Dave Braun
00:00:02
Hey, everybody. Welcome to the HireMyVA Team and Business Building Podcast brought to you by Yoogozi.com. And in this podcast in HireMyVA, we help you to reclaim your freedom through hiring and thriving with virtual assistants without breaking the bank, which is your bank. And I’m Dave Braun, I’m here with my partner, my fantastic business mentor and coach and great friend, Larry Broughton. Larry, how are you?
Larry Broughton
00:00:30
I am awesome handsome Dave. How are you today?
Dave Braun
00:00:34
Good. I’m fresh off of a new hair cut.
Larry Broughton
00:00:36
I saw that I was going to mention that when you, when we logged on here, you look very Purdy.
Dave Braun
00:00:42
I lost weight that way.
Larry Broughton
00:00:44
Yeah. Yeah. I know. I need to do something about that, but I need to lose weight on my gut, man. I’m putting on poundage, it’s disgusting. Hey, Dave, thanks for doing life with me man.
Dave Braun
00:00:56
Yeah. You’re welcome. Here we go!
Larry Broughton
00:00:57
Just thinking about this last night, I threw my gratitude journal because I’ve gone back to actually writing it out. I got in the habit of a one for awhile there where I was just listing it in my head as I was getting ready for bed and washing my face and all that kind of stuff, dim the lights a little bit and not do screen time, have decent music on as I’m like sleepy time music, trying to get my brain to rest. And I used to just, I’m not used to, but I got in the habit of just not writing them out, but instead just listing them. So a couple of days ago, I started to writing it out again. Yeah. You and our other brothers that we meet with every week, wherever, you know, right at the top, you know, along with my kids. So thanks for doing life with me, I’m looking forward to tomorrow night, getting together with you and our couple of guys and it was sure was fun last week, right?
Dave Braun
00:01:46
I know we’re going to have tonight for dinner? I mean tomorrow night. We’re we’re kind of fresh out of new ideas after almost a fricking year, but ah, Nachos!
Larry Broughton
00:01:58
Okay. I’ll take it. Yes. Yeah, yeah. For those who don’t know, this is the one night a week where I’m not eating out of a box bag or can. The bachelor that I am standing over my sink, It’s the one meal.
Dave Braun
00:02:16
Alright, are you ready for a topic? And it’s how to eat out of a box bag or can.
Larry Broughton
00:02:24
All right.
Dave Braun
00:02:25
So the question is, is how do I expand my influence? And we know how important that is, right? Is expanding your influence because right, the idea that you teach is drawing people to you and not having you go out.
Larry Broughton
00:02:41
Yeah. I see where you’re going with this. Yeah. You know the interesting thing, Dave, just recently, like we’re recording this in November of 2020, and I forget how long I’ve been teaching this, but there’s a concept that I call setting out the honeypot, Dave, you know? And so like, Larry, what hell are you talking about? I said, you’re not the honeypot. The example I use is this: If I tell you Dave, I want you to go out and catch three raccoons, two possum, two dozen bees, 50 ants, go, go do it. It’s going to take you a while to do that. Right. You got to go out and catch them onesie, twosies. Right? But if you’re smart about this, you can go, you put a big old jar of honey out in your backyard. And in short order, you’re going to attract all kinds of critters.
Larry Broughton
00:03:31
That’s right, right. Local dogs and cats and deer and all kinds of stuff. We’re going to be coming to your backyard, looking and trying to get inside that honeypot. The point is that you get people attracted to you, pretend you are the honey pot. Right. You know, there’s a, there’s an adage out there that says they it’s not what you know, it’s who you know. Right? And I kind of put another spin on that. I don’t think that’s necessarily the case. I don’t think it’s not who you know. I know a lot of people who knows you, who knows that you’re alive, who knows about your talents, who knows about your successes, who knows about the services that you’re offering. Right? So once you get people to know who you are and become very attractive, right? Then you become the honeypot. People are coming to you and that’s what this webinar teaches. It talks about, you know, how do you expand your influence? How do you attract attention to you and your business? How do you reach more clients? How do you find more investors? How do you build your personal brand? All those things are included in this. So setting out the honeypot, a webinar that we did, and I forget how long has it. It’s pretty long. I think it’s almost two hours, isn’t it?
Dave Braun
00:04:46
Yeah. That’s a couple of hours. Yeah. You really expanded on it. I know you’ve had this and we’ve had this for a while, but you rerecorded it. You added a whole bunch of fresh new content in there and that’s really important stuff. But the really good news is for everybody listening, it is free for you. All you have to do is go to Yoogozi.com/honey. Just type that in- Yoogozi.com/honey, and you will be able to register and grab it right there. And it includes an action guide, something for you to fill in and follow along because, and we do it that way because that way you’re listening and watching and writing down. So you’re doing all kinds of kinetic work. If you’re an audio learner or if you’re a visual learner, we try to touch all of those kinds of points so that you really understand. And as part of the action guide too, it helps you to create a plan of what you’re going to do next.
Larry Broughton
00:05:43
Well, Dave, I think that’s one of the things that does differentiate, what we do from a lot of the success mentors that are out there is we really look at the data and the studies and surveys that have been done. And how do people best receive information, right? Yeah. Everybody knows you should be writing down, you know, have a list of goals. But you know, something happens when you actually put pen to paper, not sitting at a keyboard, studies have been done on this, right? Something about when you hand write out your goals, they become, you’re more likely to actually accomplish them when you write them in the right way. And obviously during, through both the Hire My VA program and the Victory Masterclasses that we teach, we help people how to write their goals. But you know, there are a few things here, maybe a few tips that we included.
Dave Braun
00:06:32
Let’s go to those really quick. Now, now, Larry, when you’re in talking to talk about it, you got to be short because I mean, like you said, this webinar’s pretty long. There’s a lot of details.
Larry Broughton
00:06:40
Yeah, let’s just give three or four tips. Perfect, perfect. Three or four, and I’m going to expand on them because I’m going to encourage you folks to go listen to this. And I think several years ago I was asked in one of the TV or radio interviews. I think it might’ve been actually a podcast review. Now that I think about it, somebody had asked me, what is the biggest mistake you’ve made in business, right? That’s a classic mistake or classic question you hear? What’s the biggest mistake he ever made? I think I kind of surprised the person when I said, I wished that I would’ve started building my personal brand sooner. Yeah. People start a business, Dave. And what do they immediately do? Well, obviously you build your company website, right?
Dave Braun
00:07:22
You pour all your efforts into the company, it has everything you have.
Larry Broughton
00:07:26
All right. But let’s just look at this for instance, most businesses, we all know fail within the first couple of years. And a lot more fail within the couple of years after that. So if we know that the survivability rate is pretty small of your business and you take every ounce of energy, you have building the profile of your business and then that business goes away, what do you have left after that? Besides experience, which is important, you might have to leave your contacts. If people don’t know who you are, then a lot of that energy was for not. So I believe, and this is what we teach a lot of our coach, our clients right now, our mentees and coaching clients is to build your personal brand at the same time. What does it mean that you get distracted from building your business, but part of your business ought to be your personal brand. So build your personal brand. And we get into a little bit more detail in the webinar.
Dave Braun
00:08:23
And one of the things you just said is say, the company goes belly up, but what if the company is successful and you sell it?
Larry Broughton
00:08:30
That’s right. That’s one of the things we do talk about in the webinar. People may not even know that you’re the one who built that amazing company.
Dave Braun
00:08:36
So you’re almost starting from scratch again.
Larry Broughton
00:08:39
You know, who did a good job of this is Tony Hseih – Zappos, right? So he was even, he was the CEO of it. Okay. He wasn’t the founder of Zappos. So a lot of people don’t even know that he was so good at building his brand. Right. The people didn’t even know who he was.
Dave Braun
00:08:59
I didn’t know that. From there you go, Dave, I learned something new today.
Larry Broughton
00:09:03
Hang with me, Dave. And you might learn something.
Dave Braun
00:09:06
Every now and then, you know, all right. I’ve learned that one thing from you for the month of November. I’m good.
Larry Broughton
00:09:15
So I think that is a key. It’s one of the keys that we talk about. You have one that comes to mind that we talked about.
Dave Braun
00:09:22
Well, I know one of the things that has been helpful for me so far is investing time into a wisdom journal.
Larry Broughton
00:09:32
Funny. You should say that.
Dave Braun
00:09:33
Here, we both got them.
Larry Broughton
00:09:35
There you go. Yeah. That’s how valuable they are. In fact, there are a couple of coaches of our coaching clients who will order a dozen of these at a time. Right? And they make that they are corporate leaders or leadership team carry these with them. Alright, Dave, So what’s a wisdom journal?
Dave Braun
00:09:49
So a wisdom journal is just something that fits in your pocket. That is, let me, it’s just a few pages, but the idea is that you carry it with you wherever you go. And whenever you notice something that is different, because wisdom comes from everybody and all around us, if you notice something, you just make a jot in your wisdom journal, or you make a little drawing because if you don’t write it down that thought’s going to be fleeting and it’s going to be gone. Yeah. So this is just a really nice and you know, you can do this with your phone. Of course, if you want the nice thing about doing it in a print journal like this is that you can make a quick little drawing of something that you see. Oh, and I mean, I’ve got ones. I, I date things. It’s like, oh my gosh, those were great things that I learned. And I’ve always got them captured.
Larry Broughton
01:10:43
Yeah. And then keep these, like, I’ve got a box full of used ones of these and from time to time and go back and just go through them. There’s a great ideas. One of the things that we believe, Dave, I just want to share with everyone is that there’s opportunities to learn in every interaction that you have, whether it’s the barista to your local coffee shop, or it’s your Lyft or Uber driver, someone you meet in the waiting area at an airport, there are golden nuggets out there everywhere you learn everywhere you go, every conversation you have and just get in the habit of writing those down, I think is really good. The last thing I might want to leave with people besides the building, the personal brand and website and the wisdom journal, Dave, is that, and this is a weird one.
Larry Broughton
01:11:27
For some, for some people, it was weird for me in the beginning, but I realized that we need to have credibility. If people are going to follow us, if people are going to be attracted to us, we have to have a sense of credibility and there’s nothing more powerful than the third hand credibility. I mean, I could go out all day long and say, I’m awesome. But if other people aren’t saying I’m awesome, it rings a little hollow, right? So I’m a bit, I’m a believer that now we ought to be seeking accolades and awards. And I’m not talking about the kind that you pay for. There are a lot of those crappy things out there and I see right through them. So I go to somebody’s website and I see all these, and I’m going to use the word intentionally stupid awards that you’ve paid for.
Larry Broughton
01:12:10
That’s not really an award. And if it’s paid for, like, I went under, I paid to be on this person’s show. I’m sorry. I see. This is me. I see through it. Okay. I’m talking legitimate awards. Okay. And are plenty of those out there. Don’t be afraid to apply for some of these awards or have your PR person or your executive assistant apply on your behalf. Right? The great thing about a lot of awards, whether it’s Ernst and Young’s Entrepreneur of the Year award, or it’s the Vetrepreneur of the Year award or Passkey Foundations or Local Chambers of Commerce Awards Business of the Year, those types of things, those are all legitimate awards. And whenever those things go out, even during the nomination process, there’s press that goes out and says, Hey, Pro Website Creators, So let’s say that the Irvine Chamber of Commerce is doing a social impact award and somebody nominates Pro Website Creators, Dave, your company.
Larry Broughton
01:13:13
Well guess what? A press release goes out to all the area, newspapers that lists the nominees. And if it’s one of those things where then there’s a list of finalists, another press release goes out. The Pro Website Creators is among the top three, there they’re now finalists for this thing. And then when the awards thing happens, Dave, all the sudden you win, you’re up on stage, people are taking pictures that conductor social media, then there’s a up article written about Pro Website Creators doing great things in the community, right. And then one award leads to other awards, right? And so I can tell you, like now when we apply for an award and we say, Hey, here’s our past credentials. They say, oh my gosh, these people have been vetted already. Right? One of the things that we talk about all the time, Dave, is that people want to be on winning teams, right?
Larry Broughton
01:14:00
And so if all of a sudden there’s all this credibility articles written on the company and the profiles of the the principals, you’re getting awards and recognitions throughout the, you know, through the industry, through business. And frankly, even accolades from your state senators, local Congress people, you know, so let’s say for instance, Dave, your business has been around for 10 years. You can contact or have your assistant contact your local Congress person’s office and say, Hey, this company turns 10 years old, which is a big deal on business, Folks. You can get a citation from Congress. It says, congratulations signed by your Congress person. Really? And that goes, that could be hung in your office someplace. And it can go on part of your, I love me wall that’s in your honor. So that at night when you’re by yourself and no one else is around and you’re feeling sorry for yourself, you can go to your I love me wall and look at the articles and look at the awards that you’ve received.
Larry Broughton
01:14:55
So that at some point in time, someone has recognized you for a job well done. That’s for you for your team members. When they see these things, it’s like, yeah, I’m on this winning team for new clients or new investors that come in. They say, oh my gosh, they’ve been recognized. There’s a lot of good value from seeking awards and accolades. But listen, if you need to pay for them, fine, fine. If that’s what you need to do fine. I recommend you don’t do it because people who know, Knows. I think it undermines your credibility personally.
Dave Braun
01:15:26
Yeah. And I think the best approach is if you’re going to seek the awards and accolades legitimate, yeah. Make it legitimate. And that will make you a better company or a better person or whatever. Right. Look and see what their requirements are and say, okay, I’m going to win that award in next year or the year after that and strive towards it. I mean, that’s one thing I thought of the other thing is if you go back, you know, you’ve talked about the, I love me wall before, but you go to any kind of a sports arena where the teams won championships. What do they do? They put banners up of the year that they won the championship. And they also will put jerseys up of those people who have been their number retired. They’re paying up their award. So why do they do that? It’s the reason that you’re talking about. Yeah. All right. To show how good we are to remind ourselves that we are champions and we have to do that constantly to ourselves. And we also need to be proactive and do it with our clients or a potential client. Right. And it’s not about bragging, right? It’s it’s not it’s about saying, Hey, we are, we are champions. We are great at what we do. And you should use us because we are serving our clients Great and amazing.
Larry Broughton
01:16:42
Well, I’m so glad you said this day, because when you expand your influence in today’s social media world, if you have flaws, if you are screwing over your clients, if you’re bringing a crappy product to market, people are going to talk about it. So this will make you a better business person. It will make you a better business because you’re going to have to improve because you will be under the microscope a lot more. So I’m just gonna encourage people. If you want to expand your influence and take advantage of this, setting out the honeypot webinar, and you can find that by going to Yoogozi.com/honey, it’s a free download for you. And there’s an action guide in there as well. So do it!
Dave Braun
01:17:27
Do it, do it!
Larry Broughton
01:17:29
And if you’ve got ideas on how to expand your influence, I’d love to hear from you because what we’ll do version three of this, at some point, we can include your ideas in there if we think that they’re great ideas and, but you know, you know how to do this, right? Just go to the comment section of wherever you’re listening or watching this thing and tell us, you know, give us some ideas or send us a DM if you’re you’re that type of person as well. But the community is one of the most important parts of the HireMyVA and the Victory Masterclass.
Dave Braun
01:18:00
Okay, great. Great. Okay. Good. All right. Well, the last reminder is, make sure you go to Yoogozi.com/honey, and pick that up. We want you guys to do that and take advantage of it. So thank you everybody for joining us today. Remember building a team is the way to reclaim your freedom. And we’re of course, here to help you with our course and community, and our White Glove Service, where we help find a rockstar VA for you. Right? So three things we’d love for you to do right now and we’d really appreciate it. Number one, subscribe to this podcast, if you haven’t already done. So either on your iPhone or your Android phone or on YouTube hit the subscribe button and click on the little bell next to it. So you get reminders and then number two, give us a rating, preferably five-star. As Larry said, leave a comment below the video, ask a question.
Dave Braun
01:18:52
You know, let’s, let’s raise this up higher than the value of this podcast is great. We’ll get it out to more people if you guys do it for us. And then number three is go to Hiremyva.com for more information on course and community and our White Glove Service. Because remember even without experience, you learn how to prepare for hire and thrive with virtual assistants. Larry, we’re helping people. We’ve got a virtual spotlight session tomorrow, end of this week, we’ve got a Q and A session for those who are in our community that are just a blast. I learn a lot. You learn. It’s just fun to come together as a community. You guys want to be involved in that you really should. Tp find out more, go to Hiremyva.com. That’s it.
Larry Broughton
01:19:39
That’s right. So do yourselves a favor, do the world a favor, go do something significant today. God bless you. God keep you and God hold you. Alright my friends. Go get ’em. We’ll see you next time.
