Grow Your Coaching Business Doing Less w/ Marc Mawhinney

I recently had the opportunity to interview Mark Mawhinney. Mark is a lifelong entrepreneur who helps coaches get more clients without any paid advertising. Gotta love that. He achieves this with his coaching programs, his podcast Natural Born Coaches, and his Facebook group The Coaching Jungle, on top of his secret coach club. He's been a speaker at events like Social Media Marketing World, frequently makes media appearances, and he contributes regularly for Entrepreneur.com. In this conversation with Mark, we dove deep into his triple punch strategy, which consists of community, like his Facebook group, The Coaching Jungle, daily emails to his list, and podcasting. The goal of this conversation is to unpack this strategy and see where you can get some tangible, practical action steps to apply the things that have worked for Mark so that they can hopefully inspire you and help you in starting and growing your own online business. You can learn more about Mark at naturalborncoaches.com. So without further ado, Let's dive into the interview. Mark, how you doing?

I'm doing good, James. Thanks for having me, dude.

I'm pumped to dive into this triple punch strategy. Let's go straight in. So the triple punch strategy again is just community, daily emails, and podcasting. This is kind of your system that you've developed for growing your business in a way that resonates with you, which I think is really cool because you're the only person I've seen who really like uses this approach in particular. Like these are your three Points. I just like, I mean, people use like podcasting and different things, but I like the simplicity that you have of this laid out. What was your life kind of like before you discovered this and what was kind of like your process for finding this system that worked for you?

Yeah, so I mean, in a nutshell, I jumped into the coaching world in 2014 online and a lot, like a lot of new coaches, there's trial and error, you know, throwing spaghetti at the wall, seeing what would stick. And those 3 things that you'd mentioned, the podcasting, community, for me it's Facebook group, but really community could be anywhere, and daily emails were the 3 that I say stumbled onto as I progressed in my journey that became a big part of my business. So doesn't mean that I don't do other things because there are other things I do, but I'm putting most of my energy into those 3 places. And I'm a big Rocky fan. I just finished rewatching the movies with the Rocky and the Creed movies. So triple punch is good that way. But yeah, basically I'm really big on focusing on just a few things that you enjoy doing and that work really well as opposed to trying to do 37 different things and not being able to focus on any of them because it's kind of like trying to start a fire with a magnifying glass. You're moving that magnifying glass around all over the place. You're just not going to have enough concentration to get the fire started.

Totally. Yeah, I love that. That's a great analogy. And I'm the same way, like find a few things that are the biggest needle movers and just double down on them. It's easier way to run the business and grow. So let's dive into community. We'll kind of dive into each one of these bit by bit. Community, you said Facebook group, your coaching or your group, The Coaching Jungle, has been around for a really long time. And I feel like there's so many gurus nowadays, especially in like social media marketing. They're like, start a Facebook group, start a Facebook group. Were you kind of before that wave or did you say like, I'm going to try out what these people are saying to start a Facebook group? And then see where it goes and it became what it is.

So I started the Coaching Jungle was in the fall of 2015, but for about a year before that, I had a Facebook group for people who had been on my show, Natural Born Coaches, and had a really unique name. It was called Natural Born Coaches Past Guests, which is the most dry name you could have. What was happening was I was getting every day coaches requesting to join that past guest group. They must not have noticed it or whatever. They just saw coaches, and I would have to send the standard message, hey James, thanks for, you know, requesting to join my group. However, it's only for people who've been a guest on Natural Born Coaches. So basically, have a nice life, you know, with it. And after enough of that happening, I thought maybe I should have a group for all coaches or aspiring coaches, not just guests in my show. And it was a decent-sized group because my podcast is it's up over 800 shows now, but at the time it was a daily show in that first year. So there's 300 and some guests that were in that group. But I decided that, hey, I'm gonna shut this group down and go into a more open group for coaches, like I said, aspiring coaches. And that's how the Coaching Jungle got started. Wow. Yeah. So it doesn't have to be Facebook groups. If your people aren't on Facebook, don't do a Facebook group, or if you don't enjoy Facebook groups, right? Like I have a past client who hates Facebook, doesn't like Facebook groups. He's building a community on Mighty Networks, which works for him. He just wanted to take it completely off Facebook. And hey, it's wherever you deem best for you and for your people, right?

Yeah, yeah, there's definitely those Facebook haters out there. What would you say in running this community for, you know, almost 10 years, really coming up on it, what would you say are like the, the couple components that go into a community that you found really keep a community thriving? Because The Coaching Jungle is a thriving community.

Yeah, I mean, we have over 24,000 in there now. Not that you need 24,000+ in your group. You know, I know groups that do very well that are, I say, small, you know, 1,000 or even fewer than that. So you don't need tens of thousands of people. A couple of things that help with ours, I think first that you have to be consistent and you as the owner have to be engaged in that group and showing up because if you're not showing up for the group, then why should anyone else? That's important. Another thing that's important is having clearly defined rules and then enforcing them. So anyone who's been in our group knows that we have some of the standard rules that you see in Facebook groups, no promotions on the wall and stuff like that. But we're like very tight on those rules that we enforce them. It's not just, okay, I'll leave that one up because I like so-and-so and I'll take this one down and you know, or I don't, we don't wait a week to go moderate it. So it's all junk on the wall. We're very quick with it. And I understand people make mistakes. So we don't often boot people the first time. We'll give the feedback, you know, when you delete a post, we may set them to post approval for that person, but we'll delete it and then check off whatever rule they broke. If they break it again or they don't get the message, and we usually boot them out of there. So I think enforcing rules is important and then talking the group up constantly. I feel like a lot of people with Facebook groups, will say, well, my group's not growing. And I'll say, well, have you been promoting it? What are you doing with it? They're like, well, I posted about it on Facebook last Thursday night at 11:00 and only one person joined, you know, you got to talk it up a lot more. So I'm constantly talking about it on podcasts like I'm doing right now. I'm talking about it to my email list. I'm just everything that I'm doing, I'm trying to get people into that group. So I think that's important as well as promotion of the group to not take your foot off the gas with with getting the word out there.

Right on. Yeah, no, those are some great tips. When it comes to kind of moving into the next piece, you do daily emails, which I think is pretty interesting for a couple of reasons because like with social media getting very popular, it's been very popular, especially for business growth and all of that. Obviously you do social media, you have your Facebook group, but you also prioritize your email list. And I'm just kind of curious, like what has your experience been over the years with email marketing versus social media marketing?

I know anyone who hears daily emails are probably cringing. They think, oh my God, I'd hate to get daily emails. And any objections that you or the listeners have, trust me, I had them before I started too. So I get it. Basically, I took the first 2 years in the online space. I did email like everyone else was doing it. So it was very inconsistent. Maybe it was infrequent once a week or once every few weeks, maybe twice a week sometimes. And it was very boring, designed not to lose any subscribers and offend anyone. And I didn't get any ROI from my email or very little. And I was speaking with a guest on my show who's a fan of daily emails and I was bitching and complaining about them, about emails. And he said, well, why don't you try daily emails? I'm like, gee, I don't know about that. And make a long story short, I decided to give it an experiment for 30 days or so. I'm gonna send an email every day, whatever happens, I'm gonna just do it and If it doesn't work, it doesn't work. I didn't lose a lot of time and things started to happen, you know, I started to get replies to the emails which happened very rarely before, started to get some sales trickle in, not $1 million from emails or anything like that, but sales started to come in and that was in April of 2016 and I haven't missed a day since. And so we're up over 2,500 days or whatever of daily emails and I'm still going with it. So I could talk all day about why I'm a believer in daily emails. We probably don't have enough time to cover everything thing, but I wouldn't have done that many days if it didn't work.

Yeah, no, that's cool. I mean, that's what you're talking about at the beginning, like double down on what's working for you. Um, a couple questions around the daily emails thing. It sounds overwhelming for a lot of people to like commit to doing it. It does become routine, I feel, for you. Um, and I mean for anyone really, as long as you just stick with it, especially if you're seeing the ROI, it's more motivating to stick with it. What kind of emails do you send, and do you do them— do you write them fresh every day, or do you like bulk them and then schedule them out?

Yeah, I'm a big fan of batching my writing. So anyone who doesn't know batching, you take, say, a couple hours to write a week's worth of emails. Uh, it's putting a lot of pressure on yourself if you're sitting down at the laptop every morning with a blank screen thinking, oh, what am I going to write about today? So usually I like to be at least a week ahead, or ideally a couple weeks in the can that are scheduled to go out. Now, if something happens that's a current event I want to talk about tomorrow that just popped up on the radar, I can unschedule the one that's set to go out tomorrow, write something to slot in there and it's no big deal. So it's not like, yeah, you can keep it fresh. The question you asked, what kind of emails? Really, it's whatever's on my mind. So I'm telling stories from my life, lessons from working with clients. I'm talking about current events, you know, newsjacking, I think is important where if something pops up in the news, for example, I just read today about a CEO of a company that's in hot water because she mentioned about a pity party. I don't know if you heard about this. Pity city. Sorry, not pity party. No, she told her employees on a Zoom call that were asking if they're going to get a bonus this year. She told the whole company, basically, don't worry about your bonus. Stop asking about it. Get out of pity city and just work hard and do well for customers. Huge backlash right now. I forget which CEO. It's of a furniture company or big furniture brand.

Dang.

There. So that could be something I may say, hey, I want to slot that in tomorrow because I tend to fall onto the side of being sympathetic to the CEO because I think that people are coddled often, you know, it's easy to vilify the big bad CEO, the rich CEO and everything else. But I do think a lot of employees, especially with the pandemic, probably got a little bit spoiled working from home in their PJs all day and stuff like that. So there's an example of how I write is, I will wade into controversial subjects and take my filter off, whereas a lot of people would say, oh gee, I don't know if I want to touch that one because I'm going to annoy— most people would be against the CEO like she's a villainess and she should be canceled and chased out of town. But I like poking the bear a bit and putting out opinions that are a little bit different than what everybody's saying and saying things that people aren't afraid to talk about. So that's the other thing besides daily emails. I think it's important to take the filter off as well and just write like you speak and not overthink it. So many people are too corporate. Oh, I don't want to lose any subscribers and they're holding back and that's going to affect the results.

Totally. Well, yeah, I totally agree because I think that I think one of our best superpowers in terms of content creation with so many people creating content, like it's overwhelming. The information that we have is like your personality and what makes you unique are your opinions. And if you think that social media sucks, then voice it. If you think that social media is the best thing in the world, then voice it, you know, and kind of like, like you said, poke the bear and be like, this is what I'd like, this is what I don't like. And if people unsubscribe, because I worked with plenty of people and growing their business and they're like, I don't want to lose subscribers on my email list. It's like, well, if, if you like make a promotion and people unsubscribe and it's a course that you created or coaching program or whatever, then they're never going to be a buyer anyway. You know, being uniquely you by sharing your opinions and they unsubscribe like it's okay, it's good.

It's better to have a smaller list that's more engaged in your corner than having a larger list that's, that's where people, I say they play in the mushy middle where they don't want to offend anyone. Nowadays everything's so politicized and stuff. You say the sky is blue, you're gonna have someone trying to cancel you probably. So I would rather have a list of 5,000 engaged, you know, people that I'm emailing daily that vibe with me as opposed to a 50,000 person list that just, there's no, they're not resonating with me or whatever. And I'm certainly not the first person to say this, but it's better to have raving fans and people who hate your guts as opposed to people who are just indifferent about you.

Yeah, totally. Yeah. The lukewarm area is a no bueno. When you also say daily, I'm just curious, do you do weekends as well or do you just do Monday through— you do every day?

Yeah. Yeah. Well, I had a debate with a coach about this because she said, oh, I've been doing daily emails, Mark, thanks for getting me into it. And I asked her a little bit more and she said, oh yeah, when do you send them out? Oh, Monday to Friday. And I said, well, how many days are there in a week and how many days in a year? So, you know, 7. And I said, yeah, so, hey, it's great you're doing 5 days a week, but that's only 70-some percent of the week. It's like taking the ball downfield in football. You get to like the 2-yard line and then you stop and say, oh, this is good enough. We made it a long ways. Now just run it into the end zone and spike it down and celebrate, right?

Yeah. Yeah. So what's kind of your ratio? Because you said you were doing daily emails. You're obviously building a relationship, kind of showing more your personality, your strong opinions, that kind of stuff. What's your ratio from kind of like those value engagement emails versus making an offer? And what type of offers would you make?

Well, I make an offer in every email. Now I say an offer, it's an invitation. So sometimes it could be a link to a blog post, to a podcast interview, but it's often, it's always, there's an invitation to take a next step. And there's only been 2 emails in the last what, 8, almost 8 years that I haven't included an offer for different reasons. So what I like to do with my emails is I tell a story, give a lesson, something to make them think, and then I transition into it. But it's not like a heavy arm twisting offer, you know, like you see a lot of these people online with the all caps and the false urgency and just all that. That's not my style. So I say what I have to say and then it's, oh, by the way, I go over this in greater detail in my XYZ program. You can get it now, blah, blah, blah, just a link, you know, for it there. The only ones I didn't do a pitch for an invitation. I'm a big baseball fan, so go Blue Jays. Being Canadian, I have to support the Blue Jays. Roy Halladay was, you know, one of the Blue Jay greats who passed away in an airplane accident shortly after retirement, which was a big deal for me. Never met the guy, but I watched a lot of his games and, you know, it kind of hit me. So that day that his death had come in, I wrote an email with lessons learned from Roy Haldane. I wouldn't have felt right then saying, oh, by the way, you can get my XYZ program, you know, on sale for Sunday night. Just, you know, that was it. The other one was back in March, my father passed away, um, and I sent an email. That was one where I unscheduled the one that was set to go out because it just didn't feel right to have that one that was scheduled. And I kind of gave a rest in peace dad with a couple things there. And I guess in a way I had a call to action. It wasn't a sale, but I said, if you can reach out to a loved one, a family friend, someone you haven't spoken to a while today, let them know that you're thinking about them. That'll make me happier, basically. And it was interesting because I got a bunch of emails back from subscribers, you know, giving condolences and stuff, but also saying, I haven't talked to my parents in a while, so I took a drive up to see them, you know, today because of your email. Or I called an old friend who I hadn't spoken to in years, things like that, which was really cool. So that, that could be your call to action. May not be actually a sale or something like that. It could be just getting them to do something that you'd like them to do.

Right. Yeah, that's awesome. And that really adds to the connection piece, I feel, especially if it's something like that.

Yeah.

Yeah. Awesome, dude. So we call it community, daily emails. Let's go into podcasting. You— how long has your Natural Born Coaches podcast officially been aired for? How long you been doing it?

Yeah. So launched November of 2014. So we're now at about, what's that, 8.5 years-ish, and there's about 800, 800+ episodes now with it. Yeah.

Right. So how does this tie into your triple punch strategy, the podcast? What kind of made you want to start doing the podcast? Did you just like podcasts or did you see the opportunity to evolve? Kind of what's the story behind it?

It's funny, when I started the podcast in 2014, I was thinking I was late to the party, which sounds funny now to say it. So I learned, uh, John Lee Dumas, uh, he and Kate had Podcasters Paradise and I was in that community, learned that way. And I thought, wow, I wish I had launched my show when John did. I think it was 2012, like 2 years earlier. I'm like, I'm too late. Well, now here we are in 2023, people that I'm encouraging to launch a show, they're like, well, Mark, it's, I'm too late for it. You launched yours almost 10 years ago. It's too late for me. There'll never be a perfect time. I guess that's the lesson with it. I launched my show really to get my message out there, to get my name out there, to meet people. I met, I've met lots of cool people who I wouldn't have otherwise met and it was really the catalyst that got my business rolling. It was the first thing that hit and started to really roll with it. But there's also two parts of that equation when I say podcasting. It's great to have your own show, that's awesome. But I think it's important to go out other people's shows, just like I'm doing now, to be exposed to a whole, whole group of new people who may not know who you are. So if you had to do one of the two, I tell people getting started, you know what it's like, James, there's some work involved with hosting a show. It's probably, probably easier to be a guest to go out there because you show up, you do your bit, then you're gone, and then the host is handling editing, production and all that. But in a perfect world, my clients would be hosting a show and also being a guest on other shows.

Yeah, absolutely. I mean, this is, I'm starting to do more interviews. I used to do interviews all the time and I kind of stopped for a while. I made a lot of great connections, but I still like do my podcast, but it kind of switched to more of a solo podcast. But then I kind of started to meet some people and I like to have people that I really like jive with or that I just love the conversational aspect to podcast. And I feel like it's really valuable towards the end-all goal, which is to help people start and grow their online business. And when I admire people like you or coaches that I've worked with in the past, and it's like I've paid for courses or been following them for a long time, I love to have them in because I like to just kind of pick their brain. People who've been successful, that kind of stuff. It's just great to have that connection with people. But I love what you said before of like having a show is such a great way to connect with new people, whether that's, you know, I mean, like really famous people or even just people that are like the same level as you and you're just putting your heads together to support your audience. Yeah. How have you kind of like, how have you kind of used the podcast to, 'cause you said it kind of like catapulted your business. How have you used that to, in the end, like get clients? Do people find out about your show or is it because you help coaches and then you talk with coaches just like it's all congruent, full circle? How does that kind of work?

Yeah, I mean, there's, obviously clients can approach you when they've been listening to you for a while because with podcasting it's very intimate. You've been in their eardrums for, could be weeks, months, years. They feel like they know you. I have a call coming up after this interview with a person who's a potential client, fellow Canadian who has been listening to my show. I don't know who she is. She reached out to me, said, hey Mark, been listening to the show and, you know, I'd love to chat. I'm just getting certified and and all that. So that was cool. But the other thing besides clients, which I monetize it with, is JV partners and sponsors. So I have a super JV, I call it, where there's a company that sponsors everything I do across the board. They've got a bunch of stuff inside the Coaching Jungle, like the banner, they've got ads on each podcast episode, they've got an opening 30-second ad and then an outro as well. And there's a bunch of other things they get with that. So there's a big package and that's a good chunk of change. But then I also work with other JV partners on a week-long JV joint venture where I'll promote them to my community. And one of the perks is they get a spot on my podcast with it. So they're paying a flat fee, they keep 100% of sales. And so that's a way— I'm not selling a spot on my show per se, but that's just a bonus. I'm emailing my list daily for that week about the partner's offer. Usually it's a webinar that we're sending them to. I'm getting them on some Facebook Live interviews, doing a bunch of stuff around social media, etc., and also getting them on Natural Born Coaches too.

Right on. Yeah. What I love about your triple punch strategy is that everything's so congruent. All 3 of these different components, they all work together so seamlessly, which is pretty cool.

Yeah, it's like an ecosystem or even some of them. If you look at, for example, podcast or sorry, email list. And you've got your, if you have with an email list, somebody signs up to your list, they usually get an email right away that's giving the resource or the lead magnet that you're offering, you know, free resource. In the PS, you can send them over to your Facebook group, which I do on mine. By the way, I have a Facebook group called the Coaching Jungle, blah, blah, blah, here's a link to join. But also you can use your Facebook group to grow your email list. So in your Facebook group, there's a membership request to come in. You can set up questions. One of mine is offering them that free resource to get onto my email list. And I say, would you like it? If so, put your email here, leave your email. So it's again an ecosystem where the Facebook group's growing the email list, the email list is growing the Facebook group, and then the podcast really does the same thing too. It's helping to grow everything.

Totally. What would you say to someone who's thinking about like starting a podcast and they're like, I don't know, because a lot of podcast people start and then they're not getting a ton of views and then they just quit or consider it a failure.

Pod fading or podgatory, they call it. Yeah, I always say that I'm an optimist, but probably it's more— I'm more of a realistic optimist. So I go into things and I'm hoping for the best and I'm being optimistic, but I'm also not starting— I didn't start a podcast and go, I'm going to make a million bucks in the next month. I feel like a lot of people think it's a magic money tree in their backyard. Oh, I'll start a show and I'm gonna get a whole bunch of clients and business rushing towards me. And you know what it's like, it's not gonna work like that. So I, I would rather someone be like the tortoise instead of the hare. And I see so many podcast hosts that they're all gung-ho, they record a bunch of episodes or releasing a ton of them. Then you start to see that the, they become less frequent where, oh, they haven't released a show in a few weeks or a few months and then you don't know if it's alive or not and they burnt themselves out. They thought, I'll throw a bunch of shows up here in the early days, get a bunch of business or whatever. Didn't happen that way. And then they lose focus and motivation with it. So I say it's better to start and tell yourself, hey, I'm going to stick with this regardless of how much business I'm getting from it and start with something that you can handle, like weekly show, for example, as opposed to saying I'm going to be doing a daily show. I wouldn't recommend that. I did it for a year. It's a lot of work with it. The other thing that I would recommend is, well, there's a whole bunch on podcasting that that I could recommend. You'd mentioned with your show you've done a lot of solo episodes and you've mixed in some interviews. Yeah, it is a lot of work. You know what it's like doing a solo show because you're creating 100% of the content, and compared to an interview style where you're talking back and forth, and yeah, you do some prep work to check out the guest and maybe you read or watch some of their stuff, but it is considerably less work to do an interview style show. And I've done both. I had a Mark Moroney Show solo for a year that I did 50-some episodes, and I discontinued continued it just because I said I can't be doing both the podcast. Now I'll mix in some solo episodes for Natural Born Coaches, but I don't have a solo separate podcast anymore.

Yeah. And I think that that's something so big, like, in terms of just being consistent in the long haul, because that's how you win. You know, you have to show up. I think about content creation like, I'm a, I'm a gym rat. I love going to the gym. I go about 3, 4 days per week. And like, if you just went to the gym 1 day per week, and like even if you busted ass on that one workout, like, and that's all you did, you wouldn't really get great results. But if you, if you did like a decent job and you just showed up consistently and hit 4 days per week or 3 days per week, then you're gonna get way better results. And I feel like it's the same kind of way with content. So I, I like what you said about, cuz that was kind of a question that I had about why you chose to do interviews versus just rolling with solo episodes, but you kind of dove into it. But I think it's cool and it's kind of what I'm doing now is where like I've done— I did interviews for a long time and then I switched, started doing solos, but I kind of like the interview communication aspect, you know, with people. So to do a mix of each, I think it's a great approach.

Yeah, I think it is. And you can do a hybrid show like you're doing where you can mix them up in there too. There's pros and cons for both of them. Now, that being said, if I was getting paid, well, I guess Joe Rogan's a bad example because he has interview style, but there's some really big guns that have solo shows or whatever, and they're not doing interviews usually. If I'm getting paid $100 million, great, I will do a solo show, you know, or whatever. If anyone wants to offer that, we'll talk.

And yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I think, I mean, yeah, I mean, it was me in the beginning too, where it's like I either have to to choose interviews or solo show. That was kind of like a mindset that I have, and I feel like people can kind of get into that rut where it's this or that, but it can be both. And that's kind of what we're talking about. I think the biggest thing is knowing your audience and being able to give them content that supports them. If that means having an interview with someone and putting your heads together to support your audience, fine. If it means doing a solo episode to explain a concept better, that's fine. So I think that that's kind of like the bigger, more important piece is that everything is congruent with what you help people with in serving your audience.

Yeah, the big advantage to the interview style, especially if you're starting out, is by having a guest on, they're going to hopefully share it around to their audience once it goes live.

Totally.

Anytime I'm on a show like when this goes live, I'll be sharing it around. When you're— if you don't have a large following and you're doing a solo show, you don't have that opportunity to really get out there to new eardrums with it. It's interesting. I don't know if you found this. Sometimes I found that the people who share it more are the guests that have a little bit lower profile as opposed to the big guns I've had on the show because maybe they're busy or whatever. I've had guests on the show that don't have as big of a profile as some other ones, but they're sharing it like every day. They're getting the word out there and stuff. I'm thinking, this is great. So it's not always the size of the guests. I feel like a lot of people think, oh, I have to get these really big name guests, or vice versa. If you're going on to shows, you feel like, oh, I have to get on to these mega shows, have millions of downloads a month. You don't have to. I mean, it's great if you can. Don't think too much about that. And the example I heard, I think it was Gary Vee may have said it. He was talking about if you had 30 people in your living room of your house and you're telling them what you do, you'd be pretty impressed and think this is a great opportunity. But if you're on a podcast with, say, 30 subscribers or 30 downloads, it's like, oh gee, it's a small show. I don't know if I want to do it.

Yeah, so true.

Weird way to think about it. That's so fun.

Yeah, if you're in a room of 50 people, you're like, this is sick, you know? Yeah, that's right.

I did. I had someone, we explored working together and one of the things I do with my clients often, I'll give them connections to podcast hosts I know, if I think they're a good fit for the show, I don't mind doing it. I'm not a podcast booker, but I'll send a quick message and connect them to a few. And I had someone I was looking at doing some work with that sent me an email and he basically said, Mark, do you know— and he's a great guy, I don't want to crap on him, but with the email said, we basically would love to get on Jordan Peterson, Russell Brand, Amy Porterfield, Gary Vee, I just, I almost emailed back and said, hey, Michelle Obama started a show. Do you want me to shoot Michelle a message to get you on there too? And I said, look, don't, that's a big ask for those mega shows or whatever. There's nothing wrong with shows that are, you know, a little bit different level with those. Don't always think, oh, I have to get on the shows with millions of downloads.

Yeah, that's valuable. I feel it's kind of a wake-up call for a lot of people, I would imagine. But I totally agree. Tight. Okay, so one question I love to ask my guests is why you think people don't take action. Because you've given a lot during this interview, tons of ideas, and even if people rolled with one of 'em, like daily emails for example, and what you shared, I feel like they have enough ammunition in their mind where they're like, I could do that. Why do you think people don't take action despite the amount of information that we have in the world today?

Well, I think it's probably because of the amount of information we have in the world today. So there's just too many voices and too much advice being thrown at them. It's like drinking water from a fire hose. And I was speaking with someone earlier today about this. We were talking about laziness, and I said, I don't think coaches are lazy. I mean, there's obviously some coaches are just— they're human. There's humans who are lazy. I think that they will do the work if there's a clear plan and they know that it's going to work. It's going in the right direction with momentum. Where they get frustrated is if they feel like it's just guesswork and experimenting and it doesn't look like it's gonna pay off in ROI. Like, who would want to do a ton of work if they don't know if something's going to pay off long term with it? And that's where they start to get lazy, pull back and not do the work. They're just confused, they're like deer caught in headlights with it. So I think it's because of the amount of information being thrown at them that they're getting paralyzed and not able to decide on which route to make, right?

So what would be your, I guess, piece of advice to help them cut through that barrier?

Be very selective who you're following. It may seem like a good idea when you're getting started. You, you know, you get the brand new notebook, you say, oh, I'm on all these email lists. Here I am talking about daily emails and things. I hope people subscribe to my list, but don't feel like you have to. It's a lot of noise too if you're on 1,000 lists and then everyone's saying something different, and then you're buying all these programs. Online programs have, what, a 4% completion rate. I think that might be optimistic. So many people are buying courses and they're just, my advice would be, like I said, be selective. You know, it's good to learn and you want to learn every day, but it's better to be taking action, you know, with it. If you have to focus on one of the two, I'd say action is probably more important than you're gonna learn through that action. But just don't get flooded with too much information because it could get confusing. I had a client, this was probably 4 or 5 years ago, who had told me before she reached out to me that she had been following the online coaching space since it started basically, and she just hadn't put anything out there. And I was trying to ask her to figure out, well, why? It's been 10 years. Why haven't you put anything out there? And what I discovered from us working together was she knew too much. She knew all the players in the personal development space, read all the books, took a bunch of courses, things. So whenever she's planning to launch something, she's like, well, I can't do this because so-and-so did something kind of similar a few years ago. She was trying to find something completely unique, which is tough to do with it. That was her mistake, is she had too much learning, way too much, and it ended up making it difficult to take action.

Yeah, I totally agree with what you said before of all the noise. I think it's huge to eliminate the noise and kind of find someone. For example, if you're listening to this and you really resonate with Mark and his strategy, strategy and viewpoints and stuff, then like test out Mark's strategies for 6 months or so, 3 months at least, you know, 3 to 6 months or so. And just try it out, the daily emails, and just like, I would say just focus in on that one or two mentors that you have that have a similar viewpoint and just try it out. And then after a little bit, if it doesn't work, then you can find another mentor that you resonate with and try their approach. But But yeah, I think that it is too much noise and you just kind of have to pick and choose one strategy and just kind of roll with it. And I love the saying, with action comes clarity. I'll be all jumbled in my brain if I'm going to try something new and I just realize this is where I want to be. Is this going to get me closer to that? Sure, I'm going to try it. And then from there I can get clear on things as I'm doing it and new things show up. And from the experience you realize, kind of how to find the way, and then I can decide later on if I want to make a pivot or follow the path through. So yeah, that's awesome. That's awesome, man. Okay, Mark, it's been super fun chatting with you. Do you have any kind of final words for the guests and where can people connect with you, get a hold of you?

Well, on the topic of Triple Punch, I say 3 pillars as well. Don't feel like you have to do my 3 or the 3 that we've talked about this one. Maybe you like 2 of them, but you're not into one of them and you could swap something else in that you are into. Not saying you have to stay right to those. So for example, I'm in the, right now I hired a YouTube coach because I'm looking, starting to do more with YouTube and stuff. So maybe it'll become a quadruple punch, you know, in there. But I'm not being so rigid that I think, no, I can't ever look at anything else. I said, yeah, I'm gonna jump into that world and see, you know, how it goes with that. So that's what I would say is pick 3 that you really enjoy doing, because if you don't enjoy doing them, you're not going to do them consistently. It's not going to be fun. So pick 3 that you like. Doesn't necessarily have to be podcast and community and daily emails like we talked about, but that has worked for me and it's worked for a lot of people. So consider it, but do what feels best for you. And yeah, I mean, if anyone wants to check it out, my main site's naturalborncoaches.com. And the Coaching Jungle Facebook group is at thecoachingjungle.com.

Sweet. Thank you so much for your time, Mark. Um, whoever's listening, take what you learned here, implement something, and, uh, just try it out, and we will see you in the next one.