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Author: Tyler Hayzlett

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Best Practices Growth Personal Development

It’s Time to Speak Up! The Power of Public Speaking

Public speaking is one of the most powerful tools of mass communication, and business leaders today are taking full advantage of the ROI on speaking to large groups of people.

The rise of public speaking continues to increase. Currently, there are over 40,000 profiles of executives on LinkedIn with speaker listed as a job title.

This shift is a massive increase in self-identified public speakers.  For example, I attended a National Speakers Association event eight years ago that served over 3,000 professional speakers in the US and another 1,500 in Europe.

Granted, most executives aren’t speaking for a profession, but they definitely are positioning themselves as experts to speak in front of rooms full of potential customers.

And the captive audiences to speak in front of are nearly endless.

While it’s difficult to determine the total number of conferences held in the US each year, it’s safe to say that there’s a lot.

For example, there are over 92,000 professional associations alone in the US responsible for hosting monthly events, regional meetups, and annual conferences.

And that’s just association events.

This list doesn’t include the wide array of public industry conferences, corporate sales meetings, annual company gatherings, product launch events, expos, summits, retreats, and galas.

Public speaking is a serious source of mass communication for anyone targeting events and conferences if you are in the process of building your marketing plan.

It’s also time to add more speaking engagements to your strategy to show off your expertise to potential new customers to set yourself up as a leader in your field, increase awareness, and add more sales to your bottom line.

 

For more information visit tylerhayzlett.com

Categories
Growth Skills

Have You Developed Your Speaking Style?

In the conference industry, where everyone tries to fit in, most in-demand speakers are the ones who don’t.

Conference speakers range from coaches, trainers, keynote speakers, entertainers, to consultants that offer informative talks on niche subject expertise ranging from 15-minute TED-style talks, 1-hour keynote presentations, half-day training programs, to multi-day dedicated retreats. 

While the industry lumps all speakers into the same pool of professionals, there are, in fact, many different types of public speakers with many different styles of communication.

Varying speaking styles:

Event presenters naturally find their own method of delivery to match their energy and panache.

While every speaker has natural tendencies for the way they deliver their talk, there is an art to choosing your style of speaking to compliment the audience and message.

Take Gary Vaynerchuck, for example. To say he is confrontational is putting it lightly.

Gary spoke at a conference we hosted a few years back and dropped no less than 30 F-bombs while delivering a marketing talk to our group of CEOs and founders.

He’s naturally and deliberately brasher on stage than his podcast, for example.

For some, this tact is considered taboo and uncouth in a corporate setting, naturally upsetting to a few.

But for him, it works. And it’s all for a point. Gary’s message is disrupting and upturning old ways of doing things. His message is purposely confrontational. That’s his style. But it isn’t for everyone or every group dynamic.

On the other end of the spectrum, you have speakers like Tricia Benn, VP of the C-Suite Network and General Manager of the Hero Club. She is incredibly poised, a natural team builder who champions diversity and inclusion and focuses on a futuristic, inspirational message and delivery style.

There are many styles of speakers, and it’s important to be intentional to match the style to the audience and message:

Choose a style that works for you and fits your voice:

  • Mentor: Robert Kiyosaki
  • Humble Giant: Jocko Willink
  • Motivator: Eric Thomas
  • TrailBlazer: Barbara Corcoran
  • Futurist: Steve Jobs
  • Technical: Terry Brock
  • Philosopher: Simon Sinek
  • Tough Love: Mel Robbins

The point is that there are endless styles and characteristics.

Being a unique voice to your audience is where the magic happens to make your voice stand out above others with a similar message. It’s more of an art than a science.

Similarly, there are many ways to approach an audience.

Different Approaches:

For example, some speakers open their talks energetically, pacing the entire stage, putting the whole room on notice.

Others speak quietly as if you are the only person in the room, pulling you into a warm conversational tone.

Here are a few tips for nailing your approach:

  1. Pre-determine your energy and tone of voice
  2. Tell a relatable story
  3. Provide a shocking statistic
  4. Use a powerful quote
  5. Make eye contact
  6. Confront the industry elephant in the room!
  7. Get people to do something
  8. Tell a joke!
  9. Timing is everything. Speed up and slow down when appropriate
  10. Provide action items
  11. Remember! Tell people how to find you!

Speaking can be a game-changer for any business. There is no better way to engage potential customers than providing exceptional insights and value from the stage at events.

Speak now, or forever hold your peace.

For more information visit tylerhayzlett.com

Categories
Marketing Personal Development

What Every Business Author Needs to Know

For most business authors, the days of making a living on writing business books are long gone.

But a new era is here, and it still pays to keep publishing them.

Let me explain.

Over 70% of books don’t turn a profit on book sales alone anymore.

Just like selling music, the margins in individual book sales have become so low and finite that it isn’t a lucrative revenue model. Business books have become a marketing model.

The real ROI

The going rate for ghostwriting is around $7,000 per 50 pages, at 250 words a page. For a standard 250 page book, that’s $35,000.

$140 per page or $.56 per word! And That doesn’t cover the cost of marketing and inventory.

So, If you don’t have a marketing plan that will sell enough books to off-set those costs, you better be using them to promote the service that will.

Most authors and publishers are still marketing books like it’s the golden era of publishing in the 1980s. Business authors should use books as marketing tools and not rely on them for revenue only.

Every business author makes the lion share of their total revenue on their services:  consulting, speaking, training, etc. Yet, most authors promote their books as a separate sales and marketing process.

Separate marketing plan, separate sales funnel, separate audience. Instead, Business authors should use their books to promote their subject matter expertise in tandem with the service they make their living on.

The Reality:

Books are an increasingly low margin product.

Just think, you would have to sell 20,000 books to bring in the same revenue of a $20,000-month consulting retainer.

HERE IS THE SECRET that nobody wants to talk about.

YOU DON’T HAVE to make a killing on book sales to make a killing off of your book.

Mass marketing is over. Ultimately, you’re selling a niche service, not a book.

Don’t believe me?

Only 62 out of 1000 book titles sell more than 5,000 copies, so you can’t publish thinking book sales are the pot of gold.

Books are the rainbow that leads interested people to the pot of gold by ultimately purchasing the service you provide after proving you’re the leader in your domain of expertise.

For example;

REAL LIFE CASE STUDIES

Russel Brunson. ClickFunnels

I met Russel Brunson in 2008 at a mastermind event teaching internet marketing. Then around 2015, Brunson launched a book called DOTCOM Secrets to teach people how to be effective at digital marketing.

But he wasn’t selling his book!  He gave it away at cost. He still is (get it here). Why? Because he isn’t in the business of selling books. He is playing a bigger game.

So what is he really selling?

He’s the founder of a SaaS software for internet marketers called ClickFunnels.

He gives away his book at cost as a marketing strategy attracting as many people as possible who are interested in digital marketing to upsell them on his digital marketing software to implement what they want. Results.

By using his book as a marketing tool, he attracted a social media tribe of over 1 million entrepreneurs who do their own digital marketing.

He then upsold no less than 55,000 current active users to his SaaS software. His ClickFunnels Software company is now valued at over $360 million in top-line revenue.

Brunson’s personal net worth is $37 million today. By not worrying about making money on book sales but using his books to attract and teach an audience how to effectively use his software!

Grant Cardone. 10x

Cardone deployed the same model using his book to attract people searching for personal development and sales mastery.

When you sign up to get his free book, he upsells them into his Grant Cardone Sales Training University at a price tag of $10k per student.

His personal net worth is $300 million. While historically he made his money through real estate investing, today he is using his books to attract people into his business sales funnel.

John Lee Dumas:

Dumas promotes content to people searching for how to start a podcast.

He then offers them a $3.99 book to teach people how to launch and grow a podcast that comes with 15 video tutorials. That’s a lot of upfront value for next to nothing.

Why? To upsells his podcast training program. By using his book as a lead magnet, he netted $2 million for his sales training business in his second year in operations.

SUMMARY

If you’re in the services business. Writing and publishing a book can be the perfect way to attract the customers interested in your field and expertise.

By teaching them what you know, they gain your trust, and you become the person they refer others to for help when they need your services.

While there is little chance you will retire on book royalties any more, there is a very big incentive to launch one for your business.

For more information visit tylerhayzlett.com

Categories
Entrepreneurship Marketing Personal Development

How Popular Thought Leaders Attract Followers Through Their Stories

Being a thought leader is no walk in the park. Staying in demand is even harder. I’ve seen a lot of speakers and subject matter experts come and go over the last decade. The ones that became the most successful the longest, know how to tell stories people need to hear.

Most executives get into the speaking circuit because they know solutions others would benefit from but they have a hard time getting people to listen. Especially early on. Everyone talks about the importance of having a digital presence and digital marketing but how do you grow an audience from scratch?

The first thing to know about creating traffic is that you’re not creating it. Your job is to convert it. The internet is traffic. It’s already there waiting for you.

Brands and companies winning with digital marketing are producing the most helpful and unique content by sharing their expertise on their subject matter in a way that relates to the people seeking something new and different.

Content marketing isn’t new it’s been “a thing” for thousands of years. The term “content marketing” was adopted in 2007 though to highlight the shift away from traditional interruption-based advertising to the maturing discipline of value-oriented content creation. It was a reminder and call to arms to stay grounded in the way humans communicate.

By telling stories and sharing experiences people can relate to.

Gary Vaynerchuck is one of the most in-demand corporate speakers today on digital marketing. But people don’t follow him because he talks about digital marketing. They follow him because they first related to his story and experience is something they want to replicate for themselves.

Gary grew his parents’ wine business from $3 million to $60 million by being one of the first companies to use YouTube to make wine video reviews to sell their inventory. He left that world and grew an 800 personal digital marketing agency for the world’s biggest brands. He isn’t just talking about digital marketing he lives and breathes it.

Similarly, Simon Sinek didn’t blow up for telling companies to update their mission statements. He shared his experience of how he quit his corporate job because he felt a lack of excitement and of attention to basic human emotional needs at large companies in a TedTalk that became the 3rd most popular watched presentation of all time.

Sinek explains complex obvious problems by sharing stories that create shared experiences.

Over the last 8 years our Chairman, Jeffrey Hayzlett, has delivered over 1,300 keynote presentations by outlining in vivid detail, how he and his team went through one of the largest gut-wrenching turnarounds in American business history. Telling his experience validates what every other company in the world is feeling and going through. Unmitigated massive ongoing scary changing business landscapes and how to face the fear of the unknown.

By sharing experience, we spread knowledge.

The point is some of the most in-demand speakers and thought leaders are not just marketing themselves as speakers available for hire. Popular thought leaders today are the missing messages for change in increasingly outdating industries. Telling hard truths most aren’t willing to say.

The most effective way to share your message is to tell stories.

Marketing and soap operas:

The phrase soap opera came about in the mid-1930s because the sponsors of the earliest radio shows were soap manufacturers targeting housewives through daytime radio ads for woman.

Attention from the same advertisers then shifted in the 60s to TV programming for working moms. High drama shows involving betrayals, breakups, dark secrets, and intimate storylines were capturing the attention of the masses. It was in that shift where marketers learned the mainstream attraction and power of storytelling. They integrated their advertising where people were listening to stories.

Digital marketers today are now scrambling to become the story not just interrupt them.

The emergence of the soap opera sequence:

Marketers only have seconds to capture strangers’ attention.

They are doing so by getting people hooked on an idea. This isn’t about manipulation it’s about getting to the point of what really matters to them.

Digital marketers today have adapted a term known as the Soap Opera Sequence to structure their communication in story form intended to create drama, build suspense and anticipation, and ultimately entice people to take action.

Telling your story using the soap opera sequence

1. Set The Stage:

Start off with an eye-raising statistic or enticing question.

2. Backstory

What’s the dramatic pain point everyone knows in the industry but nobody is talking about that creates trust and allows the know you’re just like them?

3. Hitting the Wall

What reoccurring business problem stopped you from reaching your goal that your prospect can relate to?

4. The Epiphany

What epiphany did you have that solved the problem in a new way that others should know? The secret you learned that changed everything after you implemented it?

5. The Hidden Benefits

What unexpected benefits emerged as a result of the changes you implemented?

6. The Call to Action

Why act now versus later? What will it cost not to act right now?

When communicating with purpose to attract your tribe, use the soap opera sequence to make your content stand out by telling a story that your audience can relate to.

It isn’t about putting out content. It’s putting out content in a relevant and meaningful way.

There has always been too much content. The only way to stand out is to relevant and different. Tell your story like nobody else!

For more information visit tylerhayzlett.com

Categories
Growth Personal Development

The Hidden Truth Book Publishers Don’t Want Authors To Know About

So the book industry just hit a major milestone they didn’t bother to tell authors about. And it’s not exactly good…

Between 2012 to now, self-published book titles grew 156%. Last yearbook titles grew from 786,935 to 1,009,188, surpassing the million mark for the first time in human history!

So why aren’t we celebrating?

It’s never been easier and more affordable to launch a book to share your knowledge with the world. We have more legit subject experts than at any time in human history. This is the single biggest achievement in book publishing since Gutenberg invented the printing press in 1454 over 565 years ago!

So why aren’t publishers celebrating and sharing the good news?

The truth about book publishing today:

The truth is, books have become needles in a haystack to consumers these days. Most publishers need authors more than authors need them. The entire industry is flipping upside down right now.

What publishers won’t tell you today is just how much the industry has changed. With over 1 million books being published each year the chances an authors’ book gets noticed organically is low, really, really, low.

 Here are the numbers from Publishers Weekly, the American trade magazine providing industry insights to publishers, librarians, booksellers, and literary agents since 1872:

  • The average self-published author sells less than 250 books
  • The average published author sells less than 2,000 books
  • over 70% of books don’t turn a profit for authors
  • Only 62 out of 1000 titles sell more than 5,000 copies

Publishers know this information. So why don’t authors?

Publishing a book is no longer The Field of Dreams’ game where if you “build it then they will come.” The days of being discovered organically and getting retail placements are long gone. Publishers in the past controlled the distribution. Today the distribution rests in the ability of the author to create awareness amongst their followers.

Marketing is the primary responsibility of the author. Authors need to establish relationships with publishers with a mutual understanding of roles. Think of your publishing partner as a printer with a vested interest in your success.

There is value in the brand positioning of the publisher and their ability to negotiate distribution agreements into retail outlets and airport bookstores. But make no mistake, they are pay to play agreements. As they should be. You are after all taking up valuable and expensive real estate by occupying the end of isle positions others are more than willing to invest in.

However authors today need to know, the minute you publish your book is when the real work starts.

If you don’t have a solid marketing plan to promote your book to the people who need it, you will be very disappointed.

 

For more information visit tylerhayzlett.com

Categories
Marketing Personal Development

WARNING All Authors a Lesson on Pricing Content From the Music Industry

Selling books and content is no walk in the park. And it’s about to get even harder.

To understand the changing landscape for authors. Here’s a parallel situation that’s already played out for music content publishers.

When Napster crashed the music party in 1999 giving away music for free, attracting the masses to one platform, one group quietly noticed and went to work. Advertisers copied the model and took over the music industry by controlling the distribution. Now the industry doesn’t care about making money selling music anymore. They give away music to sell other products. Killing revenue margins for musicians in the process.

 Now they’re playing a different game…

Today iTunes is the new version of the record store. Apple promotes extremely discounted music to sell Apple’s lucrative products. Music’s just the bait.

Think about it, how is it that Spotify and Pandora, whose sole business model is to make money from the streaming of music, DON’T ACTUALLY MAKE ANY MONEY selling music?

80% of Pandora’s net revenue comes from the ads playing to people listening to free music. Only 20% comes from users who pay for ad-free listening. In turn, Pandora pays musicians insultingly tiny royalties established in 2016 at $0.00176 on for each song played essentially as Pandora’s marketing expense.

In other words, THEY DON’T SELL CONTENT! They use it.

They pay to give away content for free in order to sell advertising. Pandora hasn’t turned a profit since it started in 2000.

Spotify after 13 years and 96 million subscribers, finally reported a profit for the first time this year of $107M and are spending all of it and more ($500M) to acquire podcast networks for the same reason.

So what in the heck does this have to do with authors?

Publishers of all types, from news to music, to movies, to books, are NOT HAPPY that consumers won’t pay a premium for content anymore. The painful lesson content-driven industries are learning is that they never sold content! They sold access to content and the price you paid was simply the package it came in.

From records, tapes, CDs, now to streaming. But that’s all changing. Even for authors.

Amazon is doing to authors what iTunes has been doing to musicians. They sell books as low-cost leaders to sell higher ticket items.

 Don’t believe me?

Why would anyone buy a book in a retail book store for $24.95 when you can get it for $1.19 with free shipping to your front door? Look for yourself. This is a book we spent the better part of three years to build and promote. Amazon took it upon themselves to reset prices without consulting us.

Amazon sells the book below the cost it takes to produce it! It’s only a matter of time Amazon arbitrates book pricing below the cost of producing the book.

 

We launched this book in December of 2018 and In the 6 months since the launch, Amazon priced it $8 below retail.

The current book pricing model is absurd!

The book industry is still pricing books based on the old physical distribution model to keep the past model alive and it isn’t working. Retail pricing is almost twice as high for the same product listed on Amazon, and it isn’t delivered to your front door with free shipping.

People are more likely to buy coffee from a bookstore at this point than an actual book.

The first day of your book launch the listing price is discounted from the retail price on Amazon from $25 down to $15-17 right out of the gate. Amazon resellers then start to immediately undercut the publisher’s listed prices.

Ever heard of Seth Godin? Here is Seth’s most recent book that should be $24 at retail. However, you can get the same book on Amazon for $6-$11 or $0 if you sign up for Amazon’s Audible trial!

Seriously? It’s the same content and product. I’m certainly not the first to notice this phenomenon. This guy noticed it first and started a business around it.

Meet Jeff Bezos. The man, the myth, the legend.

Like a phoenix rising from the ashes of closed book stores. Bezos started Amazon in 1996 to sell books online with $16 Million in sales (Barnes and Noble took in $2 Billion that year). Today Amazon controls half the print book marketplace while B&N has only 1/5th left

Amazon’s up to 84% for e-book market and B&N just 2%.

Amazon’s e-commerce is around $1Trillion in market cap while B&N is down to $475 Million. For context that’s .05% of what Amazon is doing in online sales.

Bezos cracked the code. The book pricing model is flawed but nobody seems to be talking about it. Books are still being sold at retail pricing when you can buy them under cost on Amazon. Authors today are required to do 100% of their sales and marketing making the retail price relevant for about 3 months before you go buy it from Jeff.

Something needs to change.

 

For more information visit tylerhayzlett.com

Categories
Marketing Networking Personal Development Strategy

The Rise of Thought Leaders

Business is booming! The knowledge-based service industry is now a $355 million dollar per day business. $129 billion billed annually to subject matter experts, trainers, consultants, authors, coaches, speakers, masterminds, webinars, e-courses and more.

The good news is the demand for information and thought leaders is at an all-time high. The bad news? So is the increasing supply and it’s becoming difficult to stand out from the crowded room of other experts.

There’s a growing rate of increase in competition for subject matter experts.

Seriously, subject matter experts are everywhere. Based on a simple search on LinkedIn based on titles, there are:

  • 12 million authors
  • 6 million Experts
  • 550,000 Consultants
  • 300,000 Coaches
  • 300,000 Trainers
  • 40,000 Speakers

That’s a lot of competition!

Just think, if you started a retail business you would have just a handful of competitors in your space. In the knowledge field, it’s fair to say that competition is high.
But where are they all coming from? Why are there so many experts right now?

The rise of professional services & knowledge delivery:

Ever since the 1970s, the American economy moved from a manufacturing to a service-based economy. Today the service business in the US represents 80% of the US private-sector GDP at $10 Trillion annually. The professional service sector consists of agencies, consultants, and specialists championed by individual industry experts.

As the service businesses emerged the brand promise transferred from product quality to specialized knowledge expertise and skill. This led to the rise of individuals as brands.

The Brand Called You! You Can’t Move Up if You Don’t Stand Out!

In 1997, Fast Company recognized the necessity for individuals to develop individual personal brands to compete in the cut-throat digital economy. The key to getting ahead in the services market is directly linked to establishing your personal equivalent of the Nike swoosh. “It’s that simple, that hard, and that inescapable.” At least that’s how Tom Peters put it in this classic branding piece.

Fast forward to today. Because anyone can be positioned as an expert. Everyone is.

 

For more information visit tylerhayzlett.com

Categories
Biography and History Branding Personal Development

From Homeless to a $300 Million Dollar Brand

How Dwayne Johnson wrestled his brand to success

 

 

Everyone knows who Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson is today, but fewer know his story and his gritty past.

Before He Was a Household Name

Before you dismiss his success as just some lucky lottery winner you can’t relate to. You should know that when he started building his path to success years ago. He started his journey with $7 to his name the day after he thought his life was over.

After he failed his dream of nearly getting into the NFL. His stardom comes from an unbelievable story of defying a life of adversity.

His story is legendary and as they say: “Legends aren’t born their made” and Dwayne Johnson certainly made a legendary brand from scratch and there’ s a lot to be learned from his unconventional story.

We talk a lot about building personal brands today. But we don’t honestly do a great job of talking about what REALLY, goes into them.

 

Before He Was Famous

His is a story of defying the odds, teaching us that building a personal brand is just that. Personal.

Before being named “Peoples’ sexiest man alive”, before he was ranked as the highest-paid actor in Hollywood.

Before he had a hit HBO show and popular YouTube channel with millions of social media followers and endless blockbuster movies. Before hosting SNL not once but 5 times, and long before Johnson teased a run for president, his beginning started from a place of quiet despiration.

 

 

Early Days Growing Up

Johnson was a regular kid born in California but grew up in Hawaii.

His father, a former professional wrestler who was let go from the circuit. Out of work, the family was evicted from their 1-bedroom apartment after failing to meet the deadlines for paying rent.

Dwayne was 14 years old. There wasn’t much he could do, but he quickly found solitude in a local gym lifting weights.

 

Turning Passion into Purpose

Johnson mentioned in his official Facebook page:

“I started training hard at 14 years old. Not for fame or a competition, but because we were evicted from our small apartment in Hawaii. I really hated that feeling of helplessness and never wanted that to happen again. So, I did the only thing I could control with my own two hands in hopes that one day my family would never worry about being evicted again – I trained,”

 

 

This experience changed him forever.

It was this moment that carved into Johnson a sense of urgency as a survivor. Forced off the island without a place to live.

The family wound up moving to a little motel outside Nashville, Tennessee where he stole steaks from a local grocery store only to realize that he didn’t have a way to prepare the meat in the motel room.

Unfortunately, that wasn’t all he stole.

 

Overcoming His Demons

Johnson joined a gang and had been arrested eight or nine times by age 16.

But thankfully the time and energy Johnson was putting into the weight room started paying dividends when he found himself a fatherly figure in football coach named Jodi Swick who gave him a chance to play on the football team.

Dwayne fell in love with competition and chose a more productive path in sports.

He trained and worked hard eventually earning his way play for the University of Miami. His future was starting to look brighter with pro football a possibility. Until a sudden injury cut his dreams into shreds.

Warren Sapp replaced his spot on the roster who ultimately went on to play in the NFL and became famous instead of Johnson. Crushing his dreams and everything he planned for up to that moment.

 

With Only $7 in His Pocket Left

After graduating Miami with no prospects Johnson went to Canada to play semi-pro for the Calgary Stampeders in 1995 only to be cut from the team after just 2 months.

With no job and a wife to support, Dwayne had $7 to his name and no idea what to do.

He called his father to pick him up and had to move back into his parent’s apartment.

The voice in his head told him. “You’re done. Your life is over. You failed! You’re worthless.”

He later recalled recalled dealing with a bought of depression:

“I found that, with depression, one of the most important things you could realize is that you’re not alone. You’re not the first to go through it; you’re not going to be the last to go through it… I wish I had someone at that time who could just pull me aside and say, ‘Hey, it’s gonna be OK.
It’ll be OK.

I didn’t want to do a thing, I didn’t want to go anywhere. I was crying constantly. Eventually, you reach a point where you are all cried out.”.

 

He Had a Decision to Make

He spent that time pondering his next moves and if he even had any at all. Dwayne stayed cooped up in his family apartment biding his time simply cleaning.

Then one day his former Calgary coach called him up and asked him if he was interested in coming back.

But he wasn’t. Instead, Johnson turned to something familiar to him.

Watching his father and grandfather wrestle growing up, he decided to attempt a career in their footsteps. Only to receive some discouraging feedback from his family. After hearing his new career choice his father, Rocky, told Dwayne this was the worst mistake he would ever make.

But that didn’t deter Dwayne. And Rocky agreed to train him anyway. Johnson was able to arrange several tryout matches through the then WWF. He had his foot in the door. The professional wrestling journey for Johnson began in that awkward and disparaging beginning.

 

Making His WWE Debut

His father trained him and just a year after being cut from the Stampeders, Dwayne made his WWE debut in 1996 with the stage name “Rocky Maivia” combining the names of his father and grandfather. Later to be known simply as “The Rock”.

And once again, his experience didn’t go as he planned. The audience didn’t take to him or his character and it seemed as though his father was correct. It was all a mistake.

But Dwayne didn’t give up. He kept pushing forward. He made changes in his character and increased his efforts to stand out and personalize his stage presence. He went all-in.

He eventually won the audience over with his magnetic personality and became known as the most electrifying man in sports entertainment.

Dwayne started using his own catchphrases, so much so, that Merriam-Webster Dictionary officially added his “smackdown” phrase to the dictionary in 2007.

 

Leveling Up

After catching his stride in the ring and with his new and growing fans, the Rock was no longer surviving he was creating momentum.

Rather than being handed obstacles to deal with, he was finally making opportunities for himself.

Unbeknown to Johnson, at that same time, Saturday Night Live wanted to bring a pro wrestler on to host the show.

Because of the charisma he put into the ring, they chose him.

 

Hosting SNL

In 2000, Saturday Night Live asked the now well-known wrestling celebrity to take center stage and host a show.

It was at this moment that the outside mainstream world became aware of The Rock’s personality and energy. Things changed forever. Lorne Michaels recalled Johnson’s first hosting gig in a NY Times Interview:

 

“He has a wonderful sense of timing, he has an innate theatricality and because he projects strength, the audience kind of relaxes with him. He could do nuance, he could do subtle, he could do big and broad.”

 

Johnson stepped up to the plate in a big way.

He took the flame of success he created and added fuel to the fire. He decided to launch a book, a memoir for his life until that moment.

 

Building His Brand

The story of his life became number 1 on the New York Times Best Seller list. Another win that created more awareness and opened even more doors for him.

It was only five years after Johnson had started wrestling, and was thrown very quickly into the world of Hollywood films.

He adapted quickly. Bringing the charm he created in the ring to the studio. But he didn’t just hone his acting capability, he elevated his personal brand and marketing skills as well.

Johnson started changing the way movies were promoted.

Sharing set secrets and behind the scenes shots before a movie premiere used to be taboo. But the Rock turned the game upside down when he inked a deal to get paid an extra $1 million to promote his own movies due to the power to promote his project to his now enormous social followers.

That’s pretty badass.

 

 

And He isn’t Slowing Down

Dwayne currently has over

  • 100 million Instagram followers
  • 58.1 million Facebook followers
  • 13.9 million Twitter followers
  • over 2 million YouTube subscribers

Across all those channels he shares photos, videos, and announcements about the films he’s in as he’s working on them.

Johnson’s posts, featuring things like set photos with fans on set, often create organic media placements.

Creating even more coverage for the films he stars in, and it cost him nothing.

Conclusion

He not only stepped into Hollywood as a player, he quickly learned how to play the game and changed it.

Through his years of talented brand building. He adapted and capitalized by being the most entertaining player in his space.

At the beginning of Dwayne Johnson’s journey, it would be difficult to predict the success he would manifest if any at all. Through his perseverance and determination not to quit and race towards new opportunities, today Dwayne Johnson’s net worth is north of $320 million and climbing.

He’s a 100% certified self-made-man, an inspiration to millions, and the hardest worker in the room. But best of all, through his success, he remained as humble as the man that began the journey.

Threw his story, his actions, and his positive influence, he became a man worth following.

 

“Be the type of person that when your feet touch the floor in the morning the Devil says, “aww shit…there up.”

– Dwayne Johnson

 

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