Dmitriy Kozlov

A Little Purple Pill For My Fullest Xpression

November 1, 2017 by Dmitriy Kozlov

I’m staring an active volcano with my good friend and Maverick NEXT President, Zion Kim, with a burning desire for self expression. There’s a fire in my belly. It’s December 2016 at the Maverick M3 Summit in Hawaii, we’re celebrating the past year together and setting intentions for 2017.

I have a little purple pill in my hand.

“I commit to my fullest self-expression this year!”

“Why?” Zion asks.

“Because I want to feel free. I want to FEEL that fire in my belly fully expressed in the world.”

“Why? What will that do for the world?”

“It’s how I’ll give my greatest gifts to the world. My greatest service will come from my greatest expression. I want to liberate my voice, and through that, give my heart’s greatest gifts and my mind’s highest wisdom to the people I serve, to the world I love.”

I pop the pill.

That night, I freestyled. That weekend at the Maverick annual meeting, I used my voice and spoke my truth fully in a way that deeply served the Maverick EcoVerse and expanded my personal freedom.

In the coming months, I stepped into my poetic gifts more than ever and really discovered what it was like to liberate my truth… including writing and performing my one man show to reveal my teenage trauma in coming of age.

A couple of months later, I finally launched Influex (the name itself is Influence + Expression), supporting other big voices with their personal expression and influence. With bringing their visionary voices to the world.

One of those people was my friend Robbe Richman. He was there in Hawaii with us, and gave me that first little purple pill in a ceremony which inspired me to clarify my deepest intentions for the coming year.

Robbe Richman Xplaining XPill to the Mavericks and guiding us through the ritual, including me and Zion

Today, I’m proud to announce that Robbe’s site is the first Influex site that we’re publicly launching.

While it’s not exactly a “personal brand site” – I felt so connected to the project through my personal story, that we wanted to include it in our first 25 Influex sites… and synchronistically, it’s now the FIRST official Influex site.

Discover what this little purple “Xpill” is all about – including it’s origin story at Burning Man – and how some of the biggest names in the personal development industry rave about it at the brand new Xpill.com website, artistically designed by our creative team here at Influex.

Before Xpill was a thing, I actually met Robbe at a Maverick retreat in Vegas over three years ago, where he taught us a lot about culture and leadership when we were visiting Zappos. His background is in building epic company cultures. Here’s more of his official accolades:

He became most well-known for being a manager and culture strategist at Zappos.com where he co-founded Zappos Insights, an innovative program educating companies on the secrets behind its game-changing employee culture. Based on his experience working with hundreds of companies on their cultures, he wrote The Culture Blueprint: a systematic guide to building the high-performance workplace. He took Zappos Insights from an idea to a multimillion dollar business line. Since then, Robbe has spoken to and consulted for Google, Toyota, Eli Lilly, Whole Foods, Intuit and many other companies.

Culture is our top priority at Influex and Vision Tech Team – and we eventually intend to share our own insights about company culture and more on our upcoming “Influencer Insights” podcast and this blog. Robbe is an inspiration to us and we’re proud to support his work with our digital artistry.

Robbe Richman and Yanik Silver (founder of Maverick1000) at the Maverick Summit

Three Pillars of an Exceptional Personal Brand Site

October 31, 2017 by Dmitriy Kozlov

So you know you want a beautiful personal brand site or perhaps you’re starting to realize the power of having a site that properly reflects your value in the marketplace.

Either way, I’m going to share the three pillars we’ve learned guiding and developing leading personal brand sites for some of the top online influencers.

Before we do…

Let’s take a quick trip down nostalgia lane.

Do you remember just a handful of years ago when video wasn’t the predominant form of media online?

You know… that time when really low quality videos could outperform higher production or studio recorded videos?

That window has effectively closed.

Now I’m not saying that you can’t make effective videos off of your iPhone but what I am saying is that production value matters more and more nowadays.

Our standards and what we expect of others online is ever increasing.

This is extraordinarily true for personal brand sites.

I don’t know about you but I get on a lot of video calls and when I’m meeting someone for the first time that I’m not familiar with, I’ll jump on Google and search their name and have a quick look at their site.

I’m wondering…

Do they have a personal brand site?

How does it look and what does it tell me about them?

…and that’s the thing.

You’re getting sized up online and the first impression you’re making usually isn’t one that serves you.

There’s a significant opportunity cost to not standing out with your personal brand online (or even worse, an out-of-date site that actually hurts your impression in the market!)

With Influex we’ve built a lot of high-end personal brand sites for top online influencers and we’d like to share some behind the scene insights that you should know before getting your own personal brand site built.

If we get to the root of what a personal brand site is, there are three fundamental pillars that will absolutely make or break your site!

Here they are…

First Pillar: A SINGLE Primary Objective

If your site tries to do everything, it will surely do nothing.

The wide net catches the most fish model is NOT applicable here.

Let’s say you have a new podcast, a new online coaching program and perhaps you’re also on the lookout for getting more speaking engagements – the trouble most people get into is they want all of these to be primary objectives and then the site becomes cluttered, confusing and ineffective.

The trick here is constraint.

Hone in on the customer avatar that you want to tailor your site towards and then get clear on the most important single task your site can be driving to that market.

Working backwards from this clear singular focus makes the process infinitely easier to navigate and forces you to make key decisions towards simplification which in turn leads to more results-oriented personal brand site.

Second Pillar: Great Photography

A beautiful personal brand site is largely won or lost by great photography.

There’s tremendous value in getting a professional photoshoot and we direct all of our clients to get one scheduled immediately upon mapping out our custom personal brand site package.

These are the types of shots you'll want:

These are the types of poses you want your photographer to shoot.

I highly suggest you find one or two photos of people/websites online that you really like stylistically, model their shots and provide these examples for your photographer in advance which will help them out as well.

Quick Pro Tip: Avoid Stock Photography – unless done really well, it usually cheapens the look and feel while also making your site less ‘authentic’.

When we see a photo of someone, their eyes become the focal point – specifically where their eyes are looking, so if you have an image that looks to the left or right we can draw attention to a headline or important element on the site, which proves very effective.

I also recommend swinging for the fences with trying a variety of facial expressions.

Don't forget to have fun during your photo shoot! Be bold and try out some different facial expressions, this will help you stand out from all the typical (i.e. boring) shots we're all used to seeing.

Third Pillar: Expert Storytelling

A personal brand site is a powerful tool in your arsenal.

The reason it’s such a powerful tool is that when done right, a great personal brand site is communicating your values, who you are, what you do and why you do it.

When executed correctly this builds deep rapport and connection with your ideal market and the way all of that happens is via…

Storytelling.

One of the biggest mistakes an online influencer can make is over emphasizing their accomplishments, which can come off as bragging and excuse the term, ‘douche-y’.

This also can create a barrier or wall between yourself and your market.

Instead, consider implementing these expert techniques when writing your story:

Start on a life-defining dramatic moment, the one that defines why you do what you do
Write the story in first person
Make sure it’s in present tense
Set the setting (location and year/time of year)
Be vulnerable and real

Bringing in just a few of these techniques can dramatically shift the telling of your story into an engaging, entertaining and deeply powerful rapport building asset.

Quick appreciation for Patrick Combs who is our dear friend and resident story expert whom we refer all of our clients to for story coaching (we also built his personal brand site *shameless plug*)

Those are the three pillars, I hope they help you navigate approaching your own personal brand site with a greater perspective.

If you’d like an expert team to work with you on creating your own dream personal brand site, you can apply here to schedule a conversation with me or feel free to comment below if you have any questions or feedback!

25 Websites Lift 1000+ People From Extreme Poverty

October 20, 2017 by Dmitriy Kozlov

This past Summer, we got together and lifted 1000+ people out of extreme poverty, forever transforming a community through the power of entrepreneurship, in a way that will have a ripple effect for generations to come by building the Vision Village.

The Vision Village trains and funds 150 entrepreneurs, in 50 funded micro-enterprises in East Africa, which collectively lifts a community of 1000+ people out of extreme poverty.

How did we do it? Who is WE? And how can you be part of bringing such impact forward in your own entrepreneurial path?

First, let me answer the question, who is WE?

The biggest player in this movement is Village Enterprise, a non-profit organization with three decades of on-the-ground experience in transforming poverty stricken communities through the power of entrepreneurship with micro-enterprises.

To date Village Enterprise has trained over 150,000 Africans how to become successful entrepreneurs who can support their families, leading to the creation of nearly 40,000 new businesses, and ultimately transforming the lives of over 850,000 people.

This is serious impact.

Another big component to WE is our Influex clients.

These individuals are visionary entrepreneurs who contributed to this movement by purchasing a custom personal brand site during our Vision Village promotion, where we offered 25 Influex personal brand sites as a huge discount while contributing $1000 per website to the Vision Village project.

Finally, there is our company (Vision Tech Team and new brand Influex) and our team who is actually doing the work to make this happen.

Our ambitious goal with Influex is to revolutionize personal brand websites by creating new software for business owners to easily design their own pages. For this product to be of exceptional quality, our first step was to create the right sample size of branded sites.

That’s where the idea for this entire win-win-win campaign materialized. By taking on 25 new clients at a reduced rate, each client wins. From there, we get a large enough sample size to successfully develop Influex (we win). Lastly, 1000+ entrepreneurs in Africa are empowered to escape extreme poverty (the world wins).

This synergy of business and social good is something I have strived to achieve for quite some time, and I’m happy that it has finally taken shape.

I was first exposed to Village Enterprise while consulting on the Evolved Enterprise launch this past March, where we contributed $25 per book package sale to building the Evolved Village, and successfully raised the $25,000 to build the village. Our campaign got our promotional partners behind a cause, helping us reach a lot more people with our message, and lifting 1000+ people out of extreme poverty, while also exposing the Village Enterprise model to thousands of entrepreneurs (one of them – a key promotional partner for the launch – Anik Singal, went on to continuing support Village Enterprise with his own contributions and building another village, and is an Influex customer and therefore contributor to the Vision Village).

Sitting at the Maverick Multiplier Retreat in May, I was contemplating how to start to make the leap from just custom services with Vision Tech Team to building a platform for personal brand sites. We were also low on cash flow, and didn’t necessarily want to take on more retainer clients at the time before starting to make this shift, so we wouldn’t get distracted from our next steps. Simultaneously, I was watching the Village Enterprise impact update presentation (Mavericks previously supported Village Enterprise in addition to the Evolved Village project), and felt called to find a way to personally build another village.

Then it hit me: 25 sites. Each site donates $500. Once we reach 25 by a certain date, we personally match the contribution, totaling $25,000 to build a village, while still having the additional revenue to cover the hard costs of building these custom personal brand sites, while leap frogging us (through the nature of the fast exposure, expanded portfolio, movement marketing, and operational fine-tuning from building so many sites at once) into the personal brand site industry, helping us to develop both a better custom service (and reputation) and a product for personal brand sites.

And we did just that. Through the month of July and a little bit into August, we sold 25 sites at a highly discounted rate, and raised $25,000 to build the Vision Village.

*We've since brought our pricing closer to retail value at a $16k minimum (though still discounted, considering we used to build these for our Visionary clients at $20k – $30k+ each before we came out with Influex)

Beyond being a strong “movement marketing” play and a major contribution, this campaign did far more for our company.

It aligned us with the right clients.

After doing an initial facebook push for the Influex launch, I found that the majority of the people who showed an interest in these new sites happened to be consciously minded visionaries.

Literally, our company was creating the platforms for these leaders to empower their respective communities to make the world a better place.

I also believe that through the campaign itself, we remind our visionary entrepreneur clients – many of whom are very financially successful – of how important it is to consider impacting the lives of those less fortunate around the planet, and raise awareness of what’s going on in our world and how we can help.

Even this article – talking about how this movement impacted our company for the better – can hopefully inspire entrepreneurs (like you) reading it to put something similar into practice. To bring a stronger cause behind your next campaign, in a way that both makes a significant difference in the world and also sustainably supports your company’s growth and evolution.

I believe this is the future of business, which is the reason why I’ve spent over a year of my life dedicated to launching and building the Evolved Enterprise movement with Yanik Silver. Yanik is not alone, as other clients like Pedram Shojai (who created the new Prosperity Film) have stepped up, spreading the message of a new emerging economy that cares about people, purpose and planet along with profits.

I implore you to leverage your own entrepreneurial gifts and help this planet.

Even one seemingly small action can one day ripple into huge impact.