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61: Finding Your Voice: How to Turn Your Unique Message into a Meaningful Business

About this Episode

Joel Boggess is the host of the ReLaunch podcast show, and the author of the #1 Amazon bestselling book Finding Your Voice: Sort Through the Clutter; Discover Clarity, Confidence and Direction.

Joel is passionate about sharing fresh ideas, success tips and inspirations through real life stories. Joel is an expert at helping you connect to who you are at your core, so you have the clarity of life direction, and are empowered to take your work, home and family life in a direction that’s best for YOU.

Joel Boggess’ broadcasting career began in the early 90s behind the mic in traditional radio, on camera as a reporter, and in the master control room as an Associate Producer.

Today, he is a #1 bestselling author, a front-runner in the world of podcasting and new media, and is one-half of the broadcast team behind the creation, development and explosive growth of ReLaunch.

Within 12 days of the podcast’s initial launch, it soared up the iTunes charts to hit #1 in business, education, and in health in the listing of New and Noteworthy podcasts.

His latest book, Finding your Voice, hit the #1 spot on Amazon in three categories – success, self esteem, and happiness; on the same day, in the same hour.

Joel has mastered the art and science of how to develop and execute a podcast launch and growth plan, as well as how to mobilize listeners. His global audience has grown 10-fold in twelve months time and he has earned numerous podcast awards including Best Overall and Most Inspirational podcast.

Find Your Voice

Your success begins with a passion to share your voice. There are a number of different ways you can put your voice out into the world for people to take it in.

You can:

Start a podcast
Write books
Do a video series
Be a blogger

There are many other ways as well. But it all starts with a deep passion to share your voice and your message with the world. Once you’ve discovered that passion within yourself you can figure out what is the best way to put your voice out there, so your audience can find you.

What mediums resonate most with you and your voice? What do you enjoy doing most?

Do you enjoy social media?
Do you enjoy making YouTube videos?
Do you enjoy doing interviews?
Do you enjoy blogging?

Whatever you enjoy doing most is how you should interact with the world to build your platform first. Build an audience on whatever platform seems most fun to you to start with.

The key is to make sure you’ve mastered the platform before you move on to anything else.

Consistency is the key to success when building your author platform. In order to be consistent you have to like what you’re doing. That’s why it makes sense to begin building your platform in whatever way seems most fun and easiest to you.

Here’s another way to look at it. Where do you spend your time online right now? What social media platforms do you use? Consider building an audience on your favorite social media platform first.

Become rockstar good at whatever social media platform is your favorite. Once you have an audience you can branch out in any number of different directions.

When you try to be everywhere online at once, you defeat your purpose and you make it practically impossible to build any kind of sizable audience.

Find Your Message and Share It with the World

“I believe everyone was sent here with a message to share straight up. And once you get in tune with your message it’s a game changer for you.” – Joel Boggess

The key to being successful on the Internet today is to figure out the message you were meant to share is, and then share that message with as many people as you can in an authentic way.

You can learn a lot from the stars in your market. There’s nothing wrong with emulating the successful people in your niche. But above all else what you want to do is be yourself. Authenticity is in short supply today. And if you’re true to yourself that will come through whatever platform you use.

Joel and his students focus on finding their personal messages in his elite online group. It functions as a mastermind where everyone is completely safe to express themselves.

Be Yourself

When Joel decided to write his book Finding Your Voice he shared some of his personal journey with his readers. He talked about his difficult childhood. He told readers about how his parents divorced when he was three years old. And he also talked about his near-death experience. He was in a coma for several days and when he woke up Joel knew that he had a mission to share his message with the world.

After going through his near-death experience and years of therapy, Joel has a passion for helping other people find their purpose in life. Helping people get in touch with themselves on a deeper level so that they’re connected to their own authenticity and the self-confidence that comes with it has been a real calling for Joel his entire life.

Finding Your Voice: The Guidebook to Discovering Your Message

Finding your voice is a guidebook that helps you find:

Clarity
Confidence
Direction

The book starts out with Joel’s personal journey. Then he shares a number of stories of his clients.

All of this is to help you clarify your message, find confidence in your delivery, and decide on the direction for moving forward to share your message with the world.

“Cookie-cutter programs don’t work because we aren’t cookies. We have our own style and our own gifts to share with the world.” – Joel Boggess

Joel’s book is designed so that you can open to any chapter and find ideas and inspiration for your own life.

The Biggest Challenge

The biggest challenge people have when it comes to finding and using their voice to spread their message is they are steeped in other people’s expectations. They also might have some shame, guilt or doubt that they can share their voice effectively and make positive change in the world.

Rudy: A Case Study

Rudy is a movie based on the true story of Rudy Ruettiger who got a scholarship to play football at Notre Dame even though he wasn’t very good at playing football.

Rudy’s father told him to give up his dream to play football for Notre Dame because he wasn’t meant for that.

Rudy followed his own path and inspired thousands of people with his personal story.

Artists have the same pressure on them that Rudy did in the movie. So often we are told, “you can’t make money as an artist.” The truth is millions of artists have made a living pursuing art. Now is the best time in human history to be an artist. It’s the easiest time in human history to monetize your artistic endeavors.

The key to making a living as an artist today is to know your message, and use the medium that is most comfortable for you to get that message out into the world so that an audience can find you.

How to Overcome Fear

Joel has a Masters degree in counseling. One of the first things he does with clients and in his mastermind is create a safe nonjudgmental place where people can express their deeper dreams.

In order to discover your message you have to get in touch with the deepest most authentic part of yourself. You can only do that in a nonjudgmental place.

Once you access the deepest part of yourself and begin to talk about what you really want for your life, that’s when real growth and change can take place.

After you identify your message and what you really want in your life the next step in the process is to take what Joel calls safety steps that will help you move forward into your dream life.

Safety steps are actions that might take you a little bit out of your comfort zone, but they are definitely within your capability at this moment. They are also small wins that you can use to build momentum.

From the beginning of the safety steps process Joel puts his clients through a three-step system for success.

The first thing you have to know is whether people really are behind the idea they’re expressing. If they’re not behind the idea, they aren’t going to take the massive action necessary in order to achieve their goals.

“All success is massive action. There are no secret formulas.” – Joel Boggess

One thing you have to account for is that people’s schedules are different. Everybody has different responsibilities and roles in life.

A single mother of three children is going to have a different availability to build her empire than a 22-year-old with support behind them.

They can both pull it off. But you want to be aware of your circumstances and plan accordingly. You want to make a plan that is realistic and based on where you are right now in your life.

Building a platform and a dream life is not magic. All it takes is consistent action to achieve your dreams. The actions you take are going to be different than the actions that someone else takes because your circumstances will be different, but consistent action to build your platform and the life of your dreams is within the grasp of everyone.

Joel’s Three-Step System for Success

1) Personal Accountability

Having an accountability buddy is great. What’s even better is when you learn to hold yourself accountable, and you begin to demand more of yourself than anyone else would or could. That’s when the huge breakthroughs happen.

2) Results Only

Do what creates the results you want. Zoom in on work that REALLY matters, and delegate or stop doing the work that doesn’t. Anyone can be busy, but can you be really productive and get results day in and day out?

3) No Excuses

Don’t allow yourself to make excuses. There is no excuse worthy of stealing your dreams.

Joel has a private Facebook group and one of his greatest accomplishments is that people in that group use the #noexcuses hashtag in their personal conversations.

One of the biggest predictors of success is whether or not you do what you say you’re going to do. People who do what they say they’re going to do are far more successful than people who are unreliable and don’t finish what they start.

No matter what you plan, unintended things will happen. Take care of what needs to be taken care of and then get back to work. The only way you succeed is by moving forward on your plan.

How Joel Manages Successful Launches

Form a launch team right from the start. When Joel launched Find Your Voice, he had a large team of between 85 people.

The launch team includes:

Your family
Your friends
Your coworkers
Your neighbors

You want to get your launch team on an email list so that you can communicate with them all directly. Your launch team should be people that you know personally.

You want to make it as easy as possible for people on your launch team to help you succeed.

Joel and his team wrote out every piece of social media content that he wanted his launch team to share. Then all they had to do is re-share what he had shared.

He also took the extra step of writing reviews that people could use as a baseline for their Amazon review. No one used the review verbatim.

Writing reviews for influencers to use on your behalf is a common practice that publishing companies have been using for hundreds of years. Those quotes that you see on books rarely come from the people themselves. They are suggested by the authors or their publicists.

Joel knew every one of his launch team personally and he made sure to follow up with them when he launched his book to make sure they took the right actions so that his book would be picked up by Amazon’s algorithm and emailed to his target audience.

There are three things your launch team can do to help you promote your book during the first month it’s launched on Amazon.

Your launch team can:

Buy your book.
Review your book on Amazon.
Promote your book on social media being sure to share the purchase link that leads to Amazon.

All of those actions get your book noticed by Amazon’s algorithm.

When Joel launched his book he had a two week launch plan laid out hour by hour as to what his launch team should be doing. He communicated with them through email and by personal communication.

He doesn’t recommend using a private Facebook group because when you post things to a private Facebook group it makes it more complicated for people to share things in public. And public is where you want your launch to happen.

When Joel launched his podcast he called upon the same 85 people he used to launch his book. The cool thing about using friends and family for a launch team is they want to see you succeed. The people who form the genesis of your first launch team are the same people you can come back to over and over again. They are your true fans.