A Tale Of Scale: How To Grow Your Service Business And Make A Big Impact with Zion Kim

For business owners, marketing execs, and anyone trying to grow your business, pump your profits and make more while doing less. Welcome to Bacon Wrapped Business with Brad Costanzo. Sizzling hot business advice guaranteed to make you fat profits. Now here's your host, Brad Costanzo.

Welcome back to Bacon Wrap business. Guys, this is Brad Costanzo. Not that you would be expecting somebody else. My name is in the title and if you weren't expecting me, I don't know what you were expecting. But I'm happy to have you here. Hopefully you've been a long time subscriber and listener to the show and if you have, I want to thank you. If you're brand new, I welcome you with open arms and a virtual high five. And you know, this show is a great platform for me. I started it over five years ago at this time of this recording to get access to some really, really brilliant people and obviously helps me in my both my social life, my business and professional life. But it also helps me bring this to you. And I've got a lot of people who write in and they tell me that a lot of the guests and a lot of conversations that I allow you to eavesdrop on have made dramatic impacts on their life because this is the kind of stuff that they typically would have to pay a lot of money for, whether that's through accessing people in very expensive masterminds or information courses, et cetera. And really it's my goal to pull out and distill some of the wisdom from the people that I really admire who are out there doing cool stuff that I'm paying attention to and that I think you guys can learn a lot from as well. Today is no different. I'm interviewing Zion Kim. So Zion and I met, if I am not mistaken, at a party, the Internet marketing party in San Diego. I want to say two years ago, it may have been more, I don't remember exactly, but I remember us having a drink, we met, we hit it off, and then next thing I know, Zion's off doing some other really cool stuff with a former guest on the show, Scott Oldford. And they co founded some amazing IP and a method for growing a business. And since then, Zion has gone on to really scale not only his own business, but help a lot of other companies because he's the CEO of a company called 1mt and along with Scott, he's the co creator of the ROI method. Interestingly, he was kicked out of business school his freshman year. He didn't tell me why, but we might find out and he has since started six and seven figure companies, two of them while he was still an undergrad, which is pretty impressive. And right now his company, 1mt, is on a mission to support 1 million entrepreneurs to seven figures and beyond to add a trillion dollars to the global economy, which is a huge, huge goal. And I absolutely love it. And Zion has always been a wealth of information from the stuff he shared with me privately. And I'm going to shut up now and just welcome Zion to bacon wrapped business. How are you, buddy?

Amazing. Thank you so much for having me. And you absolutely nailed it. That's exactly where we met about two years ago.

So it's been two years. Having drinks at the bar there just. I don't remember exactly what we were talking about, but I think it was some fun stuff. And it's been cool to kind of watch what you've been able to build and interested to kind of dive into this. And man, as I said, these conversations are like us sitting down, having a, having a glass of beer, a coffee, and just kind of kicking it. But I do want to hear a little bit about the backstory. I mean, you said you got kicked out of business school, so if it's not a salacious crazy story, make one up. I don't care. We'll just lie to these.

Nothing crazy.

Cooking meth in your dorm room? What?

Yeah, no, nothing crazy like that. No, it's just my freshman year when I got there, I was definitely just taken over by the social aspect of college and just didn't go to any classes or anything like that. So my grades just plummeted. And they gave me a warning when I first got there because I had some serious senioritis and just didn't really do anything. And then. Yeah, and then after that semester, like, oh, by the way, we meant it. So we're totally giving the boot. They don't like me essentially telling that story publicly because I've since been invited back a few times as a speaker and got invited as, you know, even as like a lecturer there at the school. So. But that's, that's the reason why I kind of just put it in because it's a fun fact.

That's great now. So, you know, when we met, it wasn't long after we met that you and Scott Oldford partnered up in order to really bring the ROI method and a lot of the business strategies behind that to the market. And I want to dive into some of that stuff that you guys have created and how it's in there, you know, and I know. I've got some questions. I'm a little familiar with it, but I want to dive deeper. I also want to talk about really what it takes operationally to scale once you, you know, you've got a little bit of momentum because a lot of people hit that kind of ceiling. And I want to dive in there. But before I do, what were you doing kind of prior to that? I don't need the entire journey, but I love to hear some of the relevant things that you were doing prior to that partnership.

Yeah, absolutely. Well, I'd say, yeah, I did start a couple businesses before then. You know, my first one just being like custom apparel, where that's probably where I got my appreciation for operations and especially what operational scale was not. We had this one week where we literally got thousands and thousands of custom orders, where, of course that's great because we had a campaign go viral at the time, but again, all custom orders. Right. So that's where I learned about paradox of choice in that people only think they want options, but they actually don't. Yet we gave them a ton. Right. So that was custom clothing for fraternities and sororities. And then since then, we opened up New Jersey's largest coworking space. So that's really where I got a really awesome appreciation for community in general, where I got into the startup world and a bunch of other random stuff in the middle. There was in the affiliate marketing space more like on the performance side, and then moved into more running my own digital agency where we work with smallest companies we work with were probably like the 2 to 3 million dollars side. And then the next biggest companies are like 20 to 50 million, up to a few billion in revenue. And I got very fortunate that the common denominator with a lot of these companies were that they're industry leaders. Right. So I got to peer into the companies from the outside looking in and. Well, and this time actually being on the inside, just running their digital acquisition strategies. And that was in all kinds of different industries. So. Man, like home services, specialty insurances, like moving companies, like real estate development companies, like, you name it, like, just all over the place.

That's cool.

Yeah.

That gives you a good breadth of experience. And then is that what you were doing, like, right when we met?

Yep.

Okay, cool. What was the catalyst to kind of partner up with Scott and co create the ROI method and whatnot? Like, was there anything?

Yeah, so, yeah, so something that. So when we launched a co working space, we did it because we're really interested in Launching like an incubator accelerator. And at this point, that was almost eight years ago. And since then, I've always wanted to do it, but I never felt that I quite had what I needed. Right. Both in terms of relationships, skills, experience, whatever it might be. Scott and I just were on a Facebook messenger DM one day and just like, oh, you know, so what is it that you really want to do? And we're just going back and forth and we realized that we both had this interest in just kind of helping, you know, these companies at like the six figure level or the seven figure level, as well as like seven to multiple seven, whatever it is. And then next thing you know, he blows up his entire company, does a complete reset on it, launches a new program. And, you know, I just approached him and said, hey. And he was looking for new coaches at the time and. And I shot him a message and said, hey, look, I'd be interested, right, in just coaching for you. We talked about working together, so I figured this would be best way for me to see what you're all about, see you're not fully whatever it is. And so gone through the door. I saw a lot of things that I liked, saw a lot of opportunities for improvement. I was kept being the guy that was like, oh, by the way, we should change this and this and this. And that eventually became the ROI method. And that was all by accident as well, because I had actually come over his house in Venice so that we could redesign that program that we were coaching in, which was relevancy engine at the time. And next thing we know, we're literally just going through every aspect of the ROI method and just fleshing it out, really making it digestible and teachable for people and applicable. Right. Because that's something that I've always been really good at. Scott knows not as much. So it's like, how do we teach these things? And that's not just with Scott, that's with anyone. Right. It's like when you're really, really good at something and it's kind of in your subconscious competency, it's hard for you to figure out what about it is actually working. So I kind of came as an outside perspective, looked at what was what he was doing, and said, wow, okay. There's a lot of psychological reasons why this is working. There's a lot of tactical reasons why this is working. So my job was to not only essentially explain what the ROI method was and all the different parts, which stands for relevancy, omnipresence and intimacy. But it was also to make this teachable so people actually implement in their businesses.

So part of it that is like you kind of really extracting out a lot of the stuff that Scott was doing, kind of what is it unconsciously competent or whatnot. Right.

He discovered the whole methodology by accident. Right. He was just kind of like messing around in Facebook, started posting a ton of content up and just structured it a certain way. And all of a sudden I was like, dude, you're just everywhere, right? Like, how can I do that? And that's really how everything kind of came to be.

Now, have you ever kind of created a process by which you do that for yourself? Because it sounds like if that's something that you're in your kind of zone as genius is extracting that from other people. Do you also have a methodology which either use, teach, or have other people utilize to extract that information from somebody else about how to take what somebody else does naturally or unconsciously, competently into kind of a programmatic, systematized way?

So we've only done it probably at a higher level. So there's two ways that we've done it. So one is a higher level where it's really coming up with their own signature process. So it's really talking about, hey, there's a certain framework and a certain set of steps and stages that you're taking people through. So what is that? And then how do we kind of turn that into your, essentially your marketing methodology and your framework so that you're naming your process? Right? Because I think that a lot of people underestimate the psychological power of what happens when you actually name a process that you do every single day. Because we forget, because we do this all the time and we might not have the appreciation for it. The moment that becomes named and branded and it's out there, then it just kind of contextualizes everything that you want to talk about. But it also suggests that it's like, wow, you guys have this nail. It's a repeatable, duplicatable process that you've done over and over and over again to achieve a certain outcome. And that's essentially what we're trying to tell the marketplace. It's like, hey, with all the people we work with, how do we extract that out so that that can become one of your battle cries of, hey, this is the thing, right? And I think that especially because I work with a lot of personal, brand driven companies, it gives an opportunity for people to almost like take the spotlight off of themselves and put it onto something Else where now they become this ambassador evangelist for the actual process itself. So that also becomes really fun because if you build it the right way and build the asset the right way, then it truly does become an asset. And there's a lot of fun business models that can come up. That and licensing different types of JV deals and whatnot.

That's great.

Yeah.

Because I know for a fact that that's one of the areas personally that although I've helped people, some of my clients do exactly that same thing. It's always that it's hard thing to do for yourself.

Absolutely.

Whenever you're looking at yourself, you can't see the same things that other people see because the perspectives are totally different. Which is why having coaches and consultants, etc. Is so critical oftentimes. I know that one of my personal challenges there has always been that and kind of like you, I've worked with so many, in so many different industries, with so many different types of clients, et cetera. I've never been that had that specialized focused on one area. Like I'm not a traffic strategist, I'm a business and growth strategist. Right. So people come like my clients come to me when they need clarity and confidence. They can't figure it out. They need a roadmap for the whole thing and that might involve one aspect or this. So it's always been hard to kind of codify and systematize what I do and kind of or memorialize it in a way that's like, oh, this is kind of the methodology. In fact, one of the things I did, I did name my process or in essence or what I do, but not necessarily. And it's kind of different than that. It's not, it's not necessarily a method. But I do what I kind of call compression coaching or compression consulting sometimes. And I call these when I do this with clients. And sometimes it's a one off and sometimes it's in small group. I call it a compression session because it rhymes and that rhyming is cool. But in essence what it is, it's distilling down everything. It's like getting rid of all the fluff. And like how can I get you, how can I compress all the time, energy, effort, information, et cetera into really just the most actionable stuff so that you don't have to go through 150 module course or something Because a lot of people, that the completion rate of a lot of people's programs is actually really low. But so it's kind of funny, but I've done a lot of this work on myself is like, really how do I pull out the things that I do into a framework? Would you say duplicatable and teachable, etc.

Well, I think for you, because you and I are very similar in that we kind of COVID a breadth of things, right? And there's a lot of different things. So I think just coming up with something where it's really talking about what's like, let's just say compression, right? So if compression is like the core foundational pillar of whatever it is that you're doing, then how do you apply compression to all these significant areas and what are they? Right? Because if we really boil it down and went through that process, it's likely that there's probably like four or five areas. I mean, when you look at business in general at a high level, there's really five areas, right? Marketing, sales, finance, et cetera. Operations. Yeah. But for you, I would say it's like, how do we apply compression to each of these different areas and what's kind of the secret sauce in each of those areas? And then how does that kind of roll up to this one big thing, which is the big outcome that they want, which of course is growth. Right? So it's just seeing like, I'm kind of like seeing a visual here where, you know, it's almost like all these things stacked up and you're kind of taking like, hey, this is what it actually looks like. If we were to stretch it out almost like a slinky, where it's like, hey, this is almost what it looks like. But what we're doing is, hey, this is what I'm actually delivering to you, where it's all bite sized, Right?

Exactly. Yeah. And it ends up, what I end up doing is saying like, you know, reverse engineering. Where do you want to be? And then what's kind of the most. What's the most critical path to get there? Because there's a lot of things we all could do, there's a lot of things we should do, but it's super hard to do it all until you get to a point where then you have the resources and you build a huge team and everybody kind of comes in and you refine the machine. But you know, actually Dan Sullivan has a great from Strategic Coach, if my listeners aren't familiar, he has a great little pamphlet book called the 80% approach, which I've always liked, which is like, get it done, 80%. You can always refine it later. Et cetera but mine is even. Sometimes I get it done, sometimes 30%. And you'll be amazed what happens when you get into momentum and you get that inertia moving forward. Then that allows you to start creating the income and plug in the holes quickly, as opposed to trying to build a masterpiece from scratch.

That's a pretty significant differentiation there right away, right? Where it's just, hey, the aspect of compression is, let's not even focus on the 80, and let's just focus on getting you started so you're moving in the right direction that you could actually get it done. Right. So there's a couple elements of just even what you mentioned that are different, because there's a lot of people where they're very much a hammer and they're looking for their nails. Every single growth problem that they come across, like, we could totally solve that with Facebook ads. And you're not necessarily that person. So I think even that, hey, we're looking at what's available to us. And I would imagine it's like, hey, what's the goal? Who do we serve? Where are these people living? And let's go find them.

One of the things I wanted to bring up, we talked a little bit about earlier, and I know that this is, I think, one of the. I've got another client who's kind of going through this turbulence here because. But it's when you get to a point where you are doing well, let's just say you're making six figures, low seven figures, et cetera. Let's just say mid six figures, right? You got a healthy business, coaching, she's a coach, etc. And you get to that point where, you know, adding another couple clients is not gonna move the needle. You need to start building the team. You need to start introducing frameworks in order to scale and operations that can handle things. Otherwise, you're just going to. You're gonna grow to death because you're just doing more and you're not doing it more efficiently. So, for instance, one of her issues is her funnel had kind of. It stopped generating leads. So I helped her kind of create something where the leads were not a problem. But what happened is that. And she's getting great ROI on the ads, et cetera. But the problem is now her time, like, her entire schedule is like, oh, crap. Like, what we did is we took a marketing and lead problem and we just made it a sales problem. And it's like, oh, crap. So now she's going through that process of hiring and trying to find the Right. Salespeople in order to replicate her so that she can just focus on the ip. So, and this is a thing that I think I wouldn't say a lot of people, the fortunate ones who get to this point where they're like, all right, I'm hitting my ceiling, if I keep doing the same thing I've always done, I'm not going to grow. But making that switch over can be challenging. So what have you found is effective for when people hit that and you know, they're pedaling so fast because if they let up, things start to really fall apart. How do people get over that turbulent time and go from hustler to business owner?

Yeah, so you mentioned something really interesting because I think the first thing is kind of having the lens and the paradigm shift of, okay, you have a lead issue, but what if you don't have a lead issue? Right. And a lot of people, when they're kind of at that juncture where they're really at that critical inflection point, they can't imagine what happens when that lead issue is solved. Right. And most people think the holy grail is, okay, I just need my lead gen problem solved and then everything else will take care of itself. But fact of matter is that's when all your problems actually start.

Right. So I would say, you know, the first thing is knowing that lead gen is not where it ends, it's actually where it begins. And that's where the actual growth, like the true growth journey begins. And I would say that in order to really go over that hump, sales is definitely something that you need to outsource and most people can't. Especially if, again, you're at that six figure level, you're doing your own sales, you can't really imagine giving up your sales function to somebody else. It's just mind bending to people. Because you also can't imagine creating an application process because you're just wanting as many sales calls as possible. There's this inflection point when you start generating a bunch of leads where you get to pick and choose and that just becomes a whole different world for people in general. But I'd say that. Well, and it's also a transition point between really living in a mindset of scarcity versus abundance, where you get to kind of look at your business in a completely different way. But when you're in that situation outside the sales issue, before you even get there, I'd actually make sure that the delivery component is taken care of as much as possible. Because it sounds like the Client in this situation is mostly doing their own and doing all their own coaching. But there's an aspect to what they do. Can it be downloaded to someone else so that they can actually repeat the process themselves? And it's just. And it is a balancing act, right? Because here you are wanting to show up to delivery, but you can't necessarily get the delivery off your plate unless you have your lead gen situation figured out. So it almost all happens in tandem, which is why a lot of people don't make it through it. Right. But I'd say that while the lead gen is growing and scaling, because obviously it takes some time and you're starting to get those things going on the moment you actually get that sales function off your plate. I'd say the first almost immediate thing is, hey, do you actually have a reliable process for delivery where you're out of it? Right. Because especially as a coach, as a consultant, any service provider, I mean, any CEO in general, right. Like, if you actually have the goal to grow a company and become a CEO, then your number one job is to get out of every critical process in the company, period. Right. I would do it in that order.

And it's challenging for a lot of people who build, start off with a personal brand and it's like they're selling themselves. You kind of want to migrate to selling your system and then not. Yeah. And like you're constantly trying to remove yourself from the process, but it's hard when you started off selling yourself. So it's a big shift, mental shift for a lot of people to make. I know that's right.

And you know, just to go back to early in the conversation, we're talking about this methodology. That's why it helps to have this other asset where it's like, hey, look, like this is an asset that all of our people are trained on. It is the process. Like, there's nothing special about me, right? So it's almost this really interesting part where you kind of have to go get over this egoic hump, right? Where it's like, also not all about you. It's like. And you're almost like trying to take attention off yourself saying, hey, look, all my people are actually better than me. And you get to really edify everyone else on your team and say, but this process is the one that we've gotten dialed in. We have a whole team trained on it. And. And then you're really just selling the process. And then that shift from when people want you to the moment that they want your team or want the methodology or the process, it actually happens quite seamlessly and quite quickly unless they really do want to work with you. But then you start giving them the price tag. Right. Because when the moment you have other team involved, then your price tag obviously goes up. And then once they see that in contrast, and they're like, oh, okay, you know what? I'm happy working with the team.

Bingo. So when it comes to. You've given me so much to chew on here, and I'm getting a little. I'm trying to think about once somebody now has got that. Because I know you're. One of your specialties is in operations and just making things kind of run smoothly. Somebody's kind of got the lead problem and the sales problem kind of taken over, etc. What are some of the operational things that they really need to kind of get a handle on and focus on in order to create that confidence, stability in their business so that they're not just floundering and worried that it's all going to fall apart at a moment's notice.

Yeah. So I'd say that the number one thing is just making sure that you clearly understand who you're actually serving and what the outcome you're actually delivering for that person is. Because the quickest way to actually go from six to seven or multiple, you know, seven to multiple seven figures. Like, no matter what it. What kind of business it is, it's very paradoxical in that actually just choosing one type of customer to serve is actually what's going to give you the highest payoff and the highest growth trajectory. And that's hard to kind of, for a lot of people, wrap their mind around because it's just very counterintuitive. But it's also simplifies everything. So there's a matter. So there's actually this one thing that you have to do where you have to start deciding. It's like, you know, who are the people that you know? And I kind of take people through a very simple process where. Where I just asked them, right. Like, who are the people that you either really, really enjoy working with and you wish you had another million of them or whoever you just had the best results for, because obviously then you have a lot of case studies to go off of. So I'd say the first thing that you need to do is actually nail that down and then that will actually further help your marketing efforts and everything else. Right. So. Because without that getting nailed down, you can never, ever nail down the nuances of the actual operational delivery, because I'LL give you a perfect example. One of the folks that I work with right now trains hairstylists on how to make more money in their salons. So it's like, okay, fair enough. And here we thought we nailed the avatar and then we check in after she launches her first program. She's like, you know what? I actually have hairstylists who own their own salons. I have hairstylists who own salons, but they rent booths out to people. Then I have hairstylists who actually, like, have those booth rentals. But then I also have hairstylists who just like work in teams and they get commissions. All these people have completely different issues. And the way you would speak to each one of them is also vastly different, which is going to affect your delivery, which is also going to affect your operations, which is also going to affect your sales conversation, which is also going to affect your marketing. So I would say that's actually the first step in just nailing that down. And then you actually can start to move towards operationalizing everything from that point forward. So it's really just like niching down, nailing a niche. Which also doesn't mean that you have to be small. I think that's also the biggest misconception about niching down is that it's like, wow, then I'm going to be small. And oftentimes it comes from a really great place because entrepreneurs want to serve and help and impact as many people as they can. And really the fear of not being able to show up in that space of service for everyone.

Yep. Speaking of that, that just made me think of one thing because I was giving advice to somebody else recently, business coach, and it's very easy. The fact that we can advertise the entire world, our services, et cetera, and like, I'm just going to. Or just the entire country. I think a lot of people, if they just focus, especially if they live in a decent sized city, if they just did all of the, let's just say, the ROI method and all the advertising, all this other stuff just in their city alone, there is more than enough money in your backyard and you can easily, like, there's no reason to have to go big and global. Big is not always better. And that was one of those things that he had a little epiphany going, crap. I actually never thought about that. Like, why don't I just double down in my city? Because I could actually get a lot more exposure, a lot more bang for the buck. And all of a sudden it's like, now you're everybody there sees you, you almost become a local celebrity, et cetera. And that just kind of made me think of a conversation I was having a couple days ago with somebody that.

Yeah. And you know this because I'd imagine you do the same thing when you go into any company. It's like, okay, well, who are your customers? Where are they? Who are your favorite? And it's just like figuring out all the different people that they serve. It's like, great. So you're saying that most of your customers are this person. Why is that? And then do you know? It's like, no, I don't actually. So let's go find that out. So oftentimes when you're already at this level, all the answers are in front of you. It's just a matter of whether you want to look and whether you want to ask and actually find out. Because once you do, then the whole game plan is already written for you.

Right.

It's just like, great, now go find that person and whatever. But outside of that and delivery, I'd say diversifying lead sources is probably the next big one. Because if your entire business is reliant on one source of traffic, right, then recipe for disaster. Because we just had this other client that we work with where his ad account got shut off last week. Yeah, right. And it finally got turned back on this week because they're just like, oh, our bad. And it was a mistake. But we just lost a whole week, right? A whole week's worth of potential revenue generated. But fortunately we already had LinkedIn going, we had AdWords going, we had GDN going, we had YouTube going, we had organic going. So it was one of the things where it was a big bummer, but it wasn't the end of the world, right? Business didn't just end.

Speaking of that and just getting more tactical because I know a lot of the people are so reliant on Facebook is like the only channel that they do advertising on. Are there any non obvious lead sources that either you guys have used or that some of your clients have used that people should really be taking advantage of and paying attention to ones that like, man, I actually would not have been top of mind. But yeah, that's super effective. And I know it depends on the business as well, but I don't want.

To give you like the it depends answer, but I'll give you like the one that seen almost across the board is the people especially who have relied on paid traffic to grow the business because of the consistency, the rate of Growth how quick it is dollar in, dollar out, right? Or $2 dollars out. Often actually forget about all the organic sources, right. So I would say that it's kind of just. And it's the one that isn't the instant gratification, right. So I would say that it's really just focusing on what are those organic sources that you can really build on. And I've seen across the board that's the one that gets underutilized the most is just, hey, are you making sure that you rank in Google search? Are you making sure that you rank for YouTube videos? Depending on your audience, if you're content heavy, I mean it doesn't really even matter. But like, even like Quora, right? Like I'd say Quora is a massive opportunity for most people that they're not tapping. And just to give you an idea of the diversity, my friend runs an E commerce company where they sell grillware.

Grill?

Yeah, grillware, like grill tools.

Okay.

Grill brushes and all this other stuff. And one of his biggest channels was actually Quora because he would just go on there and start answering people's like grilling questions and all these other things. Right. So I'd say that Quora is a pretty massive missed opportunity. And another really fun one other than, you know, like Instagram and all these other ones that people are probably on. I'd say that Pinterest is still probably one that most people don't take advantage of. Especially if you have a primarily female audience, which if you don't, then how do you figure out a way to get a primarily female audience? Because money run through women, any purchase is technically done by women. If you're a man, especially in a relationship, you're heavily influenced by your significant other. Anyways, so I'd say Pinterest is probably another really, really massive source that's being missed out on. And I'd say those are the ones where you can actually build assets where it's not just hey, let's do a bunch of work and it's just going to die off and whatever. I'd say those are the ones where you can actually invest some time and keep getting returns over time.

That's perfect examples of the non obvious things that people are like. Yeah, I actually neglect that because I just don't know if it's worth it. But if you do it right, if you learn the system, anything can be worth it. A question jumped into my mind, I thought I'd ask you because you guys have worked with a lot of people in the coaching, consulting Service, personal brand, industries. And you don't have to name any names. But I'm just curious, who or what are some of the. Maybe the models that once more, not super, super obvious. And I'll give an example, the super obvious of people who you're like, man, this person or people have got this stuff dialed in and figured out. Like this business model is maybe a little unique or innovative or just works super, super well. And the obvious one, which I think a lot of coaches and consultants are familiar with, is enroll people into like a. Just a group coaching or a group model and take them through maybe a 8 to 12 week class or something of that nature. I mean that's like the 101 version. And I'm just curious if you've kind of come across anybody who's got coaching consulting models that are just really innovative, unique and for a way that it's like, wow, this, this is dialed in.

So I'd say that not so much on the actual, I wouldn't say there's much innovation on the actual like group coaching model because there's a reason why a lot of people are doing it. Because it's working, the model works. But I'd say the more innovation I've probably seen is what people do on the back end of that model and what people do on the front end of that model. How do you actually lead people into it and then what do you actually backend people into?

Yeah.

So one of the things that we're working on right now, I'll give you an example for someone else. So my buddy's an investor, probably has done like 70 different deals, had six exits and he's doing a group coaching model. So for the sake of deal flow. Right. Because for those first three months he gets to really look at the company. They obviously get an outcome with him and they're super happy. But then he has an opportunity to approach them as an investor and actually just get inside the actual deal. So I'd say like that's a really interesting, innovative thing on the back end of a group coaching model that I haven't really seen lot. I just had a conversation with someone else where they're thinking about also doing that group coaching model on the front end. But on the back end they want to do more like a retainer model where they actually vest the amount that they're paying for. So let's say that this guy's rate is typically $25,000 a month. He's saying, hey, you know what, we're going to do this At a supreme discount at $6,500 a month. So then every month you're vesting with him. So let's say you work with him for the year. That's something like 70, 80 grand or whatever it is. Then you're fully vested for that year. And the next year that $80,000 then kicks in as a residual for him. I saw that as a pretty interesting model. There's a couple people that are doing similar things.

I want to rewind that just so I make sure I understand. Alright, so let's put this in terms of me and you. You're the consultant, I'm the client.

Yep.

So I'm paying you. What did you say normally your fee would be? $25,000 a month.

Yeah, 25,000amonth.

And then by then you're going to charge me. What did you say?

Let's just use 5,000 for easy numbers.

5,000Amonth. Okay, cool. At the end of the year I will have paid you $60,000. Right, cool. And then so now talk about the vesting aspect. And then what happens there?

Yeah. So then basically the residual kicks in based on how many months you actually work with them.

Explain the way the residual works.

Sure. So let's say that you work with him for six months. Right. So then now we're saying six months, $30,000. That what becomes like vested inside of based on the actual performance residual. Therefore, once the actual term of the coaching agreement is over, then you're still paying him $30,000 a year for X amount of years thereafter. But he'll also bake in, you know, then he might also bake in some accelerator clauses for some equity participation. That way he's not necessarily on the cap table. But they might have another deal where, you know, they might have another deal where he says, hey, if you know, because the goal is to exit, therefore when you exit, just give me a multiple on this. Right. So that you don't have to. So I don't necessarily have to be an equity partner. That way you don't have to explain to your investors who this. Who I am or whatever. So we didn't go like too much because we literally have 15 minutes right before this call. But that's what we just talked about. So I was just like, that's refresh my mind.

No, I love things like that. So in essence, the residual gets paid. Does the residual continue to get paid even after the kind of the delivery is done? And it sounds like it is. In return for the discount, like you can pay me $25,000 a month. Or you can pay me this. And then once this is all done, I want my residual. You know, it's in exchange for the discount. Cool.

Yep. He's advised a couple companies to exit. His last company he brought to well over $100 million before his exit. So now he's just advising companies with fast growth, fast exits, like, you know, you want to exit. So that's kind of like one model he's been exploring. And then, you know, that's where I tossed in. Hey, before you get into bed with these guys, like, maybe you want to vet them out. So, hey, why don't you do a group coaching program to do that on the front end? Right? So that's an example of one type of deal. Another type of deal is where you typically get a person who comes into your program, and then all of a sudden, they want to do what you did for them. Because all of a sudden, a bunch of people in their industry are asking them. We have this one guy where he helps people launch programs. He helped a lawyer launch a program. And all of a sudden all the other lawyers are like, dude, you're crushing it. What are you doing? You're clearly doing something differently. How'd you go about doing this? He's now partnering with the lawyer as a jv, licensing his IP out to that lawyer. So he's the face. And then now, you know, they're JV ing that on the market, doing a register on the back end. Right. So that's another really fun and exciting, like, back end deal. Yeah, so we're also piloting that model as well, a little bit of a larger scale. So those are probably, like, the more interesting. You know, I have a couple of variations of the backend one. And then I'd say that there's also a lot of really fun, fun end things that you can do too. Yeah, because. Let's see. Because a lot of people, when they come into this world, they're like, oh, high ticket, high ticket. I just want to charge high ticket. But then they start forgetting about some of the basic principles of why you would have lower ticket in the first place. And then, you know, and there's some people that refuse to release lower ticket because, oh, it's gonna hurt my brand, whatever. It's like, as long as you deliver value, I'd say that it's like, hey, are you making sure that you're actually giving really good value on the front end so that you can bring people into your world as customers? So other than, like, the typical Tripwire or low end sale. On the front end, I have someone that's actually selling like a challenge, which is really interesting. So I use this person. I use this as an example. I work with him right now. His name is James Swanwick. Right. So he sells a program on how to essentially quit drinking.

How to do what?

Training how to quit drinking.

Oh, quit drinking. Cool.

Yep. At the time, he was selling this one challenge for like $67. Right. And then we had a conversation. I was like, I bet you you could probably get this like $5,000 if you just sell to this exact audience. Right. And then what we eventually found out was in his sales, you know, now we're a couple months along, and in a sales process, we found out that all the people that spent the time with him in that challenge are the ones that are converting the best. Right. So we realized that this, you know, these 30 days are basically this paid indoctrination period.

Absolutely.

Where, you know, because he does the training every single day, you get to build a relationship. And then it's like, great. What's next? And so that's a really fun front end that I don't see a lot of people doing because I see a lot of people doing free challenges to get people into their world and do a webinar on the third day, the fifth day, whatever it is. But that's something that I've been more keen on, is something like a paid challenge for the indoctrination period. And then if you have the audience and you've done a good job with the paid traffic, built a really great audience, then I would actually go on the lower end and launch a lower end membership of some sort of. And that is really. I would just treat that almost as a paid email list. Right. So you just have this really amazing customer base to tap from. You have a reoccurring revenue stream in your actual business, and then you can actually then keep on escalating people into the world. So it really just depends on what you want the customer journey to be. But I think that there's a lot of very interesting business models that you can strategically align just to make sure that everything's working the way that you want it to.

Yeah, I know. I couldn't agree more. You know, it's interesting what you said, and I just made me search my Evernote for this. A little while back, I found an article from Brian Harris from videofruit.com I don't know if you're familiar with them. He did an article. I'll Actually put a link to this article because I thought it was really good on the show. Notes of this. But he talks about consequence pricing and he's like one dramatic change to improve your sales by 15x. And in essence what he did is, is it's kind of similar to the challenge idea. And I think the end course that he wanted to sell was something about like how to create a $10,000 a month email program or email newsletter. Just something, you know, big. Right. But instead what he did is he started off a course, which I think it was a small course and it was really just designed to get people to pick their topic, set up their website, name it and then write their first email. Alright, so it was called the Decide Already course. And he said, and I'm reading through this here, but I thought this was pretty like innovative. And he goes, so here's what we did. First we looked for all the, what he calls moments of doom first phase, like all the things that keep them from getting into momentum. And it really are those four things. Pick a topic, set up your site, name your site, write your first email. So they created a course on that and then in order to get the course, you had to choose a consequence for yourself if you didn't complete it. And the consequences were 10, 50 or $100. And he goes, so if you completed the course, then you got it for free. And I'm guessing that's either a refund, I think, I mean I didn't go that far down this rabbit hole, but you might even fill in a zero dollar, put your credit card in here and you have to report back. And if you don't report back that you did it, you said you'd pay $100, so we're going to charge you $100.

Nice.

But so what happens? He goes, if you completed the course and you got it for free and you successfully blew past your pick your topic, Moments of doom. But if you didn't do the work successfully and complete the course, then you were charged the amount that you chosen for yourself. He did this like the percentage of successful students was 80% if they picked a consequence versus like 15% for those who didn't. But then more importantly, the number of people who then signed up for his bigger program was 15 times more likely to buy his other program than the ones who didn't. Yeah, and I just thought that was like a really genius case study of like it was innovative. It's a challenge, but with consequence pricing and it really goes to prove kind of one of those Things I was talking about earlier is if you can just get somebody into momentum, that one of Newton's laws, I don't remember which one it is, but an object in motion stays in motion. Is that the second law? Nice. You said that and immediately made me think about this. I hadn't even looked at that in a couple of years, I don't think, because I think that's like four or five years old.

No, that's really fun. So the principles of what he's doing there are exactly the same principles that are being employed in the challenge, which I think if you extract the fundamentals of why does it actually work? And I was actually thinking about this yesterday, just side tangent that a lot of people don't ask enough of, like why does it work? They just want it to work. So they don't really ask why. Because the best thing that you can do for anyone, and this is what makes a really great lead magnet, it makes a really great piece of content, whatever is can you get them to get one result? You're responsible for them just getting one thing done and they can now credit it to whatever that is that you gave to them. And I think that people really underestimate how significant it is just to move that first milestone into completion. Because then from there it's like, oh my God, I finally got this thing done. It's like, great. Now what's next?

I think I can, I think I can, I think I can, I know I can. And it's that aspect. When I've reconstructed my success early on with my very first info product that I ever launched back in 2008, and I look back, I realize that unconsciously I never focused. Like I'd read the four Hour Workweek and I was like, oh, this looks great. But I never focused on the result. Having either a four hour work week or the result of having thousands of dollars a month or whatever. What I unconsciously focused on, which made all the difference was that every single thing I learned. Because the first course I ever created wasn't, I never thought it was going to be a business. I just like, it's going to be a vehicle for me to learn the skills. So the first time I ever wrote a piece of copy, the first time I set up a website, I celebrated it. I was like, woo, I know how to do that. I didn't know how to do it before. And just by focusing on those little bitty wins in the momentum, it kept me going to the next one. And funny enough, I've had to remember that because these days, it's harder for me to focus on those because I know how to do those things now. I'm focused on the outcome and the results, so I get more frustrated. And it's like, I almost need to go back to that beginner's mind of just like, no, if you're trying to do something you've not really done before, just focus on this. Like, boom, you set this up. Boom, you've set that up. I think that's a big takeaway for, like, listeners who are trying to accomplish something big is just really focus on each step of the process as a gigantic win, as opposed to being like, ah, how come I don't have this result yet? Zion said I'd be worth $10 million in 30 days. Why are you lying, bro?

Yeah, absolutely. And on that note, I think it's also super important to think about where do you actually want to lead your customers to? So if you're working with them over the course of a year, two years, three years, like, where do you actually want to land with them? I think a lot of people aren't super clear on the vision for, like, how far do you really want to take people? And of course, the answer is also, well, it shouldn't be further than where you can actually take them based on your own experience, because I've seen that a lot. I mean, we see a lot of that everywhere, right?

I will help you make a million dollars a year. I've never made more than 100,000, but I'll help you make.

But I can do it. Yeah, absolutely. I think it's based on a really popular framework at the Escape and Arrival, or Heaven and Hell or whatever it is, right? What are they escaping from? Where are they arriving? What are all the major milestones along the way, and then what are all the sub milestones for them to reach that milestone? And I love what you said here of, like, those moments of doom. Where are the moments where you're going to have those bottlenecks where you know that they're going to trip up and you know that they're going to need that help to get to that next step? And to be able to just take that and take a slice of it, and then to be able to actually give it in the context of your larger customer journey, I think makes a lot of sense, because I was also thinking about this yesterday, right? Where everyone, especially clickfunnels is growing as quickly as it did is just like funnels, funnels, funnels, funnels. But they kind of forget it's like, well, what is a funnel anyways? Right. A funnel is just a process and a series of steps for you to get to your intended outcome. And if you really think about it that way of, well, what's the thing that you actually want them to do? Great. What do you want them to do next? Great. And if you can actually design based on that, rather than think of this funnel as a super esoteric thing of, man, I just need this thing. Right. Which is essentially the outcome.

Yeah, right.

I just need like in this case, the outcome is the funnel. I just need it and then I'm gonna be a millionaire. Whatever it is, throw me one funnel away.

What?

Yeah, exactly, right. We really do boil it down, distill it down. You get intimately aware of how do people make their decisions? Because on my most recent launch, I launched a $99 product for the first time in like two years after launching all these 10,000 plus dollar programs. And that was a super eye opening experience for me. We did it all on Facebook, we did it through messenger and I was just paying attention to what questions are people asking me. What do they not understand about it? And from that I got all the nuggets I needed for the copy, I got all the nuggets I needed for the actual funnel itself. And we just put it to cold traffic earlier this week. And the front end opt in page is converting at 70% and the take rate right now is almost 4%.

For a challenge or for something I'm.

Happy to send to you, but we created a checklist of the entire sales, like the ideal sales process for coaches and consultants.

Oh yeah, yeah.

And I basically outlined like, here's all the drop off points and here's every email and text message that you need. And I gave them a checklist. Right. And in the checklist I said on this email you should have something that basically tells them to do this and in this email you should have something that tells them to do this. And then the upsell to that, which is 99 bucks, was the list of all those templates.

That's cool. Where can people go to see that? We can put it in the show notes.

Yeah, I can send you the link.

Listen and hit the details on your podcast thing. Or there'll be a link to the blog page and I'll a link so that you can see all this stuff from Mr. Zion. That's awesome. But. No, that's perfect. But the principle behind that is really, what would you say the principle behind that and why it's working?

So, well, I'd say the biggest thing is I took the time to actually just talk to people and see what kind of questions that they had, see what they appreciated, see what they didn't appreciate, see why they liked it, like, see what they wanted, why they wanted it, why they liked it. So it's just really understanding. If they ask me a question, why did they ask me that question was something not clear, right? So then I got to resolve all that through the copy. So I'll give you a perfect example, right? So a ton of people ask me, it's like, hey, what are the actual emails in here? Right? So for some people, I literally just gave them the document. I was like, listen, if it's valuable, just pay for it. If it's not, then just give me feedback. Almost 9 out of 10 times. Every single person would pay me anyways after they saw it. So on the sales page, I literally have screenshots of specific emails that I ported over onto the sales page. So people would just see it and can see the actual template itself. I have a scrolling page so they can see the actual deliverable and the asset. Because some people just like, don't know what they're buying, right? So I pretty much just like show them everything before they buy it so they know exactly what they're buying. It's only been going for two weeks. We've sold almost 200 of them. We have one refund because the one person's like, I mean, this wasn't what I expected. Like, I don't know how I could have been clear.

Didn't have. That would worry me if you didn't.

Have one.

Person, one refund.

So at the sake of jumping around to a slightly different topic, I talked about this because I wrote this down and I forgot that I had written it down. And this is more for my listeners who are in that place where they're not. A minute ago, I talked about how if you're doing like six figures, you're doing 500,000, you're doing this. Like, how do you get to really start to scale? But what about the folks who are doing, let's say they're doing five or ten thousand dollars a month, right? And there's a lot more hustle that they could probably put in it. They can get to 15 and 20 and 30. But I'm a big fan of leapfrog theory. You familiar with leapfrog theory?

I'm not.

So leapfrog theory put a link in the show notes to everybody. So years ago, one of the Best selling books. I want to say it's one of the best selling books of all time. Business books by a guy named Robert Ringer in a book called Winning Through Intimidation. And it's actually not about winning, like using intimidation. It's like winning through it, like how to not be intimidated and understand the way it all works and win and the concept of leapfrog theory. He posed, and I will read this because I just pulled it up, this little section, because if you hadn't heard it, and if other people haven't heard it, it's really remarkable. He says this. No one has an obligation, moral, legal or otherwise, to work his way up through the ranks. Every human being possesses an alienable right to make a unilateral decision to redirect his career and begin operating at a higher level at any time that he and he alone believes he's ready. If you aspire to great accomplishments, it'll serve you well to understand that the quickest way to the top is not by fighting through the pack, but by leapfrogging over it. There's one catch, however. If you don't have the knowledge and skills to rise above the competition, then despite any bold proclamations, you make the business world jungle will knock you back down. However, if you have the knowledge and skills to be at the top of your field, it's enormously frustrating to know deep down inside that you're capable of bigger accomplishments or when you're spending most of your time and energy fighting day to day battles in the midst of rank and file mediocrity. If you're truly prepared to move up the ladder in your profession, there's no law that requires you to wait for the conventional wisdom crowd to anoint you. He goes on and he talks about more stuff, but in essence, one of the things he says, listen, if you know your shit, if you're good at this, you don't have to work your way up linearly. You can find ways to find leverage and, and leapfrog your way to the top of the pack. And in some cases, one of the most obvious cases is to say, stop charging $100 an hour for your advice and create a $10,000 program, right? The minute you do that, you have leapfrogged and established your value. Now, if you suck at what you do, the market's gonna tell you and you're gonna.

In context of the question I asked, let's say somebody's doing five or $10,000 a month and they've got a business, but it's Nowhere near where they want to be. And they're like, alright, I can just do more and do a little bit better and try to grow to 20 and 30 and 40 and 50 and 100,000, etc. But I know I'm going to need a team. I know I'm going to need resources and stuff like that. What can people at that level do? Whether it's partnering with the right people, whether it's hiring the right resources, what are some of the things that they're like, all right, I'm not willing to wait. What do you suggest to them to play a much bigger. Before they're comfortably ready?

Sure. So I go back initially to those questions that we talked about, which is who do you really want to work with? So who's the actual customer? What's your biggest problem that they have and how are you going to solve it for them and just really nail that. So I think that's step one example.

Let's say somebody's a fitness, a health and fitness transformation specialist. They're amazing at getting people into the best shape of their lives, et cetera. All of their friends are certified personal trainers and they're charging $100 an hour for that. And then they've actually gone through, they've created a signature program. They've done all that stuff. They know it and they're people enrolling in a eight week program for $2,000 a piece and they've got 10 people in it or something like that. This is kind of cool. I'm making like $20,000 a month. That's the scenario I'm just kind of throwing out.

So in that scenario, so I'm a fitness professional. So I'd ask myself, well, who am I training already? So let's just say, well, I just happen to, as a male trainer, I notice that all my clients happen to be women.

Yep.

Then let's take another layer deeper. Do all these folks work in a certain industry? Do they all live in a certain area? Do they all share certain types of hobbies or whatever it is? Right. Just to get to know this person really, really well. But let's just say for whatever reason that all these folks worked in tech or they all worked in like digital marketing or whatever it is? Right. And what problems do they uniquely have that might be different from some of the other customers that you have? And can you really pull that out? Are you also doing something differently with these folks? And likely you are, that you wouldn't do with some of your male clients. Right. And are you Treating it differently. And are you giving them different diets? Are you. Because they're super busy executives, are you having to plan special schedules where they're only working out for X amount of minutes per day? Right. So I think it's also just nailing down, okay, well, who's the person? What about them is unique? What are the unique problems that they have that some of the other folks don't have? And then let's actually get that solved for them. So I'll just give the example of like, hey, let's just say it's a tech executive. So boom, constraints are, well a. They work in technology. So fun part about that is, why does it matter? Right? It just matters because you speak their language. And that's the only reason why it needs to matter is like, you get what their day looks like, you get that they're running a tech company, you get that they're having. You're probably working with investors, you get that they're probably having to suffering from like, having to hire developers all the time, whatever it is, right? There's a lot of nuances to just that person. And you just speaking their language, will it gravitate you? So that's the one aspect of the tech, the executive. What's their biggest thing? Time. Great. So how are you going to make their time more effective on the meal side of things? How are you going to make it more effective in the actual workout side of things? What's the type of schedule that you're going to give? Very first thing I do is nail that right now. Let's talk about the actual leapfrogging aspect of it, right?

And a lot of that has to come to do with like the operational. Like, they're like, all right, I just want to really take this up. I don't want to wait to scale. I want to make this rock.

Right? Because now all of a sudden, you have a program specifically for tech executives. And maybe there's a certain place where you do it or whatever it is, but operationally it changes the nuances of the actual delivery and it changes the nuances of the product. Because now you could become the best at just working with this type of person. And then you can also add a lot of things on the other value chain where you might partner with other folks who can also serve tech executives a different way. Maybe it's people that are handing them candidates left and right. Maybe it's people making introductions for investors, whatever it is, right? So what are the tertiary services that can also service them? And then from there now you're super clear on delivery, you're super clear on who want to serve. Then I would go probably go through partnerships of some sort. So the biggest thing that I would want to do is also kind of look at, well, who else has my audience of people that are reading whatever is I'm doing. And then I go figure out, well, what kind of value can I add for them? Publication is a little bit easier because the values just create some epic content and actually write it first and then give it to them and say, hey, look, here's the actual piece. Don't just pitch them without anything in hand. Hey, here's the thing, no one else has it. I wrote it just for you, here's why. Right. And then publications. Easy one. So this is actually a fun example. So another one of my former clients literally walked in to the office building. Have you ever heard of the game Clash of Clans?

Yeah.

So one of the craziest mobile games of all time. He literally walked into the office lobby and he was like, I will train everybody here. Right? One free session for everybody here.

And eventually the fitness guy.

Yeah, fitness guy, right. So one free session for everybody here. And then eventually they just hired him for the entire company to do the sessions. All of a sudden he has an enterprise account and then he decides he's going to open up a gym. And guess who's the first investor is the founder of that company.

That's hilarious.

So you know, speaking of leapfrogging, here's a guy that came into the country with nothing but his skillset and then has arguably one of the largest and most popular gaming companies in the world that now sit on his board of his gyms. Right, right. That's a pretty interesting story. So I would just say like, go fish. Where the fish are.

And what about like so operationally when it comes to people at that level, like a lot of times what we end up doing is we either learn how to use a lot of the systems ourself and we're doing a lot of that. And then we get a virtual assistant and then we maybe we go to Upwork or Fiverr and we start to put some people together. I kind of do want to lead this into what some of the other higher end services you offer. But I know you don't offer like this like full blown accelerator for much lower end businesses yet. But I know that sometimes the catch 22 of man, I really need all these resources and a team to do a lot of this stuff for me so I can focus on my area of genius. But I can't necessarily build a team and the right people until I get to a certain level. But I might not get to that level unless I have a team. So what would you recommend on that? And I do know I have some friends and some people that I know who are probably listening to this, who are like, man, that's exactly my question, because I've actually had that question posed to me.

Yeah. So the scenario is business is pretty small. Under 10,000 might just be starting off.

Yeah. 10 or 20, maybe a 30% profit margin. 40% profit margin.

Yeah. So 10 or 20. So let's just say that I know that I need to start hiring some talent, but I know I can't afford the best talent because I know it's going to cut into my margin a little too much, because if I'm at 30% margin without a team being baked into it, then I need to look at that. So the one thing that I did earlier in my career that I no longer do now is just build an internship program into the company. Because the local universities will actually give you college. Like give the student college credits based on that program that you have. So you can build a relationship with the internship office at the local college. You can post on the job board and essentially just say, hey, look, I have an internship or credit. And here's essentially what the roles and responsibilities look like. Right. And there's a lot of aspects to that that you got to be mindful of. And just be careful because there's some internship rules where you're technically not supposed to have them do things that they're supposedly supposed to get paid for.

Timing in on that. Are you familiar with a company called GenM?

No, I'm not.

You might like this. So I had a call with the founder of it and it's G E N M co. However, for everybody else in the show notes, I don't even get paid for this, but I'll give you a little super code to even save some money. So GenM, just to diverge here is they're an internship company or marketing apprenticeship. So think of a job board, but of people who. Some of them are actually pretty skilled. A lot of them are not necessarily, but they're trying to learn this. And GenM gives them some general marketing courses on social media, paid ads, et cetera, et cetera. And these are people who kind of want to learn more. So the cost of this is, in essence, you sign up, you pay $150 for a total of three months. So it's $50 a month, and then you get to hire one apprentice. You get to go through the interview process, etc. And you find somebody who may have a little experience or education here, but they want to get more. And they work for you basically for about 10 hours a week. And you're supposed to meet with them once a week. And it's not like slave labor. It's not stuff like that you want to give back to them and you want to talk to them. But some of them are really good. Like, I had a guy for three months named Jared who was just amazing, and he was helping me do my podcast production and show notes and everything else. And normally that can cost a lot of money, but because he wanted to learn more about this and he got to learn a lot by listening to me, it cost me a grand total of about $150 for three months. And he learned a lot and he got a new skill. But. So GenM is a really cool resource for people who are eager to learn this stuff. After three months, you can decide to roll over and get somebody new or to hire this person full time. So if you go to baconwrappedbusiness.com and I believe it's forward slash G, E, N, M, I believe that will give you a $25 off. Because they're one of my sponsors. $25 off code. But feel free to check them out. It's actually pretty innovative and pretty cool what they're doing.

Yeah. So I like that a lot because we're kind of coming full circle with this. Like, let's just say you're actually selling a program on whatever skill set it is that you're teaching this intern, and you position it more as a scholarship.

Yep.

So to that program. Right. I think that's an interesting way to kind of position it. Cause it's very much like an apprenticeship at that point anyways, where it's like, hey, this is the amount of calls. What are you gonna do? The caveat to internships is that if they're giving you their time, you have to give yours. Right. Which is why I stopped hiring interns. I'd rather just pay for it. Right, right.

Like, these are the people who. They don't have that. Even beyond that. Zion. Because one of the problems with hiring unskilled apprentices and interns is you have to have the skills. So if you're a really great fitness and all this other st, the desire is like, man, how can I just hire or partner with somebody who's really good at all this crap that I'm not somebody who can build, manage my ads, do my social media, et cetera. Like, how do I bridge that gap? I'm ready to bring people on now. Granted, I could go raise money and do it. I find a lot of people in that kind of. In that conundrum, like, man, do I just go no money and just build out the team? At what point do I do that? I just don't know if you have worked with any people where you've given them resources or ideas besides that. That just allows them to kind of not have to wait till they're doing six figures in order to start really building.

Yeah. So there's a couple of groups of people out there that you can actually activate and leverage in order for you to get them to work inside your company. So one is there's a lot of moms out there who are literally just sitting at home and could take a lower rate because they just want something to do. So let's say that's one group of people because they also appreciate the convenience and the time flexibility and all those other things. So I'd say, like, that's one group, but there's a lot of, like, really skilled professionals in that group that can be leveraged. So I would say that's one group. There's a lot of, like, people that aren't necessarily retired, but they're in transition. So they just got off doing their last big thing and, you know, they're kind of just waiting for their next big thing. So I'd say that's another group that could be kind of activated there. So the way that I've always approached that conversation where it's essentially can't afford to pay their rate, but let's say I can afford to pay something. So let's go back to that fitness example. How are you going to enroll them into the conversation of essentially working with you so to take on all these responsibilities when they're super skilled? And my answer to that question has always been, what's the vision and mission of what it is that you actually want to do? Vision being the change that you want to see in the world, and mission being how do you know that you're actually doing it right? So I had this one person I was working with. He's a videographer. Right. So he's like, well, how do I differentiate myself? And I said, well, what do you actually care about? Well, the whole reason why I got into this business in the first place was because I wanted to get the message of wellness and health and all these other things out there that don't really have the voice but are the things that are working. I said, great. So all of a sudden he took that, and now that's his thing, right? So he went from being this copywriter and videographer who's known for making entrepreneurs cry to like, all of a sudden, hey, I'm here to further advance the message of health and wellness out in the world. And the question I always give people, and this is a question I gave you in our DM, is what do you want to be absurd in 10 years? Right? So what does that mean? So let's say that, you know, driving down the coast, California, and you see someone literally tossing a McDonald's bag out the window, right? So, number one, it's absurd because someone's, like, littering in this super beautiful, pristine place. And number two, that there's still people out there that consider McDonald's food. So answering that question first can really help you distill down, like, what is it that you actually deeply stand for that you can speak with from a place of conviction? Because it's likely something that you either have a very personal experience with or something that you're just, like, super frustrated or angry about. But the flip side of anger or the complementary energy is passion, right? So anger and passion are very much on that same wavelength, but one could be converted for very productive use. And being able to lead with that message when you're sharing that with someone shows that you actually care quite a bit more than the next videographer, the next fitness trainer, the next person? So now all of a sudden, what's the difference between you and every other videographer out there? So in the enrollment conversation, I'd actually start the question with, well, what's the thing that you've always wanted to do that you haven't been able to do yet? Or is there anything that you've been wanting to do that you haven't had the chance to actually work on? Because what I'm looking for when I ask that question is, is there something that they deeply care about that they've been wanting to work on that they haven't been able to yet? And the reason why I say ask them first is because anyone can pare it back, anything that you say to them, right? But if you're coming at it from a clean slate, you ask them the question, they come back to you, and all of a sudden you see whether there's alignment just in terms of those values and kicking off that conversation. From there it's just like, hey, look, we're clearly aligned in what we want to do. Two heads are better than one. Why don't we just do this together? Like, what does that need to look like? And I've had this conversation a number of times. A number of people say, listen, especially when I was first starting, it's like, I can't pay you what I know you deserve to be paid. Like, where? What do you need to make this work until we can fit and so that we can then come up with a plan on how we can get you what you want. Right? And anyone who is a high performer that's worth her salt, that wants to invest and contribute their time, they're probably going to be smart enough to help you come up with that plan on how they can increase their comp. So in a nutshell, that's kind of like the enrollment conversation that I've had with some pretty significant senior level individuals who, like my coo. When we first started her last gig, she was getting paid like half a million dollars a year. I was like, I can't afford that. But we went through this exact same process and just like, hey, what can we do here? Right? Like, what does that need to look like? They need to start part time. Let them start like, hey, start part time. It's like, great. But then I always find out different ways I can help pad their income, whatever, blah, blah. So there's other ways that you can help get someone paid that isn't always monetary value either. Right.

And the more skilled somebody is and the more successful, I mean, there's a multitude of studies that have shown it's really not about money at that point. It's really about contribution and growth and, and everything else. It sounds like you're saying, I totally agree. If you can give somebody the opportunity to be more significant, to add more contribution, to experience, more growth and in new ways that they haven't done before, and you're an outlet, they may do it just because it's something that helps satisfy their soul as opposed to their pocketbook. Right?

Yeah. And that's the most important thing is, you know, there's this whole idea out there of the genius and the thousand helpers or whatever, right?

Yeah.

Yeah. What if we live in a world where the person deeply cares about what it is that you also deeply care about and you guys are aligned and now you can do it together. And the positioning on that is, hey, use this company as the vehicle for us to do this together. And that's the power of having a significant mission. That's the power of having a significant vision for the change that you want to see. How do you want things to be different? Because we lived, because we did this, because we did this together. And if you are someone who's not just trying to make a buck and you really want to make a difference. And this conversation has worked with me from C level executives that worked at billion dollar companies and I was like, hey, I can't afford to pay you much right now and whenever you can pay me, just pay it for me because you don't want free work from me, whatever. So it'll be a different conversation every time. But that conversation alone can really kick off a significant level of alignment where we can make some pretty interesting things happen there.

So what is the way that you. Because I know your business has kind of gone through some interesting changes here. Where are you still doing Project Nuclear? Is that something Scott's doing? Is that.

Yeah. So Project Nuclear is something that we decided to retire, at least for the time being, and a lot of different reasons for that, but essentially we saw what it looked like and we just didn't want to do it anymore. There's a couple different businesses that I've been helping to incubate where I'm kind of really working on this hub and spoke model. Like, what are the biggest issues that this industry faces from a coaching consulting perspective? And my goal is really, hey, can I create the playbook for this industry? Because there's a right way to do it, right? Can we answer all the questions so we stop reinventing the wheel and can we just essentially have the right way to grow this type of business so we can just like essentially give it to people and be like, hey, this is what it is. So we're kind of starting that process off with just documenting everything that we can and just really taking one function of the business at a time. So actually starting off with sales because most people are not interested in operations, but they're still very interested in sales. So everything from hiring a salesperson, to managing that salesperson, to onboarding that salesperson, to having the right sales process in order end to end, we are really getting that process nailed down so we can essentially just plug and play anyone into that process. So it's like, hey, you need a sales process? Here it is, here's all of our automations, here's all the reminders, here's all the tech that you need, and then we'll work on the next department. Right? And the Next department and then eventually the next industry. The next industry.

So you're doing that with individual clients right now or you're doing that. Who are some of the ideal clients that you are looking to work with?

So ideally it's usually the person who's still doing their own sales who is now getting enough leads that they need to get sales off their plate because they want to ramp up their leads. The second ideal client is someone who just needs more salespeople because they're just hard to find. Yeah. So I'd say it's usually between those two, but more times than not it's usually the person who's still doing their own sales.

Okay, excellent. Is there any size revenue that they should ideally be at?

Typically over $50,000 a month in revenue.

Perfect. And then what's way that they can find out more about your offer and they can go check that out?

I'd say the quickest way is just email me or find me on Facebook because all of our pages are currently under development. But there'll be a way to check that out on one mt, period co and then eventually align sales period co. So we're about to get that page up pretty soon here.

Nice, nice. And then what about the best like email contact information, et cetera, should we put.

Sure. So that's just Zion at 1, the number one MTCO.

Awesome, I love that. So it sounds like you're about to be, you know, you're working really hard, rolling that out, et cetera. What's kind of a nut you're trying to crack right now for yourself or your company. And that can be people you're trying to find anything kind of different than just the stuff you already know how to do. Like anything that's kind of just like man, this is a stubborn nut. It's not cracking whether it's money you're trying to raise, people you're trying to meet, skills you're trying to learn, just anything. This is kind of where myself and my listeners can kind of jog our brains and think if there's a way we can help you in any non obvious ways.

Yeah. So I'd say that the biggest thing that I've been wanting to learn more about is getting proficient in just kind of like the M and A space in general. So just acquiring companies, acquiring assets, I'd say that's probably the biggest thing where I've been trying to build my mentor base, who can I turn to and stuff like that.

You and me both. As you know, I'm playing in that industry, and I'm not hyper. What do you call it? Experienced. I've got a little experience and trying to do more.

Yeah, absolutely. So I've met a couple interesting people already, but I'd say that's probably like the number one thing that I'm trying to get more interested in because one of my mentors who I found, who I wanted to introduce you to, don't start anything new. Just go buy it. So I think for me, because I'm so good at, like, launching and starting, and once it launches, it has a pretty good run rate to start, so it's not. Doesn't like, like a startup all the time. Can I just go buy that company instead? Merge, Roll it up. So that's probably the world where I'm still wanting to get better with.

Nice. Yeah. I mean, as I say, I'm here and I'm happy to share any of the resources that I've been and people that I've been utilizing on that road as well. It's funny, my friend and former guest on the show, Ace Chapman. Do you know Ace?

I don't.

Okay. Anyway, he does a lot of this, and he left me with a great metaphor that stuck in my damn head and really helped me make this shift as well. We start businesses for a lot of reasons. To make an impact in the world, to make change, etc. More than anything, every single business, with very few exceptions, has started as a vehicle to provide cash flow for our lives, our business. Right. Like, ultimately, all the altruistic reasons aside, it's a vehicle for cash flow.

Right?

And he says, when we want housing, when we want shelter as people, we typically don't go to Home Depot, buy a bunch of wooden nails, get on YouTube, or buy a course on how to build a house. We arrange financing and we find somebody who's built a house that we want, we go buy the damn thing right. When we want transportation, we don't learn how to build a fuel injection engine and all this other stuff and then go buy all the metal and do it ourselves. He goes, why is it, as entrepreneurs, we think we have to build our cash flow from scratch? Our cash flow? That vehicle already exists. Somewhere somebody has built it. It runs. It may not run as smoothly as it could, but with our skills, we can arrange financing. Like, financing for MA is an entirely other topic, but we can arrange financing and buy that cash flow and then tune it up as opposed to doing it all. I mean, I loved that analogy or that metaphor. I'm like, God, you're Right. Why am I trying to build this thing from scratch when what's the outcome? I really want. I want to have this vehicle that can allow me to. All this other stuff.

I love that.

One of the exercises I've personally been working on, and I haven't figured it out yet, this is a recent thing, but utilizing that analogy is to say, okay, well, what are the criteria? I would have, what would be a perfect scenario? And a perfect scenario would be, for me, would be, let's buy a business that provides. And I'll use very easy mathematical numbers here, but let's just say if I can buy a business that generates $10,000 in, let's just say, dividends or payments to me every single month, where I'm the owner, but I'm not the operator. I'm off the organizational chart, but it just produces $10,000 a month and I have a little oversight. I get to advise the guy who are running it, et cetera. Would that be a worthwhile thing? I'm like, yeah, absolutely, that'd be worthwhile. Because that's really passive income with the ability to grow, like, cool. So now you start to reverse engineer. Well, what would it need to have in order for me to arrange financing to buy that? Well, let's just say it's operating at a 20% margin, so it need to be doing 50,000amonth net. Okay. If it's doing that, that's about $600,000 a year. And after all, salaries and expenses. Okay, well, what would I pay for that? Well, let's just say I was going to pay 3x. Like, I'd have to pay, what, $1.8 million for that. Well, okay, so now if I was going to pay 1.8 million, what kind of financing would I have to arrange? And so if I can just work backwards to say, now I can go out and say, okay, what kind of businesses in these sectors are doing $600,000 a year with these things in place? And what kind of debt service or owner financing would it have to be to where I can reverse engineer that? And that's some of the stuff I actually like thinking about going. Yeah, like, how do I just reverse engineer what the hell I want and then go find somebody who's built it and buy it for a price that makes sense.

Yeah, I love it. Thinking about kind of like going and doing the deal and bringing my skillset to the table and just kind of saying, hey, like, I can help you run this thing. I can definitely grow the thing or whatever. I've Also never raised money.

Yeah, same here. I'm actually very beginning stages of a capital raise for another business I have, and I'm out of my comfort zone.

Yeah, I'd say that's probably the other thing is that's the thing that I definitely would love to learn, because here I am essentially taking people's audiences and monetizing it, which is arguably not the hard, easiest thing to do in the world. But if we can, hey, we have an existing business, like, yeah, let's just grow this thing. So I would say that's definitely my number one thing. I want to learn more of, I want to do more of. And, yeah, I appreciate you asking.

No, absolutely. And I'm happy to connect with you offline about any of this and share, as I said, some of the strategies, resources, mentors, people I know as well.

Yeah, absolutely.

One of the topics I'm trying to grow, like, I feel as though I know enough about the marketing side, and I'm starting to not bored of marketing. I still like it, but it's like, how can I utilize my skills? How can I leapfrog? And this really is a leapfrogging skill that you're talking about, right? Like, all right, I know all this stuff. I could build it from scratch, or I could go find somebody who's got it and who's already got momentum and inertia. Right. We were talking about that earlier, and now all we're doing is adding octane to it. One of my previous guests on the show who talked about this a lot was Carl Allen. Have you ever come across Carl?

I don't believe so.

He's bought, I don't know, like, over a hundred, maybe closer to 200 business. He'd been involved in about 200 business transactions. I was asking him even specifically, like, how do you buy these things? And then stay out of the weeds. And he goes, well, there's a few ways. Number one, I may know somebody who can run it, Obviously, I may buy it out and have an earn out, and the CEO has to stay on. But one of the things he goes, I love is when I find a company where there's a president and a CEO and a coo, right? And the COO is the number two guy. And he knows where the bodies are buried. He knows how to run this thing, but he's still number two. So he goes, sometimes I'll find a way to buy out the CEO, and then I install the COO in as CEO, so he gets a prestigious jump. Plus you give him equity that vests over time. Maybe he didn't have equity in the business now, but you're like, yeah, listen, I'm going to give you maybe a raise, promotion and the ability to earn. Let's just. I'm making this up, 20% equity in this business over the next four years, you'll earn 5% a year as long as you continue to do this. And I thought that was actually brilliant, like. Cause that's how you start to really structure those deals.

Yeah. I had another friend of mine say something very similar. He just said, oh, that's easy. I just stay off the org chart.

That Roland.

It is Roland. Yeah.

Off the org chart is my favorite line of Roland's ever is. But I'm like, Roland, that's a little easier said than done. Right? But actually. And I'll send this to you and I'll even link to it. But Roland shared one of the. On my interview with him, an amazing story of what he did. I think he said it was his very first ever acquisition. And I think he said he had never bought one before. I don't remember what kind of business it was and I don't remember what the starting price of it was. I negotiated him down to $2 million price on the business, which was lower than his ask. And he said he talked him into taking 20% deposit, 20% down and then 80% financed over the course of X number of years. So he goes, so I had to come up with $400,000. Two million times 20%. He goes, I didn't have 400,000, but. So I went out and I talked to some people who I knew who did have money. I told them how excited I was and I borrowed debt, $400,000 at 10% interest. And I put the money down and Now I own 100% of the company.

Right.

Problem is I didn't want to run it and there was other people better to run it than me. So I went out, there were a couple guys I knew who were also friends or business partners. I don't remember the details. Told him how excited I was. And I got them to say, man, is there any way I can be involved in that? And he said, sure, I'd love to have you guys step in as like CEO and coo and you guys could run this thing. Would that be interesting? And they said, yeah, I need you to have skin in the game. I'll let you each buy like 10% of the business, buy in and I'll let you guys run it. Business is worth $4 million and very short period of time, he buys it for 2. He immediately doubles the valuation to 4 million. So at the end of it, the punchline of the whole thing is he goes, so now they put in $800,000. So 4 million times 10, 10, 400,000 times 2. Put in 800,000. I turn around and I pay the loan off. 400,000 plus $40,000 in interest. He goes, Now I'm left with 80% of a company, two people who have paid money to run it, and I have $360,000 in cash in my pocket, you dickhead.

I love Roland.

I'll send you a link. It's so worth watching.

Yeah, it's amazing.

Roland's doing an intensive, like next week and a half. You're not going to that by any chance?

I'm going to be in Europe next month, otherwise I would have totally been there.

I'm going to go. I like learning from that dude, anyway. Well, man, we've been talking for quite a while, but I talked to you for hours. But I want to respect your time and my listeners, but hopefully everybody's really enjoyed this. Anything we miss, anything you want to leave them with, however I can help.

I have a lot of free trainings, free stuff, whatever. So message me, shoot me over whatever problem you have and I'm happy to send over whatever resources I can to help you out.

All right, we'll make sure that happens. Thanks a lot for joining me, Zion. It's been so much fun and I look forward to staying connected offline as always.

Absolutely. Thank you so much.

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