How to Find the Biggest Opportunities That Produce the Most Money for the Longest Period of Time

Welcome to Capability Amplifier, the show for business owners and entrepreneurs who want high performance upgrades for their brains, bodies and bank accounts. Welcome to another episode of Capability Amplifier.

This is Mike Koenigs and Dan Sullivan.

That's right. And we're here because I'm going to introduce you to a bunch of new thinking and I'm also going to share with Dan some big work that we've been working on for the Strategic Coach organization. And the episode title how to find the biggest opportunities that produce the most money for the longest period of time. And you're going to get exposed to a model and a process that I've been using. Also a brainstorming tool, I call them content parties that help you solve the biggest challenges. I like to think of it as how to make a movie starring you as the hero by turning ideas into words that move mountains. What do you think of that, Dan?

That's really good. I've got some mountains to move.

Okay.

All right. Well, first of all, Mike, we enormously appreciate the rare opportunity to get your focus thinking on what Strategic Coach has been up to for 31 years. We're in our 31st year right now. I think it's a new realm because we've really entered the virtual world over the last four and a half months. And it seems to me that your work on how we focus ourselves and present ourselves coincides very nicely with the new digital capability we have to market to almost everybody in the world.

Yes. And here is what I'm going to do with you right now is take you on a little journey. I'm going to reveal some information that I'm actually going to show you on screens. So for you listening to this episode, I'm going to describe it in detail so you don't have to see it. And this is the result of doing some really fascinating analysis by plugging all of Strategic Coaches past information history, data leads into a somewhat AI and ML powered machine learning powered system to output knowledge about the who, in other words, the perfect market. Next, I'm going to talk a little bit about some of the learnings and some of the strategies that we're implementing right now with Dan's team. Because part of what, what we've had to do is take a whole bunch of departments who all are motivated, have been operating a certain way and let's just face it, after 33 years in business, 31, every organization has a lot of power and strength, but it also has a way of thinking that gets in its way and how we're unifying and creating conversations amongst the people and departments that interestingly, everyone shares the same values and the same outcomes and goals. It's just that we always get locked into how we do things. And, and I think this is true for every organization. It doesn't matter if you're a business of three or a business of 3,000 or 30,000. Right. And then ultimately how we're going to craft stories that attract Right. Fit customers. So the end result is what every business wants. It's the Civitas moment where you've got people showing up at your doorstep, whether it's virtually or digitally raising their hands, saying, I already know I want to work with you. How do I register right now? And it feels like I've been looking for someone just like you forever. Why haven't we met before? Okay. And then the second part is Strategic Coach is in a beautiful place right now where you're going to start making Strategic Coach available virtually, not just physically. Because historically the experience happens in quarterly one day meetings where we'd have to fly in. And for some people, they'd say, I just won't do that. Even though there are some people who come in from all the world and it's the most life changing thing ever, some people just won't make that commitment. So I believe we're sitting on the opportunity to double Strategic Coaches size. If that's what you want.

Yes.

Is that what you want, Dan?

Yes, I do. Yes, I do. And I certainly want the first doubling.

Okay, well, what I'm going to do then is I'm actually going to share my screen. I'm going to describe what you're looking at, Dan, and tell you a couple stories which began with we had to grab a whole bunch of data. And even just doing that was tough because it hadn't ever been exported quite this way in the past. So what you're looking at right now on screen, Dan, is the first way to look at customers. So what we did is we imported all of Strategic Coaches, buyers and customers. And the only thing that really matters here, and I'm going to explain that the end result is I'm going to show you a pathway to get to more of the very best customers and clients Strategic Coach currently has.

Right.

Okay.

Yep.

So what we look at is across the top here, there's something called a cluster and that's cluster number one. And in there is a database that represents, if you look at the total, there's about 90 million US based consumer index records available in this current model. Cluster 1 represents its 8,685,486. Okay. And 10% of your prospects are fit in that category. I won't say the exact number of buyers, but more than four times the number of buyers than the next cluster. That's 58%. And here's the revenue, which no one can see, but it represents 69% of your revenue. And the buyer index. And the power index basically means if we approached this type of person with the right message, they are around six times more likely to say yes. That's what that power index means. What it all comes down to is if all we did is got the right message to the cluster one market one. Yep. And if that's all we focused on, we'd get more of the best kind of buyers for you. So think of this as a circle in a new Venn diagram we're building.

Well, the other thing about it, Mike, is that we're dividing our time right now on a lot of other types of customers. Right now. If we had the time back and the concentration and just focused on that one.

Exactly.

That's just what we're getting from the divided time that we're spending right now.

Exactly. And I will even go so far as to say this is the first thing that I do whenever I'm working with an organization. As I say, your first job is to fire your lowest 20% of your customer base immediately. Why? Because 60 to 70% of all the time your business and customer service spends is on the whiners, the complainers, and the malcontents. And those who don't understand what true value is. They're the strugglers. And I believe in spending as much time as we can on the top 2%. And what you want to do is you want to engage the 80% to become the 2%. The 20% are more likely to become the 2%, but you have to create messaging that inspires them to want to be that way. And this is why the nature of great marketing is in the manufacturing of heroes, making the prospect feel like they're a hero, participating in a movie of your design. So that is the philosophical strategy here. Now, let's go into the next one. This is a term that our data partner came up with called Open Wallet. Again, if we zoom in on this a little bit, hopefully you can see it here. But basically, it shows how much revenue. And in this particular case, 36.7 of the database represents what are called Open Wallet. The customer index is 849, and the revenue is 41%. Okay. And then we call it something called the power index. Again, all this comes down to is if we focus on what we call category one and maybe category two. So together that would represent almost exactly. In fact it's pretty close to exactly 60% of the revenue are open wallet minded people. And the best way to describe that is people who understand the value of investing in their education and their futures. So what we know is they're future focused.

Right?

This is something, you know, that it's part of the language and vocabulary you learn. As being a strategic coach member, I would go so far as to say any high value, high ticket organization needs to think through that lens. So again, we use this messaging of you're the type of person who understands the value of continuing education. And it turns out that on average the majority of the top performers and top earners in the world, in the country for that matter, invest upwards of 25% or more of their income and long term personal growth and education.

Yes.

All right, so here's another one, financial stability. Again, let's just take a look at the number of households, roughly 4 million. We look over here and say, what's the revenue? 24.5% the next one down. And all this basically means is people who have investments in long term things, right? They understand the value of saving. Again, that might not sound like it's all that unique or special, but what's important about this process is if we take Venn Diagram, circle number one, which is the buying index, approximately 8.6 million. Overlay that on top of the approximately 7 million open wallet and then the 5 million or so or 4 million or so five, financial stability. Now we've got a subsection to target and it is possible at least still in the United States to actually gain access to these databases. So here's the next one. This doesn't come as a big surprise to you, I'm sure, but value B on this little chart shows net worth, which basically says 58% of strategic coaches, customers and clients have net worths that exceed $2 million. Okay, that doesn't come as a surprise to you, I'm sure. But then if it's a million to two, it's 17.3 and on down. So again we overlay the Venn diagram. So what this enables us to do though is use very precise targeted languaging in our market to describe who someone is so they self identify. And then here's another one. So take a look at this. Now this is the part that for me is a little Bit scarier. But it just says that in order to get to all the places we've described, more than likely. And what we know is in category eight, it's wealthy Americans. This represents 55% of your database and 57% of the revenue is made up of wealthy Americans under 60. And the next big category is the golden elite, which are over 65. So this is pretty apparent and obvious when you come to a Strategic Coach meeting, you know who's in the room. Now it goes to show. Now does that mean that we couldn't expand this? No, it just means that this is how the messaging's worked. Some of what you attract is who you are. Then we get down a little bit further, which we're able to determine which states represent. And we even have cities. But we also have urbanicity. Now this one is particularly interesting. So the net net is elite. Urbanites represents 17.4%. And then we can also get down to the where specifically. We actually know which cities your best customers are in. So then we can get hyper targeted. That could be either with Facebook, you can YouTube and also referral drives. And again, we've got this down to really, again, knowing what their behaviors, thought processes are. And this gets even more granular over time. Okay, so then what we're able to do then is literally go out in that database and like in this little chart I'm showing you and for you at home or however you're consuming this content right now, we can get a database dump of almost 90 million Americans and know where they rate in terms of financial stability, open wallet, and then we know who they are and where they are. So basically what we've determined here, and I won't reveal all the specific details, but we know which cities. And if you notice here, Dan, the cities that I'm showing you are actually not giant cities. They're smaller cities. And I think what they all have in common, it's easy to glance at. They're going to be more conservative minded, which is where business owners are going to be. We also know how big our data is that we're going to work on. But the other thing that we're about to do, Dan, is there's a substantial database of past leads in the hundreds of thousands. We're running them through the filter and scoring them. Our goal is to activate a tool on the website so when someone comes to Strategic Coach and fills in a form, in less than a second we'll know all the characteristics of that individual in real time. And then what I've identified is by interviewing and talking and examining the data. We've got 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11 categories of professions. I'll say a couple like commercial real estate, insurance, manufacturing, for example. And based upon. Just imagine right now what we're doing at the moment is I'm going to be putting together content parties. That's what we call them. So imagine inviting six of strategic coaches, top referrers, okay. People who are actively have referred in the past to a zoom meeting, Hollywood Squares. It'll be with myself, you, if you'd like to attend, and a couple other people. And we're going to ask them to tell us their before, during and after story and teach them how to ask their spouse and children what life is like because of strategic coach. And each of those become mini movies, little clips. We've crafted a codex for the sales team that not only overcomes each of the primary objections that each of these segments come up with. So someone from commercial real estate might have a slightly different objection. And if they're a quick start or they are a fact finder, they have a slightly different one as well. And then we have a library of testimonials and video testimonials. So here's where I'll get into a little bit of the how. And then there's more to this. But I think getting in the minutia doesn't matter. Here's what's important, Dan. I've been teaching all the salespeople a couple of techniques. I call it money phone. And so I'm going to guide you through a sales process that flat out works. I've taught other people this and I've been able to shorten if you've heard, you know, the typical number of sales conversations it takes to bring someone from interested to writing out the check can be anywhere from, you know, 4 to 30. The number of touches necessary. Not necessarily calls, but touches, but conversations. And again, I'm not going to reveal the specifics, but there's a certain number of conversations that each salesperson typically has is before they get to the yes. So my process that gets it down to an average of two, even by someone who's not me. So in other words, this is a transferable skill that can be learned in a short period of time with a system comes down to this. All sales conversations occur on zoom, okay? Not on the phone. And the reason for that is you've got to own eyes, ears and fingertips. No distractions. If someone's not willing to invest in a Direct conversation that's very valuable, that can help them grow their business. Then they're an instant no in my opinion. The second thing is immediately upon a conversation, what I've been doing. And I do this with every one of the conversations, every sales call I ever do is I say, is it okay if I record this conversation? Because I will send you a link to the video afterwards, which I think will give you some incredibly valuable knowledge and information and insight into your business. I've never had anyone say no. So I'm recording the zoom call. I'm also recording the audio, which I'm transcribing in real time. And just so you see this here, you've seen this before, but every time I'm with someone, I ask for their permission. Like, here's the real time transcript of our podcast. I'm using the tool Otter for that. And you can see I'm talking. And if you talk, yes indeed, it's all real time. So what I do is I say hello, so thank you, Dan, for being here today. Could you please just give me a. I ask for their permission first and they go, God, that's really kind. No one's ever done that before. I know. Then what I do is I say, look, why don't you just give me your mobile phone number right now and I'm going to text you the links right now. So you have them and that way there's no follow up and you'll have it immediately. And they're like, really? And I go, yep. So I give it to them and I open up imessage, I text them the link to Otter and then boom, they have it. And by the way, I've got their mobile number. And I say, and by the way, this will be useful in case for any reason we get disconnected. Because you just never know about technology, right? And they're like, ye, of course. Great, now we're looking at each other. We go through and ask the DOS questions, the Dan Sullivan question. I gather some information and then I paint a picture of what life will be like as you've gone through Strategic Coach. I paint them a picture using their own words and their language. Okay. But then I asked them at the very end, now is there anyone else that's involved in making the decision with you or for you? And they'll say, well, yeah, I got to talk to my wife. This is a big commitment. You know, I'm going to be away a day, a week or a day a quarter end and, and, or a business partner, whatever it is. And I ask them now, based on our conversation, are they more of a fact finder or a quick start like you? Most likely they're quick start. And if they don't know what that means, we explain it to them and we explain how you learn this great vocabulary and you get time back when you belong to strategic coach after they've heard the movie. And then I'll say, great, what's their name? So it'll be like, well, it's Babs. And I go, tell me a little bit about Babs. And I usually say, now where is a point of frustration. And at this point, I know what that is. You know, it's a primary objection. It's like Babs is always frustrated because I am never around. I'm not giving enough time to this. She doesn't want me to join another thing and another shiny object. And I go, great. So what I do is I take those notes, I thank them and I say, by the way, I'm going to send you this video. So if you want to share it with Babs, you've got that. But what I'm going to do for you is I'm going to make a quick video that you can share right away. They're like, really? Would you do that? Yep. I'm going to text it to you as soon as we're done. So what you do is you pull out your phone and you craft the five minute follow up, describing the experience of what coaches like for the significant other. And if they're a fact finder, you're appealing to fact finder. If they're quick start, it's appealing to quick start and what their core values are. And I'm going to tell you, Dan, I've done this, I've taught it, and I have people following up and wiring tens of thousands of dollars. And they're like, that's the first time anyone's ever done anything like that for me. And I will tell you, Dan, your sales team is absolutely excited to do this and they're already using it because it's also a great way to get testimonials and referrals. So I'm going to stop now and I want you to just ask any questions you have. But that's a big part of what we've been evolving and developing. And now we've got tools and a codex and it's a group oriented system that everyone contributes to. And then we're scheduling sales team meetings to integrate all their wisdom and knowledge. Because what I've learned is every salesperson has had a different way of doing things. None of them are bad. They're all great, but they haven't organized them and structured them in a way that's easy to share. And there's so much combined wisdom and knowledge in there and their excitement. Everyone wants to participate because they all win. They know they're going to convert more, they're going to earn more, and they're motivated by the same values. So there you go.

Yeah. Well, it's very interesting, Mike. Before we did this podcast here, we had a free ranging podcast on the automobiles and trucks. And we talked about Corvettes and we talked about pickup trucks. And my feeling, we were talking about the kind of people who sign up for a Strategic Coach, the people who buy Corvettes. In other words, you know, the majority of our clients are in the United States, but I would say even the Canadians I know and other people, they have an American friendly type of attitude.

Yes.

And there's a certain thing about entrepreneurism that when you think entrepreneurism, you also think America. Okay. And I think the reason is because America is the only country where entrepreneurs are cultural heroes. I mean, a lot of countries have politicians as their heroes. They have great musicians, great writers, great philosophers. But when you talk about the United States, like Edison comes up and Ford comes up in the latter age. So my sense is that we weren't talking about Strategic Coach there, But my sense is the kind of people who live in Lincoln, Nebraska, and Salt Lake City, they wouldn't be amiss if they went flashy and bought a Corvette. They wouldn't be amiss in their culture. They would if they bought a Ferrari. They would if they had a foreign sports car, but not an American sports car. But the other thing is that probably a lot of them, you know, driving pickup trucks is really, you know, expensive pickup trucks.

You know, it's millionaire next door is what you're describing. Yeah, very much.

And that really is our client base. And I have a question to ask you because to a certain extent, we've gotten there by instinct. Right. Would you say that Strategic Coach has gotten there by instinct?

Yes. Yep.

Not because we knew the facts. Not because we did deep research. Not because we really, really made a concerted effort to get a handle on who it was. And this is a question. What has our pricing had to do with the identification of our market? Because we're high priced. We've always been high priced in the market. And I'm just wondering. And you had one of the tables, you showed, you know, one thing you should get rid of the bottom 20% of your clients. Well, we did that a year ago when we just doubled the price for the beginning section of the strategic coach. I'm sure you had some influence on that and you know the confidence that people have about that. But when you take your beginning entry level price to a very high level, you know, and it's a couple hundred thousand dollars for the entry level, you're making a statement, aren't you, with your pricing?

I think so. Here's what I truly believe and I've proven it time and time again in my own world, Dan, because I went from $25,000 to $50,000 being my minimum entry when I work with a company and when I got better at crafting an appropriate message to the market and describing the package and the outcomes, benefits and results in, it's a non issue. So the answer to your question is there's always a pricing thing, but that's just because someone's looking for an objection and it's the quickest thing and they're looking at how do I get my money back fast? Right. And what your salespeople have learned, a lot of them, is that when you tell them a story about how they get their time back and how that feels and what their spouse and their family is going to be like, that goes away. So really we are selling time compression and money at a discount. There are very specific formulas for how to overcome them. And I actually did that in the two episodes when I did the overcoming objections. So I've scripted these out for the team to use and I've also hybridized them based upon all the conversations I've been doing with the sales team, which will continue to be iterated because nothing's ever really about pricing except for people who are fixed income makers and entrepreneurs are fixed income makers. If they're stuck in living in yesterday, those that are future focused and value driven are not.

Well, one of the things I mean, because to a certain extent I've been real busy and you've been real busy and I haven't seen a lot of your findings and some of this required a great deal of digging first before you got the lay of the land. You've kind of created a map here. But I will tell you, based on earlier conversation we had about simplifier multiplier, I'm going to be the friendliest simplifier client that you've ever had in your life with this. And what I mean by this, everything that you recommend that I do as one of the key salespeople in the company. Whatever you recommend that I do, I'm going to do. Mike. Whatever the script is, I'm going to familiarize myself with that script and I'm not going to say anything else.

Well, diddly dang, I got the tingles. So here's what I'll tell you. Some of our execution is it's something you already love to do, which is there's a couple strategies. One of them is we're going to do content parties. So I'm going to tell you there's the part two I promised. I have a system that works like crazy that I started doing years ago. And I told you a little bit about this in our private session before we began today. But what we do is we have an outcome in mind that sales driven and income focused. Okay. I believe in rapid iteration and crafting and creating content that produces sales while you make it. Nothing better than that. Right. You get paid to make stuff up.

Yeah.

So what we do is I believe that the fastest way to get to free leads because one of your objectives was 100 leads per week.

Yeah.

And I believe that we could get the same outcome and results by simplifying the sales cycle and shortening it and converting more people into buyers. So we can probably get the results you wanted. I know the metrics. I won't reveal them publicly, but I know the metrics on the number of leads that converted into sales. And what if we have that? For example, you could get the same results with 50 leads. And I'm not saying we don't do more leads, but the metric is it's in the conversion. So the best way to get the best leads is through referrals. So imagine the content party that's fun and creates a deeper connection with your best customers as we get some influencers on, have them tell their journey. And you're the witness. Right. You're the collaborator. Because they're going to show up to party with Dan and you think of it like a party.

Yeah.

We ask them these questions, they become the mini movies starring the viewer projecting themselves into the result of being part of the community. And we teach the customers of strategic coach this same system and start like, we're going to show you today how to create messages that sell marketing that sells that's super easy and super low tech. And we're gonna teach you how to get more referrals to grow your business. And we teach them by doing it with them and having them do it for us. So we show them the process and then we say by the way, we're gonna teach you a really powerful strategy for getting referrals. So what I'd like you to do right now, here's the template. Here's the formula. Pull out your mobile phone, and I'd like you to text someone, you know a short video introducing them to Strategic Coach and CC and your sales rep. Okay. So that way you get a lead right away and they start a conversation with, hi, hey, this is Dan, and I want to introduce you to Strategic Coach. If you know me, you know I talk about it all the time. It's made a huge difference. I'm introducing you right now to Mark, who is my sales rep, and I'd just like you to have a brief conversation. I think it'll make a huge difference in your life. You can say no if you want to, but why don't you just spend a couple minutes on the phone? He asked him to do two of those. And then we teach them how to capture proof from a spouse. Now, I know not everyone will do it, but I'll tell you, the best way to grow a business is always through referrals and by transformational stories.

Yes.

I think by doing this, we'll create community, some amazing conversations, as well as an elevated message that will basically go viral in the community and it'll become normal. And one of the challenges that I know comes up consistently is put someone's name on a card and send them a book is there is no context. They don't know who this book is from. And then someone calls them up and they're like, who referred you? I don't know what you're talking about. Right. This is like a story and who does it? It's unique. So those are some of the plans, and I've got a whole laundry list of simple to execute, but they'll make money while we do it, kinds of activities.

So we'll do it.

All right. It'll be fun.

Yeah. I don't sit in one of our Strategic Coach sessions saying, you got to be friendly with the person who does the other side and not do it.

And the thing is, it's joyful. It's a great experience, and people are going to be talking.

Oh, yeah.

About how awesome it is.

Well, the other thing is, I mean, it's kind of magical that we've just mastered zoom, you know, like, I mean, as a company, we've done a really good job of mastering zoom, and everybody's familiar with it, but the other thing is that the whole world has gotten used to zoom. So asking people to be on Zoom is not a strange request anymore.

No, it's so true. Well, why don't we.

Well, I mean, I hope our listeners got something out of this, because I was enrapt attention as you were going through the numbers. You know, I mean, I've got an instinct. You know, I mean, I am one of the people that I'm selling to. I mean, and you are one of the people we're selling to. I mean, I represent my ideal client. I mean, my numbers are their numbers.

And I've told your team this, so I'm going to publicly say I want to be Strategic Coach's number one referral partner. So Joe Polish can eat it. I know he's been number one for a long time, and I want to have a little healthy competition, but. And the ecosystem is great for everyone. What you found and the vision of Free Zone Frontiers to create a $15 trillion ecosystem. Well, now, 24 years. This is how we get there, is by getting right fit people to build the community.

Yeah. I mean, what we will do, following your game plan, we will also recommend that all of our Free Zone Frontier people do, using your assistance.

Right.

Why wouldn't we do that?

Yeah. And it's joyful to have. And this is what I think. I had a great conversation with someone yesterday. And we'll end this episode with the secret to building an amazing tribe or an ecosystem is a shared positive mythology and vision. So it's the language, mythology, and shared values. And I'll go on record to say I believe that is the common conflict that exists on the planet today is there isn't a high quality shared vision that's future focused and positive. And the mythology that used to exist, like with music, for example, in movies, is disparate as well. We'll go down that pathway another time. But what do you say we wrap up this episode and we also give people an opportunity to get the transcript from this show as well?

I think that would be great.

All right.

Yeah, I put a lot of different pieces together for anyone who knows Mike and I do a lot of podcasts at a time. So this is our third podcast here, but it's very rich because we change subjects, and yet you've put them all together at the end. So this was a real joy today.

Good, good. Well, the nice thing is you got to be a hero in your own movie. So here's what I want to say for you, the listener right now. First of all, thank you from both Dan and me. You've got an opportunity to get a copy of the transcri of this podcast by just texting the word more to 858-434-5316. Okay, so one more time. That's text more to 858-434-5616. It'll also be in the show notes and maybe you've got a show concept. Send it over to us. We listen and we want to make this enjoyable and create movies that you want to be the hero in as well when you listen to them. So, Dan, thank you as usual.

Thank you, Mike.

All right, we'll see you in the next episode. Bye bye. Will you head over to itunes right now to rate the Capability Amplifier show? Every rating and review helps spread the message and create more empowered entrepreneurs like you. And if you've already done that, please share this episode with a friend who you know can benefit from Capability Amplifier. And if you have any questions or suggestions, head over to capabilityamplifier.com there you can can leave us an audio message and Dan and I listen to every single one of them. Thanks again for listening. We'll see you soon.