Personal Brand Secrets W/ Beats & Dr. Dre $3 Billion Sale To Apple

have you heard this company called beats they make pretty fashion Ford headphones and they became kind of iconic in their design with this beautiful letter beat and they're championed by two people in the industry Dr Dre and Jimmy Iving as you know as the record will show Apple purchased beats for3 billion dollar making Dr Dre one of the first hip-hop people to be a billionaire and here's the part that you probably didn't know do you know who manufactures [Music] beats chances are if you're watching this video you might be asking yourself do I need a personal brand should I invest money in building a personal brand and what's the ROI what kind of impact is it going to have on my business and if you're asking those kinds of questions you might be thinking about this all the wrong way now we know based on many different things but I'll cite a Harvard Business review article from the May June issue of 2023 there was something about how Performance Marketing may come at the cost of long-term brand value Performance Marketing are ads that you run they're things that you do to bring in short-term revenue and it's very good because it's necessary for you to be able to pay your team to keep the lights on and to be able to still be in business and unfortunately almost all of the business that we're speaking to are heavily invested in this and this is all that they do on the other side of the spectrum on the opposite end of the spectrum is something called brand building and creating long-term value while Performance Marketing can create short-term revenue for you you're not really building long-term value and so we have to find the Bal balance between these two things if we want to create long long-term value or we're just about short-term Revenue so many people that you see pop up on the social media feeds will announce a product they'll they'll invite you to join a webinar they'll talk about their Mastermind they'll talk about the services they provide Identity Design they build websites and they keep doing this over and over again for people who are curious who have a problem that they think this will solve they'll give them money but as soon as the transaction is complete they move on there is no residual value that's being built here conversely we we will see people who have been showing of consistently creating value for others creating this positive sentiment and they're not asking us for anything every once in a while they might ask us that hey I'm I'm speaking an event or I'm going to be here do you want to do a Meetup or how can I serve you what they're doing is they're building a much deeper emotional connection with their audience than the person who's asking for a transactional thing to happen so in 3 5 10 years from now when they want you to do something big you feel like compelled to do this because you've entered into becoming a true fan versus a consumer or a client of theirs and we're seeing this play out over and over again within popular culture and media Ryan Reynolds his company mint mobile was purchased by T-Mobile for like $1.3 billion The Rock has leveraged his stardom from his initial wrestling days into becoming like a blockbuster matina a star and leverages that to move his brand Equity into a brand of tequila and he's able to sell that for hundreds of millions of dollars we're seeing this play out over and over again and this is what I'm talking about in terms of long-term brand value let me explore this Fable with you the grasshopper and the Ant are you familiar with it so the grasshopper and the Ant they're in the field it's a sunshiny spring day and the grasshopper is singing and chirping and playing it's having a great old time and it just sees the ant working non-stop very diligently preparing for something it's like ant you're just so boring like go have fun like look at this beautiful weather and's like you do what you do I'm going to keep building so the ant the entire season has been just preparing for winter so winter comes the grasshopper has nothing to eat it has no shelter and it's freezing cold and it knocks on the ant's door and like hey Aunt do you have any food and the Ant takes pity on the grasshopper and ultimately decides to share its food with the grasshopper if all you do is live and play in the moment you'll have great fun but when those times come in winter the season of winter eventually comes metaphorically and literally what will you have prepared for yourself so if you are of the mindset that I just need to bring in money today every single day you might be guilty of what some Industries and companies do the the best example I can give to you is this if you look at America the West as brand builders they're able to create products that command a price premium in the marketplace that occupy space in your mind the consumer's mind ones in which consumers will readily pay a premium for there's lots and lots of examples of that in the West in America especially but if you look to the East and you say well what what brands are well known you're like okay I don't know because the East has a totally different philosophy they think sell sell sell that price is the driver that features are the driver to Commerce and building that relationship but in fact when you when you walk in say like a Chinese or Taiwanese electronics department store all you see are signs everywhere I'm just overwhelmed with everything that it gives me first of all a headache because the Paradox of choice too many things to look at but B I don't know one company I don't even say they have a brand one company from the other there's literally no difference and they're just competing on price we can see this pretty clearly right like if I were to ask you to name 10 American brands 10 French Brands 10 British Brands you'd probably be able to name them if I asked you to name 10 Chinese Brands good luck and we can see that clearly as a Westerner walking into the East and saying why aren't they doing this because they haven't fully understood this concept yet because they're still going through a great transitional period from being like starving to the having a a a successful middle class they don't understand yet that brand is an invention of the 21st century in the way that we understand it that is going to be more valuable than selling products or Services let's not misinterpret what I'm saying is okay don't make any money don't sell anything don't think about transaction just go long-term brand building the problem with that idea is that if you don't have enough Runway the long longterm branding brand building play just won't work because you won't be able to survive and so it's a balance of these two things you do need to sell from time to time you need to do Performance Marketing so that you can put money in the bank and so you can pay your team and you can scale your operations but you don't want to do it at the cost of building long-term brand value now let's just say like you're an accountant let's just take an industry that's kind of pretty straightforward accounting sell services and the services they sell is usually tax preparation if they're a little bit smarter they might try to position themselves as allowing you to sleep easier at night not worrying if you're going to be audited because everything's done above board that they're thorough and they provide maybe Financial forecasting as additional service to you so they're not just doing it forensically they're also doing as a predictive business model so they can do that and so lots of companies do that but very few of them do it in a way in such that you have an emotional connection with them there aren't too many brand name accountants out there there may be some and they exist I know they exist but I don't know any of them because I think when you talk to people they say that there's the big four accounting firms at least in America I don't know what they are I'm sure you guys do actually we'll link to them right here these are the four that we're talking about but if you're a relatively small accounting practice and you want to start to establish a brand what would you need to do besides say hire me to do your taxes hire me to do your books what would you have to do you'd have to start thinking about the customer the problems the challenges their needs the wants their fears the hopes or dreams and you need to speak to them you need need to educate them or you need to entertain them you could make complex accounting things that are really boring to understand simple and fun to process so that they become more informed in running their business because we know it's just not numbers numbers are data and the data should inform how you make decisions here's an example A lot of times I'm worried that you know what I shouldn't be buying this equipment I should not be hiring more team like I should not be hiring more people when in fact I have 12 months of Runway but without that kind of transparency in terms of my finances I'm not making good business decisions conversely if I have 60 days of Runway and I'm spending money wil nearly I'm hiring and expanding the team I'm buying new fancy equipment they don't need today for a future that may or may not happen I'm shortening the runway and I don't have that kind of information so accounting can be boring it can be something that makes your head kind of spin or give you a headache but in the hands of a good storyteller a good brand Builder a good educator we can make this stuff really interesting so then now we can say well there's all accountants or there's Bobby or Mary who's the accountant who educates me who's funny who has a personality who doesn't wear an ill-fitted suit who's not like my my father's accountant it's accountant for my generation so Step One is differentiation you just want to be different doing anything to make yourself different if you're the accountant who works out of a coffee shop you'll be different if you're an accountant who has a a mobile office you'll be different so that's just the first stage to be different cuz different is is something that we can recognize we're our our human mind is trained to notice things that stand out just a little bit the next stage is to be preferable so you're different and I prefer you so different and not preferable is like a lot of political figures they're different they're saying wild crazy things but I prefer not to work with them I prefer not to associate with them so we want to be different and we want to create preference in the mind of the consumer and the way that we do this is we have to take audit of who we are what makes us different to celebrate both our strengths and weakness in fact to understand that our weaknesses are a core component of making us different unique and therefore our strength being able to talk about that in a way that is a benefit to the person that you're speaking to back in the day when you would go to an electronic store like Best Buy or Circuit City or one of those things I'm dating myself here uh you would buy cables uh RCA cables you'd buy stereo cables and to be able to connect your receiver to the speaker and the brand name that was known there was a company called Monster they make Monster Cables they were thick they were shielded they were made of higher gauge copper sometimes gold tips in terms of the things that you can plug in because that's what they said audio files would say like these are the most premium level consumer grade cables and you would buy them well monster is an electronic company and they made other things they made headphones they made earbuds they made a lot of things related to the audio industry but very few people know of them for that have you heard this company called beats they make pretty fashion forward headphones that were appealing to very certain subgroup of consumers like people who were into rap music hip-hop and they became kind of iconic in their design this beautiful letter B that was incorporated into the headset and they were championed by two people in the industry Dr Dre and Jimmy ivene who was the head of Capital Records at the time and Dr Dre as all you know has had a multi-decade career in making music as a producer and as a rap artist himself would you prefer to buy a pair of headphones from Monster or from beats well first you don't even know what monster was so okay I get that part and then you're like of course I'd buy from beat why because the association that I get from these two most specifically or more specifically with Dr Drees he spent a lifetime making music he's an icon he's a Pioneer in the hip-hop space and he very relevant to fans 10 years ago as he is today so if they're good enough for Dr Dre they're good enough for us and he endorses this and he gets his friends to use them people that are in the same industry so we see people we admire like look up to and respect and if they're wearing it that's a voucher to say like that's good that's what branding is that's what personal branding will do for you now do we think of Dr Dre as a person who is an engineer not as an audio engineer in the studio but but an engineer like designing diaphragms for the speaker understanding how to turn an analog signal to a digital signal or something like that no he didn't go to engineering school he's not working at JPL but we extend this benefit to him that he's become a sought-after person who's been producing music behind and in front of the scenes for a number of years showing up consistently so when he attaches his name to something along with Jimmy ivine they are able to launch this company happen and as you know as the record will show Apple purchased beats for3 billion doar making Dr Dre one of the first hip-hop people to be a billionaire and that was fantastic for him also for ivene they've done wonderful things since then and here's the part that you probably didn't know do you know who manufactures [Music] Beats Monster they white labeled the headphones from Monster cuz they have no experience doing this so I can imagine I think there are some stories we can read about this so forgive me if I don't know the exact story but I did read it at one point IV or somebody's approached by this idea and they need Dre to coign on this otherwise it's not going to work they don't know anything about manufacturing they probably don't even know anything about design they don't definitely know anything about distribution and getting to electronic stores but they have the right Partners to be able to do this and so now we say like did monster was Monster acquired by Apple for a billion dollars nobody even knows who monster is so when we say do you want to focus on Performance Marketing or do you want to build long-term brand value you can see how this plays out Dr Dre and Jimmy ivene are making Records building a relationship with people you buy their music but more than the music you're buying a relationship with them and they're forming an irrational emotional connection with you the audience you have memories that are hardcoded in your brain where you were what you were doing probably up to no good but you're still here listening to this music it informed your Youth and so later on when you're looking for a headphone company they've created differentiation and preference those are the two things that we talked about they're different in their design the aesthetic they're different in how they're associated with other people in terms of hip-hop people versus I don't know spokes people that are just not relevant to the youth and they leverage those two things to create preference for these headphones and a lot of people audio files say well we prefer more neutral sound not one that's tweaked for base heavy production because it distorts the music and they want to be able to hear transparency in the music and in the notes and these are skewing too far this way plus I actually have a few pair of Beats they fall apart are they the best made things it doesn't matter that's what the Rock said it doesn't matter it doesn't matter we associate coolness desirability affiliation all those things those are these emotional things that 21st century Brands and marketers and branders have already learned and are applying to their products and services today so do we understand this concept that's the question do you understand this concept so you're probably sitting there thinking to yourself well didn't Dr Dre do this for 10 20 maybe 30 years and and building this relationship with the audience community and are you saying that we have to do that in order to be able to reap this reward well let me ask you this question I remember in high school uh one of our I don't know I don't remember what class it was but they had said you know if you're able to put a dollar away or take a certain percentage of your paycheck and save it and it earns a compounded interest by the time you reach 55 years old you'll be a millionaire and I know back then I was like a millionaire a millionaire that sounds so crazy good we actually have a million dollars in cash to do whatever it is that we want I could live forever on a million dollars those were my thoughts as a child cuz I didn't know a single person who was a millionaire so it would take me from the time in which I was 17 years old to time 55 To Be A Millionaire okay that seemed pretty good so the question is how many of us actually took away that percentage of our paycheck how many of us put the dollar away every single day and didn't touch it then I'm going to ask you this question here which is I don't know how many millions of people live in the United States but how many of them are millionaires the vast majority are not it's because they're not willing to put in that work and when we talk about The Compound Effect as written about by Darren Hardy it's it's making small smart choices every single day consistently over a period of time that yield a crazy result now if I told you audience do this work in 10 to 20 years you might be able to exit out of whatever you're doing for $100 million is that worth it will you do that work there's no guarantee but there high probability there's a stronger probability you hit it as opposed to not being able to hit it at all and that's an individual question I remember something that Alex Ros said on stage he said young guys would approach him all the time hey Alex how do I become a millionaire he goes if I told you what to do for 5 years and you did it consistently without ever trying to make a dollar you become a millionaire I guarantee it will you do it most of them just say no because they're stuck in I need to make money right now so we're going to find the balance I don't want to be irresponsible here and then send all of you in the in the worldwide web here running away and say that's it Chris told me not to make money I'm going to be a starving person there is a balance the ratio of how much Performance Marketing you do versus brand building is up to you and how much money you have saved up if you've earned money doing something else and you have the runway you don't have these kind of financial stresses on your system then you can afford to do this for a really long time and I'll take this story full circle right now I recently had a late lunch with my old friend Jose caber and for those of you that are new to the channel Jose and I started making YouTube content together in fact it was him who insisted that I create content something that I was resistant to do back back in the old days that was in January of 2014 for context I'm 42 years old Jose like let's make content together I'm resistant but he he convinces me so we start making content under a channel called the school SK L we start doing this content together unfortunately for us 2 and a half years into it we have Divergent ideas about how to run the company how we want to show up and who we want to speak to so we split amicably but the way that we split was we divided the company into two halves half number one do you want the channel and the audience and the community or do you want the intellectual property the products and services we created together with the revenue attached to that tough decision I would have been okay picking either one of the two and my dad taught me this lesson in life whenever my brother and I disagreed about something he says if there's a piece of cake one person cuts it the other person decides which half they want this keeps everybody super honest and I remember this rule so I I create two halves of the company which do you want the IP the products and the revenue or do you want the community the relationships and the channel one has no money attached to it one has all money attached to it one has a relationship with the community and the other one does not so we had to make our choice so I let Jose CH choose so Jose chose he needed it because he needed the revenue and the products and the short term was what fool would give up the IP and the products because all the money was going that way you understand the difference between the two now left with the community meaning I have the channel with the YouTube channel and I think we had 10,000 20,000 subscribers not a huge amount back then and we had a Facebook page or some or a pro coaching community and so I inherited that and I started running that and I started producing content differently so for for a number of years the only amount of money that came into the company all of it went to Jose because he owned the products so I remember there were years when we were writing a six-figure check to him and he did literally nothing he was sitting on the beach he was Finding himself which was awesome that was the deal and so for a while we made no money and then eventually I would release a course and then the course sold and it did well and so that how we started to generate money and the YouTube channel started to grow so how the story comes full circle was Jose asked me this question just a couple days ago he goes how did you launch your book tell me more about this book she well I didn't want to write a book the audience Community said hey are you writing a book cuz we'd love to just be able to package up your college and be able to read it in a sitting have something tangible they can hold on to I said they kept asking me so much so that I decided to go against my instincts which is I will write the book but in order for me to write the book I ran a Kickstarter campaign and said to my team if we can't get $330,000 worth of book pledges I'm not writing a book it's not worth my time at that time I put the value at $30,000 and to my surprise by the time the campaign ended I think we raised $80,000 worth of pledges which blew my mind and Jose turns to me he's like Chris it's because you have the community they showed up for you I want to let that sink into each person who's listening to this I'm a no-name author I don't even consider myself a writer yet I was able to manifest and generate $80,000 of Goodwill in 30 days because i' had been showing up consistently over time he goes Chris back when you had given me that choice you made the smart decision to go with Community I said Jose I appreciate you saying that but I didn't choose you did he goes I know I know I chose and to this day I will die on that sword my company the future is nothing without the brand and the relationship that we have with our consumers because if someone wanted to launch a product that was equivalent to ours forget about equivalent just say it was Superior to ours uh I teach a topography course let's use that as an example the typographic uh director's Club of America or the world come came together they organized The Who's Who of design teachers and they created a course that was Superior in every way than than ours and they went to launch it they will sell but I'll die on The Sword nobody knows who they are and it will not sell as well as ours so it's not even that the product's superior it's the relationship is Superior in order for them to outsell me they'd have to leverage every relationship of every person who's involved in that and present it to the universe and if the universe don't know who they are outside of a small academic Circle nobody's going to buy it just like monster and beats so the question I have for all of you to ponder to think about wherever you are in your life in your business is does building a personal brand matter based on what we just talked about I'll let you decide in the comments below okay you've reached the end of the video and you're sitting there wondering to yourself I hear you preach brother we we got it we got it I'm ready to build a personal brand I'm committed to playing the long game I am committed to moving away from a transactional model to a transformative model I want to show up consistently over time and deliver value for months years maybe decades if necessary I get it so what's next well if you want me to make that video to teach you how to do this the application the tactics make sure you let me know in the comments and based on how well this video performs and the amount of comments and engagement that I yet I'll decide if I want to make that [Music] video