Stop Undervaluing Yourself | How Pricing Reflects Confidence

Are you charging too little because you're scared to believe in what you offer? You might think low prices help more people, but they actually make people doubt your product. Your price tells people how powerful your offer is and how powerful they can be. In this interview with Jonathan J. Cronkronstadt at my mastermind group, he shares how Kajabi grew from a small team to a $2 billion company. He explains how they didn't even touch pricing for years, and that was a huge mistake. He teaches that your price should match the value you bring. If your product helps someone make $100,000, charging $10 makes it look fake. He also talks about how recognizing your customers, like sending them a t-shirt, helped Kajabi bring in more customers than paid ads. That simple idea added hundreds of millions of dollars to the business. If you want people to believe in what you sell, you have to believe in it first. And that starts with your price. And if you make it all the way to the end of this video, put a hashtag #believe in the comments below and we might feature you here. In a future video. Great. Well, I have a distinct honor to have Jay Cron here to give us some wisdom. He is the former president of Kajabi. So could you guys use Kajabi? Yeah. You know of Kajabi at least? So he built it to—

And I promise you some people did have a course that did well. So I mean, there is no doubt about it. That was the most unintentionally awkward intro, like, and the Kajabi guy who helped you spend Take money and make none. Awesome. The platform did just cross over $9 billion in GMV, so that's what our user base has sold through the platform, so someone somewhere is making money, I promise.

Jonathan didn't start the company, but he joined— how big was it when you joined?

I joined 3 times, so I met— The real time. Met Kenny 6 months after the founding of the company and consulted with them for 6 months. They fired me at a Starbucks to start working with Frank Kern. They then hired me back 2 years later as VP of Biz Dev to help with product launches. I quit 2 days after that at the same Starbucks to take the CEO role at Digital Marketer. We stayed friends. I rented an office from them and then joined as partner and president in 2016. Company was doing about $6 million in ARR, which is annual recurring revenue. SaaS has a lot of metrics and acronyms. And 25 team members. And then 5 years later, north of $100 million in ARR, 400 team members, and a $2 billion valuation with a whole lot of private equity people.

There you go. That's the story. So this is our mastermind group. Everybody here, they're entrepreneurs.

Thank you all for having me, by the way. I always am extremely appreciative and honored to be in rooms like this. I've loved it. It's been a huge part of my life. So when Evan asked me to be here, I was like, man, I just hope I can serve and deliver some value. So we'll see if it works out.

He wrote an awesome book, Billion Dollar Bullseye. I have a little bit of PTSD now with this book. I did not expect this to be a good book. Not because of J. Cronin.

A true friend always stabs you in the front, and that's why I appreciate Evan. Like, you will hear a story of— I was sitting next to Evan in Joe Polis's Genius Network, and he's like, oh, what are you working on? What are you exploring right now? I'm like, you know, I'm just kind of getting really intrigued with this renaissance of home services businesses. And Evan proceeds to give me the, like, mentor pimp hand back slap of, that is the most private equity-based answer you could possibly offer. Where is the purpose in that? And I literally wrote it down in my notebook, quoted him, put a box around it, and I'm like, OK, this entire weekend was worth the mental reset. Thank you, Evan.

There you go. I think I said it in a nice way, but maybe not. It could have been— it could have been—

No, no, it was very harsh.

OK, well, you're welcome. I get a lot of books from people who are ex-CEOs, entrepreneurs, et cetera. And most of them are just okay. Most of them are like average, mediocre, suck. And it's not that they're not smart people. I'm sure if you were going to hang out with them and ask questions, you'd be able to pull a lot from it. I think they just don't know how to put it into a book that makes sense. It ends up being very just motivational, and just okay. And then when you read it, like, what am I reading? More like bubble gum. And so that's what I was expecting, not because of J.Cron, just because that's what I usually get from people. And I was so shocked at the book and how practical it was, at least to me in my business, that the book, almost every page is dog-eared, and I can grab it and show you guys later. But this is way too pristine to be my copy. Like, literally every page is dog-eared with things underlined and highlighted. I'm gonna ask him a couple questions selfishly for me that hopefully are helpful for you as well, and then we'll have some time to do Q&A as well. I wanna start with pricing. So a big section of this book is pricing, and you say often that people get pricing wrong, and it should be priced off of value, not just off of the cost, which, you know, that makes sense. We kinda know that, but like, how do we actually price off of value? And in our groups here, so we have the mastermind group. This is our highest-level group. We have a Movie Makers program that's our group underneath this. And I have my software company that we've talked a little bit about, Runlytics, to help you do YouTube split testing on your thumbnails and titles. And right now I'm figuring out how do I price this thing.

So my question would be, when you think of the transformative outcome your software offers, what are the economics around it? What does it do for a business? What is the possible impact it can have?

You had a great example in the book that I highlighted and I was gonna ask you, but obviously now I don't know where it is. About Facebook ads and about testing Facebook ads. And there was the analogies around like if somebody spends $10,000 on Facebook ads but like you don't know if it's working or not.

So for us, we were setting $1 million a month on fire for ads that don't work, which is a shame because every million dollars helps, and we probably would have gotten more traffic had we just lit $1 million on fire on a YouTube video. So that was a mistake that we made that didn't work out well for us. But ultimately in pricing, and we have this at Kajabi, like, I mean, everyone's like, you got to a $2 billion valuation, you must have figured this out. Well, I mean, our pricing was extremely scientific. It's a process many of you have probably utilized. You know, it's called rectal extraction. And it was one where that was our pricing for literally the first 5 or 6 years of the company. And we never revisited it at all. And this is the number one most impactful lever in any business, in any business, because all of you today, could probably double whatever you are charging for, you will not lose half of your customers. So you will lose half of your headaches, but you will make the same dollars. And it's really something where pricing, just nobody touches it because, oh, we set it, it's working, let's leave it alone. So to the point Evan was talking about pricing strategies, there's this idea of pricing based on value, that if I'm giving you something that is enabling you to make an extra $100,000, $500,000, $1 million, and I'm giving it to you for $10 a month, that's not really economical for me or for you because number one, you're not gonna believe that my thing can deliver that level of value when I'm charging for it at a level that I paid for my iced matcha latte, whatever, this morning with coconut milk. So it's something where if you're not pricing in a way that communicates value, they're not going to confer the value on whatever it is you're selling. And if you're not pricing from a business owner's perspective based on the value that you are delivering in that business, you're missing out on this giant delta of dollars that are available for you, which allows you to build better products, serve people in more meaningful ways. Like, you're not serving anybody by keeping something cheaper than it should be. It just doesn't ever work that way. And what is the quote? That which is achieved too easily is esteemed too lightly. Pricing's a huge lever. And so when I look at your software, there's going to be a lot of different ways, and especially in software, a lot of levers. So you have the ability to price based on how many thumbnails the split tests are generating. You have the ability to price based on viewership increases. I mean, you can price based on any metric that you have the ability to measure, manage, and apply in an automated fashion. So if you have the ability to say, I'm delivering X, well, then you can price it at Y very, very easily. Now, this also gets into the type of business you want to build because If you're going to price based on value, you're going to have to have a consultative sales conversation, because I'm going to need to take you through the process of, well, where are you? Here's where I believe I can take you. Here's the value that's going to be captured, and here's the portion of that that I want. That's harder to do on an automated basis. So in SaaS, that normally means sales motion and individual contracts. Now, in your case, you're probably going to be more in a self-service sales process. Unlocking that value is going to be in those expansion elements of your pricing where if they're doing how many split tests or how many thumbnails in each split test, is it 3, 5, 10 thumbnails that you're rotating through, and tiering those features that as they're unlocking more value from the software, they're paying you more for access to that.

We don't necessarily need to have a self-service. Movement Makers Mastermind is not. It's a $12,000 to $50,000 investment depending on what you're doing. And so Tony's part of that, Brittany's part of that. We have account management. We've got Ida in-house, Mary in-house. So people who are on our team where we've built out not just a here's a course and go watch it, but we have support around this. It could be whatever we want it to be. That's been part of the opportunity and also just the struggle is that I also don't even need to release it as software. It's cool for me. It's cool for my friends. They're using it. —some of the biggest channels in thought leadership.

You remember when you started— when you had your laptop out and you were showing this software, I was like, dear God, please let me market this. I mean, the software is just going to print money. So it could be whatever we want, which is awesome.

And also, OK, we've got to pick where we're going.

Well, so if we're going to wax poetic about if it were mine, what I would do with it, you've got the software playbook, which is you can release this thing, scale it up like crazy. You've got the channel that is all of the proof for it, and you can exit it for a bunch of money. Or the other opportunity that you could also exit for a bunch of money that's a little bit different is you make this your secret sauce, that this becomes something that is more of an accelerator or incubator for channels or other businesses so that, you know, very similar to like Renaissance Technology. He just passed away. He's the most successful investor of all time, has returned I think 53% compounded annually for like 30 years. I mean, literally makes Warren Buffett look like he didn't show up for work. And it worked so well that he basically kicked out everybody else's money and only managed his own. So if you've got something that is that good, that game-changing, that systematically improving assets, well then you should never make it available as a service for anybody. You should only apply it to projects that you're equity-based participant in and then just blow those up and exit them all day long.

So using your framework, so Billion Dollar Bullseye goes through, what is it, 12 circles? 7 circles, perfect. The first one is purpose, and then it goes profit, and then it goes product. And so if I run it through there, purpose is number 1, and so why— What is your purpose? I want to spread more belief in the world. I think the number 1 problem in the world is people don't believe themselves enough. The genesis of what I do, I started my YouTube channel trying to help entrepreneurs believe in themselves more. As a result of featuring some of the people that I have, Then I develop relationships with them where they ask me to help them with their YouTube channel. I say, okay, cool. So I'm helping mine, but I'm also helping some of these top people build their YouTube channels. And they may not listen to me, but they'll listen to these people. So collectively we're all spreading, you know, more belief in the world. And then why start Movement Makers and Mastermind? Well, because everybody here has a positive message too. And if now I have my channel, I'm helping some of the biggest names in the world, and I can help train up the next generation. Everybody here is spreading believe in a different way, which allows me to hit my mission more than I could do by myself.

So then your purpose answers it in a very nicely encapsulated way, that this software becomes your front door, that this is the easy, most scalable, most systemizable way to give people superpowers, that you are going to give people the opportunity to believe in themselves in a way that they couldn't without the software because you're automating and improving them aggregating attention, which is the hardest part about being a new YouTuber. So if you can reduce the friction from them getting from publish to belief, you've achieved the first part of your purpose. And that gives you a much broader reach to then elevate people into the different mastermind groups that are going to help them continue to grow their business and expand their impact. And so yeah, I think it has to be a broad-based software with gigantic adoption.

That was the decision to make it public versus just me and my friends. Whether it ends up getting people in the mastermind or not is not really— it hasn't really been a factor. Well, you won't be able to stop it.

You're kind of giving people superpowers. Yeah. They're going to want to know what to do with the attention afterwards. They're going to want to know how to build businesses around it, how to continue to expand it. I mean, it's—

you won't be able to stop it. So back to pricing. It's like, what's the value of split testing? It really depends on how much of a business they have around it.

Your value-based pricing is probably going to be tiered on usage. So how many split tests are they running on how many videos and building layers. So if you look at somebody who's just starting, what are the most impactful things that will give them the momentum and capability to get to the next level where they're scaling. And now they've got a bigger channel, more videos, and that person is then going to move to where they're going to need more seats because now they've got a team that's doing all of this for them. So you probably have sort of your solopreneur, your scaling entrepreneur, and then your leadership-level entrepreneur where you've got usage metrics and then you've got per-seat metrics. How many people in the team are accessing this to do a thing? But again, pricing-wise today, I mean, you'd be hard-pressed to find an iPhone app that you really like that's not trying to get $9 a month. And I think this would easily be $49 to $99 a month for the lowest tier. I don't think I'd look at anything lower than that, and possibly even higher depending on how quickly it delivers results.

Yeah, so right now it's $97 a month, or whatever that is times 10, $970 for the year. But that was a flat pricing, not— it's already meant for teams and scale.

That's way too cheap for teams and scale. Like when you look at somebody who drops $1.2 million on a studio before they even know the outcome of their channel, they need to give you more than $97 a month for the superpowers you're going to give them.

That's why we have J.Cron here.

And it is one of those things. I cannot advocate for it enough when your business gets to a place of maturity where you can hire all of the crazy quants that are going to come in with their tables and spreadsheets and cohort interviews and pricing strategy discussions. They're amazing. They're brain-busting, but it's one of those things that I love leaving that to professionals because they will apply a level of rigor that just, you know, entrepreneurs like us won't. Let's talk about launch.

So you had some pretty successful campaigns with Kajabi, both in doing affiliate deals with people who may not have been top affiliates, but just your clients who are super successful using Kajabi. Hey, can you refer us some clients? Plus your hero program where you'd be giving people t-shirts and hats and swag and just showing off that they're using the tool, the program. What advice would you give me for launching Brand Linux?

So my favorite launch format that I will give credit to Andy Jenkins, it was when we were trying to figure out how to simplify talking about product releases. I like the order of opportunity, education, ownership experience, next step. So I would be building your thinking through, and however it's displayed, whether it's a sales letter, whether it's a video series, however you build the sales pieces of it, you're ultimately going to show the opportunity. You know, YouTube is the second biggest search engine in the world. It's only getting bigger. We're watching mainstream media die. It is all going to you as the individual. So you are establishing the opportunity. The education is who is winning in this new world. Well, the people that are winning are the people that have mastered packaging and presentation. Your Tucker Carlson example is a perfect case study of no following, still won. Gigantic following, lost to this because of packaging and presentation. And now the ownership experience is going to be your friends that have used this thing to improve their packaging and presentation. So I used Evan's magic thing. This is what happened in my business. How cool is that? And then buy now. So I would tell you that I would launch it that way.

Going to rename it Evan's Magic Thing.

You could go— I mean, it was funny. In my head, I was thinking Evan's Magic Box. And I was like, oh, that's probably even worse. But then I went with Evan's Magic Thing, which probably was worse than that. There's no doubt about it. All of the options were bad. All of them. Because I mean, I had Evan's magic, and then I needed a noun. Obviously you all went where I was going. The easiest way to remember it is OE OE and then next step, but ownership, opportunity, education, ownership experience, do this. So it's, it's a really easy process. It can be applied to almost anything. And I think for you, you know, you've got the benefit of all of the proof, like you are the proof. Like it's like this works. I built this so that you can do what I do because I know that I will be living my purpose if you're doing what I'm doing. And ultimately it comes down to giving them superpowers. You know, your, your job is to give them a big undeniable technology wizard that they can assign all of their insecurities and all of their uncertainties and all of the things that are going to stop them from pushing publish. You're going to remove that from them and let them put it over here. Cool. I missed over your, your other one about the recognition side of things. Sure. Yeah. So one of the things that we at Kajabi stumbled upon, and I tell everybody when they ask, you know, quantify how important about how important this was to your business. Well, I mean, at a $2 billion valuation, the campaign I'm about to share with you is a $670 million enterprise value addition to the business. So back in 2016, we were talking about how lonely online entrepreneurship is. And it's a lot of screen time, it's a lot of telling people you're building a business, they're telling you nobody makes money online, and it's a whole thing. So we wanted to show up for online entrepreneurs in a way that was a little bit different. So we literally, the moment you had sold $1,000 on Kajabi, we sent you a t-shirt. And at the time Kenny just kind of was like, yeah, let's call it Kajabi Hero. I'm like, oh, that's brilliant. That might turn into something. So #KajabiHero on a t-shirt went out in the mail. And all of a sudden these t-shirts start showing up in our Facebook group and they start showing up in our social feeds. And then, you know, people are like, oh my gosh, Kajabi sent me a t-shirt, check this out, how cool. And we started thinking like, wow, this is really neat. Like people are totally digging being recognized. So we started adding some levels. You know, we had a hat and a sweatshirt, like it kind kind of started going. But what ended up happening was it gave us earned and owned media that we didn't necessarily have to pay for. So we're now getting these impressions with people sharing all about us because we're recognizing them. And then we gave them the opportunity in our partner program. So this is what created this idea of recognition-driven revenue as a flywheel that just kept spinning faster and faster in our business because we send someone a t-shirt, They post and say, holy cow, I'm growing my business on this platform called Kajabi. Anyone who has ever taken an online course obviously knows they could teach an online course, probably should use Kajabi. So that person is now generating referrals to the platform, which allows us to recognize them even more because their business continues to grow. Then we mail them something even cooler. They post even more about that. That then allows us to then generate more referrals, which allows us to recognize them. And on and on and on. This spins faster and faster and faster. So if you're asking me how impactful that was in the business today, a decade later, it still accounts for over one-third of all new account additions every single day, every single month, every single year. And it comes with better unit economics, which is a fancy SaaS way of saying these are the ideal customers from how they behave on the platform, how long they stay, and what they do. So it's a better acquisition channel than paid, which again, we burned $1 million a month on paid. It was a huge unlock and still to this day represents the largest channel that we've got. And quite frankly, from just a human element, probably the coolest. Like, you know, I never got chills seeing somebody that came in through a Facebook ad, but man, you see somebody proudly wearing your brand, like, this is my business is working. This is why, because I got the t-shirt that says it is like, it's an amazing feeling. So if you are not building recognition into driving revenue in your business, it is a gigantic unlock. Napoleon Bonaparte said that had I enough colored ribbon, I would have taken over the world. Recognition is one of the most powerful forces on the planet. So huge advocate for that.

How do you think through the cost structure of that? So from what percentage you would give to affiliates to what you justify spending on a t-shirt, hat, and mail to the team managing all that, how do you think through the cost structure?

So for us, the affiliate program was when we look at our existing acquisition channels, what is the most that we could give away while retaining our profitability goals? Because ultimately, I, I come from the camp that I want to motivate affiliates as much as possible because what I know is those affiliates are going to do two things. They're going to give me direct performance, which is that last click that generates the sale, but they're also going to give me massive indirect performance, which is all of the awareness and all of the traffic and all of the impressions that they're not getting paid on because they didn't generate the click. So it is truly a massive lever in being able to motivate affiliates. We also love the idea of having commissions that would last for a very long time. It wasn't just a one-time thing. You know, we have people that are earning hundreds of thousands of dollars a year purely just on autopilot from Kajabi commissions. So we love the idea of extending the payment period. The profitability side, looking at your numbers, and this is where, you know, no numbers, no business. No numbers, no business. You know, the first two is N-O-N-O, and the second one is K-N-O-W-K-N-O-W. Your numbers are going to be really, really important. And this is one where you don't want to go off half-cocked. You don't want to build a recognition and referral program only to realize that you're losing money. So knowing what a customer is worth to you, Knowing how long they stay, knowing what you can invest in getting that customer. Those are all going to inform how you build your referral program and how you build your recognition program.

Your first kind of job was affiliate manager. Yep. A little bit. How would— what was the program you came up with? What is it now in terms of percentages?

So as an affiliate manager, normally industry standard in the info or education space was always 50%. Kajabi, we felt like that was a little bit aggressive being a software company with costs involved and, you know, things that get more expensive over time. We priced it at 30%, and that's a number that is still very exciting, but it's 20% less than most of the industry competition. We just didn't feel like we needed to go into the arms race of who's paying the most because for us, and this is another— thank you for bringing this up— it's another important nuance. We ran what's called a closed program. So you could not refer others to Kajabi unless you were a Kajabi user. We didn't really want any of the online marketing pirates that are just going to come in, jam a bunch of unqualified traffic, grab the commissions, and bounce. Really bad for a business, really bad for a brand. It's just not something you want to engage in. Open affiliate programs are, if you don't know what you're doing, are massive liabilities. So that's why we call it a referral program, because you couldn't refer if you weren't in it. And that's what allowed us to basically reduce it from 50% industry standard down to 30%. But like, you know, product launch back in the day was just standard, you know, 50%.

And so now it's 30% lifetime, first year? 30% lifetime. 30% lifetime.

Yep. And I would say that if I was doing it over again, I would probably test 30% for the year because then you recapture all those economics and you might have affiliate partners that are perfectly happy to get the year and don't need it to be ongoing. And if anything, I probably would say in retrospect, having some type of qualifier to continue to receive the commissions would be smart. Like, like, hey, you got to send 10 new customers a year to still qualify for lifetime commissions because unfortunately you end up unknowingly creating just an annuity income stream and someone's like, oh, Kajabi sent me half a million bucks this year, but I don't really need to post on it because they're going to send me half a million bucks next year. I mean, I get it. It's cool. But hey, say something nice about us. We just sent you half a million bucks.

Do you have a sense of what the hero program costs from a revenue percentage?

Honestly, I don't. I don't know today how much we're sending out. I mean, it's grown by leaps and bounds. And for us, I mean, we ran a very tight ship financially. So the t-shirt, hat, sweatshirt, I mean, the first iteration of the program was a rounding error for us. Lifetime value of a customer is fairly significant. So I mean, when you've got a 3 to 5 year average lifetime value for a customer, you can really invest in capturing them as long as you've got confidence in your math. So depending on the business model, I might apply a sharper pencil to figuring out how I would recognize them, but it's less about spending tons of money, 'cause everyone's like, oh yeah, it'd be great if I just sent out iPads, but that's just kind of a lazy way of doing it. Recognizing people thoughtfully is super cool, and it doesn't have to be expensive. Like the, you know, just send them something shiny, that's sort of like, I just don't have any creativity. So I would say that it will be different for every business, but all you're trying to generate is someone saying, wow, I never had a company show up for me that way. I can't wait to talk about it.

Cool. Well, I have a bunch of mental notes that I'm trying now not to forget. Desperately that at lunch I'll try to write down into my computer. But let's turn it over to the mastermind. So Markham, what do you got?

There's a course that we have on Kajabi. You've heard of Kajabi?

Allegedly. What's it called? We built it in 2018.

When we started this business, it was markhamrollins.com. It was just me. It's an 11-week course, really good quality video, 40 worksheets. I think it's 2.5 hours of video.

So did you put it together after you bought Brendan's Total Product Blueprint? Yes, 100%.

We watched that the summer of 2018.

Yeah, when you said you were a Brendan fan. So yeah, we joined his list. You've done a lot with Brendan. Brendan's an investor in Kajabi. Yep, yep, yep.

Talks about it big and it's a great platform. We love it. Our problem was we didn't have an email list. We had no followers. We had no one to buy it. We're at a point now where we've got followers, we have customers, we have interest, we have demand. We're thinking, do we need to redo the course with Jody and I together? And make it another, like an 8-week course or build little mini courses and add to that.

What's the name of the course?

Your Retirement Game Plan.

It's a really good name.

Or we skip over that and build a live community.

So, um, both. I fully disclaimed all of the opinions are my own. Uh, there's lots of opinions you will get from lots of people. I think so many people in this industry get so overwhelmed with the new thing being the only thing that works. Like, there's still billion-dollar companies that only use direct mail to sell Amish fireplaces. Like, this whole idea of like courses are dead, long live courses, you know, community's the only thing. They all work. It just depends on what you want to work on and what you will work best in. So if you love communities and you love the nurturing, care, feeding, all of that stuff, community's a great thing. Community could be a great bolt-on to the course. But, and you know, it's funny, I told Jody I wanted to sit down with you guys for lunch because like you not making money for the most well-heeled purchasing power generation that has tremendous pain is just sad. Like it breaks my heart. I would—

How much are you willing to spend to be our first member in our community?

Well, right now it sounds like it's not selling, so what's it selling for? No, I would actually say that this is the part where I kind of, go back to some first principles because I would want to understand what your audience really wants. And my guess is your audience wants the baby and doesn't want the labor pains. And your audience is probably not very well suited to digital education. They're already intimidated enough. They buy books, they probably listen to podcasts. My guess is they're not using AR, VR. They're not really digital education people. So to me, your business most naturally gravitates towards your retirement plan being some type of group coaching program with a Q&A element, maybe delivered through a community. But I don't know that a course is the vehicle I would go with for you unless you can tell me that your audience is looking to buy courses.

So if we think of community, which is where my head is right now, I don't know where Jody's is.

Well, but just, just to be clear though, my big objection with community is most communities are born out of marketers being lazy. Like, Communities exist because it's like, oh, this is how I find scale. Well, that's great, but if you're scaling something that isn't meant to scale or you're no longer delivering the transformative value prop that your people want, it's not gonna work. So it's like, ask me how many communities that are out there that are completely dead. Like, I mean, no engagement, no, it just becomes that thing where it's like, well, no, I'm already on Facebook and I'm already on Instagram. I don't need to live in another community. Unless your people are like that. Like, you look at millennials today, they're in like 700 Discord communities and they love it. Your people, I don't know. They're probably having a hard enough time logging into Facebook to look at grandkid photos. Like, you're gonna really ask them to dig into digital education? It's like, no, I'm smart, I have money, I grew up where I trusted everything my doctor told me, I did whatever the principal told me, I just want a coach that's gonna get on a call, spec out the plan with me, tell me what to do.

Follow up at lunch. I won't hog anymore.

Thank you. Just trying, Markham, to bring that to value to everybody. The foundational principle that I will always start with is you are going to try to change your market's buying criteria, but ultimately you will be subject to your market's buying criteria. So I'm one that lets go with the trend rather than try and educate or change them. Like my rule is if someone wants to give you money, your first rule is you should take it. So like, I come from that perspective where it's like, tell me about your customer and the psychographics and how they buy before you tell me the tool that you want to apply to try and build a business around it.

[Speaker] It's good to have both you guys up there for this question. So with YouTube, you have access to free videos all the time, right? And then Kajabi, the revenue model that I see is you pay for education. So when does it make sense to give every single thing you got on YouTube just as free as, and you told me, right? And one-on-one, you gotta care more than anyone else to help the client that you're working with versus a Kajabi model where I understand the value of people paying for things because they actually want to do them. But, and, and I don't wanna make myself my target customer cuz I don't want to, I don't do anything in Kajabi or I don't do anything more than 3, 3 courses or something like 3 lessons. I just want to move on to the next thing. So, so what, how do you guys both look at this where, when does it make sense to educate and charge versus giving it all away on YouTube?

I've got a framework for this and I'm trying to remember because it's new, but it's 4 C's. The first is customization. It's like you get, if I, if I'm joining your program, if we use Markham and Jody as an example, it's all this content they're making. They're giving 25 tips for everything, all that, it's like tons of content, but if I'm gonna join your program, I get it customized to me. So in the backend, I get a, I have a path. You can do it through a quiz or whatever, but I have a customized path, right? The second is convenience. So it's all, it's all in one spot as opposed to me having to go through 4,000 hours of YouTube content, right? People will pay for convenience. The people who value their time more than money will pay for convenience. We do it all the time. People who value their money more than time will sift through 4,000 YouTube videos. Why are they joining your course or whatever we're selling? Because it's a convenient path for them to do it. The third is community. So YouTube is not a community. YouTube's not social media. I don't know why YouTube gets lumped into social media. It's not very social. There's comments, but most of the activity is not— you don't like go to YouTube video and then instantly leave a comment on a video. There's no way to direct message people on YouTube. It's like it's not really social media. Here we have a community. This is the Mastermind community. Just by everybody being here, you already assume something about each other that you're hopefully a good person. Evan collects good people, hopefully. We're going to learn about YouTube. We're going to learn about business. This is an assumption just being in this community already. So you're creating the community. And then the last part is coaching. And so you're going to get access to somebody. So what Jay Crown was suggesting with Markham to be able to do this coaching program, or hey, I listen to my doctors, I'm gonna listen to Dr. Markham giving me my prescription for what to do in retirement. Those things don't exist in a public content world, and so you can use that as your free point to get people in, and the ones who care about those 4 C's will then come in and want to buy your program. That's how I would see it.

Yeah, I completely agree, and I think that viewing your business through his 4 C's framework of where you can add those and what that points to, Yeah, I'm in full support of it. One of the foundational principles of why Kajabi exists is that if you don't own your audience, you don't own your business. And all of the platforms that social media, you know, social media and YouTube, 'cause YouTube's not social, all of them have complete control and they're all very opinionated. And I know so many people that get deplatformed for random reasons. If my life and business was dependent on a platform, I would have been deplatformed countless times, countless times, because I mean, I say stupid shit all the time. So it's one of those things where I would say to me, the magic in the platform is aggregating audience and attention to move them to a universe that you own and control. And all of the platforms in my worldview exist for that reason. I think that the ad revenue is a bonus, but it's never a business. And ultimately that ad revenue will only always benefit them. Like the creator economy is looking for a way to not have the fate of the music business thrust upon it, which is just watching platforms get extremely rich, raping and pillaging creators that are the only ones driving the actual value. Because if no one was posting videos, YouTube is worthless. So I think that it's a thing where you will continue to see platforms do their best to give enough to keep people on them. But if you want to build a business that is yours, you have to find a way to get that audience and attention to a universe where you're not at risk. Got it.

So even Kajabi, it doesn't— you're not driving it to Kajabi, you're getting it in your platform, yourself, your— Totally.

And I'm not, you know, don't get me wrong, there's a lot of amazing tools out there. I happen to love Kajabi, but I mean, it can be as simple as getting them to an email list. It can be in like in your case, you know, knowing your business. You're going to use all of this to aggregate attention, which is then going to be filtered down to would they like to invest with you. So I mean, you don't need a Kajabi, but you do need something that's gonna grab emails. You need something that's gonna grab mobile numbers. You need something that is gradually moving them into a place where you are selling in a vacuum. Because selling on YouTube is really hard. Like even if you're really good, because there's 37 cat pictures and gymnast stunts and things on fire and thumbnails of people sticking their tongues out at me that are all optimized because of this super cool software that lets you split test thumbnails. Like, it's a very distracted environment. So it's not the place where you want to try and get somebody's attention for long-form content that matters necessarily. If it's a sales message, like, I think that longer videos, you know, view times are off the charts on them. But no, I think it's all aggregating audience and attention, moving them to an area where you can offer them the 4 Cs that Evan's talking about. Would it be helpful if I gave everyone the 90-second primer on what the book is and why it exists? Yes. It might be helpful. We should start there. So the book is called Billion Dollar Bullseye: Grow as Big as You Want, as Fast as You Want, and Exit, if You Want, on Your Terms. And the reason the book exists is because I believe that there is something missing from every business philosophy, and it is this idea that I would term aligned leverage. It is that all of these areas of a business, these core areas of focus, if achieved in order, you're going to watch each of these areas of the business improve all of the other areas of the business. So it becomes an exponential equation. So if you think about it in linear math, if I take 2 to the power of 7, it's 168, I think. If I remove one of those doublings, so let's say I remove promotion from my 7 Ps, the most successful I can be is 64 because I have a 1 where a 2 should be. And I think that this is an area where most businesses view it in terms of these silos, like, well, is my marketing working? Yes. Is my customer experience working? Yes. Well, how is your customer experience improving your marketing and how is your marketing improving your customer experience? That's where the magic comes from. So the 7 Ps are purpose, profit, product. Those are your core 3. If you don't have them, you don't have a business. Then we get into the amplifiers, which is prestige, customer experience, promotion, your marketing. Persuasion, your sales, and people, which are the people that drive all of those systems. And yes, people in my equation and in my world come last, not because I don't like people, but because it is the hardest part of any business to systemize, build predictably, hire right. And if you hire wrong, it doesn't really matter, payroll's still running on time. So people for me is the hardest thing. I actually think like, and I mean, I love Dan Sullivan, I think he's brilliant, but the title Who Not How To me is an entrepreneurial crack addiction of I want to abdicate, not delegate, because if I just hire people, my business will be magical. Ask anybody who's overhired and they will tell you how quickly it drove them into the poorhouse or bankruptcy. Like, it just doesn't work that way. People don't work that way. So that's where the 7 Ps come in. And that's kind of how the framework works, is approaching them in order of operations and then hopefully getting orders of magnitude out of watching them all play together.

Nicely.

Yeah, I read that book and probably why I might have a problem.

It's my same problem with EOS, by the way. Like EOS is the same entrepreneurial crack addiction of like I get to be a dysfunctional visionary and just outsource all of it to other people and I'm just going to navel-gaze and be really rich. Yeah, good luck.

I love the example you gave yesterday on people and this is kind of where I am when I read the first chapter on purpose. My personal purpose is dead on. I know exactly what I want, what I want to do. The people that I've hired, I've done all these personality tests and what's their why. And now I'm trying to please 25+ people. Oh, isn't that the worst? And the example you gave of the culture saying that you shouldn't do this kind of upselling and you kind of went with it. So now that I'm here in this place, and I'm an open people pleaser. You said you're a closet people pleaser. I'm like, it impacts me emotionally. So like, now I'm here, I've got 25 people that I've been trying to please, which you can't please them, right? And everyone has a different purpose. Like, they're not in line.

Your success will always be proportionate to your comfort in making others uncomfortable. The guy that honestly said this best, it's the shortest book you'll ever read, and it is the one that is the greatest. If there is only one executive book that anyone should read, it is Frank Slootman's "Amp It Up." Frank Slootman is the Michael Jordan of software CEOs, and the book is basically, you gotta understand, being a CEO is a confrontational job. Your job every day is to wake up and make everyone around you uncomfortable. They need to work harder, they need to work faster, they need to do more. and your job is to make sure it happens. So you're not going to be popular. Now, when you look at my book and the framework on purpose, that's why this idea of purposing in public is so important, because if you are not using purpose as a pull mechanism to get people into your company where they are raising their hand and saying, I want to serve who you serve, they have no desire to work harder because it's just work. So it's give me a check, leave me alone, and you run around trying to make them all happy, and it's terrible. And the way that I look at purpose, which is a little bit nuanced, there's your internal purpose and your external purpose. Your internal purpose is why are you doing all of this crazy stuff and taking all of this risk? And in my world, internal purpose doesn't need to be Instagram-worthy. Like, you can just say, I just want to get really rich. And that's okay. Like, you don't have to have anything flowery. You don't have to have anything making the world better. If you do that, it's super awesome. And when you find businesses that intersect with doing good and, you know, being able to have that level of impact, amazing things happen. Like, I got in business to get rich. I never realized the fulfillment and excitement I would get seeing entrepreneurship blossom for people all over the world and changing lives through a platform. So like my internal purpose grew. Then the external purpose is pretty simple. That is all about your customer. What is the transformative impact for your customer? That's the external purpose of a business that you need to evangelize. But you'll notice what is entirely absent from that is all of this groupthink around company culture and aligning people and, you know, bringing in political ambitions or agendas and letting that get in the way of you serving your customer. Because if you're running around trying to make employees happy, you certainly aren't ever going to make your customers happy. And your employees aren't paying your bills, you're paying theirs. It's just not cool. It doesn't work that way. It's one of those where if you have your clarity of purpose and you have employees that are making sure that their purpose or priority is more important than the purpose for your customers, they have to go. And you know they have to go, you're just waiting. And you're waiting and waiting until it gets so unbelievably painful that you have no choice but to let them go. Better yet, they screw up so badly that they see their own way out. But it's not gonna work. All right.

Anybody watching this is going to think I'm a plant for the next question I ask because I want to toss you a softball. I have experience in terms of building a 10-figure business in terms of a faceless company, and now I am focusing on building my own personal brand. So in some ways I'm like, I'm a grizzled veteran and just a wide-eyed rookie, and it's a very different thing from there. So in terms of the coaching and thought leadership, It's gonna be the whole deal, you know, it's the one-on-one coaching, it's the group coaching, it's the community, it's the weekly Zoom, all the stuff that we all know. Why should I use Kajabi for all that as opposed to maybe Circle or School or Mighty? I think there may be others, but if we're gonna look at that four, so somebody that wants to kind of do, and you don't want it to be spread and you wanna have it as consolidated and easy as possible. So maybe speak to, obviously you're a, you know, Kajabi fan. Why would it be great for that? And if you're so kind to speak about maybe some of the other platforms and what they do pretty well as well, comparatively. Totally.

So I would say that unless you like managing technology, Kajabi is the best choice because we require no integrations. Everything is connected out of the box, all in one, and it is going to make your life far easier. Our record for an entrepreneur coming from WordPress to us was 85%. 4 separate plugins they were using to run their business, all separate upgrade cycles, things breaking, not knowing what broke. Kajabi exists because we believe wholeheartedly that the technology is not that important, and we all make technology so important. Like, it, if anything, it's almost like our ultimate procrastination thing because it's acceptable to hide in research mode of judging every platform. And like, I'll never forget it because You know, Kajabi, we've got opinions. Some of them are right, some of them may not be. But when somebody walks up to me at an event, you know, who's obviously a fancy marketer of sorts, like, "Oh, I don't use Kajabi." Well, really, why? "Well, because I mean, I can't multivariate split test a page with 72 variables with a Taguchi methodology." And I'm like, "I know what all those words mean too, but how much have you sold online?" "I'm still working on that page." Of course you are, because you don't know 72 variables and you don't even have enough traffic to test 72 variables. So just sell something and then let me know how it goes. Like this business gets so overcomplicated because we move into areas that are not our strength and then we hide there because it's comfortable. If we're still choosing different platforms, we don't actually have to use a platform and put ourselves out there. So technology overwhelm is the number one reason Kajabi exists. We believe it should all exist all in the same place, all connected out of the box so that you can leverage marketing automation, you can leverage marketing automation with your content, with your courses, with your coaching. With your community, all of that. Now, as it relates to the other platforms, there's a lot of platforms that are doing great stuff. Skool's doing great stuff. Circle's doing great stuff. I actually view all of them as, quite frankly, discovery mechanisms for Kajabi, because people are gonna build stuff and then they're gonna get tired of trying to connect an email autoresponder, or trying to connect the community platform to the course platform, or I'm not getting the robustness for my course. Out of a community platform because you sometimes can't be the best at everything. But I would also say that in many ways, the other courses are evident of this industry continuing to grow, which is exciting. We believe that a rising tide raises all ships, and that is super encouraging. So the more players that are in this space, the more ways that people can find out about how transformative technology can be, and they can build businesses that they care about. So I think it's all good things. But yeah, Circle's great, school's great. You won't find me really talking any platforms except for one that they heard about at dinner last night, which I require two bottles of wine to tell you about. Shout out to Bradley. But it is one of those things where ultimately all I care about is that you are protecting momentum in your business because that is far more valuable than whatever platform you choose. That if you are on something that allows you to do what you do faster and more often, your business will grow. And I think so many of us believe that the platform is the magic when the person's the magic, not the platform. This is so much fun. Yeah, it's cool. I just think with a 4-and-a-half-year-old daughter, you don't really get to exercise your business brain a lot. So like, this is really great for me. I appreciate it, guys.

Now you got Eddie. So let's see what happens here.

Come on, Eddie. What does that mean? Here we go. Yeah. No, no, no. I mean, it's been fun. Like, I'm trying, like, in the best way to get to know everybody and like, I'm just like, What do you do? And they're like, well, I'm on YouTube. And like, there's this moment where they're like, well, have you seen my channel? I'm like, probably not, because I'm not on there a lot. But, you know, by the way, he just started his Instagram.

I'm on the plane trying to tag him in the book. It's like, dude, what's your— I can't find you on Instagram. He's like, yeah, I was like, oh, I don't have one. Like, what do you mean you don't have one? I'm reading your book and it talks about living your purpose publicly. And I'm trying to tag you on Instagram. And then to his credit, on the airplane, then he texts back, like, okay, I set it up. So his IG is thejcron. If you go find him, he's got, I don't know, a couple followers.

You, I follow you. We're each—

That's it. I'm his first follower and he's followed anyway.

Now, social media for me is a mixed bag. I am a big believer that social is more media and not social. And I think that its current iterations in many ways, and YouTube is entirely exempt from this, I think YouTube is transformational. But if you look at Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, I cannot think of a single area of life that has been more destructive, wreaking havoc on human beings than that. Like, we are now trained to swipe through life seconds at a time. We can't focus on anything. I won't even get into what it does to, you know, the suicide rates of girls in high school. And it's just like, I hide from it. I only use it when it's like, if that's the only way that I can impact people, I will do it. But I do it with a, man, I really don't want to be on here. But if that's where the world is and that's how you want to impact them, you got to do it. Eddie. Just a quick question on pricing. So, like, let's say rolling out a service or community or something along those lines. So I understand that there's trial and error, but do you have any insights you can provide around the process of testing so it feels less like throwing, you know, trying to hit targets in the dark? I would say look at anybody that's offering something similar that you know it's working well for them and then iterate off of of it. So if you see a community that has a similar value proposition, looking at how they price and package is a great starting point. And normally one of my favorite things actually is Facebook ad library, because if you look at people that are running ads, you can see how long the ads have been running, which would give you a very good indication of if those ads are working successfully. So it's a really nice hack to be like, oh, this is working and the messaging has been running for a long time. So it means, you know, Unless the person is unaware of how ads work, but it's very rare. So I mean, I would say model what's out there and then iterate from there. The other one that works surprisingly well, and I mean, I, man, when people told me they were running the split test, I always thought it was goofy as hell, but the split test of letting people pay what they want, like it works really, really shockingly well. So it could be something where if, you know, to Evan's point, like, If you're driven by that purpose element of, of I want this in the world more than I want to find the perfect price discrimination strategy, let people pay what they want because the people that really value you will pay more than you would ever ask them for. And the people that don't really value you will still be guilted into paying for something because they're getting value and enjoying it. So it's another way to kind of like open it up of just price what you want, see what the trend is, and then maybe that becomes your floor. One of the things I appreciate the most about Evan is he has lovingly challenged me in a lot of ways, and I think that it's something that, you know, despite my personal fears of social media, it is where the world is, and if you want to impact the world, you got to be where the world is. So it's certainly something that Evan has challenged me quite a bit this weekend and done so masterfully, and it's appreciated.

And listen, worst case is you at least need an account to recognize your champions. So even if you never post content or you just post about the book, 3 posts or whatever, and it just lives there, if somebody is trying to share the book, you can at least say thank you so that you know that it's happening. You're 100% right.

That is, and that quite frankly, it's a failure on my part. Like, I mean, you know, when people post about my book and I don't even show up to say thank you, it's kind of rude.

Well, because you didn't even know. At least, you know, if you knew, then you have the chance to be rude. If you didn't know, then it's just ignorance.

I would never be rude to you. I would never speak to you the way you speak.

Well, maybe not me, but there could be— How can we support you with the book?

You know, I really appreciate it. This book for me, and I'll share this in case it helps anyone in the room, there is nothing that will trigger your imposter syndrome more aggressively than something that will permanently live out there in the world that your children may someday find and it is a harrowing, harrowing experience. So just people reading it and saying it didn't suck is hugely valuable and appreciated for me. To Evan's point, I have sort of been wandering through this second season for me. You know, we talked about it at Genius this past couple of days, but when you leave the thing that you do, it gets real weird and it's like, who am I when I'm not doing the thing I used to do? And Chip Conley said it best, you know, if you don't know who you are, you will become what you do. And that's actually totally fine and a very helpful and effective delusion until you stop doing what you do. And then all of a sudden, all of the nothingness comes in and you're like, whoa. So I would say that for me, this next season is going to be one where I find second-stage SaaS founders. And for me, second-stage SaaS founders are $5 to $10 million in ARR, and they're normally people that built that company because they had a passion or proficiency that allowed them to scale quickly, but that after $10 million on your way to $100 million, that passion or proficiency will become your purgatory or punishment. And my goal would be to be impactful, important, but not on an org chart. So finding a couple of companies that I'm passionate about, because it's not going to be home services companies, that would be something that I'm very excited. So if you ever come across a software entrepreneur that you think should have my book, tell me, I will send them a free copy. I'm definitely not excited about book royalties. So, uh, just knowing that it's out there in the world and in the hands of software entrepreneurs that I could help, that's it.

So Jake Ron's going to come do some business breakdowns.

So business breakdowns are simple. This is, is literally all your time. So we can dive into any topics that are exciting for you. Um, I love business models. Uh, my favorite, favorite thing is figuring out how to get maximum money out of whatever whatever model that you have. The magic's always in the math, which is, you know, kind of not exciting but fun for me. But ultimately, your time here to surf, however I can help.

The reason that I'm, I'm here as part of this group is not because of the businesses I've had that I'm looking to go from 1 to 2 or 5 to 10, but where I'm at currently at a 0 to 1 place. So I also just want to put this—

you're in luck because I do know a lot about the business you're about to start, so Rather than breaking it down, if you'd like a business build up, we can do that too.

I am a grizzled veteran and a wide-eyed rookie, and so I'm stepping into that piece of it. And what I'm looking to build for myself, I've supported and built successfully for others, for teams. But now that I'm the product, it's like, it's a whole different way of approaching it and like getting out of my own way.

So let's dive in. What's your business?

What do you do? It's coaching. One-on-one coaching, group coaching, community, empowerment, inspiration. Okay, that's elements of what you deliver qualitatively.

Yes. A channel or technology that you will deliver it through. I have no idea what I'm buying from you.

I know, man, it's the craziest thing that I have the hardest time explaining it so simply.

Okay, maybe let's try the outcome. After I work with you, what do I get?

You get connected to the source of your power, reconnected to your divinity, and you have the tools to transcend any difficult circumstance you experience in your life. Wow.

Money-back guarantee, guaranteed. Were I to wake up in the morning and decide I was excited about a transcendent experience and I wanted to buy one, what questions am I asking myself? What conversation's going on in my head? And maybe let me give you an example that would be helpful. Yeah. So the benefit of the benefit is all that matters. And right now you're sort of describing, you're expanding. I need to know why I should buy what I'm buying. And so like if someone were to say to me on a coaching call that, let's say I call a fitness consultant, 'cause I do often because I still want a way to do what I want to do and eat what I want to eat and drink a lot and look better. And so when I call them and they say, hey, J.Crew, "Hey, Brian, you wanna lose weight?" And I'm like, "Yep, wanna lose weight." And they're like, "Why?" And I'm like, "Oh, you know, live longer, be healthier." Okay, well that's the surface level, that's what I want. Well, the good coach is gonna be like, "Well, why do you wanna, you know, look better and live longer and whatever?" Like, "Oh, you know, I mean, I've got young kids and I wanna be around, I wanna be around for my wife and, you know, like that's important." Okay, well that's like level 2. The right coach is gonna get me to say, Yeah, I just really don't want a dad bod when I go to the pool, and I feel like I'm 1% in every area of my life but this one, and it's a huge source of insecurity for me. I know I could show up way differently if I looked differently. Like, do you see the difference in the 3 levels of this process? Yeah, totally. So we've got to take what you deliver and we have to package it in a way that it enters the conversation that's already going on in my mind.

So the conversation— a lot of the people that I work with they're stuck. So paralysis is a state of mind, and I help people become unparalyzed to their thoughts, to their mind, to their limiting beliefs. So a lot of it is mind work, and then it— that also is part of having logical spirituality.

Tell me about your life story. Like, why— where does this body of work come from? How did you arrive at it?

Yeah, so it came from 10,000+ hours of just doing the work, obviously going through my own experience of having lost everything. You know, I've— I lost the use of my legs, my family, my company. How did I get— I got— I had a spinal cord injury 7 years ago. I fell 40 feet in the middle of the desert, and I woke up in an ICU to a doctor telling me I was never going to walk again. My kids were 2 and 5 at the time. 3 months later, I closed my company. 4 months after that, I was divorced. And, uh, shortly after that, both of my parents died. I've watched everything in my life dissolve. Let me pause you there.

The only The only reason I'm gonna be jumping in and out with you is we don't have a lot of time, but by a show of hands, how many of you are already way more interested in his life, his product, and everything other than the flowery bullshit he started with? Okay, that's what you should be talking about. The first thing you said, don't ever say that. That's like the videos that like I just get mad when they're in my feed. Like it's just, it's all words and there's no deliverable. And that's where like, so I'm thinking for you we probably wanna go with something from like, from paralysis to prosperity, from paralysis to potential, from paralysis to profit. Like whatever areas you're helping people with, you kinda gotta do the, I've been here, I've been in this with you, I'm gonna put my arm around you and I'm gonna show you how I got out of it. But that's really where the story starts. I think whether you use paralysis in terms of physical, in terms of mental, this is an area that especially starting in your business, you want to go hyper-specific. Like, you cannot niche down far enough because if you start where you're celebrated, then you're gonna get to go where you're tolerated. But right now we gotta start you where it immediately resonates in a way that someone's just like, take my credit card.

I love this, and this has come to a kind of a choice point for me. Beyond the fact that I had this injury and everything I've learned from it, I've learned from— I wanted to do this before I was injured. This is the business I was working on before I was injured. So a lot of my experience comes beyond my injury. The videos of mine that have the most amount of views and the most amount of engagement, you don't even know I'm on a wheelchair. Like, I'm not speaking about that. It has to do with connection to spirit and soul. And let me challenge you on this.

And by the way, This is all worth amusement value only. You can disregard all of this if you, if you would like to, and you can disregard any of this. And some of it might be insensitive, packaged poorly, adequately disclaimed. Yeah. You not showing the wheelchair is probably something where you don't want that to be a differentiator because you don't want to be known for that. I'm telling you, it's one of your most powerful differentiators.

So, and I hear that, and this is the piece that I've been, I don't know, maybe struggled with because I'm not trying to hide it. And I've been through enough of this, 38 years off a chair, 7 years on. I've learned to zoom out. I can obviously see the world differently, but I'm aware that the world sees me differently.

I'm not saying you lead with it. And there's lots of people in this industry, many of whom you would know, that have manufactured stories that they've been told so many times that they even believe their own bullshit. So I'm not telling you to like lead with this in a disingenuous way, but I'm saying that you have a powerful story. You watched this entire room engage with it. You started with the flowery statement of not describing anything I'm going to get from you. When you told your story, I literally watched everyone lean in and look at you. Like, it's entirely different. So let's talk about the programs. So what's the current state of your audience? And what is their desired state?

And coming from the Zero to One, a lot of my content is about what I would call accessible or logical spirituality.

What's the take-home value? Like, I've gotta get you to the point where you're out of the how. So the how could be spirituality, the how could be anything, but all those are, are how it happens. But what do I get? What am I walking away with?

What I said earlier, this is the language I gotta get reformed. You're truly walking away with connection your power to create your life. You are walking away with the tools to break free from being a slave of your external circumstances. You're walking away knowing that no matter what happens to you, you have the capacity to transform that into fuel for whatever you're creating.

So what I'm going to recommend for you first is you need to read the book Snow Leopard. Uh, it's by Category Pirates. It's about how to become a one-of-one publishing category. But we need to really refine and define your lexicon in a way that you've got the deliverables, that it is encapsulated. Because if you take as long as you did in the first sentence, nobody will pay attention. So it's got to be, I help people with this via this in faster than you ever thought possible.

So if I broke it all the way down, it would be, I help able-bodied people become unparalyzed in their minds. Something of that. I mean, that's that clever, unparalyzed thing I was playing with, but it has to come down to the limiting beliefs, the getting out of, you know, that thing. But that one sentence to nail it all, it's so much easier for me to do what I do than to describe what I do. And I've done this. I've been doing it. I know I've seen the work. I've seen the transformation. But now that I'm marketing myself as the product, that's the part where I start to get squirrely.

So the funnel that I'm going to recommend for you, because right now you are gonna get way overwhelmed with, do I deliver this via community, do I deliver it via course, do I do like, how do I do this? I would say starting out, you're gonna go here. You got some form of landing page content, any element here, probably your YouTube channel. That you're going to drive to either— I, I don't like free because you're gonna get drilled with, you know, weird people. I think you got to have like a $97 offer here or something. And if you don't feel comfortable yet charging, do the $97 offer that's fully refundable if it's not the best experience ever. But that buys them a resource and it buys them a strategy session with with you. And in those strategy sessions, after you do 5 or 10 of them, you will know exactly what you should sell because your audience is going to tell you. And this is basically the— I'm learning and figuring out my business. I'm going to start with you, and then I am going to ask you what you got out of this interaction. And then beginning to package that, then you can say, okay, I now know my initial transformation is course. Or I know my initial transformation is coaching, but figuring out your customers and being able to package that in a take-home value prop is going to be critical. Thank you.

I love that. I do one-on-one coaching and that I want to expand to group, and I have a program already created, 13 modules, interviews, workshops, the whole spiel. So it's going through a rebranding process and then also have a low-ticket item of a free ebook and a workbook. So I got some pieces around and now it's just tying it all together. Also with like, I'm very much of a forest person. I've always built containers. And so I'm also thinking brand bigger than me and communities. People are asking for community. People are begging for community.

Just to clarify, you said that you were very beginning and if you've already got customers, you've already got coaching clients.

I surrendered to God. I said, you want me to work with somebody, bring them to me. And then that just happened. But now I'm actually taking the step to make it as a product and share it. So I've been validated in the market with who I've worked with, but it's all been below the radar. So I don't have a whole big string of coaching clients, but I've coached people. I— my course, I haven't made evergreen, but I've worked— walked through 50 people that have radical transformation. But I haven't commoditized my product yet.

Yeah, so I'm going to say category design first. That's going to clarify your language, your packaging, what you are, why you're differentiated, the point of view, the villains that you're against. It's the easiest framework in the world that I think somebody like you, it will really hone that thinking. After the category design exercise, you're going to want to test market the commercial application of your category because that's going to really help you see if it's resonating with your audience. The number one mistake I think people make is they build it thinking people will come, so they build the greatest course ever imaginable and then nobody buys it and nobody cares. So figuring out how to have little tests or little iterations of if what you're doing is resonating, if what you're selling is resonating, absolutely critical, 'cause those are the checkpoints along the way that are gonna validate it and give you those rabbit holes that you can then dive down and really expand the business. But I would say that for me, that's the first step. Is really clarifying your message, your value prop, and how it's packaged.

Thank you. My biggest thing is sequencing, you know, in terms of the holistic human brand, which is the overarching one.

You're in luck. The sequencing is: what's your purpose? What drives you? What drives your customer? Then we go to profit. What are the unit economics of what you're going to offer? How profitable is it? How do you scale it? And what does it look like scaled? Then your product. Your product is what you're delivering. Once you have those 3, you have a business. Then we're going to start optimizing your amplifiers. Prestige, which is customer service. Promotion, your marketing. Persuasion, your sales. And people, the people that you hire to run those systems.

You got this down. You should write a book.

Yeah, right. The most douchey, self-aggrandizing thing that I have still never gotten used to saying is, well, in my book, I like that opener for anything. I just cringe.

When I say it. Thanks for the time. This is great.

No, totally. And I think, again, I think this will be something where give yourself the gift of simplifying this and choose any framework you want, mine or anyone else's, but outsource the amount of creative energy you have into a container that can direct it into marketability and then reevaluate afterwards. Like, I think it's one of those things where Again, this industry as a whole, there's so many tools and so many ways and so many opportunities of how to engage. The easiest thing to do is pick one because it gives you the data that informs all the others.

Okay, the last question I'll ask is how much of that spectrum is this based on paralysis to prosperity becoming unparalyzed or whatnot as a message? Like, is that— it's seemingly you're saying that's a really important thing to incorporate.

This is me just going cavalier to try and take all of this the things you said and put it into something you can sell. This might be a terrible idea, very poorly thought out. But yeah, it's very much something that— that's why the category design exercise, you going through it personally, because what matters the most is that, you know, as we look at an AI-driven future, authenticity will be a huge currency. Like, it has to resonate with you in a way that this is you. So it's got to be that. You know, don't let the economics drive you. Let you drive the economics and go narrow enough that you can find the audience.

And that's what I've been doing, and the resonance has been there. The audience is resonating with the message, and now it's, you know, productizing it in a way that really nails it with the messaging. So totally cool. Thank you.

And then I just want to add what you shared with me yesterday with, you know, I throw my tragic story at you and being able to name it.

I was not sensitive.

Again, I'm just bad at it. But you said name it, name what you're doing. So, like, you have this almost paragraph about what you're doing. But like, come up with a name that it's called to be able to— that's what you're selling, right? And then the whole The other thing is, I haven't had a chance to talk to you personally, but I've been watching you and your strength and your presence is very obvious in how you navigate this non-accessible world, right? The way you got up the curb yesterday was— and without like getting pissed because there wasn't a ramp, right? Like you just sort of like, hey, somebody get behind me and lift me and I'll do the wheels. Videoing stuff like that as B-roll, I think would show power in some of those videos.

That for me as a pragmatic marketer, I don't try and create demand. I don't know that you can create demand. I would just prefer to find where the demand is and get in front of it.

I just wanted to add something to that. Being his account manager, we've kind of gone back and forth on this, and I think what will be super helpful for him Right now is Jay Cronje say, Aaron, this is the next thing you need to do, like now. He has this ton of, he had those videos on TikTok go viral and there is, it's like a million views right now where he was just spitting out his message and there's tons and tons of people writing like, oh my God, you saved my life. Oh my God, where can I find my people and all of that. And he needs to get them into an email thing, like on the strategic implementation phase.

To Ida's point, do you have a lead magnet?

I do, yeah. What is it? It's an ebook called "The Truth About Time." Cool. It's way cooler than you think it is.

I believe you, but this, and by the way, hopefully this is helpful for everybody because like this is where again, my like, you know, my non-artistry, like, croissant-focused guy of like how to sell a billion of these. The truth about time to you is very cool. To everyone in here, it's, what is that about?

Yeah, what happened, I, I've just been kind of throwing spaghetti at the wall, and then all of a sudden the dam's broke, and it was like, oh darn, I need to hurry up, and all the things on the board I need to to get going, so I was already in the process of the funnel and thing, but now it's like hyper speed of really getting zured in.

I just point, number one step, build the email list. Number one step. If you've got the world showing up at your door, if you're going viral, if you've got attention, that is perishable. Capture it as quickly as possible in as many ways as you can capture it.

I guess so a very specific question for that, beyond this sign up and get this book for your free email, Is there any suggestions of like the easiest, fastest, quickest exchange? Because I have an email and I have the list of to offer to get their emails. Is there something that top of the dome you would think is like anything?

Free download. Give me your email address. About time. No, a book about time could be amazing. Time and productivity, hugely important, giant category. How is it differentiated? You know, The Truth About Time could be a movie. The truth about time could be, I mean, I don't know what the truth should be 'cause I don't know what I've been lied to about. Like, it's one of those where it's just, again, encapsulating it into something that is actionable that I want immediately, that I get value from right now. That's the key.

That's really, that's the packaging of like, but it's really about learning to master your time. You can't master your time unless you know what time is. And so there's, it's around, I'd like to capitalize on that business time management piece, but then what you're getting is a little bit of an expanded awareness.

Well, and this is one of those things that it's going to come down to split testing. You know, if Truth About Time, you see people hit a page and your email list is growing, it's working. If you know it's better to rename it Effortless Effectiveness: The 7 Lies About Time That You've Been Told and How to Break Free from Them, maybe give that one a try. And, you know, just see what resonates. Right. But ultimately, first step, landing page, capturing emails, number one by far.

Got it.

I want to make a comment about something because based on everything that you were sharing, the only thing I can come up with in my mind is that you help people change and adapt quickly. So if I was going to work with you, I will be learning resiliency.

That's one of the words. Yeah, resiliency is huge.

That's a quick— and, and I will love, like, if I was going to hire you, even if it's through spiritual fancy words or time or everything, you are helping me to be resilient to anything that life throws at me so I can adapt quickly. And that comes with many components: emotional intelligence, time management, whatever you want, spiritual, whatever. But that's— I just wanted to share that with you.

I love that frame. Thank you. That's really what it comes down to, is that there is nothing that can ever take you out. You're greater than any challenge, you know, your capacity. And so that is that resilience. Yeah.

From paralysis to resilience. Yeah, absolutely. Like, I mean, the most important thing in any marketing campaign is the from to. That is all that matters. It is, I'm here, I want to be here. I don't want the labor pains. I just want the baby. How quickly can you get me to my desired outcome with as little work as possible? And it's why you see the buying habits change, that when you can't afford anything, you're going to start with the free content. When you have a little bit of money, you're going to not want to waste the time finding the free content. You're going to want the packaged and organized content. Then when you have more money, you're not even going to want to go through the content. You're just going to want to call the guy and be like, hey, what do I do? So you're going to see that happen. And building those paths intentionally in your business is really, really helpful, especially starting out. Hey, hey, Jay Cron, can I ask you a question?

Because this is something that I was always taught about his particular business model, is that a lot of times all the content we do want to focus on the what and the why, and we keep the how behind the paywall. Okay, so what and the why is what's most important to many people, and I think that's what you're talking about here. What is it and why is it going to help me? But the how, you can usually give a little bit, but it starts getting into the weeds. Where people are almost, you know, they really want the what it is and why. You put the how behind the paywall, that's when they're invested. Now they know how to do it. So what's your thoughts on that?

I actually bet you that in the vast majority of your businesses, you could make a video telling everyone every single secret you have on the how, they'll still buy, and they'll probably buy from you more. Because what people are buying oftentimes is not the actual how, Joe Polish told me very early on that one of the secrets of the world of marketing is that the world wants perceived progress. That what I'm buying from you, the how is the justification in my brain of I'm paying for this because I'm getting this. But ultimately what I'm buying is that I can put my head down on the pillow at night and feel like I took a shot. I moved my life forward. I took a step. Like, ask me how many courses I've bought that I've never gone through. The answer is an embarrassing number. Because what I wanted is I wanted to buy that progress. So I would tell you the how, and even keeping that back, I would say you can share everything you want. And there's an actual study of this in business. I forget the name of the effect, but you can literally go tell your competitor, this is exactly what I'm going to do. Won't change anything.

Have you ever watched a Mike Dillard webinar?

Oh yeah, tons. Oh, so like— Back in the magnetic sponsoring days.

He is the king of the what and the why, know, like if you watch a Mike Dillard webinar, you will literally feel inspired to buy and you will feel inspired and you'll feel like you actually know a lot more. When you get off that webinar, you don't know any more. You just know that you want what it is he has to offer.

Well, so the way people buy, like a tiny secret of how, like if you look at the way, like if you look at heat mapping on a sales page on a website, the way people buy is they look at the headline. Do I want what this promises? They then scroll all the way to the bottom and look at, can I afford this? And if the answer is yes here and yes here, they will then read the whole middle to make sure that you didn't give them a reason to not buy. But they've already made their buying decision because the promise is what matters. The price is what limits. And the rest of it is just really there to substantiate the thing between the two.

Jake, one more thing for Iran particularly. Do you think it would be helpful for him to now capture that audience into a free community, like right away?

So it depends on how your world operates. And this is where knowing your customer is so important. If you have a community, and my guess is the spiritually oriented people probably love interacting. It's like spiritually curious.

Like, my friends are in the 5D community. I don't need, they don't need me. There's the people that are saying, I don't know what's happening right now. I have nobody I'm having these experiences or these feelings and I'm confused. Like, it's the people that are just starting to kind of awaken to something greater, need some context and help.

And community to me needs to be differentiated as is it lead gen or is it a product? Am I, am I using this to get people or am I using this to get profit? Can it be both? Not in my opinion. You can have it in both places. But if you have one that is trying to serve both of them, I don't know that you'll do either of them well. Them well. So there's a great book called The Million Dollar Group Method. It is by— gosh, it might be Landon Smith, but it's about using Facebook groups as your initial engagement. So rather than a lead magnet or a download, it is why don't you just join my free Facebook community. For you, that might actually be a great way to have a captive audience where you can refine your content, have it grow virally, and have it be a very easy call to action on your content. But view that community as it will not be as effective as email, 'cause you're not selling in a vacuum, but it may be a place where you can begin driving people to interacting with them and them getting to know you more. But you will want a formula to elevate those people out of the group into a universe you own and control, preferably your email list. And if you want a paid community, you already have people that like communities, so you could then offer them access to a circle or a school or something like that.

Do you have any thoughts? I love the freemium to premium model. It's what my previous businesses were built on, having a free community. So it's a completely wide open funnel. And then in that world, that, that's your universe, your own. You start having the separate paywalls, the courses, the upgrades, the low tickets, the private groups within that. And then, but taking it off of Facebook, and that's the model feeling resonant to me. Do you have thoughts on that?

If it resonates with you, you will enjoy it. Like, I think Markham and I were talking about it. It's not about what you use. It's about where are you at your best and using that. It doesn't matter if email is better. If you are the absolute best at community, you're going to get the best out of community. So you've got to— it's more of a self-inventory of where do you show up best. But yes, I could totally see it, especially in that niche. I could easily see a free community growing virally, and it's at least better than leaving them in a content consumption universe like a TikTok. So I mean, if that resonates with you, it's a great way to start to get to know your customers more. But for me, and you have to understand, every model in this business works. The hard part about this is choosing the model that works for you. I gravitate towards high ticket. If you tell me you want a million-dollar-a-year business, I'm gonna ask you if you can sell one person something for a million dollars. If you can't, I'm gonna want to know how you can sell 10 people something for $100,000. If you can't, I'm gonna want to know how you can sell 100 people something for $10,000. But I'm probably not going to say I want you to sell 1,000 people a $1,000 course, because that's a lot harder in the early stages of business. It flat-out is. It's gonna be far easier for you to have one piece of engaging content that leads to a strategy session that leads to a high-ticket offering. That is the easiest funnel on the planet.

I want to do high-ticket, limited-number, closed-group mastermind that people really want to go deep with that. That's— and then, I mean, the really high-ticket is the one-on-one. So between that small group mastermind, a group coaching if you want to—

just to give you some freedom, if that's what you want, just build that. You don't need anything else. Literally just build that.

Thank you, Aaron. And let's put somebody else in the hot seat too so we can spread it around. Let's go, Shawna.

Okay, so we have the Health Professional Academy and we help health coaches go from zero income, zero impact to six and multiple six figures with their soul satisfying practices without burning out.

Heck yes. Amazing USP, perfectly encapsulated. I know exactly what you do. Awesome. Aaron. That was awesome.

It's not my first time. And so context, background, I was a medical doctor for 25 years, then I became a health coach to get out ahead of it. I struggled like crazy. I knew how to help people be healthy. I just was like, how do I get the people in front of me? I didn't know I just— when I went holistic, I didn't know I became an entrepreneur. So that was the pain that I personally went through. I figured it out. And then health coaches started coming to me and asking me, how do you create a signature program? And how is it you're able to do this? And how can you replace your medical income with this? And that's what we started. So it started as a solopreneur, and then we've gradually grown and grown. 2023, we made $1.7 million. And last year we made—

By the way, amazingly awesome. Yeah. I think 96% of businesses never cross over a million dollars.

Heck yeah. And even more importantly, we have health coaches making half a million dollars and even one that's on track to a million. Let's go. Like, this process that I'm teaching them works. It took me a decade and $100 grand to figure out how to crack the code on this, but I did it the hard way. But now they don't have to. And now anything that I can do for them to make it faster, easier, we do for them. So we now build their websites, their funnels, and we take them from I have a story gold mining process where we extract their niche and we create a power statement, that statement of what they do, and then we set them up with their—

Erin, maybe Shawna could take you through her process to develop your power statement. Might be cool. We got a good process.

It works. So 100%, we always get their niche and their power statement down right away, and I have success coaches that work with them. And so when it started, I was writing my book, Free to Heal, and then the second book is Six Figure Health Coach. People came to me while I was writing the book. This maybe gets back to this God content here that seemed to infuse in. But I had 3 people in 3 days ask me the same thing. Initially, I said, "No, I'm writing my book. Focus is important." I'm like, "Am I being punked here? What's the deal? Why are 3—" I'm like, "Okay, fine. If there's 3 of you, I'll help you." Within the week, there were 9. I started with what we call the Awakened Healers Program. 12 weeks, and that scaled up to be our— so 2023 business model that made the $1.7 million. So, it was front end was $5,800, 12 weeks, and we got their signature program, their niche, their business plan. After I walked that first group of 9, one of the girls, Rachel, she said, "Hey, thanks very much, but can you walk me all the way to six figures. And to be honest, I mean, I did it for myself, but I didn't know if I could help this dyslexic mom of five, population 1,600 in Montana, do it. Like, I don't know, but I'm all in. Let's do it. And so a year later, May 2020, she reached six figures, five kids and all. And she had to homeschool them all of a sudden because now we were in a pandemic. So proof of concept. And so then I started to— after the of the first 12 weeks, offer people the year-long to walk all that way through. So the year-long was 15K, 18K payment plan, you know, so 15K single payment. And about half of the people converted from the front to the back. And what's that? 40%. 40%. 45%. Depends on the year. I'm going to say 50%.

As marketers, you never want to let the truth get in the way of a good 40 to 50% converted over into the backend.

But truth fact-check. Okay. So that was what started. Initially, it was me doing sales calls. It was call one. I would just like find— I'll take anybody. I'll talk to anybody about anything for 15 minutes. I'm like, I like your color shoes. We grew up in the same place. Just get them on. Give them 15 minutes, they'll complain. Great, let's book another call. And that would be the sales call. And that's how we started initially. Then I had somebody else doing setting and closing. And so in 2023, I had 2 of my health coaches that did my process, my sales process, which— and they had a 25% conversion rate of getting people into our $5,800 program. Then we wanted— so then summer of 2023, I was feeling— so we were doing really well. I'm in all the areas, right? Like you're burning out at this point because you're implementing, it's growing. We've had 100 clients, new clients in that year. And I was noticing that only the people who went with me for the year actually would make six figures. So anybody else after the three months, they were all in. I saw their niche. I saw the plan. They could have done it. Not one. They didn't really. I'd see them three months later and then they would be saying, I help people be healthy. I'm a health coach. No. So I thought, I kind of felt like it was unethical almost at that point to just offer that $5,800 because they're not actually going to Do it. So then we took our system, we licensed it, and that was a longer process than I had intended. And so I'm going to work with you for 12 months and right off the bat, and I'm going to walk you all the way from zero to six figures. And we got it down and that was for $16K. And so that we started last April. No, May, last May. First month, my two grandmother health coaches got 25% conversion rate. Proof of concept. Okay. I'm like, I didn't know if we could take these health coaches. And to be fair, health coaches, 95% make zero. Whether they graduated yesterday or 10 years ago, they love to help people. They have no idea how to attract clients, what to say to them, how to market, how to offer, nothing.

What change in the business are you evaluating?

So then we hired a sales director and our conversions tanked to like 10 or 11%. So I have to improve the skill of hiring a good sales manager and a good closer.

You're in luck. Tony, sir.

Yes. And I've been picking his brain. And so then the other— so the question is, is this— did I just— I only had that one month at the $16K. And is it ridiculous to have someone go from my free lead magnet, my free books, to a $16K offer? Not at all.

Okay. Because especially if you told me you were trying to take them to a $16,000 offer without a phone sales team, I would tell you you're insane. Right. But with a phone sales team, easy. There are, there are multi-hundred million dollar call floors all over the state of Utah built exactly on something that generates a phone call to a $16,000 sale.

So potentially I just need a new sales team rather than a different business model.

One— Yes, but the big advice I'm going to have for you is the only thing better than making money is keeping the money you make. Yes. And the FTC today is extremely aggressive about high-ticket sales that have income claims attached. And even like in a phone sale today, if you are on the phone with someone and it's like, how much would you like to make as a health coach? And they say, oh, I'd love to I'd like to make $100,000 a year. And you say, great, that's totally doable in our program. You have just validated an income claim, even though all you did is agree with them. So you really want to make sure that that's really tightened up. Yes. Because again, it is a risk when you're offering a claim of I'm going to build you a business. However, it is an unbelievable value proposition because you give people the outcome and now you get to scale it like crazy. Yes. So phone sales. $16K sale? Absolutely.

All day long. Even for a health healer?

It can be even for anything. I've been pitched $50,000 offers on really random, weird stuff that I'm like, I don't even know how you're selling this.

Okay. Because the other thought was, well, maybe just to get started out, maybe we do ads to a webinar that sells at $2K. So let's talk about—

there's only, there's only two business models. There's start low and go high or start high and go low. Those are the only two models that exist. So if you want, again, the business you want, if you believe the best option for them is to join at an annual program at $16,000, that's where you start. And whoever says, I don't want that, then you say, well, we do have a 90-day version. But I need you to know that the 90-day version is something that if you don't do what is required in the 90 days, you will not be allowed to join the annual program. We only offer this as an easier entry. But what we have found is that when people only commit to their business for a quarter, they don't get the results. So if you want to do this, this is the only easier path I have for you.

That feels like accurate. That's like— I mean, that is exactly what happens. They don't want to.

I mean, to your point and to everybody in here, if you truly believe in what you offer, you have a moral and ethical responsibility to do everything within your power to get it into the hands of the people that need it. Like, that's your calling. Like, don't— there's no value in being timid about it. If you're like, hey, I only sell this because anybody who doesn't buy this and buy something else, doesn't get the results.

Easy. Okay, back to the claim thing, because another thing that— because I don't want to get us in trouble and etc., etc. And part of what we also say is successful, soul-satisfying health coaching practice. Like, it's not me to determine that you should reach six figures. It's just a mile marker for that. And so, but it's possible. Most of them don't even think it's possible. And since we've licensed our system, which includes our funnels that they—

I'll give everyone in here, by the way, the number one hack to never getting in trouble. Yeah. If someone wants a refund, just give it to them. It'll protect your merchant account. It'll keep you out of any hot water anywhere. And quite frankly, it's money that you don't want anyway. And all of the time you will spend trying to fight to keep the refund or whatever else is far better spent on finding somebody else that's excited to be in your world. Like we at Kajabi, I mean, we gave refunds years. Afterwards because it was just not worth keeping it. It wasn't worth the hassle, the brand damage, anything else. It's just like, yep, there you go. Good point. Number one, number one hedge. That's the 20% that will protect 80% plus of your business, maybe 90%.

And do you say that up front or you don't mention it? No. If they— if you're—

no, I would not have a sales call which on that sales call you say, if you wake up on the wrong side of the bed tomorrow, we'll just give you your money back.

Right. Yeah. Because we've had this. We're like, we say there's no, we have a policy of no refunds. 'Cause like, we're gonna pour 100% into you.

By the way, I am in full support of that policy for the sale that you're making.

Yeah, and then I say, and we guarantee that they're going to get their investment back at the end of the year, or I'll work with them for free until they do.

Amazing risk reversal guarantee. Yeah. Love it.

'Cause I mean, I know we can get them there, but they don't know that. Then somebody said, well, you can't expect someone who doesn't know you to pay $16K. Yes, you can. Okay. So, I mean, they did before. So, and after. Okay. Because when our conversions were tanking, they're like, well, what do you— I'm starting to second-guess the whole world. So this is good. Okay. On the sales call, you would start at just do what we've been doing, $16K. If somebody says like, you know, do you have something less or I can't do that, then you would go—

I'm going to tell you for phone sales, phone scripting, and phone process, Tony's going to crush me. Like, I haven't done phone sales since 2009. I did a lot of it, but the world has changed. The buying habits have changed, and what works today is probably not what worked back then. So I would tell you to go, go right to Tony on that one. But for me, what would feel right is define the absolute best offer you can make that gets the closest to guaranteed results as you can offer. Offer that. And for everyone who isn't ready to commit to that solely because of the financial challenge, offer a way for them to still achieve the outcome and be in your universe because they're better served by you than they are going to be by anybody else. But don't offer it at the level that doesn't serve them and doesn't serve you.

So back to that $5,800, or would you lower it even further? Or $5,800 is fine.

So this is where the money's and the magic's going to be in the math. It comes down to how much time does it take from you? How much time does it take from your team? How much resources are required to deliver it? If you say my cost is zero, well, you can reduce it down to whatever level you want to give somebody the opportunity to participate. But it also has to be worthwhile for you and price communicates value. So if you lower it to a level where I no longer believe that you can deliver on it because it's priced too cheaply, I don't want it. Quite frankly, for everything you're doing for these people, like does this $16,000 thing come with my website, my funnel, my everything?

Everything. Holy cow. I know, it's ridiculous. It should be like 2 or 3 times that. It is ridiculous and yet the still—

Aaron, here's what I'm thinking, dude. He's gonna build you all of the pieces you need. What we're gonna do is swap health for spiritual coach and you're done.

Oh, and when I say health coach, that's a broad, we have someone who helps horses with their gut health. I mean, like we have, and relationships.

Oh, I know my favorite Kajabi course was a horse dressage course that was ab exercises for horses, which I didn't know was a thing. And it's hyper-specific.

Currently we're running Facebook ads and the cost is like now ridiculous, but for the most part the cost overall has only gone up about 20%, but it's the sales conversions that are tanking that is really where—

Yours is a business though that mirrors a lot of Kajabi's business in the sense that I would not be dependent on cold media any more than you have to be. I would try and turn, because ultimately you're offering a business business opportunity. I would turn every successful coach you have as a successful affiliate referral source for other coaches that you want, because all of these coaches are going to have social brands. So recognize them, give them something, and then say, hey, we've got this referral program. It's only available to our successful coaches because if you're not getting the results, I don't want you telling anyone about us. But point to us and build those, build those media channels.

Is there some best practices or great ideas to do that? We do like We'll pay like $500 for a referral for our clients. Like, you know, when they're coming in, we've always had that even when we had the $5,800 thing.

But like, no, no program, no program with a $16,000 sale is going to be exciting for somebody to get $500, right? So, I mean, you almost got to turn it into something where it's like, hey, you're going to get— and again, the money's in the math. So however much it costs you to deliver, but I would try and pay as much as you feel like you can, because again, you want these people like, oh my gosh, I just got my Family vacation this year paid for by Shawna's referrals. Like, how much more can I talk about this?

Especially with the cost of Facebook ads, we can go pretty high.

Just figure out your max cost to acquire and then basically pay that as a referral. Yep. What else we got?

J. Cron, I just wanted to say for something you shared yesterday concerning the Kajabi Heroes, where that became like a really organic way to get more people.

Yes, our recognition-driven revenue flywheel. Yeah, exactly.

I think for anybody who has kind of community around their product, it's a really good thing to steal and implement. I just think that would also work for the health coaches. And similar to what Evan had talked about for your current YouTube channel, where that channel becomes a place where you're celebrating your people, I think it's a really good thing for other people to get to see what people— what results your people have had.

Yeah, this is— to Ida's point, this is something we worked on at Traffic Geyser. We called it the social proof pyramid. So the lowest value form of social proof is a testimonial. A testimonial is, "Oh my gosh, I'm so excited, I love this, you know, like Sprinkles is awesome." That's all they say. That's all they say. But a better one is the case study. And a case study is a testimonial that has math and documentation. So the case study is, "I love Sprinkles, he's the coolest guy ever. He actually gave me his personal copy of the Wizard of Ads book with his notes in it and the highlights." and I now have 14 different ideas to implement in my business. That case study is way better than the testimonial of Sprinkles is cool. Then you have after that probably, I would call it a promotional partner. And a promotional partner is going to be the level that they like you, you've documented their success, and they're now excited to be motivated to tell others. But they are a success story that you want shared. So there's your promotional partner level that moves above that. And then the top level is brand ambassador. This is somebody that is now inextricably tied to your brand. This is one of my favorite things to do, which is when you can become the kingmaker, and the kingmaker basically has, you know, a faculty that's tied to it. So your most successful students are now the ones coming on the webinars talking about all of the things they learned, which tells you the areas of your program that they might have missed something that, you know, you can expand the program, improve the program. When you end up with brand ambassadors that are on your faculty wearing your flag, then it gets really exciting because you start to see businesses that don't normally have scale find scale through people.

The brand ambassadors, is that like kind of feedback advisors, or are they, or do they do something?

Brand ambassador is somebody that is, you have changed my life enough that I want to be part of your world and add value back into your world. And I want to do it on a long-term basis. A promotional partner might just be like, yeah, I'll send an email to my list and promote you, but that's it.

How would you compensate them?

Entirely up to you. Most of them, you don't have to pay them anything. Like, how many of you have ever been to a Tony Robbins event anyways? Yeah, almost all the Tony Robbins staff back when he did live events, all volunteers, called CAST, Care and Service Team. And these are all people that are just like, love Tony, want to help other people have a great experience. I will show up at my own expense and Tony will give them meals and say hi and say bye. So there's a lot of opportunities for you to say, hey, if you're excited about this, like, and again, this is why recognition matters so much, because if you're able to create this universe that you own and control and you are able to give status and recognize people because of all of the awesome stuff they did, now those people really want to be in your world. Because you're serving people, you serve them, they would love to serve others. Because I mean, they've now almost, if you think of Maslow's hierarchy of needs, like once you get to that self-actualization, you've kind of brought them there. Like whatever their most immediate need was, you solved it. So now they're like, man, I can't believe I'm now here. How can I help others get here?

I'll just piggyback onto that because I went to the Kajabi Hero live event in October.

And I didn't— Thank you, by the way. It makes my heart smile.

Yeah. Well, I went there because a friend of mine was speaking and I didn't know what to expect. And we're hanging out, having a great time. And all the people at Kajabi were so good at welcoming us, making us feel like really part of the family. And the last day they had the award ceremony and I was like, you know, let's just leave. Let's go for dinner. And my friends were just like, no, we'll just wait here. We're a group of people. And then I was just sitting there in the audience watching, and then I suddenly heard my name, Anakin Bins, come up to the stage. I'm like, what is this? And I got an award. And that just made me want to stay with Kajabi.

You have to understand, all of us at some level have either some majority or all of our audience that just wants to be seen and they would love to be seen in front of their people. It's without question the greatest and most rewarding aspect of the Kajabi journey.

And as we left, everyone at Kajabi had lined up giving us high fives. We were just running, getting high fives, and it was just like an amazing vibe. And I was just like, yep, I'm staying with Kajabi.

And I can tell you that It is something that for some businesses, it's effortless. Like Shauna, for your business, this is falling off a log simple. You don't need— you can implement this terribly and it will go well. Other businesses, it's a little bit harder to thread that needle, but I would come from a place that unless your business has no transformative value, there is always a way to intentionally build recognition into your processes. So it sounds like Alec is about to talk.

Which is awesome because on the back of the whiteboard he has— what was his? Scaling fulfillment for coaching.

So the problem that I'm running into now is that I have a system that works, I think, in the same way that like Shauna was talking about, but now I need to figure out how to deliver it at scale. How can I build this into something that goes beyond— like it takes me out of the business.

Let's dive into that. So number one, and the first thing that I told Alec yesterday, and this is something that I see so many marketers do that just hurts my heart, is they take a business that maybe isn't meant to scale and they try to scale it. And as a result, they break the business. It's like I have this amazingly profitable business, but it requires a lot of my time. I'm going to find a way to scale it. I hired all these people. I built all these systems. I now make $0. And I have all of these headaches, and now the business isn't scaling either. So number one, whenever you have a high-touch business, you want to start with iteratively trying areas to remove yourself from it. So this is where I'm going to encourage you to do a daily audit of everything you do. And at the end of the day, take 15 minutes, look at your calendar. Where did you spend your time? How much of that can be done by anyone not you without removing the magic from the program. So for you, you talked about how the early stage questions can easily be handled by somebody that's just blocking and tackling, like amazing empathetic support person. They can take it. Well, cool. You now pulled a little bit of your time back, which is awesome. The second area that I think you have the opportunity to nail, much like Shauna, you can take your really successful students that might either like a supplementary income stream while they're going through their boards or they might like to just be recognized and give back, they can begin to help take some of that load off of you, which again frees up more of your time and the business continues to grow. Now when you look at the massive level of scale, I think that's where you're starting to look at the business development opportunities and the digital course component. So that's where you're gonna be able to acquire large groups of students and put them into the course, and maybe the course has a light coaching component and the management that goes with it. But ultimately what matters the most is are you still delivering the outcome and continuing to remove yourself more and more from the process? So when you think about how you're removing yourself and how you could put other coaches in place and you have the digital course for mass adoption, what in your mind would be the next level of scale? Because you've sort of already figured out your next 3.

I think my concern is, is that the video component, I think in the same way that Shauna was talking about, When you take away that, there's a certain level at which you see the consistency drop in terms of the outcomes. And I think for me, it's when you take away the coach who can look at them from the outside and tell them, hey, this is your bottleneck that you don't realize, or this is your blind spot. That's, I think, where the problem comes. So I think scaling the course component, I'm less certain that I can do that because I've We've tried that before, and it didn't, you know, we kind of ran into the same problem.

Are you able to offer a hybrid? So like, are you able to move the magic from Alec to the magic going to the Alec method, and then having a coaching component with a course that is a lighter lift?

That's kind of what we do now. I mean, like, when we say like coaching, a lot of it is, I mean, currently, like, you know, I work with people, technically only spending maybe like 8 hours with them one-on-one. And most of that lift is done via the course and via an EA who can kind of direct them to the right parts of the course. So I think my next thought was I could have— so you have the student component at the lower end where it's like you have former students that are maybe only 4 weeks ahead. And then beyond that, you have kind of like the master coaches where we take the the best students from all of the sort of prior cohorts and make them kind of the master coach that can then step in and be sort of like that highest level of support. What are your thoughts of that?

I think it's gonna work really, really well because you always have some element of your process where 80% of it can be done by somebody not you, as long as they know the right way to do it. So as you begin to build that bank of certified individuals, it amplifies how many people you can have in the course that are still getting that one-to-one attention that doesn't require you to be the one doing it. And I think the other thing you should do for sure is raise your own individual rates. That with the further away you can get from being personally attached to the outcome, your rates should be higher every time you add a layer. So if it's you right now and it moves to certified coaching, you know, certified students, you should probably double your rates if someone wants to work with you specifically. And then when you add another layer, then double your rates again. Because I think that what doubling your rates does, it means that if you're getting on the phone, it's worth it. But it also adds massive value and positioning to every other layer because of how expensive it is to access you.

How would you do the recognition, like build the recognition? Because it's not quite as natural of a like they are going off and becoming health coaches who are trying to build their own brand and their own business. These people are going to work in a hospital somewhere. They, many of them probably don't want to, like, it's a little complicated because like some of these students don't want—

When they get the transformative value of your experience, what do they tell you? What do they email you? What do they say? Like when a student has an amazing outcome, what do they say?

I got a really good score and I got into extra residency, thank you so much. But I've also had people, like when we've asked for testimonials and things like that, they're like, can we keep this anonymous?

Well, I mean, 'cause you're in a world where they're doctors, so status is hugely important, and they don't wanna let anybody know that they needed help or had help, like I get that. So I mean, I would only use anonymous testimonials, or I would even aggregate the data in more of like a report type fashion of average "Student achieves X, Y, and Z." I wouldn't necessarily put the people on there just because I don't think anyone will want that. But I think in the moment, so that the moment you give someone a transformation is the easiest opportunity to ask them for something. And I would make it a soft ask. I would basically say, "Hey, you crushed this. We are so proud of you. You are exactly why this program exists. I know you've got an amazing medical career ahead of you and a lot to do." Hey, if you ever have an interest in giving back to our community and getting paid to do some sessions for students that are starting where you started, let us know. And just see who says, I'm interested. 'Cause you're gonna have people that are like, I totally wanna give back. And you'll have other people that are like, no, dude, I'm busy. I don't wanna have anything to do with it. But right now, if you're not asking, the answer to an unasked question is always no. I see.

So I mean, we ask for testimonials. Actually, most students will do that. Will give testimonials. But so you're saying that your ask would be a more broad question of like, would you like to contribute to the community? Totally.

If you're already asking them for a testimonial, just drop a question below that. Just say, hey, you got a great outcome. Would you like to tell people how awesome we are? That would be cool. Also, by the way, we have this community of, you know, successful students that some of them love to give back as instructors and help other doctors on their path. If that's you, we'd love to find out how we can help you do that.

And that's the recognition component of like you kind of make—

No, the recognition and revenue component for you is going to be a little bit more difficult because again, a doctor is not going to go on social media and tell everybody to go use this testing service because odds are the doctor's social media following is not other doctors that are about to go through their boards. So for me, the recognition component for you is more of a nuanced person-to-person approach of finding a way to congratulate congratulate them in a cool way. And I don't know what doctors need, but my guess is with crazy doctor schedules and hospital locker rooms, there's probably something that costs very little that most doctors would love, that would find very thoughtful, that is, you know, yeah, like something that's like for docs. I would send that to them and I would say, congratulations, you crushed it, thanks for being a part of our world. If you know any other doctors that would benefit from this, we'd love— we love referrals. Our business grows by referrals. But for you, it's going to be more nuanced of recognize, ask for a referral. But my guess is docs are not going to be— I mean, they might be excited to receive a commission for referring somebody, but it doesn't strike me as that.

Jay Curran, can I challenge that a little bit, what you just said? Totally. The doctors also, it's about a status. It means it has to be an exclusive community. So if they refer, like, you only get here by invitation from another doctor that have been in the program. They're more likely to bring their friends. Even they're not going to say this, but they will bring some kind of value. Like, if you really want to go through your test, here's what you can do. And not only that, we have an exclusive community for only doctors that want to pass the test on their first trial. Just saying, you know, I come from that industry.

The right answer is always try it. Yeah, you never know. But again, I mean, doctors are different.

Yeah. Okay. All right. J Cron, everybody. Let's go. For another interview from my mastermind group with Online Jobs creator, John Jonas, check the video right there next to me. I think you'll enjoy it. Continue to believe, and I'll see you there. So John, founder of Online Jobs at PH. I have been a huge Upwork user for like decade plus back when it was oDesk, then became Upwork.