E235 | 7 Ways for Coaches to Make More Money

“I’d love to, but I just can’t swing it financially.” 

If you’ve ever wanted to take a vacation, fix something in your house, take a certain course or certification, get a virtual assistant, or even start a side business but couldn’t because you didn’t have the extra time or money… you’re not alone. 

Today’s episode is all about how to leverage what you already know and do well to help you earn more side cash and not stress about the financial side of things so much. We reveal simple ways to make your current experiences, literally, pay off.  For example – 

• How to use the conversations you already have to your advantage (14:15)
• Different ways to monetize your current skills and abilities (18:50)
• Website, apps and other FREE resources that can help you budget, organize, and save
• How to create an attractive user experience around a product you’ve already created (48:50)

AND MORE.  Honestly, it’s too much to put into bullet points- you’ll just have to check it out.

If you want to see and experience how we at Art Of Coaching put some of these tips into practice, check out artofcoaching.com/challenge.  Coming in October, the Conscious Coaching Challenge gives you access to the entire AOC team, tons of FREE resources, a network of other coaches who are looking to improve, AND IT’S ONLY $99.  Honestly, it’s a no brainer.

We also offer individual and small group training sessions if that’s more your speed.  You can find those options at artofcoaching.com/mentoring.  The first call is always FREE, so if you have any questions about how we can help you or what we have to offer at Art of Coaching, let us know!

Referenced Material:

Art of Coaching Podcast Episode 43: Danny Matta – Understand What You’re Worth 

Art of Coaching Podcast E190: Why It Seems Like We Never Have Enough Time

Art of Coaching Podcast E193: What To Charge For Your Time & Expertise

Art of Coaching Podcast E199: Cliché Advice You Should Rethink or Ignore

We also can’t forget to thank Dynamic &  Athletic Greens for sponsoring today’s episode. 

We get it, you’re time poor and don’t always get in the fruits and veggies you know you should. This is without a doubt the BEST tasting greens powder out there and they want to give you a FREE 1 year supply of immune-supporting Vitamin D AND 5 FREE travel packs with your first purchase. All you have to do is visit athleticgreens.com/coach!

Dynamic Fitness & Strength is our go-to equipment partner. Fully customizable and manufactured in the heartland of America- whether you’re looking to outfit your home gym or entire weight room, visit mydynamicfitness.com to get started. Tell them Brett and the Art of Coaching Team sent you!

Brett Bartholomew  00:07

Hey everyone, Brett here. I’ve always felt like it’s a bit ironic that when you go online you can find challenges or boot camps for fitness, nutrition and even finances. Yet, few often share a post anything about what they are doing to grow from a leadership or coaching standpoint. And no, I’m not talking about conferences, courses or anything of a sort. I’m speaking to the low barrier everyday things that are within our control, but also help us get out of our comfort zone.

So if you’re somebody that never dealt with a pushy boss relationship issues, drama at work, impostor syndrome, overthinking of a time or simply trying to find more effective ways to lead yourself and those around you that I’d love to invite you to take part in the Conscious Coaching Leadership Challenge, please, let’s put a pause on the week long cleanses that three months at running three miles every day, and whatever other fad comes along, and instead focus a bit more on improving ourselves from a communication leadership and relational standpoint.

If that sounds boring to you, well guess what? Most things that make you stand out in life are boring. They’re the simple things done savagely, well, then we need to face it. Most people don’t know how to have conversations anymore. They don’t know how to engage in productive or healthy dissent, resolve conflict, problem solve and even communicate more clearly. And it’s not easy to do any of those things to begin with.

So I’m not trying to point fingers. I’m certainly included in this group as well at times, and this is why I want you to go to artofcoaching.com/challenge now to sign up, because who amongst us has not had a moment where we get so caught up in our work and 1000 other things that we let some of this stuff fall through the cracks. I want to be very clear. This is 30 days. There’s no travel involved. It doesn’t matter what country you’re in, it doesn’t matter what age you are, what color you are, what anything, what level of experience you have, it is easily our most affordable resource.

Once you signed up, I am going to be sharing essential skills and strategies that me and my team have learned that have helped us with our businesses, our marriages or relationships. Definitely even our relationships with ourselves and our ability to coach others more effectively. Our entire team is involved with this Ali, Bekah, myself, my wife, Liz, Nate, the newest member of our team and so many others. So you’re gonna get a wide range of perspectives here as well.

It takes very little time commitment, you get tons of free resources that we won’t share anywhere else. And you’re gonna get access to our team during the challenge as well as the ability to network with plenty of others within our last one was a huge success and a lot of fun. But nothing else I said really hit you just remember coaches need coaches, coaches also need strong communities. And this is everything that Conscious Coaching challenge is about. Go to artofcoaching.com/challenge now for more details. Again, that’s artofcoaching.com/challenge.

All right, now that that’s out of the way, I want to talk to you guys a little bit about something and this is an episode that we’ve wanted to do for a long time. How many times have you wanted to do something whether it be taking a vacation, upgrading or fixing something in your house? My wife and I have lived in our house for about five years and believe it or not, things are already starting to fall apart in some areas, taking a certain course or certification, adding new books for your home library, getting a virtual assistant or even starting just a side business for yourself and your family. But you couldn’t do so because you didn’t have the extra cash to make it happen.

Now I know some of you say well, it’s not so much always just cash, it’s time and we have a whole episode on time management. Don’t worry. We know there are some of you that are so busy being busy. You can’t stop being busy. I understand that. So check the show notes for that episode. But when it comes to finances and being able to find some side cash, at first some of these things may not bug you. I know there are periods of my life where I didn’t really worry about that I just had to worry about the groups that I had to coach and train when I was going to put in my crock pot that night and what maybe my workout was that day but as we get older and we have more responsibilities and a family and we just, you know, you want to put away money for college you want to have some money to invest you have to find ways to build that side income.

And it gets to a point where even though you might be able to make things work, regardless of the circumstances and you’re always in a position where you have to find ways to do more with less, guys, that just gets tiring and that can’t be the way that you live your life over the long run. Right. So I want to give you some stuff that we can really and they can help you through these tight times they can help lessen or decrease some of the anxiety that you might feel about finances. And it’s also worth important there, It’s also worth mentioning that for many this has become even a more drastic issue due to recent rises in inflation and everything else going on in the economy.

I know my wife and I and I don’t know how many of you can relate to this. We were looking to move, relatively recently and about six months ago we could have afforded to move into the kind of property that we were looking at. And then once the market tanked and everything else who was like Alright, well clearly we need to put the brakes on this and you can’t always do things about that. But in the meantime, we can find ways to be more resourceful and grow our income and really do it in ways that fit alongside our really busy lifestyle because we’re parents too. We have a full staff we have to take our son to daycare in the morning. He’s always sick because he’s still in that toddler stage.

So this is not somebody talking to you from a mountaintop who’s you know, not having to deal with any of these problems, guys, I can relate. Also, for those of you who maybe don’t know me or aren’t familiar with my journey I had to do two unpaid internships all after getting my degree. And I also had to work as a graduate assistant, where I really made just $10,000 a year and this was all prior to getting my first true paycheck as a professional coach. For you guys that might be loans that you have to pay off. I know that we have a lot of people in our community that had gone to med school or PT school and you know, one of my best friends who went to law school and those loans can seem like it just takes forever.

And it’s a never ending game, especially when you look at interest rates and inflation. If you’re just trying to plan on your salary helping you get caught up. I mean, you know, that that just can’t happen. So when we look at this, and I think back to that time, I just never forgot what it felt like to have this resource that I wanted. It was like almost at my fingertips that I felt like would help me take my work to the next level. But I wasn’t able to spend money on it simply because life was expensive enough. And if I’m completely honest with you now, you know I look at this another way as well drives my wife and I nuts when we hear some folks complain about how their work won’t give them a big enough continuing education budget to cover all their professional development requests.

Because you know, like, well, I’m no longer working for free or as a grad assistant, my wife and I are now small business owners who are on the hook entirely for the cost of any professional development. Right so we have to pay, you know, back in the day, it’s like alright, I didn’t have the money, but I could find ways to make the money. Now I have to find the ways to make the money to pay our staff salaries, ourselves some money put away for Bronson’s college fund, and our bills and our expenses, but we have to cover a 100% of the costs of any professional development we do. Nobody covers the tab for us. It’s all our own skin in the game.

And we have to be crafty like many of you do, because money is not easy to come by for anybody yet still. We do it because we know that investing in yourself so the best thing you can do. It’s a necessity, right like that’s one thing that is almost recession proof your own self education that’s always going to pay you dividends. So while I used to freak out about a course that was 800 bucks, you know, I looked at my life now last year alone, I invested 40k into a coach to help me get things in line for my next book. And that’s scary for anybody.

I’ve also learned though, and one of the things that gave me a more healthy attitude towards investing things like that, in which an employer won’t cover is that when you put your own money on the line and your own skin in the game, it makes you learn and appreciate everything at a much higher level than when somebody else picks up the tab or when it’s easy and low risk. Oh, did I mention we also learned these things were tax write offs. That’s right now this will depend on the country you’re in and all that. So please check with your CPAs but there have been times where we’ve coached coaches, and they feel like oh, I can’t afford this and I can’t afford that.

And then I realized when we go into their finances, all these years they’ve been paying for courses and certifications without documenting them as write off for continuing education. They remember to check with your CPA, this will depend if you have an LLC, but guys, this was a huge wake up call for me when our accountant said Hey Brad, you need to spend $5,000 or you’re gonna end up just giving it back to the government and you’re paying high enough taxes as it is. So my wife and I this was a completely foreign concept and I know some of you that have more intensive financial backgrounds were probably laughing at me.

But it was like I had never been told I needed to spend more money to save money. Kind of in the same indirect way we’re telling you that investing more in yourself even though you might see it as a cost really gives you back over the longer. So my wife and I looked and there were some things that we could buy, then we would much rather buy those things for our home and our business or even as gifts for our employee than just give that to the government. We already do enough of that. So mind you, that’s that’s a bonus tip here.

Before we get into the meat of the episode. Check with your accountant and see if some of the things that you’re paying for with courses and all that including ours because many of you as ours as write offs are able to save you on your taxes. But today’s episode is not about that type of financial advice. We’re not going to get into taxes or hyper complex financial investing advice and how to become a crypto bro or anything like that.

Today’s episode is all about how to leverage what you know and do well and to helping you earn more side cash. So you do not have to stress about the financial side of things so much. So let’s get into that first after my long diatribe, which was something that was useful context for you guys. Let me welcome my wonderful co host to the show of creative strategy. Ali Kershner, Ali it’s really nice to have you back on.

 

Ali Kershner  10:22

Thanks Brett, it’s been a while but I’m excited to be here. I think this is a conversation that I’ve been excited about having with you especially but hopefully it can be super helpful to the people listening because this is something that coaches don’t talk about enough. Really, I don’t think anybody really talks about this enough. And it’s a really practical step by step guide type things that everybody can do in their daily lives. And I think maybe it’s because we’re inherently competitive or ashamed about money or we, you know, we don’t want to share this information publicly. We don’t talk about these things.

And in reality, there’s so many little things you can do on a daily basis. They can make you feel so much more comfortable and allow you to do the things that we want to do personally and professionally. And they’re not big scary, you know, mountains of you know, task, but rather just little mini projects, little mini ways to repurpose what you know and what you’re good at. And I think this could be really enlightening and hopefully it helps for the people who are listening. So I think we should get right into it. What do you think?

 

Brett Bartholomew  11:23

Absolutely. And guys, just for your listening pleasure, Ali and I are going to alternate so you don’t always have to hear my machine or machine gun or chainsaw voice the entire time. I know I speak intensely and Ali brings such a calm, pragmatic tone to this so we’re gonna go back and forth here and share different takes. So for context, one of the times where it was most evident, I needed more cash was not just when it came to wanting to get more professional development courses, but also because I was really struggling at certain periods of my life where I felt like I needed an assistant.

I was just drowning in emails and all this stuff that was taking away from the main work I wanted to do. I also wanted to cover the cost of my website and I didn’t want to stress about Liz and I going out on a nicer date night and also really so that I could invest in more coaching on my own. I’m just bringing this up because I want you guys to see this as a benefit in so many other areas of your life and so many of these strategies that we share are things we’ve actually done. And they’re also things we continue to do.

And I want to be exceedingly clear, they will work if you commit to them. But if you go and pardon my language half-assed, or you give up the minute something seems harder, uncomfortable then not much is going to work. So make sure that you guys pick up the ball and go all out. Alright, so under strategy number one, obvious but not always easy charge for different aspects of your coaching.

What I mean is this when I was just a strength and conditioning coach, I always charged for my training, like that side of things was never in question. But I was constantly giving away free information. And inherently at face value. There’s nothing wrong with this. We always want to share. Nobody is telling you guys that anytime somebody asks you a question you need to charge for it.

But in my case, there was another extreme. I was getting a host of people that were saying Coach, can I pick your brain? Can I do that? and those hours at a time and in some cases it became evident that whether they meant to or not. You are allowing them either way they’re taking advantage of me or I was allowing myself to be taken advantage of because what it started as a quick Q&A session either became 32 DMS or hey, just one more thing and hey, and then I kind of found like, man, I was starting to feel really burnout and I’m starting to feel like my boundaries really aren’t respected here and and I think it just it happened as I matured, because when I was younger, I didn’t mind sharing that stuff because there’s a way to share your expertise that helps so many people and then I realized that just that isn’t mutually exclusive.

You can help people, you can really share your expertise and you can get paid for what you do. And the people who value you the most will always respect that. I firmly stand by it and we’ve done a lot of podcasts. Those will also be linked in the show notes. Now we’re not going to get into what to charge for your time right now, that’s not necessarily that important that’s been covered in other episodes. But we’re just saying that you need to think about I go through my phone and I go through my email and I’d see people would ask me questions on you know how to deal with a certain kind of personality, whether it was a boss whether it was a colleague because I talked about this a lot more when I had written my book, people would ask me tons of questions on how do I write my own book? How do you start an online course because we have three online courses Bought-In, Valued and Blind Spot that help people with different parts of their career learning how to be entrepreneurs, they’re asking us just all kinds of things.

And so you know, I’d kind of give them you know, 15 to 30 minutes of my time and I’d say hey, I really respect you and all this but I also hope you can respect the fact that I have a full time job, I’ve got a family and so if you want to dive deeper, you know I have I have sessions that you can buy and I’d love to dive into this for you. And let’s say we looked at it early on, let’s say two out of every six took me up on it. Well at that time that was because this wasn’t really common in strength and conditioning. It was still very much a field that were very weird about money.

But as I just held my ground, what I found is that my audience started to sort itself out, the people that were just takers and bloodsuckers in time vampires started to quit reaching out, and people that said, Hey, Brett, I have a couple questions on this, I’d be happy to pay for your time. Those kinds of people started making of a much broader range of our audience. And no one was nice about it before I pass this on to Ali. What I found was, the people that paid for my time actually went on to utilize the information, which was really rewarding for me because I put a lot of emotional energy into how I teach and what I share.

Whereas on the other hand, people that just wanted everything for free, man, you can go all out for them. You can give them everything but it’s just like a never ending information black hole. They’re so addicted to the information, and they’re so scared of putting into action or they’re reticent to put it into action. You just never see the fruits of your labor and Ali, It was like when if I compare it to being a strength coach, it would be like training a group of athletes for a year and seeing them never willingly add weight to the bar or try to do anything with your coach. It just, it was very depleting.

So I want to encourage you guys make sure that you are looking into your email, your phone and saying what are the things that people asked me questions about and then find a way to, you know, address those things, create resources for those things and then charged charged for your expertise and those things and do so knowing that the people that value you and respect you most will be happy to do so you can do it in package formats, hourly formats, there’s so many options and again, we’ll be happy to help you craft this. Just reach out to us and we can chat about it but charge for different aspects of your coaching. Not just the immediate thing that you are known for. Ali any comments on that or you might want to go right about a strategy number two,

 

Ali Kershner  17:01

I think you’d hit and actually think this kind of segues perfectly into number two which is You know, we all undervalue what it is that we’re really good at. And I think that sometimes it’s hard. You know, we are service minded individuals, we want to help other people, we want to teach other people, you want to mentor. And so we kind of discount the skills that we have because we were so used to giving them away that’s part of our job. But we are experts in certain things and you can really look at them like Brett said, from the perspective of what do people ask you the most I know that as a strength coach, and you know now and what I currently do I get asked all the time will like can you write me a program, right? We’ve all had the, the uncle, the aunt, the the mom, the dad, have asked us to write them a program. Obviously, that is a value to someone.

So whether it’s a program that you’ve written, maybe you’re not a strength coach, so maybe you’re a dietician. Maybe it’s a nutrition plan, I’m sure, dieticians you guys get asked all the time. Can you write me a nutrition plan for losing 10 pounds? Whether you’re in marketing, right, and this is, you know, switching to a different kind of field, but everybody is a teacher in their field of something, right? So if you’re a marketer, maybe you’ve designed landing pages or website that converts really well maybe you’re a really good copywriter.

Take whatever that skill is that you have even a feels really basic to your current audience and distill it down into something that you can put online and whether that’s an eBook, a simple PDF, whether that’s a program, I know as a strength coach, I have hundreds of templates like beautifully designed templates. Now of course, I’m not going to like take one that I used with the exact basketball team that I worked with, but I can simplify that template down. And guys, there are literally websites where you don’t have to do anything there. Are marketplaces for those type of programs. And even if that’s not the case, you can get a link tree or you can put it up on a very simple you know, website. There’s YouTube videos describing how to do that and you can sell a program for $10 $20 and that is a way to make some passive cash really quickly. Based on the skill that you do every single day.

And so what I would encourage everybody to do is to look back at their DMS, at their text messages, even from the ones from aunts, uncles, whoever, even if it seems like the most basic question, because those are the things that people really care about. It’s not the things that you’re researching and nerding out on every day, it’s the things that you know, so well, they’re like the back of your hand that you can easily monetize a little bit and you shouldn’t feel bad about that because it took you years and certifications and time to learn those things. And as long as it’s not taking away from your normal job, I wouldn’t mind seeing people put more of that stuff out there like put what you know online, don’t be afraid to share that. You don’t always have to charge for it. But also you shouldn’t feel bad for charging for it. If it’s something that you’ve dedicated a lot of time and energy to. Would you add anything to that Brett?

 

Brett Bartholomew  20:05

No, I think that’s spot on. I think that you know with these, we want to be as tactical as possible. And we just want to give people some really quick hits. And there’s some things on the later ones that I know you and I have some really deep dives on. So I think you did a wonderful job explaining that it’s just people have to get over that fear of rejection. And this was something I was going to talk about my next one but I think it fits better with what you just talked about. People are people oftentimes know the steps and know what they need to do, but they get scared of rejection and they think I’m not an expert.

And one thing I once heard that I really liked is the rule of 10%. And it’s this idea that guys, you really only need to be about 10% ahead of the people that you’re trying to help or the people that you’re trying to serve to be an expert you don’t have to be a complete master. You don’t have to be a savant. Nobody with the right attitude actually ever is. But you do need to just say like, Do I have something of value? Yes, you do. But we’re not going to do the imposter syndrome thing here. We’ve had another episode on that. And you just have to be 10% ahead and quit being scared of rejection. Put these things out there and trust that any industry that you or any service that you work with, whether you are going to sell this or sell that, like they will help you put it put it into a nice and package resource and you can easily find out how to do that online or again.

This is something and I’m using a tactic with you guys because we do it honestly, this is something we help with so I think your points are very well made.

 

Ali Kershner  21:23

Well, and the other thing I was gonna say is, you know, sometimes if I see something online from an expert, whether that’s, you know, like let’s just say that I was trying to get into real estate, and there are real estate coaches who want to help young real estate agents get into the field. If I saw something and I’m new to the field, and they were selling their blueprint for free, or they were giving it away for free, then I’d honestly look at that and be like okay, this is probably helpful to like, get the bare minimum, but there’s definitely no way they’re giving away the good stuff. Like there’s absolutely no chance of that free resources. What’s gonna put me ahead.

So if you flip the table and you turn the table and you kind of look at that in your own field, you know, somebody sees a workout program for free. Yeah, sure, it might be okay, but you’re not going to give away like your best stuff in a resource that’s free anyway. So just remember that if you’re feeling bad about charging, for your expertise, your professional opinion, your professional skill set, just turn to look at another industry and ask yourself if you would trust a free resource there.

 

Brett Bartholomew  22:26

Yeah. I think that’s a great point. Anything else you want to add on this one?

 

Ali Kershner  22:31

No, I think we’re ready for three. Cool. Three is

 

Brett Bartholomew  22:33

And this isn’t that different from number one is group coaching, group coaching is bigger bang for your buck and less time. So what I what I found is people would come to me for many of the reasons that I already mentioned before, it was something along the lines of how do I kind of step out of my industry and the norms in my industry and build my own brand or how do I kind of do this on the side but do it tastefully, so it doesn’t take away from this and that or just people-based relationships with people based leadership and relationship issues.

And what I started to notice is there are people asking a lot of the same questions. And so what I did is I just reached out to a number of them and said, hey, you know, I’m thinking about opening up a limited number of group spots. And this is always true. I mean, people always think that’s a scarcity based tactic. But just because it’s a scarcity based tactic doesn’t mean it’s a dishonest. I do whenever I coach open up a number of limited spots.

That’s just the reality because I have a life that I want to live and I have only a certain amount of time and energy and I don’t want to be one of those people that sacrifices my health either emotionally or physically. It just so I can make you know, money and all that stuff. So I always just say guys, I’m thinking about doing a limited number of spots here. All of you have similar interests. What do you say about getting together, X amount of times per month, talking on Zoom, and all this. And at first, tired has everybody keeps saying they are of Zoom? We still have tons of people in the Art of coaching community that love it.

And the reality is, is that’s sometimes how things need to be done. I mean, I think that we get in this habit of complaining about things, just because maybe we were tired of it during COVID But for people that can’t travel and that they live International, they just have different constraints, zoom, we can be really effective. I mean, I have a vibe board that I’ll fire up in the back of the zoom. I’ll write on it. We share our screen we get very very tactical, so it’s not boring. And so when you guys think about this, you just, you think about, what do I want to teach? What am I? What am I 10% ahead on what do people want and if you do want to talk about pricing for a little bit, and I’m no mathematician, so I’m gonna keep this simple.

Let’s just say you know, we want to use $2,000 as an example. Now that’s the price of one of our mid- ranged tickets for one of our workshops, whether it’s Apprenticeship, Brand Builder, or Speaker School, so I’m gonna use $2,000 as an example. And I want to demonstrate that like you don’t have to sell a ton of sessions or have a ton of people to be able to get that. You know if you can just divide that number by how many like coaching clients you want or how many sessions you want to offer. Like for example, let’s say you charge $100 for a one on one session, and you want each person to go through maybe like four sessions for maximum results. That means that you could charge right like you have to have four 45 minutes to 1 hour sessions per customer. So they’re each paying you that amount of money. So in that case, you would only need really about five customers.

My point is, is if that math went too quickly, guys just break it down. Like if you got a speeding ticket, one time I got a speeding ticket was like 300 bucks. I was like I’d really like to earn that money back and I probably have some free time where I can leverage that. And some people that could use some help. So I just reached out to my audience and I’d say hey guys I’m opening this up for a limited amount of time. Would anybody be interested? I’m happy to share all the steps that I learned along the way. I just did the math. Now. There’s more that goes into figuring out your pricing on that.

For us we have to think about Alright, when we run an apprenticeship we’re about to run one, by the time you guys hear this we have done one in Sacramento for a ton of coaches and firefighters. Those expenses will total 3500 to 4000 just for us to run the event. So we’ve got to make that back and and account to the time that Ali and I are gone and account the time that you know we print out folders and materials and all these things.

So those things your cost of goods goes into it. The money you need to meet, to pay payroll or pay for all your things goes into it. opportunity costs. So when you’re doing group coaching, you can knock out a lot of problems for a lot of folks, bang for your buck. And you just need to figure out how you’re going to organize it. It doesn’t have to be on Zoom. It can be on any number of platforms.

But the bottom line is just think about this. Think about how many people love getting together with other like minded individuals and sharing problems and strategies and what’s really rewarding on Ali I know you can speak to this before we move on is you start to see them coach each other and then you feel like you’re doing your job as a coach because you want them to like want to work with you. But any good coach doesn’t want people to be dependent on you them, you want to create communities that are really collaborative. I mean, don’t you get fired up when you see people on our coalition’s start to do that and take the reins and and then grow and build these things?

 

Ali Kershner  27:06

Yeah, I mean, I think the best part is that then they then create relationships with each other that expands their own businesses or brands or coaching abilities beyond what we ever taught them or or had conversations with them about. I mean, even speaking to something really though, somebody that happened we had two of our previous coalition members meet up real, in real time and in real life. It’s a lot of our stuff happens virtually. And one of them is a mental performance coach. Other ones are running coaches and they run a running club and they ended up meeting up in person and helping each other out. So they do mental performance lecture at the running camp and I thought that was so cool.

You know, it’s like that’s the community and that’s the type of, you know, expansion that you can get just by leveraging other great people and other awesome coaches, not just in your, you know, immediate vicinity, but people you can reach virtually even

 

Brett Bartholomew  27:58

Yeah, and mind you guys. You know, these are not things that I hadn’t really thought about way in advance. I would coach people one to one and they’d be like, Does anybody else have these kinds of questions I’d love to work with.

And so then I thought, all right, I mean, I guess I’ll do group coaching because some of my one to one coaching clients wanted that and so you don’t even have to worry about well, I don’t really know how to do this or what people would want. Just get started and people will start to tell you what you want. And that’s the nice thing about people that support your business. They’ll tell you if they want you to add a value meal or anything like that.

Ali, why don’t you take us to the next strategy?

 

Ali Kershner  28:32

Yeah, okay. So this one, you know, just to switch gears a little bit, you know, one way to make some money is actually to save money, right, which is via negativa a fancy way of saying the same thing, but you know, I can speak to this one I think very clearly because I’m a very frugal person. I am always looking for ways to you know, keep the finances tight and just I’m not an extravagant spender, let’s just say that but on certain things I am because and I kind of justify that by saving money other places, but, you know, one of the easiest things you can do is just look at your expenses on a monthly basis.

And I know that can be extremely daunting and it kind of is a Pandora’s box if you’ve never looked at your, your monthly transactions, but sometimes I will literally just pull up in my credit card statement at the end of a month and I’ll look at my what I spent money on. And I’ll just ask myself like, on the priority list, where does this file is this high priority can’t live without it, you know? So that would be like rent, utilities, etc. Is it you know, things that I really want to have which are for me, and this is where it gets you know, you have to make these decisions for me that is going out to a coffee shop from time to time because I do equate that with productivity and for me, it’s like a break in my day. I can look forward to it. I ended up doing better work at Coffee Shops. And I consider that an essential thing even though it’s for many something that could be cut.

Then you look at things that maybe you don’t need, so I ended up looking at my expenses this last month and I was still paying for Paramount plus and and ESPN Plus subscription. And I had purchased those because there were some sporting events I wanted to watch last month but I didn’t need them this month. And so it was an easy, you know, an easy snip, snip. And then you know, there’s the things that you’re like, Oh, I kind of regret the engagement. You know, obvious don’t keep doing those.

But, you know, whether that’s coffee, whether that’s, you know, maybe you’ve spent a little bit more on groceries this month than you meant to, you know, something that I’ve done and we were laughing about this earlier I go to a grocery store and shout out to Grocery Outlet. This is my favorite store because they have, you can never predict what they’re gonna have you like you walk in and it’s all surplus from other grocery stores that they couldn’t sell. So of course I’m not going there for my produce. I’m not going there for my fresh meat. But I am going there for like, you know, my fun snacks and maybe my dry good and my oatmeal etc. Because I don’t care if I get Quaker or if I get mom’s best cereal or whatever. Yeah, mom’s Mom’s spaghetti? Yeah, oatmeal.

You know, so look at ways that you can cut back even on your grocery bill. Just because that never makes a difference to you. So I don’t know, Brett, what are ways that you guys save money in your household?

 

Brett Bartholomew  31:20

Yeah, well, I think you know what you’re talking to, before I get into that is huge. Right, you’re judt talking about like, you just hit finding, finding extra cash. We’re looking at hidden costs that we’re not always aware of. So I just want to make a point that I love that. And I think if more people and I’m holding it up so that Ali could see, you know, in Microsoft OneNote I have recurring costs as well, just like she said, you know, and there’s times where there’s certain things I’m not going to get rid of.

I’m never going to get rid of my Costco membership, my Amazon Prime membership, but there are certain things that you know, I’ve just like okay, my wife and I like this show Billions, but we don’t watch much else on Showtime. So unless Billion sets a new season right, I can cancel that 10.99 a month recurring. And that’s how a lot of those subscriptions get you right, they just think that you’re gonna forget. And that doesn’t mean every subscription thing is lascivious in that they’re trying to get you I mean that’s that’s the nature of people not having to remember it and just being on recurring.

You just have to think is that a need to have or a nice to have for the season this that you’re in? And Ali’s right like going through groceries. I mean, the other day my wife and I made a big purchase. So there are certain things I just know I can live without the next time I go to the grocery store. I don’t need to get this kind of brand. I can take a hit on that or I can, you know, make make a trip to Kroger instead of you know, Publix even though I like Publix better and the prices are lower. I upgraded to a credit card that gets me 6% cashback on groceries instead of the 3%.

Now some people are like, Yeah, but does it have an annual fee? I mean, yeah, but it’s a $95 annual fee. And I’ve done the math to know what I need to keep that annual fee. I mean, not only completely wipe it off the ledger, but make more than three times back on that. And that’s really important to look at you know, just leveraging these things and saying or okay, like usually I’ll buy Quest bars if we’re going to go travel but this case I went to Costco got the Kirkland ones.

And people don’t think that the 5 10 little dollars like this make a difference. And they do and all of a sudden we were able to pay off exactly what we paid, needed to make for that for that purchase. So you know, if this is overwhelming, like just step one, open up a Google Doc, you can make a spreadsheet in there, like on Google Sheets, or you could do this on a pad of paper. But all you got to do is really make two columns and column one , just have your description. And then column two, your costs. And you’re just going to go through your bank account. And there’s this really good app. It’s a free app and no we don’t partner with them, although we should. It’s called True Bill. And they’ll alert us certain things in your spending.

But anyway, just go through your bank account statements and use these categories as the spending right category one could be your subscriptions. We already gave examples of that, so I’m not going to belabor it. Category two could be eating out. I have a friend who’s super parsimonious but he constantly, It’s a number one expense, category three could be your purchases, right. And that could be whether you’re Mindlessly scrolling through Amazon or you know just purchases that you have to make.

Ali,  last week, we had to pay $650 to get outside light fixtures replaced because apparently the home, the builder had installed bad circuits and created a systemic issue, right, like so that’s a purchase we can’t do anything about. But we can do something about category four, which is our leisure spending. Right and that those are the things that we love, that we don’t always want to get rid of. And that’s tough, but look at some of that leisure spending because you don’t need to get rid of long term. You just need to look at it situations.

And so again, under the description, you’d write subscription or whatever it is, it is say what it is and then the cost of it, and then just kind of just do this audit, do this audit and if you can’t find 100 to $1,000 that you can cut out here in there periodically. Guys, like you’re you’re crazy. I’m trying to be nice, and I’m trying to be diplomatic, but you’re crazy and it doesn’t take long and if you don’t want to do it yourself, just get that free app, True Bill and it’ll even help negotiate on your behalf. We’re able to get our homeowners, insurance and all that we didn’t have to call anybody just this this True Bill thing did it for us so awesome. I love that you put that one on there Ali.

 

Ali Kershner  35:20

Yeah, and last one just for the coaches out there who love books, but I know we probably disagree on this but I will only buy books that I know I’m gonna need to take notes on but anything for pleasure, anything that you know, I don’t know I’m not completely sold on I’m going to the library guys. The library is not dead. It’s a hot take but the library is an amazing place. And if you want to save some money, just go to the library every you know even if it’s not every book, you buy every other book and you go to library for every other one. Yeah, I mean we wait to save some money. 

 

Brett Bartholomew  35:51

I don’t disagree on that at all. I think the only time like I buy a ton of books because I create a lot of content and I need to have references around me constantly. But for sure, me before I did what I do now at Art Of Coaching. I mean when I was just interested, Oh somebody said this is a, I can definitely to your point Ali, See 20 books on my bookshelf I wish I had not bought because they ended up not being great reference material. I kind of bought them because somebody else said they’d be good at this and this and this.

But I didn’t analyze like, is this a need for what I do for a living now or is this something else that somebody else just said is a good book? And really I think this is something that a lot of people won’t like, guys, a lot of these books are just saying the same things at this point. Like I love Daniel Kahneman, brilliant, right, Nobel Laureate, but I think I’ve read about 10 other books that essentially ripped off his idea of system one, system two thinking and you start getting these things where people are just explaining the same ideas in our life, in slightly different ways.

So by doing what Ali said, and checking them out in the library first and at least reading the first 100 pages there before you just mindlessly buy them and then have this stack of books you’re never going to get to, is a huge asset. So Ali with another homerun there, Except Conscious Coaching, definitely buy that one.  Conscious Coaching buy that well that’s reference material, right? Because people can always go back and say, Damn, what archetype was that? That person was just like crazy. So I like to think that that’s a reference where we at? Are we, on number five. 

 

Ali Kershner  37:17

You want to take number five? 

 

Brett Bartholomew  37:18

Yeah, this is very easy and kind of fits in with one to one and not underestimating your knowledge. So you know, I’ve dealt with the imposter stuff just like anybody but what I found is there were certain people that said, essentially that they want to pay for my time to learn from my mistakes, and specifically where they were just trying to get clarity on same thing. So they had all the know how of how to start their own thing that wasn’t an issue, but they had trouble figuring out like, who’s my audience, who’s my audience, and so, essentially, some people would pay me just to help them like, just to ask them some questions because I’m very interested again in people and characteristics.

So this one gentleman I’ll just call him Paul said, you know, I know what I’m passionate about. Here’s these topics, okay, Paul, like why these topics, what kind of personal identification or expertise you have in these? What’s the message you want to get out all this? And he said, But how did you put together surveys so you knew what courses to make? Because for those of you that don’t know, all of our online courses, with the exception of Blind Spot costs 30 to $35,000 to create. And so we didn’t just do that blindly.

We would send out research, whether it’s Google Forms or TypePad, or once we hired a third-party research firm, but there was a very delicate craft, trying to figure out the questions to ask people. And you could argue that we could even do that better now, but it’s just it’s infinite. And sometimes you don’t always get the responses that you need. I mean, so it’s not only like how what are the right questions to ask how can I send them out? So I get the useful data?

But also what are headlines and things like that so people answer these emails, but this person just said, I want you to just grill me and make sure I know my audience, their pains and fears, their hopes and dreams, but how to speak to them. And so by helping them put together these forms, helping them just organize their ideas, helping them find better questions, because again, for those of you that don’t know, this is a large part of what we teach our workshops, how to ask for detailed, thoughtful tactical questions.

People were happy to pay for that time. Because for those of you that have done it, you know, nothing is worse than sending out a survey where you want actual feedback. And people just send you crap. I mean, let me let me put this out there. My wife and I are full believers in a higher power, right? And so I don’t know why somebody would ever say this to us. But we put together a survey one time when I was like, Hey, how can we earn your trust? What can we do better? And then for about every 10 Serious responses we got, we’d get one or two we had I remember this specifically where somebody said, start following Jesus, or another person said, make more of your stuff free, and I’m like, Alright, the first one is definitely not helpful. That’s presumptuous and who the hell says that?

And then two,  make more stuff free, guys, we give out 1000 hours of free content every year or more. So what I did is I just went back and it’s like, alright, well, Can we add another incentive there? Could we ask more thoughtful discerning Questions, how can we better segment. So if you just need help getting into the specifics of something, even if you have the general framework, people were happy to pay for that. So do market research. Liz, my wife would get on the phone to switch gears real quick. She would fill out surveys, companies would pay her 10 to $20 just to fill out a survey. So all of a sudden Liz was like, I made a hundred 50 bucks this month just filling out surveys in my spare time, when I was going on a walk or she’ll tell when she was going to the bathroom. You can fill out all kinds of surveys online.

And Ali, I’ll let you elaborate on the last because you’ve done it. You can also do studies for companies, they’ll pay you to do studies, so can you talk about that a little bit?

 

Ali Kershner  40:52

Yeah? I mean, if you want if you live in a town or a city that’s near a university, because the universities ,all if they’re research universities, they’re their PhD students. Their labs are always looking for participants for studies. So find out what university you’re near and go look for research opportunities, because I think there was one, I did one in college, different story for another time. I got paid $150 for an MRI, right? They were looking at, you know, just some normal brain stuff. I didn’t know that I was gonna have to do a urine sample beforehand. So I wish I would have known that.

And then the second thing was, I was like, very sick at the time. This was like 2017 So not COVID I was like in an MRI machine and I’m like snot. It’s just like running down my throat like most most miserable experience, but it did get paid. Either way. I’ve done something like that. I’ve I actually did a study that involve my dog where they like sent me some things some products to try out. They ask you a couple questions and they like Pay Pal, you 200 bucks. So there are opportunities out there if you look for them. And guys, I mean, if you’re on the internet, people are already taking your data and selling it and using that so you might as well get paid for it right? I mean, I don’t know, I think it’s kind of a no brainer, especially if you can control what companies find out about you.

 

Brett Bartholomew  42:09

For sure. And I’ll tell you this as incentive if you guys are on our newsletter, and if you’re not just go to artofcoaching.com/begin we and just a few months if not sooner, are going to be giving away $10 Starbucks gift cards to people that help us with a survey. Because again, we’re trying to do really useful stuff for the Art Of Coaching and getting you know feedback results that are like, I don’t know, do this, do that instead of things that are really detailed and thankfully, and to many of you listening thank you so much for being detailed.

When we asked you, when we ask you things like what profession are you in? What’s your annual income? What are some of the biggest problems you’re facing? That isn’t for just shits and giggles? We’re asking so that we can create more relevant resources for you. We serve a large of a swath of people not just trained coaches, the majority of our audiences, emerging leaders in over 20 different fields. That’s why we’re called Art Of Coaching, coaching is synonymous with leader.

So if you want to have a chance to get a free cup or to have coffee, please join our mailing list. We are more than happy to give you that money for your time now. We can’t give it to everybody. There’s like 25,000 people on our mailing list and we’re not rich, but we are going to give it to people that really go all out and just give us really in depth feedback on some of this stuff. And we’ll be happy to spend that money and pay you for your time. So don’t underestimate it.

Ali, take us to number six.

 

Ali Kershner  43:33

Yeah, so kind of going back to what we’re talking earlier a little bit with the group coaching model. You know, if you’re like man, I don’t know how it started group or what I would start the group around. One way to do that is to create a challenge and of course that term might not fit in your immediate field, your profession, your group of audience, whatever that is, but what do we mean by a challenges? Take, you know, a certain amount of time, have some sort of outcome or some amount of material you want to cover together.

Or if you’re a coach, maybe it’s a workout where you guys all agree that you’re gonna get together and do a workout together every single day for us. You know, we created this Conscious Coaching challenge if you didn’t hear what Brett said the beginning of the episode, where we wanted to take the same concept that’s been very successful in the fitness market, and give people a way to come together, network, create a community and have a specific task and some specific challenges that they can apply in their lives on a daily basis for a set amount of time because sometimes, it’s hard when you’re like, Oh, am I committed to this for six months? I have no idea where this is gonna go. I have. I do have a full time job. So maybe you can do this in the offseason. Maybe you can do this in a less busy period, but create a challenge of sorts and if again, that term doesn’t work for you fine, where you teach it a certain amount of content or you you have some sort of group goal that you’re working towards.

And if you want an idea of how to do it, you can even you know, look at what we’ve done if you go to artofcoaching.com/challenge where we go for four weeks, like Brett said, and every week we hit on a different topic whether that’s how to find your own communication style or your own coaching voice, how to have hard conversations and negotiate and, you know kind of get into the wheels, how to you know have productive debates even we touch on things like how to motivate and influence people in a way that gets them to buy into what you need them to learn from you.

We cover all these topics one by one and we give you little kind of fun activities, challenges, homework assignments, that you can go and apply with your own people on a daily basis and I think it’s created this incredible community and kind of rallies people around something together without having to have this like sort of more vague idea of group coaching.

I don’t know Brett, how would you add to that?

 

Brett Bartholomew  45:50

Yeah, I mean, I think one I just want to continue to emphasize the point that guys, this wasn’t something that we ever thought about doing either. None of this stuff is, but we had an audience that said made it very clear. And there was a certain segment of the audience that was like I love your stuff, but I can’t afford your online course and like legitimately couldn’t afford it right like or it just didn’t fit. Maybe they weren’t an online course person, and they wanted to come to live events. But if this was during COVID, certain people couldn’t come to live events and we had to limit them.

So we had a few people that said, could you do something that’s kind of, you know, 25 to 100 bucks that I can do virtually but allows me to connect with a lot of people. Well, there’s only so much as you guys can imagine any business owner can do. That’s low price. Especially when you give away as much free stuff as we do. But on the other hand, we realize Holy crap,  there is still room in that segment because we kind of found that between my book Conscious Coaching, which is like $15 on my website, or 25 on amazon and our online courses, which remember like so don’t kill me for this.

Those took 30,000 or more to create. So like we can’t make those free. So we charge around 397 for those because we do have to make some money, guys, right? You can’t change the world on a budget. But there was room like we could have had some 25 to like, $99 We decided to do that. Well we decided to price something. What is our challenge right now? Alli? Is it 99 bucks? It’s 99 bucks. Right and can you shower, you could do yours differently depending on the length and what you’re teaching and who your audience is and we felt like you know what, this is a really great way to kind of hold a flame to the butt of the lurkers out there people that swear they love our stuff.

And we know they’re engaging with it, but they haven’t really invested back in us. Nobody is going to tell me that $99 from month of in depth teaching and access to a really cool community is too expensive. They’re just not and if they are, they’re there. They’re probably not gonna buy anything that we do. So let’s try this. And you know, you don’t have to have a big social media following or anything like that. I told some friends, they told them to some friends I know Ali told members of her family. We just shared it. We were like, Hey guys, this is what we’re gonna do. If nothing else, jump in it if you hate it. We’ll give you your money back. But we think we’re providing something that’s really valuable here.

So do as Ali said, challenge to kind of one specific practice or strategy. If you’re I mean, if you’re an expert in my neighbor, Daniel is like a budding golf expert. It’s like tin cup. This is what he does all the time now, and he’s the coach that taught him really cool things about his swing. So he’s like, I’m gonna teach my other tech nerd friends some golf now because they have no clue. And this dude, he literally goes and does it. If you know a little bit more about copywriting or we have somebody in our coalition who’s great at Tech, he helps people figure out tech-based issues.

So you just share that and by the end of the challenge, the goal is that your participants just have perfected or at least advanced in some of their skills in that area. So price it in a very affordable 25 to $100 range. Think about the length, tell some friends to tell some friends and quit worrying whether you have 100 people in it. Get 10, get 10 people in there and really hone your skill and your craft. And I think that this is something you could easily do, we do it right now twice a year. And again, you can go to artofcoaching.com/challenge and figure it out. But it’s very fun. It’s very refreshing for everybody and it’s very, very affordable.

 

Ali Kershner  47:12

Yeah, 99bucks. Yeah, I mean, we go all out. I mean it when you have a group of people together, and that’s the beauty of the challenge. It’s like when you have a group people doing something together, it’s hard not to go all out for these people. And I don’t I mean, if you’re the one creating the challenge, it’s almost more inspiring to you than anyone else. So maybe if you’re even feeling a little bit burned out and you’re like, I love what I do. I just need to be around great people who also love it. It’s a great way to just get back into the motivation of it too.

 

Brett Bartholomew  49:42

And once you get rid of that fear of people rejecting things and you realize that there are people that totally want to invest in you and, and grow it just becomes really rewarding. Alright, strategy number seven, super brief, get rid of your stuff. Liz and I have moved 15 times collectively in our lives together or separate I guess, and we have acquired a lot of things.

Now. I also my wife is perfect in many ways, but she is definitely the hoarder between us. Now that doesn’t absolve me. I am doing a very different job now than I did like 10 years ago. So I have stuff in my house that is just really no longer useful to me. Now, there was a learning curve for me because I’m an impatient person, about Facebook marketplace and all that.

But the bottom line is I had really bad experiences on Ebay. I had really bad experiences on like Craigslist, just a lot of flakes, a lot of weirdos, things like that. But I had found things on offer up or Facebook marketplace that I could put on there and then people would come just gladly take it off my hands. So Liz and I do three to four annual quote unquote spring cleanings. Where we go around and take pictures of things in our house, put them against, you know, a nicer background, so it doesn’t look like we live in a crack house. And then we look at the original descriptions. We put a lot of effort into it because guys talk about differentiation.

If you just take some solid pictures of your stuff, and take the time to actually tell people what it is, you will sell your stuff way faster than anybody else. I think we made about $1,500 Just a few weeks ago getting rid of four to five things that we had laying around. Liz has also walked other people’s dogs. She loves doing that and we lost two of our rescue dogs a few years ago. So this gives back to her, I’ve driven DoorDash before one time I just wanted to see how long would it take to earn 150 bucks. We did a whole episode on that we’ll link that, it was pretty funny. Some of the things I learned and had to do. Now you can make like $20 an hour doing shift. I mean, you guys all have a few hours in your day or your weekend or Ali we got to talk about it.

There’s a certain segment of our population out there that is strength and conditioning and they’re like, Oh, I still just work dark to dark and I got the time. BS, Ali and I have done that job. We know you’re busy. We love you but you have an offseason. I don’t care if you’re in college, highschool or pro. You have an off season you can go do a couple of things, like, you’re not going to tell me none of these seven strategies work for you, nobody. Because we have all kinds of people in our community.

So to refresh these strategies, one, charge for different aspects of your coaching or expertise.

Two, share what you know online. Giveaway templates, create a course do anything like that. It could be nutrition plans, how to get your first five clients, share something you know. There’s a gentleman I know he has something something called the weekend woodworker., he just loves to make things in his garage. He has now made a multimillion dollar business off of those things.

Three, Group Coaching. Get a bunch of people that are interested in the same things and want to grow, coach them together, charge for your time, offer limited spots so you don’t drive yourself insane and so that you solve a family.

Four, make money by saving money. Look at your spending, audit those habits, audit all those things and get an idea of what your actual spending is. Make sure you’re taking advantage of tax incentives and write offs, talk to a CPA. They will talk to you for free. They will talk to you for free initially, talk to a CPA. There’s 1000s of dollars maybe 10s of 1000s You are wasting or just needlessly giving to the government on top of what you’re already paying in taxes. Nobody’s telling you to ditch your taxes.

Strategy number five, do market research, do surveys studies for companies.

Number six, create a challenge a low cost, low barrier entry way for other people to engage with what you do well.

Strategy seven, get rid of old stuff, sell it, walk dogs, drop shipping, drive Uber do Doordash.

If you are gonna say that none of these work for you, and you’re too busy, then, you know, I just want to take a moment and say that guys, like you’re essentially and I’m using guys as an inclusive term. I know I should quit using that word. You are becoming one of those people that laments. You just can’t solve a problem where you can’t see an opportunity. If you’re saying that no matter how many options are presented to you, you can’t figure out how to make anything work. You may need to question if you really want to become a coach or if you can call yourself a coach and I know that sounds harsh and that makes some of you just want to get off and like give this a bad review and hate on me. But like I’m just trying to be real with you.

If somebody that you know came up to you to try to help or you try to help somebody they just said I can’t do this. I can’t do that. Like it’s not just them being negative. It’s them almost kind of engaging in learned helplessness. So to wrap this up, then I’ll give Ali the final word.

If you still feel overwhelmed by this or want a bit of guidance that is totally okay and expected. Just reach out to us artofcoaching.com/mentoring We offer a free call. It’s no brainer. We just want to get to know you, want to get an idea of what you’d like help with. And we would be happy to help or at least put you in touch with somebody on our extended network that would.

Ali take us home.

 

Ali Kershner  54:47

No, I just think that this is  I was really blind myself to so many of these things. Even before starting to do some quick research for this episode. It was a Google search, a quick Google search of you know ways that you can make more money even though it’s just like a you know, on the side. There’s so much information out there but at the end of the day, they do take time effort and some amount of even money down in investment.

But at the end of the day, you just have to weigh, do you want to make more money? Do you actually want more time because some of these things are gonna have to go, or gonna have to get, you’re gonna have to make a sacrifice somewhere. So really make a list, prioritize what’s most important to you and then make it happen. You know, I think it’s important to even think about, you know, if you lost your job today, what’s the first two or three things that you would go do to make some money and that’s kind of a no brainer way to think about where you could plug some holes right now even financially. So, just sort of thinking about these things.

I think that there’s no limit to what you can do when you actually try and we like Brett said, we’d love to help you. And I’m sure Google would love to help you as well, but we’re going to be a little bit more in depth. So that’s all I got. I appreciate you guys. We appreciate you guys. And I’ll give Brett one last chance to sign us off.

 

Brett Bartholomew  55:58

Yeah, guys, just please send this to a friend. We all know a friend of a friend of a friend who could use these thoughts this kick in the butt a few ideas. We really appreciate you and keep sending us what you want to hear more about. So for me, Ali and the rest of us at Art Of Coaching.

We are now signing off and we’ll see you next time.