The Real Value Behind High Prices: Insight From 35K with Joe Polish

You have a segment of your clients that do not feel psychologically good if they do not spend, you know, the highest amount of money on things. I was like, I want to start a $10,000 program. And he's like, nah, it's too expensive. You know, people are going to complain. And of course he was. And he was like a master in knowing how to sell information and sell coaching and all that. But in his paradigm, he had never sold like high priced stuff. They did some practice management stuff in chiropractors that was higher price, but it wasn't like coaching. No one in the coaching space of info marketers back then was doing that. I did it and it was successful. It was very. In the very beginning, it was a little difficult. But what I realized was this amazing thing. Not only did I make more money and people would pay for it. The clients were the best clients. The people that pay the most money are always the best clients, unless you are somehow ripping them off or you're not delivering on what it is that's being promised. And so if you want to have the very best clients charge the most amount of money, but you have to deliver on it too. It cannot be a gimmick. I mean, you know, and that's where people, you know, like, I see so much shit about. What is the term they use? What's the term for high priced clients? High ticket. High ticket? Yeah. Fucking everyone with their high ticket. This high ticket, it's like, how much money can we get out of someone because we got such a great pitch. It's like the pitch is important. I understand that. But the deliverable has to be high ticket. You know, people that pay high prices know the difference. But you know, someone that goes to a thousand dollar seminar, like, my annual event this year will cost me over a million dollars to deliver the annual event. If I charge $1000 per. Like the food alone cost me over $1000 per person because it's high quality food. I would go broke. If I was charging a thousand. I would pay money to charge $1,000 or $2,000. You, you can't deliver an event like that. So if you're going to do high ticket, you really gotta do high ticket. How can you be a domino for someone else? The Joe Polish Show. Any problem in the world can be solved with the right Genius Network. In 2004, I did a Nightingale Conant program with Tim Paulson and it was called Piranha the seven Success Multiplying Factors to Dominate Any market that you enter. And it was a Whole program on marketing and it became Nightingale, Conant's number one selling marketing program. It beat guerilla marketing, it beat Seth Godin, it beat everyone. And so they sold millions of dollars worth of my marketing course. And I had, in 1999 I read a book called the Experience Economy by Joseph Pyne and someone else really good book. Has anyone ever read the Experience Economy? Yeah. And so if you remember back in the 90s, Starbucks after Howard Schultz worked for Starbucks and then he ended up buying Starbucks and he was in Italy and he noticed how people would congregate and hang out in the community around these bistro and these cafes. And he came and created Starbucks sort of culture. And then Starbucks, like when they were in Los Angeles, the first one in Seattle, a lot of famous people, a lot of celebrities would go there, they would handwrite people's names. I mean they still do some of this stuff today. But back then it was like a big deal to go to Starbucks. And there was a concept called, and I've talked about this before, I did a section in that program and I write about it in the Average Joe's marketing book called Pride of Spending. Where there's a segment of the population that does not feel psychologically good unless they are spending, they're buying the best. And in your own lives, many of you operate with pride of spending. You want brand related stuff, you want high end. Everything from Four Seasons to Louis Vuitton to watches, all this sort of stuff. What's that? Notice the psychology I'm doing here with everyone. You're all very special people. Because yeah, that's why if you are real winner, you want to be in the 100k group right now. No. So prior to spending. So if you view something as just a product, you're going to look at it as like a commodity. Have you ever been on vacation and it doesn't even occur to you that you're paying like $37 for a margarita and you just buy them over and over, whatever you're buying expensive, whatever. But then you'll be in a grocery store and you'll look at a 5 pound bag of potatoes and, and a 10 pound bag of potatoes and there might be a $2 price difference. And you'll sit there for like a couple of minutes trying to should I buy? You know, because you're trying to be conscientious because you don't view a potato as an extraordinary experience. Right. You're just buying potatoes. So when it comes to experience. But I found it fascinating because in the book he talks about a coffee bean was a 2 cent commodity before things like Starbucks. And so if you went to Denny's restaurant, you'd buy a cup of coffee for a dollar or you into the Four Seasons and get a latte or something. But it wasn't like they were super expensive. You could buy. There was like Folger's crystal. Remember the Folger crystal commercials where we're serving it in a really high end restaurant and they don't know it's Folgers Crystals, which is actually true. You know, how you frame things. Joel Weldon said this great line years ago, early on, first year of year in Genius Network, he was explaining to me, when you introduce people like we introduce people, I think pretty well here. And he helps tremendously with that. It's framing. You know, you can have a beautiful piece of art, but if it's duct taped to the wall with terrible lighting, it doesn't look as good as if it's in the Louvre or something, you know, if you really put it. So how things are framed has everything to do with how much money you can get for something and how people perceive it. So Howard Schultz figured out how to take a 2 cent commodity. And instead of it being like 50 cents or a dollar, which was Folgers Crystals or Denny's Restaurant or wherever the hell people would just get coffee, he created, you know, he changed the name. Instead of small, medium and large, he called it Tall, Grande Vente or whatever. And he all of a sudden started selling a 2 cent commodity for $3 to $5. And people just ate it up, basically. And one of the analogies I use is that at the time when I recorded the Nightingale Kona program, there was a huge segment of America that would not go to Starbucks because it was too expensive. But the margins were so high that he could have literally lowered the price and opened up the market to 2, 3, 4 times the amount of people. Because back then they didn't have a lot of competitors. It was brand new, if you can remember that. And now they're having trouble. But you know, they, but look at the stretch that they. And it's interesting because they're one of the largest drug dealers in the world, you know, because coffee is a drug, caffeine, and 90% of the global population now drinks caffeine every day, which is crazy. And so basically I looked at that concept and I was like, okay, so how does this apply? And then if you, you know, Apple watches were not yet created back then. I mean, iPhones didn't come out to 2007. But you know, I use the analogy if you're buying a Timex, you're going to pay like 100 bucks for a watch. But if you're buying a Rolex, you're paying ten grand maybe for a Rolex. So are people really buying a watch or are they buying jewelry? Are they buying status? What are they actually buying? And so you got to think about all of the stuff that you are selling. What is it? You know, it's a feeling, it's a lot of things of what it represents and it actually fits the identity. But the big core lesson on all of this is you have a say segment of your clients that do not feel psychologically good if they do not spend the highest amount of money on things. So for instance, Cherie has this hundred thousand dollar vaginal plastic surgery that she's looking on packaging which is not about the surgery. The surgery is going to be a great surgery no matter what. And if a woman wants just world class first class surgery, they're going to receive that from her clients lover. Even before we were dating, I actually read all of her reviews because I to check her out in case I ever needed labioplasty for myself. But her patients absolutely love her. I mean she's just really, really good. But the question is, so if you're going to offer something like it has to be an experience, it has to come with all kinds of other stuff. So if someone's going to spend $100,000, they're going to get a world class experience with Eboo and all kinds of things related to health for like a year. It's not just going to be go get an expensive surgery. And so whatever business you are in, there is something that you can do. And so before I ever started Genius Network, my first coaching group was $248.50. I think it was $248.50 or something. And we started in 1998 and we were doing it through conference calls. We didn't even call it teleseminars back there or webinars. That verbiage did not yet exist. And then I had read the Experience Economy and then I had seen money I had made with my marketing strategies with Bill Phillips where I took him from 60 million a year in revenue to over 200 million a year in revenue within an 18 month period using the same exact strategies that I was teaching carpet cleaners. And I was like going wow, how much is a marketing strategy worth? Well, it depends on the business it depends on where it's being used. It depends on what's being sold. And I was like, I want to do a contest. And he had given me a convertible Jaguar as a gift for helping him with Body for Life and all of this sort of stuff. But I was like, I want to do a $10,000 program. And Dan Kennedy, and some of you have heard me talk about this a little bit. Dan Kennedy was the guy that was writing a lot of my sales copy back then. And Dan would speak at my events. I go, you know, Dan's a very smart marketer, great copywriter. Kind of an asshole as a human, but a very smart dude and doesn't like people. He really does not like people. How many of you know Dan Kennedy? Like, it's really. He's very grumpy, but his books are great. I highly recommend reading his books, you know, the ultimate sales letter. His old school books are actually my favorites. So, you know, I was like, I want to start a $10,000 program. And he's like, nah, it's too expensive. People are going to complain. And of course, he was like a master in knowing how to sell information and sell coaching and all that. But in his paradigm, he had never sold like high priced stuff. He did some practice management stuff in chiropractors that was higher priced, but it wasn't like coaching. No one in the coaching space of info marketers back then was doing that. I did it and it was successful in the very beginning. It was a little difficult, but what I realized was this amazing thing. Not only did I make more money and people would pay for it. The clients were the best clients. The people that pay the most money are always the best clients. Unless you are somehow ripping them off or you're not delivering on what it is that's being promised. And so if you want to have the very best clients, charge the most amount of money, but you have to deliver on it too. It cannot be a gimmick. I mean, you know, and that's where people, you know, like I see so much shit about. What is the term they use? What's the term for high priced clients? High ticket. High ticket, yeah. Fucking everyone with their high ticket. This high ticket, it's like, how much money can we get out of someone because we got such a great pitch. It's like the pitch is important. I understand that. But the deliverable has to be high ticket. People that pay high prices know the difference. You know, someone that goes to a thousand dollar seminar, like my annual event this year will cost Me over a million dollars to deliver the annual event. If I charge $1,000 per. Like the food alone cost me over a thousand dollars per person because it's high quality food, I would go broke. If I was charging a thousand, I would pay money to charge a thousand or two thousand dollars. You couldn't do it. You can't deliver an event like that. So if you're going to do high ticket, you really got to do high ticket. You got to think about the margins. And so the point is this. I'll say it with this. Here's the business that you are in. Write this down as it comes to making money. So the business you're in is the arithmetic business. So, you know, you got Jack over here who's a heart doctor, and however else he would describe himself, but he's really in the arithmetic business. And so Howard Schultz figured out how to make the math work. And he could have charged A$2,$3. The margins on coffee are enormous. But what would have happened if he would have lowered the price to a dollar two dollars for Starbucks coffee back in the heyday? It would have ruined it because no one feels psychologically good about. And now every one of us walk into that. Drink coffee or go and get lattes, walk into places and give them $3, $5, $6. And then you gotta love it in America, where they don't even do any service and the credit card thing pops up and it automatically fills in with guilt that you should pay 20, 30, 40% tip. It's like, what the fuck? I hate that. So basically, we're all pulled into this. We all have become part of this packaging. Could you ever imagine that bottled water would cost more than a can of soda? Even though. Yes, sir. Yeah.

Joe, I love. I mean, I think that the two parts of it, right, the limitation part.

Yeah.

Of being the first, but then also, you know, how you deliver, right. I have people invest a lot to work with me, and you have to deliver.

Right?

And so I think that one of the distinctions is really cool because you talked about the painting, right?

Yeah.

What is the first thing before you deliver? What's the first thing that delivers? That creates value Limitation, Right? Limitation creates value. Like, nobody does what Joe does the way he does it. So if I had bought a painting and I brought it to my house and I found out there's two in the world, and I go to an auction, I see the second one, I buy it. You know what the first thing I do? Burn one of them. Because then there's one in the box. So I think that what Schultz did was, you know, it was like nobody was doing what he was doing. The limitation in people's mind created the value. But then, like you said, you also have to deliver on the back end.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. And here's the thing. It's often hard psychologically because when I was a broke carpet cleaner, I didn't want to sell my services to other people that were like me because I didn't have very much money. And so I had to go into homes and literally say out loud a price that I myself could not afford to pay. And that is a really weird thing when you are in a position where you're selling something that you yourself may not be able to buy. Right. But you want to offer it. So I had to live into that. Like, okay, I know I'm going to deliver a good service. I'm going to do the best job that I can. And to this day, one of the greatest things that I did for carpet cleaners, at least the ones that had become members, I would show them how to raise their prices before doing any marketing. Because I had this guy named Larry Steinman. It's a great book, it's still worth reading. It's called how to Sell at Prices higher than your Competitors. And he wrote this book probably 30 years ago. I'd done an interview with Larry, I'd become friends with him. I went to one of his events, I had him come out to one of my events. And we look at banking records of loaning money to small businesses. And in the carpet cleaning industry, we found that if you had a 10%, if you're an average carpet cleaning company based across banking records of what these companies would bring in, that he did all this analysis, God, it'd be so easy to do this shit with AI today. And he found that you could raise your prices. If you're an average carpet cleaner, you could raise your prices 10% and lose up to 40% of your business before it would affect negatively your net bottom line profit. And I was like, that is a interesting thing to know that if you had a 10% price increase, you could lose 40% of your business. And it was so hard for a carpet cleaner to raise their prices even 10%. And I would be like, guys, double it. Double your prices and add this service and do all of these things with, you know, vacuuming the carpet beforehand, prepping everything, wearing shoe covers, all the stuff that I would teach them how to. I'm like, people don't hire you because they Want to have dirt sucked out of carpet. That's going to happen. It's all the other stuff that they do. And so before I got them to write a sales letter or run an ad, if I could just get them to increase their prices, they're like, I don't have any time to learn all this marketing shit. I'm like, okay, if you had 40% less business, but the same profit you probably would have, you'd have less wear and tear in your back. You'd have less gasoline and chemical uses, you have less payroll, less. You'd have, you know, you'd have all this stuff back. And so I would get them to raise their prices and it would totally change their life because then once. So why am I telling you all this stuff? We went for a long time in Genius Network without having a price increase. And part of it, yeah, you know, I didn't want to have a price increase because I was like, you want this? How stupid? Like the brand. So many people were calling my group the 25k group. I was like, how the hell do we raise the price to 35 grand a year if they're calling my group the 25k group? And I like, you know, literally this went on, but I had enough people, at least 50 people like, you should raise the prices on this. They're already paying me. They're like, I pay. And I'm like, I'm an idiot. I tell people like, if your prices, you're going to lose people anytime you have a price increase. But what usually happens is for one, you got again, you got to be able to deliver on and you have to have enough happy people that are telling you and demonstrating to you that they like what it is you sell. But I'll tell you how many of you think if you raise your prices 10%, it would negatively impact your business right now. Now if you're in the commodity business, it would if all you're selling is commodity. So the point is, the reason I'm going on in the sole story is go and raise your prices. And if you have to add something to it. Because as we've raised the price of Genius Network, we have added a lot of other things. We've added office hours, we've added the genius. The office hours for your teams, the genius morning stuff. You know, we keep adding stuff into, into the mix. But yes, sir, I find it very.

Interesting in a lot of times in my circles, and we're starting with the Dawkins that, you know, cash pay business, it's like oh, they got to take that risk instead of doing the insurance. But even with the gal who used to cut my hair, she was saying how busy she was, right. And couldn't stand life. And I'm like, double your prices.

Right?

I said, even if you lose 50% of your clients, you're making the same amount of money and now you have time.

Right?

I said, you won't lose 50% of your clients. And so she doubled her prices. She lost two clients.

Right.

And I just. And this was probably 30 years ago.

I gave her that advice.

And I've repeatedly used that for everybody that trades their time for money in even a self employed position is you're still under charging for what you do, your clients will stay there. And the ones that you lose probably weren't really great clients anyway.

Exactly, exactly. No, you're sorry, but we don't do it as companies.

It's funny because incremental.

Yeah, well, a great. Damn it, I'm having this coughing thing here. Yeah, let me say this. So Peter Diamandis, how many of you ever been to a 360? Okay, so a 360 is really great tech conference. So the very first one was my idea for him to do a360. It was an event with 50 people at Singularity University at the time. Peter was great at raising money for nonprofits, mostly X Prize. He could go and do a pitch, he'd have billionaires in the room. The only way he made money was his speeches. And he was $25,000 to do a speech. And he's a phenomenal speaker. And I had gotten to know Peter and his book Abundance. He came and spoke in this room literally three days, I think it was before Abundance was going to be released. And he was really wanting to hit New York Times. And the book comes out. But he gave a speech. It was great. We put together a group of marketers that loved his stuff and he called it the Justice League of Marketers. And I got all these people behind promoting his book and his book ended up hitting number two on New York Times and it became a New York Times bestseller. And it's like, like, we want to keep this going. It's like, well, you need. If you want to run ads, you're not going to make any money off a book. A book is a seed. A book is a probe. There's very few authors, unless you're like Stephen King or something who's an asshole, but great writer, but asshole as a human or Malcolm Gladwell or whatever. Very few authors make money off the book. It's the other stuff that they do. So I was like, you need a program. And so I. The first one was me interviewing Peter in a hotel room for eight hours and editing out my voice on all of the questions, except one where it was the interview with me and him. And then we sold out for $97. And I was like, well, we need a video program. It's like, well, let's, you know, I need to do an event. And this is how much people don't know about how to produce stuff. So they went and got quotes to go to Boston, which is where Ray Kurzweil was living. And it went was $250,000 to videotape a three day program back in 2011. Could you imagine? But people, you really have no idea. Like, people that are not in this space, they have no idea how to get this shit done. And he's like, we can't. I go, dude, you don't need to pay to do this. Have the audience pay. And I was like, just do an event at Singularity university and charge $5,000 a person. And he's like, that's a good idea. And then we'll film it and that becomes the program that sold for several hundred dollars as a back end. And then people buy abundance and then they're in your list, and then they can buy other educational stuff. So we end up doing that. Not a single One of those 50 people came from Peter's audience. His own people would not pay him money. They were all trained to give money to xprize. But don't pay for Peter unless you're paying him for a keynote. And so I had to teach Peter how to make money as an expert because he was like far better speaker than I could ever hope to be known. All these billionaires and he couldn't get anyone to come into a room and give him money. And so I introduced him to Dan Sullivan, and every person that attended that first event came from my list or Dan Sullivan's list. And then him and Dan totally hit it off on the white. And Peter's nuts. If you know Peter, I mean, he's very bright, but he's like all over the place, total workaholic. He sits on like fucking 400 boards or something. It's like the stupidest thing ever. But basically he, you know, I say, you got to join Strategic Coach man, because you've not taken a free day in ever. And it'll be so helpful to your life if you take time off and you're going to be more productive. And, you know, and I talked him into it, and he joins strategic coach. And then he calls me up after he joins, like, a few days later, he's like, man, I feel so bad, but I'm not going to be able to do strategic coach. And I'm like, why? He's like, I've got all these speeches. I'm so busy. I just can't. I got all these board meetings. I'm like, what do you mean you're so busy? Like, this is like, this is the stupidest shit in the world. Like, what are you trying to do? Trying to make money. And he's like, I got all these. I go, how much you charge? He goes, $25,000. Because I wasn't really zoned in exactly on what his keynotes were. And sometimes he would discount, Sometimes he would. Would do things for free, depending on the opportunity. And I'm like, so I spent two hours on the phone with him, and this is probably in 2012. And I spent two hours talking him off a cliff and saying, dude, this relationship with Dan is. Dan likes you and you're in his group. Dan doesn't promote anything, especially if you're not in his group. And I go, plus, he's interested in all this stuff that you're doing, doing. So I spent two hours talking him out of dropping out a strategic coach and doubling his prices. I go, just double your prices from now on. Tell Connie. Connie Fox does all of his speaking stuff. I said, It's $50,000 or $75,000 if it's international. And he's like, I can't do that. I'm like, why? He's like, he couldn't wrap his head around it. I'm like, peter, just double your fucking prices. If you lose half, do you think you're going to lose half your speaking gigs? Maybe. I go, if you can lose half of them and you still make the same amount of money, it's just math. So he doubled his prices, and all of a sudden his life completely changed. And then he went. He stayed in coach, and then Dan started promoting a 360, and then he ended up selling that for $23 million a few years later to Singularity University. And now he gets paid over 100 grand a year to do a speech. But he could not. But it's a psychological thing. It wasn't about. Peter's speaking has not dramatically improved. He was always a good speaker. He would always talk to stuff. But what changed is his identity. What changed was the way he Looked at it, what changed was he's now got a whole group of people that have been trained to give him money. Not be trained to hear a pitch for a non profit and donate money to a nonprofit just so all these rich assholes can sit around and think like they're changing the world so they can get the status effect of funding a nonprofit. And I'm saying that sort of jokingly, there are a lot of assholes in that world though, because there's a lot. Yeah. Can we give the to Elko and then. Is that video ready yet? No, no, I'm just kidding. I'm totally kidding.

So you're like the goat of running a successful group. I mean, you do it for like 20 years and you've probably seen a lot of people starting groups and then dropping off.

Like, oh, yeah. A ton of people come into my. Most people that have a lot of groups have been in my group and they try to come and poach my list. I told Dan Sullivan, we should start a group called Strategic Poach for people that want to come in.

Yeah, but what I mean is, like, you see a of lot of people starting groups and then, you know, after a year, two years, three years, they stop or whatever.

Right.

But I'm. I was just wondering, like, what's the hardest thing of doing what you do?

Yeah.

Because you've been so successful at it. This is now my 10th year in genius Network, and it's. If you would tell me, like, okay, in a couple of years, there will be a pandemic and Joe will do a sabbatical and I'll be like, probably going to take a hit. But now I really see that. I was so impressed with the last annual event as well. Like, whoa. It's so mature and so amazing. But I was just curious, like, what's the hardest thing of doing something like this?

Let me think. So the hardest thing for me is more psychological than anything. It's when people, when you really help someone and you see them progress and they drop out of the group. That, to me, is one of the hardest things, because the other is where some person can see so much value. I will be in a meeting and someone will come up to me and be like, this has absolutely changed my life. It's done this and that. And another person may come up and complain. Very few complaints. But someone will be like, I'm not seeing the value in this. And it's like they're in the same room. And I'm like, wow, how is it that this person finds this Supervisor. That's hard for me because I actually want people to like me. And I have the thing where, like, I don't know, I want to feel like what I'm doing is up to what I say it is. Right.

How do you deal with that?

Well, therapy, mostly. No, I mean, I just keep delivering the best I know how to deliver. Know that you can't please everyone. And if we can. And also look at any complaints, because when we do the feedbacks that people. People give across the board, 95% is eight nines and tens. Occasionally we'll get a. We got a four on one talk or something they just didn't like. For some, I think it triggered them and had nothing to do with the whole event. But, like, you know, most marketers be like, who gives a fuck? You know, Dan Kennedy's like, I don't survey people. I don't give a shit what they think. You know, I mean, truly. He's like, don't do surveys. He's like, surveys are what. I don't care about feedback. He goes, they can complain all day long. As long as they give me money, I don't care. That bothers me. I can't operate that way. And so I'm always trying to, you know, so that the way I deal with it is like, I know it's, you know, these. Where's Doug Rackman at? Where's Doug? Oh, right there. Yeah. So you know, Doug, like, the driven entrepreneur brain can go very dark and also know when someone is the only upset. There's this line in Al Anon which is that which is hysterical is historical whenever someone's having a bad experience. I know that we work really hard. I think we can deliver half of what, a third of what we deliver in Genius Network. And I think most people would be very happy. So we're always pushing to outdo ourselves, especially at the annual events. I'm always trying to make the next one better. And that's hard because I frankly don't go to events that are better than my own, which sounds so egotistical. And most of the time, I mean, I do go to. And the events I do go to that are really awesome. I keep going to them because I like, you know. So for me, it's when people drop out, it's also what's really hard is I really should have some sort of technology or some sort of pain of disconnect that if people leave, they lose some. Something because it's too easy for people to leave this group. I've had People that would come in, make a million bucks in a year and they drop out. And if they would have just kept with it, it would have like, we paid for your membership for the next 20 years. Like, why are you dropping out? But they're all, we're busy, we have shit to do. So it's the drive by shooters that attend groups. And what I learned when I started doing high level groups is that there's just as much seminar junkies that have money as there are. Well, no, there's not as many, but there's a lot of seminar junkies that just go to seminar after seminar after seminar. But there's a lot of people that just go to every fricking group and they don't stick with any of them. So it's when people go shallow instead of deep. That's why we want to frame this as a three year program. Because if someone's in it for a while, like, you know, if you're in this for a long time, you develop relationships that cannot be developed in one year. This is not going to happen in a year. It takes. Takes a while. And so that's kind of what is the hardest thing for me. And there's other stuff too, but I got to think about what it is. And also I manage egomaniacs. This truly is egomaniac management in a lot of ways. And it's also the least amount of egos with high achievers. What I want, this group is the greatest group of givers that are high achievers, that are not narcissistic narcissists, that genuinely show up and be givers. And that's a hard thing to cultivate. But I think that is what has been cultivated. The beauty of it is though is it's way beyond me. Once the group starts behaving that way, I don't have to work really hard to have a group of awesome people. Because once you get enough awesome people in the room, they kind of self create the ethos, the culture of it. Yes.

Yeah. Is it okay if I give a little bit of feedback as a customer?

Yeah, yeah, of course. Good or bad?

So I remember when you, I think it was at the annual event last year that you, you explained that you're gonna increase the price from 25k to 35k.

Yeah.

So this is, this is how I processed that. Okay, no problem.

Yeah.

It was literally like that. Now why, why? It's because you did two things. Number one is you added value first. And the reason I was a member of Genius 5, six years ago. And then I got in coach and kind of had a circuitous path coming back. But the thing that really got me to come back is you had given me so much free value. You kept sending me things and giving me free ideas and doing, you know, offering me to free sessions and stuff. And one day I was just like, I need to give Joe money. Like, this is not feeling good, you know, So I jumped back in. And then when I jumped back in, you explained this price increase, and it was no problem for me because you already added more value to my life. And then the second thing you did was you communicated about it. So you. Sri kumar.

Thank you.

So you. But you communicated about it. So on this topic of raising your prices, and I agree with you that sometimes there's room to raise your prices, but I think it really matters how you do it. If you go into it with the mindset, well, I want more money, so I'm gonna raise my price.

Right.

That's very different than saying, okay, I'm not my customer. Let me understand my customer and how my customer thinks and what they value and how can I add more value for them first and then also ask for them to give me more value in exchange and communicate about it? And I think when you do it that way, it just feels so different, you know? And that's why for me, when you raise the price, ten grand, no problem.

Yeah. Well, thank you. And that's very helpful feedback. And. And I did have quite a few conversations, especially with members that have been in for a long time, like, do we get anything special? And I'm like, no, no. I did say no. So what I've actually been thinking about is there are a lot of people that have been in my group for five years, seven years, 10 years, and we've been thinking, I want to reward these people, but I don't want to be like, hey, join this group so you can get a punch card. You know what I mean? It's more like I want it to be a surprise as a way of. So that's one thing that I've been. Because I really appreciate longevity. I mean, the lifetime value of a customer in the long term ones, those are the ones that are truly the bread and butter of the business. Right. And so, like, what I said about framing, you always want to frame it in a certain way. And I have framed things. How many of you as a public speaker have ever sold from stage? Yeah. So have you ever watched yourself, like, in the beginning stages where there's this, a line, or just Something, you know, because Mark talked about timing in his 10 minute talk where you just didn't say something. And you know, by not saying that thing, it cost you like 50 grand. You know what I'm talking about? Anyone that's self esteem, like, oh my God, if I just would have done this, I just would have done that. And so if there's anything I've learned how to do, well, it's. It's only because of all the freaking mistakes and all of the things. Ultimately no one wakes up saying, you know, I really need to join a $35,000 a year coaching group. I really hope someone calls me. There might be a few people that like that, but for the most part, we go throughout our whole lives hoping we do not run into a salesperson that is going to. And this is not something that is typically bought. Even though some people buy it, it is sold. You know, you go buy food, you go buy clothes, Certain things need to be sold. And part of that is through relationships. To Elko's question. One thing that. And I'll come to you, John. Another thing that's hard for me is the filtering of information. When I have a FOMO brain that wants to watch every video, listen to every podcast, read every book. But there's this thing called capacity and bandwidth. And I get sent between 5 to 10 to 20 books a week. I can't read 5, 10, 20 books a week. Even if I had nothing else to do, I couldn't. So it's the massive filtering of information and I can't read. Like, I would love to be able to talk to every single member, but I can't. I just don't have the time any more than any of you. You couldn't talk to every one of your patients. It would be impossible. Right. Unless you charge a million dollars a person. And maybe that's the idea. Maybe that's 10 people at a million. But ultimately it's filtering the amount of information, then picking and choosing what I can learn and what I can take in. Because if you try to eat too much good food, you get bloated. So there's information is like digestion. I mean, you can have too little or you can have too much. So. So it's like a balance of nurturing myself, but also being able to deliver a really great experience for the members. Yes, sir.

How many clients would you have if you do 1 million groups?

That's a. You know, if I did that, 1000k groups, you know, I've actually talked about that. Like, what would happen. If I had 100 people in a million dollar a year program, what would that have to look like? I've done that thinking.

If you would launch it now, what do you think?

How many people would do it? I don't know. Probably five or 10 off the bat. I know five or 10 people that would just pay me a million bucks if I did it. Most so because they could. I'd have to really figure out what the hardest part for me though is like. If you're going to ask for that much money, you really got to deliver, even for 100k. I mean, I had the idea of doing 100k eight years before I ever launched it. But I was like, if you're going to charge $100,000 a year, you have. We have a higher renewal rate in 100k than we do in Genius Network. It's pretty interesting. Most people, once they join it, they're like, they love it. They stay. You know, a lot of people fall out here and there because they, you know, like Devon had to drop out because he moved to Puerto Rico. Can you believe that? But the guy made a movie on me, so he gets a little free ride. Don't miss another episode of the Joe Paulish show. Subscribe today@thejopolishow.com if you'd like access to the show notes to take action on what was the discuss, please visit thejopolishow.com 9.