Fight your instincts, make more money

Since we were kids, we've always tried to fit in. We would go where our friends are, but in this episode, we're going to try to tell you why you need to fight those instincts if you ever want to grow.

This is Useful Not Famous. I'm Amara Andrew.

I'm Jeff Sarris.

And this week, we are talking about how to be everywhere.

Yeah, and this show is broken into three parts. It's 15 minutes long, three 5-minute segments. It's why—

I already fucked it up.

—what, and how. So, why, what's our why today?

Oh, our why. We literally already talked about this and then I just—I get performance anxiety, so I'm just like, "What? Stage fright?"

It's okay.

So, the why that we're talking about is why it's important to be everywhere.

Yeah, and then the what is actually a little segment just for us. It's a little 5-minute where we talk about what we're interested in this week.

Which I'm very excited about.

And, yeah, we've repositioned and there's a lot to talk about there, but everything's only 5 minutes. And the how?

The how.

Is that the end?

Yeah, the how.

Yeah, the how is at the end. So, you'll stick around for the last segment because that's where we actually tell you how to apply the why, so why you want to be everywhere. But first, we have our little handy-dandy timer here.

We set the timer for 5 minutes, and let's get to it. So, why are you looking at me like that? That's the first segment.

It's just—well, why I'm looking at you is because, no, the first part is why it's important to be everywhere. So, this is something that, like, as you said in the intro part, it's very difficult to be where you don't feel comfortable, cuz, obviously, comfort is where you feel comfortable. But if you go places where you don't feel comfortable, that is how you grow tremendously.

Like, discomfort's probably the best thing that you can do. So, like, for us, for example, real estate really wasn't in either of our backgrounds. Like, my dad's—

And for anyone who's who doesn't know who we are, real quick, what is that? Why real estate?

So, we do we fly all over the country to film with realtors in their market. We batch-record content. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.

There's a whole thing. Go check it out on our website. But anyway, so, like, my dad was in real estate, but it was very different sort of real estate.

More on that later, maybe. But I we did not come from a real estate background. Like, we came from very different backgrounds, so diving into the real estate field as we do now, it was very uncomfortable, and going to all the conferences, which is really where we stand out, is very uncomfortable, but it's also been the most rewarding thing.

Oh, yeah, and even the discomfort, like what we're what we really want to hit on today is being in rooms where you don't belong, you don't fit in. Like, you don't have friends there.

It's the most important thing cuz, also, when you have friends in places, I've learned, it is a crutch for you where you're just seeking out those friends and you don't bother to grow and meet new people. But then if you go somewhere where you don't know anybody, you have to make friends very quickly, which I learned moving 7 million times as a child.

Like, you have to get acclimated to the discomfort and be like, "Okay, how can I meet someone quickly, and then how can we actually bond?" And that is super, super important for business cuz if you're just stuck in your one little niche, it's like what we've talked about where in our old podcast where we have that 3-year window or most people have that 3-year window—

Same podcast feed, if you look for The Iron Law of Stardom in this feed, that was from when this was called What is MAVEN.

I was talking through it to see if I could get to the title, so thank you. But, essentially, that you sort of have that 3-year shelf where you need to keep iterating and keep growing as a person if you want to succeed in business, on this planet, in life, whatever. You need to keep reinventing.

Now, the main point of this now is to talk about being remarkable and how are you remarkable, you stand out. So, Seth Godin has a book called "Purple Cow." It's used all the time as a reference, and people don't always credit him, but "Purple Cow" is the book you can look for. But if you're driving down the street and you see a cow, you don't think anything.

But if you're driving down that same street and you see a purple cow, that's suddenly remarkable. It makes you go, "Huh?" You look at it, you think about it, you talk about it, you tell your friends, "You'll never—you'll never guess what I saw." So, what we want to do is we want to convince you that you need to be in rooms where you are remarkable.

So, how do you become remarkable in a room? Let's just talk about—I want you to just, yeah, talk about how we're remarkable in the places we go and why we choose them.

I was just going to say—

—Well, why I'm looking at you is because—

—No.

—no, the first part is—

—So, something I learned at the very first conference we ever attended was—so, for example, we're going to talk about real estate a lot cuz that's where we are. But one of the things was how many fucking people would come up to us at this conference and be like, "Oh, what's your market?" And then it's like, "What? My who?"

But what's the look on their face when they say it? Like—

—Oh, they were like, "Oh, what's your market?"

Yeah, but even like empty. It's an empty question.

Well, it's just part of the networking. It's just It's the standard practice and it's what you're supposed to do at these events. But, yeah, it's very empty, sort of, "What's your market?

I have nobody else to talk to, and I don't expect to get an answer." Exactly, but then when it's just like, "Oh, we aren't in real estate. We do video content for realtors," then they're like, "Oh!" Then you see the life come back cuz then all of a sudden they have to think and they're like, "Oh, wait. What?

This is something new."

You short-circuited their thinking. They expected something and you gave them the unexpected.

Yeah. So, then having that be what you can do as a real estate professional, like, you can't just go to—like, granted, you should go to these real estate conferences if you find value, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But you really need to be elsewhere, which I know we're going to talk about later.

But you need to be where you aren't, the rest of you aren't. But getting into—

But, yeah. This is just—yeah, you're getting ahead a little bit cuz this is just the why. So, yeah, why we want to be in these rooms, why we want to be in places where we don't belong.

This is something that I always did with my brand agency, SPYR. Like—

I was just going to ask, how have you been places where you don't belong?

Yeah, pursuing interests that aren't—I'm not in a room with web designers or people building brand and business. I would be in the room with a bunch of minimalists. Like, because of our network, I was invited to an event by a big name minimalist in 2010.

At that event, a couple guys named Josh and Ryan were there. They drove in to Chicago from Dayton, Ohio. They'd started a website called The Minimalists, it was 14 days old.

Oh, time! But real quick for the rest of this story: We met, hit it off, and their site was brand new. Part of their story line is 53 people, or whatever, saw their site in the first month.

I was one of those 53. I was in that room, and what ended up happening is I saw ways that I could help them, ways that we could make their business grow faster and better. So, I've worked with them since that day, since the very beginning of their brand because I was in a room where I was remarkable.

I wasn't another minimalist blogger.

And that's exactly what we do today.

Yeah, it's the exact same thing. We've applied that to MAVEN. So—

All right, Sarris, what have we been working on?

I know. We need to set five on the timer. So, that's the why.

Five on the timer. Okay, time for the what. Where are you looking?

I was trying to see if I should get my whole Post-it of crazy things. Pull that in. Excuse me for a second.

Okay, so yeah, we have five on the timer. So, this is the what. This is what we're working on this week, what we've found interesting—

—I'm short, so I didn't think about—

—I mean, you're going to have to walk more in frame so people can see cuz right now you're out of frame. There you go. Look at that!

Ooh, look at those breadstick legs!

Pardon. I said to Jeff one time, I was like, "I have breadstick legs." "Don't look at them now." So, we have a song that's—Yeah, he made songs for me.

Yeah, I have fun with these songs. And that's something that I had fun with this week that has nothing to do with what we're doing, but it'll come up at some point.

So, anyway—

Oh my! Wait, do that again! That is a great—No, pull it away.

That is a great bounce card. Hold it higher. If you're watching right now, this is—I'm trying to figure out where this mirror is.

This is—Go higher and tilt it down. This is how you do fill light on your face. Look at that!

That looks amazing. Anyway. Okay, so what are we looking at this week?

So, we have this giant fucking Post-it thing, which compliments to Becky McCully, a Charlotte, North Carolina realtor, for the recommendation, so thank you. I totally fucking forgot.

So, let me just—We don't need to show it, so it's harder to see anyway.

Yeah, but basically we have just been reformulating every single part of our business in the best way possible and it makes me so excited, it makes him so excited cuz we've so many different things that we're working on. Some I can't tell you about and you might just stumble upon being on social media. But we have a lot of different things that we're working on.

That one is totally separate, not even related to everything else, but something that is very central to me, us, basically, the whole Mins thing that you were just talking about too, is being useful, not famous. And that's something that, like, you are hellbent on, I'm hellbent on, and like we're we're sort of the more we talk to people about it, the more everybody is keen on being useful, not famous, because—

And it also comes from where we are and who we are. Like, I've lived behind the scenes at brands for 15—what is it? 2025—since 2009, so 16 years I've been behind the scenes.

And now with MAVEN, same idea.

-. Well, yeah, it's being so incredibly useful that you don't need to be famous. Cuz also, being famous doesn't mean that you make money.

And that's mostly what people want at the end of the day. They don't want fame, they want money, but they make that comparison because they don't see what goes on behind the scenes of fame, which is having systems in place to make money.

Yeah, and the simple question is to ask, fame for what? Like, more views for what? More likes for what?

And at the end of the day, it always boils down to, "Well, to have more money." And it's like that does literally nothing, especially because so many people who have big platforms have no money, verifiably. So, anyway.

-huh. Yeah, and just real quick because fame alone doesn't make you money. Fame alone—fame with being useful to someone makes you money, an advertiser, whatever it is.

We'll dive into that more, obviously, because of what we're talking about right now.

Yep, exactly. So, anyway, we've just been restructuring everything, figuring out our personal content and sort of what we want that to be, what that means, including this podcast, including rebranding our newsletter, which I'm very excited about. I still need to do that because the newsletter drops in one day.

Structuring Done For You Real Estate Services

So.

Yeah, but it's perfect. Like, basically we have two buckets. We have our done-for-you service, which is MAVEN Top Banana where we fly out and film with realtors in market and do everything for them.

And we're building out the DIY side. We're building out the product side, so service, products. So, Top Banana is the service.

The products are varied depending on the different things that can help people grow through organic content marketing. But then it's like, what is our organic content marketing approach? How do we actually encapsulate it when it's it's varied across all of this, and that's what we've finally discovered.

Yeah, so we're just constantly iterating. I think the thing, too, I know this has nothing to do with the episode, but also another thing is—

I just wanted to say that Useful Not Famous is how. So, I didn't actually say that, but Useful Not Famous is that umbrella for our organic content marketing moving forward.

But, yeah, you just you have to start. So, literally a clip that just came out today from our episode last week, which was, you need to stop learning and you need to just start doing cuz I think so many people do get in that paralysis of like, "Well, I need to learn all the things before I can even do one thing," or "I don't want to look like a fucking idiot online." You have to—like, first, you're not going to look like an idiot, especially by the people that support you and love you, so that doesn't even matter, but you need to look like an idiot, quote unquote, which you won't, but you have to in order to grow and be like, "Oh, okay.

I don't like how I did that. Now I like how I can do this better," or whatever. So, anyway.

So, you just need to get started. That's That's another piece of our merch, "Keep going, asshole." That's like one of my favorite shirts. I've never worn it out cuz I'm so scared someone's going to be like, "Aww." But, anyway, so we are working on a shit ton of different things.

Like you said, all the DIY sort of things. I'm very excited to have everything sort of under the MAVEN umbrella, but now it's going to be under this Useful Not Famous umbrella, which then MAVEN will be part of.

Time!

But, yeah.

Everything will fall under that, but really that's our content side. MAVEN is still MAVEN, Top Banana is still Top Banana. We actually—

And better than ever, actually, I would argue.

Oh, yeah. I mean, in what ways?

Reconfiguring every single thing. We have a whole new system that we're using for the longs. We're trying to make it less daunting, more guided, and more cuz YouTube is daunting for every single person and everyone's like, "I hate YouTube, but I know I need to do it." So, just trying to make it exactly like just a whole prompt system, making it so incredibly simple and easy for someone to do.

Systems, systems, systems. That's our entire—the entirety of who we are, what we do, and what we do for people.

I know what you're pulling up now.

Do you?

Yeah.

I don't know if you do.

Buzz.

Okay, yeah. So, so we have our banana bolt. If you're a Top Banana, you know what the banana bolt is, and if you don't—

Suck it!

Yeah, it's how we sort of where we can rally around. It's a little mascot for our Top Bananas.

Na-na-na-banana. It's an official banana.

Sacrificial banana?

Yeah.

Ay-ay-ay.

But if you're looking if you're on the video, you see the little MAVEN yellow on my shirt. That's been around for a while, but that's for A multifaceted why we have a MAVEN yellow, everything sort of fits into this. Now—

We have the mascot, we have Bolt, the banana bolt for Top Bananas, but what do we do for Useful Not Famous?

We actually have Buzz. If you're on YouTube right now, you can see Buzz.

Buzz is our unbusy bee because we're helping people be unbusied.

I mean, I think his name is Bumbie, but—

So, the jury is out on what our bee's name is, but, yeah, if you want to see that, go over to the YouTube, but really this is audio first, so we can't get too heavy on the visual side because—

Bumbie is adorable.

-huh.

Which, also, ironically, I want to point out, super quick and then we're going to get on to the actual how, but not the how, but the actual how. I wanted to point out, too, we are trying to make our content so stupid simple because we don't have time to make our own content and that's something that was thrown to the wayside the past year because we've we have been—I can't even tell you how many fucking we took so many flights, we're at, like, elite status for the airline that we chose.

So, we are just so, so, so incredibly busy last year focusing on making the best video content that we can for other people. So, now what we're trying to focus on, ironically, is just making our content exist. This video isn't the prettiest and we know that, but it literally just has to exist and then you just iterate and keep going.

Like, we want to make it so incredibly simple. We are just focused on the being useful, not the being famous.

Exactly. So, yeah, this is I can I like to think of this or we like to think of this as zero effort video. This is an audio first podcast.

If you're listening on your podcast app, awesome. If you're watching the video, I guess you're a YouTube podcaster, but I don't know, I like—

Aren't you looking at our pretty little ass?

Oh, yeah. Now to the how. So, we go on to the how, put 5 on the timer.

Here's a little timer, just so you know I'm not cheating.

How now brown cow?

But, yeah, so how do you—how are you remarkable? How do you—

Let me count the ways!

I feel like I feel like we're getting in our rhythm again now, so this is going to be good.

Don't bite the hand that—

Oh, yeah.

Oh, yeah. You stole that from me. Okay, so how are you remarkable?

How Yeah, how as a realtor. So, this is for realtors. We explained how we're remarkable in the rooms.

How do you pick the rooms to be in as a realtor?

Yeah. That's a good question.

And, yeah, I mean, I think it is a difficult one, but, like, I think the first thing starts with defining who you're trying to connect with.

Well, and I think it really depends, too, if you're doing a cuz, like, I can argue any point essentially from my background being a lawyer, I'm just teasing, I'm fucking not. But if you are going for a more referral-based—

I just wanted to say, she means, and this is not true, she means her background in being an argumentative lady.

How dare you! I'm going to tell you five reasons why you're wrong! One, you're a man.

But if you're doing a referral-based business, then it is very important for you to go to all the real estate-focused events, like all where all the realtors are going to be.

Yeah, is your number one is the number one avatar for who you're trying to reach other realtors? Because then you're in the right room.

Yeah. And not just Yeah, not just referrals, but if you're trying to build a downline for your brokerage or if like whatever. Like if you are trying to target realtors to sell them whatever, you have to be in the room with all the other realtors.

Now, if you are just trying to build a client-based business, though, I would argue you really don't need to go to any real estate-focused events unless you are unless you think that you will learn something at them, cool. But I would argue you'll learn far more on the job than you will at these events, and that's no shade to any of the events, but doing the work is so much more important than talking about doing the work or learning how to do the work.

Like, that is such bullshit.

Well, yeah. Mindset—like, we say this all the time, but mindset is what people talk about when they have no actionable advice because when you take action, you shift your mindset because you get actual practical knowledge, data points. If you just start something, if like—I've been doing—we've both been doing podcasts forever.

We've done hundreds of episodes for different platforms and things, so this isn't new, but if we wanted to start this podcast right now, we're literally using my phone in the middle of the table to make this as simple as possible. But anyone can do that, and then you learn like, "Oh, wait. Oh, I just remembered now, too.

Our audio is out of sync, and I didn't fix that because the device I'm using doesn't sync perfectly with the video, and you noticed it last week, but now that's something I know. So, okay, now I need to learn, I need to take action and fix that, so I'll do that on the next one. But I wouldn't know until we actually record, and that applies to any business and anything that you possibly do.

You don't know until you take action, then your action shifts your mindset, and your mindset follows your action.

So, then taking that into account then, just start going places to be where you need to be. So,

Where you're where the client is that you want to target.

Exactly. So, like, we're not going to talk about realtors looking for other realtors just because that's a very specific That's a very different business, and we can get into that at another time.

And it's not who we It's not who we target. We're here for people—

No, we're working with people who are looking for clients, so that's why we're specifically talking to real estate professionals who are targeting their own clients.

Meta, man!

I feel like a bad What was that superhero we were talking about in another—Oh, we're going to remember. This is going to be a running thing for the whole podcast. We literally were crying laughing because it was so stupid.

But, anyway, you don't have that much time left.

So, we're not going to tell you Essentially how, yeah, let's get right back the fucking to it. But here is how you can find who you're looking for. One, figure out who your avatar is.

So, who is your client? Are you looking for real estate professionals? Cool, that's a totally different avenue.

But let me give an example. So, say it's high-net-worth individuals in the town you live in.

Oh, that's my avatar.

No, no. Sorry, sorry, sorry. So, let's say that's what the realtors want.

Excuse me?

High-net-worth individuals who are buying and selling in town. So, maybe an example of a room to go in, which is one of our Top Bananas does this. She gives money to local charitable events charitable organizations—

And because she actually believes in the message, also. But it is a phenomenal way for her to be networking with all of the top people in her town.

Yeah, because she donates to a cause that means something to her, then she's also a part of that cause. She might not be running the organization, but she's at every event. She's giving her insight into the ways that this can better help people.

And a byproduct of that—

Time!

—and a byproduct of that is that she's connecting with the exact archetype of person who then she wants to be connected with. She's in rooms where she doesn't belong. She's not in a room with realtors who are part of this non-profit.

She's in the room with high net worth individual like to be like very blunt, very high net worth individuals—

Yeah, we were we were there with her at one of the events, which is how we know, and it was shocking. It felt We felt a little out of place, not 100%, but it was it's just a different feeling.

Again, we were outliers and she was an outlier. Not an outlier in terms of revenue and donations and things, an outlier in terms of the only realtor in the room.

So, that's what you need to do is figure out. So, for example, then, if you are looking for high net worth, which, I mean, what real estate professional isn't looking for that,

But we would also recommend really consider, don't just take this as the easy answer. Consider—

Cuz you also need to get along with the people that you are working with. So, for example, if it's somebody who's high net worth, but they're the biggest pain in your ass, yeah, it's a bigger paycheck, but actually is that going to be fulfilling? Because this is stuff that you have to deal with every single day.

These are types of people that you need to deal with every single day.

Well, and arguably, some markets everyone's Most markets everyone's targeting high-net-worth individuals, but some markets everyone is targeting high-net-worth individuals, so there might be a completely untapped area that you want to focus on.

Yeah.

And I mean, we could go into other people's tactics, too, and things that just speak to them, like adult rec league sports. Like, someone's super in the in the sports and plays competitive rec league sports, and knows everyone in town, and that's not high net worth, that's an extension of her. It's who she is, what she does, and she connects with people like her, and then people who are similar to her in turn like her cuz she's so likeable and then work with her.

So, something I would recommend that you can actually do right now is look at all the people that you've worked with and literally put it in a spreadsheet. I know this sounds boring as all hell, but put everybody in a spreadsheet and boil them down to their data points. And even if like if you still have contact with them, talk to them and be like, "Okay, what are some of your hobbies, or where do you hang out?" That's like such an easy way that you can figure out where to target more of that person.

So, for example, if they're like, "I love crystals." Cool, go hang out at the woo-woo shops, or go to yoga, or do all those different things, or go to a health food store. I don't know, I'm I'm like painting a very broad picture, but or like a stereotypical picture, but that type of person does exist and maybe that's your market and that's amazing, or that's your ideal client.

Paint the stereotypical picture. That's who you're looking for, you're looking for an archetype.

I thought you were telling me to, I was like, "I just did!" Dah!

Yeah, that's not a bad thing. That is what we want to do, is we want to—

You want to boil it down and make it as simple as possible for you. So, like, we know our target and, like, that has been something that we've been refining is, like, "Okay, who do I actually want to work with?" Cuz, like, you're not going to get along with everybody and there's certain people that I don't want to work with, and that's perfect, and that's totally fine because that's how you exist in this planet is you don't have to love everybody.

Respect everybody, but don't love everybody, cuz then you're a whore. But—

Well, well, well, but—

Not just for this episode.

I just wanted to say we want to put people in a box in this scenario. Not to hold people down, this is for our learning and this is something that I ran into previously, is like I wrote this article, this essay, whatever, called Man in a Box and I wrote it because people knew me for so many different things, but each person each say industry, each vertical, knew me in a certain box that the other one didn't know me in.

So, like I had done a lot in the paleo diet space and would speak and had a very large platform that was mine around the paleo diet. And I did so much with minimalism, and we have the documentary Minimalism, do so much in design and WordPress and all that. So, I had all these different boxes, and I realized like, I'm not I don't belong in one box, but you need to give people a way to actually compartmentalize you for them, and that's branding.

We'll talk about branding separately. But we need to put people in boxes. The person that we want, we need to define that box and now find the people who fit in that box.

Yeah, so stop listening right now, well, in maybe 30 seconds when we're done. Compile your entire list of clients and see sort of where the overarching theme tends to go or boil it down to just the very basic bio data, give it to somebody else to look at, and they will tell you verbatim like, "Oh, you're looking for this exact person who drives this exact car." Like, even stuff like that.

I like that.

Yeah, like, that's how you're going to find who you're looking for, like, it's it's acquisition 101.

It's very noisy to scratch your nose when you do. Hold the mic up so no one heard that. But I scratch my nose, you scratch yours.

He's called me the worst names imaginable right there if you read his lips. But, anyway, so just do that. That'll be so incredibly simple, or, like, give it to your partner in life.

Like, they will have sort of an idea of what your business is, and maybe you work with them, so maybe give it to, like, your next best person. But they'll be able to tell you in, like, 2 seconds. So, start that, do that.

I think we should wrap this up.

Okay.

Like a little pita.

Okay, if you like this, like, subscribe, share it with your friends. What did you just say to me?

Ow, Pita!

Ow, Pita!

We'll see you next time.

Bye!