The FASTEST Way to Use Content to Grow Your Business! | #InstagramLive

It's a different kind of strategy than most. It's not the, I need to get a million subscribers on my channel. It's getting the right people on your show so you can build your business, sell it, and then build your other business overseas. For your business, referrals are so critical. Thinking about who could be good referral partners, if you're taking Canadians and then taking them to Europe, the lawyers who are experts in moving businesses over, the accountants who are experts in Italy or Greece or wherever you're going to go, those are great relationships to start to build now. Then that sets you up because they could help refer clients into you as well. It's like, oh, okay, well, we already have clients who are moving here and we're helping them with the legal. We need somebody to help them figure out their finances. Talk to Serge, he's the guy. Building those relationships is the fastest way to start getting that business off the ground. Now, how do you do that with, you're talking YouTube content or Instagram content?

I guess I could call them and say, hey, you wanna do YouTube together? Interview them and say, hey, what do you see about people coming over to whatever, Italy, and what are the things?

That's the show. The show is not actually for the consumer. The show is having people on who are your potential referral partners. It's a business development show.

I kind of have, I think, a unique situation, and I'm looking just for some feedback from you, from your experience. So I am a— I'm a self-employed certified financial planner. So I thought, hey, you know what? There's a lot of need out there for the misinformation that's out there for what to do for financial planning. Like, I hear it all the time. So financial literacy is really bad out there and there's a lot of bad information out there. So I thought, why don't I start doing some YouTube videos, start a channel, hopefully grow my business as well. I'm in Ontario, so I can only practice in Ontario, but I can get licenses across Canada. So, you know, I was looking at your course saying, who's your market? Well, initially, currently my market right now would be Ontario people and clients that I'm looking to attract would be more like on the professional self-employed basis, like me, that's who I work with and higher asset values, like half a million or more. However, I want to get the message out to anybody, whether they need to start an RESP or, you know, save for a house or whatever, they're probably not going to become clients, but you know, they need the information as well. So that's the one thing. Now, what I've learned is I just can't do videos. Like I did a few videos and my compliance took them down. They're not approved. So we're heavily regulated. The one benefit is that we have a lot of pre-approved material that I can just read word for word or put in my intonation, maybe change a little bit. However, I've learned that my process of approval takes about 2 weeks. Every time I send something in, and this is, I didn't know this, right? I thought I'd send something in, I get something back in 48 hours. No, I send something in, 2 weeks later I get it back, they make some changes, resubmit, another 2 weeks. So I've learned that. So now my, I've already figured out I gotta send in something, one a day, basically and have something going. So my challenge right now is just finding the time on the schedule, like all of us, how to do this while running a practice, meeting clients, all that other stuff. So that's currently. In 5 years' time, I probably will be retired from this and living somewhere in Europe because we've always looked to be moving there. So my idea for 5 years from now is to have a consultancy, financial planning focused, for Canadian expats looking to move to Europe. For example, I've already got clients that have already done that. So I'm already in that. We've tasted Europe. And that's kind of the long-term 5-year plan. So now my challenge is how to merge these two together, having a channel on basically my ideas like, hey, you know, maybe do a video, Malaga, Spain is a great place to retire to, blah, blah, blah. And here's someone we talked to that my cousin lives there. And then if you really want to know how to make a plan to get there, go to my other YouTube channel. Over there, which has like financial planning, and click there. So the one YouTube channel for today is finding clients with half a million or more, self-employed professionals, get the message out for other things. And then the other one would be like 5 years down the road to build it to have a consultancy. And just to make matters even more complicated, I also became— I was promoted to division manager last year, so my other job is recruiting new financial professionals something, a third YouTube channel where how to run a successful financial planning practice, right? Which would be attracting other professionals in the industry. Got it. There you go, Evan. Do your magic.

I love it, dude. Let's go. I love it. I love it. And, uh, it happens in your industry. It happens a lot of medical industries, how much you can say, how much advice you can give. Uh, you don't want to be giving medical advice, legal advice, same thing. Franchisees, same thing. They can only say some things that the head office has to improve. So I hear you. If I'm you, I'm first thinking about what is the thing that you want to be building towards? Like if your business is pretty good right now, when you're a division head, you're managing your team and you're growing your business, a lot of it is still based off of referrals anyway right now. And you want to be somewhere else in 5 years, that's the one I would prioritize the most is let me start planting the seed to set myself up for success. In 5 years, and maybe that becomes a 3-year plan or 2-year plan.

Yeah, no, absolutely. Yeah, it could be a 5-year, 3-year, or 10-year, who knows, right?

But yeah, but if you start getting tons of clients for that thing, it can help bump up the timeline and get there faster because you've got so much domain. So build domain for the right thing. If you're building a YouTube channel for, you know, clients for your consumer business, but then you know you're going to be out in a couple years, it's almost not worth it.

Um, well So one tidbit, because there's a lot of information I got to present, like for example, I still have to maintain and grow my current business because when I leave, I sell my practice to another advisor. So the bigger it is, the better it's going to be. And you know, it's, it's not just I can't keep it stagnant. I want to still bring in.

Yeah.

Uh, so really, if I could get like 10 clients a year at half a million, that's fine. That's all I need. Even less than that.

Who are the best referral partners for your current business and for the Europe business?

It's been starting now a bit after about 5 years to get referrals. It wasn't at the beginning, but I'd say I got most of my referrals from the accountants that I work with.

Okay. And what about for the Europe business? Where do you anticipate?

I guess it would have to be my clients that are talking about it because one has already moved there. So that would be a referral. Uh, one is working to move there in 5 to 10 years. I don't really have anybody else.

So that, especially for your business, referrals are so critical. I mean, I don't have to tell you that, but you know, for people watching too, thinking about who could be good referral partners. If you're taking Canadians and then taking them to Europe, the lawyers who are experts in moving businesses over, the accountants who are experts in Italy or Greece or wherever you're going to go and send people to, those are great relationships to start to build now. Yeah. And then that sets you up because they could help refer clients into you as well. It's like, oh, okay, well, we already have clients who are moving here and we're helping them with the legal. We need somebody to help them figure out their finances, talk to Serge, he's the guy. So building those relationships is the fastest way to start getting that business off the ground. Uh, now how do you do that with— we're talking YouTube content or Instagram content. How do you—

well, so you, I guess I could call them and say, hey, uh, you wanna do a YouTube, uh, together with and interview them and say, hey, what do you see about people coming over to whatever Italy and what are That's, that's the show.

So the show, because of all the compliance and because of the kind of timeline that you're working on, the show is not actually for the consumer. The show is having people on who are your potential referral partners. It's a business development show.

Yeah.

So lawyers never get asked to do interviews on anything. Yeah. So if you go in and say, hey, do you want to be a potential partner for me and maybe refer business to each other? They're getting hit up all the time with business opportunities and like you're just another financial advisor that they're— that they have to kind of swat away and decide if they actually want to do something with you. But if you say, hey, I'd love to interview you for my YouTube channel that's going to talk about how Canadians can either, you know, invest if it's a Canadian market or how Canadians can move overseas. That's what my channel is all dedicated towards. Like, really? You got a channel for that? Sure, I'd be happy to come on. And then you spend an hour with them interviewing them. Now you built a relationship. And now they're asking, hey, Serge, what do you do? Like, you're the financial guy, huh? We might have some clients for you. So it almost doesn't matter how well that video does. It's— the point is to not reach consumers, but to connect with potential referral partners. So it's business development for you.

Yeah, that's right.

Is it anywhere in Europe or specific countries you're trying to move into?

Well, most are going to be in The Latin-speaking languages, so, or the southern coast, so Spain, Italy, Portugal, you know, things like that. Portugal.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And the laws are similar but different. So you need a referral network. Yeah.

So one client right now, so I'm Eastern European by background. So the niche that I've kind of fell into is that most of my clients that I work with that are also Eastern European, Romania, for example, that's where I'm from. They've come here, they've worked here for 10, 20, 30 years, and some of them have decided they want to move back into Europe for whatever the reason. So they sell everything here, they go back there, and because Romanian is a Latin-based language, they're picking Spain or Italy instead of going back to Romania, or it could even be back to Romania, but that's kind of the niche. And, uh, so far with that one client that did it, we talked with an international accountant, we did all the paperwork, we helped them set up, figured out what have to do with the RRSPs, all that stuff. So my idea was If you're Canadian, and it could be, might not just be an expat retiring, it could be like right now people are traveling and working around the world. So even if you're like in your 30s or whatever and you're deciding you want to go and spend some time in Europe and learn the language, you still need tax information and what to do with your RSPs back home. Now, I wouldn't be able to be paid like I am paid now where I manage assets. It'd be more like a consultancy fee almost, like This is what happens. This, we can set you up with a SIN number here, whatever bank account, whatever it will be, more like helping people get there. But I've got the knowledge of if you're coming from Canada, I know it's, I know exactly what's going to happen. What do you have to worry about? That's kind of what I'm selling here.

I love it. So it's then connecting with all of the international lawyers who are dealing with this, who are the experts, and then you have them on your show. Doing interviews to build relationships.

And then my lead magnet could be the checklist. This would be the top 10 things you got to do if you want to move to Italy or Spain or whatever, right?

Yeah, 100%.

Yeah.

And the goal, you'll drive a lot more business from the people you have on the show than the people who watch the show. So the goal is to have, like, if you do a show a week over the next year, then you have 50 connections to international lawyers. That maybe not all of them pass your business, but if 10 of them do, and it's an ongoing source of business for you, that it's not just this one-off deal, right? That's the strength of having it. They have people all the time coming in. That, that builds your entire business.

Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

I mean, international for me, like, I just finished going through the visa process to get to the US, and I had to work through a cross-border lawyer to help and set up cross-border banking. And like, it's a Giant pain. And I solved it through connections, through people who were referrals. Like, I didn't know who the right person— actually, the first person I hired was the wrong person. We had to fire to get somebody to help us who had the right answer. So one of the biggest mistakes that people make is they don't think about business development in the content. So especially for you, if it's heavily regulated, you can only say so many things. You interviewing a lawyer about people moving over is a lot easier to get through than you giving RSP advice to people that has to be screened by your organization.

Yeah. It's gotta be a totally different channel of different mindset. It is, it is consultancy, but not financial planning. Let's say it's like, what are the rules that you might encounter? Like if you leave or do stuff, if I talk anything at all about financial planning, then I run the risk of my compliance saying, uh, that should be on this other channel.

Yep.

And that's going to be reviewed and vetted basically.

So yeah, so the show is just about, hey, I'm Serge and I, I love helping Canadians set up in another country, whether it's, uh, as a second residence or now it's their retirement residence, and figuring out all the financial elements to be able to move over there and still manage, uh, manage their, their life and their business. And today I got a special guest who is an international lawyer who specializes in all the legal aspects. And so we're going to talk about some of the things you have to think about when you move to Greece. Yeah, I love it. Well, yeah, right. And then so, and that's the show. And then you just ask questions, and it's the same questions. What do Canadians have to keep in mind when they're moving over there? You know, what are the biggest mistakes that you think that these people make before they, they come over there? Right.

Like, you keep calling it a show though. So is it a YouTube, like, still videos you put on YouTube, or is it like a live show?

I don't—

what is it?

Yeah, yeah. Well, so it's so that you can call it a show.

Okay.

So that you're not just making YouTube videos. It's like, I've got a show on YouTube. And, and I interview experts to have them to help Canadians move abroad. And you're an expert in the legal side of things in Portugal. I'd love to interview— I mean, as long as your English is halfway decent. But most people at that point will have— like, if you're a professional international lawyer in one of these countries, you speak English. It may not be your first language, but you can get by in English. Um, so you call it a show just to make it more— as opposed to Oh, you know, I want to do a YouTube video.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

It's like you have a show and this is an ongoing thing that you're doing ideally every week where you have different experts on sharing their advice and their story. It's a, it's a really easy show to host. It's the same questions that you just keep asking, whatever you're curious about. You don't run into the compliance issues because you're talking about the legal aspects, not the financial side of things. And then you get business from them because they need, they know all the legal stuff, but they need the financial guys. And that's where you come in. Yeah.

And I was thinking like, because I love to travel and I love food, it could also almost be like a, it can almost be like a travel food relocation show. Like, you know, start off with, because we do travel a lot. So I have a huge opportunity to make my own videos while I'm there. Um, we go a couple of times a year, uh, build a database of it and say, you know, when, when you're here, you should try this stuff at this place. So we're like, this is the street that everybody goes to kind of thing. And then kind of get into them. And then from there, go into the interview aspect of it. Like, I really, I love the travel and the food.

I'm sorry.

Well, the travel's great. The food, I don't know how much you want to get in, you know, there's limits on the food. I'm half Italian, so it's easy to overeat when I go home.

But for sure.

And it might even be worth, like, if you can get, I don't know who the top lawyers are, the top potential referral partners for you are in those countries. But if you can line up an interview with one of the senior partners there, maybe that's worth a trip on its own. That wasn't scheduled. And now, surprise, we're going to Portugal next weekend to do this interview.

Yeah, yeah, no, that's great.

Yeah.

Okay.

Yeah, it builds the connection and relationship. And especially if they meet you and they see you, they're way more likely to want to do business with you. Yeah. So now we don't need to have 100,000 followers on your channel. No, you're, you're making the content. Yes, still to help, and it's still gonna be valuable content, but you're making the content to help you grow your business through referral partnerships.

Yeah, it's, uh, it's definitely needs focused time on the calendar, and that's big, the biggest challenge. Um, just even I haven't been able to attend all the Movement Makers, maybe two of them. I'm always thinking I'm gonna watch them afterwards because for whatever reason a management meeting comes up or whatever, and If I don't plan it ahead, I just can't get it done. So I think that's going to be my next biggest challenge too. Everything you say is great. Now how do I do that? Basically pick up the phone and start calling and booking.

Yeah, you or— I don't know if you have somebody on your team or you have an assistant or you can hire somebody to help you do it. I use a guy named Beau and that's like he books all the people from my shows. And I'm happy to introduce you to Bo if you want, or just you find somebody to help you do the bookings because then you— even this, I didn't book this. My assistant booked this and now we're here doing this. Okay, I'm showing up. It's, it's 4 o'clock. Serge and I are gonna do this.

Let's go.

So to have somebody do the outreach, and then put it in the calendar, then all you have to do is show up. It's a lot easier to do a half hour, hour show where you're just asking questions than all of the back and forth and research and calling and emails and follow-ups and confirmations and making sure they got the link and all that stuff.

And do you do the interviews through Instagram or some other way? It doesn't matter, Zoom or whatever.

It's a mix. Like, this is an Instagram Live, so this is on Instagram. Uh, my other interviews, you know, like Tony Robbins and Matthew McConaughey, you know, we did on Zoom. So we just set up a Zoom link, but now everybody has Zoom, right? Like, you have a Zoom link. So everybody knows how to use Zoom now. Like, that's one of the big blessings of COVID is we all figured out how to use Zoom. So, but that's pretty, like, that's low-wage work. Like, that's not, that doesn't require you and your sophisticated expertise. You just need someone who's friendly and who knows how to do some research to go off and find these people and introduce the show. And then figure out the time. I mean, it's Europe, so it's depending on the country you're looking at, you know, 6, 7, 8 hours ahead. So it would be a morning show for you, afternoon, evening for them. Um, but that's, that's an easy, like if you just have to show up for an hour and it's all been taken care of, that's a lot easier than for you have to do all the bookings.

Okay. Build the connections, do some shows. I won't be able to monetize that at all until, well, if I do that, uh, I gotta figure out, cause any outside activity, I also have to advise, right? So if any other income that's not part of this, so it's more like base building a foundation and, you know, ready to go. Because when I do, uh, sell the practice, there'll be some money to keep us going for a couple of years for sure while I build that other practice. But I guess having the connections in advance will definitely help.

I mean, you can, you can apply the same model to your current practice right now. Yeah, it's just you're not targeting lawyers and accountants in Portugal, you're targeting Ontario or Canada. I mean, even just Ontario, if there's enough here, how many accountants and lawyers are being asked to come on shows and talk about— like, nobody.

Yeah, well, that's true. That's true.

Go ahead.

A lot of misinformation, misperceptions, even within the professional industry. Like, accountants assume what what I'm, what I know, I'm going to say. I assume what accountants are going to say or lawyers are going to say, right? So that's part of the whole financial literacy thing. Like, let's get all talking and make sure that the right information is out there. Because now with, you know, you can type anything in. People don't understand why I can't give them an insurance code if I don't know anything about them. It's like, well, go to the dentist and tell them that you want your tooth extracted without asking them to do X-rays. Like, it's so, it's, it's so hard to, in this transactional business, to get people to understand. And that's part of the reason I want to do these videos as well, right? Why it's important.

So, so I mean, if, if Ontario accountants are the number one driver for business right now, then go make a show interviewing Ontario accountants and you can go drive to them, you know, as long as they're not in like, I don't know where you live, but you know, if they're in Sudbury or something, maybe you don't want to take the drive out there. But they're easy to get on the show. This is the thing, like, you're not trying to get Elon Musk on your show or The Rock or somebody. It's, it's an accountant in Richmond Hill that nobody's ever asked their opinion on anything for a video. And now you're the only guy who's ever paid any attention to them. And they're going to come on and now you build a relationship together, right? Like, it's a, it's super easy to get a yes in this kind of model. And then hopefully pass on business to you. And again, not everybody will, but if you did 50 shows in 50 weeks, you'll get, you'll get clients. And the beautiful thing is, once you get it, like, once you have the relationship, they keep giving you clients. It's not just a one-off thing. They're, they're always having new people come in, and they can always pass it on the surge. Um, and you build an asset in the show that then when you sell your book, you could sell the show alongside the book. Yeah.

Yeah. Right.

And you can just transition to host. So maybe for 6 months you co-host with the person.

Yeah, no, bring in someone else before I teach them, teach him or her the whole thing and move it on from there. Yeah.

Yeah. For 3 to 6 months, you're co-hosting with them and then they take over the channel. So don't put the channel off your name. That channel, that's a channel off of whatever financial Yeah. You know, the company name, and then it could be anybody. You're just the face for it for now. You start interviewing accountants, build the book. I mean, if the goal is 10 clients a month, that's—

that's a year.

10 clients a year. Yeah.

Well, I mean, because— no, because I'm— so basically, because I've got multiple things, recruiting and the clients, and I've got my own client base, don't need to get 100 clients a year, but they got to be a certain asset level, like half a million or more.

Half a million plus. Yeah.

Then that'd be okay, right? So it's not that stringent or hard to do that, but it's just, there's multiple balls in the air juggling basically. Right.

Yeah.

If I don't get the 10 clients, it will be, it will be a struggle.

Yeah.

If I do, then it's good.

Right.

Well, you just need one good accountant relationship to get 10 clients. That's not, you're not coming in asking for the moon.

Yeah. It's, it's, I'm not looking to build a, I'm not looking to build like the RBC of, uh, you know, my area. Like I've got my, my, my pie, my part of the pie, and that's about it, right?

So it's completely achievable if you even— the— I mean, one show a week is aggressive, but even if you did one a month where you went in and talked to accountants and you interviewed them, to find out accountants in Toronto area is not that difficult. No, no, we certainly contact them. Like, it's not international lawyers. It's so much easier. Yeah, yeah, email them is easy. Set up a time. It's not that difficult. And now they're on your show and to get one person who's then giving you 10, 10 clients for the year is easy. And you're building up an asset that then you can sell to the next person.

It's actually, it might be a good time now to do it before the tax season here in Canada, because they could say, you know, what do you want to tell your clients that they want to make sure they do before they come and see you? And then afterwards, because you can't talk with them from February, March, right?

Yeah, but that's when you move, you move to the lawyers. Yeah, you know, when the accountants are too busy, you move to the lawyers because the lawyers can pass your business too.

Yeah, yeah, cool.

That's, that's the strat— so it's a different kind of strategy than most. It's not the I need to get a million subscribers on my channel, it's getting the right people, uh, on your show so you can build your business, sell it, and then build your other business overseas.

That's right. That's right. You got it.

I love it, man. Well, there's your strategy.

Thank you. Time to get to work.

Yeah, it's great. I mean, it's, it's actually a pretty easy business to build. Like you could start, you could start this afternoon, just pull up a list of all the accountants in your area and just again, cause meeting, going to call them and say, hey, I'm a financial planner. Do you want to meet? It's— yeah, I think they get hit up all the time.

The roadblock that hit me, and you know, it hits in your brain, is like, oh man, I got to go through compliance. Oh, it's going to take forever. So it's kind of— it slowed me down significantly at the beginning. Like, I was all gung-ho at the beginning. I was making videos and all that stuff, and I was like— and then I send in something, and they go— and this works— they go, and they said, oh, we looked at your YouTube channel. You should take all those ones down because it didn't go through compliance. And I was like, ah. So because you got to be careful that we're actually— we're representing that company, even though I'm self-employed, independent, it's under a big umbrella, right? It doesn't matter. You know, someone's still sponsoring you behind the background there, right? So yeah, no, I get it.

In any regulated industry and/or like franchises, it's, it's very similar. So this, this is a good little workaround hack and actually would perform even better, especially given your timeline of how quickly you want to make it happen, to do the partnerships and just get the referral business in to blow up the company. Okay, cool, man.

Thank you.

All right, well, good luck. Keep us posted, and can't wait to see the show.

Absolutely.

Take care, Serge.

Bye.

So I have the— my experience, and I have the product, but I am completely lost in how to market.

What is the thing that you're selling?

I am a reset coach, getting people to reinvent their lives. Using a 5-step process.

Okay. So what's the content that you're making right now? Are you making coaching content?

Yes, I'm making coaching content.

This is the Instagram.

Yes, that's mine.

There she is. All right. Coach Maryma, I'm following. Perfect. Okay. So where are— so you're doing IG Lives here and then are you bringing people up or this is— what are you doing here?

No, I just post reels and posts. I do StreamYard lives and I do YouTube videos.

Oh, okay. So you're doing it. So you have people join you on StreamYard and then you post that to YouTube after?

Yes.

Got it. Okay. And then the link here is to your YouTube channel. So let's go check that out. Look at some, here we go.

What?

Why are you laughing?

When you have the YouTube guru looking at your YouTube channel, you are in big trouble.

No, this is good.

It's all love.

It's all love, Barry. Come on. It's all love. Okay, so this is it, right? I'm looking at the right one?

Yes, that's it.

Okay, and then these are the coaching sessions you're doing?

No, I have done private coaching sessions, but they are not on YouTube. They are with my friends and family, and then I have been able to help them with my strategy of SWOT analysis to find their strengths, their weaknesses, their opportunities, and then the threats. But I can't take them further on how to monetize the talents that they have rediscovered.

Okay, so marketing now, we need to see you coaching.

Okay.

We need content of you coaching. So first off, I wouldn't stream anything to YouTube. So, and on your channel here, you've got some videos, it's great. I wouldn't do it as streamed. I would just upload it as a regular video because streamed videos get a lot less long-term views on content. But you speaking to the camera is great, but it's not as good as you coaching if you're a coach.

Okay.

Like the fact that you can make a post, what was your, you on Instagram talking about like what's stopping you from growth? By the way, I love, look at the, where are you? This is crazy. Where are you standing right here?

Country in Calgary.

That's beautiful. Wow, I love it. So, but like, that's a great— it's a great-looking video and you're talking about what's stopping you from growth. Awesome. But that doesn't mean that you're a great coach. The fact that you can just speak to camera doesn't mean that you're a great coach. Okay, so if you want to sell coaching, I need to see you coaching.

Okay, that comes now to the second challenge I have. I set out to, like, I thought, I thought that my niche was people who have burned out, like people above 50, my age grade, who are burned out and who think they are a failure, who have failed, and they are struggling, not knowing where to, how to continue. And I thought I set out to help them reinvent themselves. But now I got, a few weeks ago, when I got more than 200 subscribers on YouTube, I decided to take the analytics very seriously. So I went to the audience analysis, and I realized in the audience disaggregated data on gender and age that most of the people who are watching my videos, 64% of them are men. No, 67% of them are men and 64% are between 18 and 24. And the other 30-something percent are between 25 and 34. So there's nobody above 50, or well, maybe they don't have enough data to give me. And so I became completely lost. I don't know now, should I continue doing the videos the way I'm doing them, or should I change to some snappy way of doing things since the consumers are younger people? So I got lost, and that's why I started doing live streaming, because I didn't know how to do videos that would suit that age group. Should I continue the way I'm doing the videos, or I should focus on those age groups?

Well, you're saying you don't know how to make videos to hit the age group, but you're already hitting the age group in your analytics. The bigger question about that is who do you actually want to serve? So does— I mean, you started the business and you thought you'd be helping people who are 50 plus who are struggling with kind of the next step in their life. Now you're helping— you're actually helping people in your content who are much younger. Does it matter to you if you're doing resetting for people Does it matter to you their age?

It does not. I was just mind-blown by— because I focused on something else and then I got a different result. But, you know, as a communicator, I'm a journalist, so as a communicator, you know, the generations, the way you communicate to them is different. So I don't know now, maybe I have to do some snappy videos to come down to the generation. Or I keep the way I'm doing. I don't— that's where I got challenged.

So you're a reset coach, and, and like your IG bio says, you help reinvent yourself, or you help people reinvent themselves with the 5-step process to rebuild self-confidence, improve your net worth. So you help people reinvent themselves. This is what—

this is—

that's who you love helping the most.

Yep.

Cool. So where you come in and help is anytime somebody needs a reinvention. Which might be when they're 50 and they're hating their job and trying to move the next step. It could also be as they're trying to figure out what their first job should be or their second job or their first marriage or their second marriage or whatever, right? I mean, you take athletes who are done at 35 and they can't compete anymore. What do they go off and do next? They have to reinvent themselves, right? So it's less about an age demo and more about the life stage that somebody's at. When they need a reinvention.

Okay.

So I don't even worry necessarily about having snappier content or finding which age group to go to. I'd focus more on doing coaching sessions with people who need to reinvent themselves and let the right people come find you. So if you're doing your coaching sessions, it's with people who are like, you've got 233 followers right now on Instagram. Let's go. You know, first, The first 233 is the hardest 233. So in there, who is looking to reinvent themselves right now? And then that becomes the coaching content that you do.

Okay.

So it's regular, whether you, if you want to use StreamYard, cool, you can, uh, Instagram allows you to hack other people's audiences as well. So if you're going live with somebody on Instagram, their audience gets to see that you're live with them too. They might promote it as a collaborator as well, but it's seeing you coaching. So that's the best kind of content you can make. It doesn't mean that you stop doing, like, I love it. You're outside in Calgary, beautiful mountains. You got a great message for growth. It's awesome. Cool.

Thank you.

It doesn't mean you have to stop those, but that content won't lead you to generate as many clients. If you're selling coaching, if you wanted to be a speaker, then maybe, but if you want to be a coach and you want to sell coaching, cause you already are a coach. And if you want to be a coach, but like, what are you selling? If you want to sell coaching, I need to see you coaching. Okay. So if I was doing Instagram breakdowns, if that was my business, right?

Cool.

I could, we just did a quick little example. Okay. Okay. Mary, like, look, here's your Instagram and here's what we got to do is we have to switch up. Then somebody else would come in and I could help coach them on Instagram and then I could sell my Instagram coaching services. Right. Uh, it's not what I want to do, but that would be the model. So same thing for you. You're getting people who need a reset in their life and creating content with them and coaching them through the process, coaching through the 5, uh, not the 5 Rs, the 5-step process, 5-step reset process, reset. That's what it was. Not 5 Rs. You put them through your 5-step process. And then I get to see, oh, Mary's awesome. Maybe she can help me too. And for anybody who's looking for a reset in their life, maybe they call you now, but it's not depending on age or gender or country or whatever else. If that's not actually important to you, like if you don't care if they're men or women or from Canada or United States or Italy or, you know, wherever, No, I don't care.

I just want to serve.

Right. But who— but serving people who need a reset.

Yep.

So that's what you're all about. So it's not about the demo, like how you niche down is not based off of the demo or like age group. It's based off of— or gender. It's based off of do they need a reset right now in their life?

Okay. Because when I saw that, I thought maybe I missed my— like my calling was to use my experience to help people who have gone through divorce and So, I didn't want to say divorced women because that will continue the stigma, the word divorce. So, now I don't know if I've missed my mission or I just continue with resetting their lives, their finances, their— I don't know.

Well, you haven't missed anything. You just continue to reset, right? You know, in your own language. Like, here's the thing, like, do you want to help women who are divorced, and that's where you want to be the expert at, or do you want to help anybody who needs to have a reset in their life?

I think everybody. I wanted to help women in particular because I thought that those are the people who have a big issue on trying to find themselves when they fail at something. But well, maybe that was just some subjective analysis. I don't know.

Well, a lot of guys are lost too. A lot of guys are lost too, Coach Mary. A lot of guys are lost too. But here's what will happen if you actually do coaching sessions. Like if you start messaging your 233 followers and you start DMing them and say, hey, If you need a reset right now, I'm happy to do a free coaching session with you. We'll put it live on Instagram. What you'll end up finding is different people will be attracted to you, but they still have their own version of what they need a reset of. And you may end up niching down. It's based off of still like matching what your heart wants to do with what head kind of practically makes sense. But the niche may be completely different. Like maybe why are all these 24-year-olds needing resets or it's like 18 to 24? Well, they're trying to figure out going to college or not. Do I go to college? Is it still a good thing to do? They're in their first job. Do I, do I stay in this job or not? I thought I wanted to be an engineer, but now I realize that I hate it and I want to be something else. Right. They're trying to figure out, do I stay in this relationship? You know, do I marry my high school sweetheart or do I go and you do something completely different. So, but people are having resets all over the place throughout their lives. As you start actually doing the coaching, you'll find the best people that you love working with the most.

Okay.

So it's in the doing. Like if you did 100 coaching sessions with people all around and not, not being judged, not, not, not that you were judgmental, but not saying it has to be women, 50+, divorced, and you just said, you need a reset, I'm going to help you navigate that. You have it open to more people and you'll, you'll end up gravitating to and pulling in the better clients to then actually go hire you for coaching. As long as it's still within like what you want to do. Like if you say, yeah, I can help somebody navigate being fired from their first job, and now moving on to figure out their second job or having a midlife crisis. Instead of buying the Ferrari, hire Coach Mary. She'll help you out instead, right? It's a better return on investment there. Here, if I pull up my most recent book, right, Momentum, on the back I, I said what you can use it. She's got— there you go, you got your coffee too. Like, on the back, like, use this book to launch your business, write your book, begin a healthy habit, create your masterpiece, kick off your podcast, start your YouTube channel, gain momentum in the goals that matter to you the most. Because these are the most common things that I get asked to help people with. Okay, so it'll be similar with you, like, hey, work with Coach Mary to, to help you reset your life to like, what if you're going through divorce, figuring out your first career, you know, swapping to your next job, trying to get into college or not, like whatever the main things are because ultimately I don't care if I'm helping somebody launch their first book or start a YouTube channel. I just care about people getting their message out to the world.

Absolutely. It makes a lot of sense.

That becomes like, how do I create— how do you create a regular show at least once a week? Like, the, the starting point is once a week. The ambition point is daily. And so somewhere in there, like, where do we want to play? But at least once a week of actually coaching people and anybody who needs a reset. And that's who you then bring on. Look at Movement Makers. I don't care what country you're from, what your background is, men, women, age. Like, we've got— somebody asked me yesterday, what's the diversity like in Movement Makers? It's like, it's all over the place. Like, lots of men, lots of women, all sorts of age groups. Like, so, but what's common is everybody wants— everybody's got a message and they want to get it to the world. And so that's the thing that binds everybody together. So for you, like, it doesn't matter where they come from, but everybody needs— everybody comes to you is looking for a reset to make that next shift in their life.

Okay, that makes a lot of sense. Thank you. So now, talking about publishing a book, I have two complete manuscripts on my— in my computer. I don't know how to go about them, publishing them. So I am challenged by the copyright issues. Or how to get the books out to the public.

So what's the copyright issue?

I had a block that somebody downloaded and published the book and published it in a book and had the audacity to send it to me to edit it for the person. And so I really got blocked and I really don't know. So now I have, I have, as a communicator, I write and write I write and write. I do knowledge management and stuff, but I write the things and they stay there. I don't know now how to— I really don't have that push to bring them out.

Well, you have to decide if you're going to go self-publish or try to work with a publisher. If it's self-published, you can get them up on Amazon today. You could. I mean, you got to, you got to get a design for the COVID but it could be basic. Like, you don't need— the beautiful thing about Amazon is you can keep updating it. So you can launch it and then you can change the COVID if you don't like it. You can change the manuscript. Like, you can keep updating it if you want. But if it's just to get a book, you could self-publish it and you can have it ready to go. You have an ebook that you sell from your own website. Like, you can have it up if you want. If you want to get it published, then you You go with a publisher, you start submitting it. You could talk to Kira, who's my business partner in Freedom House, about getting the book out to the world. Um, so those are your two options, right? There's pros and cons to both, but you could, like, if you just wanted to get it up, you could. The challenge with the book is you still need to market it.

Okay.

Because having a book on Amazon doesn't mean that it's— anybody's gonna buy it.

So I, because now I, I, I have a very tiny budget for that. So I would go tilt more towards self-publishing. And so you're saying if I'm going to do self-publishing, it's easier, but I have more work to do.

Yeah, exactly. It's, it's, it's, it's maybe not easier. It's like, it's easier to get up, I guess. But it's harder for you in terms of it's going to take more time to create and post and figure out how to do it yourself or work with someone, even the movie makers like Terry Wade Thompson could probably be a resource to help you. He's done a whole bunch of different books. Other people have self-published their books too, but Terry's gone through the process a lot. So he might have some tips to get you there faster. The challenge with it though becomes, the book without marketing is not going to generate more business for you.

Okay.

So I would love to see you start making more money and then you can afford to hire whoever you need to, to do whatever else you need to.

Right.

So people tend to default to more like, okay, oh, I need to write a blog or I need to write a book or I need to like just create more, but Creating more doesn't mean that you're going to get more clients and get paid more. So if you're a coach, having a book, does it add some credibility? Maybe, you know, like these days it doesn't really matter that much if you have a book or not. If it's with a publisher, maybe. If it's in a bookstore, maybe. But are you still buying books in bookstores? You know, I don't know. It's like, it's not what it used to be. The reason I write a book is because you want to birth it into the world. You got a big message and For my books, like this, just, this is better in a book than it is in a series of videos. But I didn't need this book to like immediately generate business for me. If I was you, I would focus on how do I grow my coaching business? You might have big ambitions and huge things you want to do and maybe start your own publishing company. I don't know. You got lots of things that you want to work on. But what's the fastest path to start making some money inside of your big mission. And if you're self-coaching, the fastest path is coaching. So what's going to help you generate coaching clients? Your two best bets are coaching content. So like a book isn't coaching content. A book is you being a thought leader again, right? So coaching content, ideally videos where you're showing, right? Um, and any potential partnerships, like who are they? Who are people going to when they need a reset? So for example, you mentioned divorce.

Cool.

Go talk to the top 50 divorce attorneys in Calgary and say, here's what I do.

Okay.

Right. So that somebody is going through a divorce, maybe they recommend Coach Mary. Like, hey, if you're struggling with this, you should talk to Coach Mary.

That makes sense. No, I was talking about the books because I already have the manuscripts completed. So it's as well as finding a way to get it out and instead of keeping it in my computer, it doesn't serve anybody there.

Sure, 100%. But, and like, you're not serving anybody if we're not generating revenue too.

Absolutely. Right.

So, Like if you build a coaching business up and then you have 10 coaches underneath you and now you've got a team, you can serve a whole lot more people, whether it's through short snappy content or books or speaking tours or whatever else that you want to do. Right. So usually, you know, the immediate priority, you can tell me, you could tell me no, it's like, hey, you know what? I don't need to make money for the next 3 years. I'm good. So tell me what to do next. Okay. But usually like monetizing becomes important. And what's the fastest way is through coaching content and through referral partnerships. So like divorce attorneys is a good one. Um, thinking about other people, whether it could be accountants, it can be lawyers, like other lawyers, other accountants, like someone who's just sold their— like when I sold my business, I could have used you when I was 22. I sold my business, I made money, great, but I didn't know what to do next in my life. Like the thing that I just I had dedicated myself to was gone. It's a good problem to have, but it's still a problem. Like, okay, what do I do next? And I just explored a bunch of different things. But maybe talking to you could have helped, right? If my lawyer said, hey, talk to Coach Mary, she might be able to help you. So who are the people who can give you referrals? Because they're dealing with these people all day long, and a divorce attorney is not guiding people through how to reset their life. They're just they're just guiding people through how to not get screwed in the divorce, right? Like, it's not their expertise. Yeah. So, and it doesn't just have to be Calgary. I say Calgary because that's where you are and it's, it's, it's close, but you could make partnerships with divorce attorneys across North America. Like, get so much business from, from your marketing strategy that then you can do whatever you want with books and speaking and employees and whatever else you want to go off and create. So like the book exists on your, on your computer, awesome. But there's still a, there's still a time cost to get it. Like if you're going to figure out the self-publishing route, there's still a time cost to figure all that out and get it up.

Okay. Thank you so much. And before you go, do I need a business license to do, to go into entrepreneurship in Canada?

So there's a couple types of businesses in Canada. You've got your, you know, sole proprietorship, uh, which just means that you're running it off your name, or you can set up a corporation. The, the pros and cons, um, the main issue is around liability. How likely are you to be sued? So if you go corporation, you can set up your own corporation, easy. You know, you need to get a lawyer to help you. It's not expensive, but there's annual filing fees. So you're probably spending at least $2,000 a year just to maintain your corporation. So not the end of the world, but if you're not making money, $2,000 a year is still $2,000 a year. So the starting point is you just do sole proprietorship and it's based off of your name. The only downside is if you get sued, then they come after you personally.

Okay.

So now you gotta ask, and I'm not giving legal advice here over Instagram, but—

No, I just want to find out if I need it, then I'll go get a lawyer.

Yeah, well, so it's like, if you think you're going to be sued, you think about the types of advice you're giving. You know, coaching is a low likelihood scenario, right? Like I leave, I run a dance studio, right? Like the largest dance school in Canada for salsa dancing. We have, I don't know, $1 million liability insurance. Like if somebody comes in, We've, we've never had anybody sue us. But if somebody slips on the floor and breaks their leg or something like— we've never had that. But if that happened, right, that's why we have insurance. But that— if I didn't have a corporation, if Toronto Dance Salsa was not a corporation, then they could come after and sue Evan Carmichael.

Okay.

Right. So if I'm just giving YouTube strategies or something, they're probably not going to— like, the likelihood of somebody suing me is a lot lower. So for some industries, it's very high, you know, for salsa dancing or anything physical, anything, anything health-related, you want to— people sue like crazy there. So you want to make sure you're, you're, uh, it's a corporation for sure and you have insurance. But, uh, at the beginning in a coaching business, uh, the likelihood's pretty low, but it's one of those things like as soon as you start making money from it, it's good to turn it into a corporation. Um, if you ever want to have business partners too, you need to have a corporation. I don't know if you ever plan on giving up equity or shares in your company, but, uh, then you need to have a corporation to make that happen.

Okay. Thank you so much. Yeah.

All right, Mary.

Oh, grateful. Thank you so much.

So next step is we got to start booking like action items to-dos. Book the show, book guests that you're free to coach, and make a list of 50 divorce attorneys in Calgary to go start connecting with and see if you can build a relationship. That's how we started to build this business.

Thank you very much for your service and for your leadership. I greatly appreciate it.

All right. Amazing, Mary. We love you. Have a great week. And, uh, we'll see you in Movie Makers next week.

Thank you very much.

To see me coach another entrepreneur one-on-one, check the video right there next to me. I think you'll love it. Continue to believe, and I'll see you there. It feels weird to say, but it's having lower expectations. Here's what happens when you have really high expectations. Then when you don't do it, you lose a little more self-confidence.