Have you been dying to build a business in Coaching or another passion, but have no idea where to start? If you don’t take action, will it turn into a regret that you’ll never forgive yourself for?
Our guest today has helped countless people reach business success they had never thought was possible. Donald Miller is the CEO of Story Brand and Business Made Simple. He’s also the Host of the Coach Builder youtube channel, and the author of several best selling books including: Building a StoryBrand, Marketing Made Simple, and How To Grow Your Small Business. In this episode we dive deep into his new book Coach Builder and cover many topics including:
- The importance of defining your brand
- What to look for when hiring new employees or a virtual assistant
- How long it realistically takes to become a trusted authority
- Guidelines for creating your first high-revenue product
- The must-use tools for entrepreneurs at any level
Referenced Resources:
If you’d like to order Donald’s new book, please visit www.coachbuilder.com/artofcoaching and receive a Bonus Webinar: How To Sell Your Coaching Services!
Ironically, during the episode Donald uses an example for a business idea of a workshop around developing keynote presentations. If that type of product would interest you, we have good news! On June 1st – 2nd we’re hosting our Speaker School in Phoenix, AZ. Our team has experience delivering keynotes to industry leaders from Microsoft, Facebook, Wells Fargo, several Universities, and Professional Sport organizations. This workshop isn’t just for experienced speakers, it’s also for those who want to find their voice or ease the social anxiety that comes with public speaking. We keep the number of participants to 10 or less to make sure you get the experience and feedback you deserve. Sign ups are open now and you can take advantage of Early Bird Special and save up to $200! Hurry, offer expires April 1st!
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TRANSCRIPTION
Brett Bartholomew 0:11
Hey Brett here, there is nothing more transferable to every profession, situation, walk of life, whatever, then skills pertaining to people communication and power dynamics. I mean, that’s just the reality. Being more socially Agile is only going to get more important in the future. AI and anything else is not going to make people irrelevant. What it is going to do is highlight the differentiation between those who have really locked in their people skills, their social agility, their ability to listen well relate, well communicate, persuade, all those things, and those who are really only reliant on technical skills related to their trade.
Research makes it clear, those who are able to be more effective communicators across various contexts, not only earn more, but have higher life and relationship satisfaction. And we’d love to be able to provide a way for you to check your blind spots which we all have, by the way, myself included, or just be a part of your overall professional or continuing development. So please go to artofcoaching.com Check out our one to one mentoring, our live workshops, online courses, Route mentoring, digital community, whatever, we have something for every single budget, we have something for every single walk of life. We have served folks from over 30 profession and we would love the opportunity to serve you. Let us earn your trust. Let us help you get the results you deserve. Go to artofcoaching.com now
Welcome to the Art of coaching Podcast. I’m Brett Bartholomew. And at a young age poor communication nearly cost me my life. Now, I help others navigate the gray area of social interaction, power dynamics and communication so they can become more adaptable leaders regardless of their profession, age or situation. This podcast is for everybody who is fascinated with solving people problems. So if you’re in the no nonsense type who appreciates frank conversations, advice you can put to use immediately and learning how others navigate the messy realities of leadership. You’re in the right place. I’m glad that you’re joining us. Let’s dive in.
Today, I sit down with Donald Miller, Donald is the CEO of story brand and business Made Simple. He’s also the host of the coach builder, YouTube channel, and the author of several best selling books, including building a story brand marketing made simple, and how to grow your small business. And today we talk about all things, coaching, specifically how to build a profitable coaching business. There are so many people out there that have tremendous knowledge and perspective, yet they don’t know how to get started, or really they’re nervous about pivoting and building a coaching business.
We walk you through everything here. It doesn’t matter whether you’re at level one, or you’ve been doing this for a while, if you’re still listening to self limiting beliefs and excuses. You are going to have tactical strategies here that can help and they’re all based off of his new book, Coach builder. So make sure you listen in. You’re going to love this one. Here’s my conversation with Donald Miller.
Welcome back to another episode of The Art of coaching Podcast. I’m here with Donald Miller. Nice to have you, Donald.
Donald Miller 3:40
Good to be with you, Brett.
Brett Bartholomew 3:41
Yeah, I’ve been a longtime fan. I’m sure you know that’s always a cliche thing to say when you have a guest, but I’ve been a fan for reasons that maybe other people haven’t been Do you mind if I kind of elaborate?
Donald Miller 3:51
Oh, no, let’s go yeah, let’s go.
Brett Bartholomew 3:53
One I’m from the Midwest and I have a strong affinity for things that are no bullshit. And just anytime I’ve seen you present on something even if you talk about your earlier work and storebrand just having things grounded in straightforward first principles, no flash, no nuance this is what it is make your stuff easy to understand. That to me is like the ultimate sophistication now because everybody loves to continually muddy the waters to make them seem deep.
So that’s number one. Number two is and this is the communication nerd said to me, you just have a great voice and a great delivery. I feel like you could do a Howard Stern like thing if you ever get tired of doing. I mean obviously you always have your own podcasts you do these things you’re trained at it but just very easy to listen to.
Donald Miller 4:41
That makes me feel really good. You hear your own voice and you hate it so I hear my own I’m like, Miller Come on. But I believe I got one guy says I’ve got a good voice. I’m grateful for that Brett
Brett Bartholomew 4:54
Well now careful because this is coming with, now that here’s the backhanded thing, right like because we have to have. One thing I can’t stand about yet is you pump out books and content. What seems like, I know it’s not. But it seems effortless and I’m working on my second book right now. I’m on my third rewrite, I’m losing my damn mind. You’re coming out with it. By the time this is released, you have come out with coachbuilder your newest book. How do you manage it? What’s this process like for you? I just gotta know, behind the scenes a little bit. If you don’t mind me asking.
Donald Miller 5:25
You know, there’s, okay here. I’ll give you a metaphor to explain it. Recently like in the last 90 days, I’ve gotten really into cold plunging. Have you done? Have you gotten into this trend yet?
Brett Bartholomew 5:34
Oh, yeah, I trained athletes for about 15 years as a strength coach
Donald Miller 5:38
Okay, so you’re way ahead, you know exactly where all this is. And I’m down to 39 degrees and my cold plunge, I’m adjusting it today to 35. The problem with 39 degrees now is I can’t shiver, it literally is not cold enough. And I think that sort of absurdity is what happened to me in writing, you just get used to the pain. I think I’ve written about 12 books, I wish I could say it gets easier, or there’s less self doubt there just isn’t.
It’s just a matter of like, waking up and saying, I’m gonna go torture myself for two hours working on this book, and for some reason I have been able to do it. And then, it’s not unlike having kids, where there’s this amnesia of how hard it is, right when they’re born. You forget about all of that, like, Well, I think I’ll write about this and get into like, I can’t believe I’m doing this again. But for whatever reason, but I am looking forward to writing my last book. I’ll tell you that right now.
Brett Bartholomew 6:39
Yeah, well, no, I can relate to that. And I wonder if, and there’s a lot of themes here that we’ll examine within the context of this conversation. Because writing obviously provides a lot of clarity of thought, that’s immensely valuable. When you’re building a coaching business, you need to know what you’re selling, how to speak to it on many different levels. But have you ever started a book or a project and as you get deeper into it, a new theme emerges?
And you realize, wow, okay, yeah, I was in a good flow. Now, something else is– I gotta write about this within it, too. And that scares the hell out of me at first, but it makes it better. What I mean is, so my next books on leadership, well, within that perception, communication, power dynamics, hidden themes emerge. Do you ever have that? Are you a guy that no matter what you do, it’s outline, it’s planned, no deviation?
Donald Miller 7:28
I think I’ve written 12 books, it might actually be 13. I would say, two of them. Were the book that I set out to write. So sometimes you write your way into figuring out what you wanted to say. You thought you were gonna say this. And then you get about hopefully a fourth into it, not half into it. And you realize, that’s not what this book wants to be this book wants to be something else. And I’ve learned actually, to pay attention to what the book wants to be as though you’re writing with your partner, your partner is your subconscious. And so there is another brain inside of you, many psychologists would divide it up into three or four, that you’re dancing with this kind of creative process.
And so there are a lot of times where I’ve gotten into it and said, I actually don’t think that’s what this book wants to be. It wants to be something else. And then what I do is I write that book from there forward and go back and rewrite the beginning to match the end. And that’s happened at least eight times
Brett Bartholomew 8:32
I can’t imagine
Donald Miller 8:32
Writing these things. Yeah. And then there are other times, my family and I did our first sabbatical, my first sabbatical ever last year, went to London for a month, got to London to do a final pass on the book. And realize there’s three chapters that are just completely missing. They’re not even here and so had to get, because you realize you didn’t cover this, and you didn’t cover this, and you didn’t cover this.
And so there I was in London, just starting, not starting over, but adding another 10,000 words, when I thought I was just going to do a typo correction kind of a thing. So, yeah, books tricky. If you’ve ever done any mountain climbing, there’s a lot of false summits in between books. And you’re like, Okay, we’re almost there. And you get to that summit, you realize, we’re close?
Brett Bartholomew 9:19
Yeah,
Donald Miller 9:19
Yeah, that’s happened a lot.
Brett Bartholomew 9:20
Yeah. Well, it’s good to know that I’m not the only one that happens to because I think there’s even this illusion of, if you work with a big publisher that you have all the help you need. And they kind of do this. And it’s like know, when themes emerge, you’ve got to go do the hard work. And you’ve got to figure out how you’re going to pivot and what you do. And that brings interest into your newest projects, right? We’re talking about pivoting. We’re talking about how a second themes emerge.
And that happens in people’s careers as well. And so what you’re putting out and of course, I’m biased to it because I’m somebody that after 15 years in one career decided, You know what, coaching has a broader meaning to me. I want to do it in the communication strategy, power dynamics space. And then new themes continue to emerge and that this project is all about helping people pivot in their career find a way to profit off of doing what they do best helping other people bringing value to the world coach builder, why now? Why do this project now at this point in your career?
Donald Miller 10:16
Well, we started a coaching certification program where we were teaching our small business frameworks to coaches. And all those coaches came to me and said, We love the frameworks. How do I get clients?
Brett Bartholomew 10:34
Heads up, our only speaker School of the Year is coming up on June 1 And June 2, in Phoenix, Arizona, this is such a unique event, we keep it under 10 people, you get a chance to have a lot of reps, and you get a lot of feedback, and a judgment free zone. We mix in a lot of fun, we’d go through everything on slide design, how to present more effectively how to be more articulate. And it really doesn’t matter whether you’re trying to actually build a speaking career, continue to scale the one you have, or if you just want to get more competent speaking in front of crowds.
We’ve had people that have came that have done TED talks, we’ve had people that come that have social anxiety, it is a very welcoming atmosphere. So if you enjoy and appreciate the opportunity to grow and improve and connect with other like minded people, and you want a chance to become more articulate, to become more fluent, to improve how you get your message across, do not miss speaker school.
Also, it is a perfect time of year to come to Phoenix, it is always right before it gets way too hot in the summer, you can make a little vacation out of it, you can go hiking, you can go to Sedona, you can go to Scottsdale, there’s so much to do. So go to artofcoaching.com/speaker. Now, that’s artofcoaching.com/speaker. Remember, this is our only one of the year early bird pricing is still available, we hope to see you there.
Donald Miller 11:59
Well, we started a coaching certification program where we were teaching our small business frameworks to coaches. And all those coaches came to me and said, We love the frameworks. How do I get clients? Yeah, you know what I thought well, okay, so I, and then I was hearing that from people who are certified by a bunch of other folks, right? They love the certification, they love the knowledge, they love being able to deliver the value, they love connecting with people, but they didn’t understand the nuances of actually growing a coaching business, which is really about building a personal platform. And promoting yourself.
It’s when you really connect with other people and want to help them, it’s not intuitive for you to promote yourself. And so it’s two different things, coaches don’t tend to be very narcissistic human beings, right, they’re fairly other centered. So what I did is I sat down to start a PDF on, okay, here’s some steps you could take to build your own brand. And monetize your and leverage your expertise in the form of coaching business, that PDF, very quickly, I realized this is going to, you know, 250 pages.
And, there’s eight steps in the book. And then of course, I realized, Oh, this is your next book, which sometimes happens too, you start on something you don’t mean to make it a book, and then it becomes the book. And I didn’t see a whole lot going on in the market that would cover this and thought, well, here’s an opportunity. And I don’t know that I could be helping a better group of human beings to be honest with you.
So, how do you make money doing it? That’s what the book is really about? It’s really about how do you make money doing this? Like, how do I make it sustainable, where I can keep doing it day after day after day, and put money into my retirement and buy a few toys and be very generous? In order to do that you got to treat it like a business. And so this book is about building a coaching business.
Brett Bartholomew 13:51
Yeah, well, it’s smart. And I appreciate the way that you did that. Because, even when I went out on my own, we had some coaches that inevitably asked the same thing. And when you would bring up the name like the term brand, to some people, not everybody, but as you know, language has its own baggage. Some people would feel like, well, I and I’m like timeout, your brand is the idea that you stand for made real by what you do. Right. It’s just a communication,
Donald Miller 14:15
Yeah a very good definition.
Brett Bartholomew 14:16
Thank you. Well, I mean, it took a long time, because I had cognitive dissonance over it for a while, right. Like, it’s natural, I think, for people or maybe, to say, Okay, I do know, I can provide value at the same time. I don’t have all the answers. Yeah. And you have to realize you don’t need to have all the answers, but you do need to, as you said–
Donald Miller 14:35
You need a lot more answers than they do. And that’s it. I mean, think about that, Brett. You need a lot more answers than they have. That does not mean you’re perfect. That does not mean you have all the answers. That does not mean you’re the world’s greatest expert. I will pay you if you have some answers to questions that I don’t have. And that’s way more people than they then realize they have that ability.
Brett Bartholomew 14:58
Yeah, no, definitely people will pay for perspective and it’s stuff that gives you a massive return on time. All right, so let’s talk about this, in your book, and I admittedly, it’s not my greatest quality, I can be a cynic. So I was really happy, and I wasn’t worried about this with your stuff, otherwise, we wouldn’t have you on the show. But it’s so nice to be able to pick up the book, and I go over to my wife. And it’s like, right, I remember opening up page, because this was one of our biggest issues was hiring help at the beginning, right?
I’m not saying that and I’m like, you know what makes this book valuable? Is he has level one, level two, level three, level four, who you should hire, what that position is. And then it’s not like you are left with the ambiguity of well, what should I write to attract the right person? You even cover that? Here’s my question. What was your biggest early struggle? When you first started doing this? Was it finding the help? Was it figuring out the right platform? I know it’s all of it. But what inspired you to write such a tactical manual, when you easily could have been like everybody else who just do, all right, you go, just value yourself, you can make money, rah rah here, whatever.
Donald Miller 16:02
Well like everything. What made me write that chapter, which was basically, here’s your first hire, here’s their job description, Here’s your second hire, here’s their job description, here’s your third hire, here’s their job description. So you can go look for them. And you can sit down and say, I need you to be able to do these things. The reason I was able to be that clear in that chapter is because that’s not what I did at all I made every single mistake you could possibly make hired people didn’t give them job descriptions, didn’t give them roles, didn’t give them goals didn’t, realize after hiring this person, they’re actually not good at that at all. Maybe I’ll can go here.
So in hindsight, that chapter is just, here’s what I wish I would have done. Now, all of those people, those job descriptions actually work in my company, and they do a fantastic job. But it was just a ton of mistakes getting there. And so that chapter is really about two things. One is here’s how not to make the mistakes I made, your morale for your team is gonna go up. And they have very clear job descriptions, and they know what they’re supposed to do. But the second, the reason, I think that I wrote that specific chapter was to give you permission to make that hire.
If you’re a solo coach, for example, the longer you wait to hire that virtual assistant, is, the longer it’s going to take for your business to grow the compound interest on getting help. You need to start early and start small. And so it’s also a chance for people just to go okay, Don’s telling me I can do this, and it’s going to work. And for almost everybody who reads it is it is going to work.
Brett Bartholomew 17:33
Yeah, well, I like the way you phrase that because that can be and we, had our audience write in with some things. This is kickback you can get from folks, I’m pointing at myself as well, because I know when I first started out, it was scary hiring somebody, you start thinking even if they’re $25 an hour, it’s the first time you’ve done it, you don’t know the return on value. And that is something that we’ve even had clients in the past, we say, hey, hire an assistant, well, I don’t have the money to do that. And you try to get them to understand, I get that I’m sympathetic. But it is a compound interest, like you said, it’s a value amplifier. You’re you can’t not afford it. Would you address that a little bit just for somebody that feels like, I know, I need help. But the financial aspect of it scares the hell out of me.
Donald Miller 18:17
Yeah, so what you want to do is you want to be able to figure out what your worth per hour. So if you’re somebody who coaches at 800 bucks an hour or something like that, and you went and picked up your dry cleaning, and you you booked a flight because you got to travel appointment, they’ll pick up a dry cleaning and booking flights probably an hour. So you just lost 800 bucks. You could have paid somebody 25 bucks to do that. So now you say okay, how many wasted hours do I have a week? Well, it’s probably at the very least 10. Okay, so if it’s 10 wasted hours a week, that’s 250 bucks that you could spend in order to make 1000.
So it’s just math, right? And people don’t realize that’s one of the things you need to do if you hire a virtual assistant. They’re not just a business assistant. They’re a personal assistant. Yeah. So I don’t schedule my own haircuts. Somebody comes to my door and picks up my dry cleaning. My assistant texted me on Tuesday, Wednesday, actually and says, Donnie had a dry cleaning day. Yes, that’s, by the way, a reminder for me to throw stuff in a bag and throw it out on the front porch, because I always forget that part, too. The downside of it is, I don’t know what I’m doing. Every day. I literally wake up, I look at my calendar, and somebody else has filled my calendar, right.
But I learned to let them do that. By an interview with Jimmy Carter. There was a guy who was interviewing the former president and he said and you know about the interview, he was shocked at how fully present Jimmy Carter was. He was not worried about anything. He’s not thinking about anything. He was fully present. And that interview. And when a handler came in and said Mr. President, I’m sorry. I’m gonna have to cut this interview short. You’ve got another appointment. The President literally was like, Oh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t realize, was really good talking. He’s literally just letting other people handle where he is so that he can be fully present.
So as a coach, if you’re thinking about the fact that you got to get a new client, and you got to get some marketing stuff out, you got to do this. And you got to do that, while you’re in a coaching session. That’s not good. So you want somebody else planning, the not planning, but getting the date night on the calendar, just knowing that you do not work after five o’clock. You know what’s beautiful? My schedule is incredibly busy, there is nothing on Saturday or Sunday, that’s nothing, there is nothing after five o’clock. So that stuff, my assistant literally locks that down. The next trick after they start handling your schedule is actually if you can do it, it’s an amazing thing to do. start handing them your correspondence.
In other words, when people email you, it doesn’t go to you, it goes to your assistant, and your assistant responds if they can or forwards important emails to you. I have two email addresses the one that I give out and the one that I that email number. Yeah, that the number that you can just get directly to me. And what I find is, if I let people have direct access to me, I’m a really crappy person, right? Because I’m like, okay, yeah, I can probably meet with you on Tuesday that I didn’t get it on my schedule. But if I give them my assistants, like, oh, Don, would love to meet with you on Tuesday. Fact, I just put it on the schedule. He’ll be there.
So you kind of have to that’s the first hire, in my opinion, is a virtual assistant who can handle your schedule and handle your correspondence, you can start with 10 hours. So you’re not talking about a whole lot of money. But what you also have to be disciplined to do then, especially if you’re just starting to build your coaching business, is take those hours that you just bought, and make sure that you’re using them in your sweet spot. If you don’t do that, if you sit by the pool, yeah, you’re gonna lose money. Yep. But if you take those hours and say, No, I’m not scheduling hair cut, I’m not doing my dry cleaning, or any of my dry cleaning, or somebody else’s handling that, therefore I need to sit down and write a piece of content, I need to deliver a webinar and I need to do something that actually moves this business forward with the hours that I just bought.
Brett Bartholomew 22:07
Yeah, well, a couple clear distinctions there. And you alluded to it. And page 202, what are the personal costs in building a seven figure coaching business and Well, opportunity cost is the biggest thing, as you alluded to.And that’s something that I think a lot of people because coaches are natural givers. They’re people that inherently, depending on the field they come from, aren’t self important. And it can feel to some people that have not had that kind of help before. It can feel self important or weird to have an assistant. And it’s like, no, no, this is not, as you alluded to, this is somebody that’s allowing you to be present. You’re also by the way, if you don’t hire somebody like this, you’re robbing somebody else in the world, from being able to do the thing that they love to do that they’re great.
Donald Miller 22:51
That’s exactly it. There are people who love booking flights. I know that sounds crazy, but there are people who actually, they love it, they love the logistics, I’m gonna get Don over here, we’re gonna move them over here, we’re gonna get this car that picks them up here. I’m going to email that person’s assistant say, hey, it’s got a heart out at two o’clock, and you make sure he leaves the room. You know, that sort of thing. There are people who actually just really, really love that. And you are robbing them of a job. By the way. It’s called teamwork. Yeah, right. And so I don’t know that a football coach feels guilty for hiring a quarterback. Right? I should be doing that. You’re never gonna win a single game if you don’t figure out how to put the right people in the right seat on the right thing.
Brett Bartholomew 22:51
Yeah, no, that’s a great point to look at now. Just selfish question here, before we transition into the next one. Your assistant are they local, because some people may not feel like okay, I can find somebody local remote. Obviously, there’s benefits to both I know, when we’ve had remote at this point in my business, I want somebody that’s local, because I do need help with more personal type stuff. And alsom I like being able to say, hey, come over to the house, let’s game plan for the week, direct medium of communication. But what do you prefer?
Donald Miller 24:07
Well, I do a hybrid, all of my assistants, there has been three, they have been remote, but they’re local. So if we need to get together we can if they need to come over and set up the house for something or make sure or drop some books off at the house that I’m supposed to sign they can do that. However, one of the questions that I asked my assistant, one of my biggest concerns before I hired one is I’m a creative guy, I really like to go down to the bottom of the ocean and spend a week there, figuring out what’s down there. And I don’t really want to be disturbed or come up. If I’m in book writing mode, especially.
I’m a content creator. And so one of the things I asked is how much time are you going to want with me? Are you wired that you’re going to need a lot of time they do need daily direction. And if they say yeah, that’d be really great. I see you’re not my person. And, I need somebody who I can say, hey, I want to do an event, can you look into it probably make 300 people, I don’t know what all involved, there’s probably food, like, we probably need a room. Get back to me in a month. And if they can do that, we’re on the same page.
However, there’s other people and you may be one of them. That’s just not their leadership style. They really want to sit and communicate every day. And so there are plenty of people who they love working for a person like that. What I love about my assistant, I think what my assistant loves about me is he’s got enormous amounts of autonomy. I mean, he can kind of just freewheel and he’s got this list of chefs that we use to cater different events. He’s got these, all the kinds o, I don’t micromanage any of that stuff. I’m too busy, writing and you ask, how do you write a book? That’s how you do it. I’m not thinking about who’s catering the next event, right? I’m thinking about what’s the title of chapter two?
Brett Bartholomew 25:47
Yep. No. And that can be crippling because that’s the reality of a lot of people that have pivoted, right. They’ve gotten past this self doubt, they don’t need any convincing that what they have is valuable. But they do have that crippling, as you alluded to earlier of, Oh, I’ve got to do this. And did I reshare that content, but and then inevitably, though, comes a question of, where do you find these types of people? Because common knowledge would say, All right, well, LinkedIn or this site or that site, or there’s Facebook groups where you can find this.
And what I try to get across to people, but I’d love to hear your advice is listen, it you are going to go through a process. And there’s no one place where all the good people are right. Just like when you’re young, you think there’s one place all the really smart, attractive, fun people live. It’s like, yeah, you’re gonna have some people that reach out, you’ve got to have a vetting system. But what are some places that you go that you recommend, hey, this is where you can go to find an assistant, or somebody like this, that wouldn’t be just post on LinkedIn and see what you get?
Donald Miller 26:46
Well, for my virtual assistant, I’ve always gone with Blay solutions. In fact, Brett, this is crazy. I had a virtual assistant for my assistant, I literally hired one. I was like,
Brett Bartholomew 26:58
I need to hear that.
Donald Miller 27:00
Yeah, you’re overworked, you got too much going on. I’m gonna get you an assistant. By the way, I sat down with my assistant, my executive assistant, who, by the way, helps me run a company, right. I mean, this is not a glorified secretary, this is somebody who’s, they’re paid extremely well, because we’ve hit that point. But at the same time, I sat them down and said, I don’t think you should be doing your dry cleaning, I think somebody else should be planning your date nights, I think somebody else should be doing your schedule, I think somebody else should be handling your correspondence, I’m going to get you a virtual assistant, treat them exactly the way I treated you.
And that freed up more of their time so that they could stay in their pocket. So that was an incredibly great investment for me. But we’ve always gone with Blay B l a y solutions. They’re used to hiring assistants and setting up coaches with the specific needs that a coach has. And they’ve always just been fantastic. And you can also scale up. So I think the first time I did it, I started with 10 hours, moved to 2025 Pretty quickly moved all the way to 40. And then paid the penalty, you have to pay a penalty. I don’t know what I call it a fine, but it’s actually just like a release. I had to pay 1000s of dollars so that that person could actually just come on staff. But it was such a wonderful thing to be able to scale up in that way.
Brett Bartholomew 28:15
Yeah, no, it’s smart. Now you speaking of scaling up and pay, I always try to change the names of anybody that writes. Let’s say we’re talking to an archetype, somebody that’s listening to this that says, hey, I get that bought into that value as well. But I’m just starting, where can I get that capital from? Now you and I know that there’s that quote finality to this question, right? You can get it from doing odd jobs. You can sell a kidney, you can do whatever. But what I’m asking is you Donald Miller, if you started today, right, you’re not who you are now, you started today. You just transitioned. You’ve got your book. I’ve got coachbuilder here. I know I need to make some hires. But I don’t have a lot of capital. What are you doing to start funding that? What’s your approach?
Donald Miller 29:00
I’m selling one high profit, high revenue product. I’m creating a product that I can charge $5,000 for, I’m going to create a one sheet on that to help me sell it. I might do a live stream or a webinar to promote it. And I’m gonna go out there and sell it. And that’s really how you start, a lot of coaches think, well, it’s just, I made 100 bucks an hour, 1200 bucks an hour or whatever, but what if you had a sales workshop? What if you did a workshop where you taught people to give a really great keynote presentation, you capped it at five people. And at the end of the two day workshop, all five of them had to stand up and do a 15 minute presentation using a keynote deck.
That’s a $2,500 product. You got five of them in the room. That’s a pretty good amount of money for that. And so you got to get cash coming in that product by the way you could probably do Bi annually and maybe even quarterly. So now it’s one more product on your menu of products. But whenever you need money, you need a product, and you need to create a product to sell. So it could be a small business group mastermind that you do. It could be a community group could be a dinner club, where you do four dinners a year, and you bring in some exceptional speakers, and you allow people to talk to each other, by the way, people will pay you a lot of money, not even talk to you to each other because they don’t.
And if you think about it, I literally went to Brett, you’re gonna love this story. I’m not just a coach who helps people do better coaching or grow their coaching business. I’m a client. So I actually have a coach, I went to a friend of mine, he was a pastor of a really big church, he decided to take a year off kind of in transition. And I went to him and I said, you hang out with some very awesome, very accomplished people. I would pay you $10,000 a year just to be around some of those people and gain their insights and smoke cigars with them. And drink a little bourbon, have some honest conversations. Do you think they would do the same thing? He’s literally started this thing. And I’m paying 10 grand to be a part of it.
And he’s kind of, well, what would I teach nothing. Yeah, turn the lights on. Open the humor or turn the fan on, get the smoke out of here. And let’s just have some really great honest conversations about what it means to be a leader in today’s environment. There’s people who will pay for that stuff. And I think you’d be surprised. I will say this, though, Brett, because I don’t want to be a pie in the sky, everything’s gonna be great. All you got to do is, you know, 123, I think in order to create a reputation as a coach, people will pay top dollar for if you’re starting from zero. I really believe most things take about three years. It takes three years of consistency, consistency, consistency, for people to realize why you are so valuable.
So a lot of people give it three months, or they give it a month. It takes three years, I learned that actually from somebody, we were looking at it, my wife and I bought this house and we kind of landscaped the backyard. And a friend came over and they said, you know, in three years, it’s gonna look great. And I said, What do you mean three years because well, actually, the way plants work, they spent a year kind of dormant, and then the roots go down year two, and then the tops flush out year three. So this place is just gonna look incredible three years now. Sure enough, three years later, it looked unbelievable.
And I thought, that’s actually kind of the way businesses work, too. Unless you stop promoting yourself, you stop building your brand, you stop creating products, you start stop, cultivating an email list. Tat’s basically like not watering the plants anymore. Yeah, good luck Three years from now. So I think it takes about three years. But during that three years, by the way, you’re making great money. I mean, you should be making great money right away. But in three years, you’ve kind of got this sustainable coaching, business rolling.
Brett Bartholomew 32:55
Yeah, some really important distinctions there. And pardon me as I try to because you gave a lot of value. So I’m going to pinpoint off some things that may take a second one, I’m very glad that you made that distinction. About three years, I’m folksy. I, again, come from the Midwest. So we too, would tell our clients, they think of it as farming. You’re an entrepreneur, but you’re also you’re a farmer, and there’s gonna be, this is gonna take time, as you alluded to, I won’t beat a dead horse there. But you also need to be able to weather some seasons, there’s gonna be some times where your heads down, you’ve tilled the soil, you’ve done all that your yield, isn’t that great. That’s just data. Right?
And you got to look at that. Okay, did that event let’s say we did do the live event to start off making capital? Did that not sell? Well maybe it was just a seat. Hey, oh, you you know what that was Memorial Day weekend? Come on. gotta plan your calendar a little bit better? Or was the upsell not right? Or were you trying to reach out to too much of an aspirational audience and you didn’t look at around the people in your phone, that are asking you these questions already day that you have built up social capital with.
And where I’m going with that is whether you do a live event, a small group mastermind, a course whatever that is, people put a lot of pressure. You mentioned this in your book as well. People put a lot of pressure on themselves. I’ve got to build my online platform. I’ve got to– wait, maybe start with the audience that you know, that knows you first. So is that correct? I mean, is that bad advice?
Donald Miller 34:19
Yeah, especially if you’re leaving a job where you’ve had some success, you can actually write an email that just says, Hey, if you’re struggling with this, this or this, I know how to solve that problem. Here’s how I did it at my previous job, and I am now leaving that job in order to become a consultant. I can help you figure out x, y, and z. So call me. There’s a guy named Chad. Chad worked for somebody who does something very similar to what I do. They kind of folded that did his division. And so he sent out that email, and so I called him immediately and said, Chad, I’d love to buy some of your time. I started on a monthly retainer. that monthly retainer was as much as you would pay a full time employee.
He also had five or six other people doing the same thing to him. He was so good and so effective, that I basically not that basically, I bought him out, he had a partner in his new coaching business. And I said, Go tell your partner, you’re working for us now, because we really need you. And he was willing to do that went to his partner. Now he works for me full time. Brett one, he sent one email. That’s all he did. He sent one email. So it’s a very calculated email. It’s not, hey, I’m a consultant now. It’s, hey, I know how to solve these specific problems. I know how to make this happen for you. If you want that to happen for you. Let me know. And let’s talk about entering into a coaching consulting relationship.
A lot of times, that’s more or less all it takes. Now there’s some things that you can do to, better the chances that that email is going to work really well. One is actually have people you can email. Right. So I mean, just start collecting email addresses from everybody who you think might be a potential client. The other thing is warm those that list up and when they say warm that list up what they really mean is establish trust. And the way you do that is at least every month, but preferably every week. In fact, I would actually say every week at the minimum, you’re sending out an email that offers really great value, that this basically reminds people you know what you’re talking about?
And you are able to solve problems. I think it takes a person eight times to open and read that email before they even begin to process you as an option for somebody they would pay. Yeah. So it just takes familiarity it takes time. It takes trust. Name, one relationship that you’ve been in, that’s lasted a very long time that started out of the gate amazingly well, right. It’s more along lines of, well, this person told me about this person, and I thought that’s interesting. And then I met them, I thought that kind of cool. And then they happen to show up at this thing that I was, it’s slowly over time.
And so the great thing about today’s technology is you can actually use a CRM or something of the like, in order to start building that familiarity and trust. That way when you send out that email, it says, By the way, I’ve got this presentation workshop coming up. It’s the end of next month, I’m only opening five seats, everybody’s going you know what, I’ve really wanted some time with this guy. And this is my opportunity to do it. Also, it’s not an open ended, if it’s a specifically a one day workshop, it’s not a retainer, where I’m committed to pay this person 1200 bucks a month, right? No, it’s a one off thing. If I waste my money, I wasted my money, I just No, never go back. And so now you’ve given them a kind of baby step that they can take
Brett Bartholomew 37:51
Now great value there. And just a touch point here as we transition to the next piece, and feel free to build off of it if you want. But the advice that you gave of thinking about this, often a three year longer term process with your business, in my opinion also applies to email. And I say that because there’s people that feel like, Hey, I’ve got an email list. But you know, it doesn’t really feel like it’s converting the way that I want. And I’m not getting the open rates that I want, again, data, okay, very up the content you’re putting out there, but also manage your expectations, quit looking at open rates, standards for every other industry, you need to normalize your data, you need to realize it may take a while for your audience to come around.
And you have to just be able to sit in the pocket and realize that some audiences are going to be slower to convert, and you just got to, I think it would just help a lot of people and your book helps them do this, if they just wrote out alright, what’s the nature of the content? What’s the problem? I think it’s speaking to is it long form short form? What are all these variables I can switch. But the most important thing is just be consistent with it and quit having those expectations that your newsletter is going to just get this wild engagement rate right off the bat, or maybe it does, I don’t know. I feel like today with saturated
Donald Miller 39:09
Yeah, we all want to win the lottery right. Here’s the best way to win the lottery, buy 20 tickets every day. It’s gonna cost you a lot of money. The end of the day, the numbers are not with you. But I like the word that you said a word that you just said was consistence to be consistent. And there was a physical trainer years ago, I met him at a Starbucks. There was a physical trainer years ago changed my life. And he taught me something. He wanted to write a book. And so I said, Hey, why don’t I help you do that? Or at least I’ll give you some advice.
He said, Well, I’ll tell you what, I’ll be your physical trainer for a while. And we just made this even kind of exchange. And it ended up being a great relationship. One of the things I’ve been with physical trainers before and I go home and kick it out of bed the next day. I go into this guy for the first session, he puts me on an exercise bike, puts me on the exercise bike for 20 minutes gets my heart rate up to about 120. And when it gives up that 130 He says, Hey, slow down, just 120 Right? This is called fat burning. And we’re gonna stay at 120. And at the end of 20 minutes he said Don, great job. I’m like, great. We’ve warmed up. What’s next?
He goes, go home. He said, that is called a workout. Now, if you just show up every day and do that, you are going to win. I’m like, Are you kidding? You’re the best physical trainer. Within like four sessions, he had me literally puking in the alley behind his gym. And he looked at me, he goes, that’s also a workout. That’s a much better workout. But Never feel guilty for showing up for 20 minutes, because that’s a workout. What he really gave me permission to do is not be a perfectionist. But he said this, and this is what changed my life.
He said, Don consistency over intensity, consistency over intensity, small things every day. For instance, if you make one phone call every day to a potential client, just letting them know what you do. And you do one lunch with a potential client every week, letting them know what you do really live doing a strong listening session, say, Hey, what are you struggling with? If you do those two things, one phone call, one launch every week, and maybe one or two emails every day, you will have a six figure coaching business within 18 months.
Brett Bartholomew 41:27
Yeah, I agree with that.
Donald Miller 41:28
It’s just every day, you got to do it.
Brett Bartholomew 41:30
Yeah, no. And there’s a really powerful point here we had, and it was last year, we had a lean quarter. And I remember our staff was saying, hey, this isn’t selling, this isn’t working. That’s usually where I said timeout. And I analyzed some of the behaviors. And I was heads down working on this new book. So I was trying to, and I’m also just trying to develop them to take on certain parts of the business. And I said, when you say it’s not selling, what are you doing? Okay, you’re putting stuff out on our email list. You’re posting it on social media, and we’re talking about it on the podcast periodically. That is not adequate data to say something is selling.
Are you having conversations with people, as you alluded to, are you picking up the phone, because I’ve never had a time, as you also stated, where if I wanted to, if this week, we needed to, like there’s a gun to my head, my son’s not gonna get fed lights are gonna go out unless we can make five to $10,000, you’re gonna find enough people that are going to pick up the phone, if you can talk about what you do in a clear and honest way. And there’s, previous goodwill there, you’re gonna be able to do that. And it’s just like, I don’t tolerate i and this is something of a part of myself I’m working on.
I don’t tolerate when somebody says this doesn’t sell or this doesn’t work, if they’re not having direct conversations. Phone calls, in person meetings, lunches, dinners, get putting themselves out there if they just expect and I think there is this expectation of it today, that your online brand or these online ads, and all that are going to be enough. I’m not saying they can’t help, but we’ll talk about your opinion there. You’re wrong. Your stuff won’t sell unless you talk to other people like humans and get in front of them. Am I misunderstanding what you’re saying? Or is that gone against your experience?
Donald Miller 43:10
No, it’s 100% true. When I look at online branding email list, I look at that as air cover. In other words, if you’re in a war, you got planes flying over, they might be destroying some headquarters to somewhere or making sure these guys over there are kept in check. Without boots on the ground, you cannot take over a position you just can’t do it. So you got to call people, you got to have lunch with people you need to do these live streams, these webinars, all that sort of stuff. Your email list is air cover. Now the great thing is air cover and boots on the ground work incredibly well together.
So whenever you’re on the ground, you know that territory has been cleared by air cover. Whenever you’re actually meeting with launch. I met a guy today who said, Hey, I was reading your email. We were at Disney World. Last week, Disney World physical trainer came up to me and said, Hey, I’m buying your book coach builder. I’m thinking about adding a little bit of mindset coaching to my physical trainers. Thanks for writing the book, all that? How did you get that? He got that from looking at me on Instagram, and it was air cover. Now we’re in the trenches. And we actually have a conversation and he can decide to buy one of my products. So I think it’s actually you want to do a good bit of both.
Brett Bartholomew 44:18
Yeah, no, smart answer in terms of just CRM and being able to manage those contacts. Obviously lots of examples out there. It’s not one size fits all. What what do you use? Are you a HubSpot? Do you like keep what have you use? And this is getting to the core of the question of what tools have you tried, liked, hated, stuck with, come back to? I know it’s a basic question, but it’s an important one. I think it can provide a lot of value.
Donald Miller 44:43
Well, CRM is the reason that you and I are talking today. It’s the reason that you even know who I am. And it’s the reason that I’ve been able to sell books. A CRM is everything. You’ve got to collect email addresses, and you need to be making yourself familiar and building trust all of the time. Level two would be you begin to segment that list. These are the people who want help with this. These are the people who want help. And you got a bunch of different email campaigns and lead generators going on. But it all starts with getting a CRM.
The CRM that I believe is best for coaches running solo practices is Keap k e a p. And by the way, Keap and I got together and me and my team wrote hundreds of emails that you can get actually with Keap and I write them for you in order to grow a coaching business. So Keap already has that. HubSpot, I think when you get up north of I’d say about a quarter million email addresses, you’re going to want to switch to something like HubSpot, once you’re north of 8 million, you’re going to switch to Salesforce
By the way we paid. I’m not I don’t think I’m making this up. We paid about $200,000 in consultants just helping us to use HubSpot. But HubSpot is an incredible piece of software. And obviously Salesforce is too, Keap is just so much more simple for a solopreneur. And you just learn to use it very easily. They have a 90 day coaching program, you can literally call somebody anytime. And they can help you figured out. So Keap is the CRM of choice I think for Coach.
Brett Bartholomew 46:15
Yeah, no, I appreciate that. And again, it’s a kind of tactical stuff that I think has been missing in the industry. And I’m glad that your book alludes to. We have a friend that owns a business and he gets frustrated by these kinds of questions. He’s like, it’s not that difficult. I said, Well, timeout. It is a noisy world now. Even just from when I went out on my own, just the amount of platforms and what’s changed, or we had an online course that in 2018, we could spend a little bit of money in terms of ads on and we were able to have a $250,000, which was big for us launch and five days
Donald Miller 46:51
That was big for anybody.
Brett Bartholomew 46:52
Yeah. And we tried that, again, around 2020 2021 in a different context. And you could well, that landscape had changed, some of those things have changed. And so I think that sometimes we forget as business owners, just how overwhelming it can be. It’s also okay, just like it’s okay to like you allude to, hey, I want to quit my job and, and pivot and turn my expertise into a career. You can pivot these tools. We’ve had active campaign for a long time. We’re looking at switching to Keap we’ve had this for a while, but it is tough. What are some other tools that you feel like if you started today, in any category, you’re like, this is one that I’ve really loved?
Donald Miller 47:30
Well, I’ll get a little bit into tools. But also there’s some strategy. We have gotten into live stream webinars, webinars have been incredibly effective for us. We’ve even done to day webinars like T W O two days long
Brett Bartholomew 47:46
That’s incredible.
Donald Miller 47:47
No, and we’ll just keep it going. And we offer incredible value. And then the call to action is, hey, we’re offering this thing, sign up for it. And we’ve seen incredible success to that, you know, you obviously have a little bit of a team at this point. But one great thing about a virtual assistant is a virtual assistant can run Keap for you, you can literally say I want you understand how to use this program. Once you get me set up, where we’re emailing people once a week, make sure that you cue me every week to get that email written so that I can send it you can put it in the system and let them handle all that stuff. Another person that I think was a great hire for me. And again, this is gonna sound so luxurious, but it’s only luxurious, because you actually built the company that made the money to be able to hire the new person, right
He is a social media person. So yeah, so I don’t like Instagram. I actually like looking at it. I don’t like posting. For whatever reason, I can’t think of what to say. So about once every week, Kate shows up today, by the way, it was that day to two and a half hours gone standing in my backyard. And she said, what’s the worst advice you’ve ever been given? Oh, that’s easy. And she just points the camera. She records it. She posts it. So not long ago, she said, Don, is there anything else want to talk about that something you’ve discovered? What have you discovered lately? I said, I discovered like, there’s this technique that narcissists use to get out of a confrontation and make it your fault, because that’s kind of interesting. Just give it a try.
So I explained Darbo deny attack reverse defender. And that now has 18 million views on Instagram and got me 150,000 new followers. That’s insane. But you know what, I didn’t have to sit there and think about I didn’t have to think about what am I going to talk about. Kate just showed up and she actually gave me the questions that I need. Well, that’s 150,000 new followers who heard about my new book. So I was able to hang out a book called coach builder and well that translates into book sales. I pay Kate I’ll share the numbers with you because I think we’re both the kind of guys that just share everything. I pay Kate $60,000 She’s got a bunch of other clients. She makes great money, by the way could not be helping a better woman this woman has adopted as a single woman two foster children.
Brett Bartholomew 49:55
That’s awesome.
Donald Miller 49:55
She’s unbelievable. And then she she met the love of her life that get married in early April. And I’m like, how could you? You get to help these people? Not I mean, it’s just amazing and she loves it. So and then did the book sales pay up pay for that? Absolutely. The book sales pay for that. Yeah. So you kind of have to think about it in that way. But live streams and webinars were a big pickup for me. That’s a little bit complicated, but you can do it. Hey, my buddy Henry Cloud, he wrote a book called boundaries. It’s been in the top 300 on Amazon for 25 years talking about jealousy. I’m so jealous.
But he’s also just staggeringly brilliant. So I think was during COVID. But he said, Hey, it’s 150 bucks. I’m going to do a two hour livestream on some relational topics that’s going to help you have better relationships. 150 bucks $99 Early Bird, so it gets a mix of early bird 5000 people show up for this thing. He does it Brett on his iPhone, puts a sheet over a lamp and points an iPhone on him, presses the button gives the livestream half a million dollars.
So I mean, let’s not overthink this, what people are actually paying for is your coaching. They pay for what you know. And by the way, the worst thing that you can do to sabotage your career is say, Well, I don’t think they’ll pay for me. I don’t know anything. You know, a lot that nobody else knows. Your experiences that nobody else has had. So get out there on social media, share it, get on those live streams, share it, create some webinars, share that stuff, create some lead generating PDFs, write some emails, get out there and start broadcasting your wisdom. It takes three years, you’re gonna hear crickets, but the people who are able to hear crickets and keep going are the ones who succeed in life.
Brett Bartholomew 51:43
Yeah, and I’m glad that you brought up the the tools, not strategies piece, because people do want to know that. But then you give them all the tools and they don’t do this. And this was something that I had to be careful on setting boundaries in my own coaching coaches business, because I remember going to my wife one time, she’s our director of ops, and I said, I’m gonna lose my mind. And she said, why? And I said, well, because I feel like we’ve given people some strong fundamentals. Hey, what do you do, let’s work on the line, let’s make it almost impossible to misunderstand. Because if you ain’t like that, you’re gonna get somewhere in the realm.
Let’s give them a long term horizon, let’s talk about these things. That’s helped them figure out what they want to run, okay, they’ve done that live event. And I remember this one person, this was early on, they left and they didn’t sign back up for our program. And I said, alright, what could we have done better? And they’re like, Well, I wanted to know how to build this funnel. And I wish you would have told me to buy this technology. And this and, and I’m like, if we would have done that, at that point in time, before you had your concept. Before you had any of this foundation, where were all these people that you wanted to spend ads and marketing dollars, where were they gonna go?
And then I just realized, okay, you know, and this is a powerful thing for any coach to understand. Even if you do lay things out, even if you do give great insight, and people don’t have the right perspective, either about their value, or the time horizon for the process to take place, they’re going to learn that hard lesson, you can’t always control that, because it’s an expectation thing. Another piece there that I wanted to allude to not that I don’t want to give you a chance to talk about that, but I want to honor your time, is you made an important distinction about alright, we, let’s say we hired that first assistant, and somebody says, well, now how do I find this social?
That’s what your assistant does for you. And you hire that assistant, whether you need a Content Manager, you need this, you need that, whether you need somebody to teach you spelunking, they do that. And I say that because people can think, Well, how am I supposed to find all these people? No, no, make the core hire, listen to what Donald just told you hire that quarterback, let them throw some passes. And you’ll be surprised as long as that person has, you know, an understanding of your business principles and your budget and all that what they can maybe do for you. Is there anything you would add to that? Or am I looking at that?
Donald Miller 53:54
Oh, I mean, you know, we have 30 employees now, actually, probably more than that, I’m looking at Sam, who might have 35 I really don’t know. But we but I haven’t known a single one of them for probably the last 25 hires. So that that first 10, you’re kind of, you’re finding your cousin, your whatever. But what happens is, as the company grows, somebody else starts thinking, well, we need this, we need this just this morning, actually, Emily emailed me and said, Hey, this is what we’re thinking in terms of our new hire, and I didn’t come up with that job description, right? And then they’ll go look for that person. If they can’t find they’ll come back to me and say, Hey, Don, can you share it on social media? We’d love to get more people applying for this, and sometimes we’ve gone with a service to actually find somebody.
And all of that is because you just want to be really slow to hire. I mean, really slow to hire. We’re hiring a controller right now. I have personally attended the final interview with I think, five different candidates. Then we’re like, Nah, we’re gonna keep going. And finally, we’ve actually found somebody, but you have other people finding those Before you eventually, now there’s going to be a temptation to hire this person because you like them. Sometimes that works out. But we really want that detailed job description, you’re gonna go through every part of it, tell me what you would do about this. If you were in this situation, what would you do? And then by the way, you think that person is going to work out, the best possible person is gonna work out about 75% of what you thought they would be going to be able to do. Just always be able to expect that, by the way that 25% that they can’t do is your next hire. That’s, you gotta give that job description. Somebody else.
Brett Bartholomew 54:41
You mind if I give you another audience question here? Paul, solo coach teaches self defense. He was talking about how he’s running a workshop, he tries to keep it small. So he limits it at about 10 people, which I can relate to, because we have some events, we do that as well. And he said, historically, this has sold yeah, I’ve never had a problem selling it out. Yes, sometimes it will sell last minute, but there’s viability here. I have that. So I’m not too emotionally attached. He said that said, I struggle sometimes when it gets to the closing date, and it hasn’t sold as well as I thought, I feel an intense pressure to bother people to follow up.
And it almost feels like I’m trying to convince people of my value at that point. I know, this is a broad question, but any tips for that? So it sounds like what he’s saying is he’s got something that’s sold well, however, there’s some times and of course, it’s seasonal, and there’s going to be different things. It doesn’t he’s struggling with like how much follow up is enough. He gets in his own head thinks isn’t my messaging. Is it this is it that he feels like he’s done all that. But he just he really struggled with a follow up because there’s a guilt or pressure that he doesn’t want to bug people.
Donald Miller 56:42
Gotcha. Okay. So really, what you want is you want to a sort of marketing pipeline, some lead measures that are going to tell you how many people are going to show up at that event three months before the event. So three months before the event, you’re going to create or have created some sort of PDF on the topic. So let’s just make something up. And I actually don’t do this. So let’s make up something that neither of us do. Unless you do this, Brett. But, let’s go with this idea of we’re gonna help people give really great keynote presentations. So we’re going to create a webinar or a PDF that says, five things that guarantee you’ll get a staring at standing ovation. Alright, that’s definitely very aspirational.
But five things. And now we’ve got, I don’t know, 400 people downloaded that PDF over the process of three weeks. Well, three weeks later, we’re going to do a webinar on how to get a standing ovation as a presenter as a first time presenter. Well, anybody who attends that webinar, I got 80 people on that webinar, I got 100, and I’ve got 180 people on my email list, I can now predict that I’m going to have 10 people at that thing that’s going to cost 1500 bucks. And the way I predicted is, well, I know about 10% of these people are going to actually be interested, that’s 18 people, slightly less than that are actually going to pay the money and show up.
So what I would do then is I’ve got these 180 people, I’m going to get a separate email going to them, probably about six of them talking about why it’s so important to be able to communicate, why you’ll be chosen for that promotion, if you can give a speech, why it feels so good, why so many people fail and why that will never happen to you. Right? All that stuff is going out. And then I’m going to announce, by the way, six weeks from now, I’m going to do a one day workshop, so I got plenty of time on their calendar, I have not booked that workshop during spring break, I have not fully booked that workshop, during Memorial Day weekend, I have not done it, I met not made those stupid mistakes, it’s not during Valentines day it’s not on Halloween, when they want to be home with their kids.
It’s none of that. So I haven’t made any of those mistakes. And then what I’m going to do is I’m going to offer a bonus an early bird bonus. So you’re gonna get a copy of my favorite book on presentations or something. Autographed by the author, or you’re gonna get, you’re gonna get something that goes away about two weeks before that event. So that tells me if I got six people who sign up for that, I’m going to sell about four more at full price. And we’re at our 10. But I can tell based on how many downloaded lead generators, so I can tell by how many people pre registered and got the bonus, and so on and so on.
If you call people to say, Hey, I’m doing this thing, do you want to come? The answer is going to be no 90% of the time. However, if they gave you their email address, they consider that an investment by the way, it’s about a $20 investment psychologically, if I give you my email address, I’m going to chase that investment. Now. I’ve gotten a lead generator. I’ve read the whole thing. I’m extremely familiar with you. I attended a webinar. I kind of liked this guy. It’s got something really great going on. I think I’d like to be able to present like he does. And now I’ve got a bonus that’s going away unless I register right now.
Now you take that existing thing that you were having trouble selling you put it in that sort of Launch framework or timeline. And you’re going to sell a lot more seats until you’re going to know whether or not this thing is bombing way before. If you have nobody pre ordering the deal, it’s gone. We’re pulling it off the shelf, it’s not no longer even available, because you’re certainly going to deliver it to an empty room. Sorry, that’s something else you can sell.
Brett Bartholomew 1:00:19
Yeah, and I’m smiling like an idiot, because it doesn’t get more tactical than that. Again, I just feel like that’s a lost art. You just had somebody if you listened to it too quickly rewind that. Donald literally just broke down from soup to nuts route to the fruit, what to do. And it’s excused proof. I mean, I don’t I know, we’re just getting to know each other. I’m a pretty direct person. So I always one of our clients call me the most respectful kick in the ass they got. So I’m not trying to be like, that’s exclusive. He didn’t talk in vagaries. And it’s that clear. And by the way, you also just helped us because we do run a speaker school. And so we appreciate that.
Donald Miller 1:00:56
No, very good. Very good. Well, I’m glad you got the product. Actually just do it. Yeah. Here’s another one, Brett. Here’s another just practical tip, because I know that your audience just loves Hey, like, don’t be a philosopher here. Tell me what you think I should do. One of these. It’s worked really well for us. I’ve got a mastermind. And we started out with 20 people, it’s at about 35. Now, what I’ll do is, because I talk so much about marketing, and branding, and I’ll do these big events, Tony Robbins things like that, where people will say, here’s my tagline, what do you think’s wrong with it?
I’ll say, Well, I think this is wrong with it. What if you made your tagline this? Or what if you actually use this pitch, or what if you put this on your packaging. I’ve got 800,000 people in the audience. And I’ll say, hey, there’s a couple things, to spend a day with me, overhauling your brand. And your messaging is 50 grand, most people don’t want to take that risk. For 20 grand though, you can join my mastermind. And that’s pretty much the only place that I give personal advice. There’s never been a time when I’ve said that when somebody hasn’t signed up.
Now it’s so you actually want to give a large group of people a taste. And then you want to say by the way, if you want a solo meeting, I don’t do that. But I’ve got this mastermind and it cost this much. And people sign up. And that mastermind starts to grow. So that’s just another strategy if you have the the ability to get on to stages. And when I say stages, you can create your own stages. You can do a live stream on Instagram, just hit like literally did one today for my backyard just hit live and was broadcasting live on Instagram. So you can do that stuff anyway. By the way, if you like this advice, the only place, that’s the key, the only place you can get it is if you join my mastermind.
Brett Bartholomew 1:02:37
Yeah. Well, that’s access right there. Right? People want access, they want that information. That’s something that even
Donald Miller 1:02:44
It’s also true. If you’re really busy. It’s like, I wish I could, but I can’t. But you know, what, four times a year I get together with this group of people. And every month I get together with them on Zoom. And we have a great time.
Brett Bartholomew 1:02:56
Yeah, well, and that’s something that we just we tell people again, and again, you’ve got to get over. Because if people have guilt about that I say it’s not. I remember the first time I had raised my prices as I crossed over now other industries, somebody jokingly said, Oh, big time now I’m like, No, I just know my value, because I know what it costs me to make those mistakes. And you can’t put a price on perspective. And it’s okay if you don’t value that. But I just remember one time a client.
He had this question that I remember I had paid a trademark attorney it was a $7,500 lesson that I’ll never get back. And it was awful advice you could have Google did all this. And I remember talking to somebody I said, buddy, do you remember when you were complaining when you paid this at the beginning, because you were nervous that not because you didn’t trust me, but you didn’t trust yourself to implement it, you just got $7,500 that I had lost back in the day. And imagine what people can get from you. And so that’s incredible.
Donald Miller 1:03:52
You know what I do is, I’m not cheap. For the strategy session, it’s a lot of money. What I do is, hey, we’re gonna spend eight hours together. And I literally been this and I’ve said it to everybody who’s ever paid it. If you don’t make 10 times what you’ve paid me, based on what we did in the room, I’ll write you a check. I’ll give you all the money back. Because that’s easy. Because, I know if they change the tagline or if they still get a lead generator, or if they we actually sit there and write the emails right there in the room. There’s another guy that I really appreciate. He said, Look, I basically save companies money, I go in, and I figure out where they’re wasting money.
And I charge $10,000 By the way, if I don’t save you, 20 When I go through your books, and all that kind of stuff, if I don’t save you 20 I just give you your 10 back. Well, who wouldn’t pay $10,000 to save 20 Yeah, right. You’re basically saying, Hey, let me just look at your books and I’ll make you 10 grand. So he goes in and he’s got this checklist, what subscriptions are they subscribed to what software are they no longer using? He just has a checks is there inventory sitting there in there that’s expiring too quickly.
He has a giant checklist of everywhere that most businesses waste money, he has never not made somebody 20 grand, and he usually makes some 200 Just in savings. So that sort of thing all of us coaches need, we need to be looking for those opportunities. And what you’re charging for is not your time. It’s not even your knowledge, really, what you’re charging for is the money that you are making or saving people, you’re charging a percentage of that.
Brett Bartholomew 1:05:25
And that goes back to just loss aversion as well, right, like we mistake that we made that you’d probably chuckle at early on is when we made art of coaching the focus of my PhD and my later work is all about communication strategy. And so I remember at first I was like, Man, I’m spending way too much time speaking about the value of communication, this thing that is a colloquialism to most people that they think their most people think they’re already good at, I need to be speaking about the cost of poor communication, because nobody wakes up and says, I really want to spend 10 grand on being a better communicator today. No, what they say is, I want less drama at work, I want better relationships, I want better results.
Donald Miller 1:06:07
I don’t want to fail, they don’t want to walk up on stage and look like an idiot.
Brett Bartholomew 1:06:10
Right. And that’s another thing that I appreciate that your book just talks about is like because our messaging is everything, tools, strategies, all critical, all part of the implementation. But if your messaging is wrong, if your messaging is wrong and that connection is wrong, and the fundamental promise in speaking to that pain point is wrong. Now you’ve lost them to the ether. I want to give you the final word, I also just want to take a quick break here, because we do this, you’ve given tons of value, folks right now
What I don’t care if you’re walking the dog driving, pull over Park, do your thing and make sure you go to coachbuilder.com/artofcoaching. Donald’s got there’s free clothes, the client kits, there’s bonuses, this is an incredibly well put together book, and even more well put together website that’s going to give you tons of value. He didn’t want us to do this. I’m happy to do it, make sure they and I’ll put it in the show notes, coachbuilder.com/artofcoaching. Donald, I want to give you the final word. Tell us about your book, tell us how we can support you the most.
Donald Miller 1:07:13
Well, the book is called coach builder, just go to Amazon. But there’s a ton of really great bonuses, including 27 of my favorite coaching websites, that is coaches who are making six figures and some seven figures have put together websites, I put together the 27 that I think are the best and literally will give you a PDF, you can literally just scroll through 27 different coaching websites, circled the parts of their websites that you like, and just duplicate them on your site. Don’t use their language, obviously don’t plagiarize. But if they talk about this product in this way, so I could do a product like that
And so do that’s going to be really great for you coachbuilder the book, here’s the last piece of advice. And this is the piece of advice I give to everybody that I talked to, if you want to build a brand, figure out what problem you solve, and own it. Own it. If you figure out what problem you solve, and you own it, nobody will forgive you. Because every time they have that problem, they will associate that problem with your name as the person who fixes it. So it’s not looking like a fool on stage, not getting passed up for a promotion. You know what is? Is it tax strategy, you’re paying way too much in taxes. If you’re paying way too much in taxes, one of your coaches can literally own that right now. And they can be the tax strategy person. You would be surprised at how micro that you can actually get but when you have a problem, you have job security for the rest of your life.
Brett Bartholomew 1:08:39
Yeah, well put. And now we need to recall our website so that we can get on your list. I’ll send you the speaker school or Brand Builder one that we have. Well listen, I want to thank you. I’m a stranger. You didn’t know me from Adam.
Donald Miller 1:08:51
No Brett you’re not a stranger. I feel like we’re two we’re brothers from another mother. Right? We’re trying to do the same thing help the world in the same way. I’m grateful to know you.
Brett Bartholomew 1:08:59
Yeah. Well, likewise, it’s just nice to talk to. The podcast world in this world can be interesting. There’s a lot of folks in it, but it can be lonely because it’s just hard to find people that are transparent, honest, tacticals straightforward. And you’re that and more in spades. So you’re an example of when they say don’t meet your heroes or disappoint. Yeah, you’re not an example of that at all. You you surpassed my expectations and I’m very, very, very appreciative.
Donald Miller 1:09:21
Brett, I’m honored. Great to be with you. And thanks for trusting me, these people that you love. You clearly love them. I’m grateful.
Brett Bartholomew 1:09:25
Likewise. All right, folks, until next time, we’ll talk to you soon.
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