Ep. 98-Erica Leary Can Find Any Business $45,000 in 45 Minutes

This is the You Winning Life Podcast, your number one source for mastering a positive existence. Each episode, we'll be interviewing exceptional people, giving you empowering insights, and guiding you to extraordinary outcomes. Learn from specialists in the worlds of integrative and natural wellness, spirituality, psychology, and entrepreneurship so you too can be winning life. Now here's your host, licensed marriage and family therapist, certified neuro-emotional technique practitioner, trainer and certified entrepreneur coach Jason Wasser.

All right, so we are back with the You Winning Life podcast, and today's guest is business and marketing consultant Erica Leary, and her goal is to help business owners generate more clients, close more sales, and increase their overall revenue and profits quickly. And here's the key thing— inexpensively. So I'm incredibly excited because she has tackled a lot of stuff in the work that she's including online platforms and helping other business owners add bottom line revenue in a very short period of time. And whether you own a business, whether you are working in a business, or whether you're just someone who's listening to this and wanting to get some insight on how to change your way of thinking about how to apply your day-to-day life to achieve goals, we're going to tackle some of those topics today. So welcome and thanks for hanging out.

Thank you so much. I appreciate the opportunity to speak with you and your audience. Very exciting. My pleasure.

I'm I'm glad that we have been able to get this on the books. So the first thing that I want to jump right into is the mindset of things, right? Entrepreneurs, business owners, solopreneurs, family business owners, someone who works in a business, doesn't matter, right? We're all coming from a, from a starting place that we want to contribute and do something good for the world. We also want to make money. We want to feel some purpose, some value. And stuff like that. So from your perspective of everything that you've been doing as a consultant, what are some of the key mindset tips and insights that you think that every person should start with?

That's such an awesome, fun question. I love mindset stuff. So I would say one thing is, you know, you need to believe in yourself first and foremost, because especially when you first start out, there are going to be a lot of people who don't believe in what you're doing, don't believe in you, don't believe in anything that you are saying. There's going to be a lot of that going on. So I think first thing you need to do is be very passionate about what you're doing. It doesn't necessarily mean you have to be working in your passion, but passionate about what you're doing. And then I would say, you know, find some other people like you that are going through the same thing or have gone through the same thing or can help you go through the journey because mindset is probably one of the biggest, I guess, assets or make it or break it type things to any business or business owner, I think. A lot of the bottlenecks happen with the owner of the business, and it is usually not an inventory issue or a leads issue or anything else that they're after. It's, you know, that's the first thing that somebody will say, you know, I need more leads, but you find out really, you know, are you sure? So a lot of times it's something other than that. And 8 out of 10, I'd say it's probably starting with, you know, the owner. So mindset's huge. You want to definitely get your mind in the game. And then so that would be the first one, but also like have a reason why you're doing it and remind yourself, you know, if anybody has studied mindset or whatever, like talk about affirmations or whatever. If you don't think that's hookie, you know, if you do whatever, but you need to know exactly whether that's a picture of your kids or a picture of, you know, a retirement home or, you know, buying your parents' house for them, whatever, you know, you want to get done in life. I think it's very important to know, you know, if you I want to, you know, Tony Robbins feed— I don't know what his goal is— a billion people. Any kind of reason that gets you up on those days when you don't feel like getting up, because there are a lot of those days, you know, as an entrepreneur when you go through it, there are a lot of those days that you're just like, ah, I just need to pull the covers back up over my head, and you can't, right?

And just do it anyway.

Yeah, that's right. So just do it anyway.

So doing it anyway, having this mindset is, is incredible, right? There's gonna be so many times in all of our lives, whether we are a business owner, whether whether we're entrepreneurial, whether we're doing whatever we're doing, at any age of our life, we're gonna have that, that, that thing that's standing right in front of us or not wanting us to get out of bed and just do it anyway. That's hard, right? I hear this all the time, right? So, um, let's take it even more into a little bit deeper from an emotional standpoint, because we're humans and we all have some level of something that will provoke anxiety in us. We have things that make us sad or angry or even, you know, to a point of depression. When we're there and we have to do this stuff, like what would that be, right? So to just do it anyway, we have great mantras and Tony Robbins and listening to a Gary Vee or an Oprah or a Deepak or whoever, right? How much do you find that consistency is going to help someone get through it no matter what, you know, adversity they're, they're facing?

I think huge consistency is probably one of the biggest keys to success. I mean, I think if you go back and, you know, whoever, whichever successful person you like or want to follow or business or whatever, if you go back and look, it's because they really like worked it when everybody else kind of gave up early or gave up on themselves or the idea or the business or whatever it is, you know, a lot of people run out of money. But other than that, I think that the main thing is just the consistency, and you have to move forward. And everybody, I think, deep down knows when you're in a rut, when you're like, oh my God, this was yesterday, was the worst day ever. You know, the only way to really get out of that is by taking action. And even if it's a small little mini action, like getting out of bed, you know, even if it's just that, you know, putting one foot in front of the other, having a couple of things that you do consistently every day that make you feel like you're one step closer, I think is huge, huge, huge. And it doesn't mean you have to work 80 hours a day, you know, Maybe that one thing takes you 10 minutes, you know, but do it. Do at least one thing that is gonna make you feel like you're moving towards your goal. And, you know, whether that snaps you completely out of it or not, I think definitely will help you at least stay consistent.

Well, I think that's the key of like listening to any podcast that focuses on success, is that the mental toughness always has to win no matter what the original story is, no matter what the struggle is, right? And it's if you don't build mental toughness, you're not going to weather any of the storms. And I think that when we take that mindset into especially creating or being part of a business scenario, every day there's going to be something that's going to be thrown at us. But even taking it again out of the entrepreneurial space, just to life, we just went through a tumultuous political season or political years, and, and, and there's still going to be fighting and there's still going to be difficulties. It's a more perfect union. It never says a perfect union. And You know, it's still going to be in 4 years, we're gonna have the same thing again. Well, less than 4 years, we're gonna have 3 years, we're gonna have the same thing again of this all ramping up and starting over. And we have to realize that like, this is a long-term project. This is a, you know, a 200-year democracy that's young and new and scrappy, right, as Hamilton says. But we have to look at the bigger picture. And we have to look at that our life as the bigger picture. It's not just what's a week away, a month away, year away. It's where do we want to be 20 years from now? Where do we want to be 40 years from now? What do we want to be our legacy?

Yeah, I'm very, very, very big into that because I think a lot of people don't take, you know, the time even to look at it. I think a lot of people think maybe it's a little scary to think about where they want to be or what they want to be doing, and so they just, you know, ignore it. But I think it helps a lot. I think once you actually sit down and not even just think about it, but, you know, verbalize it, write it, I do think once you start writing things down, it changes because even if it's in your head, once you start actually writing it down, it changes. And seeing that and believing in it is, you know, one of the things that will help you have that mental toughness and help you kind of get through it. I think it's a necessary, necessary part.

Well, it's also, I think, the idea of differentiating yourself from things around you, right? Whether as a person I think this applies in people seeking relationships or looking to find a partner that like, how do you make yourself stand out that will make you become a more attractive person to partner with? But even in businesses, right, differentiating your, your market position. And I know that's one of the things that you, you, you talk about. So what are some tasty little nuggets of how someone, whether personally or professionally or as a business brand, can, can start identifying some ways that they can differentiate themselves and stand out in a, in a, in a aligned way, in a way that, that feels purposeful for them and meaningful for them?

Well, that's an awesome question. So that's probably one of the very first things I look at when I start consulting with any business besides mindset, but is their messaging and what it is that they want people to know about them. And a lot of that is about what makes them unique, what makes them different. And, you know, does it align with, you know, their principles and their goals and their core values and how closely is that related and how much are they actually articulating that in all of their messaging. And you'll find a lot of businesses either aren't articulating it at all, don't even know what it is that, you know, like don't really know what it is that makes them different. Well, if you don't know what it is that, you know, you can't compete with Walmart, you know what I mean? Like you have to know what makes you different, otherwise you can forget it. So I think competing on price is, you know, in the marketing world, a lot of people, you know, want to compete on price, and it's just the absolute worst place you can compete. Again, Walmart, you know, you can't compete with them. So what makes you stand out and what makes you different? And I think if you tried to figure out what makes you as an individual different, probably bleeds a lot into your company.

So would it be fair to say that we should not focus on price at at all, but it should be more about what's the value in that perception. I mean, obviously price is, you know, if someone can't afford it, they can't afford it. If it's legitimately a financial concern, right?

Right.

But when we're talking about someone wanting to see why they should maybe take that over investment, right? I can't afford it, but I'm willing to put it on my credit card, right? Or, or I'm not quite sure if this is the person I want to spend more time with. Not because, right, the, the, the value versus cost, the cost is, I don't know if I have enough free time, right? I don't know if I have, if I, if this should be my primary focus. The value is this person showing, or this business, uh, or this product showing that your investment, even if you can't afford it right now, is worth it to stretch yourself a little bit thin because here's the benefits that you will get from the opposite end that you never thought you would get.

Exactly. And if you are not in, however you're, um, getting your message across, if you're not getting that across, then they're gonna get a price or they're gonna go to something that really is, you know, has nothing to do with their real decision. And so being able to figure out what, you know, your benefits are to them or how you can make their lives easier, better, whatever it is that you're selling, and being able to actually say that is key to them not questioning it because it's not about the money. If you're talking about from a sales perspective, I mean, most of the time it's not about the money. I mean, do I think price has zero impact? No. I mean, clearly, you know, it depends on where you want to be in the market. But again, if you're positioning yourself here, you know, price-wise, but all of your marketing is down here, you know, you're not—

it's not consistent, right? It's not congruent with that, right? And I see that with people as well, especially really, again, I go back to relationships because sales is all relationships and, and, and relationship is all sales. Right? Dating is all sales. And, and, and, and even in a, in a real, in a committed relationship, they're still having to convince the person to continue to stay with you, right? As it would be with a business partner or a sales associate, or a sales associate looking to their, their, their business owner or their, their boss or supervisor, like, well, why should I— what are the benefits, right? Why should I keep committing to your company if I'm not receiving, you know, commiserate, you know, benefits or experiences that will help me grow? Because, you know, Most people want to evolve at some level. When that gets stuck, how do people identify whether— if you're on the side of the, uh, let's just keep it in the business context. Like, if you're the business owner and, and you're, you're not realizing that the value is not being given, one, out to about the products or about your business, or two, to the people that are working with you trying to sell that, like, how do you, how do you become aware without, like, obviously you not just having sales, but what's, what's the step that people need to go from like, okay, we're not making money, we're not producing enough income, we're not selling enough product, to holy crap, this might actually be a me issue, not a business issue, right?

So, so I would go through a whole series of questions. A lot of times if you look at where the bottleneck is, you can kind of find, you know, if it's stopping right at the beginning, clearly, you know, you're not getting to either the people that you want to get to or You know, if you do, we were talking earlier about online and offline. So if you look at your funnel or your, the steps, you know, I don't know if they call that offline and online, but if you look at the steps that the people go through when they're trying to get to a sale, right? Normally you can find within those steps where it's sort of cutting off. And that's the first thing that you want to do is find out like where that cutoff is. And I would say 9 out of 10 times, whether that is the problem or something else, messaging, probably has a big part of it.

And the messaging goes back to the belief about what it is, what it, what the brand is, what the value is.

If the owner doesn't know, you know, you can't articulate something that you don't know. And so if I ask you what makes you different and you can't tell me, clearly nobody else is going to be able to, um, to say it either. And I think, I don't know if you've ever heard, I don't know if it's Gary Vee or who talks about this, but so if you're at a dinner party and, and the table next to you, they are talking about whatever your company offers or whatever your offers. You want your name to come up whether you're in that conversation or not. And so you need to know that— what is it that I want them to be talking about when, when my name comes up?

Yeah, yeah, right. That's synonymous with that brand, that your name is that brand, right? And then you want to be the person in any field. So it's right, South Florida, as you know, as I'm sure was familiar when you were living in Atlanta, is like, you know, how many realtors are there in those two, right? In South Florida and Atlanta, right? It's kind of like everybody does what they do and then they're also a realtor on the side, right?

That's exactly, exactly. Here, here in Panama it's the same.

Oh, it's the same thing, right? So yeah. So it's that South Florida, uh, Latin culture, uh, addition. So it's kind of like, well, why would I want to use you? Like, and like, well, and, and if most people will assume, and I, and I, I pick on this a lot because a lot of time people go into this just cuz they wanna make some extra money. Money on the side. Are you passionate about what you're doing? Are you only doing it for the money? And that's going to shine right through when it's not an alignment of your full brand with who you are. Now, there's many people who are radically successful in selling something that they really don't care about because they're creating a packaging and a message that is targeting specifically the people that they're targeting to sell that product to. But that's when there's a product versus you being the product. And I think that like when people are in a service industry, and I'm wondering like what you see, right? If you're in a service-based industry where the person is part of the product versus a product being the product, then it doesn't matter who's behind it. Is there a different way to go about—

huge difference.

Yeah, so let's talk about that for a few seconds.

Huge difference. So I would say if it's just the product, just the product, I mean, it's probably more straightforward, but you just want to say what the benefits of the product are. But if like in your business or in my business, you know, the person, it has a lot to do with the product, you know, who you are and what you believe in has a lot to do, or your personality, or, you know, your strengths or weaknesses, whatever it is that has a lot to do with you being able to connect with somebody else or relate with somebody else. So you want them to know that, but you also need to know who is it that you would want to connect with? Who is it that you would not want to connect with? You know, why would you want to connect with somebody like this but not somebody like this? I mean, there's a lot, a lot of different things that you could kind of go through and maybe, you know, Like for example, I don't— and as a marketing person, this sounds almost funny, but I do not limit myself to one type of business. Like, um, I don't just handle doctors or I don't just handle construction companies. And the reason I don't do that is because from a marketing standpoint, when I'm helping them, if I can pull stuff in from different industries for them, I can kind of pull a little bit from here, a little bit from there. Right? So for me personally, I don't want to lock into one type. However, do I like a certain type of business? Yeah, I want a business owner who is excited about the business and what they're doing and is really into it. I don't want to work with somebody who isn't passionate about it or doesn't really, it's just like, "Ah, I just want to know the numbers." My personality is going to rub a lot of people wrong. I'm loud, I'm excited, I'm happy. Some people might take that as I have no idea what I'm talking about. Other people might take it as I'm really passionate. It just depends on who that person is that you're speaking to, and that's okay. I'm fine with that. You know, like Gary Vee says, I don't care what other people think. I am also fine with that because I don't want to work with somebody who's going to say, oh my God, your laugh is so loud, you know, please be quiet in my office. I don't want to work with somebody like that because I'm not going to sit in somebody's office and be like, I'm like, "It's just not my personality." So I do think that a lot of a personal business does have a lot to do with the personal brand. And literally it can be a product that you're selling, but if you make yourself a part of, you know, a lot of people who sell physical products, for example, I don't know what your family does in your, I know your family owns a, you know, like a brick and mortar type thing. So if they make the family part of that brick and mortar, that is gonna, going to relate to people who have families or people who relate to, you know, the people who are making themselves part of the brick and mortar, right? I think that that helps a business a lot, and, you know, maybe could hurt it depending on your end game, you know, depending on how you want that business to continue, right, or how you don't want to get—

Well, it's interesting. A while ago when I was helping them with some ideas, um, from the consulting side, we kind wanted to help them differentiate because they are a brick and mortar. We are a third generation family business. Our name is on the, on the company. Um, it's right all over and that is the branding. And we've, we, you know, I've talked to them about like, would it be better to take the name off if someone wanted to come in and buy you guys? And, and, and, you know, if would you, is there a number that you would sell the company at? And is it better to, right, to take it off now or just to keep it on? Right. And we, we went through all those conversations. But at the end of the day, it's still a family business. And I, and I kind of helped them realize that what are the— people can buy some of the high-end products that they sell from other people. Now they're always going to do a great job of trying to compete with price, but we already talked about that, right? It's, it's also what's the value? What are they getting in addition to that? So the way I help them phrase it or look at it is that they highlight what's great about buying your furniture from a brick and mortar family business. How do you do that? It's, you're going to get someone in the family at some point in the process. You're gonna be engaged with someone from our family. You're gonna get the white glove delivery. You're gonna get X, Y, and Z. You're gonna always, you're gonna know that there's, we're standing by what we're standing by versus a big box store or another type of retail store where you have no clue. It's just a salesperson who, you know, at the end of the day, they're trying to sell you whatever it is to get their commission. We wanna make sure that once it's right, we wanna make sure once it's linked to our name's on it, our name's on it. So the second it gets landed to you and it's delivered in your house and we like, they've gone over and they measure stuff to make sure that it's gonna even fit in and tell 'em you can't order this product as much as you love it. There's no way we're gonna be able to get it inside. So we're not gonna sell this to you. Right. I don't know any other, like, you know, a major department store wouldn't give a crap about that. Or another type of, you know, firm might not care about that when it comes to, but that's like the, you know, the attention that we are gonna, you know, if it's not gonna fit in our place, it's not gonna fit in yours. So I think that's kind of where I see where business owners do have to be. Now, it doesn't mean you have to be in the nitty-gritty. You and I probably believe the same of like leveraging out and hiring associates and making sure that your zone of genius is where you're working on and you bring the right staff to do that for the other things. So I guess that ties me to the question where, for those of the, those people out there that are the solo, solopreneurs, right? They're basically a 1 or 2 person, maybe a 3 person gig. How do they get to the place where they're able to now start hiring someone, like knowing that they might have to take a short-term hit because, right, it's the retreat to attack type of paradigm, right? I need to make a little bit less this year, but that person will make my life easier and that person will help me allow, allow me to accomplish more. Where have you seen, and I don't know if there's a perfect answer for this, but where have you seen with any of your clients where they have had to do that? And like, where would be the ideal point where you would say, here's really proactively where you should have started. But if you're here and you haven't done this, you should definitely do it by this point in your—

I would, I would say as early on as humanly possible, um, you need to hire somebody on because it's almost impossible. You know, it is impossible for one person to do it all. I mean, it's just impossible. And every solopreneur tries to do as much as they can by themselves for as long as they can. But at some point you need to start figuring out, you know, How much is your time worth for starters? At the beginning you may not have the money to hire somebody out and I'm talking about, you know, people who are on a shoestring type of thing. I get that they're not going to have the money to, um, to do it, but the minute you can kind of pull together, even if it's part-time, even if it's a couple hours a week, wherever you can kind of get somebody to do stuff for you, that is the time to start as soon as possible. And you can start looking at, I think, systemizing as much as possible when you can systemize. Even before you hire somebody, if there's anything that you can get computer systemized, that kind of thing to help yourself a little bit, that helps. I think another thing is documenting from the beginning, the things that you're doing so that the minute you can have somebody do it, you've got it already documented and you just maybe jump on— there's so many ways to hire people overseas now, but jump on a call with somebody, a Zoom, something, and be able to do a video or be able to to send them the step-by-step or video yourself doing the steps and then be able to send it to them. I just think there are a lot of ways and I don't wanna put a number on it because I think it would be different for everybody in different circumstances, but I would say as soon as possible.

So it's interesting. So I was thinking about this from a marketing perspective a while ago. I saw on social media this person who does one sheets for speakers for, right, those type of things. And it was really cool. The graphics were cool. It popped. It was very— it was a sexy looking thing. And I reached out to them like, oh, what do you charge for that? And like, well, we charge X amount of dollars. I'm like, oh, okay. And it was like, it was a lot for what they're doing. Anyway, a few weeks later, I saw something that they posted online about a new client that they had. And I went through it. I'm like, all right, it's cool. And I found 4 or 5 typos in it. So I sent them a message to that person. I'm like, hey, I really love the layout of the things I want. I don't know if you notice this, but you missed these 4 areas. And the person responded back to me, thank you so much, I need to, I need to let the VA who did this know.

Oh, okay. So if you're gonna do something like that, number 1, you should probably go over the stuff. Number 2, you need to get somebody who's capable of doing it. And especially in the beginning, I mean, bottom line, your name is on it, but the buck stops with you, right?

But here's what's even crazier. Like he's outsourcing all that at, at $5, $10, $15, $20 an hour and charging 100x on that. So here's what I did. I took, I printed out one of them and I broke it down. What questions are they asking per each paragraph to get what's, what data's put on there? And I made that into a worksheet.

Beautiful.

Of my own, right? And then I hired a VA and said, hey, ask me these questions on a Zoom call. I'm gonna give you my answers. I want you to take what I said to you on these questions in Zoom call, and I I want you to make it sound sexy, right?

Nice.

But, uh, you know, to pay $1,000 knowing that this person is spending $25 to do it, right? And this is unfortunate. This is the scary thing that people are finding in this entrepreneur world is that, right? How do you know who to work with versus, right? A, can you do it yourself? I mean, I, I really did, did, did reverse hack what that person was doing, but it, it really is like at that point, like, cuz there is that, like we said, the, the dollar amount. It wasn't worth it for to do $1,000, especially wasn't after I found out that that person's referring it out to a VA somewhere in wherever the Philippines or right, whatever it could be at $5, $10 an hour. Right. So it just looks sexy with a graphic designer or whatever. So fine. So who do I can find for $200, $300 to do all that or whatever it may be. But I think like people are really nervous and scared, especially when everybody now has no proof about what they do, but everybody, everybody is, well, I'm a marketer, I'm a social media manager, I'm a social media expert. I love this. Like, I love getting I'm getting emails or hit up on, on social media for, I want to help you grow your Instagram page, and I go to the Instagram page and I have more followers than them. That makes no sense.

However, that's the shoemaker's, the shoemaker's, um, kid, right? Right. I mean, that could be that, because I do— I, I am sort of guilty of that myself. Like, I don't pay so much attention to, to the things that I probably should as business owner because, you know, I started—

if you're doing a ton of business and you have proof of concept that someone can show me, different ball game. But if you're saying I want to help you grow your Instagram and your Instagram isn't right, you know, there, then what, you know, it's, it's, you know, whatever. I have— there's someone I know who's a financial planner and I'm like, but you're living in the same apartment complex as me.

I don't want you—

why would I hire you? You know, like, unless you show me your bank statements, you have $600,000 in your bank account But if you're— but if we're, if we're doing same same, you know, I don't want to be samesies, you know.

Back in the day when I used to do like aerobics at the gym, you know, like this is like way back in the day, I would do the same thing. I would go in and if the person didn't look like 10 times better than me, I would walk out. I'm like, why would I want to do that? You know? Right.

But, but I think that's, I think that's one of the struggles that like especially earlier entrepreneurs that are starting off, like how do I prove that I know How do I prove what we're doing? And, and, you know, and right now is such a good time, especially in the middle of a pandemic. If you're good at something and you want testimonials, you want video proof, you want whatever, record what you offer it for free and use that as social content, right? Easily.

Yeah.

Right. Someone was, I was, you know, to go into a restaurant that you love. If you're a photographer, if you're a copywriter, if you're a graphic designer and be like, can I redo your menus? Can I redo your website? 'Can I redo your pictures for your whatever, for your menu and your website and your marketing?' Right? And, and maybe you'll, you know, don't even do it for money. Maybe they'll offer you free food, whatever. But you then say, 'I'm going to do this in exchange for social media, you know, for me to leverage my brand.' And most people will probably say yes, especially right now during this pandemic, right?

I think there are conflicting kind of messages and views on that because a lot of people will tell you don't work for free. But I think that, um, for you personally when you're starting out to get your own confidence and for you to feel better about it, don't worry about it because if you don't work for free, what is the alternative? Are you just going to wait until you have the experience that you're never going to get because you're not going to have the confidence to actually charge somebody? You're going to get on like a downward spiral that's not going to stop because without the testimonials, you don't feel confident without, you know, being able to actually do it yourself, then you don't feel like you can do it yourself, and then you project that when you're going out looking for somebody or when you're trying to. So I think I've worked with, with other consultants and coaches and stuff. That for me is just like one of the fun ones that, you know, my target is more brick-and-mortar local business type things, but for fun, because they're more like me, the hyper whatever. Anyway, a lot of them when they start off, they have that same sort of an issue. And I think that, you know, getting caught up in like, "Oh no, but I can't work for free." Who cares? You know, do what you need to do to make yourself feel better. And then the other thing is, is prices. Like I might be able to say to you, "You need to charge, you know, X amount of money." But if you don't feel comfortable charging X amount of money, there's no I can tell you all day long that that's what you should be charging, but if you don't feel comfortable with it, you're not gonna say it with a straight face. That's what I always say. If you can't say it with a straight face and a punto at the, you know, like a, at the end of that, then don't say it. You know, start off with something that feels comfortable, you know? And if zero feels comfortable, go for zero. You know, if you can say $10 a month and that feels comfortable, go for $10 a month.

And I just had a conversation with a client about that, that, um, wants to start tutoring on the side. I'm like, well, what do you think about charging? And they said whatever number. And I'm like, where did you come up with that lowball offer? And they're like, what do you mean? I'm like, well, what's the going rate? Well, they're— I'm like, well, someone, someone I know charges whatever, and that's way too much. I'm like, but people are paying that. It's not too much for the people that are paying that person. So why are you deciding it's too much? If someone is making that money, then it's not too much. And you can't undervalue your, your whole perspective. And, and I found that I'm like, well, how much would you personally pay for that service? And they're like, well, I wouldn't pay that much. I'm like, well, that's why you'll never be able to ask for that. So that's where the confidence factor is. In order for me as, as a therapist and a coach and doing the integrative work that I do, I had to be comfortable paying someone else more than what— to pay the thousand per session, right? More than what I'm, what I'm asking for myself, because that pain point starts changing, especially when I'm like, wow, this is the result I'm getting at $300 an hour to pay someone else, which is a lot of money for service. But if I'm gonna be asking for X anywhere in that range, I have to be okay paying someone else to receive that.

Exactly.

So I think that's something challenging out there that I'm not— now I'm not saying someone who's like, I have a $10,000 product, so I need to go buy a Prada bag this week, or Gucci, whatever. Right. I'm not, I'm not saying, but it's like in that same leverageable mindset.

Like, I was about to say, that goes back to the whole mindset where we kind of started this full circle here. But that goes back to that and, um, me answering that first question, that you better be secure in what you're doing because other people are always gonna— nobody would pay that, nobody would ever do that, nobody would ever buy that— you're gonna get that all the time when you first start off. So you need to be comfortable with whatever it is that you are selling charging, doing all of it. You need to be comfortable and you need to have your own confidence about it and maybe a support circle or a support person or somebody outside of your normal, you know, brother, sister, mom, dad, husband, teacher, whoever, you know, that might think that they're trying to help you by saying you'll never be able to do that, but plenty of people before you have and plenty of people after you will, you know. Yeah, find people that can kind of back that up with you.

Yeah, so let's talk for the next, you know, the last few minutes that we have about your e-learning marketing system. I find it absolutely fascinating. So give us, give us the background, how that, you know, why did you decide to create that and what if, and who out there is it targeting and who should absolutely be connecting to what you're offering there?

Okay, awesome. So that is, I use it but two ways, but number one, it's It's a do-it-yourself kind of zero to $100,000 if you're just starting a business. If you are already into your business but you have things going wrong, it is a great way you can kind of jump around. Anyway, so what it is is a training course. It's about 52 weeks long. It is 52 weeks long, not about. And it literally goes through like from start to finish building a very profitable business. And so if you have the time, You know, going through it from zero to end is awesome because there's a lot of information in there. And even if you've started your own business, a lot of people who start their own businesses are not business people. You know, they know how to do a product. They know how to— maybe they're salespeople and not business people. Maybe they, um, you know, had an idea, created a product, bought something, whatever. So this is the whole, you know, how to start a business and from the marketing standpoint also. So I use it that it's do-it-yourself. And then I also go through it with, when I have my own clients, I go through it. I have another system on top of that that I would use. And I don't necessarily go from beginning to end because, you know, I said earlier that I work with like brick and mortars or I work with service-based local companies. And so a lot of them are already up and going. That's my main. So I might go back back almost 100% of the time to the beginning because that's where the messaging part comes in. But then I might skip to something else. Something else that's important to their business at the moment where they're at. The system is really good because you can skip around. You can do it, do it yourself or when I do the consulting, I do use parts of it.

Awesome. Some of the topics here just as I go through them is differentiating your business which we've already talked about. Um, business ventures, right? Who to partner with. Uh, direct mailing, generating online leads using webinars and telemarketing and teleseminars, radio, TV advertising, right? But it's still, but it's still existent. It's still, yes, some people, some people, especially in the, um, in the, in the fashion, not like, like the furniture and the interior design, they're still doing all that stuff, right? The vanities, right? Spotify, you know, those type of places are doing that in that world. So there's a lot of audio.

Audio is going to be big in the next couple of years, whether you believe it or not.

It's huge. Well, it's already here and it's already huge. Forget podcasts. We're now talking about Clubhouse, that app, which is just insane. I don't know if it's, if it's opened itself up to Latin America yet, but in North America, right, in just North America, meaning like the United States and Canada, on the last month, this Clubhouse app has been Insanity, and right now it's only eligible to people who are on Apple products to have access to it, and you need to be invited in. And it's an online networking conference, talk group chat with like— I mean, there's everybody from like— we were talking about like Gary Vee is on it, and Grant Cardone, and Daymond John, and Lewis Howes, and, and like— and you're just in a room with them, and you can get on a virtual stage and ask them a question, or you can have kind of that organic engagement that you would be able to have otherwise. Yeah, yeah. There's some people I'm already going to have on future guests, uh, that will— that are significant, like, you know, significant, significant founders of crazy companies that are just in a room and you're like, hey, like, I was just on that chat with you and I asked you that question, would you be on my pod?

Right?

It's just the amount of leveraging. It's, it's here and it's, you know, it's the early adapters that always win, right? You hear Gary Vee talk about like, I should have bought in at what you call it stock and I was such an idiot and like whatever. And he's like, that's one of my biggest regrets, right? Versus like all the other things that he's done right. So, um, you know, it's the early adopters that are gonna take it and use and leverage and use it for marketing and branding and, and sharing their passion. Um, it's super, super, super cool. So like, I don't want— I want to challenge people out there who are not used to new technology, right? Where we're already at the middle to tail end of TikTok, but it's still an open wide space. I don't personally use it. I, I just don't have the time.

I, I actually think it's not, you know, the end, anywhere close to the end actually. I think it's still a good, so I think with TikTok, the problem was is that because it was dance and music and everything, people didn't get into it. I don't use it for my consulting business either, but I do have a brick and mortar that I pivoted online that was a language school, and I do use it for that. And it is amazing. I mean, it is an amazing platform. I do not sing and dance, I haven't done it from the get-go and I've got like 10,000, you know, or more followers on there. And I never once, you know, did a— right.

So it depends on your niche of what you're really doing. Like for me at the beginning, like when I saw it was pre-pandemic into the beginning of the pandemic and I'm like, all right, like I, I'm not getting any value and I just see myself wasting so much time. So I didn't leverage it even though I did create a few things, but it wasn't like, right. It's, it's a consistency like we talked about, but I wasn't getting enough. Like my focus was on Instagram. And my focus was on Facebook and, and my podcast and stuff like that. And I was taking some stuff, but it just wasn't resonating for me. It didn't feel like it's the place that I wanted to be.

That's the other thing— where are your people and how can you get them between the things? I mean, like, you're already on, right, you know, 2 or 3 different ones.

So, well, it's interesting because a month ago— so we're now at the beginning of January— about a month ago, my, my main Instagram got shut down for no rhyme or reason. Nothing political, nothing pandemic otherwise nothing. The next thing I knew, it just got shut down. So I had my second back one that was just for my podcast, even though I was doing everything on that main one with my practice. And, and I had to start from scratch. But here's the crazy thing— joining, uh, Clubhouse, you didn't get it open again? I could not get it back. I've multiple emails and all this other stuff. So here's the interesting thing: in just the last 2 weeks alone, I went from— let's say I put— I haven't touched it in, I don't know, 6 or 8 months until, you know, December from the time that I joined Clubhouse to this week, the numbers that I had doubled. Still low numbers, right? But it went from like 120 to 310 in the span of 3 weeks, right? Um, so there's that facilitation of finding the right platform where you can get organic connection with people that are like-minded, that are in the same things that you're into, that you know that when they're, they're going to look at your thing, they're liking it or engaging with it because they're interested in it as well. And I think that's really what the focus needs to be on versus just getting your likes and your numbers, because that doesn't mean anything if there's no engagement with, like, engagement.

Exactly. 100% agree with you. And I definitely think, you know, different platforms is a must. I think a lot of people back in the day said, oh, just focus on one, because I don't think that is a good idea at all. But I— nor do I think you need to be on 10 of them, right?

Right. And especially with what's going on in today's climate where it could be shut taken down at any given time. And that's why it's super cool for you where your, your stuff is hosted on your website versus on some other website or on YouTube or whatever, where it can be taken down for whatever reason, that you're hosting it on yours. And I definitely would recommend for people— it's a little bit more costly and a little bit more challenging, but to find a way that you're, you know, you at least have a storehouse of your marketing stuff on something that's your own platform as well, in case something happens in the future, no matter, right, whatever whatever's going on in the world with whatever, you know, these social media platforms that can— for no rhyme or no rhyme or reason, people—

Facebook has been doing it a lot, right?

Nothing. For nothing, right? It could just be a keyword that has not— right, that they're assuming will fill in the next keyword. So yeah, I just want to be mindful for that.

Normally they turn them, but that is the second time I've heard that about Instagram, that they never got it back on. Wow.

Got back on after multiple. So it is what it is. One day it might show back up. But for those of you out there who want to get more of this, if you're, again, if you're in the marketing and the business side, you want to do some business development, business marketing, definitely check out Erica's website. It's ericaleary.com, and that's where you can see her e-learning marketing system. You can see she has a really cool tool called the Marketing Evaluator, which has a bunch of different verticals to see how well you're doing in different aspects of building your case and all this different perspective of putting your message and your brand out there. So, Erica, really want to thank you again for spending some time with us today.

Thank you. So awesome. And I appreciate the opportunity again.

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