How to Demonstrate Expertise Without Launching

You're listening to the PT Profit podcast, episode number 314. Today I'm unpacking how you demonstrate expertise and value without launching. Are you ready? Let's dive in.

Hi, I'm Beverly Simpson, former fitness manager turned online personal training business owner. And this podcast is where smart fitness professionals, including trainers and clinicians, discover how to increase client performance and movement, package and position their products and services and get out of their own way so that they can increase their revenue to live a life that they love without sleazy sales. Welcome to the PT Profit Podcast. What's up, coach?

Thank you so much for pushing play on another episode of the PT Profit Podcast. I'm your host, Beverly Simpson. And if this is the first time you're hanging out with me today, welcome. I'm super pumped that you're here. I'm excited to dive into in to today's episode where we're talking about the ways that we can execute and implement a hybrid sales system. So what does that mean? It's one of the systems that I teach the accelerator clients where you can set up a system to add value, meaning you're adding connection, you're demonstrating your expertise, and you are making sales every single day in a semi automated evergreen system. So what do I mean that it's semi automated? I mean that typically people don't want to buy from automation bots. Like, think about it like this. When was the last time that you called the bank and you were really excited to talk to the automation? Like, press one for ba ba ba, press two for ba ba ba. Or you call the doctor and you just want to speak to a fricking human, Right? So. And it takes forever before you can talk to a human. So we're setting up these premium offers, whether it's low ticket, mid ticket or high ticket. Premium doesn't just mean one on one. What's always interesting to me is when people will say things to me like, I want to have accessible options and I want to help a lot of people and then they, you know, resist trying to get on the phone with people who are only paying $37 a month. Now listen, I get why, and I get why this mentality where that comes from. Because you, there are only so many hours in the day and when you prioritize your time over your money, you'll tend to have plenty of both. And so I understand the sentiment, but usually work to your capacity, work to your constraints, and then we can start to move through that. And so what that means specifically is if you have 10 people paying a $37 membership get on the phone with them and talk to them. Now, do I think you need to sell on a phone call one to one to sell a $37 membership? Of course not. I think that we can remove the barrier of entry and all of the resistance and really move people towards the outcome that they really want in a much more leveraged capacity. However, it really comes down to, it's not really about how to do it. It's really about your relationship to how and what it's going to take to continue to present those types of offers over and over and over again. Usually it's about the relationship to selling and it's not really about the membership or the offer or talking to the people or the capacity or the hours in the day. And listen, if that's you, you're not alone. Everybody loves to buy things, but they hate to be sold to. So I get it. We've all had experiences where people have sold at inopportune times that they've lied to us, that they won't take no for an answer and that they don't listen and they're not empathetic. So I get that. I get why there's resistance there and you don't want to come off in that way. And, and so this is why this episode is going to be so powerful. Because when you can demonstrate authority and your expertise, problems for people and help them get the outcomes that they already want, this is going to help deepen the sense of trust. But not trust in you as a person. Trust in your ability to do what it is that you say that you can do. So now, when someone is transitioning into this hybrid sales system where they're generating revenue and making sales every single day, one of the questions becomes, well, how do I demonstrate my authority and my expertise? Or without launching? Okay, so there are four main components that we're going to talk about when it comes to layering in this hybrid sales system and demonstrating authority and expertise. So the first is the difference between authority and expertise, because it's not the same. Number two, we're going to actually talk about and unpack what launching actually is, why it's powerful, number three. And then number four, how you can incorporate it into your business where you are generating sales every single day. So first, let's unpack authority and expertise, because I probably don't have to tell you that there are people out there right now who are generating more revenue than you are, but you are more qualified or more educated. And this Comes down to the fact that authority starts with the decision to be one. So first you must decide that you are an authority. This is like the Dunning Kruger's effect in In Action is that people don't know what it is that they don't know. So when they come into the space with this magnetism and authority and then someone backs it up, whether it's their following, which could be smoke and mirrors, whether it's, it's. They're, they're a celebrity trainer and they work with someone who's endorsed them. Like, there's just so many reasons why people get authority. Right? We also have the concept of monkey see, monkey do, which is that, oh, and I watched myself do this. Oh, if she can do that, or if that works for Sally, then it must work for me. And it's the collective mind mentality. And it's not necessarily that it's bad, I'm part of it. It's just that's how we tend to sometimes fuel and give authority to someone who might not yet have the expertise required to help that person at that time. So, number one, authority comes from your decision to be one. And it doesn't matter what level of expertise you're at, it doesn't mean you can't help someone. So a lot of people out there who are high achievers, they keep telling themselves, oh, I just need one sort of more certification, I need one more thing, I need to do X, Y and Z. Or they look out into the space and they compare themselves to someone else and think, I'm just not ready. I'm just not there yet. When the truth of the matter is that you're, you are allowed to live in the end and your expertise is allowed to grow while you're also an authority, while you're also pouring in to the community of people that you can help. Think about the growth of an acorn to an oak tree. An acorn doesn't just stay in the ground until it's ready to be an oak tree. It has those stages of growth, being in the right environment, stages of growth. In those awkward teenage years, it always seems like nobody talks about that messy middle enough. And maybe because I'm in the weeds of it, but here's the truth of the matter is that no, as a high achiever, you're always going to feel like you're in the messy middle because there will always be another goal to hit. Being an authority starts with the decision to be one, and then you can live in the and with your expertise. Okay, number Two. So what is a launch? A launch is a presentation of an offer with the deadline, usually through a gateway. So what does that mean? It means that somebody has to put in their name and their email. So that's the gateway to get into the party and then they come into the party and then usually it is a training that's either in the OneToMany model, the many to many model, an event, it's usually accompanied with the energy of an experience and then there's a presentation of an offer, usually with a deadline. So let's. I often talk about the cons mostly because of my experience with them and then also because of my, of, you know, how I build my business. But there's actually a lot of pros. So we're going to talk about the pros and the cons of launching. So let's talk about the cons first. The cons are that typically people tend to get into a feast or fight famine cycle of work or a cycle of, of revenue. And our revenue depends on these big chunks of, of big launches. Now for me, that puts a ton of pressure on the launch. I was feeling like I, I would spend hours upon hours upon hours creating these assets and fueling these assets and being like ready to launch and then feeling like working so hard. And then the. You had to get all the ads right, you had to get all the, the organic posts right. Your algorithm couldn't have an off day. You couldn't have an off day, like, heaven forbid your kid got sick from school and you had to go and get them or you know, like it was, it was just very pressure cookery. Okay. And so what happened was that then I would launch and then I would bring in 10 people and it would be amazing. But instead of celebrating those 10 people that I'm bringing in, I would say, oh my gosh, my launch failed. I can't believe I only brought 10 people. And I was really focused on. And, and then I would be like, well, what am I gonna do? I can't launch next week. I guess I'm gonna have to wait another 90 days and then I'll launch in 90 days and I'll just spend all this time doing the I don't want to do because living in that if then continuum, like, well, I guess I'll just keep as my side hustle until then I can have the next best launch. And my whole business was, was contingent on this. Whether or not my launching was working, not to mention the fact that was for me, it was just incredibly draining. I had to do. I was doing five launches a year. And then, you know, my mentor was like, well, why don't we just go down to two launches? But then it got even more scary. Like, even as I said that, I felt my heart and blood pressure raised because I was like, I can't. My entire business, my team, the wellness of my team, like, I can't depend on two launches because if one goes south, it was just. It was. And listen, we can have an argument and a discussion around, like, well, you could just add another launch. Like, we. Of course we could have those things. There are always things you can do. Again, it's not about whether or not the launch model is bad. It's about will it work for me. And I needed to take off the pressure for myself, which is why I started to switch to this hybrid evergreen model. Okay, so that was con number two, I guess. Was that one one or two? I think maybe it was one because I was just talking about the feast and famine. The second reason why it was a con for me was that I would spend hours working and crafting on this beauty, this beautiful message, and then. Nope, that nobody would hear. And I don't know if you're anything like me, but that can feel really deflating and disappointing when you work so hard and no one comes. Sure, we could reset our mindset, which I did many times, and then redo it again. But I needed something that was. That. Needed to feel like, hey, listen or don't. But because there was so much urgency for me to get the launch right to generate revenue that I. It didn't feel fun, so I had to stop. So that was number two. There had to be a better way. And then, you know, one of my clients, parent got sick, and she was about, you know, ready to go into a lunch, and I was. And she was, you know, it was very like. That was kind of like the. The. The. The moment where I realized, oh, nothing in my life can go wrong if I'm launching, because life lives and is my business solely con. Solely on or solely dependent on whether or not my launch goes well. So I just. It was not the model for me. So I thought, there has to be a better way. Okay. And then the other reason why launching can be so. So. So I just want to mention and say that it's really not like the. The. The component of launching is not that launching's dead or whatever. There is just. It's not that. It's just that for me personally, I could not live in a rat race of feeling like the pressure to get it right or to sell or to hit my numbers was. Was there. It just that that was not working for me. It works for some people. It did not work for me. So then. But now we have to have the other side of the conversation where we're talking about why launching is amazing and the fun of launching. Okay, so what? Why launching is amazing is because a couple of reasons. Number one, if you've ever participated in a launch, not as a host, but as a participant, there's this energy, this momentum of being in a community, of being in an experience. Oftentimes it will feel like an event event. And those types of events. Like, have you ever been to a live in person event where it's just like so mind melting and then you come back and you're like, oh man. And you're just. You get out of the rut of the everyday life and there's just this experience, this momentum of people coming together and it's people going through things together. Not to mention the fact that we're already indoctrinated into the cohort society from when we were like little kids. We start school at the same time, we finish school at the same time. We have seasons on. Honestly, that's part of the human beingness where we have season, we need to operate in season. So those are things that are good about launching. Oh, I forgot about, I forgot about another con. I knew there was a really important con. The other thing I hated about launching was that when I'm in a problem, I need my problem solved now. I'm literally, I mean, I'll give you a perfect example. I'm in the weeds of trying to get my ads to work right. And it's been a minute since I ran my own. I had somebody tell you. And so I'm in the middle of trying to get those ads right, and it's not working. And I'm like, beyond frustrated. And it, my, my husband is like, beverly, it is Saturday night before the super bowl. And I'm like, where is nobody working on said? And he's like, listen, no, but just, he's like, nobody's coming. Okay. You just, you gotta wait. Okay. But in the moment, I was like, I want this to work and I want it to work now. And so I'm not going to a wait list to get on a wait list to solve my problem that is urgent that I want it to be now. You don't go to the grocery store and get on a wait list for avocados. It's Just it's, it doesn't happen that way and that's not how people make buying decisions. And not to mention the fact that cohort styles of training can sometimes lead to, to, you know, people who get, feel like they're behind because they're not catching up with the group. And then some people who are like, oh my gosh, this program is so slow, I need it to move faster. I'm at a different spot than everybody else. So there's, there's sometimes a launching cohort doesn't meet people where they're at. Now listen, they're going to be cons to the other side and I'm happy to share them with you because I've experienced them and it was a transition. You had to of move through this. But so anyway, so, so launching can have like back to the pros. The launching experience has this momentum and, and we already know and it really feels comfortable to be in a cohort where we all start together and we all finish together. And so it already has that feeling. Now the other reason why launching is so powerful is that aside from the momentum and the energy and honestly this depends on the person, some people really thrive off that. Me. So I think it was funny where people were really confused when I went to a Evergreen model just because I am not an introvert, I'm an extrovert. I thrive off. I'm an extrovert. I am a manifesting generator. I am like, I thrive off responding and being with people like it is. I love the energy of launching. Can't live in a pressure, but it can't feel like a pressure cooker. So I had to figure out a way to create that launch. Oh, okay, we're going to get that. I'm jumping ahead. I promise I'll go back to it. But the other thing about launching that is so good is aside from the momentum and the energy and the movement and the experience, there is an opportunity in a launch typically to demonstrate expertise. So when it comes to understanding the customer journey, we have to understand that your people are operating from mistakes and misconceptions. So what does that mean? That means your people are in a problem and they want an outcome and they're doing all the wrong things to solve it. And it's because of their current skill level. So what does that look like? That looks like, well, here's the problem that they're in and either they don't know the real problem or they're doing all the wrong things to solve it. And it's not by Choice, it's based on the fact that they have a misconception. So they take action from their current level of skill. Their action provides an outcome. The outcome will have an effect, a feeling. And then that feeling, they make it mean something. So if we take dieting, for example, like, okay, I. My problem is I can't lose the last £20. I want. The outcome that I want is to look, feel and move better than I ever have in my life. I want to lose the 20. And if I want to get grant, you know, if I want to get tangible with it, I want to lose the last govern £20. But no matter what I seem to do, I can't do it. Okay? So that's the problem that I know that I'm in. What's the real problem? Oh, I'm in all or nothing mentality. The problem, the real problem is me. The real problem is that my habits are off. But I don't know that. So what am I doing? Well, I'm going on the Whole30 diet and now the Whole30 diet. Now listen, if this. There's no shade, okay, Like, I'm just giving you an example, okay? I'm not here to be right. I'm here to give you an example so that you can see this. Okay, so what do I do? I go on the Whole30 diet. So what does the Whole30 diet do for me? Oh, I lost 20 pounds. I feel great. I feel amazing. But then I gained it all back. Now I feel crappy. So that must mean I need to hold 30 harder. And then I get trapped in a vicious cycle. And that's because I'm not aware of what the real problem is, otherwise I would fix it. Okay? That is what your customers do all day, every day. Doesn't matter. It does not matter what the business model is, because that is the human experience. And so when you're launching, it becomes our job to communicate that and to carry people through that customer journey to get them on board with the solution that. That is not whole 30. To get them on board with the solution that you teach. That's going to demonstrate and show them why all those things are not the right things and then move them towards the outcome. The sale that is powerful and what launch messaging can do. Now, the other thing that a launch can do because it is a presentation of an offer with a deadline. Now, it does not matter whether or not you are running Evergreen or you are not running Evergreen. Urgency is part of of a. Urgency is part of an offer and it is something that need and it is part of the offer. And it is. It needs to be present whether it's evergreen or launch. So what does that mean? Urgency means that we need to give people a reason to make a buying decision now. Not maybe. Right. And so, and so the buying decision is either going to be yes or no. Not yet. So this is the other part of the pressure free sales system. Because if the buying decision becomes no, not yet, I'm okay with that because I don't need to put pressure on you. I don't. I don't need to be pressure on you. I make sales every single day and I've built this system so that it takes what it takes until it takes. So if the answer's not yet, cool, hang out in my ecosystem because I will help you. I will nurture you. I'll move you towards when you're ready to get the support that you need. Because I made the mistake before and this is something that. It's going to sound arrogant and I don't intend to make it. It sound arrogant because I didn't. Honestly, I didn't realize it until recently, but I'm really good at sales and I've always known that I'm good at sales. But what I mean specifically is that I have made the mistake of putting people in the wrong offer at the wrong time because I'm good at sales and also because. And not because I'm not. Because I'm good at sales in a pressure way. Okay? But because I'm good in sales because I can really see what is possible for you when you come to me and share with me what you're struggling with and what the vision is. I literally can see your success for you. And that is a blessing and a curse because I get so confident in what is possible for you that I will sometimes push toddlers to run marathons. And that is not. That's. That leaves everybody feeling miserable, let me tell you. And so because of that skill of mine, I have to check in on it where I have to really, you know, ask myself like, is this, is this in service of the highest good? Because I'm so convicted. What makes you good at selling is competence. Being competent in your ability gives you confidence. And when you're confident that you could do it, then it's. Then it's. That's how you step into that mat. That's what magnetizes you. That's, that's why people get authority when maybe they don't have that expertise, when most people are just leaking their personal power everywhere. And looking for that validation and saying, am I, Is this right? Am I right? Is this right? And listen to me, if this is you, no shade, because that was me. I've spent most of my life like that. I fight. I fight, fight, fight myself often and remember, remind myself that it's okay to live in the end, it's okay to learn and that nobody's coming to save you and that your expertise is enough. And that is work. That is work. Because what it's done is it's caused me to feel like that's why it really took me so long to realize I was so good at sales. Because I would look at outcomes, I would make them mean something else from a misconception and realize, oh, oh my gosh, it's actually not that I'm not good at sales. That's not why it's not closing. Because the ones I am closing because it goes back to my high achiever ness because I couldn't. It's so easy to focus on what went wrong instead of what's going right. So urgency, back to that was kind of a tangent, but urgency. But why it's powerful is because urgency, you need urgency. So when you're in a launch, a deadline of open closed doors, very powerful. Ever notice, like look at how you make buying decisions? You're buying decisions, people wait for the sales and sales are limited. People wait for clearance people, people like I think, you know, I know I'm going to take my kids to Disney on Ice. I take them every year and then one year, you know, but I, I never rarely buy it on the first day tickets go on sale, it's usually the day of ever been in a gym and it's like the last day of the month. But the only difference is that one's a Monday, one's a Tuesday. It's arbitrary sense of deadline. Human beings need a reason to make a decision now. And if you are doing an evergreen model like me, then you're appealing to inner urgency, which is a hang of a lot harder than deadlines. And then the other thing that you're doing with, with urgency is you can have expiring bonuses. Like the deadlines still exist and they're still required. But, but there are ways that you can do it. Enrolling enrollment experiences. Okay. And so, and so the question becomes, well, if those are so, if those components of a launch are so amazing, how can you incorporate that, that experience? Because the truth of them into your, you know, evergreen rolling enroll enrollment experience. Because the truth of the matter is that that demonstration of authority and expertise and tangible wins for your clients is still a requirement. And so, you know, I did a, I did a podcast which will probably ask to link in the show notes of, you know, how you can add value and still get paid to coach, because that can feel really conflicting and confusing. How do you give people tangible results but then they don't, but then still get, you know, and, but. But accidentally not create this? Like, okay, I could do it myself. Thank you. High five. By Right. How do you cultivate the demand for your stuff? Right. Well, this comes down to the gap. And creating the gap. I can show you how to do it. I do it all the time. I do it in my free groups. I show I even for my paid people. But just because you learn how to do it and you've done it a couple of times, that's not what makes you a master. What makes you a master is the repetition, the compounding effect of skill acquisition. Like, I have run my ads for years and all of a sudden it's like breaking down. I'm laughing because it's, I'm using that example. So how you do it is couple ways, right? Well, what I like to teach my accelerators inside the program is I like to do macro and micro cycles of content, meaning that I'm still building in my launch calendar. I'm still building in the same thing that I would. So I call it a hybrid. Same thing that I would potentially do if I were in a, if I were running a launch, work on growing the audience and whatnot. But now, instead of having any wait lists, I'm just moving people into the DM and having conversations and moving them into the program when they're ready to buy. But the presentation and the experience of what I would do for a launch, like going live three times, you know, five times a week, or getting people to come into the mechanism. Like, I would still do that in. Like, I would still do that even, or I still do that. I still bake that into my, into my, my content calendar. Because growing that audience still matters. And so you could do it in the same way that you would launch. So if you've got a group you can do a live event with, you could do events in the group you can do. You could do it live on Instagram. The sky is the limit. You can still do the experience of a launch, just change the deadline and the enrollment a little bit. But the, the point of a launch, which is to carry people through that customer journey of never hearing of you before exposing the truth about the real problem that they're in, demonstrating why what they're taking has been causing them so much trouble, and then giving them experiences of how and why you know that to be true and go test this out in our time together and then them getting a wow and then a gap being created for why they need to come to the next step that never changes. So hopefully that helped. And if you want to go deeper and you want to learn more about how we could put this hybrid evergreen sales system inside of your business, then reach out to me@bsims and fitness.com on Instagram, send me a DM and we'll schedule a free custom profit plan and we will do a demonstration of how this process could work specifically in your business. So you could either send me an email info@bsims and fitness.com let me know that you heard the podcast and that you're interested, or send me a DM and we could talk about it. And if you want to see a visual or a little bit more about how specifically this this would work, then DME simple and you'll get a link to register for a free upcoming class called Simple Scaling. So if this helped you, thank you so much for hanging out with me today and I'll catch you on the next episode.

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