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If you’re not building your personal brand on purpose, you’re already being left behind. It’s one of the most important things you can do in your business right now, and it has to be done with intention, not left to chance or hidden behind your work. That’s exactly what this episode is about: how to take your story, your experience, and your voice and turn it into something people remember.

To break it down, I brought in Rory Vaden: bestselling author, entrepreneur, speaker, and one of the most respected names in personal branding today. We uncover the biggest mistakes people make when building their personal brand, why cutting through the noise online matters more now than ever, and how to know which part of your story to lead with when you’ve lived through ten different chapters. We also get into the self-doubt and limiting beliefs quietly running the show behind the scenes, and how to move through them so you can finally step into the brand you’re meant to have.

About Rory Vaden

Rory Vaden is a bestselling author, entrepreneur, speaker, and personal branding expert who has spent his career helping people build businesses, brands, and lives that create lasting impact. Through his work, he teaches entrepreneurs, speakers, and leaders how to clarify their message, build their reputation, overcome self-doubt, and turn their unique experiences into meaningful influence, blending personal development, entrepreneurship, mindset, and personal branding to help people step into their story and share it with more clarity and confidence.

In this episode we chat about:

• The real story behind becoming one of the world’s most in-demand speakers (3:12)
• What Rory says first to someone with a big idea and zero direction (13:30)
• Why your personal brand matters more now than it ever has (28:20)
• The biggest brand-building mistake almost everyone makes (34:04)
• You’ve lived through ten different stories: here’s how to know which one to tell (41:16)
• How Rory coaches people out of self-doubt and into their power (48:31)
• The one book Rory wants in every high school on earth (57:37)
• Inside a completely ordinary day in Rory’s life (63:06)

Episode resources:

• Free Brand Strategy Call (website)
• Wealthy and Well-Known by Rory Vaden (Get the free audiobook here) 
• Rory Vaden (website)
• Rory Vaden (Instagram)
• How To Multiply Your Time TEDx (Youtube)
• Take the Stairs: 7 Steps to Achieving True Success by Rory Vaden (book)
• Procrastinate on Purpose: 5 Permissions to Multiply Your Time by Rory Vaden (book)
• Be The Buffalo by Rory Vaden (book)
• The Influential Personal Brand Podcast (website)

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The following transcript has been automatically generated and not checked for accuracy.

Melissa: [00:00:00] The Melissa Ambrosini Show. Welcome to the Melissa Ambrosini Show. I’m your host, Melissa, 

best-selling author of Mastering Your Mean Girl, Open Wide, Comparisonitis, and Time Magic. 

And I’m here to remind you that love is sexy, healthy is liberating, and wealthy isn’t a dirty word. Each week, 

I’ll be getting up close and personal with thought leaders from around the globe, as well as your weekly dose of motivation so that you can create epic change in your own life and become the best version 

of yourself possible.

Are you ready, beautiful? 

Hello, and welcome back to the show. I am so excited about this episode because we are talking about something that I believe is non-negotiable for everyone in business right now, and that is your personal brand. Not a curated performative version, the real one built with intention from your actual story and your actual voice.[00:01:00] 

And whether you think you have a personal brand or not, 

you do. 

Everyone does. Everyone already has a personal brand, and it is being built whether you like it or not, so you may as well build it with intention, and that’s what this episode is all about. And if you have ever wondered how to turn your experience into something that actually moves people, like deeply moves people, this conversation is going to change how you think about it.

And for those of you that have never heard of Rory Vaden, he is a two-time New York Times bestselling author, an eight-figure entrepreneur, and the youngest American ever inducted into the Professional Speaking Hall of Fame. He spent years studying the psychology of influence, and his work has been featured everywhere from Forbes to Good Morning America, and his TEDx Talk has been watched over five million times.

Now these days, he is the go-to personal brand coach for some of the biggest names in the personal development industry including Lewis Howes, Ed Mylett, and Amy Porterfield. And for everything that we mention in today’s episode, you can check [00:02:00] it out in the show notes, and that’s over at melissambrosini.com/710.

And now without further ado, let’s bring on the incredible Rory Vaden.

Rory, welcome to the show. I am so pumped to have you here. I’ve wanted to have you on the show for so long, and it’s finally, the day is here, and I am so excited. But before we dive in, can you please tell me what you had for breakfast this morning? 

Rory: So I have a turkey egg bite sandwich like every day, and then a frozen decaf coffee.

So I do a blended coffee every day, decaf. 

Melissa: Frozen, what do you mean? 

Rory: Like, it’s like there’s like a frozen powder. It’s like a coffee… It’s basically like a coffee-flavored smoothie but with no caffeine. So yep, I do that pretty much every day. I’m, I am a man of very… Yeah, of habit for sure. I just, I, I try to like, [00:03:00] I, I stick to a schedule, so that’s pretty much the same every day.

Melissa: Yeah. Um, my gosh, I love that. I’m the same. I have the same thing every morning. It just is easy, especially with kids. You’ve got two kids. I’ve got two kids. It’s just easier to do the same thing So I am pumped to have you here. You are one of the most prolific people I know in this space. You are an incredibly captivating speaker.

I’m a speaker as well, and I love watching you speak. You’re so engaging, you’re so entertaining, you’re so full of knowledge and wisdom, and I’m just so excited to extract some of that out of your brain today. 

Rory: Well, I’m excited too, although you’re setting such a high bar, it’s gonna be like how do we beat this?

But yeah, this is gonna be… It’s gonna be awesome and s- since y- you know, you can’t see me, but we’ll do it with voice and this is, this is gonna be fantastic, so I’m so glad to be here. 

Melissa: Yes. Yeah, yeah. I will put this on YouTube, this video here for everyone to watch [00:04:00] it so they will be able to see you. So tell me how you got into this work.

Like, where did this all begin for you? Can you take us back and tell us a little bit of your origin story and how you got here and into this work? 

Rory: Yeah. Well, I, I mean, I was raised by a single mom, so my mom got pregnant when she was in high school. She had my brother. She was divorced from his father, you know, three years later.

Then she met my biological father. She had me. He left six months after I was born. And so my mum was a 22-year-old single mom, no college degree, living in a state away from her family and, you know, we didn’t have much, but we always had love and my mom always told me, she was just like, “You’re gonna be the first in our family to go to college, and you can do anything you want.”

And so, like, she literally programmed me with all of the right– She was in Mary Kay. My mom sold Mary Kay cosmetics. I don’t know if you remember, like, you know, the makeup company. So she would drag me to the meetings, and they were [00:05:00] talking about goals and time management and, you know, leadership and delegation.

And so I grew up learning all of the principles of success from women. Like, just seven years old running around these, like, Mary Kay meetings and it also means I know more about makeup than I do about cars. It’s true, Melissa. Like, people are always shocked ’cause I’m like, oh yeah, I know, I know all about, you know, women wake up every morning wash, toner, moisturizer, foundation, wrinkle-free eye cream, base eyeshadow, dark eyeshadow, blush, eyeliner, mascara, lip liner and lipstick.

Like I, I know that. Now guys on the other hand is like, you know, I don’t know how to change a tire, I can’t like hang picture frame and, and so that… You know, I grew up around personal development and I remember You know, not having much, right? Like we– I lived in a trailer when I was first born and, you know, all I wanted was like boxed [00:06:00] cereal.

But like we had this crappy bagged cereal that was so stale, and I wanted Air Jordans ’cause that was like the thing to have. It’s still kind of the thing to have, right? But it was like we couldn’t afford Air Jordans, so I got Air JorDash. There was a brand called JorDash that was like a knockoff brand that I grew up with.

And, you know, I just remember probably being l- whatever, eight, nine, ten years old starting realizing like how come our family doesn’t have any money? Like how, how come all these kids I go to school with have like… First of all, why do they have a dad? I don’t have a dad. Like why do they, y- you know, live in these houses and we live in…?

And, and I started getting exposed to that and, and I remember the first time I saw a speaker, Melissa, I was in sixth grade. This is a true story. I was at PMS, Platte Middle School. That’s what I went to, PMS for middle school. And this speaker walks in, and it’s in a gymnasium And I was, at, at first I was like, “What is happening?

What, what are we doing here?” [00:07:00] And this guy starts talking and he is funny and inspiring, but he’s also telling this horrible story about how he got into drugs and he went to jail and his brother got murdered and his, you know, friend got beat up. And basically he was m- telling about you should make good choices, basically, so you don’t end up like me.

That was sort of the, the nature. And that was the first time I thought about like, wow, how do you become, you know, a speaker? And I, I thought also, what would happen if you made good choices your whole life instead of like this guy who made a bunch of bad choices and then figured it out. And then I was in high school, and I was on student council, and, and we controlled the budget for the speakers.

So now I’m like a freshman in high school, and we paid this guy $1,000 to come speak at– in our high school gym. And I was like, “You gotta be kidding me. $1,000 to hold a microphone and tell some jokes and some stories.” And I was like, oh my God, like, this is the career for me. So like pretty much in ninth grade, I decided, man, I [00:08:00] wanna be a professional speaker.

And so I started speaking in high schools or in middle schools when I was in high school. And by 17 I was getting paid to speak. And then I got into direct sales in college. I, I got a full scholarship to go to college, but I had to pay my living expenses, and so I took a job as a door-to-door salesperson in college.

And they… But they had all of these speakers and all of this personal development training, and I always wanted to be on the stage. And then I did that for five years. I made like $250,000 doing that in my college summers. And then I teamed up with a buddy and said, “Hey, let’s start a motivational speaking company, like the best one the world has ever seen.”

And so we’re in our twenties going, you know, “We’re gonna be the next Tony Robbins.” And no one had ever heard of us, right? We were 20 years old, and the only thing we knew how to do was sell. So we were teaching salespeople, and so we made cold calls out of [00:09:00] the phone book, right? Just like literally cold calling.

And we came into companies, we did a free workshop, and we tried to like razzle dazzle them for an hour, and then we said, “Hey, if you enjoyed this, buy a ticket to our one day event.” And then we were the speakers at the event, so we were selling tickets to people to come spend a day with us. And we generated like $250,000 in four months at our first event.

And we also– He recruited his best friend and when we started the company, and he’s like, “We gotta have my best friend AJ. She’s the smartest girl I’ve ever met. I’ve been copying off her page since sixth grade. We grew up together.” And so the three of us and one other guy started this company. Well We sold 750 tickets in the first few months, did our event.

We ended up doing that for five years, going to a new city and cold calling every four months just starting over. And we grew that to like a multi-seven figure business, and then we figured out how to sell coaching, and we started selling [00:10:00] coaching after the event, and then the business exploded. We went to eight figures in coaching revenue.

We had a multi seven figure seminar business, a multi seminar– seven figure speaking business. My first book came out when I was 29 at The New York Times bestseller list. Then my TED Talk went viral. And in that journey I met a person, a, a gentleman that you’ve had on your show before named Lewis Howes And so Lewis and I became friends.

I helped him launch his first book just casually as a friend, but I said, “Hey, you should do this,” and taught him everything we did. He hits the New York Times. And then a few years later our company was booming. We had two hundred people, five thousand clients. You know, this is a very healthy eight-figure business.

And then one day we walked into a meeting with basically our business partners. They were like the equivalent of our investors. And that girl AJ that we had started the company with, that was my buddy’s best friend, a year into the company, her and I started [00:11:00] dating. We fell in love. Two years later, we got married, and then what happened was she got fired unexpectedly in twenty eighteen.

And they fired her, and then they asked me to stay, and I resigned. I was like, “There’s no way. I’m, I’m going with my wife.” And so we left, and to the day, like almost exactly when we left, I got a phone call from Lewis Howes, and Lewis said, “Hey, I know we haven’t talked in a while, but I really could use help on my business.

Is there any chance I could borrow your brain?” And we were like, “Well, the calendar’s wide open.” So he flies to our home, and we spend two days together, and he said, ‘This is the most powerful two days I’ve ever had, and this is what you guys were born to do. This is your new business, is that you are going to be a strategy firm specifically for speakers, authors, coaches, and thought leaders and anyone who wants to build their personal brand.”

And I said, “Lewis, we don’t have a company. Like, we don’t have [00:12:00] a team. We don’t have an email list. All my social media is gone. It was all owned by our former company.” And I was like, “We don’t even have a checking account.” And he’s like, “That’s okay. I’m gonna have you on my podcast, and you’re gonna share with everybody what you shared with me over the last two days.”

And, and that’s what we did, and we had over a thousand people request a free call, and that was twenty eighteen. And now fast-forward, Brand Builders Group was born. We’ve now worked with Lewis for several years. His podcast exploded. He was doing thirty million downloads when we first met him. It had taken him like seven years to get to that.

In the first two years we worked together, he went to five hundred million downloads. And then Ed Mylett became a client, and then Amy Porterfield, and Trent Shelton, and Cody Sanchez, and Jim Kwik, and John Maxwell, and it just goes on and on. Dr. Gabrielle Lyon. And, and now we have become a personal brand strategy firm for many of the biggest thought leaders in the personal development space.

But most of our clients are not that. Most of our clients are the people more like I was when I was [00:13:00] seventeen. They’re somebody who has a calling on their life And they have a dream. They’re what we call mission-driven messengers, but they have no idea how to turn it into an actual business. They have no idea how to, you know, get their books published and sold and speak on stages and grow, and that’s what we do.

So we help mission-driven messengers create more impact and more income in the world. That’s the whole story. 

Melissa: Mm. I love that story so much. It’s so good. Oh my gosh, there’s so much juice in here. So when someone first comes to you, what are the first few things you do? 

Rory: Yeah. So I’ll share with you the single best piece of personal branding advice that I’ve ever, ever ex- heard, and this is not a Rory Vaden quote.

This, this quote actually comes from a guy named Larry Winget, and the first time I heard this quote, I knew he was right. Like, as soon as I heard it, I was like, “Hmm, that’s it.” And this is what Larry said. He said, “The goal of a great [00:14:00] personal brand is to find your uniqueness and then exploit it in the service of others.”

Find your uniqueness and exploit it in the service of others. And as soon as I heard that, I was like, “That’s it. That’s, that’s it.” But Larry wasn’t in the business of teaching people how to do it. He was a speaker and an author, but he never developed a system. And so when we started Brand Builders Group, I was like, oh, let’s create the system to help people find their uniqueness.

And so that is what we do. We’re a very curriculum-based training company today. We guide people through, you know, a four-phase process that takes them all the way from idea to, like, eight-figure, you know, household personal brand. But we… It starts, the journey starts, actually, Melissa, with one, is answering one question with one word, and most people cannot do this.

And, and, and by the way, you know, I should also [00:15:00] say that we define personal branding as not as, like, that doesn’t mean you have to be, like, an influencer or a podcaster or a YouTuber or whatever. We just define personal branding as simply the digitization of your reputation. And so anyone who, who ca- has a reputation has to build a personal brand.

You can’t say, “Should I build a personal brand?” You already have one. The question is: Is it the one you want or not, and is it driving leads to your business? Is it growing your influence? Is it, is it making the impact in the world you wanna have? So you can’t not have one. It’s like a reputation. You have one.

It’s just you may not think you have one, and so you’re ignoring it, and it’s not doing what it can do. But when, when you start working on that Formally, the full definition we often give is that personal branding is the formalization, digitization, monetization, and multiplication of your reputation.

Right? Those represent the phases that we take [00:16:00] people through. So when you start getting serious about going, “What do I want to be known for? What do I want people to say about me?” Whether you ever plan to write a book or not, okay? We work with speakers, authors, coaches, and thought leaders. But all of us have a personal brand, and these principles apply to everyone.

And the f- the, the, the whole journey starts with a simple step, and it is one simple question that you have to answer in one word, and most people cannot answer this question in one word. 

Melissa: I’m scared. What is the question? 

Rory: Question is, what problem do you solve? In one word. 

Melissa: In one word? 

Rory: One word. And the reason why that’s important…

So talk about why it’s important, and then we can talk about, you know, like how do you, how do you get there. But the reason why is because the number one reason why brands fail, personal brands fail, is not [00:17:00] because they’re not smart enough or talented enough. It’s not because s- the person they’re seeing that has millions of followers is more qualified than them.

It’s simply because they get distracted. And our number one overarching principle is we have found that when you have diluted focus, you get diluted results. Full stop. And what most people are doing is they’re talking about too many topics on too many platforms to too many different audiences, trying to monetize their expertise with too many different revenue streams, and they’ve received horrible advice from people.

They’ve received advice like, “You should have multiple streams of income.” And that’s the most terrible advice, especially for someone beginning. Multiple streams of income is not how you get rich. Everyone who gets rich gets rich from having one amazing stream of income. Everyone who becomes famous becomes famous first for one thing, not 10 [00:18:00] things.

Everyone who becomes a world renowned thought leader… W-we call it Sheehan’s Wall. It’s a, it is a great visual. And I named this after a colleague of mine named Peter Sheehan who kind of gave me the wall analogy in a corporate environment. We’ve adapted it to personal brands. But basically, there’s– in any given market or industry or geography or vertical, there’s two different groups of people.

There are those who are unknown, ‘kay? They’re living in obscurity. They’re not as recognizable. They don’t make as much money. They don’t have as much influence. They don’t make as much impact On the other side of the wall is people who are well-known. They have notoriety, they are recognizable. At the highest level this would be, you know, Oprah, The Rock, Gary Vaynerchuk, whatever, Brene Brown, Tony Robbins, Mel Robbins, people like that.

You know, many of our clients have broken through over the years to become pretty, pretty mainstream. I put Lewis in that category at my left. Cody Sanchez is having a big moment right now where she’s, she’s, she’s [00:19:00] making that pivot move. And so you’ve got– the difference between these two groups is not obvious to the trained eye– to the untrained eye, but it’s very, very simple.

And what most of us do is we look at the people who are well known and we try to emulate them and we say, well, you know, Gary Vaynerchuk is on all the platforms, right? And he’s like, “Yo, I should be on Twitter,” and you know X and Meta and Facebook and Pinterest and LinkedIn and Instagram and Snapchat and the podcast and, you know, you should be live streaming and, and he’s like on all the platforms.

And then you look at Tony Robbins and he’s talking about all these different topics. He has Unleash the Power Within and then he’s got Date with Destiny, you know, and then he’s got money and he’s got books on health and longevity and he owns all these different companies. And then you look at The Rock and you go look at all the streams of income this guy has.

He’s a comedian, he’s a movie, uh, star, he owns a clothing line, he has a facial men’s products, he owns a sports drink, he owns part of the XFL football league. And, [00:20:00] and so we try to model after those people and what happens is we bounce off the wall and we never break through the wall because we’re talking about too many products to too many audiences with too many different topics on too many different platforms.

And that equi– That is the equivalent of if we were actually trying to break through a wall right now. Like if, if we had a sledgehammer and we were trying to break through a wall. If I hit all of these different places on the wall nothing happens to that wall But if I were to hit that same spot on the wall over and over and over, eventually the paint would peel, and then it would chip, and then it would crack, and then there would be a divot, and then eventually there would be a hole.

And I would blow through that wall, and then I pull that sledgehammer back, and the entire wall comes crashing down. That’s exactly the strategy we use with personal brands. It’s exactly what we did with Lewis [00:21:00] Howes. When I met Lewis he had 17 revenue streams. He, he had heard all this, you know, multiple streams of income.

He only had nine employees, and I said, “Lewis, that’s insane. You cannot manage 17 revenue streams with nine employees.” Like, all you’re doing is being marginally effective at a whole bunch of stuff. And every billionaire I know, and I- I– At this point it’s crazy. I have nine billionaire clients who are private clients of mine.

It’s like I’m around a lot of these people. All of them got rich from one thing, right? Like, if you look at, you know, Jeff Bezos, he got rich from Amazon. If you look at y- you know… Take, take your pick, right? Sarah Blakely made all her money from Spanx. Jamie Kern Lima made all of her money from IT Cosmetics.

You know, Bill Gates made all of his money from Microsoft. The way you get rich is from one amazing revenue stream. The way you get famous, yes, Gary Vaynerchuk Is on all the different platforms. But in the beginning, Gary Vaynerchuk talked about one topic, wine, on one platform, [00:22:00] YouTube. Then he broke through to Twitter, then everything else.

Even Amazon. Today, Amazon literally sells everything. But in the beginning they sold one product, books. So the way you break through the wall is by becoming known for one specific thing to one specific group of people, and that’s the strategy that we’ve used again and again and again. It’s how I built my career.

You know, before we sold our first company, I was the procrastination guy. My first book on Take the Stairs is all about the psychology of overcoming procrastination. My second book is called Procrastinate On Purpose: Five Permissions to Multiply Time. It’s all about a new form of procrastination that we identified that we call creative avoidance and priority dilution.

And I created a TED Talk around that, and I got to speak on the biggest stages in the world, and I became known as that guy, and I broke through the wall on procrastination. Well, then we had a– We sold our company after the whole thing in [00:23:00] twenty eighteen. We had a non-compete. We had to reinvent ourselves.

Well, most people today know me as the personal brand guy because all we’ve done is help people break through the wall with their personal brand. And so the problem we solve at Brand Builders Group today is obscurity. All we do is help people with obscurity. We help mission driven messengers get more well known.

We help them get… You know, people who are struggling with obscurity, they feel like the world’s best kept secret. They feel like they have more expertise than the people there s- that have more followers than them. It’s frustrating because they’ve spent all their time mastering their craft. Meanwhile, other people are winning just because they’re better marketers, but they’re not making as much money.

They’re not getting invited on the big podcasts. They’re not speaking on the big stages and that they just feel overlooked and bypassed and scrolled past. And they are. And we teach them how to take their expertise and bottle it up and become wealthy and well known, which is, you know, the title of [00:24:00] our most recent book.

It’s called Wealthy & Well Known. That’s what we, we do. So it’s breaking through that wall. So coming back to your question, it all starts with ask- answering what problem do you solve in one word? And most people can’t do that. And Lewis couldn’t do that when we met him in twenty 18. But we helped Lewis get crystal clear that his entire brand, everything he does, is about helping people overcome self doubt That was what his word is self-doubt.

Brene Brown’s word is shame. Dave Ramsey’s word is debt. Mel Robbins, who’s… These are, yep. So Dave, just to be clear, Mel Robbins, Brene Brown, and Dave Ramsey are not clients of mine. But if you look at Mel Robins versus anxiety, right? She talks about her panic attacks and not being able to get out of bed.

Like, you see this over and over of like– but i- to the untrained eye, you’ll never notice it, and most people can’t do it. And so that is the first step of the long journey. 

Melissa: Okay, I don’t think [00:25:00] I can do it in one word. So I’ve got homework to do. I’ve got homework to do. 

Rory: Yeah, it’s hard. It’s extremely hard.

It’s extremely hard. And by the way, you can’t do it for yourself. You could do, only do it for other people. This is not a thing that you can like– Lewis actually was also kind of the one who did it for us. He was the one who said, “This should be your new business. This is what you were born to do.” And so, you know, that’s why we — Brand Builders Group is basically 12 different two-day experiences.

Like, if you were to boil down, we have basically 12 different courses, 12 different … You could do them as live two-day experiences, or you could do them as, you know, s- you know, on-demand courses, or you can do them as one-on-one coaching. We work with people in a variety of different ways, but it’s all the same curriculum.

And so it’s, it can be very affordable or, or it can be, you know, if you’re working with me one-on-one, that’s, you know, as I like to say, expensive but worth it. And, but, but we take everyone through the same process. And so our first two-day [00:26:00] experience is simply about getting people clear on four things. So the first thing is: What problem do you solve in one word?

The second thing is: How do you solve that problem in one sentence? Your one-sentence command, instruction, or order. The third thing is: Who do you solve that problem for in one phrase And the more specific, the more terrific. And the fourth one is what one revenue stream matters above all others? If you get clear on those four things, we can build a world-renowned personal brand around that.

We can break through the wall. Those… That, that represents your un- that your spot on thewall that you’re gonna break through. This little sliver of mental space that you’re gonna own, and worldwide you’re gonna be known as the person on X. But until you can define that, you can’t own [00:27:00] it until you can define it.

Because if you’re not clear, there’s no way the market ever will be clear. And it’s really hard. It’s hard work, and most people don’t wanna do it, and, you know, that happens to be the work we’re really good at. 

Melissa: Mm. I love this so much, and I’m gonna put a link in the show notes. If anyone wants to get a free brand call with you, all you have to do is go to freebrandcall.com/melissa, and I’ll put it in the show notes for everyone.

I highly recommend going and doing that. 

Rory: Yeah. And that’s, and it is straight up, like no catch. We do– We’re a very human c- company, right? So it’s, we’re freebrandcall.com/melissa. We will talk to you. We’ll just want to hear a little bit about your story, your vision, where you’re at, and then we’ll walk you through what our whole four-phase process looks like.

Whether you work with us or not, we just go, “Hey, here’s the four phases that you, you need to be successful.” You know, we only have, like, 20 spots open every week to do the calls, so I know a lot of people listen to this show. But, you know, we’ll take them in order and yeah, yeah, no [00:28:00] catch, no strings attached.

Melissa: In the sea of noise online, this is more important than ever. Like, there’s so much noise out there. 

Rory: And now there’s AI noise on top of all the human noise. It’s, like, multiplied by an infinite amount of artificial noise. 

Melissa: Yeah. So have you noticed, like, with the rise of the noise that this is getting even more important to do this work?

Rory: Yes, 1000%. People think… Here’s what’s crazy It’s actually easier to stand out if you do it right. But if you do it wrong, you’re just dead. Like there’s just no way. Like you’re just getting buried under the weight of the algorithm and all of the content. But when you are very specific– And a great example…

I’ll give you two great examples, both clients of ours [00:29:00] who are doing this really well right now. One is Cody Sanchez, and all she talks about is ownership, right? Like she is, she is owning the word ownership. Her new book is called Own or Be Owned. Another great example of a, is Dr. Gabrielle Lyon. So Dr.

Gabrielle Lyons, you know, we helped her launch her book Forever Strong, and she’s the founder of Muscle Centric Medicine and like she is the woman on muscle. Like protein, but like the muscle is the organ of longevity, and she’s super science-based and like she has just, she just hits it again and again and again, and she helped rewrite the food pyramid here in the US recently.

And, you know, she was just on, she was literally just in Time Magazine as one of the three leaders in the world on longevity. And it’s just like she’s just hitting that same message over and over that m- you know, muscle is the organ of longevity. And, you know, her whole brand can be boiled down to one simple premise, which is youth.

[00:30:00] Everyone thinks we’re overweight, but really we’re undermuscled. Everyone thinks we’re overweight, but really we’re undermuscled. That’s her message, right? When I said, “You, you, can you boil it down?” And then she just hits it again and again and again and again, and it’s like she’s on the biggest podcast in the world, she’s speaking on the biggest stages.

Like before I met her, I don’t think she’d ever been on a stage. We shared the stage together at the Keller Williams event last year, seventeen thousand people. It was me, her, Tony Robbins, and Mel Robins. Like it was… A-and it’s just like, and she’s like a doctor, but that’s an e- She’s a great example of, of that, of just

And so you go, there’s more health coaches, more nutritionists, there’s more health podcasts than ever before. Why is she breaking through? Because she is so specific, right? She has a specific problem, right? Obesity is like the problem that she’s, you know, basically tackling, right? But and muscle is her solution.

So she can boil down the solution also to [00:31:00] one word. And when somebody has it, uh, I’ll give you a, I’ll give you an analogy for this. Okay, so imagine you’re in a crowded room, like a networking meeting or something like that, okay? So there’s like bunch of people everywhere. Everyone’s chitter-chattering with their own conversations, right There’s like this murmur of the crowd.

It’s all indistinguishable noise. You’re talking a conversation, and then from the far side of the room somebody says “Melissa.” Immediately it snaps you out of the conversation you’re having above all the other noise. It y- it literally yanks your attention and it holds you captive and you’re like… I- it, it grabs you What I want you to notice, and here’s what people don’t understand.

It’s not the volume of the message that matters, [00:32:00] it’s the specificity of the signal, right? It’s not like the magnitude of the message, it’s the specificity of the signal. They call you by name, and it literally rips you out of one conversation. That is what your ads need to do. That is what your podcast needs to do.

That is what your, you know, your-your book needs to do. And-and you go… Now, this conversation that we’re having today deliberately will-we’ll round it out to more people ’cause you’ve got a very broad audience. But the people who are gonna probably request a call with us and who would be very well suited to work with us, it’s like if they are a speaker, author, coach or thought leader, or they want to be one of those, what I– The things I am saying are going to speak so specifically to them that it’s like they have to work with us because they recognize that [00:33:00] we know what their pain feels like and what they’re struggling with, and that our solutions work and that our case studies work.

So if we don’t try to serve everyone, we tried to serve one person in the most deep way possible. And so, you know, by the way, that’s how you make a lot of money too, with a little follow, uh, small following. Like I don’t—I have much less followers than most of my clients, but we make way more revenue than almost all of our clients, and it’s because we serve a very specific audience in a deep way.

And so that’s something I want people to also understand. You don’t need millions of followers to make millions of dollars. Most people would be much better suited going after a narrow audience, you know, finding that who and just serving them in a really deep way versus getting– Otherwise you’re just gonna get buried in the noise.

Like the more you’re in the middle, you’re just like [00:34:00] buried in the noise. 

Melissa: Mm-hmm. Absolutely agree. Are there any other misconceptions or mistakes that you see people make? 

Rory: Okay. Ye-yes. So, so the other big mistake mission driven messengers make all the time Is they refuse to narrow their avatar because they say, “I wanna change the world.

I wanna help everyone. I’m here for everybody.” 

Melissa: I’m not gonna lie, I have said those things many times in the past . 

Rory: Yeah. And it’s, and, and it’s, it’s not wrong to say that. That’s, that’s a beautiful thing to say from a human perspective. But it is not the effective strategy in the marketplace because… And here’s why they do it.

They errantly think that if they have a smaller audience, they’ll reach fewer people. [00:35:00] But it’s actually the inverse. Think again about Sheehan’s wall. When you try to reach everyone, you’re literally hitting all over the wall, okay? When you reach a very narrow audience, you break through on that, and then once you’re on the other side of the wall, you can expand to do anything that you want.

And so you end up very counterintuitively reaching more people by having a s- a more narrow focus. And mission-driven messengers really struggle with that. So let, let me make it super practical too. So As an example, you know, Simon Sinek so very famously says, “Start with why.” And I love Simon Sinek. I happen to be a huge Simon Sinek fan.

I, I really love a lot of his work and his thinking. But when you’re building your personal brand, start with why I think is bad advice because it leads you down this load of– the road of like wh- why? Well, I wanna make impact. I want to help all the people. And so [00:36:00] you chase all the people. A more pragmatic tactical way to start building your personal brand is instead of start with why, start with who.

Start with who are you serving. And by the way, I can tell all of you what the answer is. I can give everyone the answer right now to who they should be serving ’cause I know this. So I didn’t know this when we started. We, we didn’t know this when we started the company, Melissa, but this will blow your mind, okay?

When we originally started doing this work with people, you know, we’re finding their uniqueness, which we still do, and everyone does have a uniqueness. But on this particular point of figuring out who is your who, who is the who you should be serving, we noticed a pattern about three years into the company, and it’s been true now like ninety-nine percent of the time.

So here’s the shortcut, okay? I can give you the shortcut, everybody listening. What we have realized and learned is that for all of us, [00:37:00] you are most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were. That’s it. You are most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were. So I don’t know who you once were until we’re working together, right?

But I can tell you it’s true for all of us, right? Why is Brand Builders Group succeeding so fast? Like, we built an eight-figure company in our, our first business, but it, it took us like ten years to do it. We went from zero to eight figures in five years with Brand Builders Group, half the time with way less staff and no investors.

Why? Because I am serving the person I once was. I am serving seventeen-year-old broke as a joke Rory, who wants to change the world, wants to speak on stages, wants to be recognized for thought leadership, but has no clue how to run a business, doesn’t understand marketing, doesn’t know why most titles are terrible and why most email subject [00:38:00] lines never, you know, get opened, and w- why like most branding positioning is all wrong and the advice…

You know, like We’re able to serve that person because that’s who I’ve spent my life becoming, right? Or, or, or, or serving. So that same is true for you listening. I know it’s true. And, and so your fastest path to cash, your fastest path to impact, your fastest path to changing other people’s lives… And by the way, your fastest path to credibility doesn’t come from degrees or how many followers you have or what other people say about you.

Your credibility comes from the fact that you have actually walked the freaking path. You’ve experienced the heart bait. You have survived the setbacks. And so you have to ask yourself, and this is what we train our strategists to do, is to say, “What [00:39:00] obstacles have you overcome? What setbacks have you survived?

What pain have you pushed past? What tragedies have you triumphed over?” Therein lies your uniqueness, both from a strategic tactical standpoint, but in our case, we believe that this is divine and spiritual. We believe that God has prepared you for the life you’re supposed to lead by putting you through the pain that you have been through in your past, that all of it has prepared you and shaped you and made you into becoming the person you needed to one day be for someone else.

And today, if you feel that calling on your life, it’s because you’re that person. It’s time to reach back and help somebody else. And it is like such a specific signal And that is where the power lies. Not in what freaking AI tool are you using or what prompt. Oh my gosh, it is not the … [00:40:00] “Co- yo comment this word down below and I’ll send you my prompt.”

That ain’t it, sweetheart. That’s not changing lives. That’s not moving hearts. That’s not connecting emotionally. It’s not that you shouldn’t do that stuff, right? Like, that can be helpful, but that ain’t it. That is not the divinely interconnected human experience. What we’re talking about is uniqueness, connection, not just the profits of your business, but the purpose of your life.

When we connect a personal brand to somebody’s purpose, of course they break through the wall, Melissa. And it’s so rare because everyone is copycatting everyone else. Go watch freaking Instagram. They’re like, “Copy my viral hooks. Want to co-” You know, “Here’s the tool to go copy the viral script that everyone else is using”.

That’s not a thought leader. That’s a parrot. That is repeating. Now, we do use some of those techniques and, but that, like, that’s the, that’s the… It’s the sprinkles on the cake. It’s not the core of [00:41:00] the cake. The core of the cake has to be tied to your, your, your humanity, and the more that the world becomes artificial, ironically, the more you lean into your humanness, the easier it will be to break free from all the noise.

Melissa: Hmm, absolutely agree. What if someone has overcome multiple different types of adversities? Say, you know, they were adopted, or they were sexually abused, or then they had troubles getting pregnant, or went down the IVF route, so they have, like, overcome multiple different types of adversity in their life.

How do they choose? Is it a matter of connecting with the one that makes them feel the most alive? Like, how do they pick? 

Rory: Yeah, it’s a combination actually. So, so there’s a tactical answer to this, and then there’s a, a little bit of a softer answer. Okay? The tactical answer is simply whichever one is the fa- the, the [00:42:00] easiest way to make money.

And often, here’s what people should just understand, the more practical the problem is you’re solving, the quicker and easier it is to make money So like it’s way easier to make money teaching people, uh, how to do spreadsheets than it is teaching them how to have a better marriage. Or like it’s way easier to teach y- you know, like time management than it is to teach like, you know, manifestation or self-talk or something.

So the, the more practical you are on the continuum because it’s easier for people to understand and when people understand the problem they’re more likely to buy. Like this is a marketing lesson is that clear is greater than clever. Clear is greater than clever. So one of the big mistakes people make is they try to be too cutesy, too clever, too like, you know original with their bio or their like tagline or what they do.

No one understands what the freak you do right? You just need to say [00:43:00] I help who to what. I help who to what, right? To overcome what problem and achieve what payoff. So from a tactical standpoint, the more desperate you are to make mon– The more desperate you are to make money in the short term, the more we would say short term we would encourage you to lean into teaching a tactical skill.

For example, for me one of the things I struggled with the most in my early speaking career is being funny cause I’m not naturally funny and people meet me in real life and they’re like “You’re not funny,” ’cause I’m not funny. But when you see me speak onstage like freaking people are peeing their pants with laughter because I learned the psychology and the science of laughter so I can construct humorous lines because I now know that as a skill.

The first money I ever made as speaker was teaching people the psychology of laughter. That was much more tactical than building their personal brand and finding their uniqueness right? Like that is a little bit more [00:44:00] tactical. So but in terms of the, you know finding more of your purpose for your life in the long term if you’re not sort of desperate for money short term then it’s consideration or a calculation both of what am I passionate about doing and also what would people pay me for Right?

So there’s, you’re… It’s a tension that you’re, you’re, you’re balancing and, you know, it’s like what problem would they pay to have solved for them? And so some of that’s paying attention to the market. So like for example right now I use that example of teaching people how to do spreadsheets. Right now I would not teach people how to do spreadsheets ’cause AIs can completely destroy that space, right?

So you gotta– You might be passion- I happen to really love spreadsheets by the way. People don’t know this about me but, like, I love spreadsheets. I’m a spreadsheet… I’m a data nerd. And so it’s like the even though I might love teaching spreadsheets, it’s like pay attention to what’s going on in the market and like, you know, I wouldn’t do that right [00:45:00] now.

It also could be I’m really good at teaching people spreadsheets, but I have no passion for it whatsoever, right? Like I have no passion to do it so it’s like well that’s off the table. It’s like I got to be passionate about it and people got to be willing to pay for it. You know, I had a mentor recently tell me he said, “Rory if you ask somebody what they want they’ll give you a very long list of stuff.”

But if you ask somebody what are they willing to pay you for, it’s always a much shorter thing. And so when you put that frame of what would you — What problem can I solve that people would pay me for, that narrows the list pretty quickly. So it is a, it is a balance of that and it should be life giving.

Now another thing whenever we have the money conversation We take people through this exercise called the golden grid and we are analyzing their short term financial needs with their longterm financial goals. It’s really important to separate those and make that distinction because if you are broke as a joke as I was when I first started out You have to make a [00:46:00] consideration of that, that if you don’t make enough money to pay your mortgage, your dream’s gonna die as a matter of just practicality.

So you have to do what you have to do to make money in the short term to earn the right to get to do what you wanna do long-term. Now, as you get more financial freedom and savings, you know, you could do a lot more, right? Like I could do… After we sold our first company was kinda like, well, I could– we could do whatever we wanted.

We decided on personal branding because we were passionate about it, we were good at it, and the– there was a market for it, you know, and largely because Lewis was asking for that help. And but y- you know, so, so the f– there is a financial component that’s realistic that I think, you know, ’cause sometimes people are like: “Oh, just chase your passion, just chase your passion.”

It’s like, well, if you don’t have enough money to fund the runway for that passion to get off the ground, your passion’s gonna die. So we gotta balance that with a pragmatic reality of like it takes a lot of money to build a personal brand. You have to hire people, you have to have systems creating content, just equipment, you know, [00:47:00] getting proper coaching, you building the systems and the tools.

One of the things that we just rolled out for our members this year is we now give our members all of our funnels. We give them all of our pipelines, our marketing funnels, our campaigns. When they become a member, we give them the system because we know that they’re much more likely to succeed if we just give them our system.

And then the goal is we’ll make our money back if they stay with us for the long term. Because you, you know, there’s just a practical reality to it. So, so it is a balance. It is a, it is a, it’s a tension, and that’s why it’s kind of like a conversation for each person. So again, you know, if you go to freebrandcall.com/melissa those are the kinds of things that it’s like we got to understand, are you a beginner?

Are you 17-year-old Rory with a dream or Do you have some money saved up and you’re w- in a career transition, you wanna do something new? Or are you in a pivot, or are you in the middle of a crisis and, you know, you just got divorced? And you know what, like [00:48:00] it… So every person’s situation is unique, and that matters because it informs how much sort of flexibility we have and what your timelines are.

Melissa: Hmm. This is why I love coaching, because that person can also reflect back to you maybe some blind spots. And like you said before, you said about the word, you know, you can’t do this on your own. Like other people can see things about us that sometimes we cannot see. And this is why I love coaching so much.

It’s just brilliant. Talk to me about the mindset piece, because I can imagine that for many people that you work with, there’s self-doubt, there’s limiting beliefs. How do you coach people through that? 

Rory: Oh yeah. Mission driven messengers want to change the world but they’re so afraid of offending people.

They’re so afraid of rejection. They’re so afraid of looking the wrong way on camera or [00:49:00] losing their credibility or not presenting right. They, they’re afraid of being pushy. They’re afraid of being perceived as manipulative. They are afraid that they won’t understand the technology. They’re, they’re– They, they have all of these fears.

And here is the answer to your question. And what you have to u-understand is that fear as a concept is 100% entirely self-centered. 

Melissa: Hmm. 

Rory: You only feel fear when you’re thinking about yourself. Am I gonna say the right thing? Am I gonna look a certain way? Are people gonna make fun of me? Am I going to fail?

What are they gonna think? Am I gonna get rejected? Are they gonna think I’m pushy? Are they gonna think I’m a … It’s all I, I, I, I, I. It is completely self-centered. When you are scared, you are being self- centered, period, full stop. Now, when you are in danger, that is very warranted, [00:50:00] right? Like, when you are in survival for your life.

But when you are in the marketplace, I think mission-driven messengers often think, “Oh, I’m so altruistic. I’m so service minded. That’s why I feel this way.” No, you feel this way ’cause you’re self-centered, right? Like, there is no fear once the mission to serve becomes clear. Oof. There is no fear once the mission to serve becomes clear.

Right? Think about it this way. If I have the cure for cancer and I figured it out, but I, I never tell anyone about it, I keep myself in th- uh, its- I just, I, I, I keep it all to myself in the basement. You literally have

cured- Because you’re scared of what people will think Yes. You’re scared of rejection, you’re scared of what people would think, you’re scared of drug companies kinda whatever. Like, you could be scared of a whole bunch of things. You served nobody. You made no impact. You didn’t change the world at all.

All you are is the best kept secret Now, it’s not [00:51:00] about you not becoming the best-kept secret. That’s not our goal. Our goal is you making impact. Our goal is you helping other people. Our goal is you changing lives. And so that means if you genuinely wanna help people, you need to overcome your fear of being on camera.

You need to overcome your fear of learning how to use AI. You need to overcome your fear of hiring or doing this kind of introspective work or writing or whatever. Like, if not, it means your fear is greater than your desire to serve. I hate to say it that direct but that is what it is, right? And so whenever I feel someone…

A lot of times they’re, they’re hiding under this facade of like, “Oh, you know, I’m such a good person. I don’t want to take advantage of everyone.” It’s like, that’s not what you’re doing. You’re using that as a scapegoat, as a layer of protection to keep you safe, to keep you from having to risk and go, you know.

When you’re really service centered, right? Again there is no fear when the mission to serve is [00:52:00] clear. How do firefighters run into a building? I don’t think it’s because they have insane courage; I think it’s because they are insanely service centered. I think they’re scared of the fire. I genuinely think they’re scared.

But their desire to save somebody is greater than their fear of dying. And they go, “It doesn’t matter how I feel, what matters is that someone needs my help-” 

Melissa: Ooh. “…

Rory: and so how I feel is irrelevant” I 

Melissa: got full goosebumps. 

Rory: That’s the mindset an- and that is … A lot of what we do is have to coach people on the mindset ’cause that is part of it, right?

And I’m, I don’t mean to make you wrong for this stuff. How do I know this by the way? I had to go through all of these hurdles, right? Like I had the same thing. I wanted to be discovered, right? This is something that artists…. You know, a lot of artists they’re like, “You know, my art is so good people should find me.

People shou- sh- share it for me And [00:53:00] that’s what we call a starving artist. What real artists understand is that there are two parts of your art. There is the art of creating your art, and then there is the art form of letting people know that your art exists. And the art of letting people know that your art exists should be done as creatively and tastefully as creating the art itself.

It should not be manipulative and high pressure and slimy, and it doesn’t have to be like countdown sequences and flashing boxes. It doesn’t have to be that. And that’s part of where we really… That’s really the space that we play in. It’s why we serve mission-driven messengers, right? So we tend to not serve as much of the, like, info marketer, spammy kinda like just make me money quick and just like

You know, we tend to serve more of like professionals and people who again care about their reputation but we’re going. But you need to learn from t- the best marketers in the world. We have a lot to learn from [00:54:00] them, but there’s a way we can do it tastefully and ethically. But that is part of your art.

Again, you write the world’s greatest song, you create the world’s greatest painting, you’re the greatest chef, nobody sees it, nobody touches it, nobody eats it, you made no, you’ve made no difference in the world. You made zero impact. So congratulations, you got to hide behind your self-centered fear. But congratulations, you also affected nobody.

So you just gotta make a decision about which one you care more about. 

Melissa: Oof, this so good. I love it. Just, just straight up. Straight up. And I think a lot of women especially need to hear this. 

Rory: They do. They do. Men too, but women too. But here’s why I think women have a great advantage. I genuinely believe that women are More hardwired to serve.

I think women by design, I believe this is God’s design. They are– they ha- they are [00:55:00] mothers, right? They… Women understand selflessness and sacrifice and giving, and literally putting their own life and dreams on hold for the sake of serving other people, right? Not just moms, but definitely moms, right? So I, I do think women have that advantage to do it the right way, right?

Men tend to be more like aggressive competitive. I’m speaking clearly in generalizations here, but, but I go, “In a world of artificial content, I think what stands out more is service.” I think it is service. And by the way, what I’m saying right now, this is our uniqueness. So the one word problem we solve is obscurity.

Our one word solution, our uniqueness is service. So what I’m telling you is not only what we practice, it’s what we believe. It’s connected to the way that we operate, right? Money is important to [00:56:00] us, but it’s subservient to mission, right? Like we care about revenue, but we care more about reputation. We care about income, but we care more about impact.

We care about profit, but we care much more about purpose. So like we know you need to make money. We’re good at making money, but money is not the North Star. Impact is. And I genuinely think like a lot of women are really well suited to lean into that, you know, natural ability, and I think that, that can be a great, a great advantage for them.

And so I– anybody, anybody who has a propensity to serve, I think has a great advantage because I do think AI is gonna level the playing field of like giving us access to the tools and the what to do and the how to do it. And I think it’s going to really reveal the humanity of what is the heart of why we’re doing it.

And I think people will be drawn rapidly to the why. It’s why we’re like, we have a lot of … [00:57:00] We do 16 in-person events a year for our members. They get unlimited access to just come to them, right? So we, well that’s for our, our, our flagship program. We have a more virtual program but like we’re just seeing an, a huge in- resurgence of people coming in person because it’s like they want the, they want the connection.

So I think that’s, you know, anybody who is… I think the future of personal branding belongs to mission driven messengers. I just think we’re still behind because we’re afraid to learn how to do marketing and sales and that’s probably because you don’t wanna do it in the way you’ve seen it done. But we gotta figure out how to do it somehow.

Melissa: Mm. I love this so much. If you could put one book in the school curriculum, go back to like 15, 16, 17-year old Rory, one book in the school curriculum of every high school around the world What book would you choose? It could be on any topic, but what book would you choose? 

Rory: Yeah. Well, so I’ll give [00:58:00] you the true honest answers, which will be cliches, and then I’ll give you an answer that I think is more like the one you’re looking for.

So the number one answer for me is the Bible. So I am a hardcore Bible-thumping Jesus freak, you know. You don’t have to believe what we believe to be, you know, part of our community, but AJ and I, like, we are… I’m big into apologetics and the archeology and the history and the, and the, the, the academic support for scripture.

So, you know, that’s what I– would be my number one answer. My other answer, which is, like, kind of the cliche, but would be Take The Stairs. My first book is, like, it teaches people the fundamentals of how do you break free from poverty and underperformance and fear and scarcity, and what do ultra performers do?

And take the stairs as a metaphor for doing things, how to get yourself to do things when you don’t feel like doing them, which I think is sort of the crux of success in all [00:59:00] walks of life, all topics. You have to get yourself to do things you don’t wanna do. But there is another book that I really love.

There’s a book called The Trust Edge by David Horsager, who’s a friend of mine. I think that would be a great book for all high schoolers to read, and it’s all about trust and character and integrity. I’m a huge fan of Dave Ramsey’s books, The Total Money Makeover. I think, I think financial intelligence is just really, really important.

You know, so those are some oth-other ones that would show up there f-for me. But for personal brands, you know, I would say The Go-Giver is a great book by Bob Burg. That captures a lot of our philosophy. Tactically speaking, the book that AJ and I wrote together last year, Wealthy and Well-Known, that is, I think, the greatest book there is.

It’s a, it’s a, it’s an emotional book. It’s a memoir, but it is a tactical handbook for how to build your personal brand. And by the way, everyone can get it for free if they want on, on audio. If you go to FreeBrandAudiobook.com/Melissa, [01:00:00] FreeBrandAudiobook.com/ Melissa, you can get that book. Now, if you request a call with us, we’ll automatically send it to you.

So if you wanna talk to us, just go to Freebrandcall.com/Melissa, and then we’ll automatically send you the audiobook. But if you’re, if you’re not ready to request a call with us or you’re not, you know, so serious about that, but you, you know, you can still get the, get the, the book as well. So either one. 

Melissa: Oh, I’m so excited to listen to that.

It sounds amazing. So does AJ still work in the company? 

Rory: Oh, yeah. So AJ is the CEO. I am the CMO. We are 50/50 partners, and we have no investors and no debt, and, you know, so this time it’s just the two of us. We have about 50 employees now. 

Melissa: 50? 

Rory: Yeah, about five zero. We’re about to hit 50 again, so because Brand Builders Group is an eight-figure business, and then we also a few years ago, so We’ve helped over 130 clients become national bestselling authors, and we have now helped [01:01:00] 29 clients become New York Times bestselling authors in the last three years.

So we’ve got a really good system for how to sell books. People love writing books but they don’t know how to sell them. And publishers make books but don’t know how to sell ’em. And so writers write, editors edit, publishers publish, retailers retail, distributors distribute, but nobody knows how to sell a book.

And so we’re really good at that. And but then we figured out, oh well, a lot of people, they, they also still need to get a publisher so we started a company called Mission Driven Press that publishes books through Simon & Schuster and we distribute it through Simon & Schuster so our books are New York Times eligible.

And then we also have independent publishing that is not New York Times eligible but still national bestseller eligible and it’s– But it’s a little bit more affordable so that company’s about to hit eight figures which will be our third eight-figure business. And so you know, we’re growing but we’re not trying to grow We’re just trying to serve people in a deeper way, and [01:02:00] that goes back to wh- what I said earlier is like you can make a lot of money just recommitting to serving a smaller audience in a deeper way.

And that’s all we’re doing, is we’re just trying to solve problems for our audience which is, you know, mission driven messengers. Yeah, so but yeah, AJ is definitely… I mean she’s more than in the business, she’s running the business. And, you know, we homeschool the kids, but they go to homeschool tutorial two days a week, and then the other two days a week we have someone come to the house and help.

So but she takes off in the afternoons and, you know, takes care of them, and she takes off Fridays like, you know, earlier, and I do, I take off f- earlier on Fridays too. So our first company we did, you know, 80, 100 hour weeks just all the time non-stop for 12 years. But Brand Builders Group, we, we stick to f- 40 hours l- uh much less, and now we’ve got teams, so it’s like getting a little better.

But she runs the house, runs the business. It’s amazing what she, she does. 

Melissa: You guys are incredible, [01:03:00] and you can really feel how much love and heart and purpose and m- mission and service is infused in everything you do. I’m curious how your day looks. Can you talk us through a typical day in your life?

Rory: Totally, yeah. So I usually wake up 5:30. First thing I do is read the Bi-… Oh, first thing I do is, is, is say what I’m grateful for. I play this little game of saying like anything I don’t say I’m thankful for today, I pretend like it’ll disappear tomorrow. So if I don’t say thank you God for this thing today, that like it would disappear tomorrow.

So I constantly am going through my day just like, “Thank you for this. Thank you for that.” First thing I do is read s- the Bible, so those are the first input in my brain every day is I’m reading the Bible. Then I am in the sauna usually by like 5:45, 5:55, then I’m swimming laps in the pool at 6:30. Then I’m inside showering, and then by [01:04:00] 7:15 I’m helping the kids get ready, making my coffee breakfast drink, you know sending the kids off to school usually like 7:40.

If it’s a home school day, you know there’s a little more flexibility there, so like today we’ll throw the football or whatever for 20, 30 minutes before they start school. And then I’m usually in my office at like 9:00. Definitely no later than 9:00. Sometimes 8:30, but definitely 9:00. And then, you know, I hit it pretty hard between 9:00 and 5:00 We tend to do all of our meetings on Mondays.

AJ and I do a walk every Monday ’cause it’s a business meeting walk so that we don’t talk business on nights and weekends. We have a discussion list, and when we wanna talk about business, we add it to the discussion list, and we do a like a, like a two-and-a-half hour walk every Monday from like 8:30 to 11, and then we do a 90-minute walk every Wednesday morning, and that’s where we talk through all the business [01:05:00] stuff.

And then all my other meetings are on Mondays, and so the rest of the week is sort of free for webinars, podcasts, content creation, working on projects, speaking, right? I’m still speaking a lot, so I… But I never travel more than twice a month away from the family, so that’s a rule. So that’s why, you know, on my website, we only accept 24 speaking invites a year ’cause I won’t be gone more than twice in a month And we do, you know, we have a monthly strategic meeting with all of our leaders that lasts about four hours, and then we do a quarterly planning meeting which is a one-day meeting.

And then AJ and I do a couples trip four times a year, and then we do f- like… Or three times a year, and then we do three family trips, like with the kids. So that’s most- more or less those are like the big… Oh, oh, and then the other rhythm that’s really big is every Sunday, this will seem crazy for people, but so on Sundays we go to church, we come back, [01:06:00] we prep for the week, grocery shopping, meal prep, whatever, hang out as a family, and then we do Bible study every Sunday from 3:30 till 8:30 PM.

But we’re not just, like, reading the Bible for five hours. What happens is there’s five other families. They come over. We hang out and chitchat for 30 minutes, then we sing, like, three songs. Someone plays the guitar. We do a little worship. We hire babysitters on Sundays. Two babysitters come take all of the kids from the families, and they go play outside.

They go to the park. Parents do Bible study for 90 minutes. Then after that, we do dinner. The men eat at one table. The women eat at a different table. Then for dessert, the babysitters and the kids and everyone come back together, and then we do dessert, and then we clean up at 8:00, and everyone goes home at 8:30.

And we’ve done that every Sunday for, like, five years. Wow. It’s been life changing. 

Melissa: Oh my gosh, that’s so beautiful. And is this just a group of five families that you [01:07:00] created? 

Rory: Yeah. And they all go to, like, different churches. Like we, we just, like, are just, like friends and, and all we read is the Bible. We don’t do, like, book studies.

We just read… We actually just read the Bible and discuss the Bible and, you know, we study it. We study what’s the archeological evidence for this and what, you know, what logical support is there. You know, I actually have a separate… So AJ and I have our Wealthy & Well-Known podcast, but then I have a separate podcast that I created called Eternal Life: Seven Questions Every Intelligent Skeptic Should Ask About Jesus, ’cause I was a nonbeliever.

Like, I really struggled with, like, the supernatural and somebody walking on water and raising from the dead and, like, all that stuff. And so I walk through how I became a believer. I recorded it for my sons so that they would have it in case I died before they got old enough for me to explain how I became a believer, and then we just put it out online.

But yeah, so that’s a big part of our life. You know, there’s no spirituality components per se to Brand [01:08:00] Builders Group. That’s not a part of our curriculum and, you know, we have all sorts of different people from different faiths in our business, and even our employees. We have atheists, agnostics, we have Muslims, like, in, in our employee base.

So you don’t have to believe what we believe to belong in a religious sense, but you do have to be someone who who is a mission-driven messenger, who is committed to serving people as sort of the highest value in order for us to work with somebody. 

Melissa: Mm. Beautiful. I love that so much. And when did you become a believer?

How old were you? 

Rory: Yeah, so, you know, I grew up in Catholic school. 

Melissa: So did I. 

Rory: Yeah, okay. So I was, I was sort of indoctrinated. But my mom made a deal with me. She said when I was 12, I could decide whether or not I wanted to go to church anymore. And so on my 12th birthday, I was like, “Peace out. Done with this,” right?

And so I, I left the church. And then really when I was going door to door and having doors slammed on me, and people spit on my face, and being [01:09:00] walking around a neighborhood for 14 hours a day with no car, that was when I basically gave up and, you know, had more of a spiritual encounter. I just gave up and I was like, “God, I can’t do this.

If you want me to finish this, you have to just take over.” And so that was really when I, you know, restarted a relationship with God, and specifically Jesus. But I still struggled to believe because I’m such an academic, scientific data driven nerd. And so it was really in my early 20s started a journey the, of me exploring the evidence.

And I would say I really became a deeply convicted believer in, like, my, like, basically 10, 15 years later. And then we published that Eternal Life podcast, I think, like, three years ago. And it… I don’t– It’s just a set thing. It’s, like, we- I don’t update that one every week. It’s just 15 episodes of, like, here’s…

Again, it’s really for my boys. But yeah, so that’s kinda my journey. [01:10:00] 

Melissa: I’m so excited to listen to that. We’ll link to that, as well as everything that you have mentioned, every book, all your podcasts. We’ll link to everything in the show notes. This has been so amazing. Is there anything else that you wanna share, or any last parting words of wisdom, or anything that you’re like, “Oh, my gosh, we didn’t cover that”?

Rory: Yeah. Thanks, Melissa. Uh, yeah, this is a beautiful space that you’ve created, and you, and, you know, just your energy, I think, just really comes through so much for everybody. Yeah, so, you know, if I wanna talk to the person who feels that calling on their heart that, like, maybe I am supposed to share my story.

Maybe I am supposed to share a little more of my message. Maybe I, maybe I am supposed to serve. And, and there’s two things I would share. One is, you know, go to freebrandcall.com/melissa and just request a call. Just let us, you know, let us meet you. We’ll tell you if we don’t think we can help you or if you’re not the right fit.

Like, it’s, it’s, it’s super casual, but we wanna [01:11:00] meet you. But the bigger thing I would say is that if you feel that calling on your heart to share your story We actually believe that the calling on your heart is the, the result of a signal that’s being sent out by someone else, and that that person needs you way more than you need them And it’s not, it’s not just doing what you can do.

It’s, it’s actually that for you this could be a hobby, maybe a business, maybe a life-changing profit making endeavor. Who knows? But for them, it’s much more. Like for you, you’re dealing with fear, right? You’re going, “Ah, I don’t know if I like this. This would be uncomfortable. I have to learn new skills. I’d have to do difficult exercises.

I might have to whatever.” But somebody is out there right now [01:12:00] seeking and searching, and begging and pleading, and could quite literally be on their hands and knees praying for answers to questions that they have about issues that they are struggling with that you know like the back of your hand ’cause you’ve already been through it.

And I would just encourage you to think about that person, right? We say there is no fear when the mission to serve is clear because when you’re thinking about yourself, you’re self-centered, you’re scared. But when you’re thinking about that person, you’re just going, how do I reach that person? How do I make sure that that person doesn’t have to go through what I went through?

We believe that that is not just the secret to building a great personal brand, but it’s the secret to living a purposeful life. So think about that person. 

Melissa: Mm. And that’s a really great visual to take yourself back to. Like, think of [01:13:00] you in your darkest, when you were on your knees in the bathroom crying.

Like, think of that person who is calling out for the answers for what you have that, like you said, that you know like the back of your hand. And that literally, if I visualize that instantly, I’m out of fear and I’m into service straight away. So I love that so much. It’s really beautiful. You are incredible.

Like, the wisdom, the value that you have shared in this is absolute gold. Like, I hope people realize how much gold is in here, and I wanna encourage everyone to go back and re-listen to this and to take notes. And definitely book in a call with you and your team, freebrandcall.com/melissa, and get the audiobook, freebrandaudiobook.com/melissa.

I’ll put everything in the show notes. But you are helping and you are serving so many people with what you [01:14:00] do. So I wanna know how I and the listeners, how can we give back and serve you today? What can we do to serve you? 

Rory: Oh my gosh. Well, I mean, share this episode with someone. If there’s someone you know, right, where you’re like, okay, maybe this isn’t for you, but someone you know, you’re like, They have a story.

They need to be– More people need to know this person’s story,” share this with them and tell them, “I believe in you, and I think that this episode can help you.” I would, I would do that. Outside of that- We don’t… It’s weird. Like, we’re in a place, like, we don’t really need anything. I, I mean, I tell our clients that literally, ’cause our clients are always like, “What can we do for you?”

And I’m like, “The number one thing you can do for me is succeed.” Like, you crush it. You go succeed. Because when you’re successful, people are gonna ask you, how did you do that? And if we get to be a part of that answer, it changes everything. You know, one of our, one of our goals is to i- is we tell people is, you should be so good at what you do that your customer force [01:15:00] becomes your sales force.

That they… You’re so focused on helping them get results, that the people around them can’t help but notice that they, something about them has changed. So, that would be the thing, is I would just say, you know, whether you become a customer o- of ours or not, just like take this and go do something with it.

Because that is actually what would also be the most helpful to me because it, it makes you talk about us, and it, and it makes you remember us because you’re like, oh yeah, like, you know, Rory and AJ say you’re most powerfully positioned to serve the person you once were. And like you lean into that, and you’re successful, and somebody says like, “How did you do it?”

And you’re like, gosh, well, I was … You know, this really spoke to me. That, so go succeed. Go help somebody. Go be useful. That is the best way you can help us. 

Melissa: Yeah. I love that. And have you worked with many Australians before? This podcast is global obviously, but have you worked with many Australians? 

Rory: Uh, yeah.

Not many. I don’t know about many. But definitely a few, [01:16:00] and I would say like more than a dozen probably. But we’ve had hundreds of clients. So one of our memberships is our, is a virtual membership, and so it’s all virtual. We do have live events that people can attend an- and that. So yeah, we, we do. And then we also, people can do, once you’re member, you can do private two-day sessions with us, and those can be virtual, and we can do those on a timezone.

You have to be a member to get like one-on-one time with our strategists, but we do, we have done several of those. So yeah, for s- for sure. 

Melissa: You’re amazing, Rory. This has been so fun and so insightful, and just such a delight to have this time with you. I’m so grateful. I’m gonna link to everything in the show notes.

When you come to Australia, you must let me know. When I come to Nashville, I will let you know as well. But this has been so great. Thank you so much for all of your wisdom, and just keep being you and being awesome. 

Rory: Well thanks, Melissa. Yeah everyone, thanks for having me. Go out and find someone to serve.

See you soon[01:17:00] 

Melissa: I absolutely loved this conversation. I am buzzing. I got so much out of it. I hope you did too, and if you did, please action at least one thing from this conversation and come and tell me what you’re going to action right now on Instagram. Head over there @melissahombrosini and come and tell me what you’re going to action straight away.

And if you love this episode, please subscribe and leave me a review on Apple Podcasts, and send me a screenshot of your review to [email protected] and I will send you my Wildly Wealthy guided meditation as a thank you. Now, these are just not ordinary meditations. My meditations are next level audio experiences.

They are infused with binaural beats, isochronic tones, and solfeggio frequencies, so they are designed to reprogram your brain. So send a screenshot over, and I will send you that as a thank you. And before I go, I wanted to say thank you so much for being here. [01:18:00] I am so grateful. I truly love serving you.

This is one of the greatest joys of my career, so thank you for being here. If there’s someone in your life that you can think of that would really benefit from this episode, any friends that are currently building a business or a personal brand, send this to them right now. So you could take a screenshot of this.

You could share it on your social media, email it to them, text it to them. Do whatever you’ve got to do to get this in their ears. And until next time, don’t forget that love is sexy, healthy is liberating, and wealthy isn’t a dirty word

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