John Maxwell “It’s Not the Branding on The Outside, It’s the Building on The Inside.”

It’s so frustrating.



It usually starts with a question…



Hey Sean, I want to do what you do — work from home, create content, and earn a great living helping people on the internet. How can I do what you do?


Invariably, my reply begins with me reminiscing over staring awkwardly into a camera several times a week teaching people how to solve their health problems on YouTube.



Then I hark back to 2008, when I recorded my first podcast. I had no idea what I was doing. Clueless. But I kept showing up. Slowly but surely, the audience began to show up as well.



I go on and on about the importance of building an audience. Leading with service. Earning trust. Making people feel like they know you.

Like Zig Ziglar famously said, when you help people get what they want, they’ll help you get what you want. When people feel like they know, like, and trust you, they tend to want to give you money for stuff.



Unfortunately, there’s the advice I give people … and then there’s what they do with it.



Almost universally they want to skip steps. They try to circumvent the uncomfortable parts. The parts that involve the vulnerability of being seen, heard, read, and maybe rejected. The parts that require the most patience. The long, slow grind of building an audience. 


They jump right to things like spending a huge chunk of their life savings to hire an agency that promises to “do it all for you.”



Or they enroll in a program that teaches them how to create an online course that’ll “replace their 9-5 income” in 90 days or less.



Or they get all caught up with their “branding” without building a solid competency in the product or service they intend to offer.

They want to be a brand without actually building anything.


Unfortunately, it doesn’t work that way.

Like John Maxwell says on today’s episode, if you want to do what I do, you’ve gotta do what I did. 


“We want to do … but we don’t want to did.”



The “did” is the disappointment of putting in the long hours creating and editing a YouTube video that gets 12 views. An Instagram post that barely gets a like. A podcast that gets a smattering of listens. Hosting a webinar that gets 3 registrations and zero sales.

All the successful ones did that.



Meanwhile, for everyone else, the commitment to skipping steps, instant gratification, and avoiding rejection exceeds their commitment to helping people.


The results speak for themselves. 


Tap the PLAY button to hear John Maxwell discuss how if you don’t did it, you don’t get to do it. It’s my favorite clip of the week!

Source: GrowLeader Conference 2021 – Evening Session with John Maxwell