How Amber Vilhauer Proved You Don’t Need the “Special Sauce”

[00:00:03] Hector: Hello and welcome to another episode of how to scale a business podcast. My name is Hector Santiago Esteban and I'm here with a very special guest. We are here with Ms. Amber Vilhauer and I don't know how to introduce her. She's an amazing mom. She is an amazing speaker. She's an author. She runs a number of businesses, but I think most importantly, she's probably just an incredible soul and energy to be around.

[00:00:25] Hector: So Amber, thanks for hanging out with us today.

[00:00:29] Amber: Thank you.

[00:00:30] Hector: I got a chance to go to Amber's event really on a whim, one of our mutual friends, Isaac Stegman, he's like, Hey, there's this event I'm going to be at, you should be there. And it was like, totally out of my like, budget at the time. And I was like, I'll be there. Yeah. I'm glad I made it.

[00:00:47] Hector: I got a chance to go and the transformations that people have, you know, sort of the, results that I've seen since then have been amazing. But before get into some of the ways in which you affect some of those changes, I'd love for you to share with the listeners your story and, some of the key stops that you've made along the way.

[00:01:05] Hector: Those four. Yeah.

[00:01:06] Amber: Sure. Well, thank you, Hector. I mean, honestly, when you showed up at that event, I don't know if you remember my reaction, but it was like winning a car or something. I was just so happy to see that you made it to the event and that you definitely just made it better. So thanks for that. , you know, where I want to start is actually when I was 6 years old and.

[00:01:26] Amber: I want to start there because when you look at somebody online, you just make these assumptions about what their life must have been like. And when you look at me online, you're going to see somebody who's very happy and smiley and confident and out in the world. And I seem like an extrovert, even though I'm actually an introvert. And I think a lot of people think, Oh, well, she just has the special sauce or she was born this way. And actually it was just the opposite. And so I bring you to a moment when I was six years old and I am alone in my bedroom and I'm playing on the floor with my little pony and I can feel hatred seething through the walls next to me of my older sister.

[00:02:12] Amber: And. My mom is at work, as she always was, and I was just feeling trapped in this room alone and channeling that into like escaping into my imagination with my My Little Pony. And it wasn't my sister's fault for not liking me, I don't think. I mean, I think she just resented that she had to take care of me so much when she was just a kid herself.

[00:02:34] Amber: But that was really my experience of belonging. Growing up and it translated into school where I didn't have friends. I think it was mainly because nobody taught me how to have friends. So I was just the awkward one on the playground, which then manifested into getting bullied in high school. And I was the one that would eat lunch in the bathroom stalls just to avoid getting harassed during breaks.

[00:02:57] Amber: And by the time I was 17 years old, I felt As worthless and alone as a person could feel, and I really didn't understand why this was my life or what was happening, but I felt really off course. And even when I was 16, there was this experience where I got jumped at a party that I didn't even know was set up for me by five girls.

[00:03:18] Amber: And I write about it now in the book Infinite Impact, and it's a really juicy one, so you should totally check it out. When I was 17, I found Cutco cutlery through divine intervention. So I'm one of those people and I started selling knives and, , in training, there's a three day training program. And on day one, the trainer said there are three types of people in the world.

[00:03:41] Amber: There's the person who sits on the fence watching what everyone else is doing. The second type of person dips their pinky toe in the pool to test the temperature and see if it's a fit or not. And the third type of person. Cannonballs into the pool and I had no idea what I was doing in this training seminar, learning how to sell knives, but I did know that I wanted to be the third person.

[00:04:03] Amber: I wanted to go all in on life. So I listened. I did what they told me to do and it worked. And that following Monday morning, I show up for advanced training and I'm surrounded by applause. And I honestly thought it was a mistake. Like they were plotting for somebody else, but it turns out they were plotting me because out of my 100 person training class, I was one of best.

[00:04:25] Amber: No idea how that happened, but it doesn't matter. It was the first moment though, that I felt heard. Seen and valued. And that was the moment that I decided to dedicate the rest of my life to helping other people feel the same. Now, how on earth I ended up as an entrepreneur as a young 20 something and built my own website.

[00:04:45] Amber: I taught myself code and learned SEO and marketing and blogging and affiliate programs and membership and scaling and podcasting and everything and, created an agency that is now a publishing and marketing agency that helps entrepreneurs like you. Scale up in a meaningful and profitable way.

[00:05:02] Amber: That's fulfilling to you. I don't really know how that happened. One step at a time, right? We lay the bricks and we keep walking the journey, but now 18 years later, it's been an incredible journey, , where the company is, one of the fastest growing in America, we got the Inc 5, 000 award. I help entrepreneurs launch bestselling books.

[00:05:22] Amber: I help them get into alignment and I help them build a brand online that they feel really good about that is also impactful in the world. And it's been quite the journey, Hector. And so I'm just happy to be here to share that and hopefully empower some of the people in the room that maybe don't feel like they are, capable of being visible.

[00:05:41] Amber: Can I really do this in my business? Like, what is this going to mean for my life? And I'm going to tell you no guts, no glory, baby. No guts. No glory.

[00:05:50] Hector: It's interesting. I ended up in one of those same, life selling trainings, not knowing what I was doing. And, similar to the feeling that I had when I, booked a flight in a hotel and to go to your event was like. Something is just pulling me and I can't rationalize it. It doesn't seem practical.

[00:06:10] Hector: when I explain it to people, they look at me like I'm crazy. Or, you know, if you try it, to make, it seemed logical and in the same way. Something said, yeah, do this weird knife thing and, looking back on it, it, to opened up so many doors I didn't know it at the time, but there was sort of an intuition that, I'm supposed to do this.

[00:06:30] Hector: Like I meant to do this. There was an alignment that I'm grateful for. Right. And now I sort of actively and intentionally look for those things because thankfully I found something where I could be my own boss and make, you know, money based on what I was worth and wasn't a slave to the clock and all these sorts of, traps that people get into.

[00:06:49] Hector: talk to me a little bit about alignment and. You know what that even means, because I think a lot of people on the show, they're like a woo woo show? You know, what are we talking about here? So how does that play into your world? And specifically, like, how does that show up for business owners?

[00:07:03] Amber: Absolutely. Getting into alignment means that you are living in line with your deepest beliefs, values and needs. Most people don't do that because most people are coping. And they are avoiding and they are guarded and they are skeptical and fearful and doing the best that they can. And so we make decisions based on our logic instead of our deepest beliefs and values and needs, which is a very different measurement than what our brain tells us.

[00:07:40] Amber: And my work helps entrepreneurs go back into the deepest truth of who they really actually are. Not the coping version when you are in alignment, your strategy for your business needs to come from that alignment and then the strategy is what creates the execution in your marketing sales and operation.

[00:08:04] Amber: Now, most young entrepreneurs don't even have the strategy piece. They're not there yet to know the value of having a strategy, but a strategy is really looking at all of the constraints. And what I mean is what's my schedule, what's my budget, what's my team size, what are my desired outcomes, what am I best at, et cetera, what's my alignment.

[00:08:25] Amber: And when I am in a consulting session with someone, Hector, and I understand their alignment and I see those constraints. I can instantly come up with a strategy to help them hit their desired outcomes in the fastest way possible without sacrificing quality. And everybody's strategy is 100 percent different.

[00:08:49] Amber: So even in the last four strategy sessions that I've had, the. Advice that I gave to those individuals was so worlds apart worlds apart. So what happens is most people go to market and they skip over alignment because nobody's talking about it. They skip over the strategy because they don't even know that that's a thing.

[00:09:09] Amber: And they go right into tactics and execution, which is like. Hmm. How does Alex Hormozy do his, reels? Maybe I should edit my reels that way. And then I'll see the same success. And it's like, it's not gonna work for you. Oh, well I'll just hire the ads person because they said that they used to do Tony Robbins ads.

[00:09:26] Amber: And then I'll see the same successes as Tony Robbins. Not going to work for you. And the average entrepreneur spends their wheels and waste so much time, money and energy. It is unbelievable. And this is why so many businesses fail. It's because they don't have the proper strategy that is rooted in their own individual alignment.

[00:09:47] Amber: And so I'm here to kind of course correct that it's not a woo thing. It's really, there's a framework for it that has been proven and tested and works. And it's just like if you want to get to the fastest way of achieving your vision, which could be desired income. Desired schedule or maybe feelings that you want to experience in your business or all of the above, you've got to get into alignment and Hector because of our relationship, I would be happy to give any listener a free copy of the book because the exercises to get into alignment are in my book.

[00:10:20] Amber: So literally just get the PDF, do the exercises and you can start to really see the difference in how you execute in your business.

[00:10:29] Hector: Yeah, I'm curious if the level where business owners start to work with you, if they're still dealing with like trauma, because you mentioned this word of coping and what's interesting is that if, someone is, coping, then I think that alignment is very hard to find, right?

[00:10:47] Hector: It's like, mistranslated or there's some sort of, , like, it's screwed up, right? Like that screws up the ability to be truly aligned if someone is constantly coping, whether it's insecurities or an accurate army, we probably go into what, but I'm curious if that's still something that you see, even when businesses get to, you know, whatever level it is that they're at when they're sort of working.

[00:11:12] Amber: It's everywhere. It's everyone. There's nobody exempt that needs to get into alignment. And I see it like I was working with a client, who's kind of a celebrity client. They have brick and mortar offices all around the world, 13 times New York times bestselling author, well over a million people on their email list.

[00:11:32] Amber: Totally out of alignment. Like it was remarkable. Another one. Also, more of a celebrity type author speaker, sold millions and millions and millions of copies of his book has a humongous following totally out of alignment and it manifests for business owners in a lot of different ways. It can look like.

[00:11:53] Amber: Gosh, my team members are always screwing up. Oh my gosh, this agency that I hired was unreliable. Oh, it's so frustrating. I put all of this energy into a product launch and then nobody bought. Like, why aren't more people engaging on my social media? Why is my open rate like this? Why is there conflict everywhere and chaos and, you know?

[00:12:12] Amber: It's because you're out of alignment, man. Like I'm telling you, and it's, ideally in a perfect world, you would get into alignment immediately, if not sooner, like right at the moment you decide to have an idea to start a business, right? But most people don't have that luxury. Like most people just kind of bumble around in their business and they do the best that they can.

[00:12:32] Amber: And they think like, where are my blind spots? Why do these things keep happening to me? Maybe I shouldn't be doing this business. And it's like, no, you should. It's just that you need to understand some of the clarity that you're missing. And it's, inside of you. It's not outside of you. And so the framework that I teach, it helps you to identify the one person you're doing this business for your avatar, except most people teach it as like.

[00:12:57] Amber: What is your audience? And it's like people that are 35 to 65 and some college and 2. 5 children. If you market to an audience, best of luck to you, buddy. If you market to one very specific individual and you're sharing language that they relate to and connect with, it will land. It will naturally connect with them.

[00:13:18] Amber: They will naturally activate and they will naturally convert into some action. The second part of the framework is vision. Most people are taught like, Oh yeah, I want to impact a million people. And it's like, well, who knows if we're ever going to achieve that vision? It's nice and all, but I teach. That your vision should be something specific that can be achieved in the moment.

[00:13:42] Amber: For example, my vision is to help individuals feel heard, seen, and valued. And if I just focus on that in each moment, fireworks and magic and beauty and growth and sales are inevitable on the other side. I've been proving it for 18 years. The next part of the framework is why, again, most people teach it as well because I want to help people.

[00:14:05] Amber: That's why I'm doing this and that's beautiful, but your why should be something that fills your unmet need as an entrepreneur. We are taught to give, give, give and be in service. Guess what that leads to burnout because you are not receiving, you are not using your business as a life. giving tool.

[00:14:27] Amber: Instead, it's taking your life away. And you wanted to start this business to have freedom and autonomy and to choose your schedule. And yet it becomes the thing that chains you down. Well, when you understand your why mine is freedom. And then I went further and defined what freedom is for me. And it actually is the ability to self express and be who I really want to be in the world.

[00:14:50] Amber: And when I help my clients to achieve that, It reinforces that inside of myself. And all of a sudden there's this harmony and this flow and this congruence that happens at giving and receiving. So now my cup is filled every single day. I'm achieving my vision and every single moment. I'm so clear on who I'm doing this business for.

[00:15:12] Amber: And the last part of the alignment is the thing that helps you stay in alignment, which is your core values. And there's a whole practice that goes way deeper and gets more personal than most people teach it. But the whole thing in total is like, once you see your alignment, you can't unsee it. And forevermore, your strategy, your team can get into alignment, your marketing practices and alignment.

[00:15:36] Amber: And all of a sudden your business is. Whole it's congruent and it's fulfilling for you. So it's less about, any sort of trauma or woo healing can occur in it, but it's like you can't get aligned fast enough because every day you don't, it's having a problematic impact on your brand and your results.

[00:15:59] Hector: One of the things at your event and it was an exercise that you did was really helping the attendees To visualize who their avatar is, and it was, a very, engaged, experiential exercise, if you will.

[00:16:12] Hector: But I think a lot of clarity came from that, and to your point, a lot of people are trying to serve an audience and not an avatar. , can you just expand a little bit more on that and how that seems to show up for businesses as well?

[00:16:27] Amber: Absolutely. When you are marketing to an audience full of a diverse group, I'm trying to meet the needs of a 35 year old stay at home mom with three kids while I'm trying to meet the needs of a 65 year old employee who's getting ready for retirement while trying to meet the needs of somebody who's 50 and going through menopause and questioning everything in her life you can't meet all of those needs at the same time.

[00:16:53] Amber: So you're forced into. Your marketing being general, it's generalized. Like generally, you should do this in your business because the opposite of that is that I'm teaching the 35 year old stay at home mom. Here's exactly what you need to do in order to be successful with my widget or whatever is happening, whatever I'm selling, which is a different positioning.

[00:17:18] Amber: Then what I would tell the 65 year old employee. Right. So the thing that's going to make you successful in your marketing is number one, you being very clear on what you're here to say and do for whom. And, the second thing is with the avatar. Once we identify the one person we really want to serve the most in the world, my minus Heather, it's my Heather.

[00:17:45] Amber: Everybody knows Heather in my world. I created her, you know, gosh, 16 years ago. Now, every email, every speech, every podcast recording, every sales call, every single thing I do is in service to Heather and only Heather. The common objection I get is, but Amber, what about everybody else? And here's the thing, even though I only market to Heather, who's a stay at home mom, by the way, 70 percent of my clients or more have always been men and usually successful entrepreneurial men.

[00:18:19] Amber: Now, how on earth can that be that I am marketing only to a, 47 year old stay at home mom, yet most of my clients are successful entrepreneurial men. It's because what those men have in common with my Heather are the beliefs, the values, and the needs. They have it all in common. So I can speak intimately into Heather saying, Hey, I know.

[00:18:45] Amber: That you are feeling frustrated. I know that you're feeling alone. I know that you're distracted more than anything when you're sitting there and your child is talking to you and babbling and playing. I know that you're off thinking about how stressed you are and how lonely you feel and how defeated you are.

[00:19:01] Amber: And second guessing if this is even something you should move forward with. But I'm here to tell you that's a distraction and to refocus and get in the game. And here's what I advise you to do moving forward. So you see in that example, it's the specificity of how I can nurture Heather. I can be engaged with her.

[00:19:23] Amber: I can speak very detailed into her private experience, her private thoughts and feelings. And yet the men come in and they're like, Holy blank. How did she know? How did she know that I'm this distracted and unfulfilled? How did she know? I get people coming to me all the time. Hector saying, it feels like you wrote that book directly for me.

[00:19:46] Amber: I stayed up and I watched all of your YouTube videos. don't know how you were in my head in that way. And it was only because I was doing it for one person and I know my avatar well, so it is an absolute game changer. It is different than the way avatar has been taught. One of my favorite things is when somebody comes to me, they're like, Oh, I've already done that exercise.

[00:20:06] Amber: And it's like. No, you haven't done it this way. And so you can either do it through the exercises in the book. There are alignment guides who are certified and they do these 90 minute alignment sessions that it's facilitated. So you can go hook up with one of them. , and then I run a, four week group program, getting entrepreneurs into alignment and April and October.

[00:20:29] Amber: So, I mean, there's plenty of options depending on if you're a do it yourself or, or I want a one on one or I'm open to a group experience because I get to see an experience more that way. And I get to learn from other people and connect with like minded people. I literally don't care how you do it. I just want you to do it and try it because otherwise you're already seeing where the current road leads.

[00:20:52] Amber: Just really assess your own frustrations and inner thoughts and you'll see exactly what I'm talking about.

[00:20:58] Hector: Yeah, , I was one of those people who's like, ah, this is the avatar. Excellent. Yeah, yeah, I've got my avatar. And what was interesting is like after the experience it, you know, or the exercise, it like totally not changed, but it evolved in a really important way that, and the clarity that came from going through that was just, I needed to go through that and another thing that was really impactful for me, and I don't want to make this all about me, but, At the event, , another thing that really stood out was this idea of building your business around. giving and fulfilling that core wound that you have, I think you sort of touched on it a little earlier, but in the sense that, through our business, we can give the thing that for us is our biggest, wound for me, that's like being seen, right.

[00:21:42] Hector: in my way into sort of podcasts where I can help people be seen and, It's great that I accident, you know, I happened into, that sort of alignment, but, , I don't think a lot of business owners are thinking there's so many that I know that are looking at it from a.

[00:22:01] Hector: A market standpoint or a margin standpoint or a widget standpoint or like a money or a revenue or like they're looking at it from that standpoint, as opposed to, you know, how is it actually going to serve and fulfill them as a, being, , what are your thoughts to someone who goes like, Hector, what are you even talking like wounds?

[00:22:20] Hector: how do you bridge that gap for someone who's like, very much in the tactical and execution sort of mindset?

[00:22:27] Amber: Well, one thing is I would invite a language change to unmet need because wound sounds really scary and sad, whereas unmet need is curious. It can be interesting. It's like, oh, I want to fill your need it like you're in service to your own unmet need now. Almost nobody can figure out their unmet need by themselves because again, it's buried beneath layers of coping and life and guardedness and, you know, avoidance and escapism, I mean, if you drink a little too much at night or you, whatever you do to escape the realities, you're, binge watching Netflix.

[00:23:09] Amber: You just need a break from life. Those activities. Yes. It's all layering on top of what you really need and you're escaping because you don't know what that need is. Therefore you don't know how to fill it and it's painful to not know and but to know consciously there's a blind spot. There's something there but you don't know how to access it so then you avoid it and escape it.

[00:23:29] Amber: That's just human nature. We're not talking about You know, anything scary here, but let's just shine a light on it. And I'm not here to be play therapist with you, but I'm just saying like, everybody has needs and usually entrepreneurs have some really big unmet needs because it is your desire for freedom.

[00:23:51] Amber: And for self expression and to be seen and heard and valued that comes from a time where you didn't feel those things before and so we're crazy monkey brains, right? We're like constantly with our new ideas and challenges and self sabotaging and more challenges. We freaking love it. Like, we're addicted to it, but it's because we're all searching to fill that void inside.

[00:24:12] Amber: Well, the alignment process does help you to quickly identify your unmet need. And for me, it was freedom. Remember where our story began. I was six years old, trapped in that room. Was I feeling free in that moment? No, I was not. I was avoiding and channeling into my, my little pony. So it's no surprise when I figured out what my unmet need is.

[00:24:37] Amber: I'm like, Oh, that totally tracks. I felt so trapped before and now I'm on a search for freedom. That makes sense. , and even further, , if we dig into kind of what my experience was growing up is I learned. That this best and safest thing to do was to stay invisible. So that meant not being seen and not talking.

[00:25:04] Amber: I became a grand observer. Now, thank goodness for that. It gave me a superpower to see right through people. I think you've noticed that, Hector. It's like, as soon as I met you, I'm like, Yep. I know exactly who you are. I see you very clearly. I see you right through you. There is no hiding with me and it's okay because I don't judge you.

[00:25:22] Amber: Like we're all having this incredibly difficult and exhilarating human experience. Right. But like I can see literally right through people. so this unmet need, I. really wanted to be in a place where I could be heard, seen, and valued because I was invisible before, and I craved that, and now I can give that gift to other people who have a similar unmet need.

[00:25:49] Amber: That's you, Hector. That's why we love each other so much. It's like, oh, you're like me. You want to be seen, too. Well, I'll see you if you see me, and then we'll be friends forever. Like, that's kind of the way this thing works. And If you are drawn to Hector, it's probably because you have a similar unmet need.

[00:26:07] Amber: You too have a longing to be seen for the truth of who you really are. You have a longing to be heard because you have important things to say, and maybe you haven't been saying them because you learned at a young age that you had better keep your mouth closed, right? And you too want to be valued because, you know, there have been times in your life where you felt valued.

[00:26:30] Amber: felt so good. Why would you not want to feel like that all the time? And I bet in some way, shape or form in your business, you are emanating that to your audience, whether you're consciously aware of it or not. So the value of uncovering this work, it's so powerful and the way that. You can show up in your business and in your marketing to fill people's unmet needs and now have that translate into yourself.

[00:26:58] Amber: Imagine the difference in your business. The last thing I'll say is if you are the person that's like, I don't know if I buy this stuff, I'm just in it for the money. Cool. No judgment. Good for you. Happy that you're focused on financial security and you'll come knocking on this door when you're ready because.

[00:27:16] Amber: So many people I talked to enter into their late forties and they have the uh oh moment when they realize that they have just spent decades building wealth and they feel like a complete empty shell on the inside. They feel. Lost at home. They don't know where their value is, and they are longing to understand what their legacy is, what their impact is, who they really are.

[00:27:43] Amber: You have forgotten, you have, forgotten how to meet your own internal needs. You channeled it all in the external world, getting money and wealth and assets and things like that. And it didn't fill the need. That's because you have a deeper need to say, feel seen or valued or what freedom or joy.

[00:28:02] Amber: I mean, everybody has a different unmet need. But the more you start leaning into meeting your own needs, not getting it in the external world, but fulfilling it on this inside. For me, that means I'm in a podcast interview and I am fully self expressed in this moment. I'm saying what I am here to say. The way I want to say it not in hope to get more friends and likes and follows and transactions and stuff, but because it feels so freeing to me in this moment to say what I really want to say in service to you.

[00:28:37] Amber: And that meets such a core need inside of me. I don't feel trapped in this moment. I feel free in this moment. I am giving to myself in this moment as I'm giving to you in this moment. And that's how we can really have such an elevated connected experience. And it's one, you will not forget if you got impacted in this episode, it'll just linger and you're going to want more.

[00:29:00] Hector: Wow. what I also love is that you are not just, course there's a lot of and inspiration to you, but you also provide the frameworks to sort of back it up. And so that's in the book. I know you mentioned that a little bit earlier.

[00:29:12] Hector: I'd love for you to share, that and where people might go and find you and more about you. And if they want to get more connected,

[00:29:18] Amber: I'm very open to feedback. So I would actually like love to have you email me or find me on social media. Amber Vilhauer. Nobody knows how to say or spell my last name, which is okay. I mean, just do your best in Google and I'll probably pop up number 1. I'm the only Amber Vilhauer in the world. So it shouldn't be too hard.

[00:29:36] Amber: And I was talking with Hector before we started recording, and I wanted to just offer the book for free. There's no opt in wall and stuff like that. Like, I really just would rather you do the work. So, I let him know that I'll be setting up a webpage at ambervillehoward. com. Forward slash H S B and you'll find the book and I can give you access to a toolkit and some other resources that go along with the book as well.

[00:30:02] Amber: I'm just interested in you doing the work. And if something moves you reach out, I mean, there's plenty of ways that people can get involved in what I'm up to, to partner with me. If you feel like getting your. Clients into alignment could be an aligned partnership that we have, or you want to share a stage together or just hang out as friends.

[00:30:22] Amber: Like I'm up for all of it. I'm in a playground season of my life and I have full trust that the right people will connect with this work and with me and that it'll be a really mutual reciprocative relationship. So it's all good either way.

[00:30:37] Hector: I'm deeply honored and grateful to have connected with you in this lifetime. And I'm sure this is just, you know, one of, many, but, we'll link all that up in the show notes for your listeners, go get connected with Amber and, we'll see on the next one.