall yet. And if you're diluted across multiple topics, multiple platforms, multiple monetization methods, targeting multiple audiences, you are hitting against the wall, and that's probably why you're frustrated: you're not getting views; you're not growing, or it's marginal growth, but it's not breakthrough growth. So you said the goal is to find our uniqueness and exploit it in the service of others and to actually be a thought leader. And I would love—that feels so intimidating. Like I think before we hit the Frameworks, can you speak to the mindset of how can I possibly contribute to the Zeitgeist when it feels like I'm looking at Rory Vaden in his career or I'm looking at where Sean is is in his career or who I followed? How can I add to the conversation? Is it so out there? Like there's already the bestselling authors like—is this accessible to to somebody who's just jumping on the scene?

Oh man, I'm so glad that you asked this because because this is the biggest roadblock mentally that a lot of people have to get past. As you go, like, like, "How the hell am I supposed to compete with Adam Grant or Brené Brown?" Like, like, yeah, like, what what am I gonna say that's like smarter than Simon Sinek? Nothing! I mean, you know, so it's realizing—and and this is something that we didn't know this when we started the company 5 years ago—now that we've worked with, you know, thousands of personal brands, and we do everything one-on-one, as you know, you know, Sean, it's like that's our core is like we're working with people one-on-one—is we discovered a shortcut for someone to help them find their uniqueness. And we we we identified it through pattern recognition, was like we did so many of these, we're like, "What? There's like a theme here." And then we finally saw it when we started training our own strategists on how to help other people find their uniqueness as we started to scale the company. And the secret shortcut that we found is this: is realizing that you are always most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were. You're most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were. You don't have to be famous; you don't have to be the world's smartest. What the world wants from you is for you to tell the story and share the strategies for how you overcame the things that you have overcome. That's what uniqueness looks like; that's that's what community looks like in the future. And it's it's actually very tactical to get you there. It's you start by saying, "What problem have you pushed past? What obstacle have you overcome? What challenge have you conquered? What tragedy have you triumphed over? What setback have you survived?" Because nobody else in the world can talk with as much specificity and credibility for how to overcome that thing as you. And nobody can teach how to overcome it in the way that you overcome it with more credibility than you. And nobody can teach about how to overcome the thing in the way you did it with the stories and the background and who looks like you. And these things all matter, right? Like it matters how you look. Eminem was a white rapper; it mattered how he looked. He connected with a generation because people said, "Oh, I he looks like me," um, and so they paid a new group paid attention. The biggest virtual event for Content creators is happening May 23rd through the 25th with Gary Vaynerchuk, Dave Ramsey, Patrick Bet-David, Oli Abdallah, Cody Sanchez, Shelene Johnson, Pat Flynn, and so much more. Just click the link around this video to get the most affordable ticket price in history for Grow with Video Summit. This is your chance to get access to top video experts, to network in our exclusive app, and connect with creators and entrepreneurs around the world that are using video and to leave this 3-day virtual event with a step-by-step plan for how to grow your personal brand, your business, and ultimately monetize your content in new and multiple ways. All happening at Grow with Video Summit. So click the link around this video to learn more and get your ticket before prices go up. The the key, the thing that you're you're fighting against here is imposter syndrome. I mean, that's what—to call to call it out, right?—is to go, "Well, you know, who am I?" And and and I call this um another way of thinking about this, Sean, is we we sometimes call this the law of the frequency. And if you think about a radio station, okay, you could have two radio stations playing the exact same song at the exact same time, right? So these two stations are playing the exact same song at the same time, but an individual person can only be impacted by one of those radio stations. Why? Because you can only be tuned into one frequency at a time. And so even if you were you know, verbatim saying something that somebody else said, it still would be powerful because they can only hear it from you because they only have access to you now. So part of your uniqueness in in in a in in one on one hand, it's going—you you can share the principles that have always been shared because they're only going to hear it from you because they only have access to you. They they you know, like uh, if if if if there's somebody listening who is like doesn't look anything like Tony Robbins, you go, "Tony Robbins could say it a hundred times, but because they don't like him, they don't like his voice, they feel like he's too energetic, they go, 'He's not my guy,' even though he teaches that principal." Meanwhile, you go—you go look at somebody like Brené Brown, and you're like, "Oh, she's she could say the same thing, and now all of a sudden it connects; it's in a different way." Now, on the surface, that kind of looks like not uniqueness; that looks like it's the same message delivered through a unique messenger. So the messenger themselves is a part of what makes it unique is you living into more of—view—uh, I love that—Sally Hoghead talks about how the way that you differentiate yourself is not by looking at what everyone else is doing and asking, "How can I be different?" It's by leaning into more of you already are. And that's what I think uniqueness looks like. It's it's your stories, your anecdotes, your strategies, your techniques. You know this—in the part one of this interview, Sean, we shared the Focus Funnel. The Focus Funnel is a technique, a strategy, a framework that I created out of my head. The TED Talk went viral; you know, it's about how to multiply time. I wrote a book on it: *Procrastinate on Purpose*. Well, lots of people have written books about productivity; lots of people have written books about time management; lots of people have written books about delegation and systems, right? So it's not that I'm saying something that has never been said before; it's that I'm saying it in a way that only I can say it. And the way that I'm saying it is: if you want the Focus Funnel, you have to hire Rory Vaden. If you want someone to come teach that, you have to hire Rory Vaden or you got to hire someone that has licensed that intellectual property from Rory Vaden. You can't get it anywhere else. Why? Because it's out of my freaking head, right? So it and and that's what matters. And I think as we enter into a world of AI, it it it includes both the sort of artistic component of this and then also the practical—the practical element of going—you're creating unique Frameworks and unique quotes and unique constructs and unique curriculums—not that are teaching things that have never been taught before, but that are being taught through a a different set of Frameworks and through a different set of lenses, through a different set of stories that is only available from you because it came out of your head. And so the first thing that we do at BrandBuilders Group is we extract that knowledge out of your head and we put it into a system that can then be distributed, you know, to the world that is inspiring and uh I think exciting for listeners. And we're also probably feeling like, "Shoot, okay, so I've got all all these ideas in my head, and I'm trying to figure out my brand, but I don't have a proprietary process yet. I need Frameworks; I need constructs; mental models of these things; I need curriculums; quotes; stories; systems of my way of doing it." But it's also so empowering because you spoke to—we are most powerfully positioned to serve the people we once were. And so the challenges and setbacks and all of those different details. Okay, I want to get into your framework works, but I also want to make sure in case people are on the go or they need to pause or go to uh, you know, finish the episode later, if you want to connect with Rory, we've been actually sharing this resource for years: freebrandcall.com—slink—many of the people in our community, V Students, Think Media podcast listeners have jumped on a free call just to get a little bit of help because you might say, "Okay, I can tell I need to talk to Rory's team to kind of like bring some clarity to the chaos that's in my mind. I've got these great IDE—IDE—but I want to formulate them." Jump on that free call. And then, of course, you can already see Rory's a world-class dude; his company's incredible, so maybe there's a Next Step you could go to, but that's a resource. We'll talk about it a little bit later, but that is their expertise. And there's been many time—there's so much I could just riff on right now that you've helped me. One of the biggest ones was you were talking about—as I have my proprietary process, I could teach one point in a TED Talk; I could teach my seven points in a one-hour class at a surface level; I could do a one-day Workshop; I could then take that same framework and do a three-day Workshop if I wanted; I could teach it over seven days. And our V Students know about this; it's the 7R system that we teach related to YouTube, but this is the kind of thing we're talking about is you creating something, and AI didn't create that, and AI can't compete with that. So if you're gonna stand out with personal branding and build a strong personal brand in 2024, you've got to formulate Frameworks, constructs, curriculums, quotes, stories, and systems that are unique to you. Rory, walk us through one or two—whichever ones we could cover today—to start creating some original IP and original content.

Yeah, so um, you know, the Brand Builders Group process, our our meth—our process is actually 14 different two-day experiences. Like if you worked with us on everything from, you know, book launches—like we've helped 20—29 authors become New York Times, Wall Street Journal, like USA Today bestselling authors—speaking, selling, high-dollar offers, building funnels, uh, you know, training your sales team, like doing Live Events—all the things that we teach for personal brands. But where it starts, okay, the first the first two-day experience is called "Finding Your Brand DNA," and the flagship framework from that two-day experience is something called a "brand positioning statement." If you don't get this part right, everything else will break down and fall apart. And there's a couple key elements that you have—you have to nail um, and you know, I'm a I'm a huge Simon Sinek fan. I love Simon; I love *Start With Why*; I love *Eaters Eat Last*, and so much of the stuff that he's done. But when it comes to building a personal brand, what I would say is you don't start with why; you start with who. The very first thing you've got to get clear on is: who are you talking to? Who are you serving? Who are you creating for? Who? Who are you addressing? If you're not clear on the who, everything else is fuzzy, and it and it just unravels more and more. The the moment you're clear about your—and for many of us, by the way, our who is a why. Our who is our why, right? For many of us, even in our personal life, like our kids are our why, um, our you know, our family is our why, our team is our why. And as creators, a lot of times our why is the person that we want to help, who is a version of us, right? That was me; I was the struggling author, the aspiring speaker who couldn't had no road map to follow. And that's like why we serve Mission-driven Messengers is like we understand them. So a lot of times it goes back to your most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were. So start with your who. We call it your avatar, Persona, officially in in BBG—Brand Builders Group speak—a one-phrase description of the psychographic person that you you serve. Okay, so for us, it's Mission-driven Messengers. What's psychographic compared to demographic? Yeah, good call. It's just it's just the mindset, like, you know, when you think of defining your audience, uh, it's a good exercise to go through like what is their age and their gender and their income and all that, but what we found matters way more in that is their mindset, which is the psychographic. So Mission-driven Messengers tells you something; it's not so much about gender; it's not so much…

About age, it's about the people who you know, believe the things you believe, care about the things they operate and exist in the world in the way that you know, kind of you do, or or your content reaches them. So that's the Avatar Persona. The next step, which a lot of people struggle with, is to be able to answer the question—this is in the brand positioning statement—so these are the elements of your brand positioning statement. So you start with the Avatar Persona, the uh, and and some people struggle with that just to narrow it down because they're like, well, I like talking to single moms and you know, I have this passion for people who collect cats and then you know, I want to talk to kids in high school, but I have this corporate experience, but and it's like you you done like you lost like you you not going anywhere like you it's not going to happen. So um, then you got to answer this question: What problem do you solve in one word? What problem do you solve for that group of people in one word? You got to be super clear on that. Then we say, how do you solve that problem for those people in one sentence? How do you solve that problem for people in one sentence? This is the stack; it's these things combined; it's not just one of these. Cuz some of this is like, okay, I've I solve YouTube; what's your methodology for solving YouTube though, right? Is that what the how means? Like your unique way of solving the problem? Yeah, so we're going to get there. So your brand positioning statement, these are the elements of it, right? What is the Avatar Persona? You know who, in one phrase? What problem do you solve for them in one word? How do you solve that problem in one sentence? Uh, and then what is your uniqueness? Your uniqueness is basically a one-word distillation of the message. So the message is the one-sentence expression for how to solve that problem, then your uniqueness is a one-word distillation of that message. And then if you have uh, and then the and then the other thing is, what is your primary business model? So what is the one Revenue stream above all others that matters? So if you can get clear on those things: who do I solve the problem for (one phrase), what problem do I solve for them (in one word), how do I solve that problem for them (in one sentence), what is my uniqueness (in one word), which is a one-word distillation of the message, and what is the one Revenue stream above all others that matters? Those are five one things; those are five things that you have to get, you know, clear on. If you get those, that's what we call Brand positioning statement, and and often that takes us about two days to work through with somebody to really nail it. Like it's it's not easy to do; it's it's hard to do.

So then from there, so that's that is, you know, Phase One course one for us, finding your brand DNA. Then in in Phase One course two, it's called captivating content. So now this is where the unique IP comes into play; we're going to extrapolate your uniqueness into a body of work, into a body of knowledge. So the one-sentence message from the brand positioning statement that we were talking about is, you know, how do you solve that problem in one sentence? That is, give them an instruction or a command in one sentence: What must they do to solve that problem? Then captivating content is where we extrapolate that into a full body of work; it's going, okay, let's go, how do you solve that problem? What are all of the steps? So we call them pillars; um, you could think of it like a chapter, a pillar; you could think of it like a chapter if it was applying to a book, but we call them pillars deliberately because if you do this process right, you will write a TED Talk, a keynote, a half-day training, a full-day training, a two-day training, a course, a six-month coaching program, a year-long Consulting program, and a book all at the same time. If you do this right, you'll you'll create them all at the same time, which is powerful. So each pillar, we go, okay, now let's create the buckets, right? So you know, like you talked about your seven Rs, right? Each of those is a pillar; those are the buckets to solve; what are the steps or the, you know, the the main themes that someone has to understand to overcome the problem that you help them with? And then you're going to create those buckets, right? So like sometimes they're sequential, so like in in my first book, Take the Stairs, they were not sequential; they're just they're seven kind of general principles. In my second book, Procrastinate on Purpose, it's the five permissions of the focus funnel; they happen in a sequence. A Brand Builders Group, we we have 14 parts to our curriculum that happens in a sequence. So sometimes they're sequential, but they don't have to be; um, they could just be like principles. And again, these are not the principles that Stephen Covey says to change your life; this is not the principles that Tony Robbins or Mel Robbins or Robin Robbins or any other Robbins says to change your life; this is how did you change your life? How did you overcome the problem? How did you get past the setback? And what is your—we're building your unique methodology. So we bucket that out. Okay, let me pause right there; any any questions so far on that, Sean? Are we you are we tracking? Again, I think that number one, rewind the audio or video and and relisten and save this episode because it's really I I know our listeners are thinking, okay, I gotta when I get home later I'm gonna pull my journal out, write this down because you're giving us a lot of prompts and more than just being entertained with information; I want people to really do the work and start working uh through this, but no, keep it going; this is amazing; I'm taking some notes and I'll follow up. Okay. Okay, so now you have the beginnings of what we would call the modular content method, which is our Flagship framework for captivating content, right? So we have our pillars, our buckets, our themes, our chapter headings. What we then do is under each one—and this basically makes a grid, right?—because your buckets or the pillars become the columns on a spreadsheet, and now I'm going to give you the rows for each pillar: you tell a story, make a point, teach a framework, and inspire a behavior, and then we give them an exercise. Okay? So tell a story, make a point, teach a framework, inspire a behavior, give them an exercise, and we know that if we can help you create and outline each of these five components, like subcomponents, then you're going to have an amazing pillar that is taking shape that does change people's lives, and it is unique to you. So we start with signature stories, and we talk about what CL, you know, what counts as a signature story and what makes a good story and why why most stories suck and you know what you need to know about how to tell the story in the right way. But we're going to take a story, and the stories, if at all possible, we're going to try to avoid stories that appear in the Zeitgeist; we're not going to tell the story of Walt Disney, and we're not going to tell the story of Abraham Lincoln and you know, Lance Armstrong and whoever; we might use a few of those, but what makes it powerful is not that it's the story of, you know, when you put your kid down to sleep one night and they said something to you that changed your life, right? It's the the it's the celebration of life's seemingly small, insignificant moments translated through the power of the science of Storytelling to create and and and celebrate these magnificent moments as you know, learning as a as a part of the learning. Um, and so you know, everybody says, oh, I don't have any good stories, blah blah blah blah, and I'll give you I'll give you like super tip on stories for a second: every picture in your phone is a story, right? So if you go, I don't have stories, I promise you do; every single picture in your phone is a story. Now, is it a good story? That's going to depend on if you understand the science of Storytelling, which is what we really help people understand and like craft and like put it together, but you can take any picture in your phone, apply the science of Storytelling, and we can make it a great story. Similarly, if you climb to Mount Everest, Mount Everest, if you don't apply the science of Storytelling, you could say, I went on a trip last month and I climbed Mount Everest; it was amazing. That's not an amazing story, like even though it's an amazing thing you did; it's a crappy story. So it's not the the essence of what you did that makes a great story; it's how you tell the story, and you have to start each pillar, or you have to have a signature story in each pillar because people connect with stories. Okay? So we tell a story, then we make a point, and this will this will freaking blow your mind. Um, one of the things that we discovered, you know, we're we have a data science team, and we're a bunch of nerds over here; we we we're a herd of nerds um and an army of army of of of analytics; we found that like 99% of all the quotes you ever hear when people give a quote and like, what's your favorite quote, right? There is a quote; 99% of those quotes fit into one of the six six sentence structures; we call them the six Pillar Point formulas. And so what we discovered is that it's not only what you say that makes something a quote; it's how you say it, the Cadence of how you say what you say, right? Like one of my most famous quotes is, Success is never owned; it's rented, and the rent is due every day. That was like my very first like kind of quote that went viral from my Take the Stairs book. Um, your most powerfully positioned, by the way, that that that success is never owned; it's it's rented, and the rent is due every day; that's one of the pillar; it's a pillar point formula. Um, you're most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were; that is what we call litera of construction; that's one of the six Pillar Point formulas. Um, metaphorical Construction is the rent axom. Uh, I also have this, you know, very famous story about Buffalo and how Buffalo charged the storm, and I just I actually just recently wrote a kids book called Be the Buffalo; that is metaphorical construction; it's it's this concept that has like become a very popular concept. Um, all of it just from from running this checklist of these six Pillar Point formulas. So then we come up with what's the big idea for that pillar, um, and then how do we run it through the six Pillar Point formulas? Then there's Frameworks, which are basically visuals; we can dive in on these if you want more, Sean, but there's Frameworks, which is how do we create a visual articulation of the main idea? When when people say, oh, he has great content, or she she has a you know, she's an amazing thought leader, or when they say, um, you know, this is a weird thing that people say, but they say that speaker had a lot of meat, right? Or like that video had a lot of meat; what people are really saying is they had great stories; they had uh, you know, clear catchphrases; they had amazing visuals and ways to organize the thinking and clear action items or takeaways. Um, so that's what they're they're saying. So in Frameworks, we want to go, how can we, you know, we clarify the essence of your pillar as a pillar point, and then we put you through the rigamaroo of going, how would you express this visually? And then that becomes a framework; like the focus funnel is the flagship framework of my TED Talk in my second book; it's like it's a visual; it's very simple, but we created it by thinking about it, which is what thought leadership is, and what thought leadership requires is thinking hard about how to communicate this in a more efficient way. Then you give them a behavior, which is a a command for what they need to execute in order to, you know, achieve that pillar successfully, and then you give them an exercise, which is a a uh um you know, you create a tool to help them actually apply what you need them to, what they need to do, and what you've told them to do in the pillar. And so if you do those things—tell a story, make a point, teach a framework, inspire a behavior, give them an exercise—and if you do that on repeat for somewhere between five and nine pillars typically, then what's happened is you have created a body of work; we call this the modular content method, and basically a TED Talk is one pillar, and by the way, we've had six BBG clients write TED Talks that have gone viral with over a million views; it's happened six times, right? So you you one pillar is a TED Talk; two pillars is a keynote; three pillars a half day; four four pillars is uh, well, three pillars with exercises is a half day; four pillars with exercises is a full day; and then the full pillar system becomes a a two-day experience, uh, which also doubles, you know, can be made into a course, six-month coaching program, a year-long Consulting program for a company, and a book. And so it just becomes this giant puzzle that you've got to fill in. And then what our strategists do—you could see why it's like we have to—it's a very Human Experience—yeah, and that's why we have strategists that walk you through it. Th media podcast, you've been living on the surface, and Rory just invited you to the depths. I think that um there's so many takeaways here, and I actually hear uh Drake and Jay Cole saying, who to Goat? Who to Goat? Big is the Super Bowl, and goat is greatest of all time. There's a lot of personal branding people out there like, oh, personal branding this or that; they have a lot of fluff, and they they don't take it to the Tactical granular depths that actually shows their science behind this, their systems behind this; that's why I love you, Rory, because it's such a world-class level. Couple takeaways um that I think could uh bring some nuggets as we process what you've been saying and then take it to um some more tips from you. One, taking it all the way back to your most powerfully positioned to who um to help who you were yesterday, and that actually you don't start with why, but you start with who, your Avatar Persona. I actually just started following somebody that is teaching Fitness now; talk about crowded, talk about a a a a niche that, oh, it's too saturated, but on Instagram, I think it was on the recommended page uh or it just actually hit my feed because it was somebody that was saying, you can still be fit when you're 55 or 52. Now I just turned 40, and I'm looking in the mirror, and if I get a little vulnerable here, I got some man boobs, and I'm not pumped about these; some people call them mobs, is what they're called. And so I'm thinking, okay, now there's of course 20-year-olds; they're out here; I'm like, bro, I'm offended by you because your metabolism—like I don't care what you're able to accomplish; I don't want to go on TRT; I'm looking at different people. So I'm looking for some L natural healthy, and when I saw 52, and so I see this guy Jeff Sutherland, here's his handle, Midlife Fit Club; I'm like, boom, bro, I want that fit in my midlife, and I'm thinking, Jeff, you're more fit at 52 by a long shot than I was, and I'm CH I'm guessing I'm his yesterday; I am, you know, shoot, my metabolism is a little different. And so even though it could feel crowded, he who he was yesterday and starting with the who, I would imagine the Avatar Persona is somebody that's now feeling in that more quote-unquote midlife, and then from there we can start going deeper, of course, into you know his funnel or whatever else he has, but it all started on social media, but Manny cut through the Noise by starting with who. But what's so cool here is also some of this is repeat, but I want to challenge our community to also like notice that as you add these layers together, you can see that the rabbit hole goes so so deep, and nobody takes it as deep as Brand Builders. And so then you layer on, okay, what problem do you solve? Who do you solve it for? What is your uniqueness? And then these idea of content. The second big aha was one question that we get all the time: Man, what do I decide? What do I teach for free versus what do I charge for in my paid course? Would you like a free copy of the number one bestselling book for growing a successful YouTube channel? If you want to get a copy of the new and expanded second edition of YouTube Secrets, just go to yts.com, and if you'll cover shipping and handling, I would love to send you this book for free. And the cool thing is, when you place your order, you're also going to get access to some bonus resources like our 1,000 subscribers Club, our 7 C's framework, our perfect video recipe framework, as well as some bonus videos that will help you get results on YouTube faster. So to get your copy, just go to YTsecrets.com or click the link in the podcast show notes. Man, what do I decide? What do I teach for free versus what do I charge for in my paid course? And I would love to hear your answer, but my big takeaway from me is that one, maybe you haven't formulated your ideas and your process, and and this is a process you should go through, and of course, check out show notes and connect with Rory's team because once you've got your pillars, why not—this is a YouTube video as well, right? A YouTube video is tell a story, make a point, teach a framework, give an exercise, and that one YouTube video is can be so profound and so deep if you will, but also it's covering just a sliver. Like when you start start seeing of course what Rory's teaching, it would be hundreds of videos to really teach through the entire process, but he can give away his best content; he's doing it right now; he's giving away his best content; there's just the depth of it. And when you go through his entire proprietary process, especially because it's not just the information, it's going to be the stories, the exercises, the unlocks, the depth of the information that we're not just going to get it when it hits our mind; we need it to hit our heart and be transformed into our lives. This is, I think, is encouraging because a lot of our community gets stuck like, well, wait a minute, like if I just tell people—and that's actually I've got videos that tell people are seven pillars—and you, well, Sean, you just gave away all seven pillars. Well, yeah, but there's 50 hours inside of our course, and I just shared them for seven minutes to your—as I learned from you—like, okay, we can GA the big idea, and the big idea is, I'm not holding anything back; it's it's really good, but we only had seven minutes to cover it. If we're really going to socialize and internalize this information, I would invite you to join me at a deeper level. Do you want to come to our event in Vegas, or do you want to come to uh join our course? Because as we unpack this, you're going to experience even more transformation with that. Expand on that idea because one of the biggest questions we get for aspiring thought leaders and thought leaders that are like, man, I want to package what I know into something like an online course, but man, I'm afraid; what if I give away my best stuff? Or what do I give away free versus what do I charge for? To me, your system really solves that; break that down. Yeah, that it's a good it's a really important question: What do I give away versus what do I charge for? So I'll give you two two thoughts on this; the first one I think is pretty clear; this actually comes—this is not a Brand Builders Group or Rory Vaden quote; this comes from Old School internet marketing, like in the back, you know, information marketing pre pre-internet marketing information marketing and still to this day, I think it's one of the best ways to answer this question, and the short answer is, you give away the what and you charge for the how. You give away the what and you charge for the how. Here's what to do, right? And I'll say, hey, go out and find your uniqueness; create a brand positioning statement. You and I both know you're gonna fumble through that if you try to do it on your own, and some people may get there, but but a lot of people are going to, you know, want help, so it's it's like you give away the what and you you charge for the how. I like that because it's a clear delineation; what I don't like about it is it feels a little bit like a scarcity mindset, like I'm holding some back, and I'm I'm only allowing you to have certain level of access to me, and I'm making you pay to have access. And so the way that we actually do this and the way that we've adapted this and the way that we teach our clients is a different version of that, which I think is a more abundance mindset, and and our philosophy now is, teach everything you know for free; teach everything you know for free, but but in small bite-sized chunks and in all random miscellaneous order because people don't pay for information; they pay for organization, and most of all, they pay for application. People don't pay for information; they pay for application. And so even if you taught everything you knew for free, the course is different in that it's like, you got to have tools to help them apply the information, right? That's a big difference; also, you're teaching them in a sequence of where everything is organized step by step because people often do the right thing at the wrong time, right? Like lots of people come to us and they go, I want to write a book, and it's like, well, they they have no idea about how to build an audience. A lot of times people come to us going, I've written a book, and I heard you guys can help me be a bestseller, and it's like, well, we can, but like you went way out of order here. So it it it's a lot of it is the sequence and going the the there's two reasons why I love this strategy, or a couple reasons why I love this strategy: one is, the more that somebody consumes your content, I have found that doesn't make them less likely to hire you; that makes them more likely to hire you; it doesn't make them less likely to buy from you; it makes it more likely to buy. And so and maybe maybe they don't buy your course because they think it's all all the way through there; even if they don't, they're probably going to tell people about your course, and they're going to tell people about you, and those people are going to buy, and when your course comes out as a book, they're going to buy it, and they're going to buy it for their friends and for their community. So it's it's not that those people buy less; they buy they buy more; they also want more access to you, so you ultimately have higher-end offerings, and we could do a we could do a killer video on monetization strategy at some point, Sean, and we could talk about dares and the paids and something that something um you know, these these different things that we we talk about for scaling Revenue, the fractal math and the services Spectrum uh would be great to go like you actually can monetize in lots of other ways like that that you could make a lot of money from if people love you. The other reason though, which to me is like the bigger reason why to do this, is because at least if you're a Missi driven messenger, which is our audience, you said you wanted to build a personal brand because you wanted to change lives, right? Like isn't that kind of why you started? Isn't that sort of why you left the corporate job? Like isn't that sort of why you went under your own? Isn't that why you kind of started the side hustle?

And started following Shan is cuz you're like, "I want to make the world a better place. I want to make a difference. I want my life to matter. I want to do work that I love. I want to know that my—what I'm lending my time and talents to—is making a difference. I want to make a difference in the world." Great. Push record and make a freaking difference. Like, nowhere in that equation is it required that you get paid to make a difference.

The good news is, is you don't have to get paid to make a difference. You can just make a difference. Like, you can just add value to people's lives. You can just pour out the stuff that you know. And I don't know if there's how to make it science; all I know is to go. This is what our philosophy has been, and it's working really, really well for us, right? Like, we sold an eight-figure business, then we started over, and five years later, we're back at eight figures. I know that we're working with Lewis Howes, and we're Ed Mylett, and Amy Porterfield, and Jasmine Star, and Tom and Lisa Bilyeu, and like Eric Thomas, The Hip Hop Preacher. Like, these are our clients. Like, it's worked out well for us, and it's worked out well for them, so it's probably gonna work out well for you. It's it's it's the law of reciprocity. It's not the theory of reciprocity; it's the law of reciprocity. Like, you want to help support the people who have helped you. And even if not, you know, for me, this is a—it's actually a spiritual thing, Sean, because I go, I just don't believe you can ever outgive God. Like, you can't outgive the universe. You can't love on people in a way and not have it come—come back to you. So I think, you know, while I understand the fear, and I've certainly had the fear myself, I think people over-index on that fear, um, and and they kind of catastrophize. And again, you know, like, in order for the devil to win, he doesn't have to, you know, destruct you; he just has to distract you. And if—if he can—PL remember this about the devil: the devil is a liar. The number one tool that the devil has is deceit; it's—it's lying. So if he can plant this lie that, "Well, you can't give that away," "no one would buy," or "you're not good enough to be on camera," or "someone else already did that," or "why would anybody listen to you," or "you don't know about the technology," "you don't know how to edit," "you're not as smart as this person," "you're too late"—right—all the devil has to do to win is distract you. He plants those thoughts; he deceives you; he wins. It's a low bar for him. Meanwhile, you go, "I'm gonna make a difference in the world. I'm gonna share what I know. I'm going to become a better teacher in the process of teaching." All of it. Worst-case scenario, I make an impact, I automate trust, and I build my reputation, and long-term that strategy never loses.

Rory, the what you hit on last there was so powerful. I think, too, because there are so many mission-driven and purpose-driven people listening to this that I want to also feel the weight that if—if you keep believing the LIE of, "Well, someone's already done this," and you stay silent and you don't lift your—lift your voice and you don't press record—here's my question for you, Think Media Podcast: who is waiting for you to overcome your fears and to start posting content, and who is waiting on the other side of your fears and your insecurity? Because whether it's 10 views or 100 views or 100 million views, if you don't put that content out there and you don't share your message and you don't share what's worked for you, then someone's life might not be changed. And—and the LIE is, "Oh, well, somebody else is already sharing that information," but not the way that God designed you. You're—your—the way you look, your experiences, the pain you've been through, the trauma you've been through, the heartache you've been through, or the—the simple solutions to the business problems and the—the frustrations that you've had—man, who's waiting on the other side of your fears and your insecurity?

Lor, that hit me because how the devil works is lies, and these different lies, mental barriers, these different mindsets that could be holding us back. For time sake, we have covered so much. I still have a hundred follow-up questions, but uh, I would—we absolutely want to have you back for talking about—uh, monetizing, talking about your different frameworks, and all the different ways we can monetize a personal brand in today's world. I have a couple final questions—land the plane—but uh, a few resources to remind our community on: check out the show notes for episode number one, because after we have even what you learn in this episode about maybe your next video—tell a story, make a point, teach a framework, give exercise—you still got to take action and overcome the insecurity and procrastination and laziness that might come up, and that's what we talked about in part one with Rory, so that's linked up in the show notes. This series with you is now becoming like a master class. We might—might be on episode four or five in Think Media Podcast history. I would highly recommend pacing it out, but add to your watch later list or save previous episodes, which will link up all of Rory's episodes. So many rich and deep topics just like this one. Roy's got a couple of books, but most of all, and I think the one thing I'd want you to do next is go to frebruary.team. Of course, if you want to hire them, that would be available, and they'll let you know about that on the call, but the call in it of itself, Rory, what—what—what's going to happen over how many minutes when people just register for that free call to connect with your team?

Yeah, so it—it—the—the what typically happens first of all is we—we take like an inventory of your story. I mean, your story is the thing that we build the personal brand off, and we want to know like—we want to know you, right? We're human; we do work one-on-one—one-on-one—and—and in—in—in-person environments, so we want to hear your story and what—what challenge have you conquered and what problem have you pushed past? Like, so we want to hear the story, and then we want to hear the vision of what you've got for your personal brand, right? So we'll ask questions about like, "How big is this vision?" Uh, you know, like I said, we work with some of the biggest personal brands in the world—um, some of the most recognizable; they've done really, really huge things. We also work with people who have just like a very specific thing that they want—to get a promotion, or they—they want to get more atten—attention for, you know, their—their local nonprofit or, you know, whatever it is. So what's the magnitude of the vision? Um, and then just kind of like where you at right now, what's going on, and—and we got to, you know, tell us what you're—what you're good at. And you might go, "I'm good at this, but I'm struggling with this, and I don't have a team to help with this, and I'm not clear on this," and, you know, we'll kind of—we'll kind of talk it out. And then, uh, you know, if at some point that we kind of go, "Hey, we actually think we might be able to help you," if that comes up, what would happen is we would show you, "Here's what the Brand Builder—we call it the Brand Builder Journey—looks like," and we would actually walk you through—we would tell you this for free: "Here is the four-phase process that we take people through to become, you know, household names," and everything that—that we've done and we've learned. And so we show you that, and then—um—if you kind of go, "Yeah, that—that does look like something I'd help," then we would go, "Well, there's a couple different ways we can work with you. Some are very affordable, like, and some are more, you know, customized and, you know, faster." So, but it's like our heart is for mission-driven messengers. You don't—you don't have to be rich and famous to, you know, start working with us. They—a lot of people, it's just an idea, and then other people, it's like, we're working with some of the biggest personal brands in the world, right? So it's just about the mission, and—um—again, so, you know, I think you mentioned, Sean, so you go to questions on there in the front end that will help you kind of like think through some of that. And then the last thing that I would just say, Sean, to—like what we were talking about is it really is true that there is somebody out there right now who needs you more than you need them. And if you just get present to that idea and you think about this—that right now there is somebody searching for answers to questions that you know like the back of your hand; they're—they're seeking; they're looking; they—they literally could be on their hands and knees praying for answers—um—that you are equipped to—to help them with. And you have to stay focused on that person. Uh, you know, one of the things we—we say a lot is, "There is no fear when the mission to serve is clear. There's only fear when you're thinking about yourself." You know, "How am I going to look? Am I going to say this the right way? Like, are people going to like me? Is someone going to make fun of me? Is anyone going to watch this?" Like, it's such a self-centered thing, but is no fear once the mission to serve becomes clear. When you just go like, "I want to help people. I want to offer what I know. I want to encourage them. I want to educate them," and yeah, "I want to build trust in a way that hopefully brings back fruit in my life in the terms of—in income and impact and influence," but at the end of the day, even if it didn't, you're making a difference to those—to those—to those people, and you—and you got to remember that. Another little thing on this is: think of your offline—think of your online audience as an offline room. So think of your online audience as an offline room. Too many times people go, "My video got 26 views. What a freaking waste of time," right? Meanwhile, because you're looking at, you know, Gary Vee or whoever like getting a bazillion views, and you're like, "27? What a waste of time," yet if I told you right now in the room next door there are 27 people gathered sitting in chairs waiting for you to share your life story and everything that you know about how to overcome that problem, you'd probably be pretty excited about it. Like, your heart rate would probably speed up. And if it were a couple hundred, you'd probably be like outright nervous. If it were a thousand, you'd be freaking out, right? Like, it's—you have to—it is that way. There—those are real humans; those are real people; those are real stories, real eyeballs, like real people struggling. So it's like, don't forget the power of that one person. And think of your offline or—think of your online audience as an offline room. Man, it kind of gives me chills and like just thinking about that, and it's a good reminder for the ups and the downs of the content creation journey, because sometimes we're like, "Oh, man, the video took off on YouTube," it's one out of 10, and then sometimes it's 10 out of 10, which would be the lowest scoring; you're like, "Man, I put so much energy into it," but think about your online audience like an offline room. This episode was one of my favorites, so power-packed—uh, packed, juicy, and so—uh, Think Media Podcast, like, rate and review, of course, if you're on YouTube; would love your feedback and your biggest aha moment and what action you're going to be taking next. Um, check out all of the show notes and resources, and then follow Rory; we'll link up his socials and whatnot in the show notes as well. Tons of juicy goodness there. Want to thank you for being a part of the Think Media Podcast community, and as always, I am Sean Cannell, your guide to building a profitable YouTube channel, and I can't wait to connect with you in a future episode.