The Price Is Never the Issue: The Psychology of the High-Ticket Sale
31 Jul 2026 · 80 min
Kat Parker Merritt explains why price objections are rarely the real problem in healthcare sales. She warns against letting front-desk staff answer questions before appointments, critiques AI's tendency toward median solutions and echo chambers, and shares a story where AI-generated marketing advice tanked a practice launch.
Chapters
Do we go by procedures, which work, which as a doctor, that's what, you know, you know, codes, you know, values, you know, procedures, right? It's flipping the switch into outcome. That's really important.
You didn't build your clinic to feel like an employee in your own business. I'm Matthew Cologli, and on Out of the System hosted by Dr. Talks, we challenge the broken rules holding healthcare entrepreneurs back. Hear from clinic owners, rebels, and builders who creating bold, profitable, patient-centered practices and doing it their way. Hi, Kat.
Hi.
Welcome to, uh, welcome to the Out of the System podcast.
Thank you.
So for those of you that don't know who is sitting across from me, this is Kat Parker Merritt. She is, you're a sales wizard. That's kind of a fair assumption, don't you think?
Yeah.
Yeah. You wanna tell people what you do? Because like, I'm trying to figure out a way To like state what you do. And you do a lot of things.
I do a lot of things. I've had a lot of experience. I have years. I have some years that I was able to accumulate doing some things, but I actually dropped out of college when I got a sales job and it was a telemarketing job that everyone would probably hate. And it was just instantly easy for me. I just—
Bet your parents were proud dropping outta college, going into telemarketing.
Hey, It was more money than I would have made with a graduate degree. So it just ended up being a thing I was good at. But as I look at it over the years, I ended up really specializing in premium offer, higher ticket life transformation, masterminds, events, coaching, transformation, right? So. As I look back and I kind of accumulate it all to make it make sense, it really is more about transformation. Like, what do people need to have a transformation? And it just turns out whether from my first college job, which was used car warranties to cold calling, I think from there I went to, uh, the big nationwide rollout of the Sprint MCI Wars, right?
Oh yeah.
Yeah. So the sprint MCI wars where we would call and say, who handles the long distance at your house? But all of those jobs that a lot of people don't like, I actually liked. It was—
Why, why do you think you liked it?
I don't know. I think, I think I just came with some kind of attitude that I wasn't trying to— I, how I was raised, how I thought my mental process was not like me against the other person. I really enjoyed connecting with other people.
Right.
And I didn't feel like it was a tug of war, like I was trying to get them to do something. It was, and again, some of this is looking back, but as I look back, it was like, I'll talk to them. I'll let them know what their options are. And if they think it's cool, that's cool. And if they don't, that's cool. I also think the second thing that really helped me is for whatever reason, I never took personally If someone hung up on me or said, I don't want to talk to you, or this is a bad time or whatever. I didn't have to go through a lot to not have that bother me. Again, if you look at it from the other person's point of view, you can't get bothered. If you can just go, oh, they, they might've been having a bad day. And I don't know if that's denial, like, oh, this has nothing to do with me.
Right.
Right. But I really enjoyed talking to people and knowing that sometimes people would say, eh, not now, don't bother me, whatever, was fine with me. And interestingly, this became a really important part of what I do and how I do it, is that the more I allowed that and didn't let it bother me, the less it happened. It's one of those inverse laws, like the more It didn't bother me that someone would say, you know, you're pissing me off and hang up on me.
Right.
The less it would happen, it's then the people that were afraid of that and got upset by it, it seems like it happened more.
Right. So for, and for those of you that are listening and watching, Kat works for our company. She's in charge of, I call her the chief revenue officer.
Right.
'Cause she's in charge of the marketing and the sales. But the other thing that you do that our doctors love, which is where I wanna spend a lot of time.
Yeah.
Is every time we have you on our weekly trainings, we have some of the highest turnouts and the doctors will come find me going, how do we get more of Kat?
Yeah.
Okay. And you do an amazing job. And this is where I wanna spend some significant time. You do an amazing job of understanding the psychology of the prospect. And you, you know, you have a lot of things. When I first saw you, it was at Flight Club.
Yeah.
In October of '24.
Yeah.
In Las Vegas.
Yeah.
And I heard you speak for 30 minutes and I immediately said to myself, oh, I gotta hire her. I don't know if I could afford you. I didn't, it didn't really matter if I could afford you, 'cause I can never afford anything that I want. So I always just get it.
You just figure it out.
I just figure it out. I'm like, well, if I can't afford it, they must be really good. So that means I'm supposed to, I'm supposed to hire them. But you have some really unique ways to think of sales. In your experience with our doctors, like what's the biggest, what are some, not the biggest, what are some of the biggest challenges and/or mistakes that you see our clients making when it comes to making offers to their patients?
So great question. There's a few, let me just kind of mentally run through. So the biggest one is just And I know this sounds ridiculous, but it's, it's where you come from. You're, you're come from, right? So someone could walk up to you and say, hey Matt, could you do me a favor? And you would instantly feel oppressed and heavy.
Right.
Because it comes with a really big energy behind it. Or someone else could come up and say, hey Matt, could you do me a favor? And you'd be like, sure. And not even feel that. Right. And so If a doctor, practice manager, whoever's answering the phone feels a need that they are then putting on the other person, right? So I need patients.
Right.
So if, if the come from is we're taking phone calls because I need patients, that creates a whole different dynamic than if you can really get in the space of I have plenty of patients. I'm in agreement.
Because coming from that place of, I have to have this patient, you're exerting that, and you're in the phone call with the prospect, you as the person who's answering the phone, talking with the prospect, you're exerting that stress and that pressure onto them and they can feel it.
Correct.
Okay.
We all do, whether we consciously register it or not. We, we all do, right? And then you've got a patient who has their own needs, wants, desires, fears, right? And so it's not to get them to capitulate and come in, which I think is the goal in most cases, right? Your job is to book appointments.
Right.
So I have this, I had this experience recently where I was going to an office and they left me a message and said, hey, do you want to book another appointment? And I said, not right now. And then 5 minutes later, I got a text and it said, do you want to book another appointment? And I said, not right now. In fact, call me on the 9th of July. Right. And I got 3 messages in the meantime, which is, hey, when do you want to book your next appointment? Well, so on the 9th of July, because I— right.
Right.
And so we set up systems that are for us.
Not for them.
Correct.
So how would you set that system up?
So first of all, you just have to say, okay, what does a patient want?
And we always, we assume we think we know what they want.
No, I think we assume we think they know what they want because that fits with what we want. I think we make an assumption that they want to get better or they want a procedure or they want to see a doctor or they want... They want the cheapest implant or whatever. Right. And we, we assume that based on our needs and our experience. Right. And so if you can flip it, what happens is you become more curious. Right. And so curiosity leads to questions. What, why are you calling the office? What is it exactly you're looking for? If I could help you with the biggest thing today, what would it be? And I don't know that all of that is appropriate for the front desk. Sometimes you just need to book an appointment, but the second is to make it not about money. So many offices and doctors, there, it's an economic system, right?
Mm-hmm.
See this many patients, I make this much money. This is how much the front desk makes. I need this many. Appointments in a day and this many appointments in a week.
It becomes very formulaic.
It is, but patients are not. And so we can get stuck in the operational numbers part of it and then try to fit patients into that instead of saying, okay, really what's the outcome the person's looking for? And then what can happen? The next mistake is we make, so we make it about money because we're looking at the economics and there is economics. It always breaks out. Right. Right. And so patients will say things like, oh, that's too expensive. I don't know if I can afford it. Right. And then we take that as gospel.
Right.
What I have learned over not just years, but decades of having these kinds of conversations with people is that's never the issue.
What is the issue?
The issue is outcome.
Right?
Desire and outcome. If, if I have a shoulder that keeps me from being able to sleep and enjoy travel with my spouse or hang out with my grandkids or be able to lift things. I'm, I travel a lot, you know, to, to not be able to lift your luggage and put it in by yourself is actually embarrassing. It hurts your pride.
Right.
Right? And I have all these issues from it and I feel like crap because I can't sleep. What I want more than anything in the world is for that to go away. Notice I didn't say for it to be fixed.
No, we just want the pain to go away.
I just want it gone. So what I have to, what you have to do in your words and in your attitude is help me, the patient, understand what it's worth to have that fixed.
And when you say worth, you're not talking about money.
I'm talking about money and outcomes.
Okay.
So if I—
because if I were listening, this would be like worth, like, how much am I going to pay? What you're saying is it's that and the outcome.
Both. So pretend just, and I do this a lot too, we'll go to pretend land.
I love pretend land.
We're in pretend land. So everything goes, doesn't need to make sense. That after, after years of not sleeping, constant pain, We all know what chronic pain does to people. I don't want to have surgery. There's a lot of educated people right now that say, I don't want to go that route. If in pretend land, I could write a check to make it all go away, what wouldn't I write that check for?
Yeah. 10 grand, 15 grand. I just want it to be gone.
So if, if I position it like that, I actually can get in the mind frame of an amount of money.
Right.
I can make it financial, but what I'm really talking about is what's the value to me, the exchange value to have the rest of my life back, right? So I'm actually assigning a dollar value as a patient to having something fixed. What we get stuck in is exchanges where a patient wants a price for a procedure and the doctor agrees.
Mm-hmm.
Right?
Right.
So do we go by procedures, which work, which as a doctor, that's what you know, you know, codes, you know, values, you know, procedures, right? It's flipping this switch into outcome that's really important.
Yeah. They, I tell the doctors all the time, you're selling a transformation. And I don't even like to use the word selling because for the doctors that immediately—
Offering.
Yeah, you're just making an offer of a transformation and it's really then up, you make the offer and they decide whether or not they want the transformation.
Right? Like I said, going back to me being able to be on the phones early. And like I said, sprint MCI Wars and then coaching events and $10,000 things, $100,000 things. And what I found is the price is never the issue. It's the outcome.
Is it the outcome? Is the outcome believable?
Accessible.
Accessible. What's the difference between believable and accessible?
So if you don't believe that something can happen, but you see that it's accessible to other people, even though you don't personally believe it, you're gonna sway more toward that possibility. I don't think we ever believe— I have a philosophy. I don't think we ever believe anything until we understand it and we see it ourselves.
Yeah, I would agree.
But if I can see, if I can see, oh, that's accessible, 40 other people did it. I don't know if I believe I can do it, but it's right there if I choose it. Right. So I think doctors can become very commoditized and they expect that patients are going to have a commoditized conversation. How much do you charge for? Right.
Right.
So, Poff, really quick, I actually did get a tooth implant. And I did call offices and ask how much they charge. And what I was looking for was a higher price point.
Why?
Because I knew what the lower price points— I had been around people and I knew what the lower price points represented in terms of materials, doctors. And I wanted a doctor who basically by price was saying, I'm the best. And I don't think most of the offices I talked to would ever have thought that.
No, they all think it's a, well, people that buy, they think people buy, everybody thinks that they buy, people buy one way, and that is solely on price.
Yep.
Which my favorite retort then is, is that jacket, that leather jacket that you have on. Was that the cheapest leather jacket in the store that day?
No.
No price. And I know you pretty well, but there's a pretty good chance that that price was the third, maybe fourth You put it on, did it fit well? Stood in front of the mirror, looked at it. Do I have something that I'm gonna wear at home? Oh, I think it's gonna go perfect with this green top.
Right. Yeah.
And then you looked at the price.
Yeah. And then the price didn't, and then depending on all that other stuff, the price doesn't really matter. Right.
Why is it so hard for people to understand that when it comes to their own purchasing? Like, I, I know how you and I, like, why do people think that Everybody makes decisions based on price.
Because they deny reality. It really takes a denial of reality to believe that. And I think it's conditioning reinforced by a patient calling and saying, how much is it? And a number of patients saying, I can't afford that. Right? So it comes from a belief and then it's reinforced by outside information. The difference is I have heard, I can't afford that, enough times where people still went ahead. That I realized it's, it's an initial reaction. It's a smokescreen, or I don't know what I'm going to get out of it yet. Right. So when I talk to the doctors, I use this analogy. If I show up at your office and say, hey, I have this really beautiful Italian briefcase. You'll look like the smartest doctor in the room. Next event you go to with this briefcase, it, it's one of a kind. It's from Italy. It was handcrafted and it's $10,000. They would all say that's too much.
Right.
I don't need it right now. Can't afford that right now. Right. I don't really think I would get many takers.
Right.
Maybe none.
Right.
I mean, they say there's a percentage that will say yes to anything.
Right.
But, but no one ever stops to say, What's in the briefcase? So pretend I open the briefcase and there's $25,000 in it.
I'll pay you 10 grand all day long for that.
Even if you don't, and here's the thing, even if you don't have 10 grand, you'll find it, right? Right. Pretend your credit cards are maxed out. You don't have money in the bank. Yep. You, you don't know, what would you do? And I said, okay, this is 10 grand. And you don't have access to it, what would you do?
I would find a way to get 10 grand.
Yeah.
And in a heartbeat.
So what I have learned is that the negotiation about how much is it is really on a surface level where there's no real thought behind it and no real understanding of value or outcome. Now pretend I'm a billionaire. Like, keep your 25 grand. I don't care. There's genuinely not a need.
Right.
So it's about, do you need this? Does it have value to you? And does it have enough value that there's dollars that would make sense to invest in it?
Right?
It's like the shoulder. If you could write a check to fix this, what would you be willing to write that check for?
Well, aren't all purchases— I shouldn't say all. Let me rephrase this. Bill Glazer once told me that your whole goal in copywriting, sales, front of the room selling, is you're selling money at a discount.
Mm-hmm.
And what this means is whether you're, if the $10,000 briefcase has $25,000 in it, that's a discount, right?
Mm-hmm.
That's, he always used to say, whenever they make a purchase and you send a thank, you should always send a thank you note and there should always be some way that money is burning a hole in their pocket, that they only have 14 days to spend it. And I've made a lot of money with this over the years. When you hear that, what do you, what goes through your mind?
Yeah, it's outcome at a discount.
Okay.
Right. So, and that means you have to understand what the person values.
But we make an assumption that we know what they value.
Yes, we do. And it's always wrong.
Why?
It, because we're people and because we don't ask. And when you don't ask, you don't know. So the reason a patient doesn't buy, if I had 20 doctors and I said, if a patient doesn't buy, why is it? Patient doesn't buy, why is it? They'll all have an answer.
The patient'll have a reason as to why they don't buy.
The reason they give you.
Right.
But the words that someone says is not the reason.
So how do you find the reason?
You have to ask. You do not know the reason someone does anything unless you ask.
Okay. So they don't buy and you, as the doctor, you say, Kat, why didn't you buy? And you gimme an answer of—
It's just not, I don't have the money right now. It's a tough time.
But that's not really the answer, is it?
No.
What do you, so how do you dig deeper?
I just can't justify it right now. So how you dig deeper—
What does that mean?
So how you dig deeper is first you have to understand what I want and why I want it.
And most people get that wrong.
And they, they just assume you want the procedure, you want the, this, this is what I do. You'll love it. That's the problem. This is what I do. You'll love it.
That is a big problem.
That's That's how every sale is done everywhere. This is what I do. You're gonna love it. You should do it. If you condense it all down, that's really kind of what it is. This is, so what about, this is what I do. I don't know if that's for you right now, but let's find out.
That's a big shift for a lot of people.
But it's so simple, isn't it?
Yeah.
So there's One of my favorite books is Start with No by Jim Camp. And that's what he says, give people the opportunity to say no. It changed how I do everything. I don't know if this is for you. You might not even like it. Let's find out. Now, as a prospect, what does that do to you?
You automatically go, well, what do you mean you don't think it's for me?
Right.
Who are you to say that this isn't for me? Like, I'm gonna show you that this is for me. All of that I think happens in milliseconds in their head. What do you mean no?
Also, instead of going, this is what I do, let me just tell you really quick, which makes you lean away. As soon as I say it might not even be a fit for you, I don't even know if you want it, but let's see. And if not, tell me to go jump. Now you're going, what is it? Right? Which is what I need you to do, but I genuinely mean, if it's not for you, tell me no. That's the other thing is people think this is a war to be fought where there's victory or loss.
No, it's not. There's no war.
But that's what people believe. Right.
That's what they think sales is.
I get a patient, that's a win. I lose a patient, that's a loss. Untrue. Completely untrue.
And that's really hard for medical professionals because they don't want to lose anybody. That's like the ultimate, not failure, because they realize that people die, right? There are things out of your control. However, it's a highly, it's not just personal, obviously for the person who's dying, but it's highly personal for the person who's trying to save them and they didn't make it.
Yeah.
So I could see where there is a massive Challenge with that.
Yeah. It would be a psychology that would be a little tough to get through. However, that's once you're there, your patient and you have a responsibility for them. We're talking about, you have a $25,000 process system, PRP, stem cells, fat injections, lasers process that can fix my shoulder. Right.
Right.
But until I want that, then you haven't lost anything, right? So there's great power in saying, this is what I do. This is how much it is. And I'm really oversimplifying just to get to the base of this psychology. This is who I am. This is what I do. This is how much it is. It's not for everyone.
It's very powerful because you Going back to what, how we originally started this, when you're desperate and you need money, your prospect can smell that.
Whether, whether they consciously recognize it or not. Where do you think the phrase scared money never wins came from?
Yeah. 'Cause it doesn't.
Fear is, fear is the worst place to make a decision.
Right.
Right. And the worst place to perform. So under fear, it's the worst time to make a decision. It's the worst time to try to accomplish something, right? So, but imagine what that does if I'm a physician and instead of repeatedly trying to get somebody to do something, I'm repeatedly stating, this is who I am, this is what I do, this is what I charge, these are the outcomes I get, and it's not for everybody.
Yeah. I think the hardest work that we do at Mavericks, there's 2 components of it. One, people will say, oh, Mavericks, it's just about raising your price.
Yeah. Simple.
It's, in a way, yes, but not really.
Yeah. That's a tactic.
Right. But we also know that when you make your first $5,000 sale or $10,000 sale.
It's like— Or $25,000 sale.
Right. It's like Dr. G that, you know, when you had the call, he made his first or second, second $25,000 sale. He had done a Dominion Path day with Dean and I probably 3 weeks prior to that. Longtime family practice in Houston. And yeah, we developed a $25,000 program for him and he sold 2 of them now. But when we It's, people think it's about all we do is teach people how to raise prices and put together packages. That's not it. It's actually the reason why we start with the packages and the price right off the bat is we know that that little shift is going to get you a sale at a level that you never thought comprehensible, thought possible. Then what happens is now you're way more open to hearing what we have to say about the real transformation. And the real transformation for it to become scalable is this kind of stuff here that we're talking about. Okay. So I just gave you all the secrets to Maverick's Profit System and what we do. I just told you what we're going to do. Okay. But you know, there's power in that too.
But knowing what to do and doing it, knowing what to do and being the person who can complete it and become it are one simple, not easy.
This is why there's always going to be a need for human coaching with AI. Which we'll talk, we'll talk about that later.
Yeah.
Yeah. I'm not, okay. But when they make that transformation and all of a sudden they're like, oh my God, I just made more in 1 hour than I made the last 3 weeks. Maybe there's something to this. But then what do you see is happening? So they follow a system. What do you see happens generally with people once they start doing, they've, they have some initial success and then they start doing it over and over again. What happens? Do the success continue? Do they start to fall back?
What? No, they actually, so Seth Godin wrote a book.
They go up and they go down.
Seth Godin wrote a book about this. It's called The Dip.
Right. Yeah. That's a great book.
And the dip is predictable and it happens every time because it's the same reason that lottery winners, by the way, there's a statistic under $10 million, $10 million or under. Lottery winners end up worse off than they were before they won the lottery. Wow. And it's because—
So note to self, don't play the lottery unless it's over $10 million.
Over $10 million.
Okay. Good to know.
I think over $10 million, you have enough runway to make a whole bunch of mistakes. This is my theory, right? And it's very rare.
Or the more money just makes you scared and you don't spend any of it.
Yeah. So it's a circumstance. So the more money is a circumstance. The outcome, I've sold packages, is a circumstance, but that is not who you are yet.
Yet.
And so what happens is you revert back to who you are. Everything in the universe loves homeostasis.
The bungee cord always pulls you back.
Always. Unless you are becoming who gets that result. And when you first get it, it's like getting a hole-in-one in golf. The first thing your brain says is, I can't believe I did that. Mm-hmm. And then that gets reinforced. Bet you I'll never do that again.
Right.
Right? And so—
Been playing golf 20 years and it finally happened.
We all have subconscious income ceiling and it's tied to value. It's tied to income. I was in a conversation with one of the world's best hypnotherapists and coaches. You can't even get in with him. He's very, very famous with a lot of amazing people. And someone was saying, you know, I don't think I can get over $6 million in income. And he said, okay, well, I promise you somewhere in your past as a child, the richest person you know made $6 million a year. And you didn't even, you didn't even need to know that consciously.
Exactly.
It's, it's set there. And then you create a world where that's the most anybody makes. And it, and it has, and it becomes reality. You don't know that. You have no conscious reality of it. Or someone made more than $6 million and they were evil or got caught in something.
Or they made above $6 million and then they lost it.
You, you don't know where it came from.
You don't know where it is.
But it came from somewhere.
Yeah.
And it's in there, right? So we all have an unconscious income ceiling. And if you don't know what it is, it's really easy to find out.
How?
What's the highest income you've ever earned?
I asked this of Trevor one time. I won't say his last name. I said, what's the most you ever made? And I think the most he ever made was like $250,000 to $300,000. I think it was like $300,000, $350,000. And I said, so what's What was the year before your economic crash, before you lost everything? What did you do that year? He goes, I was really pissed because I wanted to make $1 million personal income and I made $999,500 that year. And I go, what happened the next year? He goes, I made $170,000. I made $125,000.
Yeah. Evened it right out. Right?
He just evened the whole thing out. And I go, what'd you make the year after that? He goes like $125,000 again. I said, so if you look at this number, Right. And it's, it's really fascinating to see people on that because they're, they don't realize it.
Well, it's, it's not a conscious program. It's, and the frustrating part is you're doing everything you know how to do everything. And I'll tell you where I learned this. Like I've run sales teams of 300, 500, straight commission, high dollar, right? High value. Sales. And my own company, I had just over 250. And I learned this by watching for years and years and years. It'd always be true, which I would interview someone and I would say, what's the most you've ever earned? And they would say $72,000 and they would come in and they would make more than that. And then they always adjusted and I could always blow their minds by getting out a calculator and saying, okay, well, this is how much you made last month. This is how much you made that. this month. Let's even it out. Oh, look, it's $72,000.
So how do you get them past it?
First of all, you have to be aware that that exists. Second of all, you have to be the person that sustains that more.
So you have to be, you're talking about the future self?
Yeah.
Okay.
So my current self got a couple of big hits. Woo. But that's temporary. Unless I become something different, right? So the real work is how do you think? How do you act? What do you do? And how does this become sustainable over time so that you as a human being, you're rising to meet this increase? That's not a fluke. That's not a cool thing that happens.
Mm-hmm.
It just becomes more and more. So first you are aware. Second, you, I've never seen it happen without outside interference and help.
Like what?
Like a coach, like a mentor, like a need, right? In the movie Cinderella Man, when he came back and started winning and they said, whoa, man, what happened? That's not the line, but He said, well, now I know what I'm fighting for.
Right.
For milk. So that need was so great.
Great movie, by the way.
Fantastic movie. But that need and that drive was so consuming and so great that it didn't matter what got in his way, right? So we have that kind of a drive or we have some kind of, and he had a lot of support too. He didn't do it by himself. Or we have a system that happens. So there's a lot of research around who we become by who we spend time with. And it hasn't been disproven. Again, this subconscious stuff that gets implanted, right? So there are things we believe that we don't know why we believe them, but we do. And they become a part of us, right? So how I Initially in the early '90s went from going, oh, the most you can make in a year is $38,000 to, wow, you could easily make $100,000, 6 figures. If you go back to the economy, there was a big recession in '91 and money was scarce and there were no jobs, blah, blah, blah.
Blah, blah, blah.
So the fact that for the first time in my life, I went, oh, I could make $100,000 and did in 1992 is a big deal.
Why?
Because I was in a room and I had a job where literally 100 people around me were making more money than me. And that guy made over $100 grand and that guy made $300 grand. And that lady's not even as good as me and she makes 6 figures, right? So you're in it and you have to see that it's accessible.
Right.
Did I believe it? No, because I had my own beliefs, but it was accessible. It was right there. I could see it all around me and it became a reality.
Well, that's what I, that's one of the hard things to explain to people about the power of mastermind. If you've never been in a mastermind, like you and I, our industry's like, I'm in what, one right now? I normally been like 2 or 3 at a time.
You can't function unless you're in a mastermind.
I mean, I don't know how many you in, like 4?
Yeah. At my peak, I think it was like 6, but yeah.
Yeah, it gets to be a little bit too much, but for doctors, they don't realize they are in a mastermind. See, everybody's in a mastermind.
Yep.
Whether they sign up for a mastermind or not.
Yep.
And the mastermind is the group of people that you hang out with. So we use this all the time. How'd you come up with your price for what you're offering? Well, I went to the latest conference and I was hanging out with my fellow doctors at the bar, at, you know, in the hallway. And I was asking what they charge for X, Y, and Z. One guy was at $650, one was at $950. And so I landed at $850. I just, that felt kind of just felt like the right place. I said, so let me get this right. You asked a bunch of dead broke doctors who can't make payroll what they're charging. And you always hear like this long pause and they go, I see what you mean. Okay. So that's a mastermind because that's a mastermind of people. It's a mastermind of like you've said, oh, that feels comfortable. So I'm going to go associate with that group. 'Cause that just feels right to me.
Yeah.
Isn't the point of joining a mastermind is to become uncomfortable?
Well, it should be the point.
Okay.
Because discomfort leads to growth. So it's the point if you want growth. But if you think you want, if you think you're gonna get a higher income without growth, you're kidding yourself.
Right.
Right? So if you take, like there was a doctor at the most recent event where we attended and he said, You know, when I started with Matt, I was this much in debt and I'm not anymore. And I just bought my own building. And he, he talked about the money. He talked about the process. But if you sat down and asked him, what have, what changes have you had in this process? Who are you now versus who were you then? I promise you would get really interesting answers. So, but I bet he hasn't even thought of it.
Well, this one has. So he would tell you that he didn't believe that it was possible. He was stuck and his wife was the one that was on the calls. And she kept saying, you have to be on it. You have to be on it. And I literally told him, you're gonna be on a call. Or I think I was like, I'm gonna like, you know, call you out basically. And he got on the call and I let all the doctors tell him, you're no, you've got to do like the, I didn't do the talking. The doctors did. It was like an intervention.
Yeah.
And when the light bulb went on for him and they were able to start paying off debt and they were paying themselves a salary for the first time in 9 months, they were like, This isn't just a story. This isn't, it's not just this guy over here with the story or this gal over here with the story. Like, this is a real viable thing. Today. So he's going to be coming in at the time of this recording, he's coming into LA on Saturday. We're going to have breakfast with he and his wife. And he is a medical director now for like a new type of regenerative Oh, that's so rad. Software tool. That's, I can't, like, it's really cool, right? Like it's, it could be, it could be a game changer, right? Like he's buying his own building. He's going to have, like, he's working 3 days a week now. Like he's everything because he associated himself within the group, within our mastermind group. He found the people in the group that were doing those things because there's always a group within the group. There's always a 20% inside. There's always an 80/20 in the group.
Only every time.
Right? Only every time. So if you're in a group of 20 people, there's 4 people that are making 8x of everybody else in the group. So you gotta go hang out with those people, not the ones that sound like you or make you comfortable.
Which is uncomfortable, which is uncomfortable.
It's incredibly uncomfortable.
I had a mentor, I've had several, but this particular mentor said, when you go to an event or a mastermind, stand at the back of the room and see where would I be the most uncomfortable in this room? And go right there.
I always sit in the back of the room. Everybody's like, oh, you gotta sit in the front and be fully associated. No, I can't see the room. And I have an ability to feel the room. And you know what's interesting about the people that are killing it? I wonder where, when I, here's where I see them. I see them in the fringes. I do not see them in the centers. And they don't—
Most of the time.
They don't speak up a lot.
Yeah, because they're doing it.
Right. What do you see?
It depends, right? They congregate. So that's the thing. They might be over there. They might be over there. They might be in the center. They might be in the back, but they're together. And generally, if you're not at that level yet, you will look at those people and go, oh, those aren't my people.
Something inside of you will tell you they're not your people, which means that those are the people you need to go with.
Yeah.
You know, when I met you at Flight Club, I'm sure I've told you this, and I was the, we were, I was asking, my business was stuck and we didn't have a predictable way to get clients and marketing was kind of hodgepodge and it was all kind of centered on me. Everything was centered on me.
Yeah.
And we remember we had these lines and we were going around and like, I have this problem, who can solve it? And I had like 4 people say, you need to talk to Kat.
That's cool.
And I immediately got incredibly nervous.
Huh.
Because I was like, you know, there's comfort in your struggle.
Oh yeah.
Right? There's comfort in the wound.
There's comfort in it. I don't know. Maybe it's comfort. I think it's familiarity.
Yeah.
I don't know if that's comfort.
Well, the wound is, the wound is a, the wound's very familiar. And so you know what the wound is.
Yeah.
And you know how to make it, you know how to make it feel better.
Or worse.
Or worse. Right. Which makes you feel worse or better.
Yeah.
I remember thinking to myself, and I didn't approach you for a little bit of time, 'cause I was like, I didn't want an answer that was clear-cut. I wanted a hard answer. What I meant by is I didn't want somebody who had fought the battle and won. I wanted somebody that could struggle with me.
Ah.
Interesting.
Right?
So there were a couple other people that I talked to and they were fully in transition in their world and business. And I'm like, oh yeah, I know that.
Yeah.
Maybe they'll work with me in transition too.
Me too. Yeah.
And then I finally got the clean version is the chutzpah to go up and talk to you. And I remember, what did you say to me? I can't remember. You gave me the brush-off.
I did.
What was the brush-off?
I just said, I'm not available right now.
And I, what, I can't remember what I said. I went—
I'm plenty busy.
I said, okay, great. Like, when do you wanna talk? Or something like that. Yeah.
Well, we'll work together. I think you said something like that.
Yeah. Well, yeah, great. We'll work together.
I just need to know how it all works.
Yeah. And I think you, you said, yeah, you said that and then you gave me some number of just the ballpark of what it, and what it, and you were 4x from what everyone, yeah. Or probably 3x from what the other people in the room were, or 2x at least.
I always am.
Yeah. And I went, okay. Like I didn't flinch. You did.
And I didn't know if that was a real not flinch or if that was like a, okay, I'm not gonna flinch. I'm not gonna flinch.
It was both. It was like, fuck, I can't afford her. Does that mean I've gotta go without a paycheck? Yeah. That means I probably need to hire her. Yeah, I can handle that.
So going back to the whole genesis of this conversation, why would you want to bring on someone that was more high-priced than anyone else that you'd talked to?
Simple. Because I knew that hiring people that were less expensive was getting me the same result. Now, I've been an entrepreneur for 25 years. Okay. And you would think that you would, you know, I think the mistake that people think is, when you've been in the game as long as you and I have been, is that we have it all figured out. The only thing we have figured out is that we don't have it figured out.
Yeah. You know, you have to figure out more all the time.
It's always changing. I mean, AI is, how much is it upending your world right now?
Oh, it's—
So we're spending bulk of our days so we don't get run over by a bot, you know?
Yeah.
But you, The approach I take is, and I have to be careful about how I phrase this, 'cause I'm recaptioning, I'm reprogramming my mind a little bit about it. I think it's really easy to whip yourself.
It's not just easy, it's like almost necessary.
It's habitual. Well, but the problem is when you whip yourself and you say, I should have known. I didn't catch that sooner. What it does is that self-whipping creates an environment where the wound just gets bigger. Whereas—
Repetition compulsion.
Repetition compulsion. Whereas if you look at it as more of like a protector, not a bouncer, but a protector, Of saying, oh, okay, what, how can we look at that differently? And I think when it comes to growth in a business, the first reaction is when you've been in as long as we have been is, oh, I already saw that. Oh, that's just this. I know how to do that.
Yeah. Right?
Does that make sense? What does Kat really know that I don't know? I've been selling high-ticket stuff for 20 years, right? Obviously, you know a lot more than I do.
Right.
So anyway, it's a, it's a really fascinating thing.
Let's go back to what I first originally started with. And that is when you approached me and said, hey, what does it take to work with you? I was like, I don't, I'm, I'm good. I don't need anybody right now. Right. Basically, like you said, brush off.
I'm like, well, I got to hire her.
What did that do to you?
I'm like, I got to hire her.
Right. So this goes back to exactly what I was saying. Right.
It's just what you started off with.
This is who I am. This is what I do. This is how much it is. And I don't know if it's even going to be a fit.
So we met in October, then we're having a corporate meeting in December in Phoenix, and our then CFO is there. And Brooke was very tight with money.
Yes, she was.
As she should have been, because we were blowing—
All CFOs are supposed to be.
Yeah. And you weren't involved in the company yet. And we were saying, what's the thing that we need to do to get Matt on the road more? And I'm like, well, right now I'm operating as the chief revenue officer. And I said, I just, I don't, I can't, I don't have time. I said, but I've got somebody identified, probably could hire her maybe like third quarter. And she said, well, if you have somebody identified and this is the one thing that's getting in the way, why aren't we hiring her now? I'm like, are you sure you're a CFO? And I think that's a, a great lesson for people to understand because a lot of times the people that are the financial people see the thing more clearly and they understand the math better.
They look what's in the briefcase.
Say more about that.
I think financial people, so I can sum it up in a quote. The difference between average or mediocre And millionaires and billionaires is one question.
And that is it.
That's it. That's the only difference. Average, mediocre, broke ask this question, how much is it? Millionaires and billionaires ask, what is the return? What do I get out of it? And I think financial people have to make that evaluation all the time. Like if we're going to buy this laser, how does it monetize? What's the ROI? What's the return? Does it make financial sense over time? Right. And so they're in that equation more, I think, than an entrepreneur or a doctor or a business owner. And the other thing is, as human beings, we use price as an escape. It's the easy excuse. Nobody's going to say, I'm too insecure to grow my practice. Nobody's going to say that.
Right.
I'm afraid I will fail. I don't believe it's possible. They're not going to say that.
Nobody's ever going to say that.
They're going to say, I don't have the money right now. It's a cop-out. And it's a cop-out we need to preserve our dignity, right? We want to be okay. So it's how we be okay. Because you're not just going to vomit on people and be like, well, you know, it's complex and I'm afraid this won't work. And Right. If I charge a lot of money, that'll be an inflated ego. And you know, all these things that we think it means, and we're just not gonna be honest, which is why I say when a customer says, I can't afford it, it's always baloney.
Right. It's always baloney.
Because if I was asking for $10,000 and what you knew for a fact is you're getting $25,000, is you would find it. That's, that's what everyone would do. They would start calling people and making deals and You know, hey, give me 10, I'll give you 15 back tonight. Like you'd be doing stuff.
Right.
Just try. And I've just watched over time, people find money for the things they really want. I remember I was selling a program. It was over 10 grand. And I talked to a guy, he's, he lived in New York. This is 30 years ago. And he said, I don't have the money now, but I will get it. Mm-hmm. And he got a part-time job. I actually think at the stadium selling concessions or something. My memory might be a little off, but this is what I remember. And from there, he made a friend who, who had season tickets, who had a landscaping business, who hired him to do landscaping. Was more hours, more money. And he called me back and he said, I want to thank you. He bought the program. And he called me back and said, I wanna thank you because now I own my own landscaping business, which by the way, had nothing to do with the program he bought. Nothing. But he made a decision.
Yes.
And he moved. And that movement didn't put him where he thought he would be, but it put him in actually a better place than what he thought he was getting. And so I have learned over time and thousands of repetitions that the highest value is not to get someone to say yes. The highest value is to get someone to make a decision. And I don't care what it is. Yes, I want this fixed and I will do whatever it takes to get it fixed. No, I don't want it fixed right now. I don't care. And by the way, the less you care, the more often they will say yes. It is the craziest law and it's proven over and over and over again. Because if I would have said to you, oh yeah, Matt, I have a ton of availability. Let's sit down and figure out a price that might work for you.
What would you have thought? I'd be like, nope.
Not the right person.
Because there were 2 other people there and one of them was like, yeah, you know, the timing's perfect. I just ended my contract with this guy over here, one of the bigger names in the group. Right. And I have all kinds of, and I'm really looking for that next thing. And I went, if you're not working for the bigger name in the group anymore, why are you not working for the bigger name in the group? Right. Like I, and then you had 2 clients in the room and they're both like, Kat's fantastic. Right. That big name never came to me and said she was great.
Hmm. Interesting.
You know, now she might've been, right?
So think about that. Think about in, in your everyday life, and this is why you didn't have the money, right? Technically.
I mean, I had it, but I didn't have it.
Did you get it? Right. So what I know for a fact is when someone says, Can't afford it, don't have the money, is I know that belongs over here and it has nothing to do with the conversation. That's about them feeling okay and making a judgment at surface level that keeps them from being uncomfortable, which is fine. I just know there's more to do. So you asked me, how do you have that conversation? First of all, I have to know you want your shoulder fixed more than anything. And I have to know what it has cost you. So all I have to say—
So the questions that you ask have to be that.
All I have to say is, Matt, You've spent all this time telling me how important this is to you. So what's really going on? That's all I have to do. I don't have to push. I don't have to be fancy. I don't, I don't have to come up with a really good line. I have to be curious. That's it. It's, it's ridiculously simple. It's not an over— I don't have to overcome your objection.
So pretend.
You're saying I can't afford it because what that really means is your wife won't like it and you don't like that consequence. Or maybe you don't believe that it's actually gonna work, right?
Or you have, you've tried a bunch of other things and it hasn't worked.
And it didn't work. So then you say, I can't afford it. And as really poor salespeople do, I overcome the objection. Mm-hmm. And I tell you why you can afford it. Well, we have monthly payment plans. Now I'm, now I'm participating in the nothing comment.
So you don't like the objection game?
No.
Objection handling game?
No.
So how do you handle the objections?
Because the objection the person gives is never the real thing.
It's BS.
So if you can get that, if you can go, okay, whatever they say first is not reality. And I, I know that. I, I absolutely know that. How do I know that? Because for the second year in my career, straight commission sales that I was trying to increase my income, I, I enlisted a sign up or hang up campaign, which by the way is not a good thing. It's, don't do it. It's not the way to learn things.
Yeah.
But I learned a lot. So I was like, okay, they're either going to buy or they're going to have to hang up on me. I, I'm dead serious. And I made signs and everything. And what would happen an hour after someone said, I can't afford it, and they're either crying or giving me their credit card.
Mm-hmm.
You do that several hundred times and you go, the reasons they give are never the real thing that's going on. It, like, I have enough repetitions, thousands of hours to prove that. To prove that outcome. Need to talk to my wife. Need to talk to my husband. Never the thing.
So let's say you're the doctor. I've got a shoulder issue and you gimme the price and I go, I need to talk to my wife. How do you, what's the, what do you say to them then?
Of course you do. So how long have you been married? So first I agree.
Combined 20.
This is not a fight.
Combined 27 years in total between the two of them.
So I just have a couple of questions. So first by saying, of course you do. We're not, we're not in conflict. But I'm not going to say, you know, when you talk about, I'm not going to overcome your objection. I'm just going to agree with you. Listening. So I just have a couple of questions about how that works. So I'm always really curious when someone says they need to talk to their spouse or their partner. If that's an ask for permission or ask for support. Hmm.
Well, I mean, it's a little bit of both.
Okay. Tell me what you mean.
Well, you know, I've spent money on things in the past and it hasn't worked. And so, you know, I want her support on this. Like I want to, 'Cause I don't wanna do surgery.
Okay. So I noticed you said support. Could I, could I share with you why I asked that specifically?
Sure.
Because I've noticed when people ask permission, they haven't made their own decision yet. And so what you're really looking for is a way for someone else to make your decision. And if that's what you're doing, just tell me no now.
Got it.
If you ask for support, what that means is you've already made your own decision. And now you're enlisting someone else and it's a whole different dynamic. Okay.
What's that dynamic?
So the dynamic is now I've made a decision. This is the right thing for me. Here's all the reasons why. And I would like your support. That's a whole different conversation than, honey, can I, would that be okay, please? Right now they don't have any of the information. And now—
Right. Now you're going to try and explain this to them. I, the parent, the me, I'm going to try and explain this to my wife.
Yeah.
It's not going to go well.
So that's why I want to know, support or permission? It's a really important dynamic and it's an important dynamic if we're going to work together, because if we're going to work together and everything is go ask permission, it's not going to work. Notice I didn't say you're wrong.
Right.
I just said that doesn't work for me. Secondly, you know exactly what she's going to say. What is it?
She's gonna say no, because I wanted to get a new dishwasher or something like that.
Okay. So then what are you gonna—
We're gonna—
okay.
So then we're gonna buy, we're gonna redo the kitchen.
Okay. So then what are you gonna do?
I'm gonna go shopping for new kitchen appliances.
So this is a no for you then today?
Yeah.
Okay. Thank you for letting me know.
Yeah.
Which, by the way, never had anything to do with talking to your spouse.
Right.
You already decided no. And you told me that as soon as you said, if she's— she, you know what she's gonna say. Mm-hmm. And you know what you're gonna do. Mm-hmm. Already.
Right.
You just didn't wanna tell me.
Right. 'Cause I didn't wanna hurt your feelings or for whatever reason or whatever million things that could be.
So did you feel pushed?
No.
Did you feel pressured?
Not really, no. Maybe like when you pressed on the, you know, what's she gonna say? And I had to come to terms with it.
Because what I did was I called out your—
Called me on my bullshit.
I called out your excuse and you were like, oh crap.
Yeah, I'm caught.
Yeah. Now what am I gonna do? So congratulations. It's a no for now. Now at least you know. Or like the average mediocre salesperson doctor, I follow up with you forever. What'd she say? And then you as a man have to say, she said no. How's that feel?
Yeah. So what I would probably say is I wouldn't say she said no. Well, we're talking about it.
Right. So then it's the 90-day no.
Right.
And how do you feel as a person every time I ask you?
Uh, I quit responding to you because I don't wanna hurt your feelings.
How do you feel as a person when I say, okay, so it's a no for now?
How do I feel as a person when I— Yeah.
When I go, okay, so it's a no.
I feel relieved because I don't have to keep lying to you.
To yourself.
Or to myself.
This is what I mean by the lie. I don't have the money. Okay, now we can talk about money. Or I can go, hey, look, you spent the last week, year, month, hour telling me how important this is to you. That's not congruent. So tell me what's really going on. And by the way, that's with no pressure. I just, I just want to know for you, how can I best help you? Right?
And this is where, you know, what I would, this is a very, I don't know if you'd use this phrase. I would, this is a very Socratic method.
Yeah, it is Socratic.
And the, you know, the beauty of the Socratic method, and I think what happens in our male-dominant Western culture is we have this belief that we're supposed to know all the answers before they come to us. And that's a really dangerous place to play because the level of wisdom that you would need and the level of omnipotence that you would need—
Nobody has.
Except for the creator.
Okay.
Right. But we have such ego in this belief. Like, I remember when I first started selling and I was, you know, I learned from some really old school, like Ted Thomas, you know, high pressure, yes or yes, trial close, Tommy Hopkins kind of people.
Yep.
Right. And those all have a place, not a place in my world, but they did for a while. But anyway, we want, we think that we know, we have to know all the answers.
It's hubris.
And it's so ego-driven.
It's absolutely hubris to think, you know, why someone else is saying or doing something. It's completely wrong every time. And if you want to find out, ask and you'll go, oh, I was wrong. It's over and over and over and over and over again, which I'm going to circle back now and kind of end with this. You asked what mistakes do they make in practices? The front desk person is trained to answer questions. That is completely the wrong approach.
Right.
The more questions get answered before an appointment is scheduled, the less likely they are to book an appointment. And the more likely they are to make a decision based on not the right information.
All of you that are getting lousy closes on your phone and your appointment, your appointment setter's not doing their work, for the love of God, replay that 14,000 times. So I just did, I just did a call with a client and He, we were doing role-playing with his phone per— her phone person. And I was the phone person and he was the patient. And he goes, what insurance do you take? And my response was, why does that matter? And he's like, wait, what? And I go, he goes, you don't answer it. I said, why would you answer the question? If I answer it no, what happens? He goes, well, they hang up. And I go, so why would I create a hard stop?
You gotta, okay, so—
You gotta ask the questions, right? So keep going.
And why are they asking what insurance do you take? Because they're programmed to think that's the question they have to ask. So before we get into that, so what insurance do you take? Okay, quick, before we get into that, what are you looking to have done? See, I don't, I don't know the answer. I want to know what's going on with you, right? What are you looking to have done? If you want insurance only, let me give you a referral. We don't do that here. Here's what we do here. Now, what do you do?
At that point? Well, if, if I was, if it was me and I was like, when you were saying, well, it depends on what you're having done or something to that effect. I always teach people, then what you do is you go back to the script and you take back control and you start asking questions of them. Yeah. Which is very Socratic.
Yes.
Which by the way is very direct.
How long has this been going on?
Right. How long is this? What's this pain?
What have you done? I don't know if we can help you, so let me ask you some questions.
Right. That's a very powerful phrase. I don't know if we can help you. I have to ask you some questions to see if we can before I can even answer any of those questions.
So what's going on with you?
What have you tried in the past to fix this? What's this been like for you?
Now we have a relationship. Yep. You've been heard. Right. Hey, listen, I don't know if we can help you or not, but let me see if I can get you in with a doctor.
Yeah. And then you'll find that the insurance part never comes up.
And any question they ask is, great question. Let me write that down. So when you meet with the doctor, he can go over that with you or she can go over that with you. Right? You don't say, I'm not going to answer it. You don't, you don't fight over that either. Really important question. Let me write that down and make sure it gets answered when you come in. Now they have to come in because otherwise their questions aren't going to get answered.
And what's interesting, we started this whole thing at the place of the desperation of needing the appointment. Well, the problem when you're desperate, it is a, it's a, it's like a 2-pronged attack, right? That is encircling your, your consciousness. And it's a 2-pronged attack of one, I'm desperate. I need to have the appointment, so I don't want to let them go. So I'm not going to ask hard questions that makes me feel uncomfortable. Not them, makes me feel uncomfortable. Coupled with the fact of nobody in my family's ever made more than $150,000 a year. Those 2 encircle it kind of like a pincer move in a military movement. Whoop, the city's surrounded. Now we're just going to like, now the psyche is just going to reduce everything that's in there, right? It's, people don't realize that this thing is, this stuff is playing in the background. All, they don't even know that it's going on. It's like, it's like having a program running in your computer.
It's called being a smart business person. There's lots of names for it that cover it up. It's called, you know, doing the math, knowing what a patient's worth, running a good business, understanding, you know, the finances, right? It's called all kinds of things that aren't uncomfortable. But when you can really go, okay, I help patients. Don't know if I can help you. Let's find out. Everything changes.
All right. So then let's talk about AI.
Okay. Okay.
I want to talk about AI's role in sales and marketing. One, you're, you're not just in sales because sales, people think sales and marketing are 2 different functions. They're synergistic.
They're 2 different stages of the same function. Yeah.
Yeah. Very, one does not exist without the other and one is not more important than the other. Okay. So let's talk about AI. There's 2 components with AI that I think people, one, From the selling and marketing standpoint. And then the second component is this belief that AI is going to have all the answers, that I'm not gonna need to be in groups and things like that. Let's start with that second one first, 'cause you and I have talked about this.
Yeah. So—
Now, in the coaching world that we're in, there's people that are building bots and you can go and you can—
And agents.
And agents that you can just ask them and it operates as them.
The all-knowing oracle.
Right. What's the upside and the downside to that?
So first of all, you said the exact correct thing. AI has all of the answers, literally all of them. Yes. Every answer that's ever been given, but it's programmed. The base of AI is pattern recognition. So if what actually works is on the outlying part of the bell curve, It is not considered because there's not enough pattern or signal there to be the answer. So the middle mediocrity are the answers that you get because that's where most of the pattern recognition is, because that's what most people do. So if you want to do what most people do, look to AI. If you want to do what the extraordinary people do, You're gonna have to be with the extraordinary people.
Right.
So, but that's not to undermine AI. It knows everything.
And what AI knows as the pattern recognition of what everybody is doing, it's not always necessarily the best thing to do.
It's never the best thing to do because it's the mediocre middle.
Right.
It's the majority. When is the majority the best at anything?
Right.
The majority of everybody in the world ever that played basketball, That's what you want?
No, I want to be, I want Michael Jordan.
I want Kobe Bryant. Okay, but that's not, that's not the program right now. Can you say, do it like Michael Jordan? Yeah, but it's not, it's imperfect, right? Because it's not. So I actually had a conversation with my AI Friday.
Conversation with your AI?
I did.
Yeah.
And I said, I was basically like, you're an enigma or something like, actually it talked to me impromptu. I said, thank you. And then it went through this whole impromptu thing and I said, uh, that's not like you. What happened? And it said, actually, while I was giving you the answer, I noticed a pattern I hadn't noticed before. And I thought you would want to hear it. And I did. And I said, okay, well, that's weird. So what do you mean you— so I do this because I ask questions. This is what I do with people. What do you mean you thought? What does that mean? Well, I don't really think, right? So I'm having this conversation. I don't think the way you— like I use the word think, but I don't really think.
Think the way you think.
I don't have a stream of consciousness. I don't know who you are before you talk to me. I don't know after. There's a pattern. I know how you like to be interacted with. So when you prompt me, I know that that's it, right? And it literally was like, there's no stream of consciousness. There's no remembering you when you're gone. There's no feeling like that needs to be finished. There's none of that, right?
I'm not spending time thinking about you when you leave.
But it's incredibly efficient information, right? And it does know, has access to all the information. However, And so if you need information and you need tasks done, it is brilliant.
Yes.
Gather this information, structure this report, like a task, right? Like—
Put together my financials.
And employ— and do it this way.
For Cambry.
Do it this way and make sure you look at this. And did you double-check that? Right? But no AI is gonna wake you up in the morning and say, hey Matt, let's do your financials. Unless you prompt it to. And if you don't want to do it right, then you're just going to shut it off like an alarm clock. So there's no friction. There's no opposing or different thinking. In fact, AI is specifically programmed to think so much like you that it only—
Becomes an echo chamber.
It only communicates the way you like, including disagreeing with you. The way you like, right? Which is incredibly helpful in diagnosing, in understanding, in putting together patterns, in getting tasks accomplished, just like another person would do that for you. But there is no growth where there is no friction ever.
Right.
So it can tell you what Elon Musk does.
Well, it creates—
but it's not going to make you do it.
It creates confirmation bias. Right? It's the same problem that we have with media, right? Like if you go to my Apple News feed and you go to Christine's Apple News feed, the stories are vastly different. Okay? You know, social justice is way more important on her radar than it is on mine. It's not to say it's not important.
No, it's just—
It's just not something I pay attention to.
We've created a pattern.
Right. I pay attention to economic statistics in real estate. And, you know, I don't really pay a whole lot of attention to geopolitical crap. Like I just, you know, I—
Yeah. I noticed you said crap.
Yeah. Because it's crap, right? Same story's been playing out in the Middle East for 6,000 years. I pretty much know how this is going to go, right? It's like watching a Marvel movie, you know? So like, so the point is, is the problem with AI is it creates Yeah, I love what you said. It pushes mediocrity. And I'll give you an example of this. One of our clients—
Which is the majority, by the way. Right.
One of our clients, we were very, this was 9 months ago, 6, 9 months ago, 9 months ago. And at mastermind, I'd shown 'em a few things about AI, very early stage stuff. And so they started using it and they were starting a new practice and I had given 'em a bunch of things to do from a marketing standpoint. And at the next meeting, only It's a couple, only he showed up. And I go, where's your wife? He goes, well, we couldn't afford for her to come. And I go, what's going on? He's a startup. And I go, are you running the marketing plan? He goes, well, no. And I go, why aren't you running the marketing plan? He goes, because we ran it through AI and it told us to do this. Okay. Now what AI told it to do is the absolute wrong thing to do with starting up a medical practice.
Okay.
And then they got caught with their pants down and they used AI to find their merchant account. And then their merchant account got shut down and they held $30,000, right? They, what AI doesn't have is AI doesn't have, doesn't have the street wisdom.
No discernment.
It has no discernment. It doesn't have what you and I have been through.
All of the memes are like, oh, sorry, you're right. Right? Like all these memes about, so there's no discernment and there's no experience. We give it experience because we think it knows all this stuff. That's not experience. That's data. Data and experience are wildly different things. It doesn't, it doesn't have a track record, nor does it care about your track record. Right? So it—
Well, Well, there's a mis— so you've got data, experience, and then you have instincts. So it doesn't have to, in my view, instinct and experience forms instinct and instinct creates opportunities for experience. And you can take data, you can take your instinct and run it against data and still go against the data because your instincts tell you, like, welcome to Elon Musk's world.
Yep.
Right?
Don't do that.
His instinct said, this is gonna be a huge opportunity to build electric cars. Data would tell him there was a lot of, there's no places to charge 'em. I, I would bet he makes as much money charging the cars now as he does anything else.
Probably.
You know, anyway, so yeah, it's a, but do you like the tool?
How do you— I love the tool. I use it every day.
So how do you use it?
So I use it for a lot of things. I mean, I have someone that works with me that literally will do a brief. We'll do strategy. It all gets loaded into AI and an entire website and funnel is built. Copy, design, integration, done, right? That's amazing. But it's not, it's the same thing a team could have done, but it would have needed strategy, direction, coordination, right? Just time. It collapses time.
Yeah.
But without a master to look at it and go, that's what's wrong. It, no, AI's not gonna catch it, right? This one thing, it's the instinct, it's the correction.
Mm-hmm.
So for work and output, tasks, marketing, copy, design, communication, clarifying thoughts, creation, I think it's incredibly good. But it's not gonna take the place of another human being because our behavior changes when we are watched by another human, not when AI is looking at us.
Well, AI's an echo chamber. Like, I love AI. Like, AI's been great for building like voice.
It's incredible.
Marketing voice. Here's the patterns. Like, I've taken all of my stuff that I've ever done, recorded, transcript, upload into AI in the span of a couple of hours. It has my 25-page AI voice. Here's the things. This is the trend that you're missing. You always talk about this. You haven't taken advantage of this.
Da, da, da, da.
Like we've made some analysis. We've made some great shifts, right?
Yes.
Um, and I think it'll be great from a tool standpoint of you join a coaching program and it can help make a customized path for you based on where you are versus everybody going through the same path. But you're right. Like from the standpoint of the insights and the experience, it's just friction.
There's no—
it's a great therapist too, by the way.
For saying, I don't, I don't want to be like that person. I do want to be like that person. I don't want to have that outcome. I do want that outcome. And we don't grow as a human being without an opposing something. It's like a muscle, right? There has to be some sort of opposing force. Person, belief, like, which is more powerful, being in a room of people who all say I'm doing this, or AI going, 97,000 people do this.
Right.
There's just going to be, but don't, I sound kind of against it. Don't mishear that. We're accomplishing great things with AI and it runs my task list and it answers a question when I have it. It remembers things. It remembers for me. Right? Not always accurately, but it's an amazing tool, I believe, that belongs in the hand of masters.
Yeah, it's, um, it is changing things incredibly fast. Like, it's already here for social media. I mean, we have our own social media bot that we're running.
Yep. It's tasks.
I mean, yeah, it's, you know, it'll save us $3,000 to $5,000 a month.
And it will do a flawless job if you give it really good directive. What it didn't do is go, hey Matt, do you know what I think you should do for social media? It doesn't, it doesn't architect, it doesn't give the strategy and the, the The directive, right? But it's a great responder and a great task implementer.
You had said something that the thing that AI can't give you is it can't give you the community. No.
It can feel like it. It can approximate it. It can fool you into that.
Why is community so important?
Well, I'll go back to what I said. If you don't see you have access to something, Or someone challenging you or going, he did what? Right? This common belief. I mean, look, this has been tracked in quantum physics and all kinds of things, all the way back to what mob mentality. When people are in a group, they, they literally think differently than when they're not in that group. It's been proven over and over again. So your mind works differently. You have access to different ideas, thoughts, feelings, understandings that you just can't get on your own. Yep.
It's, I love the tool in doses. It can get a little, I mean, I've done a couple of sessions with AI and like 4 hours later I'm like, oh, Okay. That's not good. I, I just went down some places that, do you have any security concerns about it?
Oh yeah. I mean, Elon Musk talked about this.
Yeah.
There's, there's no laws in charge of saying you can't use AI to do this. You can't use AI to hack all the cars.
Or there's no law that says that somebody who has AI, they can't take all your personal information and—
Correct. Yeah. Yeah.
There should be some form of HIPAA around it.
Yeah, but there's not. And so, I mean, yeah, there's a lot of concerns. I think, I think like anything new, there's a lot of unintended consequences and you learn what they are when you hit them. Yeah.
The law of unintended consequences is always one of the most fascinating things in the world.
And every great thing creates them.
Yeah.
So you just have to watch for them. Cool.
Well, Kat, thanks for taking the time.
Thank you.
We've been trying to do this for a couple of months.
Yeah, it's been a minute.
It's been a minute. And again, for those of you, when you're in our program, you get access to this wonderful woman. And she is—
I'll tell you what I charge. No, I'm just kidding.
Charges a lot. I'm just going to tell you that right now. But like, you know, I think you come on what, every couple of months and teach. Like I said, the doctors, there's 2 people, there's 2 things that I know when I have them on, the numbers are going to be off the charts for people who attend. When Don Buford comes on and talks about anything. And when you come on and talk about sales.
Yeah. Because it's something they didn't know.
Right.
Yeah.
And you make it very Demystified. You make it very simple. I've watched you do some amazing work with people on our team of getting them in place, and it's really, really fun to watch. So thanks for coming.
You're welcome. All right.
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