Public Speaking Millionaire ｜ Phil M. Jones Interview
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Summary
In this episode, I'm joined by author and speaker Phil Jones to talk about how he built a personal brand from the ground up and how he's built it into a multi-million dollar business. We talk about the importance of a strong personal brand, how to build one, and why you should never settle for mediocrity.
Transcript
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I had seven, eight, nine revenue streams within a personal brand business in about 15, 16 months.
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Wow. And when it comes to building a personal brand, here's what I think is remarkably important.
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One is visibility. You've got to be seen to doing the thing you want to be seen to be doing.
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So everything you can be doing should be growing visibility.
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You should always be working on your future bio. If you haven't updated your bio every six months,
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you're probably doing something wrong. And my goal on a bio point of view is to keep evolving
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appreciate you being on the show love being here thanks dan um so we're in your beautiful exactly
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what to say hq literally overlooking the i mean this is incredible thanks friend it's inspiring
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it's inspiring um we're gonna dive into the amount of books that you have on your books
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and i mean it was crazy like you pull us out you're like yeah these are just a few of them
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yeah we have others and the brands i really want to i want to unpack for everybody because i've
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The business of information, what I call the wisdom economy.
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but you've been speaking for, I think I went online.
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I heard like 2 million people you've spoken to over the years,
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2,500, probably more now, almost 3,000 talks you've given.
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And you were really quick to jump on the virtual stuff when COVID happened.
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Like you didn't even, there was no beats, miss, zero.
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I saw your YouTube video go up and it's like, now we're going virtual.
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How long did you do speaking before you wrote the book?
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Oh man, I guess I've been speaking one way or another since my first proper careers.
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At 18 years of age, I was one of the youngest sales managers for a big department store group.
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And in my role with that group is we would do a lot of store openings,
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which meant showing up to a city and delivering presentations to people in that community to give
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them an idea that they might want to come and work with us got it so i was telling the brand story
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and looking to get a recruit and i think what age were you speaking 18 19 20 and then equally was
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in the sales leadership role in those stores so my early speeches were top of a set of an escalators
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in a department store addressing the morning huddle um so i've been in those environments
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forever being training teams forever but my formal okay i'm a speaker in a personal brand capacity
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started around 2008 okay moved out corporate roles moved out of um running an overseas
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investment property business bought that business down and it kind of started by accident in the
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the company that we'd built had a good time for a good time until 08 i'd built a lot of it through
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B&I, Chamber of Commerce, networking events to be able to find clients and referral partners for it.
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When we brought that down, I was well known in that space. But all of the small independent
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business owners were struggling in that recessionary time in the UK. So they were asking me,
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like, hey, Phil, would you come and do a 30 minute, 60 minute presentation around some ideas that they
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could do to take success into their own hands, find some new clients, grow their book of business,
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deal with a declining customer base? I'm like, sure, sounds fun. Well, I figure out what I want
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to do next yeah started their 08 and then it's built out from there accidentally and those early
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speeches came to people saying well can you do more could you train my team what would it look
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like if you did a one day and i remember people saying like well if you did a one day what will
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it cover and they're like well well i was like well what would you hope it covers they're like
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i hope it'll cover blank and you'd be like well it covers that then it's like here's a paper
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whatever whatever you want it to cover the first one day sales training workshop was built on
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people asking will it cover blank me just writing it down the night before the program i just looked
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at all of the things that people had said and built the program from there we delivered that
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one day program every week um for about 17 months holy moly so you had some reps yeah and put
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refinement behind everyone built a coaching business behind that built a consulting business
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behind your businesses or for them mine okay cool um so it automatically sort of grew out to be
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i had seven eight nine revenue streams within a personal brand business in about 15 16 months and
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no no book yet no book yet wow first book i wrote 2011 was a book called toolbox i've since gone on
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to retire that book and i wrote it with the purpose of you need a book we've been in the
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world long enough to hear that you need a book you need a book you need a book story i did this
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in 2011 self-published first book where you put as much as you possibly can about as much as you
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possibly know between a couple of sheets of paper.
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It was 247 different ways you could win more business.
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It was a compilation of sales, ideas, tips, tricks,
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We did okay, but it delivered on its promise to sit in the line item of a bio that was published author of.
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My international speaking career was catapulted from that, not because people came looking for the book,
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but when people asked about me, my credibility bio sat stronger.
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It took me to speak in Iran, took me to speak through Asia, took me on a European tour.
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It allowed me the passport that when I leaned into those environments, the credibility was in place.
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And then the second book was a book called Magic Words.
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Magic Words is almost the EP to Exactly What to Say.
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I was in a mastermind group maybe 2012 with some other author, coaches, consultants in the UK talking about how challenging it was to create a book.
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And what happened from that was they said it was so hard to write a book, I said I could probably turn one around in a month.
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and that was magic words in fact look this is it look at that this is a book yeah i want to see
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look at this it's like a pamphlet it's a literal pamphlet look at the photo on it it's a beauty
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and what was fun about that though is this is great you are now an author yeah i mean we're
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talking 20 dude it's 23 20 pages it's nothing it was a joke it was me responding to the bet
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and what i did is i plugged it into amazon's kdp download program when amazon's kdp download
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program had just launched we woke up one morning to 120 000 units on a free promo oh that makes
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sense yeah and then what happened was this became a giveaway it became lead capture it became a
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thing that i could customize and change colors for for a client we could do 12 copies 30 copies it
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was just for fun it was the the takeaway we plugged it into cd content and used it when i spoke at
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events for lead capture and it it became a part of my brand from a magic words point of view
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And every time I spoke or delivered a workshop, people would say to me, like weeks, months, years afterwards, still using your magic words, still using your magic words.
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Exactly what to say came about a little later where I was going through my geographic move from UK to US and made a decision.
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I didn't want a global speaking business anymore.
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I wanted to really sort of focus effort and energy into building a business in one of the richest markets in the world in the speaking profession.
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Had all these ideas about a new book I might write to put myself on the map with the bureaus, et cetera.
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Why do I write a brand new book when what I've got is a half-baked EP over here that the marketplace is already telling me it quite likes?
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And I was going to relaunch it called Magic Words.
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I get two-thirds of the way through the process, and just like you've been on a title story, I'm like, it's actually not that good of a title.
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And worse than that, I just found out a guy called Tim David had just published a book called Magic Words, and he was a real magician.
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So I'm like, I probably shouldn't use that title.
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And I thought about the question that people had always asked me following training sessions.
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And they said, well, yeah, but what exactly do I say?
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it also been road tested and it's kind of fun to see it here it's a three cd set that we sold to
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the direct sales industry prior to the book coming out prior towards the book just to test the title
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no it was just something we did when i released another product back in the day oh you already
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had it yeah existed cool and and it's interesting because like even pulling the title of a book from
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the book content yeah waiting to title it once you see what's in there that's right more often
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than not like from a book point of view i think there are there are two types of books that people
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can create there is a a big idea book and there is a proven method book the two very different
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things and what would be examples just for people like a big idea book is seth godin's purple cat
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yeah malcolm gladwell stuff malcolm gladwell big idea it's like okay i think this thing and the
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market's going to tell me if what i think is a good idea or not yeah and more often than not if
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you're doing a book like that you probably want to do it with other people's money
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you want to launch a big idea let the marketplace decide and maybe sign a big advance get a support
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of a big publishing partner if it's a proven method book i.e something you've been working
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sharpening shapening totally something that you've owned a workshop time yeah then um that's like
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your baby is like something that belongs to you like your child or a home that you've crafted
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yeah and in that environment the success is already baked in because there's already been
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an audience that has appreciated this and has validated through their purchasing and probably
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a strong possibility that they've been trying to teach what they learned from you in the proven
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method interactions prior badly so when the book shows up they're like this is what i've been trying
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to explain to you and it becomes their way of creating a portable story around your work more
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easily instead of them trying to explain what they learned from you in a two-day workshop badly over
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a pint yeah it's like how about i just give you the book here's the book this was the whole thing
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yeah i was trying to tell you this but there's more context read the whole thing that's right
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so the the areas that i think you are masterful at and i was already impressed and then i came
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to your office and you showed me levels upon levels of this is just how you've been able
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to monetize because i know so many authors they can't even get their speaking figured out right
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right let alone businesses consultant coaching all this stuff um what do you think let's let's
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start with the speaking side of things because i know um and dude when there's a lot of speakers
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out there your craft and mastery is like literally when i see you speak i can tell phil did not the
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the economy of words the emotional uh prep like there's no doubt you are the best at what you do
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and I appreciate just that I know that you do it
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Like, what have you learned about speaking bureaus
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what do you think are the things people are missing
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or they're just chasing the wrong thing to try to build that demand?
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I think a mistake that many people make is they want to start in the middle of the race.
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And what I mean by that is they think that because they've got an impressive resume
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or because they've done a couple of things that make them notable public figures in some way,
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they can enter the speaking business somewhere near the middle of the race
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and the marketplace is going to appreciate that.
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The myth that then gets compounded on that is that people think the role of a professional speaker
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is a mirror shining back on them it's my audience or i'm there to be able to serve my message or i'm
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there to be able to help people understand my story and what they forget is that if you've got
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10 000 people in an audience and you're speaking for an hour that's not about your hour it's about
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their 10 000 hours that you're responsible for and that company's needs correct from your message
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correct from your understanding of the prep work the post work how that they can utilize your
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delivery in that moment to be able to anchor thousands of other conversations that come after
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that and to be able to attach maybe all the other corporate messaging that they wanted to be able to
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get across in that given environment. Yeah, they might have a theme for that kickoff call or
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whatever it is. And more than even a theme, it becomes the memory peg, right? Is how many times
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have you been to an event in your personal life, you know, being out for a great meal and a great
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time, et cetera. And what do you remember? It's, oh, when we had that amazing dessert all together
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or when they serve that thing with that killer sauce
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or when, oh, they did that like pre-cocktail thing.
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Well, you have to care about more than just your message,
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that means the ability to hit the show me that you know me button it also means considering where
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are you on the agenda are you opening closing middle and more than that like what's come before
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you because it can be ridiculously irresponsible for you to show up and deliver your 60 minutes
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without knowing what happened in the eight hours prior because what could happen is you could
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conflict compound cause some form of chaos in message yeah not because you're wrong but because
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somebody else delivered something earlier that was close to or was in some form of conflict or
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contrast and your job is to be able to add that together not to be able to subtract or divide
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yeah to align you know i was listening to what dan was saying earlier on and what dan shared about
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blank blank blank is remarkably impressive and what you may want to consider also is
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let's build on it and now what you do is you show the audience that you're a willing
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participant in an event as well as just the sage on the stage talking at them correct everybody
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needs a rewind and listen what you just said phil because like as you're talking and you're saying
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the show me that you know me and the the pegging of them and i'm just like listen like i need to
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take notes um because it just demonstrates that you're you're a student of your craft
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and if you want to get paid to speak over a sustained period of time what's imperative is
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that you are always better than your fee so that means that great you get paid $15,000 once what
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you could risk is that somebody's like he she was pretty darn good but for that money I expected
1.00
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more career is over you'd have been better to be a $5,000 speaker on that day and they're like wow
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geez for $5,000 we paid this other guy 15 or 25 and she was like maybe just as good if not better
0.65
00:15:39.100
and now reputations are built on that that means that you probably want to be a brilliant free
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speaker, a brilliant $500 speaker, a brilliant $1,500 speaker, a brilliant $5,000 speaker,
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a brilliant $7,500, $10,000, $12,500, $15,000, $20,000, $25,000, $35,000, $50,000, and now
00:15:55.400
you're playing with the house's money. But you've earned it. Yeah. And you've put that all in the
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bank. And then what else you need to be responsible for if you want to win on the stage is you need
00:16:05.780
to be able to deal with anything that might go wrong. What do I mean by that? What are some of
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these crazy ones we were talking about the uber relay i mean yeah all the travel stuff is is for
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real you've got to be prepared to put yourself hell on it yeah hell on a travel schedule just
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to show up at your speaking slot no excuses be a professional and also know that nobody cares
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about anything how hard it was to get there or what else is going on in your life or the fact
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that you've got a sniffle or that you're suffering from hay fever or you know the kids have got a
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thing that they hurt their knee at school etc in that moment you're in character nobody else cares
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so decide that but also when it comes to being ready ready ready and prepared you've got to deal
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with you're booked for 90 minutes and on the day of they tell you we need you to run 75 and you
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just say no problem and then 40 minutes before you're about to go on they're like hey how would
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you feel about doing 60 yeah and then they're like you know what does 42 look like yeah and
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And you've got to do that without being able to say, I need to go readjust my slides and creating some form of panic around the event organizer.
00:17:12.640
And then when you find out when you'd step onto stage and there's 22 minutes on the clock, you've got to bring your best 22 and make no drama about the whole thing and realize that sometimes less of you was more value to them in that given environment.
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You've got to feel confident and comfortable that if a fire alarm breaks out in the middle of the speech, you can deal with it.
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If somebody has a cardiac episode in the middle of a speech, you can deal with it.
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I'm not telling you about anything I haven't dealt with.
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You know, crazy heckler, somebody that's there to cause trouble.
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And yeah, you've got to deal with the fact that the room is set for 1,800 and what you've got is 147 in the room.
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You know, the craziest thing we dealt with recently is I showed up to an event and the event production company, like, we've got a cool new idea.
00:18:07.120
We're going to run a unique way of us being able to deliver to this.
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And what it was was three speakers on three parts of the same stage delivering to a different audience at the exact same time with everybody in the audience wearing, like, silent disco headphones.
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so you're in a giant auditorium microphone but not amplified where you can hear the other two
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speakers delivering to the side of you and you don't know if the audience you're looking at is
00:18:32.020
listening to you or either the other two it wasn't even they get to choose come on choose your own
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adventure right you gotta be able to say i can deal with all that you and you just like bring
00:18:42.880
i'm gonna crush these guys yeah yeah and then also sometimes you do your job great and sometimes you
00:18:48.680
do a great job and I think both of those things need to show up right you're not you're not always
00:18:54.860
a superhero and part of that means you can't believe too much of your own hype if you want
00:19:01.220
to run in the speaking business for a long time because we're all pretty replaceable in the grand
00:19:06.360
scheme of things I could be booked for a gig and I could have done a great job but if I fell sick
00:19:10.120
or something bad happened to me and Dan Martell was tapped in with a completely different message
00:19:14.960
then there wouldn't probably have been any issue with the event like we could be subbed out somebody
00:19:21.320
else tagged in yeah there's nothing and there are lots and lots of different people that could
00:19:25.540
deliver to a good enough standard to be able to get away from that and that's been helpful for me
00:19:30.660
to be like you don't get too far ahead of yourself sunshine yeah you're there to do a good job you're
00:19:36.040
important but you know this is not life or death yeah this is intelligent entertainment show up
00:19:42.360
and do a great job and remember that you're not the main event your job is to be the hot sauce
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on the side of the main event to make the main event more memorable i love that and then the
00:19:51.660
idea of like using the book to supplement an event or using an event to create momentum to
00:19:56.680
monetize after like the c i love the idea of like cds and like yeah you know to do lead collect right
00:20:01.740
like a lot of speakers you know i have a friend that i'm thinking of i mean he does 200 days a
00:20:06.080
year and but he doesn't understand the business of it so i'm not sure he's not collecting emails
00:20:10.020
but you seem to think about this on a level like what are what are some of the so obviously show
00:20:16.740
up be great do great you know to get more speaking stuff right but what about the other things around
00:20:23.300
like the email list the potentials to do workshops in that same city you know you said like your
00:20:28.600
corporate clients booking you for tours and then while you're doing that trying to fill up times
00:20:32.860
like what are other ways authors speakers should be thinking about building a business that's not
00:20:39.280
just the keynote um you say what should they be doing i don't know if i can answer what somebody
00:20:45.260
should be doing i can certainly answer what people could be doing yeah and the could be is plentiful
00:20:51.040
in our work with exactly what to say we talk about the fact the worst time to think about
00:20:54.760
the thing you're going to say is in the moment you're saying totally a pre-event planning call
00:20:58.700
is the call for you to be able to schedule the actions that might follow the keynote it's not
00:21:03.760
the call to prepare for the keynote it's also the call for you to realize what add-ons could be
00:21:12.420
right now that will put tens of thousands of dollars in your
00:21:16.280
Do the pre-event planning call and as you're about to wrap
00:21:18.540
say just one more thing, what's your plan for books?
00:21:26.260
What do most people do? And you're like, well, most people
00:21:28.440
look to put a book in the room for everybody in attendance.
00:21:36.620
speaking gig. What's your plan for books? That's it. It changes the game onwards from there. And
00:21:42.300
even it opens up conversation like, oh, we don't have any budget for it. You don't?
00:21:47.880
Well, you know, not allocated for it at this point. Okay. So you're saying that you're open
00:21:52.780
for books to be in the room. You just don't know who's going to pay for them. They're like, yeah,
00:21:56.240
that's where we're at. And then you can explore potential for sponsors. You can explore opportunity
00:22:01.080
for, you know, cross-pollinated opportunities with other clients to be able to get book in
00:22:04.620
the room from there. You can create follow-ons from meeting greets and signings and all of that
00:22:11.540
jazz. The most important thing that then happens from the book point of view is photographs and
00:22:17.680
social shares, because that's where your next set of leads are going to come from, is how does that
00:22:24.200
run full circle? I'm a little unique in that we have a pretty big business, but I have nothing in
00:22:29.860
the middle of my business. So I have no online courses. There's nothing that somebody can buy
00:22:33.720
from me, you know, $1,200, $1,500, $3,000, nothing that falls into that.
00:22:41.460
But what it allows me to be able to do is it allows me to be able to do a lot of big,
00:22:50.260
Dude, the book, I mean, this is CDL driver recruiting.
00:22:52.840
So, I mean, you're doing corporate deals where you're doing custom versions of your
00:22:59.360
But it doesn't bruise anything in the outside world.
00:23:02.000
It just lives in their world, and it's a big ticket, all rides on.
00:23:08.140
And then what happens in those corporations is people leave.
00:23:14.720
Or, hey, you did business with us at this location.
00:23:18.680
Any chance that you can come and do something similar for us there?
00:23:24.720
But I like just productizing everything so we can.
00:23:34.280
We go big on the book with exactly what to say.
00:23:46.540
Because the certification cannot be achieved online.
00:23:58.920
we have team certification we have corporate certification all productized all packaged all
00:24:03.660
separate pdfs all separate hidden pages in the website yeah personal certification come here
00:24:08.220
spend 5 500 bucks beginning middle and end experience high five see you yeah corporate
00:24:13.020
certification i come to you i do the same thing all the expenses are yours single big ticket
00:24:16.900
what we then got is certified guides where people are then licensed to deliver and then train the
00:24:23.040
work they pay an annual fee from a licensing point of view yeah to maintain it but what they
00:24:27.460
then do is they need to have a workbook for it to be a certification program workbook is a profit
00:24:32.100
center yeah and don't you even have people that you'll allow them to put their name on your book
00:24:38.300
um our certified guides yeah i don't know if i have a copy you might have one it might be over
00:24:43.700
there yeah but what we've done is we've created ways to customize the book whether it's a corporate
00:24:48.360
customization whether it's a small independent brand that wants to use it as part of their
00:24:52.540
onboarding experience we do customization from as little as 100 units and right up to 10 000
00:24:59.200
plus units that we've done for brands like volkswagen etc um but our certified guides have
00:25:04.640
their own exactly what to say version that is we call it an industrial strength business card
00:25:09.300
so it brings their credibility forward is their positioning back of the book is all of their
00:25:15.020
testimonials their credibility pieces and what our guides often do is you know they'll have a
00:25:21.280
couple of hundred of their personal custom edition, use it to open doors, create new
00:25:26.060
opportunities, gifts to past clients. And then they'll have the sort of OG edition to be able
00:25:32.120
to plug into their events at a lower unit price. But we just built a business model that allows
00:25:37.620
people to now partner with exactly what to say. And the big difference between what we've done
00:25:41.800
with certified guides and what many others have done is all of our guides stand in front of the
00:25:46.680
brand, not behind it. So if you look at any of the other sort of big names, it's so-and-so's,
00:25:53.760
coaches, et cetera. Didn't want any mini fills. What we're looking at is, this is Trisha Browers.
00:26:00.860
She's an experienced professional trainer. She's done this, she's done that, she's done the other.
00:26:05.380
Clients include this, this, this, this, this. Oh, and she just so happens to be exactly what
0.94
00:26:09.080
to say certified. Sits lower down in the bio. And if people can't win their own clients and
00:26:15.440
don't have their own credibility they don't come into our world but our world is the thing that
00:26:18.900
ties them together so neat and and essentially what i've noticed what your stuff phil is most
00:26:25.700
people write a book yeah three years later they write another book for you know what i mean but
00:26:30.180
it seems like your approach is to campaign it well i'm like taking clues from the music industry
00:26:37.860
if you look at any band that has lasted 20 30 40 years they're not lasting 20 30 40 years on
00:26:45.080
writing new music. You got the greatest hits. Greatest hits on repeat, collabs, customizations,
00:26:51.520
reinventions, finding new audiences for the same thing. Jon Bon Jovi has to be just as excited
00:26:57.220
singing Living on a Prayer tomorrow as he was 30, 40 years ago. And guess what? If he delivers a rock
00:27:03.340
concert where people have paid to show up... They want to sing along. They want to sing along to
00:27:07.460
Living on a Prayer. They're not like, hey, show me your new stuff. Yeah, new stuff that I've never
00:27:10.540
heard right yeah they've been working on right with a little preamble as to why this is so
00:27:14.560
magical it's like no no give me the give me the stuff that i know and the world is so crowded and
00:27:20.600
i've seen so many examples of this of of you know other great thought leaders is simon sinek has done
00:27:26.660
an incredible body of work he's going to struggle to shake the fact he's the why guy yeah doesn't
00:27:32.360
matter what else they're done you know and mel robbins incredible body of work it's like let's
00:27:37.560
countdown from five shall we like and that's the strength of a great brand is like if you can be
00:27:42.960
so well known for a single word or a single thing etc why would you try and dilute the potency of
00:27:48.120
something that could help you grow a a massive long-standing yeah because there's so many other
00:27:54.100
people that have never heard that message and i know you did the real estate well you've done a
00:27:58.200
bunch of these that's right like how did so even unpacking that like how did you think of who to do
00:28:02.560
the collabs with in these different industries so there's two types of collabs right there's the
00:28:07.840
behind closed doors collab yeah which can be like do i like the people when are they prepared to pay
00:28:13.140
the fee because behind closed doors yeah i do what you need right this is what it can exist in the
00:28:18.160
background there's no external exposure yeah there isn't a week that goes by in my life where
00:28:22.840
somebody doesn't say hey you should do it exactly what to say for something you know something you
00:28:30.960
You could argue that there's a reason for everything.
00:28:33.900
How do you decide what you bring to open market?
00:28:37.840
Because most markets aren't narrow enough and deep enough to warrant doing a book.
00:28:44.820
They might be narrow enough and deep enough to do a course or to deliver a training program for
00:28:49.620
or to run a high-end masterclass for, et cetera.
00:28:52.520
But there aren't many markets that have got 100,000 units in them.
00:28:58.800
There are some that will definitely have 100,000 plus units in them.
00:29:02.360
Markets like the dating world, markets like parenting, financial services, et cetera.
00:29:09.440
What you then got to consider is message and messenger.
00:29:13.100
So do I want to have my name on the title of a book that is positioning myself as an expert towards marriage or parenting?
00:29:24.100
Do you think for your stuff, like commission-based sales professionals?
00:29:27.520
It can be, but we've got the OG edition that actually starts to lean towards that.
00:29:32.040
There's almost no need to create a customization unless there was a collab with it.
00:29:35.600
So say, for example, Salesforce decided that they wanted to be able to create something where 2 plus 2 could equal 5,
00:29:43.020
and we run that together, and we were pointing it at commission-based salespeople.
00:29:46.960
Now we're talking, because the partner creates the credibility.
00:29:51.800
And that's what we did with the real estate edition.
00:29:55.420
because there is incredibly high earnings potential,
00:30:00.580
and a very big churn of people joining the industry.
00:30:14.860
So what you've got is a little bit of a sweet spot
00:30:23.360
for context is my real estate book across all platforms is sold around 75,000 units
00:30:30.500
which for a niche edition is phenomenal awesome for any non-fiction book 75,000 units would be
00:30:37.600
like ka-ching you hit wall street journal 11,000 units yeah so we're there with a real estate only
00:30:43.060
edition um sustained over time but it keeps running like i checked my stats before jumping
00:30:48.640
on this we've done 42 units of that book today yeah and we did more than that yesterday and about
00:30:54.120
the same the day before and about the same the day before and i he's kind of flat it's one of
00:30:57.920
the only growth curves in my business that i'm happy to see yeah sustained sitting do you like
00:31:03.080
did you sit down and think of the industries and approach people or you just waited for it to
00:31:07.300
organically happen knowing that there was potential there um it's all of that is i'm committed to the
00:31:14.500
growth of the exactly what to say brand forever okay so the brand is that's the thing so when it
00:31:19.740
comes to collabs it's people place opportunity bandwidth yeah all of those things coming together
00:31:25.900
and and the real estate version was brilliant to do with jimmy and chris because i'd keynoted for
00:31:31.940
their audience i'd done a second keynote for their audience was well liked by their existing customer
00:31:37.660
base what they could also do is facilitate the working groups that i needed to be able to create
00:31:42.780
the customization because i didn't want to do the customization through them and their expertise
00:31:46.440
i wanted to do it through their customer base for sure so we created all these um micro workshops
00:31:52.760
and think tanks that was getting me clear on the critical conversations that people in real estate
00:31:57.340
were facing if they were new agents six months in if they were a 30-year tenured agent if they
00:32:02.100
were running a big team if they were in a luxury market if they're in a volume market if they're
00:32:05.980
in a rental market like i built all these personas and said fill the room with at least one person
00:32:11.540
from each of that list, they managed to do that for me.
00:32:14.600
We also had a real clear win-win deal on a collaborative book.
00:32:19.760
They wanted the credibility and the expertise inside their brand
00:32:24.200
and the ability for this to be information that lived in the world of their customer base
00:32:32.520
I wanted the book and the micro-niche and speaking and training opportunities
0.84
00:32:37.420
so there was a clear divide that says this partnership can work effortlessly
00:32:45.140
and there's no, I didn't want to be into reporting royalty reports
00:32:49.440
back to co-authors to be like here's your split
00:32:51.620
and when you're in the book space in your own IP
00:33:04.700
Like, I'd have to employ somebody full time to pull it all together.
00:33:15.340
Was there an upfront fee they paid, though, for you to get involved in that?
00:33:18.960
Or there was a bit of a trust that they would promote it on the back end?
00:33:22.300
There was a financial commitment to a body of work over a 12-month period of time that was inclusive of the book.
00:33:30.940
it was a bigger project consulting agreement over 12 months as a retainer one of the scope of work
00:33:36.180
line items was within this timeline a book would exist under this guise that's cool yeah and then
00:33:42.260
what how have you like because you also talked about because you said you're an open books i'm
00:33:45.180
gonna ask but like you did you did a bunch of like hearing clinic talks and then you start a
00:33:50.020
marketing agency with some partners that you know you don't you said most of the employees definitely
00:33:54.400
you've never met them right so it's like what i love about you is that from the outside it's easy
00:33:59.740
to, you know, oh, Phil's a speaker and he does speaking.
00:34:08.800
Some people just don't know how to partner.
0.97
00:34:18.300
Is there a strategy to it or is it just whatever,
00:34:25.820
The strategy for me around particularly partnership,
00:34:47.020
is if the organization, group, community, et cetera,
00:35:01.160
That's why I have no conflict of interest within the middle of my business
00:35:04.340
that could start to be able to say, come join my tribe,
00:35:08.940
It's more, I'm in the business of helping other people's train sets run faster.
00:35:15.600
How do we then do that from a collab point of view is,
00:35:21.860
If you think about Tabasco as a brand of hot sauce,
00:35:25.520
how many tables around the world does that sit on?
00:35:27.580
how many people order that product on repeat phenomenal number of people yeah and nobody
00:35:34.140
knows it's there until they want it but it's not stealing the show no one's like i got to go to
00:35:39.500
that restaurant because it's got tabasco but there it is sitting on the side of a table everywhere
00:35:43.920
ordered on repeat ordered on repeat ordered on the repeat i can get to a position of scale i can
00:35:48.380
buy back a ton of time if what i'm doing is i'm making a little bit of money there a little bit
00:35:52.360
of money there a little bit of money there i can have hundreds of partnerships of where i'm play
00:35:55.980
a really important part i'm an essential ingredient that helps their business run faster
00:36:00.360
but i don't steal any of the limelight yeah or certainly not so much of it and that has been my
00:36:06.880
route to scale that is a little different than most because you know i don't have a podcast show
00:36:12.600
on purpose because you can just go on other people's podcasts well i get a lot more reach
00:36:17.460
by getting to meet dan's friends than than trying to be able to find somebody else to introduce to
00:36:21.860
mine all the time yeah and yeah my view is the same on that from speaking my view on the same
00:36:26.980
of that is is all other collabs and then how do you decide what is this like for fun stuff okay
00:36:33.400
and my best friend is in kentucky and he introduced me to bourbon we've done tons on the bourbon trail
00:36:39.420
together but do you bring this into your speaking stuff like do you do like how are fun ways it's
00:36:45.860
talk triggers it's a chance to be able to i'm a british guy right yeah and i love bourbon and
00:36:53.440
people think i know nothing about bourbon because i'm a british guy and and you guys are clearly
00:36:58.660
probably should be a scotch drinker yeah um it's kind of fun when i'm in parts of the country where
00:37:03.500
people are like oh you like bourbon that's cute and then what we can do is stack out some fairly
00:37:09.260
rich knowledge about it and then oh by the way i got a collab product i did with a small micro
00:37:12.860
distillery here in new york yeah it's a credibility piece and when it comes to building a personal
00:37:18.900
brand here's what i think is remarkably important important repeat one is visibility are you got to
00:37:25.960
be seen to doing the thing you want to be seen to be doing more of so everything you can be doing
00:37:29.660
should that's a big idea people need to hear you got to be seen doing a thing you want to be doing
00:37:34.140
more right like it sounds crazy but it's like get this is your like you said photo ops of after you
00:37:40.200
speak like you touched on the um on the virtual thing is i never had to tell somebody i can do
00:37:48.980
virtual events we just jumped straight to doing virtual events built photo evidence around it
00:37:53.520
did a showreel around the fact that virtual events i was the first person to ask my photographer to
00:37:59.020
take photographs of my screen delivering virtual events that then went onto our virtual page i think
00:38:03.980
we may have hired that guy to do our virtual event photos yes get caught doing the thing that
00:38:10.600
you want to be seen doing more of like and that whole that's so good visibility then jumps to
00:38:15.140
credibility credibility is is about putting your pegs in the board i touched today in this interview
00:38:21.200
that there was a point if i wanted to speak internationally i needed to be published author
00:38:25.020
of blank otherwise my bio doesn't add up by credibility i mean you should always be working
00:38:29.920
on your future bio. If you haven't updated your bio every six months, you're probably
00:38:34.400
doing something wrong. There needs to be something else that is adding into your credibility
00:38:38.080
piece. Otherwise, what you are is the guy that worked for IBM in 2014 that's still trying
00:38:44.520
to call that relevant today. It's not going to work. And my goal on a bio point of view
00:38:50.820
is to keep evolving and working on my future bio until you get to a one-word bio. What's
00:39:03.960
Right, Cher, Oprah, Gaga, no further explanation required.
00:39:08.640
If you've got a one-word bio, you're probably good.
00:39:11.000
So you have some work to do until you get there.
00:39:21.900
the credibility statement that you're looking for.
00:39:23.720
and I put exactly what to say out into the world it did well New York City publisher tried to buy
00:39:31.500
the rights from me I didn't want to do so but I did sell them the rights to two alternative books
00:39:36.540
that allowed me to put more weight behind it so exactly how to sell and exactly where to start
00:39:40.380
live in the same family from a branding point of view but I've got a book that is deeper about
00:39:45.480
sales skills that means that if somebody says oh it's just a light flimsy book around exactly what
00:39:50.280
to say, well, there is a heavyweight book behind it called Exactly How to Sell. It's never going
00:39:54.760
to sell anywhere near as many, ironically, but it provides some weight and credibility behind it.
00:39:59.720
Exactly Where to Start is an entrepreneurial book that says I've got some knowledge and
00:40:03.160
experience about what it means to start big ideas and turn ideas into things. They're not intended
00:40:08.240
to be able to be runaway success stories. They're weight behind the tip of Exactly What to Say.
00:40:13.180
Support the brand. Commitment to say Exactly What to Say still matters is what are the pegs in the
00:40:18.020
board right i did a million copies of the book and when you do a million copies of a record you get
00:40:22.780
a gold disc but when you do a million copies of a book nothing happens so i created my own
00:40:27.860
commemorative editions allow us to be able to create a way of talking about it did i love your
00:40:32.580
analogy 10 000 units yeah i love your analogy to the the record label right like it just maps so
00:40:37.860
beautifully yeah and i just produced the sexiest version of the book we could and also answered
00:40:43.200
the questions yeah that people were like well what is the why behind the what and allowed this
00:40:48.460
to be that people who were fans of the work already could reintroduce themselves to the work
00:40:52.540
and have some of their big questions answered in another book and you know like take the cover off
0.93
00:40:57.280
the thing the damn thing's sexy inside like silk covered embossed i wish i had mine i did the same
0.61
00:41:02.160
thing look yeah most people don't know i signed every one of them embossed into the hardcover
0.98
00:41:06.800
so good you got to this is the this is the art part of the craft that people just you got to put
00:41:12.260
your personality into it that's it oh it's beautiful the rounded corners it's like I'm
00:41:16.500
doing all of that and then yeah and then we do the you know workbook editions and you read the
00:41:22.260
book cover to cover in 72 minutes I cannot get through this workbook in less than two days
00:41:26.360
so what we now have is is all these other things that keep extending the brand that pegs in the
00:41:32.580
board and there's a kids book version oh you got the kids book and then you know I I was in my
00:41:37.740
kids school I told him about this Herman our mutual friend he's like oh the kid books is
00:41:41.360
crashing yeah like wow and there's no money in it but there's fun in it and it keeps the
00:41:46.400
conversation alive and it says i care about fun yeah so you got visibility credibility then the
00:41:52.100
thing to think about is authenticity which means you've got to care about the thing you care about
00:41:55.940
even when you're not getting paid to care about it and think about that from a from a buyback
00:42:00.800
time point of view is when you bump into somebody in an airport that's struggling to be able to
00:42:05.840
fit everything in you can't be like i'm not on the clock right now i'm not going to give you
00:42:10.160
some of my trade secrets you've got to care about authenticity when you see things that are
00:42:14.900
happening in the press where your expertise should have an opinion about it it should have an opinion
00:42:19.260
about you think about this at such a deep level yes it's beautiful doesn't show up otherwise and
00:42:24.420
then only then and only then do you work on the fourth thing which is availability i.e like what's
00:42:28.720
in the shop and if you've built a fan base that's this big then you need something somebody can buy
00:42:33.940
from you for ten dollars and you need something somebody can buy from you for tens of thousands
00:42:38.140
of dollars and you got to think about that product suite yeah like your uh department store like
00:42:45.020
you've got something for everybody in that and i worked in premier league soccer for a while on the
00:42:49.160
commercial side of of retail and licensing merchandising yeah and we knew that right we
00:42:55.080
knew that somebody's got three pounds in pocket money to buy themselves a gift after the game
00:43:00.260
and we know that there are some corporations that are trying to offload 50 grand off the balance
00:43:04.380
sheet quickly to be able to get their tax back and to make sure they don't lose the money next
00:43:08.080
year and for some hospitality. We knew everything in between. So you've got to productize and
00:43:12.660
package something for the people that you know want to do business with you. So it's always
00:43:17.200
visibility, credibility, authenticity, availability. And I'd always be asking yourself the questions
00:43:22.660
is what can I do to grow my visibility? What's missing from my credibility? What can I be doing
00:43:28.140
to demonstrate authenticity? And now how do I do a better job working on the availability of
00:43:33.460
people being able to access my message and it's a lifelong body of work i don't know how you can
00:43:37.760
do that with 37 different messages yeah you have to pick one but i mean even in this book you got
00:43:43.360
evie jones who collabed with you on the children's stuff and like it is awesome to see the way you
00:43:50.740
partner with other people and one something i saw recently and you did it organically and i don't
00:43:55.600
know if you're involved in this but it was a marketing book there's a woman prove it yeah
1.00
00:43:59.560
prove it so like are you involved in that i heard that book okay well so this is the thing is that
00:44:04.580
you were so good at being like hey there's this book and it's one of the best marketing book and
00:44:08.220
i bought the book and i was all excited because it was it was a friend of yours but i was like
00:44:12.800
he's probably involved in it yep so like how even that idea so you can still be involved in new books
00:44:18.960
but they don't have to be written by you correct and that's a lesson that you take from the movie
00:44:23.040
business there becomes a point where you realize being the lead actor is not actually the best job
00:44:27.480
on set yeah right you want to be director producer probably producer so prove it and the work before
00:44:34.460
the work are two books that we produced and bought to market in collaboration with page two well what
00:44:39.920
i did is took editorial director producer role on it and in prove it i'm helping provide credibility
00:44:49.000
to mail from a small business point of view and then curating the the experience of the book by
00:44:54.960
almost being the narrator so I do the opening and the close of the chapters
00:44:59.880
and she does all the meat in the middle again when you say narrating you mean
00:45:03.540
the audio version the audiobook and in the physical book version really there's
00:45:07.320
some setup and punchlines that around by me and what it allows me to be able to
00:45:12.700
do is back into my agency business and then towards opportunities the question
00:45:18.000
marketing now is that's my take on content marketing produced by somebody
00:45:25.160
that is a show that we've produced now in book form
00:45:32.280
hey, what should I be doing with my content marketing?
00:45:41.100
And it just so happened that an event of a past client
00:45:49.340
and maybe less than maybe 14 days ago that was happening in 10 days time the speaker they had
00:45:57.600
hired have me having spoke for them last year had backed out with a health issue they asked
00:46:04.160
did I have any way of getting hold of them because he wasn't responding to calls
00:46:07.180
and my view was well firstly I'll find out what's going on with that guy get you an answer but
00:46:12.680
secondly I'll help you find a speaker in 10 days that can be able to deliver and whether you can
00:46:17.080
refund get fees back or whether this person will just show up and do a great job for you for another
00:46:20.620
like we'll get that done so your event doesn't get risked and who did i put into the event mel mel
00:46:26.440
went in she crushed it feedback was amazing audience of 1500 people just met a book of which
00:46:31.740
the royalties are mine what did i do in that book mel wanted this book to exist for her speaking
00:46:36.660
training consulting business new piece of credibility she gets all of that she can build
00:46:41.520
online courses off the back of it she can do anything she wants that way around book royalty
0.52
00:46:45.700
is mine i paid her an upfront fee to write the book you essentially publicly you became the
00:46:50.220
publisher correct i mean this is again back to music i mean this is g unit with m&m that's right
00:46:55.280
or 50 this is this is crazy all the clues are there though right yeah you're not i'm not really
00:47:00.080
inventing anything you're literally saying this pattern exists how do we execute it correct and
00:47:04.560
and and the greatest marketing minds to me from an inspirational point of view are people like
00:47:11.000
ed sheeran the musician and and i've had the joy of being able to watch his career from a you know
00:47:16.360
busker in the uk to what he's become today and two things he's done remarkably well one is data
00:47:24.640
collection and i was at a pub in birmingham i know 15 years ago the dude was singing when he was
00:47:32.920
nobody the lights went out in the pub power went out in the park collecting he pulled a table into
00:47:38.540
the middle of the event and still played his guitar and still collected data from everybody
00:47:42.480
in the room when he was nobody then went on probably did another three four shows on the
00:47:47.560
same night not only that though is look what he's done from collabs he's no right to be respected
00:47:54.780
by the rap world but he is has no right to be respected by the oh it's true the classical music
00:48:00.640
yeah he's got the largest line dancing song in history is ed sheeran got no right to be in any
0.98
00:48:06.640
of those marketplaces but he's done it through collabs by saying two plus two can equal five
00:48:10.700
this is crazy i hope everybody that's an author a speaker right now is going like i've got to
00:48:19.460
level up my game because literally like i actually because i've had friends in the speaking space
00:48:24.880
that when i looked at their world in their business i was like that doesn't look fun
00:48:28.900
you're on a plane 250 days a year you have no continuity you have no back end i was like i
00:48:35.460
don't want that but that's their version of it not yours i've also studied the the so-called like
00:48:42.000
hero gurus who are 20 30 40 years ahead of where we are in the race and albeit many many quote
00:48:49.440
unquote success stories are out there there isn't a single version of anybody else's success story
00:48:54.620
that i can look at and go i want all of that because pieces but they look like trains you
00:48:59.960
can't get off of yeah is what it ends up looking like and i'm like i'm not sure if i want to ride
00:49:04.840
that train till i'm 60 70 80 and i don't want my whole identity to be attached to that for the rest
00:49:10.980
of time so you have to build something bigger than yourself in order to be able to step away
00:49:17.120
from it and that's what we're trying to do right now with exactly what to say like who are people
00:49:20.960
that you see like i think of covey yeah right is there who else would you put in that that that
00:49:27.160
pool of people that have built things that have gone past just the individual well there's people
00:49:42.200
over the door on everything and they're still going to touch everything
00:49:48.260
I spent a week with him and we're having dinner
00:49:50.380
and I said what's the most important thing in business
00:50:00.100
because clearly is but it's almost it's interesting the way he replied he's just like it's the brand
00:50:04.880
right and i was like but what else and he's like no it's the brand and i was too young i was like
00:50:11.240
in my mid-30s i was just like i didn't get how he literally he's like it's the brand it's the
00:50:16.100
brand is the brand because and then you see what mr beast is doing now yeah like he'll be a hundred
00:50:19.760
billionaire like i i see it like with beast bars my kids are literally i want these anyways but
00:50:28.280
People have to be able to assign themselves to that brand.
00:50:34.120
But if you look at brands, this is where I was listening to a podcast this morning about, you know, Nike and LeBron.
00:50:41.280
It's like to do what you're saying is now I do collabs with people that assign themselves to the brand.
00:50:46.840
So if you own a word, you don't even have to be the face of the brand.
00:50:50.460
You partner with the face of the brand that supports the brand.
00:50:53.380
And the more you do that, the more it has longevity.
00:50:57.280
Correct. And, you know, I see this being a long term race and my tombstone, if it reads like loving husband, proud father and author of exactly what to say, I'm good with that.
00:51:09.960
That's cool. Phil, I love it, man. I really appreciate you. Super inspiring.
00:51:14.820
And I know a lot of people that follow me, the speakers, the coaches, the authors, the experts, they're they're going to have some work to do now.
00:51:23.760
Where's the best place for people to go? I'm assuming your website.