– [Henry] People want the real deal. And if they could see that you live it, breathe it, and are it, the selling process is going to be a lot easier because they know that you mean business, right? This is you. You’re not just talking the talk, you’re walking the walk. And I’ve done that from a very early age. You know, I’ve always put in 110% and still fell on my face dozens of times. And you know, it takes a lot of courage and effort to get back up and to make it right for whoever you’re serving and to also, you know, make it right for yourself because at the end of the day, guys, you have to consistently be confident in what you’re doing.
– [Jason] You know, your business can change people’s lives but you don’t yet have the right words to inspire them to take action. Imagine the changes you will create in your business as you tap into the secrets of ethical influence and positive persuasion to not only better serve your clients, but also to supercharge your financial freedom.

[00:01:02]

I’m your host, Jason Linett, and welcome to the Hypnotic Language Hacks podcast. I help entrepreneurs and business owners just like you to close more premium sales. And no, this isn’t about tricking or manipulating people, not at all. It’s about helping your prospects to appropriately sell themselves into your products or services. Please hit Subscribe and get all the episodes now at jasonlinett.com. If you want to change your business, that probably means you need to change your clients. However, once you change your clients, you’ll very likely end up changing your life. I am Jason Linett, and welcome back to Hypnotic Language Hacks, where from 20 years professional experience as a hypnotist, I’m here each and every week, sharing with you methods of ethical influence and positive persuasion, specific hypnotic language hacks you could put to use immediately. Now, in addition to that, this week is a great example,

[00:02:01]

I also bring on outstanding guests, such as my incredible guest this week, Henry Kaminski Jr., also known as the Brand Doctor where we’re going to talk about this whole theme of operating, if indeed, even living on borrowed time and how to go from half-assing your efforts to, as we talk about full-assing your efforts to really put the most benefit into what you do to see the biggest returns in response to that, to share with you some of the work that Henry has done over the years. And he’ll talk about this as a designer, as an expert in guiding people in the branding of their business with a client list, with names such as Russell Brunson, the creator of ClickFunnels, as well as Jon Bon Jovi, which, damn, to hear how he eventually got to that place by watching someone else design and Photoshop and going, “That’s so cool. Show me more,” and, “I want to learn,” and specifically, I’ll tell you in advance, whenever I’m about to record with somebody as a guest on this program,

[00:03:02]

what I’m often looking to highlight are those turning points, those challenge markers in time where someone else would have thrown in the towel, someone else might have just given up, but asking what was the mental hurdle they had to jump over? What were those chance encounters that could have been a risk could have been completely left by the wayside, and instead, as Henry shares, the opportunity to really jump in, take ownership of where he was, and make stuff happen? So this is Episode number 15 of Hypnotic Language Hacks. We’re going to make a couple of references in our conversation. Head over to jasonlinett.com/15. That’ll give you the show notes of this episode. And before we jump in, here’s a little bit more about Henry. Henry Kaminski Jr. is the founder of Unique Designz. That’s spelled with a Z. His website is uniquedesignz.net, a full-service design, branding, and digital marketing agency that’s dedicated to helping

[00:03:59]

with personality-based brands, working with coaches, consultants. Full disclosure, I’ve hired Henry myself to help to level up a lot of what I do. He’s the author of the Amazon bestseller Refuse to Give Up as well as the host of the highly regarded and massively downloaded Brand Doctor podcast, which check that out. We’ll link to that over in the show notes as well. A self-taught graphic designer, as he shares the story here, and building a wildly successful multi-million dollar business in a matter of the last 12 years. His client list, myself included, includes names like Jon Bon Jovi, Fabio Viviani, as well as people like Russell Brunson, designing podcast covers, and helping to build a lot of the cohesive design scheme that still stands to this day that he was the origin story along, helping with. So listen to an amazing conversation of utilizing turning points, how to double-down on your efforts, and get outstanding results from what you do as well as making sure what you put out to the world represents the best

[00:05:02]

of who you are. I’m so excited to share this with you. So here we go, Henry Kaminski Jr., the Brand Doctor. Before we get started today, if you want to easily grab people’s attention, naturally build authority, and organically have your prospects wanting more from you even before you’ve made an offer, I’ve created a step-by-step program to help you to do just that. It’s called Business Influence Systems. And this is your opportunity now to visit jasonlinett.com to get a free behind-the-scenes tour of the exact hypnotic persuasion strategies that you can ethically use to better start up or scale up your business. If you want a proven framework to boost your confidence, attract premium clients, and inspire more people to take action with you, get Business Influence Systems now at jasonlinett.com. All right. I’m here with Henry Kaminski Jr., the Brand Doctor.

[00:06:02]

Henry, how are you?
– Jason, thanks again for having me on the show. I’m doing amazing.
– Awesome. And I wanted to have you on here to tell some of your story about where many of us catch ourselves in that place where it seems everything is stacked up against us, all odds are not in our favor, but how so often it comes around to thinking a bit differently about our model, our brand, and how we can serve our audience. But for those that don’t yet know you, could you give a bit of an intro to yourself?
– Yeah. I think the odds I’ve been stacked up against me since I was two years old or maybe even before I was born. So my mom used to tell this story, God rest her soul, about how I was her miracle baby. And I never understood what that meant. And she would always tell her girlfriends that it took her 16 years to have me, and as a little kid I thought like women were pregnant for 16 years. So I was like, “Whoa, God bless women.” Right? But what happened was my parents, after they got married, they tried to have a family and they couldn’t.

[00:06:59]

There was issues with my mother, issues with my father, and they just couldn’t get pregnant. And medicine wasn’t the way it is today, so it took them literally 16 years of just trial, after trial, after trial, and then finally once medicine got a little bit better, my mom went in for a small little surgery, and boom, I was conceived on the day of the Immaculate Conception for all you Catholics out there. So it was pretty amazing. So then fast-forward two years, I’m born and I seem to be doing okay. But my mom is in the kitchen cooking or cleaning, whatever she was doing, and she comes in to check on me in the crib and I’m non-responsive. I’m practically dead. So they rushed me to the hospital and they found out that I had lost all the salt in my body. And so they did what they had to do to get me back to life, and so here I am, you know?

[00:07:59]

And so when I hear that story growing up, I always say to myself, “Well, I feel like I’m here on borrowed time. I got to make the best of the days that I have on this earth, physically, and I’m going to do whatever I can to just make it the best life I can until I’m dead.” Right? So that has sort of been the mantra in my head to get me through a lot of the tough times and to get me to where I am in business, you know, 14 years later. So, you know, I use that story because it’s mine to really push me when, you know, I’m feeling stuck.
– Well, it’s that awareness. And I think we’ve had conversations around this before, that nothing is worth doing, unless we do it full out and quick, quick side story of, I’m working with a 14-year-old kid many years ago that, as he put it, he goes, “It’s not that I have attention problems. It’s not that I don’t apply myself…” He goes, “I just haven’t been trying in school.” In his words, he goes, “Up until now I’ve been half-assing everything.

[00:09:00]

I think I just need a whole asset now,” which his mother turned a beautiful shade of beet red and I went, “I get this kid, let’s get to work.” I love it. So fast-forward, where did design, where did, your own brand, your own style come into all of this?
– Yeah. So pretty interesting. So I did not go to school for design. I didn’t even know what I wanted to be when I grew up when I was in college. But I did know that I had had the gift of gab and I wasn’t afraid to talk in front of people. So I immediately switched majors to communications and went all in, and that path was very easy for me, you know, where people would struggle and hide in corners because they were so afraid to speak in public. I was like, “Let me add them, chief.” And so I really excelled in that area. So once I get out of college, it’s around 9/11, that just happened and

[00:10:01]

nobody was hiring. Everything was pretty much locked down. And so I had to use my resources and connections to find a job. And so my uncle was pretty connected in one of the local hospitals here in New Jersey and he had got me in as a guy literally checking insurances at the same-day surgery center. It wasn’t anything exciting. I was cleaning coffee pots half the day. And I decided to go back to get my master’s degree since the hospital was going to pay 90% of it I said, “Why not?” So I started my master’s program in business management. I always had this want to do things on my own. Right? I had a hard time with rules. I had a hard time. I’m just going to call it out. Right? I had a hard time with rules. This may come back and bite me in the ass later on, but who cares? But I had a hard time with rules and I just saw myself just doing something,

[00:10:59]

but I had no clue what, you know, at the time, as naive as I was, a 24-year-old with a master’s degree, I was thinking I was going to be the next VP real soon. And it never happened. But I did punch my way up the totem pole at the hospital and got a job at the Sudden Infant Death Syndrome Center in the Children’s Hospitals. So for those folks that don’t know what SIDS is, it’s when a baby dies under the age of one with no cause. There’s no cause of death. And they the autopsy cannot…that’s the autopsy report, it’s Sudden Infant Death Syndrome. So can you imagine if you’re a parent going through that? So we had a center in the Children’s Hospital that helped families in the state of New Jersey get through that. And what my responsibility was, once I got promoted into that position was, to create fundraising events to support the program but then take that money and spend it on support events for the families in the state of New Jersey.

[00:12:00]

So we would take them down the Jersey shore, we would take them to Great Adventure, we would take them to all these things with the monies that were raised. So it’s very fulfilling. So what happened was I landed one of the biggest sponsors ever, Z100, one of the biggest radio stations on the planet as a sponsor. And I knew I needed marketing materials to make this event hot. And so my buddy was in the nightlife industry and was a club promoter. This is where I’m dating myself here, right? and he said, “Well, why don’t you do the event at my club? I’ll do all the marketing and flyer work, and design, and all of that.” And I said, “All right. Let’s do it.” So I sat down with him and I watched him design these flyers and I was like, “My God, this is design? Like, you’re playing God right now.” Like you could literally design anything you want with Photoshop. And I just got bit by the bug. So I got my boss to buy the Photoshop program and I convinced her for me

[00:12:59]

to start doing all the in-house design work. And so little by little… This is the part where I think a lot of people forget. They see like the end result of my career. They don’t really see where it really started. And I spent 36 months at the hospital designing my ass off 20 hours a day. So I started to build a little book of business outside of the hospital as well as inside of the hospital and it took me about 36 months for me to say, “I’m going to do this on my own now.” But that was sort of a push. It wasn’t something that I was planning on doing. So the hospital started to…well, the 2008 hit, economic crisis, things were going to hell in a handbasket and I could see what they were doing to my position. They were slowly squeezing me out. So half the day I would go into some administrator’s office and I would be filing papers from 1:00 to 5:00.

[00:14:01]

And I just saw it coming and eventually, my boss brought me in and said, “Henry, come January 1, you’re going to be somebody’s secretary because this position is dissolving.” So I went to my uncle who was, you know, helped me get the job. I figured I owe it to him to go back to him and say, you know, “What should I do?” This is not where I want to go. And I told him, “I got this little side hustle going on but I don’t know if it’s sustainable.” I said, “Why don’t I come work for you, Uncle Joe. You got a big construction company.” I could be like a project manager like my cousin. And he was like, “You know nothing about highway construction, my friend.” And he said, “You know what? Let me talk to my daughter and let me see if there’s a spot for you and I’ll get back to you.” So…
– Let me go back to something you said a little while ago because I think this is where… I love the phrase that if we call it out and use it as a strength, it’s something to our benefit. The way that you mentioned earlier that I had a bit of a challenge with rules,

[00:15:00]

which, right there with you. So that opportunity where that’s often what drives us to create our own thing or to find something as it was with you with Photoshop to go, “I’m going to throw three years into this and get really good at this, get really world-class at this.” Because it’s where that ability to look at something and go, “I get to create my own thing.” Talk to me about that for a moment in terms of places where that’s been a strength for you.
– Yeah. So, you know, when I am in control, I think I am the best. And I think that’s where my leadership ability really kicks into overdrive. I’ve always had this. I’ve never played organized sports in school, but I always picked up the games on, you know, outside of school, like on Sundays we’d all play football, we’d all play, you know, things like that and I was always the one pushing everybody. And I was like the smallest guy running around. Like I’m not a big guy at all, but I was always pushing everybody to be

[00:15:58]

their best because that’s what I wanted on my team, the best. And that was like a mentality that I got from a childhood friend who was like the big class jock, right? And me and him became great friends in middle school and his level of standard rubbed off on me at a very young age. And I took that with me all the way up to where I’m at now, 40 years old. But, you know, I remember Paul screaming at me on the basketball court, you know, “Go, go, go.” You know, and there was a story way back when I used to play soccer, when I was 6 years old, my father signed me up because I was just a little chubby kid. And, God, every time I would go for the ball, it’d be on the other side of the court or the field and it was a mess. I don’t know how we made it to like the championships that year, but we did. And part of that game was me always being on the opposite side of the field of the ball.

[00:16:59]

And I’ll never forget it, it was a crowd full of people there and all I could see is my dad on the sideline, screaming off the top of his lungs, like, “Get the ball, go, go.” Meanwhile, I’m ready to walk off the field and just sit, the bench. And something just came over me. You know, I wish I could tell you, Jason, what it was, but something just came over me and I ran like hell and I was like a bull in a China shop. And I just like took out everybody in my path, got that ball, dribbled it down the field, and scored. And like that was the first time I ever scored in my life. Right? And, again, 6 years old, that story is still in my head. And, you know, every time I feel like I’m bowing out, I think of that story and it brings me right back to, you know, right back to where I’m at today. Just getting back to that story real quick from my uncle, well, my uncle never got back to me. That was the best thing he ever did because that helped me spread my wings and say, “Uncle Joe, I got your message.

[00:17:59]

I’m going to do this on my own just like you did and we’re going to make this work.” And 14 years later here I am.
– Yeah. So then move us forward then. So then going out on your own, what were you doing in those early days to get that first round of clients?
– So I was out there getting doors smashed into my face. You know, I would go out and I would design for free and I would hear no response back. And I would go after all the club promoters and deal with that. Anybody that would give me a shot to design for them, right? And my design work was horrible back then. Like I cringe when I look at that work, but I had to figure something out. I had to figure, like it out. And eventually, one of my buddies who was friends with the person who showed me Photoshop for the first time, he was a club promoter and he said, “Henry, I’m going to give you a shot. I’m going to give you 50 bucks and you’re going to design me this flyer. And if it, you know, if you come through, I’ll give you another job.”

[00:18:57]

And sure as heck, he did that and I went on to become one of the premium designers in the nightlife industry for like 6 years straight, wiping out my competition completely and building, you know, earning a million dollars designing club flyers in the first 36 months. None of my competition was doing that.
– Yeah. So then using that entry point of here’s that chance encounter of someone going, “You know what…” I love that it’s what got you into it originally is where you then ended up inside of that. At what point then did it start to branch out to businesses beyond clubs?
– Yeah. So eventually I got older and I got married and we stopped going out. And I saw that once you’re out of sight, you’re out of mind, you know? So I started to, you know, just resent the work a little bit. I guess I was maturing out of it. Right? And so I started to get some higher quality work.

[00:19:58]

I had my favorites that I still worked with in the nightlife industry. It dwindled down to like two or three people, right? Two or three clients. But one of the promoters introduced me to Bon Jovi’s brother, which turned into two and a half years of working with the Bon Jovi team on two world tours, doing a lot of it. If you could see behind me over here, there was a CD, an exclusive CD that was only sold through the JBJ fan club that he wanted me to design cover to cover. And so it’s still on my wall to this day. It’s a huge accomplishment. And it was such a great experience being from Jersey, working with such a icon. Right? It was really cool. And then eventually I got another big gig working with a salon, these two twins, two twin girls, opened up this salon called Moxie and they literally found one of my club fliers hanging on a car window and they picked it up because

[00:21:00]

it caught their eye. They saw my name on the side of it and they called me and they said, “Come down. We’re in this little chop shop right now, but we’re moving to this nice town and we’re going to open up our first shop.” And I said, “Okay.” So I met them, I loved their energy there. They were like me. They were like go-getters. And they said, you know, “Make us our logo, make us this, make it…” Like, “We need you to brand us.” And we did. And over the five years, they went from one location to, I think it was eight and it became a multi multi-million dollar salon. And it was an amazing experience. And then that led into a lot of corporate work because they had a lot of corporate clients and they would rave about me and that just turned into a whole bunch of corporate work. And, you know, we could get into where everything started to go downhill again in a second, if you want, because that’s where I think the real turning point happened.
– Yeah.

[00:22:00]

Which just to highlight a few things inside of this, that, you know, we talk about maybe a calculation for luck being preparation meeting opportunity, and there you were doing the work, actually grinding it out and, you know, listening to the clients. I love what you’ve mentioned though about when you were no longer in that club world, you started to resent it. And, in some ways, I’m imagining became difficult to keep up inside of that, that right there, there’s a formula for everything social media in the 21st century, that if you want to be selling in that world, you’ve kind of got to be a bit of a part of that world as opposed to presenting as if you are in that world, which apply that over if you’re in health and fitness. Apply that over if you’re speaking to business owners. That of being in the same sandbox, as it were.
– You have to be. I mean, people want the real deal. And if they could see that you live it, breathe it, and are it,

[00:22:59]

the selling process is going to be a lot easier because they know that you mean business, right? This is you. You’re not just talking the talk, you’re walking the walk. And I’ve done that from a very early age. You know, I’ve always put in 110% and still fell on my face dozens of times. And, you know, it takes a lot of courage and effort to get back up and to make it right for whoever you’re serving and to also, you know, make it right for yourself because at the end of the day, guys, you have to consistently be confident in what you’re doing. And I think that’s where I come in as…and that’s where I got bit by like the branding bug because I grew up watching this video, this movie called The Bronx Tale, and it was about…you know, the preface of the whole movie was the saddest thing in life is wasted talent. And I come from a very urban upbringing in high school, and I was 1 of 50 white kids

[00:24:01]

in my whole school. So, you know, when I got out into the real world, I saw a lot of my friends just staying stuck in Long Branch, New Jersey and I never understood. Why? I said this in another interview where there was a friend of mine who makes Dave Chappelle look boring. He was funny as hell. And he never did anything with it because he felt strapped to his environment. He felt like he couldn’t get out. And so I’ve made it a… It’s not about design for me anymore, it’s not about branding for me anymore. It’s about bringing out the best in people, because I had…
– And I think a lot of that comes from where we can get caught up in this downturn that suddenly a market shifts, suddenly we’re no longer in a specific world, and to instead let that become a catalyst to begin to level things up and go after bigger and greater. So you hinted at this earlier, that here’s a point in time where things

[00:25:01]

took a turn. Could you walk us through that and then what you did to get out of that?
– Yeah. So I’m basically crashing and burning my own business because I hate my clients and I hate the industry that I’m working for. Well, what’s the word? When it rains, it pours. Literally, Hurricane Sandy comes through right around that same time and wipes out two of my biggest clients. So working in the nightlife industry, you get introduced to a lot of the liquor representatives that sell to that establishment. And people were raving about my work, so I started getting picked up by these big liquor companies that had massive marketing budgets. So I started to work for…through the liquor distributors, I used to work for Ciroc. I used to work for all the tequila brands, Corona, Coors Light, Miller, Anheuser-Busch. I was getting paid through the liquor companies and working on all of that stuff. And then when Hurricane Sandy hit…

[00:26:01]

So just to put this in perspective, two clients brought in about a quarter of a million dollars in revenue. When the hurricane hit it, wiped them both out completely to the studs. And when they rebuilt, they came to me and said, “Henry, we’re wiping out our art department. We’re just going to sum it out.” So I couldn’t make up that quarter of a million if I tried. And that’s where things started to go really bad, really bad fast. And…
– Yeah. So then to get out of that, what were the actual steps? What did you do?
– Yeah. Well, let’s sit in the pain for a couple of seconds. So I kept living high on the hog because I didn’t want to show everybody how bad I was failing. And eventually, it all caught to me and I went to my wife and I said, “I’m broke.” You know, “I got some cash in the safe, but it’s not going to last long.” And instead of her bailing on me, she said, “Listen, I’m going to help you.” You know, “Let’s figure out where you need help.”

[00:26:58]

And so that’s why I went into exploration mode and I went online and I said, “How can I provide more value to my clients?” And that’s where I started to find like digitalmarketer.com, and ClickFunnels, and that’s where I bumped into Russell Brunson. And I went down the Russell Brunson hole just by listening to his podcast then I signed up for his coaching program that I couldn’t afford. And the day that I met him on the call, he said to me… We’re both hysterical, crying because I’m telling him my whole story and where I’m at. And I guess my story resonated with him so much, he said, “Henry, I’m coming out with this new book, DotCom Secrets, I need a bunch of design work. Do you want to help me?” And I didn’t even know what to charge him. And I said… I knew I owed him 10 grand. So I was like, “How’s six? And he said, “Sure.” And then we worked together on that stuff and then a couple months later he came

[00:27:59]

back to me and said, “Henry, we’re really trying to take this ClickFunnels brand to the next level. I got six designers bringing me six different looks and feels every time I asked for something. I need somebody to come in and help me consistently brand this company so we can take it to 100 mill.” And I said, “All right. Let’s do it.” So I worked with him for about two and a half years, got everything super consistent, and then sort of passed the baton over and six months later, he hit 100 million. So that’s a great, great, you know, part of my memoir that I’ll never forget. And we went on to do great things together.
– Yeah. Let’s talk about that as a theme though, that oftentimes, branding can get a bit of a bad rap because it’s kind of, for some, let’s say a distraction, that they’re just kind of going after it because they think they know what the audience wants as opposed to exactly what you’ve mentioned here about creating a brand that is cohesive where everything looks good, everything matches up,

[00:28:58]

and it’s delivering a consistent through-line, even if it’s the next blog post, even if it’s the next podcast episode, even if it’s an ad that’s going on social media. Let’s start here first. Where do you think most people are kind of missing the focus when it comes to creating that brand and what that actually could convey to an audience?
– Yeah. What I think is happening right now is there’s a lot of me-too businesses popping up and people are just copying, and copy and pasting people’s funnels and they want to be the next, you know, they want to be the next guru, right? And that’s like the worst thing you could do because everybody’s over that already. At least my clients aren’t buying that anymore. And they’re forgetting that they have their own voice. They have their own lens in which they see things. And people want fresh, they want something different. And what I tell my Brand Accelerator clients is like the biggest secret weapon

[00:30:00]

that you have is yourself. Like people want to hear your story. People want to hear your perspective. That’s why people hire me. You know, you could go to Fiverr and get all the design work done for pennies to the dollar, but they don’t get my thinking. They don’t get my strategy. They don’t get my eye. And that’s what people are really buying for. And then they don’t get the process. You know, the process that I take my clients through is very systematic and, you know, clients over, and over, and over tell me, “I’ve been thinking about this for a year. I’ve been thinking about this for three years. Haven’t pulled the trigger yet. Haven’t pulled the trigger yet.” Why? “Because I just don’t know where to get started and I haven’t found somebody to help me and really hold my hand through the process.” Because you can get pretty deep in the mud and sometimes sink if you don’t have somebody pulling you in the right direction that’s delivering on their promise. And that’s what I hold.

[00:31:00]

You know, that’s my standards of business, is guide them, leave them better than you found them, and give them something that they are super proud of because we all know when we’re working with high confidence, we feel like we can take on the world, and that’s when we really excel in business.
– Well, I love what you said about…and it’s not necessarily entirely put down all that’s on Fiverr even all of it’s on Upwork or the similar platforms, yet looking at how so many people look at their business as these events that are running one after the other, after another, and it’s this game of almost trying to always catch up that, “Okay. We’ve got this thing, oh, wait, we’ve got that one.” If we can come back to, and I’ll call this out as a client of yours inside of your Accelerator, to be able to come back to just a guide that now this is the message. This is the information we’re putting out. This is even everything down to the style of graphics and to go, “Here’s our Bible in which now everything filters through.”

[00:32:00]

And to make it so now, you know, it’s the better language of that of a campaign. It’s the better language of that, of an ongoing relationship, an ongoing conversation, as opposed to these one-off images where suddenly everything looks scattered, you get lost into the fold of everyone else, as opposed to the ability of one of these days we’ll have to do an episode all about the color purple. Did my best. Thank you for that. That laugh should inform everybody of how people can interact with something and immediately go, “Oh, that’s that person.” As opposed to, again, that sort of copycat world at the moment where, “Oh, here’s another person.” Yeah. “What do they do?” Pretty much the same as everyone else, but they say it in this order. So talk us through that… Before we get to the Accelerator and exactly what that is, there’s something that I’ve heard you say before, which is about, if you want to change the quality of your income, about changing the quality of the clients. Can you expand on that?
– Yeah.

[00:32:59]

So the quote is “the quality of your brand will affect the quality of your clients, what will determine the quality of your clients. And the quality of your clients will determine the quality of your life.” That’s it. One of the best things that I’ve ever done for myself because, you know, I relate to that 14-year-old that you talked about earlier, and I did a podcast episode about this, this week about half-assed Henry. And I would do a lot of things half-assed and eventually, it caught up to me in business and, you know, I had to refund $40,000 in a day. That’s not fun. Right? Especially, you know, when you’re living paycheck to paycheck and spending every dime that you make. Okay? I had to pull myself literally out of that hell hole on my own with a little bit of help, but on my own to get back on track. And so what I said to myself was…and it was perfect timing because my son was born right around that same time.

[00:33:57]

And I said, “I’ll be damned if I raise a half-ass kid. I don’t want my son to look at me as a half-ass dad.” And that pushed, that pushed buttons. And that was it. I leveled up my business. I invested heavily in processes and systems. I rebranded myself as somebody who’s going to deliver a premium service with premium quality. And now word on the street is Henry’s not cheap. But for that extra money, you get a ton more value. And that’s where I feel comfortable. Right? And but I’m always evolving, Jason, I’m always evolving. I’ve recently redone a lot of the strategy work inside of my Brand Accelerator program to beefen it up because all it takes is one person to come to me and say,

[00:34:59]

“Henry, I can find this stuff on the internet if I look hard enough.” It only took one person for me to hear, “I immediately spent $15,000 on a consultant and we literally ripped everything down to the stud and rebuilt everything.” And my consultant said, “Now I want to hear somebody say that after going through your program.” And that makes me proud, and that makes me happy. And I say to myself, “It’s worth every penny of $15,000 to make this bigger and better and more unique than ever before.”
– Well, it’s looking at how it takes that turning point, but also it takes that bit of a mental shift to suddenly eliminate part of our audience, that here are markets that, you know, got me up and running pretty early on in my business that there came a turning point where it went, “I can’t serve that clientele anymore. I don’t have the time. I don’t want to travel,” which was seemingly the right decision in advance of 2020. But to have that permission to go, “These are the people I work the

[00:36:00]

best with, and just yesterday, as an example, I get an email from someone who had messaged me two years ago, going, “Hey, your scheduling link doesn’t work.” Which reason number one, I switched companies away from one to now another one, which $10 investment a month. Woo-hoo, going great. But that ability to go, “Oh, I no longer work with clients for that category. Here are two people I’d recommend, tell them I said hi,” was all the message went. And not the game of, “Yes, I could work with them. Yes, I could honor the same rate I had mentioned previously,” but to go, “No. This is what I do now. These are the people who I do the best work with. These are the people who I serve the best. And as much as I put my focus on them, that is what naturally comes in the door, that’s what naturally responds to a podcast episode, a webinar, whatever it would be. So what do you say to those people who are maybe a little afraid of letting part of their previous audience, part of their old business kind of fall away?
– Oh man.

[00:37:01]

So one of my other Brand Accelerator clients had just literally said that last week when we were chatting. He’s launching this week. And he said the same thing, “We’re having difficulty parting ways with our other client base.” And I said, “You’re doing them a favor. You’re doing them a favor because you know what the greatest thing in life is, is that you actually recognize that when you do that work with that clientele, you’re not doing your best work and you’re actually doing them a disservice.” So to deliver the best value to them is do exactly what you did, Jason. Send them to somebody that that’s their cup of tea now, you know, that’s, that’s who they want to serve and refer them out because you want to be doing your best work all the time. And, again, I think turning 40 this year has really opened my eyes to my

[00:38:02]

value of time. And going forward here is I only want to work with people that… You know, we kid yesterday when you came on my show and I said, you know, “It’s such a pleasure to work with somebody that has their ish together.” And you do, you know, you do. And that’s what made the process so seamless and so effortless in some ways, for me, because here’s a guy that is really serious about his business, really wants to take it to the next level, has a level of standard that I can run with, and we work together beautifully, you know, and those are the people that I want to work with. And so I have a standard and I’m challenging everybody watching and listening to this to level up your standard. And when you level up your standard, you’re going to level up the quality

[00:39:00]

of business that you own and you’re going to level up the quality of clients that you serve. And if you do great work, you deserve great clients. – I love it. I love it. So then how can people track you down? And tell us a bit more about the Accelerator?
– So new and improved Brand Accelerator program. I cannot wait to get my first client through the 2.0 version of the program. But basically what we do is we discover, we strategize, and then we build, right? That’s where I got the Brand Doctor name from. I had a guy that I was in a coaching program with and he says, “Tell me how you work.” And I said, “Well, we diagnose and discover the issues first and then we strategize and come up with a plan, and then we actually apply that plan through execution.” He’s like, “That’s kind of how doctors operate on their patients.” I said, “Yeah.” He says, “Well, then you’re the brand doctor.” And then that was it. It stuck. So what we do is we go through a very, very thorough discovery process, making sure that you understand who you are, what you do, who you want to do

[00:40:02]

it for, what’s your unique value proposition? You know, what makes you the golden choice, right? What makes you the obvious choice versus your competitor? And we really establish your messaging, we establish how we’re going to come to market. We’re going to develop offers that are going to be relevant and very advantageous to your clients to buy and then we’re going to strategize how to develop all of that and then my team of designers, copywriters, and developers are going to build it all out for you. And we do this in a 90-day process. And we get you out the door, you know, polished up professional with a primed message for a very specific audience that is going to go on to do big things.
– Nice. So before we wrap it up here, let me pose a specific avatar for you that I’d love to hear your advice for them, which would be here’s that person who

[00:41:00]

chances are is kind of like where you were at the hospital many years ago, where here was something that very clearly was becoming a passion. Here was something that very clearly was becoming a bit of a calling for you to go, “This is what I ought to be doing.” And I especially love the aspect of the uncle not even giving you the courtesy of the callback, just silence being the best message. So for that person who may be… And this is a lot of people out there who have that side passion, this hobby, this goal of theirs that they want to really level up and take to an audience. And perhaps there’s fear, there’s some block, there’s something that’s standing in their way. To wrap us up, what advice would you give to those people?
– Yes. So you only have one life to live and, you know, I’ve learned at a very young age that you can’t take life for granted because it can be taken from you at any second. You know, I just think back to what my parents thought, you know, 16 years trying to have a child and then their 2-year-old is unconscious in a crib.

[00:42:00]

What goes on in my mother and father’s mind at that split second? Right? And then I think about the borrowed time that I’m on right now and how 40 years of age feels like 4 years. Yeah. Four years of time. Right? And how quickly it goes, especially when you have a kid or multiple kids. This is what I say to them. You know, “At the end of the day, you’re going to be 80, 90 years old. God bless you if you live that long. And you’re going to be looking back on your life and do you really want to live with the, I should have, I could have, I would have thoughts. And do you really want to live with all that regret?” I don’t think so. So now is your time. There’s never going to be a good time. You know, look what comes out of COVID.

[00:43:02]

You know, everybody learns overnight that they could start working from home. I used to be criticized, and ridiculed, and made fun of from working out of my home. I had a pretty big influencer. I’m sure a lot of you know who his name was…bully me once and say, “Henry, you work out of your home. Like, why would I pay you $50,000 for this project?” And now I just laugh because look at the world now. Right? And so I want to share that with you because I say to myself, like, “The hell if I’m going to be 89 years old, looking back saying, man, I had the health. I had the energy. I had all the opportunities in the world to do that thing and I didn’t because I

[00:44:00]

was afraid of what people were going to think of me. I was afraid of what people were going to say about me. I was afraid of failing.” What’s the worst thing that’s going to happen? You fail, you get back up and you do it again. Like you think I was an overnight success? You think Jason was an overnight success? You think I was a killer designer overnight? No. It’s about courage and effort. It’s about courage and effort. You got to have the courage and you got to put in the effort. You put those two together and you mix it up and you get a beautiful life. You do. You get a beautiful business. So, you know, I’m here to help people design the life that they’re proud of and design a life and business that they could go on and say, “Man, I’m happy that I invested in myself because look at the end result and look

[00:44:59]

at the people that we’re helping now.” So that’s what I’m here for.
– Beautiful. Beautiful. Where can people tracking down?
– Super simple. Unique Designz with a Z at the end, not an S .net.
– Awesome. Well, thanks for everything you’ve done for me. Thanks for being on the show, and I’ll see you soon.
– Thanks, Jason. Appreciate you, man.
– You have been listening to the Hypnotic Language Hacks podcast with Jason Linett. Please stop everything and start exploring jasonlinett.com for even more business influence and persuasion resources. Make it a priority right now to subscribe to this program and listen to every episode because the next one may reveal that one hypnotic influence secret to massively scale your success. Change your words, change your business, change your life. Get even more at jasonlinett.com.