Book Yourself Solid For Coaches & Consultants

There's probably another hundred thousand people who would be interested in reading it, if only I can find them. So marketing and lead generation, using either speaking or writing or indeed web based strategies is about thinking strategically, getting fresh leads into the system.

Welcome. I'm really excited to be exploring the world of Michael Port and Matthew Kimberly's newest book, Book Yourself Solid for Coaches and Consultants. As many of you know, I've been a big fan of the book for years. It's just a rock solid system that's evergreen. It helps you build up your brand, tune your sales, get your follow up process right, leverage different strategies to get your name out there. Networking, speaking from the stage. I mean it says it in the title, which I love. It's to book yourself solid and it's just the best of the best techniques all rolled into one as a system. And now the new book, Book Yourself Solid for Coaches and Consultants came out earlier in the month and I thought, hey, I need to get Matthew on the call so we can explore it, find out a little bit more about what's new, what's changed and most importantly how you can apply the system in your business. So maybe first things first. Just like to say welcome to the call, Matthew.

Thank you for having me here and thank you for bearing with us. While the very dramatic sum comes through my window at just the wrong angle. You'll get a peek into my study every now and again, but otherwise you've got the, the face of Matthew front and center. Thanks for having me, David. Absolutely wonderful to be here.

Yes. The lighting just makes it look like. Yes, you're ready to speak from stage. So my first question, I'm curious if you see yourself as a systems person.

Yeah, let. Yes, and here's why. Because left to my own devices, things fall apart very, very quickly. And so I use systems not through a desire for.

Improvement but as a safety net. That's my primary motivation is if the system isn't in place, then things fall through the cracks. We neglect to do things, we, we drop things, we lose things. And systems, whether that's a system for how to deal with an incoming email or how to communicate with our prospects or whatever that might be, really save my bacon every time I can forget about innovation. I'm naturally very creative, I think, and creative types are good at breaking things and very good at getting frustrated with things and, you know, mixing things up, rocking the boat just because you can.

Yeah.

And that, that's good for innovation and for keeping me on my toes, but it's very bad for Ensuring bills get paid and suppliers get paid and customers get communicated with. Because my, my brain goes off in a thousand directions and the systems are what support my ability to jump around.

I, I love that and I feel like that is a common theme that just pops up over and over. That founder, like founders and visionary leaders and creatives, they aren't necessarily systems people, but they see the value in the systems. So they surround themselves with great systems people and great systems because they know how important they are. So for the book Yourself Solid System, which already was rock solid and is a rock solid system, which I think is based on very much evergreen principles. I'm curious to get an idea as to why the new book, why the update, has anything changed or what, what's the approach there?

So Put Yourself Solid is a system. It's a systematic approach to doing marketing and making sales. And it allows us to, it creates containers for exploration, but each of those containers sits very firmly where it should be. You know, firstly we lay a foundation so that when people respond to our marketing, they know that they're safe, they understand who we are, we have a way of communicating what we do. They know that they're in the right place and when that happens, they give us the opportunity to earn their trust and that moves them into a sales cycle which again is a system which uses a keep in touch system, emails one to one personal outreach. It uses demonstrating to our prospective buyers what our various offers are. Because people make investments that are proportionate to the amount of trust that we've earned and their need, of course. And so while a sales funnel might be a system, we also say that, you know, multiple sales funnels or multiple ways of doing business with somebody is, is wiser. And that's a systematic approach. We have, we have a systematic, always have something to invite people to offer, which is a regular, frequent group format, free interactive event. You host that on a regular basis, weekly or monthly. That's a systematic approach to building trust with clients and so on and so forth. And then we have six core self promotional strategies which of which three are mandatory. So that's a daily practice or a systematic practice. And three are kind of optional and you can play with and has it. Is it evergreen? It is now. It is now evergreen. So when Michael first wrote the book. So I, I discovered Michael after we became friends and colleagues and business partners and co authors after he had launched Put Yourself Solid. And I was running a recruitment company which was heavily dependent upon various systems in order to, including financial systems, working out how much we Needed to borrow on a daily basis using, you know, financing solutions and things. Where first. My first hire was somebody who understood systems so they could make sure that the numbers were. Were done and the lights were kept on. But I discovered Michael during that period as a business owner. I read the book, fell in love with it, applied it in the business. The business grew every year that I was involved with it. And then I exited that business and became more involved with Michael. I became a kind of super fan. And.

The book then was reissued. So Book Yourself. So the original version came out, I'm going to say 2006, but won't be held to that. About 20 years ago. And then there was a second edition which was updated to reflect a couple of changes. One where one of the pieces of it, of the. Of the whole system was not quite in the right place. It had to move from up there to down there. Keep in Touch was part of the sales cycle rather than the marketing strategy. Because if you're doing marketing, for example, it's not actually email marketing, it's email selling because they've already raised and said, I'm interested. So you don't have to generate the lead, you've already got it. And then email. Know Michael probably mentioned MySpace in the first one or perhaps one of those now defunct websites that we were all on back in 2006. And then there was an illustrated edition which was the same thing for visual learners. And then the third edition. And by the third edition, which was actually the fourth book, Book Yourself Solid, they. We realized that if we talked about any specific web technologies or websites or. Or specific.

Then it was going to be outdated pretty much as soon as it came to print. So we replaced instructions with principles.

Yes.

Fast forward a few years. I have taken control, effective control of the company. And after three or four years we found a buyer and we found a couple of buyers in doctors Lacy Book and Sean Dill, who now run the organization as a going concern. And one of their interests was to bring. There were a few people. Bidding is the wrong word, but there are a few people interested in the company. And Sean Lacy said, look, one of the things that we'd really like to do is bring this book to new verticals because Book Yourself Solid for business owners. But we know that it works really well in our world, they said, which is the world of chiropractors.

Yeah.

So Book Yourself Solely for Chiropractors was written a collaboration between Michael and a chiropractor. And that was published I think earlier this year or perhaps at the end of last year, I'd had great experience working with coaches on Book Yourself Solid, both as resellers of the system but also as.

Applying it to their own business. And I said, well look, we so take it to this vertical, put yourself solid for coaches. And so we did that and that's just come out and Book Yourself Solid for Creatives is also scheduled for publication now. And I think there are more plans ahead for different verticals. And part of that is a marketing play. So, you know, they've taken over the organization and they want to reach new people. So this is what we do is relevant to you.

But also in, in parts it's about taking out the guesswork for, for, for the reader. So if you are a coach, we've made this hyper relevant to your business. If you're a chiropractor, we've made this hyper relevant to your business. So it kind of decreases any learning curve that there might have been. That was a very long winded. It's remained, the system has remained essentially the same. There have been some changes. For example, a business model for a roofer is probably, and the pricing models associated with that are going to be pretty markedly different to a business model for a coach, a business coach or perhaps an online creator type coach. So we've reflected those differences where they, where they were really necessary.

Yeah. What I love, like great signs of an excellent system is something that is specific enough that it tells the person what to do, but general enough that it can be applied to many different scenarios and still produce a great result. So the original book was a great example of this system that could be applied to lots of different scenarios because it was specific enough that it felt like, hey, I'm following a system and I know what I need to do. But it was also general enough that regardless of the industry or the type of work that the business is doing, it would just work like that's what I loved most and do love most about the system. So it makes perfect sense to then go, well, how about we replace the examples in the book with specific examples for the industry and the case studies that we select are from that industry so that people in that industry, like you said, go, oh, it is for me and it's proven to work in my industry and there are examples here. Oh wow. Now I can believe in the system because sometimes that's a big part of sticking with something is a belief to know that you're going to really get the outcome. So yeah, I can see huge, huge application for that. I've had the good fortune of doing quite a bit of work with Michael Gerber over the years. And, I mean, he is famous for doing The E myth 4 insert the vertical. And so I could see how this system lends itself extraordinarily well to that if we whip through the system. For those who aren't familiar with it and not necessarily like, the way I think of Book Yourself Solid is it's one big system that delivers on the promise to book yourself solid. And there are these subsystems that you talked about, like, there's different, smaller components, and each one of those really is a system that delivers a particular outcome on this journey to book yourself solid. And it starts with the red velvet rope policy. So maybe we just start there. And even if we just spend a few minutes on each, I'd love to kind of. And, you know, we can slightly tailor the message specifically for coaches and consultants, although really, it works for any business.

It really does work for any business. You're right. And we'll absolutely do that. And I love. I love what you said about how.

A system can be. Can be general enough to be applied in, you know, to pretty much any. Any situation, but can be made more relevant. And we always thought about yourself. My philosophy still very much is that information is free. We would encourage people to go to the library and get a copy of Book Yourself Solid if they didn't have it. We're not gatekeepers of the system. Our value can, as coaches in the modification, the application, the personalization, the customization of the system to your specific situation. And I think that's what we've done. We've done one step better for coaches by, as you said, giving case studies, examples, and specific help to coaches in this book. So you mentioned the red velvet rope policy, and that's the first fundamental piece of Book Yourself Solid, which is based upon one of the core principles around Book yourself solid, which is there are some people you're meant to serve and others not so much. So to try to be everything to everybody is to be nobody to anybody. And so the first thing that we have to implement in our business, much like a careful nightclub owner might implement in their business, is an admissions policy. Who's allowed it to the business? Can you come in or not? And we don't base that. It is literally a red velvet rope policy, a filtration device that only allows into your business the kind of clients who energize you and inspire you and allow you to do your best work so that it becomes a virtuous Cycle, because more of that leads to more of that. And as anyone who's done coaching, or especially group coaching, one bad apple will quickly go rotten and spoil the whole barrel. Right. So a red velvet rope policy is not based upon demographics. It's not based upon, you know, how much money somebody has, what business they have, or what car they drive or which postcode they live in or where they send their kids to school. It's based upon their inherent qualities. So it's not, it's not whether they've got money or they haven't, because that is a situation. You might be broke today and wealthy tomorrow, but whether they have a great sense of humor, whether they like animals, whether they.

Are good at timekeeping and respect other people, these are criteria you might like.

Whether they're a coach or a consultant.

Yes and no. You know, I think coaches generally are in the business of helping people. Some, some, some very successful coaches are actually marketers who are primarily marketers and then coaches. And we all know those types, they're everywhere and they're brilliant at selling. Choosing to be a coach is possibly an example of.

Of intent or character. But strictly speaking, David, according to the system, their job title doesn't count. It's, are you a good person? Are you going to show up on time? Are you going to respect our contract? Are you, you know, do you help old ladies cross the road? And my red road policies, there's some behavior which is kind of indicative, like if somebody is perpetually missing appointments or if somebody is not doing what they say they're going to do, that's a red flag.

Yes.

It's going to be very difficult to work with you as your coach. And we take the sports field coaching analogy, you might have the best athletics coach in the world, but if, if your athletes are turning up to practice hungover or late, then your coach isn't going to be able to do their best work with them. So we're looking for people who are willing to play the game. So the red velvet policy then goes to examining your current client roster and saying, should you be working with now you're a star client or are you a dud? And if you're a dud, you're not going to be a dud for somebody else. So let's just transition you out of the business, which is scary because we ask people to fire their clients within a week of working with us. But this client 80, 20 principle, this client is, is causing you 80 of your problems. But they only represent 10 of your client roster. Get Rid of them. Create the space for something new. It's about being strategically selfish in that respect.

And then the next bit, I suppose is understanding in the system why people buy.

Correct. And this is, this is, we kind of help this process for everybody working through it by breaking it down into four buckets. Really. This is where we do look at demographics. We look at your target market, a group of people or organizations that have existing networks of communication. So we can hijack those networks of communication. You know, if I'm going to serve dentists, that's quite a good target market. It's broad, but it's quite good. And don't forget, target market is where you target your marketing. It's not people that you exclusively work with. If I'm providing coaching services to dentists on getting more clients and plastic surgeon knocks on my door and says, hey, I hear you're doing great work with dentists, can you help me? My answer may well be yes, but I'm not targeting my marketing towards that group and that group at once. So we help people get very, very specific about their target market. Do you know where they are? Do you know where to find them? When you understand who they are? They're going to have a specific set of needs and desires which are particular to them. So a target market of dentists, you know, might be interested in customer acquisition. If you're also working with.

I don't know, online marketers, their, their idea of scale and ability to take in new customers will be completely different because one, one customer, one client can deal with 10,000 simultaneous clients and that would break the dentist business. So we have a clear understanding. Or if you're working with 65 year old empty nesters who have just retired and helping them live their best life, they're going to have a very, very, very different set of needs and desires to the new mother or new parents who are trying to apply for their first mortgage. So we can't be everything to everyone. So we understand their needs and desires and then we come up with a single biggest result that we can give those people, which is we, we encourage zero creativity in this. You know, typically if you're a coach, you're offering one of three things. Healthier, happier, wealthier. Yeah, really well, you know, get rich, get ripped and get laid. Those are the three traditional buckets. Don't overthink this with. There's no, there's. I help you get more clients, okay? Get more revenue. I hope you spend less money. I help you lose weight, okay? That's it. It has to be understood by everybody. You're not.

I, I think that's what I love about book yourself solid is it is the best example of itself and I think by you going after the verticals that even telegraphs that even more. The next part is develop a personal brand and getting that right. How do you approach that? Particularly I suppose thinking for coaches and consultants.

You again our approach to this is, is very unsophisticated because people are very good at over complicating personal brand and they think that it means logos and color schemes which is a marketing exercise. But it's not your personal brand. Your personal brand is, is what you do and who you do it for. And are you able to communicate that so you can't jump forward to the personal brand because until you understand who your target market is and the single biggest result that you're getting them, you can't have the. The two mandatory components of a personal brand that we need and put yourself solid. Two mandatory components are a who and do what statement. So I help coaches get more clients. It's as simple as that. It's not who I am or what I do, it's who my target market is and what I give them.

Yeah.

I help, you know, firefighters bench press more is a great clear example that's it's that simple. If you can't talk about it in a way that a 5 year old and an 85 year old understands, you've got it wrong.

Yeah.

We help implement strategic stakeholder solutions for better synergy across borders is a terrible example of a personal brand statement.

Right. How about this then? I, I feel like I can get some consulting here at Systemology we help business owners take a guilt free holiday. Yeah.

It's beautiful. Fantastic. You know what, what are you giving them more time?

Yeah.

Give you time back? Yeah. Take. Take time off a business, you know, remove it. We help business owners remove themselves from the business. It's beautiful.

Yeah.

And it, and it speaks directly to a very clear desire or need from your target market. What do all business owners have in common? Spinning too many plates, not being able to take time off.

Yep. Love it. And then the next bit like we're getting hyper clear who we're targeting, who will come into the business. What is the problem that we're solving. We're articulating that. And then talk about what you do. Like that's the next step which is kind of then is that wrapping the story around this and how do you communicate this?

It's about easy. Well it's A couple of things. It's about ease of referability. So if we can't talk about what we do, clearly don't expect anybody else to do that. Coach. Yeah, very few coaches. I mean the vast majority of working job in coaches and I don't have statistics to back this up. I've just got 15 years of experience of working with coaches are not looking to grow million dollar businesses. They're looking to have a roster of clients. Which means if you only need 20 clients, which is probably way more than your average coach, if you only need 20 clients, you don't need to have a database of 40, 000 names.

Yeah.

So a lot of business will come from happy customers who've passed your red velvet road policy talking about a great experience that they had with.

Yeah.

So we, we also encourage people to talk about it in a way that stimulates conversation because it's a missed opportunity all the time. Let's say I go on holiday and.

I, I don't know, I bump into someone and they say, and I say what do you do for a living? And they say oh, I'm an insurance broker.

Great.

That's pretty much the end of the conversation. Yeah, but I'm on a family holiday and I meet a guy by the pool or a lady by the pool and I say what do you do for a living? And, and they say well I see you're here on holiday with your kids. And I say yeah, I'm here with my kids. Well what I do is I make sure that if anything happens to people like you, then the kids at college fund is paid. And I'm like, oh yeah, well that sounds interesting. Why don't you tell me a little bit more about that. And what have they done? They've just given the target market and the single biggest result. So what do you do for. I'm a business coach. Yeah, everyone's got preconceptions about labels, David. You know, I've worked with some good coaches and some bad coaches. You tell me you're a business coach. I'm going to color that with my own prejudice. You tell me you're a policeman. I either love policemen for the great work they do in the neighborhood or I hate policemen for whatever reason, you know, or a lawyer. I'm a lawyer. Great. Well, you know, my ex wife's lawyer took all my money, you might say, or. But what you haven't told me is that you're a human rights lawyer who helps re home underage refugees, you know. Yeah, well that's a Completely different story. Why don't you tell me the story of your business? So if you're a business coach, don't say, I'm a business coach. You say, well, I help people like you. I don't know. Let's say you're a sports coach. Oh, well, I help teenage basketball players jump two inches higher.

Well, that's interesting for the right person. Oh, well, that's fascinating. So tell me a bit about that. And then I'm thinking about all the people I know who've got teenage kids who play basketball, and I want to talk to them about the conversation I've just had with you. So that's how we talk, what we do. And we don't say, I find strategic solutions for stakeholder synergy, for example.

Yeah, it kind of rolls in very well to the next step around credibility and likability. Because I kind of feel like, I mean, each one really dovetails on to the next piece. So how does this fit into the picture?

Likability is, is a very, very simple exercise that we can do every day. How did I score on making people feel good today? That's it, you know, because there are plenty of. And again, it's subjective. There's some people we're meant to serve and others not so much. We don't want you to become a doormat. We just want to increase the likelihood that people will or. Or take down the barriers to people being able to do business with you. So if you answer your emails to a prospect with, you know, bad spelling and. And no punctuation, then for some people, that might be a barrier. If you show up at a networking event with your nose hair all unkempt and, you know, yesterday's coffee stains down your shirt might be the best coach in the world, but that is going to prevent people from doing business with you. If I give you my email address and it's juicy tushy.com you're going to make a snap judgment on my credibility. If I come to your website and it's difficult to navigate. These are just small things. It's almost like a checklist. Are you still using business cards? Great. You know, maybe you need business cards, but did you print them yourself on your home printer?

What?

You know, you. If you don't look like you invest in yourself, it. Even if it's just having a haircut, don't be surprised if people don't invest in you. And very often, I can tell the likelihood of success in a new coach is based upon two things. How good are they at what we've just talked about communicating what they do without winded or confusing or boring or bland or even worse. When you say, what do you do? And so many coaches go, well, it's kind of complicated. Like, I'm not even interested. If you haven't worked it out, I don't care.

But also how, how much diligence do they take in how they show up in the world? Because it's, it's an unfair marketplace. We are not judged on our merits. We're judged on our merits. After we're judged on our initial presentation to the world, we make snap judgments about where we want to sit the minute we walk into a restaurant based upon who the other diners are at the table. That looks like he's going to be loud. They look like they're going to be drunk and rowdy. These people are having an argument between themselves. Unfortunately, it is human nature, like it or not. Sometimes you've got to put on a suit and tie or at least be. I use that metaphorically. At least be very deliberate about how you present yourself to the world. Very deliberate. So you might. That your look is long haired, dope, smoking hippie. That's fantastic. Cultivate that deliberately. Don't. Don't leave anything to charms.

Oh, hey, I know you're tuned in right now, so I'll keep this super quick, but you like awesome YouTube videos, don't you? Well, there's not really that many YouTube channels that create great content about how to systemize your small business. So I want to make sure that you catch every video that I publish. So if you haven't already, firstly give this video the thumbs up and then go ahead and subscribe to my channel. You can even hit the bell notification to make sure that you're the first to know when I publish anything. So go ahead, do it right now. I'll wait a sec, and then I'll transfer you back to the video.

Yeah, I love this whole idea. And it was mentioned a few times. It's. There's a system here and you're really optimizing it for your particular target audience so it speaks most cleanly and clearly to them. So they go, oh, that's me. And then you're ticking all the boxes that you know that they're looking for either consciously or subconsciously. So you kind of stacking the deck and making yourself a little bit of a magnet so that when that person sees you again, you might attract in people that are outside of that target audience and you might decide to work with them because they meet the other criteria. But for the right person, you're speaking right to them. And, you know, you build up case studies and stories showing that you've already worked with that person. So you're just further magnetizing those people. And in business, I mean, you get to choose, so you might as well choose great people to work with. Part of this, like if someone makes it to your door after getting attracted into the business through your marketing, then we kind of move into the next step, which is the sales cycle process, which is another chance for further filtering. How do you think about that part of the system?

The sales cycle is about allowing people to make investments that are right for them. So the example I frequently give is if I talk on stage.

Say I come to one of your mighty system builders conferences once upon a time, and I stand up on stage for 20 minutes and I give 20 minutes of my best bits, my best stuff, and I make a great impression. There's a pretty strong likelihood, at least it's happened, you know, more than a couple of times, that somebody will come out of the audience, shake my hand and say, that blew me away. I'd love to talk about working with you privately. And so what they've done is they've gone. And working with them privately will cost, you know, thousands and, and sometimes, you know, tens of thousands. And yet that person who's never met me before spent 20 minutes deciding that I might be a good fit for a personal coach for them. And then I'll go back to my hotel or even check my emails and somebody will send me an email that says, matthew, I've been on your list for eight years. I just want you to know I just bought a copy of your book. And that's fantastic. You know, both are wins. But it took 18 years of weekly correspondence or weekly awareness to spend $10 or $20 or whatever a book costs. And it took another person 20 minutes of consideration to spend $20,000. You know, which I think is indicative of the fact that rather than push people into a sales funnel, we should perpetually be allowing them to see what's on offer. So let's not hide it. You know, we don't have to hide everything behind opt ins. Welcome to my mailing list. I'd like to invite you to my always have something to invite people to offer. It's a free group format event. While you're there, if you're interested in how you can work with me, great. I've got a couple of offers. You can come and join my Group. You can join my workshop or we can talk together about working privately. If you say that every day, people are going to say, well that's interesting, tell me more. And all of a sudden you've been given permission to introduce these people to your sales cycle. Yeah, sales offers.

Yeah, that bit you mentioned, which is the next step also that keep in touch strategy. Because not everybody is going to be ready to buy now and different people will need to see different things and different people have different things going on in their lives. So sometimes they're ready, sometimes they're not. And I know a lot of people leave a lot on the table by not keeping in touch. How do you think about that?

I find it absolutely phenomenal. I have known organizations that have customer databases of half a million people that are not sending regular emails to their customers. And emails is one of the email is one of the greatest trust building selling tools that we have. Yes, we, you know, we should be keeping in touch with our prospects for sure because our prospects will be ready when they're ready. And it is part of our duty as sales professionals or business or business owners, maybe as coaches to increase desire for our services amongst the right people. You know, they've raised their hand for a reason. They've opted into your list because something about you or something that you're offering is attractive to them. What they've essentially said is I need your help, please help me. And if we refuse to help them, we're doing them and our business a disservice. So regular emails. I'm an absolute passionate advocate for sending human emails to our prospects. Human to human, if you're a coach, you are the figurehead of your organization. People want to get to know you. They want to get to know what's going on in your business and more importantly in your life. And you get to demonstrate that you get them and that you have solutions for them that's going to make their life more delightful, less difficult. They will be wealthier, healthier and wiser if they pay attention to you. And then we make appropriate sales offers in order that people can pick up and run with those when they want. But if we're not keeping in touch, don't be surprised. You know, I've been, I've been a more client's guide for a long time, particularly for coaches. And many people come to me because they don't have enough clients, they want more clients. And I will ask, well, you know, how many sales did you make this month? And they'll say, well, none. And so the next question will be, well, how many sales offers did you make? And they're like, well, you know, my cat got sick and I was distracted. I go, well, I think I see a correlation here. Let's just, let's email, let's send emails that delight and entertain and educate. I've got a course on emails called delightful emails and you can get that delightful emails dot com. But I have a philosophy around emails that it's very, very much a person to person business, particularly if you're a personality led business like most coaches are. There's a almost, it's almost criminal how easy it is to connect with your right people through the written word. And big disservice has been done to coaches over the years by telling us that we have to create valuable, actionable content and spit it out into the world every week. You know, coaches do not have to be publishing companies. I would argue that even in this age of content marketing, it's irrelevant for 90% of businesses. You do not have to be a public, you don't have to have a publishing arm in your one person business. But you do have to know how to communicate with people at scale, which is writing emails. Who can write an email? Every single person listening to this has sent an email today. That means you could have sent an email database today when you do it. Right?

Yeah, yep. I love that, that work also. I love work that you can do once and then you can reuse and get benefit from. I know that's the next step around information product strategy. Also. Anything where it's like work that you do once. Can you tell us a little bit about that step? Yeah.

Information products allow you to speed up the sales cycle and they, by the very nature of them, you know, information products have been around forever. When I was a kid, we used to go to the village center and there were two restaurants. One was a Chinese takeaway and one was an Indian takeaway because these were, this was the 1980s, the 1990s in rural England. They were the two options. There was a pub and a post office, a Chinese restaurant, which may have doubled as the fish and chip shop and an Indian restaurant, but we always lent towards the Chinese place because they had.

A takeout menu which they distributed to every single house in the village. And so it was, it was on the fridge with a fridge magnet. It was the Chinese take. So we get excited about it, we read their information product, which was a brochure and we were able to make a decision ahead of time. That's a very simple Example, do we have digital collateral out in the world that does the selling for us when we're not there? The other benefit, which is not the primary benefit, but could be depending on your business, is that you can sell your information products and you can deliver them at scale. So one of the questions coaches always have is, how can I scale? There's really three answers. One provided really good group coaching service that. That allows you to put tens, dozens, hundreds of people in the room at the same time. And I know a few people. You know a few people who are doing that? Yeah. Very, very well. That's an option. It requires a certain approach, but it can be learned. Or you can hire the right people to run it. The other way you can scale a coaching business is by employing more coaches, and all of a sudden you're running a coaching agency.

Many, not most, many coaches I know choose the coaching life because they don't want to be CEOs, they don't want to have staff.

That's certainly one of my motivations. You know, I don't love. I love working with smart people collaboratively. I don't love being in charge of their payroll.

I can't. Yeah.

Can't deal with the responsibility, frankly enough time taking care of myself. I don't want to worry about anyone else. But also, I'm not very good at it. But the third one, of course, is that you package up your knowledge. And remember, we still believe that information is free, but you can certainly put your spin on information, how to. How to approach things, how I did, what I've done, how you can learn from others. A book is a great information product. It will sell for you while you're sleeping. You can charge for it, but it will also endear people to your organization or a course or a PDF. And you can, you know, essentially you're learning a new skill set because you're going from working with 20 clients to working with potentially unlimited clients. But of course, each client. What do you need? You need a little bit of customer support so you don't have to. A new client signs you for a coaching engagement that might be 20 hours, 200 clients buy your ebook, 20 minutes. Yeah, we love products.

Yeah.

But they're not. They're not mandatory.

But.

But it's really important that your message can spread without you being in the room at the time. And information products in the form of books, literature, essays, even videos. You know, there's a big crossover between marketing and information products.

Yeah, yeah. I'm keen to get through all of the steps Are you okay if we go a little bit longer?

I'm here for you, ace.

Well, the next, the next one is the perfect pricing. Can you tell us a little bit about that?

Yes. So this was one of the ones, this is one of the chapters that was rewritten for in, in. I mean, all of the chapters were rewritten, but this one was completely turned upside down for the coach's book. Yeah, so. Because, because if, like I said earlier, if you're a roofer, you're offering, you know, far fewer options than if you're a coach who could do group coaching, bundled coaching, retainer coaching, information, product coaching, workshop coaching.

When it comes to pricing, we would always encourage a coach to reverse engineer from their nut. Their nut is their, you know, monthly minimum because pricing is elastic because there are business coaches out there who are charging a hundred dollars an hour and there are business coaches out there who are charging $9,000 an hour. Whoever hires that $9,000 an hour coach values them at more than $9,000 an hour or they wouldn't be making that purchase. It's horses for courses. So where do you begin?

It's, it's a tough one because pricing is also, there's a lot of emotional baggage attached with pricing. If you're a new coach and you haven't done your reps and you haven't come from money or, you know, you haven't been used to charging clients in a corporate environment, tens, twenties, hundreds of thousands of dollars for an engagement, you're probably going to start too low and it's not going to serve you. Because if you are charging 50 bucks an hour, you're going to run out of hours in the day and there will be less, there'll be more month and money. So we reverse engineer. So let's say that your nut is $20,000 a month. Well, very simply, we could work with, you know, 10 retainer clients at $2,000 a month. Well, that's a pricing approach that makes everything very, very, very simple. Thank you. Now all I need to do is go out and find those 10 clients. Can you find 10 clients? Yes, you can. You can find 10 clients. Can you find 10 people who, who you can charge $2,000 a month? Almost certainly. Unless you've done something wrong in the previous steps, unless you haven't worked on your credibility builders, unless you're the wrong person for this target market, unless you don't understand their needs and desires, you don't live in their world. But if you do all of that right, you can charge what you want, maybe you're a coach who charges a hundred thousand dollars a year for, for an engagement. Great. Do you know where you have to go to find those clients? Well, if not, maybe you shouldn't be charging a hundred thousand dollars a year for an engagement. So pricing is, is a, is a tricky one. But if you can break it down into units of inventory, even though as coaches we tend not to have inventory, it becomes much clearer and easy for us and it prevents us from. You know, they say when any new business starts because the founder is scrappy and you just want to get the business on board, we tend to rule by exception. So this Guy wants a 20% discount. Can we give it to them? Yeah, yeah, give us them. This client wants to completely renegotiate the terms. Can we do that for them? Yeah, yeah, we can do it. Let's just get the business on board. This client wants us to build a website along with their marketing coaching. Even though we're not website builders. Can we do it? Yeah, we'll work it out. And that is actually really dangerous later on because that's the opposite of having systems. Right. So I was to just begin as you mean to go on. We're always going to be a bit scrappy in the beginning. Our red velvet rope policy is going to be a bit looser in the beginning. But if you can move to systematized approach to pricing, which is here's my price list. Yeah, no, there's my price list. No, no, you can't have that. No, no, that's another deal. Then we're doing ourselves, we're doing ourselves a favor.

And the more that you use that red velvet policy, the more that you can tailor your system and going to work well for that target audience and you're optimizing for them, which means you get them a better result, they're happier clients, which means you can command more. So it all kind of feeds in on itself. I mean the whole process is really simple and straightforward. Again, another sign of a great system, the next step is the super simple selling, which again, once you stack the deck correctly, you don't need to be fancy because it's obvious the value that you deliver. So how do you approach this? Particularly for coaches and consultants, super simple.

Selling serves two purposes. Firstly, it's a four step system. A script that you have, the other party doesn't have a script. So it's a framework rather than a script is probably correct. So when you, when you do meet someone and it's appropriate to talk about your services you know exactly what to say. But secondly, it solves one of the biggest problems that coaches and other personality led businesses have, which is actually getting into sales conversations. In the first place. You'll be at a networking event or you'll be at a cocktail party or meet someone, you just, you really want to work with them, you like them, you know that you can help them, but you're getting on so well. You don't want to change the nature of the relationship by saying, hey, give me your money and let's do some work together. So this solves that problem by allowing. It's almost like a Jedi mind trick that allow. That encourages the other person to ask you about your products and services. And it goes like this. The first question is, what do you want within context? Oh, you're a chiropractor, what do you want for your business? What are you working towards? And they'll tell you, oh, you know, I'd like to open a couple of new offices and I'd like to employ some associates and maybe I've got an empty room, I'd like to put a massage therapist in there and say, okay, great, that's fantastic. Why, why is that important to you? And you're asking them to future pace. This is, you're painting the picture of what life will look like when they've got the, ah, well, you know, I'd like to step back from the business. I'd like to spend more time with my young family. I'd like to go on better vacations. Yeah, I can see how growing the business will give you that. You might say, so what do you want and why? Or what are you working towards? Or you know, what are your goals? Some variation of that. And then if appropriate, that you're a person that can help them with. And you say, well look, have you ever, have you ever thought about getting some help with that? Or would you like somebody to help you with that? And the answer will either be yes, no or maybe. And if it's no, you go, great. Well, you know, I do, I do a lot of that kind of work. So if that ever changes, let's talk. I'd love to help you. And you've just planted a seed. And if they say, well maybe, you say, well, you know, I do that kind of work. Do you want to, do you want to explore? And they will either say yes, no or maybe. But we've given people that maybe will be, well, it depends how much it costs, so on, so forth. So the four questions are, what do you want why is that important for you? Would you like some help with that? And would you like that help to come from me? Those are the four questions. And even if you're at a cocktail party, it'll. They basically say, if you say, would you like that person to be me? The chances are they're either going to say, well, it depends, how much does it cost? And all of a sudden you're talking about your product or your. Or your offer, or they're going to say, yeah, I'd like to explore that. Shall we schedule another time? In which case you have an agreement to talk about your services at a later date and it just works like gangbusters. I've known, I've known. A real estate coach in New York used that as her only source of new business. She would go to real estate professional meetings, training courses, conferences, networking events, cocktail parties. And she just. A good day for her was having that conversation with five strangers. She booked herself solid in no time. You cannot do it unless you've got your target market and the single biggest result, you get them in place. Unless you've done the work on the foundation, you can't have that conversation in good faith.

Yeah, at this point, I think you've built a really rock solid foundation. Now it is just about projecting this and getting this message out in front of that target audience as much as possible. And there's a series of systems, of course, that meets that, the first being networking strategy, which sounds like what the New York real estate agents start with. And I think networking's great. So how do you suggest coaches use networking?

So we've got to. Yeah, you're right, we've got to. The final level of book yourself solid, you know, the boss level of book yourself solid, which is sell the six core self promotion strategies or the marketing strategies, for want of a better word. Now book yourself solid. Course, we believe that marketing doesn't get you clients, it just creates awareness about what you do.

Yes.

What you. That awareness that counts. So that's when we convert people. Marketing. Come and check out my red velvet rope policy. Oh, now you're in the system.

Networking is a funny one because, yes, networking is about going to networking events, if you like. But at book Yourself Solid, we have a very specific definition of networking and really, really important.

When we talk about the first three marketing strategies, networking, direct outreach and referrals, we're not always talking. In fact, we're not often talking about doing these activities with prospective clients. Yeah, we're talking about building strategic relationships. So we have three Currencies at play when it comes to business development. We have cash, money, hard currency. We can buy ads, we can buy customers. We can acquire a customer for a certain amount of dollars. We have time, effort, sweat equity, which is what a lot of coaches start with when they haven't got much money. They'll create a lot of content. They'll spend hours creating content. And, and. But if you've also got relationships like.

Relationship capital, that makes your money and your time go a lot further. If you've got a relationship with the host of a networking event that's filled with potential referral partners, industry bigwigs, publishers, journalists, people who can get your message, people who can amplify your message. Let's say a great strategic relationship is with somebody who can directly or indirectly amplify your message. A journalist, a conference host, even the local librarian who might give you a library talk slot once every month.

Of course, you know, famous people who will write about you, JV partners who will mail their list for you. These all count. Networking is maintaining those relationships. And I do 15 minutes of networking minimum every day by sending text messages to people who are important to me. And it might be three or four people. So long, long and short of it. And I can talk about this for days. And if you go to my site, matthewkimberly.com my, my download guide, my free guide, is all about managing relationships. We want to drop a list of 90 people who we like, who like us, who we have a strong enough relationship with that we can send them a text message and it won't be weird. And we make sure that those relationships don't go cold. We say, happy birthday. Say, how's your mother? We invite them out for coffee. We send them congratulatory notes when they do good things. And we, you know, send them postcards, gifts. We maintain those relationships because one day, inevitably, we might need to ask for help. And we're not asking for help until we absolutely feel that we need to. Could you introduce me to this person? Could you do me a favor? Oh, I see you're hosting event. Is there any chance I could sponsor a booth or. Matthew, you can. You can have 15 minutes on stage for free. Don't worry about it. It'll be a pleasure. Things like that happen every single day in my world because I've spent 15 years nurturing relationships. And sometimes I'm, you know, I've got more than 90 people in my list, closer to 400. And sometimes I'm really good at it, and sometimes I just drop the ball. Geographical distance counts for a lot, David. I dropped the ball with you for sure. You know, we should have, we should have been in more regular context. Shame on me. Shame on you that we weren't. Right. But you did. You know, we have done the important thing now, which is reach out. Say even though it's been a couple of years, can we talk? The answer is always yeah. Yes. Right. Don't ever be afraid to manage those relationship. You might say, I don't know, 90 people, I don't even know nine people. Move on to direct outreach, which is not calling. You can cold call by all means, if you want to. As a coach, I wouldn't recommend it, but this is not about adding new prospects to the pipeline. This is about adding new strategic relationships to your Rolodex. If you don't know a journalist, follow them on Twitter, comment on their articles, subscribe to their newspaper.

Send them notes to say thanks very much, go to sit in the audience, in the front row where they're talking about things. Pay for access to people. You want to get to know David pay to join his group. You want to get to know Matthew Pay to have him as a coach for a few months. You know, these are shortcuts. Often asking for introductions can help. David, you know some great people in Australia. I'm going to be down there for a few weeks. Can you introduce me? I like to think you'd say yes. Yeah. So that's direct outreach and then referrals is exactly what it sounds like. And we have a system for referrals which is asking for business from not only previous customers or not only existing customers, but pretty much anyone that we meet, you know. Well, you know, if you, if you happen to know anybody, here's what you can tell them. So networking, direct outreach and referrals are all about strengthening our support network. That's precisely what it is. Coming a valuable member of a support network for others and thereby as a side effect, strengthening our own support network.

Yeah. The other strategy that you've got for getting the word out is the speaking strategy, which I think for a lot of coaches and consultants, it's, it's definitely a skill really worth developing just because oftentimes you want to craft and hone your message and get really great at projecting that. What particular strategies do you have to. To grow that area?

So put yourself solid doesn't really go into how to be a great speaker. We do talk a lot about how to structure a speaking gig. It's more about how to get the opportunities so if you want to be a great speaker. Michael Port now is running an organization called Heroic Public Speaking. And to my mind is one of the better programs in the world where it comes to actually being a performer, being someone who gets invited back to speak a second time. Because that's the critical thing. Right. You might get your first speaking gig, but if, if you bomb it, you might not get a second chance. So the danger, and I'm gonna, I'm gonna address speaking and writing under the same umbrella here because you're either the danger that a lot of coaches do is they preach to the choir.

Yeah.

Or they, they sermonize only to their own congregation. And back in the day, this used to be the curse of blogging. You'd set up a website, you'd create a ton of content, but it was only being read by the same hundred people every week. So that's your platform. I would say that if you're going to create 20 articles, you're far better. Or if you want to do speaking gigs, are you doing them to your own audience or are you doing them to other people's audiences? If you're writing articles or thought leader pieces, are you writing them on your own platform or are you writing them on other people's platforms? And this is where I would leverage the relationships that we've already built to say, you know, if, if a hundred people have enjoyed my article on how to lose weight in 2025.

There'S probably another hundred thousand people who would be interested in reading it if only I can find them. So.

Marketing and lead generation, using either speaking or writing or indeed web based strategies, is about thinking strategically. Lead generation is not.

Part of the keep in touch sales cycle. Trust building, credibility building, experience that comes after you generated the lead. This is about getting fresh leads into the system.

Yeah.

And many people forget that. If I'm going to spend 20 hours a week on web based marketing, which is the third one, what am I doing? Well, I hope I'm being very strategic about encouraging whatever the consumer of the web property, whether it's a video or a social media play or an Instagram reel.

Whatever I've done, I hope I'm encouraging the consumer of that video article experience to maintain a relationship with me. And I think a lot of people forget that. They think if I'm prolific then the rest will they invest deeply in an Instagram strategy without asking how can I get this person off that platform and into my system? So whether we're speaking, writing or doing web based stuff, probably other people's platforms and that can include aggregators like social media sites, Instagram and LinkedIn. If you know, you know, if you know how to go beyond your own limited group of people who are reading your stuff, that can work. You got to do one of them, at least one of them. And because so much has changed over, you know, since the first edition of the book, there is a huge crossover between speaking and writing and web. They, they are pretty the same thing. But I've also seen plenty of coaches either take bad advice or just be a little bit fearful and think that if they spend, you know, three hours a day commenting on other people's LinkedIn posts, then they will build up sufficient trust and credibility to make a sales offer. I've very rarely seen it work like that.

Yeah, yeah. I love strategies where you can do one task and it will tick a whole bunch of boxes. And I think.

Getting speaking gigs and having it recorded and then repurposing the heck out of that and pulling the ideas out and using that to help with your writing strategy and feeding it into the website and using it to help build your credibility and likability like and help with your keep in touch strategy. It's all about. There are certain strategies. You look at this as one big system and then there are components where you're like, oh, now that I understand this is a key piece, I can do this one thing and it helps to tick all of these boxes for me, they're oftentimes some of the really best places to focus.

With. You know, you've been around the book yourself, solid system for years now and now we're focusing in on the coaches and consultants. I think you mentioned pricing was one of the big ones that changed. But are there any other ones that you just go, other than the case studies and specific examples, are there any bits that you felt, hey, this.

There is significant change that needs to be made here or did you find, hey, it really just works, you just have to apply it.

The latter, it really works. You have to apply it. Part of the reason, I believe is because when Michael wrote the book back in 2006, he was a coach. He was a fulfilling gyms. He worked with, with gym owners, fitness center owners in Manhattan, help them bring new clients through the door. And that's how the system was developed. So he came to it from a coaching perspective. So that was useful. You know, he wasn't an E commerce store and book yourself it is for service businesses. You know, it's not for E commerce. Although many of the principles will apply.

No. And you know, if you are a coach who once read book yourself solid, have listened to this and thought, ah, I should revisit it. Revisit the new version. It's the most relevant version. If you're a coach who knows book yourself solid inside out because you read the book at some point in the past, I would say you probably don't need to buy the new book if you're already confident with the system.

Yeah.

But if you're, you're new to it, get the by all means. Or if you need a refresher, get the new book by all means. But if you're already a book yourself solid expert, the new book will not teach you any new expertise. You will just look at it through a slightly different lens because it's a.

Collection of systems and many, some of the systems you might, you know, run once a year, you revisit your velvet rope policy and you think about who that target audience is. Some of the other systems are going to run on faster cycles. You might be sending out your weekly email or you might be putting out a couple of blog posts a month, or, you know, you're doing the outreach. So certain systems elements here, I think they're so ripe for tuning and getting into a process and potentially even I know it's all about coaches and consultants, but half of these things also many coaches and consultants might operate solo, but if you've got a virtual assistant, like, once it's a system and a process, like, I just feel like this is something that should be running all the time. So I know it's definitely worth revisiting. Yes, there's a bit of work to making this happen, but it's all process driven. And once it's in place, I mean, it delivers on the promise, which is to book yourself solid, which then gets you focusing. Which the problem with a lot of coaches and consultants is they generally only think about their next customer when their last customer ends and it's this feast or famine. But marketing takes time. You want people sitting in the hopper ready to go, so when that space hops and opens up, people are ready to jump in and you're ready to go straight away because there can be lead time. You talked about earlier, like someone sitting maybe on your newsletter for eight years until they're ready. Like some people will require longer than others. So it's just the whole approach for me fits incredibly well with the way that we think about business and, you know, whether it's coach or consultant, but really probably 80% of the principles we talked about right now, if not more apply to any business and every business. So yeah, I love your work. Always have appreciate the insight into the new book. I know people can grab it on Amazon. So we'll pop all the links in there if people want to keep an eye on you. I know. Matthewkimberly.com I'll pop a link through to there. Is there anywhere else? Like where are you most active if people want to keep an eye on you?

On my emails, my emails is the best place to go. Instagram, I forget about. I like it. LinkedIn is always a. I'll implement that system next week. But get on my mailing list and you won't regret it. It's where I have the most fun.

Yeah. Rock and roll. Well, thank you again for your time.

Thank you for having me.