Secrets to become a thought leader - Jim Hohl and Lucas Garvin

Magnificent friends, this is your host, Cloris Kylie. Welcome to a new episode of the Beyond Influencer Marketing Podcast, where you learn how to build long-term connections with influencers. And talking about influencers and connecting with them, collaborating with them, you have to attend my demo this week where I'm going to show you this proven system I use not just to connect with influencers, but to collaborate with them, okay? So just go to cloriskylie.com/demo. That's cloriskylie.com/demo. And today I'm so excited because we welcome Jim Hall and Lucas Garvin to the show. They share their insights to become a recognized thought leader and thrive in business. Jim and Lucas are the co-founders of Thought Leaders Institute, They believe that you shouldn't have to choose between making an impact and making money, and that your best life and highest potential can be realized by building a thriving business that helps others. As Digital Marketers Trainer of the Year, they have trained thousands of people on how to start or grow successful and impactful thought leader businesses. And you can learn more about them at thoughtleadersinstitute.com. Well, hello, Jim and Lucas. Are you ready?

Yes.

I'm ready. Hi, Clarice.

Hi. So excited to have you both. And, you know, I'm excited because you are experts in, you know, how to become a thought leader. And that's what we're all for here in Beyond Influencer Marketing. So before we get into that, I would love to ask you, you know, how did you get started in this business? Why focus on helping people become thought leaders.

Got it. Well, this is Lucas speaking, for those of you that don't know me yet. And, you know, we got started in this business, I think, largely as a product of our own personal and professional journeys. You know, Jim and I both sought personal development and personal growth in our own entrepreneurial journey. And prior to, you know, choosing to exclusively serve coaches, consultants, and course creators, You know, we worked with a lot of small businesses, and through our own personal development journey, we just learned that we loved to, you know, communicate and work with and really enjoyed supporting people who were up to big things in the world and wanted to make a transformational, positive difference in the lives of the people that they work with.

I see. Yes, that's true, because, you know, you might want to have a really small business. I feel like you're still a thought leader though, because you're— even though you're your impact is smaller, you're still, you know, changing the lives of people. That's what we're all about. So how did you first grow the business? Because I'm wondering, you know, it's tough to get started, it's tough to grow up, you know, an agency. And I know you do a lot of different services, a lot of different things. So what is that one thing that helped you kind of get over the hump?

Well, luckily this isn't the first business for either of us. We had businesses before and we actually met before we started this business. And we worked informally partnering on some things together, and then we just decided that this was something we wanted to do together. And so luckily we had that experience to fall back on, but even with that, it wasn't always smooth sailing even from the beginning. So, you know, we started out as kind of a general marketing agency. So we did websites, we did SEO, we did a little bit of Facebook ads, we did a little bit of everything for a little bit of everybody. We realized that that wasn't really gonna help us grow or stand out in the market when, you know, pretty much anybody could be making a website or anybody could be offering, you know, little pieces of what we did. And so we just decided what we really needed to do was focus both who we served and how we served them. And so we did that probably about a year or 2 into our business. And since then, um, we, we, you know, we changed the name of the business to align with that mission of working with that specific audience of thought leaders and then just really narrowed the focus of what we do. And you said we do a lot and we still do do a lot for our clients, but it's much less and much more narrowly focused than it used to be.

Yeah, yeah, that makes sense. It's also how you are perceived now, right? Because when I work with my clients, I do a lot more than just influencer marketing. But the way I'm known, or yeah, I'm known as the person who focuses on influencer connections. So it does give you that relevance. Okay, that's awesome. Would you say that building connections with other thought leaders played a role in your ability to grow the business too?

Absolutely. You know, very early on in our business, we chose to seek mentorship to grow the specific type of business that we wanted to grow. And we, you know, since then have had multiple mentors that have helped us you know, go from, from one level to another and different stages in our business. And, you know, that was really a core part of what helped us, you know, establish a network in the industry was, you know, selecting the right mentors and embedding ourselves and becoming active in their communities and getting to know their clients and their friends and their connections. in the industry that ultimately over time, you know, we had our own.

Yeah, that makes complete sense. So now you are thought leaders, right? You help others get to that place where they're making a true impact. So what would you say is, is maybe a first step to take to go into that direction, right? How to stand out and be seen as a thought leader?

You know, I think one of the biggest things that people forget about thought leadership is it's not about you. It's about the people that you're reaching and that you're serving. And I think people think of thought leadership as this self-aggrandizing opportunity to become known and to be You know, someone who has influence, and that's great and that's wonderful and that's certainly part of the picture, but it's not actually about you. It's about the people that you serve. And the fastest way to become a thought leader is to design your business and your marketing around the people that you serve, not around what you want.

I love that. Jim, you had something to say too?

Yeah, I mean, I, I want to piggyback on that because I think that's a great thought, is that, you know, what I think a lot of people fall into the trap of is sort of, you know, yes, you want to have a business that serves you and your goals and your vision for your life. Absolutely. But if you lose sight of why you're doing this, that you're there to, you know, to serve other people, yet have a profitable business along the way. We're absolutely not talking about just a mission that is a nonprofit or that is something else. That's absolutely awesome, and there's a place for that. But inside of the business, you need to make money. So you need to set it up in a way that supports you. But also, if you— I think if you structure your business around being of service, that will, you know, be— that'll go a lot further in the beginning. So knowing who you want to serve, who are you best suited to serve, who can best use your help that can afford to pay for it, how can you structure it in a way that they can That they, that they can get value from it and that you can get properly compensated for the time and effort that you've put into not only delivering the service for them, but also the years that you spent getting good at what it is that you do, that you can offer it to them. So all of those things, it's kind of hard. I guess why I hesitated at first was the first step is kind of— it's hard to say the first step. I feel like it's kind of all together. You kind of have to look at it a little bit more holistically than as one thing.

Yeah, that makes sense. So what would you say then when, when people are starting out, they want to become those thought leaders, what is a common mistake they make in those, you know, those first few, uh, maybe first year or 2 in the business?

Uh, one is, yeah, I think that they're not focusing on making it into a business. So yes, knowing who you want to serve is really, really important, and being of service is important. But also, um, actually making money on what it is that you're doing is important, because the problem with not doing that is that you run out of runway. You just— you run out of time, or you run out of money, or you run out of energy or motivation or something, you know, along the way will, uh, will fall out of the picture if you're not actually getting compensated. I mean, if you have an outside source of revenue or something, that's great. And that's Probably not part of the picture for most people. You know, if you're really trying to make it a self-sustaining organism, its own, you know, the business on its own making its own money, you kind of need to be making that money pretty quickly. Yeah.

Yeah, completely agree, man. I think it, it's like you were saying, Jim, and you were saying, Cloris, you know, you have to have the right business model. You have to have the right offer, one that supports you, you know, as Jim was saying, making the amount of money that you need to make to continue to sustain yourself in the business and the growth of the business and the mission. But I think there's also this really, really consistent issue that earlier-stage thought leaders run into, which is that they, they run out of bandwidth because they overcommit. They overcommit to the number of offers that they want to put out in the marketplace and sell. They overcommit to the number of channels online that they want to promote their business.

on.

They overcommit to the number of projects that they take on inside of their business because they're so excited and passionate and ready to get out and serve that they, you know, serve themselves into the ground and out of a paycheck, you know. And it's that big heart that really motivates us in trying to help thought leaders, you know, create the right foundation, the right business model, and the right marketing strategy from the start.

Yeah, I love that. So then, if you could, could you walk me through maybe one of your clients in your agency who, who had that problem and the transformation they went through? Because I would love to just see how that went. You know, a coach or consultant who was all, you know, spreading different directions, who didn't have the right business model, and how that made a huge difference. Just, just that, just that foundation really made all the difference.

I mean, we could talk about ourselves. We definitely were a case study in that. You know, we used to spread ourselves really thin. Like I said earlier, not only offering so many different things, but also, like Lucas just mentioned, being in so many channels, trying to, you know, saying yes to everything. And saying yes to things is great, but also knowing what's the right thing to say yes to. And sometimes in the beginning you say yes to a lot more than you might want to later on because you're kind of testing things out, right? You don't know exactly what's going to work, and there's no— no shame and no harm in that. But eventually you need to learn how to distinguish between good opportunities and opportunities that might not necessarily pay off. And so in our case, we did that a lot in the beginning. We used to, you know, we did an event that we probably shouldn't have done really early on in our business that we weren't prepared for, that we spent a lot of time working on, doing the materials for, filling and everything, and it just totally bombed. It did, like, ended up netting us zero revenue. And costing us a lot of time and money. And then we just really turned that around because we realized from that event that we weren't focused. We weren't, you know, working on the right things. We weren't talking to the right people. We didn't have the right message. And so a lot of that, you know, we can talk about that more in a lot more detail. We go into it in the training that we'll talk about in a bit. But, but really, that was the catalyst for us to, to focus and to put systems in place in our business that got us to where we are now.

Yeah, yeah.

And a client example, a recent one, was one of our clients, Jace. You know, when he came into working with us, he already had a coaching business that was off the ground. He already had clients working with him in a high-end sort of mastermind-like group program. But ultimately, he wasn't seeing consistent growth, and he wasn't seeing the level of conversion that he was hoping when he would make offers or when he would have conversations. And ultimately, what it came down to was he needed a lot of the stuff that we've just been talking about together, right? He needed to refine his message. He needed to have a more scalable offer that was designed to be able to serve a lot more people without taking up a lot more of his time, and to do all of— to present all of that in such a way that people said yes, and they were ready, and they wanted to invest in it. And so, you know, after working with us for just really a couple of weeks to get the message dialed in, to get the offer dialed in, He did a new speaking gig, a new opportunity, and he brought in $50,000 in sales in just 3 weeks.

That's amazing. And it's true, like sometimes, you know, people have such a powerful message, but it's the way they present that message, right? And the way that offer is created, and even, you know, what he's offering that makes a huge difference. So yeah, I love that. So Jim, you mentioned the Thought Leader Secrets training that you guys created. I know, of course, we don't have time to go through everything in it, but tell us a little bit more about that. Like, what should we expect to see?

Yeah, so what I alluded to before is we had this event that we had done in our business early on, probably a year and a half into our business, and it was really well done. It was flawlessly executed as far as I'm concerned. We had a team helping us. We did a great job with putting it on, putting some great content out there, filling the room, all that, and the offer just didn't work. And so what we do is— what we do in the training is we really break down what we learned from that experience and how you can use that to save yourself the time and the heartache of doing the wrong things at the— doing the right things at the wrong time. And so— and what kind of systems you need to have in place in your business. And I know systems is a scary word to some people, but don't get bogged down with that word. It's just loosely used to talk about frameworks or processes that you want to have in your business that will help you enroll, attract, and serve the right kind of clients in your business.

Yeah, yeah, I love that. So now, would you say— I hear this a lot— oh, you know, I'm just one of a small number of clients, I don't really need systems, I, you know, I just do my thing. What would you say to somebody who has that thought?

Well, unless you want to work every waking moment of your life in your business, At some point you have to introduce systems into it in order to continue to serve clients well and to grow the business if your desire is to grow it. If you don't have a desire to really grow it much further, at the very least systems can take some work off your shoulders so that you're not working as hard, right? And that's sort of how we teach it with our clients is, you know, how to take simple systems, some automated, some just a simple step-by-step process that you do yourself That really takes a lot of work off your shoulders and ultimately makes it that much easier and faster to grow your business.

Exactly. Yeah, that's, that's wonderful.

So one thing, Flores, real quick, and to that same question, a mentor and former client of ours, Lisa Sasevich, is known for saying— I think I'm going to get this right. I hope if I didn't, if I don't, forgive me, Lisa. This structure gives you freedom is one of her mottos. And it's really true. You know, once you have the structure in your business, what we call systems, it just frees you up to operate within that. You know, so if you have a system in place for how to have effective sales conversations, it doesn't— every sales conversation isn't made up each time. You're not winging it every time you get on the phone with somebody. You have a process that you know is going to work, that you're going to rely on. You know, every— if you have a system to attract clients to you, you don't have to worry about how— where's the next one coming from? You know, when someone's leaving, it doesn't cause a panic. panic, you know. You know that, okay, I have a pipeline. I know that I can turn this thing on and I can start getting conversations. So, and if you have a system for serving people, you know that when people come in, they're going to get the results that they're looking for. You're going to serve them at a high level and consistently, and people are going to have the same experience as the last person, you know. So that, to me, I, I, that the aversion to systems, I think, really just comes down to not understanding that they actually free you up. to concentrate on the core of what you're doing to deliver the service you want to deliver at the end of the day and not worry about those kind of details. Handle them once so you don't have to handle them over and over again, basically.

Exactly. Yeah, that is so true. It's about delivering a consistent experience, the highest quality experience, so you get referrals too, right? And your business just gains momentum really fast. Yeah, I know Lisa really well. She was one of my first mentors back when I started my business. I learned a lot of things from her, so it is wonderful. So, well, talking about people of influence that you've connected with, now you've built a broad network, not just your clients, but, you know, all the people you work with, you associate with. What would you say is a good way to stay in touch with your connections, to nurture those connections, and to collaborate with them, you know, to grow each other's businesses?

Well, I mean, whenever the opportunity presents itself, we do try to just, you know, check in and have conversations with the people that are, you know, important to us personally and to our business as well. You know, different people in our network that maybe we partner with on certain events or, you know, try to support each other in our business endeavors. You just have catch-up conversation and connect with them and to you know, update them on what's going on in our business and vice versa. And so that certainly helps. But I think another thing that we did this year in 2020 that took things to the next level in many of our, you know, connections and relationships with them was to host an online event that benefited all of us as well as charity. And so it was really a win-win-win. And it positioned us very much as leaders in that group. And we had incredible people participating. We had Lisa Sassovich, we had Stu McLaren, we had Laurel Langmire, we had—

Suzanne Evans, Bill Glazer.

Exactly. Steve Olscher. I mean, we had a long list of A-listers participating, as well as many really amazing people in the industry.

That is wonderful. Was that a virtual summit or an online conference?

It was a giveaway. Yeah, it was a giveaway. Yeah, it was the Thriving Thought Leader giveaway. We had it in April.

Yes. Well, that's fantastic. Yeah, that sounds great. And I forgot to ask you, actually, because we need to access this training you mentioned, the Thought Leader Secrets training. So how can we access it? Well, I'm sure we're going to have a link in the show notes.

So, yeah. So it's in the recording. The link is TLI for Thought Leaders Institute, tli.to/beyond. So you can just type that in, the short link, tli.to/beyond, and that'll take you to the training. It's available anytime. You just sign up and then you get access to it immediately.

That's awesome. That's an easy link. And we'll definitely have that in the show notes as well as how to connect with you. Now, we're running short of time, so I Do love to ask this question to all of my guests, because we all go through challenges as we grow our businesses, especially, you know, this year has been a tough year for everyone, everybody. So what is your go-to strategy when things get tough and when it's time to, you know, pick yourself back up and keep going?

Well, I have a meditation practice that helps for sure. I only do 10 minutes a day, but I make sure that I do that daily. That's something I've been doing for a couple months now, and it's really helped. Another is, I mean, it's great that I have a business partner so we can check each other. Sometimes his mood will be down and mine will be up. Sometimes mine will be down and his will be up. So it's great to have— if you don't have a business partner, I think it's great to have someone else that you can sort of check whatever it is that you're going through.

Business buddy.

Business buddy, accountability partner, whatever you want to call it. Someone that you can sort of work with to get out of whatever it is that you're in. So those are a couple for me.

Yeah.

Did you have anything?

Sure. I mean, for me, you know, it really helps to, as best as I can, stay and reconnect and be grounded in our mission and our vision for our business and, you know, what we're up to in the world and why we do what we do, which is ultimately to help people live their best life, right? As many people as we can. We want to help people to, you know, realize that they have agency in their life and they can create the life that they desire. And we do that through our business, but also through our clients and all the amazing work that they do.

Yeah, that's awesome. Well, this has been fantastic, and I really appreciate your being on the show. You are inspiring us to keep going and to become thought leaders.

Thank you for having us. It's been wonderful.

Magnificent friends, so what do you think? What is it that you're going to do first to position yourself as a thought leader, to become a thought leader? Leader? Please share your thoughts in the Beyond Influencer Marketing Facebook group. Go to florescallie.com/facebookgroup and connect with us, connect with the influencers in the group, and start building a magnificent business. I'll see you soon.