Inside Rhonda Swan’s Live Interactive Branding Workshop

You used to close deals face to face. You’d read the room, adjust on the fly, and someone would say yes because they trusted you, not your slide deck. Then you moved your business online, and suddenly you’re a stranger typing at other strangers, and none of that instinct seems to transfer.

As someone who built rapport one conversation at a time and is now trying to do it through a screen, you already feel the gap Rhonda Swan is describing in this workshop. She hit that exact wall early in her career and spent years closing it, and this session is her walking a live room of students through the same fix in real time.

Why does a story work better online than any pitch ever could?

Rhonda’s starting premise is simple and easy to underestimate: people don’t choose what you sell, they choose why you do it. A stranger scrolling past your page has no context for your product, your compensation plan, or your credentials. What they can respond to instantly is a person who seems to have solved a problem they also have. That’s the entire mechanism behind pull marketing, and it’s why she opens the workshop by contrasting it with push marketing, the older style of getting in front of people and hoping repetition eventually wears them down into saying yes.

She backs this with real numbers on why story and visuals outperform plain pitching: 93 percent of the most engaging posts on Facebook are photos, blog posts built around a visual format see 180 percent higher engagement, and a viewer can process an image in under a tenth of a second, far faster than they can read a paragraph of text. The brain is simply wired to respond to story and image before it responds to argument.

People will remember a story 82% more, that connects them emotionally.

That statistic is the whole case for why she has every student in the room building a story instead of a features list.

What exactly should you say first when you tell your own story?

This is where the workshop gets genuinely tactical instead of just inspirational. Rhonda has watched enough students attempt this to know the common mistake: people start their story from childhood, working through every hardship in chronological order before they ever get to the point. Her fix is a specific structure: who you are, where you were, the vulnerability and pain point that defined that period, what you were looking for, what you actually found, and then a clear call to action. The story doesn’t start with your whole life. It starts at the breaking point, the specific moment you decided something had to change, because that’s the part a stranger can actually recognize in their own life.

For Rhonda, that moment was watching a woman drop her daughter at daycare on the way to a corporate job, the same life Rhonda herself was living at the time. She didn’t need forty minutes of backstory to make that land. She needed one image.

How different can one workshop’s students actually be from each other?

The most convincing part of this session isn’t Rhonda’s own story, it’s watching four completely different students apply the same structure and end up nowhere near each other. Nathan built his identity around being a lifestylepreneur for surfers and travelers his own age. Sarita built hers around helping struggling mothers find abundance through law of attraction, after finding Rhonda’s videos during a period she describes as financially and emotionally difficult. The Ventos built theirs around a near miss on a doomed flight, a marriage that nearly ended, and a shared dream of relocating to Thailand. Tiffany and Bernie built an entire dog training business around a simple, oddly specific niche: people who travel with their dogs and refuse to treat them like accessories.

None of these four brands could be swapped with each other and still work. That’s the actual proof of the method: a real story, told specifically, produces a business no competitor can copy, because no competitor lived it.

What is a personal brand actually built from, if not a logo?

Rhonda is blunt about this distinction throughout the workshop. As she puts it, “the personal brand is really what people say about you when you leave the room”. Not the color scheme on your page. Not the tagline. The impression that lingers after someone finishes watching your video or reading your post, and whether they feel like they know you a little better than they did five minutes earlier.

That’s also why she pushes every student toward blogging with a defined reader in mind rather than a defined topic. As she puts it, “We blog for someone, not about something.” Write for the specific person you already identified, and the topic takes care of itself.

• Start your story at the breaking point, not at childhood.
• Lead with an image or a moment before you explain the lesson behind it.
• Write every post for one specific person, not a general topic.
• Let your story, not your product, be the thing a stranger actually remembers.

Create your free account to watch Rhonda work through this live with her own students, including the parts where she stops each of them mid-story to sharpen exactly what they’re saying and why. Download the audio and revisit your own story structure as many times as it takes to get it right. Start at empowernetwork.com/watch.

The full session transcript follows below.

Transcript

So, what we're going to do now, guys, is we're going to now engage in an interactive branding workshop. How many of you guys have taken my branding workshop? Yeah, the live one, right? Yeah, we've had most, many have taken the live.

Some of you guys have listened to the recordings. Well, we are, the branding workshop, I started this a couple years ago, because what I found is that when I got started in this industry, I had to find a way to bridge the gap from me being one-on-one salesperson, being able to connect with someone, and not being able to see them one-on-one. How was I going to stand out in this massive sea of marketers, right? And so, I immediately realized that learning to create not only a brand, but really something that just allows me to stand out and connect with my audience was what was going to help me build my business.

Now, I'll be very upfront. I am not a massive, crazy traffic guru, right? We've got Jabril who does amazing things to help us develop lots more traffic. I didn't have Jabril working for me 10 years ago.

All I did is focus on developing how I was going to stand out and why I would be irresistible, why our family would be irresistible to someone, and why they would choose us to work with, right? And so, we started to really figure out ways that we can be more attractive and stand out. And the number one thing I did was, the number one way that I have really developed and how people start to connect with you is because they connect with your why, right? People don't buy really what we sell.

They buy why we do it. They buy truly why we do it. Because they can relate to the problems that you have to their problems. And when you can connect to someone and bridge the gap from you just becoming someone that they can buy something from to someone who can buy something from you, someone they go oh I'm really connected to that person and I'd rather buy from Vashon than I would from Nick think about that right there's a lot of cold marketing strategies that we can do and they all work more eyeballs more traffic certainly more sales but what we do differently as a tribe and why there's so many people that have very strongly developed images brands their stories are so tight and why their results are so strong it's because they got this one key element and that is really understanding how they can take themselves and step out of the crowd and many of you guys know our story right you've heard our story how many of you guys worked directly with Brian and I and you decided to work with us because you heard our story right over a third of the people here because you're heard our story and when I share my story I have a very strong core message I talk about all the time right it was the breaking point that I had of when I saw a woman put in her daughter in daycare and she was going to a corporate job each day right that was me and I saw this woman putting her child in daycare and I said there's no more this is never this is not going to be my life so we share this story we share this vision and the why we and why we do what we do to start connecting to our audience and a third of you guys here were connected to those exactly future ideas for what our life is problems that we had right our exact story and so what I want to do right now guys is really share with you the power of storytelling right and the power of creating a strong brand so I'm gonna do is I'm gonna roll this film because the power of storytelling and connection to people's emotions right whether it's you face to face or it's just a simple video that Google put together and the I think was 2010 Super Bowl it told a very simple story and it was the most highly viewed video highly viewed commercial in all the Super Bowl and there was a reason why because they learned the art of storytelling and started to connect just something as simple as searching on Google to a story inside right right so did you see how just something so simple made us laugh it connected with our humor and it connected us to the story I mean what all right so what was that what what was the the main theme of this story to kind of get it but it was really if you if you watch the progression this guy was he was he met a girl in Paris he started finding how do I speak French how do we interact with it right it's the power of of connection and of course google's brilliant right because they utilize the power of storytelling to connect everyone if you notice all big brands tell stories right we went from that old-school brand of storytelling to the beautiful brands that we talked about and we went to the big brands that we talked about and we went from that old school brand of form of marketing which was which I call push marketing right which is I get in front of you hey look what I've got look I've got you know maybe you want it I'm not sure but I'm gonna keep it in your face because maybe one day you'll buy it that's push marketing pull marketing is like wow because amazing lifestyle I live my life is amazing I'm with my daughter every day I'm right that's pull market where someone's like why are they like that why did they have that life that I don't have right so the value of the Internet is allows us to really powerfully tell our story right blogging allows us to start telling our story and connecting with more people so the the moment that we really identify that how powerful our story is is when our brands begin to filter up right it's not really a brand it's not a brand about logos right I have a video I'm going to show you guys it's about you it's about how you're going to connect with your audience and I did a little research on this pretty cool so statistics on visual storytelling Jabril's really popular so of course we're going to talk a little bit more about that but as you powerful, and Jabril and Justin's training for our Facebook PPC marketing that you guys are going to start on tomorrow, they really dig in deeply about the power of your story, right?

Connecting with people on Facebook when you're writing your ads, when you're shooting a video, sharing your story so that you are solving problems for people and they're connecting with you. Statistics for visual storytelling is 93% of the most engaging posts on Facebook. 93% are photos, right? So we're using photos to connect with people on Facebook.

We are big with more marketing, storytelling marketing, right? So we have to connect with people so that they feel connected to us and 93% of the people on photos are the highest engaging posts. Blog posts, blog posts with visual story format, 180% higher engagement. Your blog posts, right?

You want to create a visual with your blog posts. Certainly when we blog, we use keywords, but when you have a visual, that's why when we're utilizing slides, we're not just always typing everything that we're sharing. We're just using a visual. We're not just always typing everything that we're sharing.

We're just using a visual. So that allows you guys to connect with what we're up to, what we're doing. Almost half your brain is involved in the visual processing, right? So we're using more brain.

When we're telling someone a story, we're connecting with them, right? When I start sharing with people my story of never wanting to put my child in daycare, I start connecting with women's emotions, right? They're connecting with their emotions. And so they go from not even knowing who we are at all to watching a video that we have.

They're like, wow, I just, I already feel like I know them. I already feel like I want to be part of that. And that, what that does is start creating questions for people to start saying, what is it that you have? Why do you have what I don't have?

So we use powerfully our brain when we are sharing stories with people. It's not just, you know, put a post up and put an ad up and hope someone clicks on it. It's let's connect and target. So tomorrow we're going to be really deeply sharing you guys how to take that story and really target through keywords and find the people that have the same problems as you.

People will remember a story 82% more, that connects them emotionally. So we always want to use a vulnerability piece, right? When we have a storytelling outline that when you are sharing your story, it's not just like, oh, my life is amazing, right? There's, there's, there's downfalls, there's pitfalls, there's problems that we all have that people want to solve.

So we always want to make sure that we're connecting to the emotional connection. And then one can interpret a visual in less than a 10th of a second. So people, more people are able to connect with a visual immediately than if they were to just be reading, right? So we want to use visual.

We want to use video and use storytelling. All right. So with our story structure, they're always going to be the same, right? We have this really similar story structure.

Who am, who am I, where I was, you want to use vulnerability and pain points and problems, what I was looking for and what I found. And of course we use a call to action, whether it's on a Facebook post and we click them, we have them clicking onto a link or it's a video post where we're bringing over to one of our lead capture pages. Now I was mentioning push versus pull. So the difference in push versus pull is that you're not going to be able to do it all at once.

There's a difference in push versus pull. And I'm going to give you guys some examples. And then we're going to do some interaction so that you can now actually see their brands and how they've developed them. So you can start identifying the differences.

There's nothing, not one is better than the other, than the other, but we use more of a pool marketing strategy in our team. Certainly there's a lot of, of, of push strategy that you can use a lot of more traffic gathering that we can use. But pool marketing is really, I think why most of you guys are here, right? Because you not only saw something that we shared, you connected with it, but it's more, it's a lot less expensive, right?

Um, content it's based on content, blogging, social media, social sharing, right? YouTube, all the things you guys are going to learn this week, more connection pieces, whereas push, we're getting just more in front of people. You're paying, you're paying to be in front of them and hoping they'll click on it. Right.

But we use pool marketing to really attract people into our story and to really connect with us more. All right. All right. So let's, so let's dig into the belief of a brand, right?

And what really, what a brand is and why we, um, start developing our story to really start building up who we are because the personal brand is really what people say about you when you leave the room, right? It's not what people say when they, when they first meet you, it's like when they leave, you make an impact, right? So on Facebook, when we're marketing on Facebook, when we're blogging or sharing videos, it's when people really, they connect with you. So it's when they get done with a video, are they engaged?

Do they want to do, do they want to stay in connection with you? Now we're going to start teaching. We're going to start sending them emails. All right.

Is what we have to do. Is it with them? Right? So I just love this because it's really what people say about you when you really leave.

All right. So this is what I'm going to do. I'm going to show, I'm going to go through, um, this branding video, and then we're going to start interacting with our group. So you guys can really see how they've developed themselves and how their brands have come out so that you guys can start developing your story.

All right. So that's good. So do you see how I, what I love the most is brands. You can make them and you can unmake them.

Do you see all that? Do you see how you feel that? Right? So our, our values, our values, our values, our values, our values, our, the way that we put ourselves out in front of our customers, we have to be really aware of how we're sharing, what we're doing.

Facebook is the most social place. Everyone, you are so exposed in Facebook. So when we start to really share who we are, it really starts to develop and comes out to our audience. So what we're going to do right now is we're going to have some of our, of our leaders come up and they're going to just go through what their core messages, their three core customers are and what their niches are.

So you guys can actually start their base and how their brands and really how they started to develop. Yeah. You guys ready? Okay.

So Nathan, you want to come on up? Okay. All right. So Nathan has done like a really powerful job at really bringing out his brand.

He's going to share with you how he started to, to establish himself. And it was really powerful how Nathan, let me pull you up, Nathan. And Nathan, let me ask you this. Did it?

Yeah, I got your page. So when you first came out, were you automatically the, this lifestyle preneur, this guy, that just knew exactly who he was going to be and how his story was going to roll out? I was, I was plumbing full time and I just had a desire to travel. So I knew exactly what I wanted.

I didn't want to, I wanted to find a way to be able to travel full time and work or make money somehow on the road, but I wanted location flexibility. That's all I wanted. So that's when I came up with the idea of lifestyle preneur because I was willing to work for it. And when I started, digging into Rhonda's branding workshop and doing everything she told me, that's kind of, that's what I was all about.

I wanted to travel. I wanted to be able to surf. I wanted to be able to do what I want, but because I was running a business behind this, I had to become an entrepreneur. So that's when I came up with lifestyle preneur and it didn't take me long to figure out really who my target audience and who my customer was.

And I figured out then I wanted to target and work with people that are just like me. So I broke down my three core customers. And basically my message is I wanted to show people and prove to people that it is possible to live a life, a different kind of life, to live a life where you can travel and basically do what it is that you're passionate about and basically make all your dreams come true. Right.

I know it sounds pretty crazy out there idea, but it can happen. And that's what my message was to be able to show that you can live a flexible lifestyle and work from anywhere. in the world now my three core customers and I definitely got really targeted after Miami and that's when things really exploded for me because we started exactly what you guys are going to be doing over the next few days so I hope you're excited but you get really targeted on who your customers were and my one is like plumbers I was a plumber full-time so I would my first customer would be a plumber between the ages of say 23 and 24 or 23 at the time so I got really targeted a 23 year old plumber just like me who might either be working as a plumber an electrician or a builder or a tradesman that had a desire to travel but couldn't figure out how they work for long periods of time to take cool vacations but they don't exactly have the flexibility that they want they work like 45 to 60 hours a week exactly like I know that this person was me obviously it was me what I was doing you know working full-time and wanting to travel so that that is customer number one you know working full-time and wanting to travel so that that is customer number one and obviously through ads and things which you'll be learning about I could target that exact customer now my second one as a traveler someone who loves traveling they are connected to you know they know all about backpacking they would just want to pack their life up into a little backpack travel all around the world doesn't matter how they do it doesn't matter how much money whether they're sleeping on couches or wherever you know just they want to travel they want to see the world they want to do different things and basically exploration is like the biggest passion that is this that was my second customer and my third one is surfers because I love surfing it's my biggest passion or between that and traveling and so I would target surfers you know people that you know had the same like like the same surfers I like they follow the world tour around they check the surf reports every day like Brian does six times a day like Brian does you know just just I got so you know teenagers that are my or people that are my am I a teenager now what age do you stop becoming a teenager I don't know I'm still a teenager in my own mind no so it's like people that like you know 23 25 year old mid mid 20s you know males that like surfing and I have a lot of friends like that you know I've got heaps of friends that they would save up work all year and sometimes do like a one month trip to Indo to go surf in Bali for a month or two while that is cool and I you know I'd done that I want to do more of it because you go back to work and you've got like another six months ahead of yourself and everyone you know I have a lot of mates that are just like I want to do more of it because you go back to work and you've got like another six months ahead of yourself and everyone you know I have a lot of mates that are just like I want to do more of it because you go back to work and you've got like another six months ahead of yourself and everyone you know I have a lot of mates that are just like I want to do more of it because you go back to work and you've got like another six months ahead of yourself and they go through that same cycle they go on a trip you know big bunch of mates it's great but then you go back and you're like I just used my lever and I don't have the time to you know I have to wait at least six months before I'm gonna have enough to take another week off so that was like my third customer see did you see how what made Nathan Nathan completely unique Nathan was not like me he's not he doesn't target corporate executive women that have children that don't want to go to daycare Nathan targets Nathan's guys right do you see how when we start to just really identify who are we going to target who do you really want to connect with it was one of the easiest ways when I actually started building my business I just started sharing I found that exact one woman that I started targeting and now we target families that travel Brian target surfers see when you really identify that then you guys everything that you do in your day to day is gonna all be congruent with your brand so what we look at to start with is we look at what are our core values so it makes us more unique right we all have a certain core value so it makes us more unique right we all have a certain core value right so family travel freedom helping people honesty transparency like these are our core values when you start writing out what your core values are then you begin to really identify with who you want to work with right I don't necessarily want to work with rock and roll stars that are like you know out smashing you know chairs all the time right there's the we all have different type of values I target values of family I target different people that I can connect with so when I do my videos then I'm talking to that specific person right opposed to just like look what I'm doing I'm talking to this specific person right opposed to just like look what I'm doing I'm talking to this specific person look what I've got so broad it's I'm talking specifically to that woman that's look what I've got so broad it's I'm talking specifically to that woman that's taking her child to daycare I see her in the eye do you see how you start to when taking her child to daycare I see her in the eye do you see how you start to when you start identifying who that core customer is then everything that you you start identifying who that core customer is then everything that you share your blogging your videos everything you do connects with them and share your blogging your videos everything you do connects with them and then of course you do look into her passions so now I'm gonna have Sarita then of course you do look into her passions so now I'm gonna have Sarita come up because Sarita is completely different than Nathan she's completely unique in a whole different way than Nathan.

And she just started building her story, right? And as Sarita built her story, I remember her calling us. It's really cool because Sarita started actually in February. And we had just gotten to Panama and Sarita says, okay, I'm ready.

I'm going all in. And she's like, I got these two kids. I want to be home. I'm like, okay.

So that's how we connected, right? And you slowly saw Sarita just developing, developing. She started learning how to tell her story. See, we always have one.

We just don't know how to share it. We don't know how to put it into our passions and really start caring about it. And Sarita's slowly developed and all of a sudden she's crushing it, right? How many, how many all-in sales did you have this week?

Last week, three. All right. So first of all, thank you so much for having me speak. But yeah, Rhonda is a huge role model for me.

And I mean, you know, I got, I found her while, I think I was on YouTube and I saw one of your videos and I was like, oh my gosh, I'm so excited. And I was like, I was just so inspired because I was in a bad place emotionally, financially. And I love being a mom, but I just hated struggling, you know, paying our bills and being stressed and fighting with my partner. And so when I saw Rhonda, I was like, I'm going to do this.

And I, I just, you know, I, I just jumped in. My partner didn't know about it. I just put it on the credit card and I, you know, I was like, can't get any worse. I'm just going to do this.

Do you remember what you're searching for? Do you remember? I think I was just, I don't know. I really, I just was looking for something inspiring, I guess.

And because I love traveling as well. And I hadn't been traveling when I saw you and, you know, she's so powerful, you're so powerful and just love the idea of traveling with my kids. So, you know, we are thinking of living in Bali part-time now starting from next year, you know? Yeah.

But yeah, so when, when I did your branding workshop, that's when I started looking at, yeah, what kind of pages, Facebook pages I wanted to create. So I've got Unstoppable Jedi Mompreneurs, one of my pages. And I was a bit cheeky there. Because, you know, when I started, I just like, I didn't have any results yet.

And I just took on those names. But, you know, I just, I really felt, you know, the unstoppable, you know, I'm very, I'm very determined when I do want to do something, I want to do it and I'm going to, you know, easily get my way. And, you know, the Jedi part is, you know, the spiritual part and mompreneur. And I wanted to inspire other women like myself, you know, to be able to be powerful, you know, live their dreams, create a better life for themselves and their families, travel the world.

And this is actually my daughter and me on our Bali baby moon when I was pregnant with my boy. So that's why I love that image because it represents what I want, you know? I want to have more kids. So that's me pregnant there.

So one day… You know, it's just, that's part of my vision. And I think that's why it's really important. The images you share, like your cover pictures, really important.

And for me, this is something I want, and I'm creating that again. So, yeah, so I just took the branding workshop and I just… Who are your, who are the three main targets? Okay.

You may not have three, not all of us have three, we should pick three because it usually can kind of span who we are. Yeah. So one, obviously, mums, you know, from, you know, if they're stay-at-home mums or if they're working mums, because I think many mums just work, but they don't really want to be working, they have to. And so that's why, you know, I want to inspire mums who are working to stop working and be with their kids and be at home with them.

Or mums who are not working are struggling like I was. So that's one. The other is, I've got abundance for life, quickly. There, you're starting to see, right, how when, Sarita is so, she's, she only focuses on these people.

And I remember when I first, you know, started in the industry, I just thought I could hit everyone, right? If I'm just want, people that want to make money. But that's really, when we, when we go so broad, we start to narrow in and Jabril and Justin really teach you guys how to really focus in. And same with John with YouTube videos.

I only did YouTube videos initially. I was just doing videos after videos after videos. But when you get so good at telling your story and being able to share exactly what those pain problems are that, you know, you're not going to be able to get a message from them, right? They're not going to be able to get the same feedback that one of the mom has.

That's how Sarita's starting to connect with them. And she's getting people exactly like her. Exactly like her. That's why we've got people like the Ventos are exactly like because they wanted to travel.

They wanted to do, right, Nathan? Same. So you start looking at it like, wow, when I really start to narrow in, get my story down and really start pushing out and pulling them in, right? We get, we get much more targeted.

Better leads, better people that really want to connect with us. And my core message for this one is, I mean, it's, I'm so excited about this. I'm so excited about this. I'm so excited for you.

I'm so excited. message for this one is, I mean, it's very similar like the other one, but it's more abundance for life is really my brand. I call myself the unstoppable Jedi Man Premier from abundance for life. Because I want to live an abundant life for life.

And I want it to be abundant in all areas of my life. Like I put here, here to serve, guide and empower others who share the same vision of creating abundance in all areas of our lives. So yeah, that's pretty much the core message is living an abundant life. And the audience is really law of attraction type audience, men and women.

So, and I've just posted a lot of things about, you know, the things that I, I've always been into self-development, law of attraction. So that's kind of what I post and then 20% I promote, you know, like we learned through the PPC and Justin's training. And I guess there's a third niche, which is the traveling, because I do, you know, even in this, I put like, pictures of, you know, destinations that I want to go to, right, like on the vision board, what it goes. So, so it'd be travelers, mompreneurs, and then law of attraction niche that I'm targeting.

Yeah, yeah. Awesome. How many of you guys have your three core, thank you, Sarita. That's awesome.

Thank you for sharing. How many of you guys already have your three? Like you just know, you know, who your audience really is. How many of you guys have no idea?

Some? Maybe not, yeah. But this is, this is why we're bringing you guys together this way so you can really start working on what our, how can you can really find how to target into those people. All right, so let's see, here, we're gonna, I'm gonna have the Ventos come out and then we're gonna we're gonna switch it up.

Well, thanks again, guys, for having us up here too. And same, like Sarita and Nathan, the power of the branding workshop is incredible. And I know there's some people here that really have yet to dig deep and to find that niche and you know just I can't give her enough, Rhonda enough kudos because that will definitely open up your mind and help you reconnect with who you are because sometimes in life we kind of get off our paths and that's a little bit about Scott and my story is well we've been married 10 years now and we raised our blended family, our kids are growing out of the home and somewhere along that those 10 years we kind of got off track.

I was going one direction, that was still going in his direction. He's the steady stable person that's been at his job or his career for 35 years, at his same job for 20 years. I'm the one that tries everything. I've done everything literally.

I had my defining moment when I was a flight attendant for United Airlines and back in 2001 I was scheduled to be on United Airlines flight 93 which crashed in Pennsylvania. So I was a single mom at that time and I thought that was it for me you know that was, I loved to travel, I loved that job but when I had a migraine headache and called off sick on that flight my life was spared and that gave me a whole new reason to start searching for my purpose. My son was 10 at the time and he begged and cried and just said don't ever fly again mommy, don't leave, don't do that.

I was single, I didn't know what else I was going to do because that provided a good life for us. I'm from Hawaii and we had family in California. I was in the United States and I was in the United States and I was in the United States and I was in the United States and I was in the United States and I was in the United States and I was in the United States and I was in the United States and I was in the United States and I was in the United States and I was in the United States and I was in the United States and I was in the United States in California.

So we did a lot of traveling. I never flew again and I was always looking for other, you know, other jobs. I did fly again but not for work. And fast forward a couple years later, I met Scott and here's this guy completely steady, stable, doing the same thing and I thought okay great.

You know we're opposites, we're contracting. We blended our families, got married four months after we started dating and like I said things just happen. The kids grow up, you have challenges. challenges.

We separated for four months in 2012 and we had some really hard times. We almost lost our house. We ended up doing a short sale on it. But we almost lost everything and we were on the verge of a divorce.

And during that time, Scott actually went to Thailand. Now that Thailand was a dream that we had back maybe three years ago. We read the four hour work week which is how Rhonda found us was by her Facebook ad with Tim Ferriss talking about the four hour work week. And I had read that when I was a real estate agent.

I thought, oh yeah, I could do this. I could do anything. He was like, how can I do construction in Thailand? Come on.

Yeah, now that I've been there, I don't want to have anything to do with it. No. So one of our dreams was to get to Thailand. And part of that reason was because Scott, he's been training Muay Thai since, gosh, for seven or eight years now.

I think he started when, he started at age 46, okay. 44. 44. Doing Muay Thai.

He saw Randy Couture do it at one of his fights. Same age and he was killing it and Scott's like, I can do this too. So he started doing Muay Thai training, very disciplined, and not a lot of guys his age start doing that. So, anyway, our goal was to travel and get to Thailand for that reason.

And plus for me, it's a lot like Hawaii. It's tropical and we just love the lifestyle there. Now, during that time when we separated, Scott, if you guys don't follow us on Facebook, you may not know he's a fear of flying. Okay.

Former flight attendant, skydiver, fear of flying. So for him to face that huge fear, being separated, not sure if he's going to have anything in life that was important to him when he came back from Thailand was a huge eye-opener for me. It showed me that he could actually get out of this comfort zone that he had been in for so long. And when he came back from Thailand, we started talking.

I came back to California, and we reconciled. And we said, okay, what are we going to do differently? We're getting rid of everything. We're selling our home.

We're going to start living our dreams now. We're done talking about it. Our kids are grown and out of the home. My son's 23 and lives in Hawaii, and he's got twin boys that live in San Diego.

He's like, we're done. I mean, he's been at his job for so long, but what are we going to do? You know, wait until 65. We don't have any retirement.

It's not getting any better. We were still paycheck to paycheck. And then, boom, here comes an ad from Rhonda that pops up. And I'm like, she's talking about a four-hour work week.

It can happen. It can happen. I can do it. And why was I going to tell him?

Because I drink the Kool-Aid for a lot of products. I think there's some really good marketing, and I kind of fall for all of it. So I signed up. I got the basic level, the inner circle level.

I didn't tell him for a couple of weeks because I just knew he had to, you know, take some time. And actually, I didn't really know what I bought. Brian called me, and he's like, oh, did you watch the videos? I said, no, I'm not really sure.

What did I buy? And what I bought was I bought their story. I bought their lifestyle. I bought their energy.

I said, I don't care what it is that they do, but I want to be around them. Because I had learned through self-development that you have to be around people like you in this room to feed off the energy and to learn and to grow and to be successful. You have to be around successful people. So I was like.

Okay, I'm in. Then I finally told him. And we were already starting to talk about getting to Thailand and selling. We had already sold the home, so we were starting to sell off our stuff and everything.

And he finally said, okay, while you guys were out in Orlando at your first Mastermind house, there were 10 of us from the Unstoppable family out in Anaheim because they did regional events at that time. So Regina and Mike was there, and Nicole and some other people that aren't here. So we got Philo. Yeah, that's right.

Yeah, Jess. And we got two. So we got two people to be around, the first mini Mastermind. But anyways, I'm probably getting off track.

We moved to Thailand. Well, how people are unique, right? We do it this way. I want to do it this way because it allows you guys to really experience what people are, how they're starting to build and utilize your story.

See, everyone thinks when you start in a business or you start marketing, you have to just be the most amazing marketer. Well, you can develop that. But the core foundation. Guys is where you come from.

The core foundation is what you're the most comfortable with, which is your story. That's what we're the most comfortable with. So we start building through this bottom foundation, then adding the marketing skills, the marketing tools we can start developing. Right.

But you have the most marketing marketable tool right now, which is you, which is your story. And that's how you initially start to connect with people. Initially, you may not get a ton of leads. You maybe get five or three of them are just like you and you connect with them on Facebook, you connect with them through an email.

And boom, that turns into a customer. See, I don't want everyone to have this massive broad stroke thinking you have to have tons and tons of traffic. You will get there. But if we focus on really what's important with starting developing through our story, we'll start connecting with with with more people.

And all right. So we go through what a core message really is. Right. It's keeping consistent, clear message that defines you and your audience all the way through your full sales process, meaning your lead capture page into a bridge video and into your offer.

Right. We're going to go through that in just a moment. Horacio. Horacio is going to come up, really go through exactly what the process is to keeping that a core message consistent, of course, through your ad copy, your emailing, your bridge videos, everything that you really consistently do.

I mean, you guys obviously know the unstoppable family. We have a very targeted niche, right? It's corporate women, surfers and traveling families. Right.

We know everyone knows exactly what we are. Right. Unstoppable family. You know that.

Right. I love in that video is it really how to how to go people. How did it say that they they remember you through I remember what it was, but there's a quote that they use on there. And I love it because it really knows people know who we are.

You know why? Because I talk about it all the time. Right. That's why, you know, when you always in your videos, you say who you are.

Right. I don't say it necessarily. Rhonda Swan. But when I say the unstoppable family, people know who we are.

Right. So you just start identifying yourself with something and it just allows people to be more connected to you. OK. Now we went through picking your niche and this is something that.

Everyone, I go through this consistently, right, because I have changed. We will change niches, will add new niches. But the easiest way for people to really start defining is really just pick one to three customers that directly relate to you. Right.

And then you learn every single thing about them. You heard Nathan. He knows every single thing about his audience, what they read, what they do. And when you start to do PPC style marketing, you know, oh, I know that my women read certain magazines.

Right. I know that the type of shoes that they wear. I know that the places that they travel to. Right.

So you want to know exactly what your niche and what your people do so that you can connect with them more. You can relate to them even better. And again, if you're not sure you relate, you look at yourself. And lastly, I want to close with this, guys, and I'm going to have one more person come up in lieu of time that we're going to switch over is it's really about selling the destination, not the plane.

You know, so many people get hung up when they're sharing their business or they're sharing their offer and they start just selling the benefits. Right. And the offers of exactly this is wow. You're going to love this.

Specific product. This company is going to give you this amount of money. This is when we start selling the destination and not the plane. That's when we start bringing in more of that pool style marketing.

Right. Where people are like, you're not that sticky marketer, not to say that it's wrong, but when you're using more pool style marketing, we're selling the destination. People really want to know what's possible for them, opposed to, oh, this is going to be a great product that you're going to learn from. Or you're going to lose weight if you take this product.

It's more. Look at what I've done with my life. Now I can run with my kids because I can run with my kids. I've lost the weight.

So different than saying, if you take this, you're going to lose weight. Right. It's now you're able to share really what the destination is so they can see it for you. All right.

And then lastly, guys, is really sharing your true voice. When we really start developing our are not only our brand, but really our story, it's sharing, sharing our true voice and blogging is such a key element for doing that. It's a great platform for us to do that. And this really represents it.

Well, we we know our audience. We blog for someone, not about something. Right. We blog for someone.

People start looking for things that we blog about, and that's such a great way for you to start really learning and discovering your true voice. That's why we use blogging as a really strong platform so that you can get used to really sharing your videos, really connecting with what your vision is and really connecting with your audience. All right. So we have one last one.

They have Tiffany come on up to the traveling dogs because Tiffany is totally different than any of our of our other of our other people. There's a right Tiffany and Bernie. I've. Actually, they they run a dog training business.

Right. Totally different. I think about the vast people that we have in in our group that you guys are watching today is Tiffany and Bernie have a dog training business. So they've utilized really defined who they are, really started talking, targeting their audience and their dog training business is like completely blowing up.

So, yeah, it's good. You guys are cool. So we're kind of all about getting your life out of the dog house as well as and sort of living a life. So we're kind of all about getting your life out of the dog house as well as and sort of living a life of being able to do spontaneous shit whenever you want.

If I'm allowed to swear a little bit. But so we started applying all the stuff originally to our dog training business and it's made that explodes. The marketing stuff's been crazy for our business. That isn't a part of the end.

And I know this is all about what we do here. But for those of you that do have businesses other ways, the stuff is so applicable and that does help you get people in the door as well. So just remember that on a side note for your stuff. That's Bernie.

He's my partner in crime. Love and all things. Fun and he's not here. He's been to all the other ones.

Most of you guys know him. If not, he's brilliant. So you should make sure that you're friends with him and stuff, too. We it's sort of different.

I mean, the branding thing defines so much for us. And Ron is so great with saying stay focused. So he is the focus in our business. I'm like the all over the place.

So we're really nice. Compliment each other that way. When we started, I was like so nervous about focusing on one person because I was like, what if we miss this person over here and what if this is one person? On this corner of the world?

Right. But the more you start to focus down on one thing and start with one niche or one person or target market, whatever we're talking about, it's almost like it opens up and it gets bigger. So the more you focus down, the more people you can kind of reach because you you're out there and you're sort of finding those people. And we initially started we wanted dog people because Bernie and I have two dogs.

They're part of our life. We do a lot of things with them. We believe a dog should be part of your life, not your home. And our philosophy on dog ownership is a lot different.

Than the average person. But that wasn't working for us because we were getting people that were strange dog people, cat people, whatever. I can say that. And there's probably some in the room.

It's not a bad thing. It's not a good thing. It's just a thing. But we were getting very strange people at Bernie and I are like, we can't handle this.

We're doing all this stuff that we don't agree with and whatever. Right. So we kind of threw that out the door and we started to say, well, we want people that are traveling. So Bernie and I, if you're to look at our calendar for the next year, there's probably nothing on it because we like to randomly pick up and go.

Do stuff whenever we want. We like to go to restaurants. We like to travel. We like to hit the road.

We do everything and bring our dogs with us. So we started to start to target those kind of people. And then the people that were finding us did have dogs. And we were finding these people that were just like us.

And they started to come to us. And we're like, this does work. She knows what she's talking about. Right.

So you start to listen. You need to listen to her. And one of our targets is basically people. I think we have ages.

I think it's 28 to 30. 38 or something, or 45. And I grew up, always had a fun life. I grew up as a child.

And sorry, I'm trying to stay on track, but I don't really stay on track well. And I traveled a lot as a kid. I never had many worries. I kind of went through school and never went to university.

I moved to Whistler. I skied for 10 years. And I always had a fun life. And then I was starting to turn 30, and I started freaking out.

And I was like, there's all these pressures, right? I'm supposed to have a career. My mom's like, why don't you have a job? I'm diabetic, so I have no health insurance.

And everyone's like. Well, shouldn't you have insurance so that your stuff can be paid for? And I'm like, so you want me to get a job and work 9 to 5, 40 hours a week so that I can afford stuff that keeps me alive? Like, that's not life when I'm working, right?

And I started freaking out because I'm like, I should have a job. I should have a career. I should have a husband. I still didn't have a serious boyfriend at that time, or whatever, a boyfriend at that time.

I didn't have a house, right? I was skiing every day. Life was great. But I was like, I'm 30, and there's all these pressures that society sort of puts on you.

So I started freaking out a little bit. And you know what? You know, we're targeting those people because I'm like, you don't have to get all that stuff. You can have the life you live.

There's no reason that you can't do what you want, right? Or that thing that people say, you can have your cake and eat it too, right? Or you can't have your cake, and you can have your cake, and you can eat your cake, and you cannot eat your cake. I don't care.

So we target those people that want to live kind of their lives and keep their childhood maybe in a more adult way, if you will, males and females. We also target dog-related businesses. So that's a little bit of our umbrella as well. So we take people that are dog trainers around the world that are pet groomers and whatnot, and we teach them how to have their business explode, all right?

And that is something that is missing in the dog industry. Dog trainers don't get along. Bernie and I are probably the only ones that do. And look where we are now.

You meet one dog trainer, and they just talk bad about the other dog trainer. So there's really this congruency that was missing in that industry. So we're providing a safe environment for those people to come together and to help teach them how they can grow their business. And we do have other ones in there, but we need to focus on the two or three that we have right now.

And we need to start making those work before we're going to allow ourselves to focus on the other ones that we have, because we do have a few other ones in the umbrella that we want to bring out. We mainly do all the Facebook stuff. That's our main form of marketing. We have an e-book, Getting Your Business Out of the Doghouse.

And we also have a magazine that we're starting. It's going to be an online magazine, too. So just getting leads that way as well. And that's going to be a continuous, monthly, everything changes in there and whatnot.

So that's kind of how we get people to us. But basically, all we're doing is showing our lifestyle. So our style isn't much about preaching about money and stuff, too. So that's kind of Bernie and I aren't ones to sort of put how much we make and all that out in front.

But we want people to say, how in the heck are you guys able to do that? And our end goal and our vision that will happen is we love our dog training. And that is a big part of our business in the summer. We love where we live.

And we want to be there. But for the six other months, we want to be warm. Maybe ski a little bit, but we want to be in the warm tropics and not in the cold Canadian winter. So that's our eventual goal, is to be home in the summers and travel all through the winter.

We found you 4-Hour Workweek. So that's how we found you guys as well. And I related a lot to Brian at the time. I just replaced surfing with skiing.

But that was this passion that I discovered. And I love to ski. And I've skied some of the greatest mountains in Canada. So that was a big part of that.

And before Bernie and I were dating, I'd actually boughten him the 4-Hour Workweek when we were friends. So that was kind of a neat thing that we found throughout that, too. So that kind of brought us together, I guess, as well. Yeah.

Does that help with some of the stuff? Is that helping you guys see? Customers, messages, niches. You see how you just look.

We targeted them with something they like, a book that they like, right? Our lifestyle connected with them. We're really sharing how the pool method of marketing works when you start really sharing what you have, what people really want. So this is why we start here in this foundation piece.

So you guys get really clear. If we don't get clear on truly what your story is and the few customers that you can really target, all the other stuff is now just extra work, extra techniques. You're just learning, learning, right? Get your foundation straight.

We start developing your story. And then certainly you can learn traffic building techniques. But this is going to be one of the most legacy-creating ways to build your business, right? This is legacy-creating.

We can send traffic to anything, but you really want to create a legacy. You want to really create an identity of who you are, your uniqueness. Really sharing your story, sharing your vision is how we create customers for life. And see, that's the objective that I have in my business.

You know, I can get someone to buy something any time. And there's two different sides of the coin. I want customers for life that know me, they like me, they trust me, they connect with me, and they want to buy from me consistently. And that, guys, is really truly how we build a tribe.

That's why you're all here. You guys are not quick money people that just got splashed into one of our pages and decided to buy from us. You actually connected with us. See, there's a reason why there's this many of you guys here, right?

And we've got maybe 500, 600 other people that are not here. But when you start building a business like this, you start getting this foundation, this is when you have people that will follow you everywhere you go. It doesn't matter what I'm selling. See, this is the piece I want you guys to get.

It doesn't matter what you sell. You're selling you. People are going to buy from you. So let's say you just decide to change the offer that you're selling.

It's still you. I have sold many different items. People just, I just reroute them to the new thing that I'm selling. You get that?

So when you build this longevity, a long legacy brand, you can call it a brand. It's really you. It's your uniqueness. It's your story.

Get it out to the world, and you'll have customers that'll continue to come back. Making sense? You there? Okay, so let's take a little break, right?

And then we're going to switch gears. Okay, now we're going to go into, now let's get some stuff done. Get the foundation in. Now we're going to get your, your bridge videos, your sales funnels created, so you're ready to send traffic tomorrow.

Okay, are we there? Are we good? All right, let's bring the energy up, yeah? Okay.

All right.