How To Build Your Expert Authority With Jessica Yarbrough

All right, we are back with another episode of Bacon Wrapped Business. This is Brad, and I am hoping that you all out there are surviving 2020 with all of the craziness that is happening. Today is June 2nd. I can't believe we're five months through this crazy year which has dramatically affected quite a few businesses for every one in between, from obviously hospitality and restaurants and local retail to online businesses actually like E commerce, are probably doing super duper well. And one of the most interesting businesses out there is kind of the expert advice, consulting, coaching business, which I myself am a very big part of. I make my money in primarily a couple ways that one of those is consulting and coaching and the other is through acquisitions and opportunistic ventures that I invest money, time, capital in. But I know that this past few months has been a little bit hectic and crazy for me, having lost business, having gained business. And today I wanted to bring in a guest who has got a lot of experience in extremely high value coaching and consulting. And she's actually helped a lot of other people understand how to not only get started in this and selling their expertise, but to do it in a way that doesn't suck your soul, that focuses on really high value clients and getting paid what you're worth. She's quickly developed a reputation of being one of the best business strategists and marketing and sales consultants for entrepreneurs who really want to sell at a high value and get paid for it. Her name is Jessica Yarbrough and she's a genius at showing people like you and me how to build an expert platform, raise their value and build credibility online. Jessica, it's about time. Welcome to the show.

Thanks for having me, Brad.

It was a blast getting to meet you at our friend Ron Reich's mastermind here lately and we hit it off. I loved hearing about some of the stuff you're doing and I immediately saw some of the innovative things you're doing on LinkedIn, for instance, and just kind of your approach to it. You're here in San Diego and I was like, yeah, this would be a shame if we don't jump on here and share some of your tips and tricks with my audience and selfishly, me as well, because I'm sure that I could learn a few things from you too.

Thank you.

So spill all your secrets. Let me start over. I want not start over, but I want to go back a little bit. Like, you know, did you just come out of the womb consulting and coaching or what's, you know, what's Your background in this before you kind of make. Made your way into helping others understand how to navigate this world of expert advice.

Yeah, it was about the time that I learned to speak, you know, really. You know, my background was in business. My mom used to joke and say, I have that ability to make something out of nothing, to find gold in every situation and every job I ever took, I always kind of stepped very quickly into a leadership position. I found ways to improve things. Had that natural. That's that natural strategic ability to go in and do this for every company. And yeah, I ended up building a startup company here in San Diego. Ultimately, I ended up walking away from that company. And what kind of business was it? Yeah, it was actually a global medical tourism company. I don't know if you're familiar with the industry.

Absolutely. I mean, living here in San Diego, we obviously have the ability to go across the border to TJ Tijuana for like, we go down there for dental work. And we've gone down there for a couple other things in the past. And it's such a cool perk of living on the border. And I've looked into medical tourism. That's interesting that you'd had a business with that.

Yeah. So this was more than a decade, over a decade ago when it was really just, you know, a state of infancy and, you know, not as much was known about it. And, you know, I actually wrote a business plan in college for this very business. And then I met the man in San Diego with the key, including the money and the background. And it was just a really phenomenal thing to be able to build this company. We were in seven different countries, 14 centers of excellence, and found a loophole in the insurance market where we could transfer the savings of going abroad into the person's HRA account. So it was actually really cool. Not only are you going to save money, but you're going to get some of that money back rather than having to pay into it. And of course you're flying. All expenses are covered. You know, three weeks recovery in country, like a really, really amazing program.

That's cool. So then, so then did you. Did you. What happened to that business?

Yeah, so I actually exited the company. You know, I think this was a time for me where I was still. I was in my 20s. I think I started working really, really young. I managed my first company at 16. I was always in a hurry to kind of grow up bigger.

And you kind of did come out of the womb. Business expert. I like it. I was joking, but I'm like wow, cool.

Well, and part of that though was just I think I had always been such a high achiever in striving and working that I didn't have that time for self exploration. And I hit a breaking point where I realized like, this is amazing and I'm so proud of what I've created, but there's a whole world that I want to explore and I didn't discuss it with anyone. I really just came back from a trip to Thailand with a friend of mine and I gave up my shares in the company, handed my notice, sold all my things, packed about 13 pounds in a backpack and bought a one way ticket back to Asia and spent about four years globetrotting and backpacking around the world, diving deep into meditation, yoga, personal development practices and really discovering more of who I was.

Well, that's fantastic. So then what was the, you know, what was the evolution into working with other experts and working with people who have an expertise that they want to sell? Take me there. Let's get into the hard.

Yeah, I kept getting pulled back into consulting. I mean, even when I was in Thailand, I ended up consulting and you know, going to China on behalf of this company and it's like it always pulled me back. And so I continued to consult with other businesses and I was making money and I had a lot of friends say, hey, how are you doing this? I was doing a lot of done for you at the time. I was building out the campaigns like we were talking about Brad a little while ago. And I couldn't do it for all of the friends that are asking me. But what I could do was I could teach them. And ultimately that was a lot more fulfilling for me because I didn't like being behind the scenes and being the doer. I wanted to be the teacher and empower people with the knowledge and skill set so that they could create this type of business for themselves. So ultimately I gave up kind of the done for you agency side. I transitioned into really creating my own methodology, my own trainings and leading a movement of people who are building in a mid six and even seven figure businesses.

And so you do yours a little bit different than a lot of the high ticket coaches out there. I think. You think you and I kind of talked a little bit about this. I mean a lot of people are just, you know, going with the same, all right, come up with something you want to teach. Run Facebook ads, run ads like this, send them to a webinar application, call, et cetera. And I know when you and I were Talking. You said that, you know, paid ads, et cetera, are not really the core of how you teach and what you do, because, I mean, that takes an, that's an entire other skill to really master. And there's actually not that many people it works tremendously well for. And you get a lot of your clients from organic marketing and whatnot. Is that correct? Did I remember that right?

Yeah, absolutely. And you know, I think the thing is, when you talk about ultra high ticket Facebook ads are really a different ballgame. I mean, even the people selling high ticket on Facebook ads typically have some kind of tripwire and then they're selling a three to maybe $10,000 product. You don't have many people running ads to a 30, 50 or $100,000 program because that's a very different process. To take someone who's never heard of you and then put them on a webinar and get them on a phone call and sell them a $30,000 programming. The likelihood of that succeeding is very low. So I take a different approach. You can absolutely use ads if you want, but we validate and build a platform primarily on LinkedIn, where people are there to do business. You can actually target them based on industry, location, job title, all kinds of things. Lots of different search features they have, and we're able to pull them in to get to know you, build that credibility and that, that rapport and connection and ultimately sell them into those high end programs. And all of this can be done without spending any money on advertising and in a lot of cases, without even a funnel.

Right, right. So take me more into the way that works, like the mindset of the type of. Well, let's talk about the type of person you typically work with as a client, like who they are and what they're trying to accomplish. And then I'd love to know, like, typically how it is that you get them to say, you know, I think that Jessica is the one with the answer for me.

Well, you know, I have two stages of clients. One is making that 75 to 100,000 a year and they're trying to hit, you know, 200,000, 250,000. The other stage are people who have already been doing a quarter million, 350, even 500,000, but they're at capacity and they're tired. They're like, I don't know how to make more without adding more. And most of the time they're, you know, they're exhausted, they're doing too many things. So they hire me to help them simplify Reclaim their time and scale up their efforts so they're actually making more while working less.

Let me jump in there with a quick question. So are they typically the ones when they decide to work with you, are they already typically doing consulting, coaching and offering their expert advice or are they more expert level employees who are looking to make that transition?

Most of the time they already established like a coaching business of some sort. But there are outliers. So for example, one of my clients is a nurse practitioner. She is an investor. She invests in senior living centers like the building of them. She has a seven figure private practice and she came to me to create consulting model of her signature program. She was able to, she, and she's never taught this in this form before and we were able to put that together and she sold it for $80,000 six weeks after hiring me. So there are exceptions where we can take someone brand new and they can have that level of success in a short amount of time.

Okay, so you mentioned signature program. Is that one of the things that you also suggest that most people have or develop it out as well versus I can just help everybody with everything?

Yeah, it's got to be a scalable program with a clear pathway, clear methodology for getting people results and kind of going back to. And a lot of people don't have that. Like they don't, they don't have a gps, so to speak. And you need something that's going to, like I said, is scalable, that you can actually take to a one to many solution and you have to be thoughtful about how you're going to bring people in where they're being at different stages and move them through that method. You know, to your point earlier, how you market to people varies. And I think that's one of the biggest mistakes that a lot of coaches make is they're trying to market to everyone on the same buyer's journey in the same way. And so they think, hey, Internet marketers say we need a funnel. We need a lead magnet to a tripwire, to a 497 course, to all the other things. And what they don't realize is, you know, some of my best clients, I would say the majority of my clients actually never even went through a funnel. Now I have funnels now because my company is scaling. I mean I have it at that point, but those people are really busy and they don't have time to sit through an hour long webinar and go through, you know, 10 emails. They want their problem solved and they want it solved right now. And I think that's the key to understanding. If you can pivot your messaging and your approach on social media to show, to speak right into their pain points and show them a way out, they will book a call and they will pay you a ridiculous sum of money. And it doesn't require a funnel and it doesn't require coercing people through Facebook ads.

Right. So do you, how would you describe your signature system?

Yeah, so my expert accelerator methodology is really five stages. I mean, the first one is, is understanding like what is expert positioning? What is the positioning? And so there's different, what I call levels in the sphere of influence. And we want to move from a generalist to a specialist, specialist to expert. That's where the sweet spot is. So how your market perceives you is key and to how much success you have. So positioning is probably one of the most overlooked, critical pieces that need to be addressed head on. So one of the first things we do is we look at their positioning. Are you perceived as the expert and what needs to shift in that? Then we look at things like what is your high ticket offer? As I mentioned to you, Brad, I'm about simplicity. One of my favorite quotes is by Steve Jobs when he says, with focus and simplicity you can move mountains. And for entrepreneurs, distraction is their biggest bottleneck. And so if you can understand how to focus that energy, including with a high ticket offer or one or two high ticket offers, you know, you're going to free up a lot of time and energy and you'll be able to scale quickly. The next thing we talk about is expert credibility. You know, when I describe credibility, I like to describe it like this. It's as if your reputation precedes you. So if you think about what your brand represents, are you the used car dealer or you the Mercedes Benz dealer? Because if you are the used car dealer, you are going to, and this goes right back to positioning. You're going to attract people who have, you know, scraped together their last remaining money, a little bit of money. And they're going in there with trepidation and they're like, hey, I want to get, you know, whatever the best that I can afford with this little bit of money. That's a completely different energy than when you're the Mercedes Benz dealer. People know that you have quality and luxury and that it's going to be a phenomenal client experience and a high class machine. And when people come into a Mercedes Benz dealer and you're positioned that way and you have that credibility, they're not there with their last bit of money, hoping to get, you know, a car off the lot. They're actually there just to discuss options. And so that's the key with credibility is like understanding that if you can build that rapport and that presence online, you will become like the Mercedes Benz dealer, where the right people are coming in with a lot of money to spend and they're happy to drive off in one of your vehicles.

Okay, One of the things I want to back up to and it ties directly into that. So you mentioned going from generalist to specialist to expert. How do you, how do you see the line of demarcation between specialist and expert? Well, how do you know when you're a specialist versus how do you know when you're an expert?

Yeah, so the expert actually is what you put out there. So you can, let's say a generalist is a life coach, fitness instructor, social media manager and mindset coach. Right. Like that's a LinkedIn profile. That is definitely a generalist. And then you can say, okay, guess what? I'm just going to say, I'm going to go all in and I'm going to focus on mindset coaching and maybe I'll even do mindset coaching for entrepreneurs. And that's going to be your focus. That doesn't automatically make you an expert. So in order to become an expert at something, you need to demonstrate certain criteria. So there's many different ways to build expert authority, but here's a handful of them. You can get on podcast and teach your methodology. And to me, experts are people who have a defined clear pathway and methodology for their way that they get results. You also move into expert status when you have taken people through that methodology over and over again and you have a proven system that hasn't just worked for you and it hasn't just worked once, but that has been flushed out, fine tuned and literally works. It's about plugging those people in it. Those are a few different, like, core elements of your program. Beyond that, getting podcast on podcasts, teaching your methodology, writing about it. Actually, experts are people who teach, who give the aha's the breakthroughs for people. They're not just trying to sell them something. So there's different criteria that comes into becoming an expert. But an expert is something that is built over time. It's not something that happens overnight. Does that make sense?

Yeah, it does. And it's almost like specialist is something you do. Expert is, is based on things you've done. Right. Like, because anybody can say, okay, I specialize in this, but until you've done it successfully over and over and helped other people get those results at that, at that point you receive expert status. And that comes with the nuance of knowing not only what to do, but what to avoid and, you know, the gotchas and also sometimes showing you the simplest, straightest path there without having to go through everything else. That's one of the things I like with, you know, your approach to this is, yeah, I'm going to keep it simple. I'm not going to have a million low ticket offers and I'm not going to have a, you know, make you buy my $7 ebook and then buy my $300 course and then my $3,000 course, et cetera, et cetera, you start kind of at the top. And I've always been a bigger fan of that, you know, you, you can call it the dissension funnel as opposed to the ascension funnel. It's a lot easier to start at the top and, and work your way down from there. I know whenever I've worked with clients who are in this business as well, I always say, look, start at the top, you know, players with money. A long time ago, when I was a financial advisor for Prudential Investments, my branch manager called me in because I just closed an account and it was a little bitty account and I talked to this, it was a little old lady, she was super sweet. Talked to her for about like two hours on the phone. I finally closed this like $50,000 account. And, and I don't know if you know much about the financial advisory world. That's nothing like, you'll starve if you get like one $50,000 account. And I remember him saying, listen, Brad, it's okay. You know, we love, we love broke people, just not during business hours. And like, I try to take that to heart because, you know, at the end of the day, if we're offering advice and expertise, going for the people who have the ability to pay for that and also to, to get the biggest results from that is really where the money is made. So, Jessica, after you've hit the.

You.

Know, the expert, you know, you've got your special, you know, you got your specialization, you've, you know, you're showing expert status, you've got your signature program. Let's talk about, where do you, you know, where you teach people to find clients and go about that in an organic way besides just social media posting? Because I know if you're just social media posting, I mean, you're, you're talking to your social crowd, you know, people already know and like you. What about finding those new people?

Yeah, and that's actually the fourth stage of the method, which is you have to have an audience of people and not just an audience of random people, audience of your ideal clients. And so one of the big mistakes that people make, especially with LinkedIn, where you have that $30,000, not $30,000, 30,000 connection ability, is they accept anyone and everyone and go for the vanity numbers. What they don't realize is, yes, you have vanity numbers, but you're pulling away attention from people who can pay you, especially with what I teach, a lot of money. And so we want to build our network intentionally. We need to grow our network. We cannot just sell to our existing audience. Like that's gonna get eaten through pretty quickly. And we need to go to places like LinkedIn or Facebook or Google or YouTube and put out those seeds. Whether that is an ad for some people or whether it's your content or podcast interview and pull them into your network where it is a highly intimate network and you can nurture those people with relevant content. And essentially you become a micro influencer where you're the big fish in the little pond. People always focus on that million dollar mark. And what I try to tell them is with a hundred raving fans, you have a million dollar business and that's 100 people paying you 10,000. Do the math. If it's people paying you 25 or 50,000, it doesn't take a lot of numbers to hit seven figures. When you change your focus from quantity to quality actions, high amount of relevancy, you are literally. Your job should be to repel and anyone who is not your ideal client in your messaging. Forget about quote unquote, leaving money on, on the table. Go for the people who, you know you can solve their problem. Go, go for the jugular in your content. Those are the people who literally nod their heads and say, oh my gosh, she's right. I've tried this, I've done this, I've invested this, I got to talk to her. And I can tell you, the people that paid me the most money, and they were just sitting around my retreat. And in March, before COVID happened, they all came from LinkedIn and not a single one of them went through a funnel or clicked on an ad.

So how do you typically repel the wrong people for yourself? Like, what are some of the messaging you use to repel the ones who aren't a good fit?

That I am not the cheapest coach That I don't do low ticket people know it's going to be a five figure investment going in with me. And if they apply and that's not clear, then I'm very clear before we even get on the phone. Because I'm not here to take somebody who's been working a retail job their whole life and help them build a six figure business overnight. Like that's not me. I work with people who have a skill set, education, background and they want to accelerate their growth or they already have an established thriving business and they're ready to scale it. And so it's going to take a significant investment of money and of time and commitment. And you know, Brad, I know you've seen some of my results, we can get rapid gains. Many of my clients replace their entire income that they made from the previous year within, you know, 30, 60, 90 days of working with me. But they've got to take action and they've got to be willing to make those changes. And the first one starts with the ability to invest. And quite frankly, the people that I attract are people who have that growth mindset and they understand the power of someone coming in and collapsing time for you and helping you see your blind spots and avoid making the costly mistakes that are going to suck up your time and energy.

Yeah. Do you. And then do they go through a. Explain how your program works. So I mean, do they get access to you personally, do they get video training in addition or what? How do you typically structure your, your curriculum?

Yeah, so, and this is something I recommend for anybody listening, my methodology is the same. The methodology doesn't change, the level of access does. And so I'm not trying to create and again disperse my energy creating all these different methodologies. All I'm doing is creating the same expert accelerator methodologies. And those that want more access to me, more hand holding, more one to one support, pay a lot more. And the rest of them experience the same content but in a group setting. And quite frankly, I've even shifted my programs now that I don't have any strictly one to one. Even my one to one is a hybrid because I understand the importance of community and masterminding. So even my one to one clients have that hybrid group element into that. Where I build in all inclusive retreats, we have our inner circle like monthly calls where they're having that sense of community which I believe is one of the fundamental pillars of success.

Yeah, they get to learn from each other, backing up towards the, you know, client attraction side. Like I know one of the things on LinkedIn you showed me and I loved it. And those were some of the, like the LinkedIn, like on Instagram they call them carousels. I don't really know if they call them like docs or whatnot.

Documents.

Yeah, yeah. And I love that. I thought that was super cool when you did that. Explain to me some of the way, because I know that there's a lot of strategies on LinkedIn and LinkedIn is unfortunately gets a bad reputation for getting a lot of spammers and a lot of people throwing out tons and tons of spammy messages. And it's weird though, I actually almost never get those. Maybe I haven't set up my profile to attract those folks, but give me the kind of the overview of the LinkedIn strategy I know about like Sales Navigator and you can do searches and you can visit people and you can do all that. But how would you break down the overall strategy, what you use and what you teach people to use on LinkedIn.

Yeah, well, you definitely want to get really targeted with who your ideal clients are. For some people it's easier, like you and me who are targeting, you know, business owners. For some of my clients who are like relationship dating coaches, it's a little more challenging because you can't tell if someone's married or single. So there are limitations from that point. But you know, essentially it's about getting really clear of who your ideal clients are, where they are in the world. So maybe you're US based, but you plan on having events in California, then start there. Or maybe for those of you listening that are consulting with companies that maybe have furloughed all their consultants because of COVID then and you want to continue to gain clients, then you need to look at industries and target industries that are thriving right now and there are plenty of them. And so you may need to shift your targeting based on the industry and what's happening in the world. Or you know, if you look like I was sharing with one of my clients, there's a lot of venture backed startups that are very open to coaching because they see the benefit and guess what? They have the funds.

So I've got one of those clients as well.

Yeah, it's about like really, you know, thinking strategically and I wish I could just give you like this is the strategy. But unfortunately when I tell people that's the strategy, they usually mess it up and they need someone like myself or you, Brad, who is an actual strategist who can show them. Wait a minute. For your market, you need to like, look at this. I can give you some broad, sweeping examples, like with the COVID but other than that, it's about leading with value. I find if you can keep them on the platform rather than try to pull them onto your list initially, that's more powerful. Sending them to content on LinkedIn that's relevant is powerful because, number one, LinkedIn loves that you keep them on the platform.

Number two, all the platforms do, because if you're on there, you can, you can click ads. So if you, when you find somebody, like, I imagine you use Sales Navigator quite a bit, right? It's such a cool tool. Um, and then, so you, you identify them. Is it a simple, like, visit their profile? Do you send them like connection requests and using sometimes automated tools to just send them a little like freebie or something like somebody's first. Like, if I, if I didn't know you and, you know, you visited my profile and maybe sent me a connection request, what's my first experience with you? If I'm.

Yeah. After we connected, the first experience you would have with me would be sending you, most likely to a video. So I'm always testing different campaigns, but I would send you to a video that is hosted on LinkedIn. And that way, what's really cool about videos hosted on LinkedIn, when you share them, they actually appear. You can't see it on Sales Navigator, but you can see it in regular inbox. Just so you know, they appear right in their message thread, so they don't even have to click away to play the video. Pretty awesome.

Yeah, that's great. I've seen that. But would you, Would you actually start a conversation first and get a look, like, get me to respond before you sent the video, or do you just send that video like, straight away after the. With the request?

Yeah, I would send the video. And again, there's no request for anything. It's just like, hey, here, sharing some value with you, Hope you have a great day, you know, or whatever, whatever the message is.

But I mean, like, before that, is it okay, you do the connection request. Obviously you don't send a video with the connection request, I imagine. Do you ever ask them a quick little question or try to get their engagement with you first and say, hey, I've got, like, I've got. I've got a video that talks about this. Would you be interested in it or do you just send it?

I tried that before because I know some people talk about that, like, getting permission to send it first. What I found is that people assume on LinkedIn that you're gonna sell them something. So if you ask a question before giving any kind of value, I found that it doesn't really work well, at least in the ad campaigns, message campaigns that I've tested. So I like to send the video and that way they can play it, they cannot. And then I'll follow it up with a question. So where I ask them something like a little deeper about their business. But I want them to know, number one, I'm not selling them anything, I'm not asking them for anything. Because even asking is asking them to do something. Think about it. People are busy and you don't know them and you're like, I'm going to take a moment to tell this total strange answer, this total strangers question who's probably just going to turn around and offer me a call to sell me something. Like that's the mindset they're going in with. I'd much rather say, you know, hey, Brad, thanks so much for connecting. You know, one of the biggest struggles of coaches is getting leads. Here's an awesome video I put together on how to find leads quickly and whatever or whatever the message may be and that way if it's something interesting to them, they can click on it, they can ignore it. A lot of people are going to ignore it. So, you know, you can't be afraid of rejection. Some people just aren't going to say anything, but they're going to watch you for three months and then they're going to book a call and pay you a lot of money. Some people are going to respond back. You know, you just have to continue to put yourself out there. If you want to go an extra mile, you can tailor your message even more, make it more relevant, Send them an even more relevant resource based on their job title. You can personalize the message. If you find someone that is an ideal client, you can even, you know, send them a loom video or something like that. Like there's all kinds of things that you can do. If you're going to go that route of personalized videos, like go all the way, like actually record the video. Don't send them the generic one that so many people send out, like, hey, thanks for my network, here's about me. Like it doesn't work exactly with the video you send.

Is it like a long video, like a 20 minute video? Is it a short, little, like 2 minute, like bite size videos?

You know, I've actually tested a couple different ones so I don't ever upload anything on LinkedIn. That is over 10 minutes because then it's hosted on YouTube and therefore that it doesn't get really good reach. So I either do a short, powerful video or because I do have access to LinkedIn Live, I, I will send them to LinkedIn Lives, which is great for my engagement with LinkedIn Lives. And those are usually longer. Those are usually about 25 minutes.

Right. And then those videos, obviously, most videos, I imagine you do have somewhat of a call to action to, you know, hey, if you want to schedule a time with me or find out more, you can obviously go here. Is there a, is there a way that you can track inside LinkedIn? Like if you send them a video, are you able to track if they've actually played that video or watched it?

Not if. Not if I'm sending them to LinkedIn content. If I'm sending them to dub or loom, yes, we can look at those metrics and see. But listen, Brad, with what I do, my goal is not to get on a bunch of calls.

Yeah.

You know, what I do is very specific for people who are in a certain level of influence and income that are ready to scale up. So number one, just my price point and what I do eliminates a lot of people out there. And then number two, they have to be ready, you know, ready to make the changes and invest. And so my goal is not like some people who might have a $500 program or $1,000 program just to get a bunch of leads coming in and call so I can close them. My goal is to make sure people are aware of me and understand who I am before they ever get on a call with me. Because if I'm just going again for that quality of num or quantity of numbers over quality, I'm going to get on the phone with a bunch of people who are sticker shocked or have no idea what it takes to scale a company like just are so clueless versus if I can get someone's attention in my network, they don't have to respond to me now. I don't want. They don't have to get on a call with me now, but they watch One of my lives, Two of my Lives, they're hooked. They're in because they understand there's such truth to what I'm saying. And not only is there truth, but they can go and spend all day looking through rows and rows of case studies of people that I've helped to back up what I say. So I have a different approach than probably 90% of the coaches out there where I am not looking to just book a bunch of calls all the time. I really want people to be very indoctrinated, very nurtured, very enrolled in who I am and what my method is. They don't have to understand it completely, but they need to understand like, this is a serious, real program. It gets real results. It's not a churn and burn webinar, whatever model. It's not a lead gen service. Like, this is about how to build an expert platform. If you want to be a highly paid expert. This is the method. Book a call if you want my assistance in doing that.

Is there a way that you typically, that you typically weed people out or filter them for their ability to afford the level of service you offer. So like, I would imagine that on your messaging you don't just come out and state prices like, hey, here's how much it is. I mean, I could be wrong. Or do you do that anywhere prior to them getting on the phone to make sure that you're not getting on the phone with broke people?

Yeah, yeah, of course we have an application process. Depending on your answers, you may or may not get through to this, to the scheduling software. And other than that, you know, you, you're sent to another resource. Because the last thing that I want to do is get anyone excited about something they aren't able to do that's not productive for either of us. And so we do have a screening process. And then if the application comes through and they booked an appointment and I'm reviewing it or my team's reviewing it and it still doesn't seem like a fit, that's where myself or my assistant will reach out and kind of give them more of the overview and make sure they understand the level of commitment that's involved and let them make that decision. And you know, the response is so amazing. When that does happen, people will thank me. They'll say, thank you so much, you're right. Like I'm not there yet and I want to be. And now I know and this is what I'm going to work towards. And it just makes the process that much easier because I know I'm not going to let someone down because now they're not ready for what I do. And I'm happy to send them resources and say, hey, watch my YouTube channel. Go watch these videos. Like get to this place. Or even. Honestly, Brad, I've referred, I'd say four or five people in the last, I'd say 60 days to my current clients, students in my program. So I know they understand how it works. But these people don't make the threshold of income that I require for someone to enter my program. So I have students of mine who specialize in total newbies and getting you to, you know, your first X amount of money as a coach. And so I will refer them to some of my clients because I know they have a good teacher and they're going to steer them in the right direction.

Well, that's another benefit of being one of your clients is the ability to potentially get some extra lead flow if the situation is correct. That's fantastic. Yeah, I love how, I love the simplicity of it. I love focusing on the right types of clients. It makes all the difference in the world. And I do the exact same thing with that. Where you know, just personally one of the things that one of my biggest fears is that I would, or it used to be that I would not be able to get the results for the client that I worked with. And for the longest time I was thinking, well that's a me thing. And it really wasn't. It's because when I realized, well no, if you only, if you focus on only working with the clients that you know that this is a no brainer, that if you, if you have these qualities and characteristics, I can help you. If you don't, then no amount of help you know, I give you, I can't guarantee the results. So it's one of those, it's one of those easy fixes for if, if you're out there, if you're worried about it is just, you know, make sure you're working with the type of people who can actually benefit from your help and it reduces the risk of you not being able to help them and thus charging too much. Because you know, I, and in the past I've done that, I've over promised and under delivered. But it was not so much me, it was more of the client that I was working with didn't have the ability to execute or implement or even reap the results of what I was doing. So I know if there's anybody out there listening, connecting those dots are really critical. Besides, so LinkedIn sounds like it's your big prospecting place. Do you do a little bit elsewhere, I'll see you sometimes on Facebook, etc. But is LinkedIn really been the primary client gathering place for you?

It is. I mean I used to be really, really big on Facebook but they've been such a pill ever. I don't know, in the last, I don't even know Six months, nine months. And not only with Facebook's advertising problem, policies, restrictions, account shutouts, but just also how politically charged, emotionally charged, as we were talking about. Brad, right now. Yeah, go on to LinkedIn right now. Yeah, you'll hear a little whisper of some of things like that, but people understand that they're there. They can put aside their differences and that they're there to do business. And quite frankly, Facebook's going to be like this until November, December. So, you know, I like the professionalism that comes with LinkedIn, and I don't think you get that on any other platform out there.

No, I agree completely. And it's. Speaking of that with Facebook. So I don't do a lot of. Like, my Facebook is pretty personal. Like, I don't do a whole lot of. I'll throw business tidbits and thoughts and insights out there, but I'm not making offers. And, you know, I'm not actually running any ads on my own. In the past six months, like, you just hit the nail on the head. So I've lost my Facebook ads ad account twice. I've gotten it back within like 48 hours, but I wasn't running ads. There was one time where I was running a video view ad a few months ago, and it was literally just a clip of a speech I gave with zero calls to action, nothing scammy. It was literally to this. When I spoke at Entrepreneur Organization, there was a clip and I ran it and I just wanted to see what video views were costing these days. This was right after Covid and I turned it off after a couple of weeks. It was okay. It was cool. And then like a month later, this was the second time I got my ad account shut off for zero reason.

Right.

And my. My appeal was like, why are you. I'm not even running ads. And what I did, they're like, oh, yeah, sorry, we turned it off by accident. And then a few weeks later, I lost my Facebook profile. They were like, something happened, security or whatever. And it went down. Like, I couldn't access Facebook at all. My. You couldn't even find my Facebook profile. Like, disappeared for like 48 hours. And I'm thinking, what did I do? Like, I'm the least incendiary kind of guy out there. Crazy enough, I was able to go, my Facebook page still existed. And I was able to, with my wife's account, go to my Facebook page and check the page transparency. And that thing was still running ads. So they killed my personal profile. My Facebook page was still up running like that this was during that whole thing where I was doing like a two week test. Like, this is bananas. How can anybody expect to run a business on that with them being so finicky? And I still do recommend and help strategize for some clients of mine, like Facebook ads. It is a very effective strategy. But to be honest, it's not a place to hang your hat and make sure that, you know, make sure you got some diversity. But yeah, you just hit a, you hit a soar button for me on that one. I'm like, this is stupid, right?

Exactly.

So. Well, I'm a big fan of what you're doing and how you're doing it, and I think that folks out there should definitely be listening closely. What do you think are, you know, what do you think is like one of the bigger mistakes people make that could be rectified very simply? Like, because there are a lot of people are following the exact same formula, but are there any big, glaring mistakes that you found that you just say, stop that and things will get a lot easier?

Yeah, I mean, a couple things. Number one, stop doing the shiny object syndrome. You know, sit your butt down, focus and commit to whatever it is you want to create and don't let anything else distract you. It's so easy to be pulled in and to feel like we need to be busy doing something in order to be successful, and that's simply not true. In fact, one of the first things I do with my clients is I want to make sure that they have the right amount of balance in their calendar. I know it doesn't sound business related, but so many people are just in this hustle mode and you cannot grow, you cannot grow a sustainable, scalable business if you don't have some sense of balance in your life. And so understanding that it's really important for entrepreneurs to take time off, to actually take time to dream, that's when your greatest inspiration is going to come through. And if you're just jumping from one thing to the next, executing and launching and perpetually launching, which is totally exhausting in and of itself, you're going to burn out. You're going to watch your brand credibility kind of diminish. You're going to repel people that actually would be happy to pay you a lot more money because they're so unclear, because you're constantly launching something new. You're going to burn out. So just focus, sit your butt down, get clear, and free up your time as much as possible, which you can do through simplification so that you have time to take care of yourself and spend time with the people you love.

I love that. I love that. That's very sound advice. I know. Especially on the focus thing. That's one of the things that all of us entrepreneurs get, you know, pulled aside too much. Shiny objects are fun, especially when we know that sometimes we can catch them and play with them in their fun. But focus is key and focusing on the lifestyle you want to live and the business you want to run is also absolutely key. So Jessica, if my listeners want to watch, follow, read more about how you do what you do so well, where would you like to direct them to go find out more?

You can find out more@jessica yarbrough.com or follow me on LinkedIn and let me know, hey, I heard you on Brad's show and so I'll be happy to accept that connection request.

I just liked one of your documents on LinkedIn as we as you said that.

Awesome.

Because I follow you on LinkedIn. Well, this has been, this has been great. I'll make sure that the, all the links are in the show notes so that anybody can go check it out. And follow, click, read, watch. As I said, like I've seen, I see a lot of people trying to teach a very similar method of high ticket, high value coaching and consulting. And a lot of people make it a lot more difficult than it really needs to be. And Jessica, you're one of the few people that just seems to figure out a simple, elegant way to get what you want without having to absolutely monopolize your life. So I think you're doing great work out there for all of my listeners. If this is a topic that you like, want more of, let me know. Shoot me an email@askbradaconrapped business.com Also, if you've listened to any of my other episodes but you still haven't subscribed, you can hit the subscribe button on any of the like Apple or Spotify, or even if you're on my website, jump on the newsletter because I send stuff out there that not everybody on the, on the, you know, just on the audio thing gets. But Jessica, last question for you. This is one of the questions I ask everybody on the show. But is there a nut you're trying to crack right now? Is there anything in particular that you're trying to solve, learn, hire, figure out? Just kind of like a head scratcher that if you can figure this out, things would be pretty darn good.

Yeah, you know, I honestly don't have anything right now Brad I mean, it's summertime, right? My hope is that I can hold my events in the fall. My plan is to have them in the fall. And really this is a kind of a more of a downtime for me and my family, just typically. So I'll start to, with the intent of having my events kind of ramp things up and prepare for those events starting in July. And I have the plan to do that since ours were shut down in the fall. We have all the marketing materials and everything. So it's just a matter of plugging it in and ramping back up and knowing that, you know, now with even everything that's happening, it's, you know, there's nothing to launch, nothing to do. And just to actually take some time to enjoy this little bit of a break I have for the couple weeks of June before we ramp up for our fall series of events.

Oh, perfect. Well, to all my listeners, thank you for tuning in. And, Jessica, thanks for sharing all of your secrets here on the show. And I know you didn't share them all all, so go follow her and stay tuned for the next episodal. Talk to you guys soon.