Fast-track Your Success with a 90-Day Success Sprint

Welcome to this month's subscriber workshop. This is called the 90-Day Success Sprint. What I'm going to show you today is a system that I learned from Laurel Portier when I was in her Lean on Laurel program. It's actually my take on something that she taught me that we both actually have learned from our mutual friend and mentor, Nick Peterson. It is the system that I've used to create a business that funds and fuels my lifestyle, which is being able to take care of my grandson for 9 hours a day, 5 days a week, instead of what I was doing before, which was just working all the time, kind of living to work situation. And using this system over a period of 9 months, I was able to dial in a business that provides for all of my financial needs, working just a few hours a day, and leaves me free to do what I want where I want, when I want, with who I want the rest of the time. In addition to presenting this 90-day success sprint process, I'm going to layer in some ideas that most of you will recall from the Clarity Hierarchy. There's a post in the link that I shared earlier that you can refresh your memory. It's a system that I, I learned from Lucas Roszczewski that he's actually writing a book about now. And so I think my take on this system and the common language and principles that we all have learned together through the Creative on Purpose content and anything that you've gleaned from Guardian Academy content or Man Bites Dog content is really going to be a powerful force multiplier for catalyzing your progress towards whatever your priority is. What I'm going to do is give a real live over-the-shoulder look at how I am currently implementing this process in my current 90-day Success Sprint. Before I show you my Google Doc and, and show you the, the system that I'm using, the first thing that you have to be able to do is to dial in your priority. I'm not going to spend any time on that in this session. We have talked about this many times. We've done trainings on it. There's plenty of, uh, content in the Creative on Purpose Substack about dialing in your priority. The one thing that I want to say, and this comes from some takeaways that I had from recent conversations in the Catalyst Club weekly calls, is sometimes your priority is to figure out what your priority is. And sometimes you define a priority and in the pursuit of that priority, you refine, iterate, and improve your priorities. You can think of priority as goal, objective, purpose, whatever it is you're trying to achieve. For me, a priority is the most immediate thing that I'm optimizing for or working on in order to achieve the vision of the life that I want to be living. So my number one priority for the last several years has been, I want to be a full-time grandparent to my grandson Jasper. That means I have to optimize my business to provide for my needs, my ability to take care of my financial responsibilities and leave me 9 hours a day, 5 days a week to take care of Jasper. And then I keep thinking about the step before the step. Well, how am I going to create that kind of business? Well, I have to have an offer that, that I can deliver to an audience that's eager to purchase from me, and I have to have a, a sales success system that puts that offer in front of that audience and keeps enough people coming into my revenue generator to build a sustainable business. And so Having done all, like, my, my priority is completely locked in. We are Jasper's full-time daycare. My income goal for this year is already taken care of. I've achieved that priority. So my current priority is how do I create sustainability and maintain sustainability in my pipeline, funnel, whatever you want to think. I'm not big on funnels, but however you want to think about your client acquisition process. How do you create prospects that can become great leads that become great clients and so forth? So that's the priority that I'm working on. The last thing I want to say before I open up my Google Doc is I am not suggesting that any of you do anything that I am doing. You define your priority. You define your process. You need to play your game on your terms. Don't play my game because my game is my game and you can't win my game. Only I can win my game. You can win your game. Define the game that you want to play. Define the rules of engagement and then figure out how you can optimize to win the game that you want to play. So if, if elements of what I'm doing make sense to you and you want to try to incorporate them, that's fine. But I'm not suggesting that in any way, shape, or form that you do what I'm doing in my 90-day plan. I want you to just look at the overall framework and how something like this might actually help you close the gap. Because in order to close the gap, you have to have a destination. You have to know where you're going. You have to know where you're starting and what you're starting with. We've had several workshops where we've talked about this, and you need to define the 2 or 3 things that need to go right enough for you to start closing the gap. How do you close the gap in less time, with less effort, with a little bit more fun and joy, right? So starting point, destination, the 3 things that have to go right, that's your system. And then it's all about optimizing your system. Raising the floor on whatever is the least efficient piece. So just going to hit the pause button there. Is everything that I've shared so far, does that make sense? You can just give me a physical thumbs up if you want to. It makes sense to everyone. Okay, cool. Just one last thing. This is probably going to be one of the shorter trainings because I'm, I've literally written it all out and I'm just going to walk you through it. So, you know, once we're done, I think it's going to be much more beneficial to you all to have more time in the Q&A and implementation session to ask questions and figure out how you can, how could, can you use a similar system or process to actually create your 90-day success plan and implement it. With that, let me share my screen. Do you all see July through September 2024? Awesome. Okay. So right now my priority is to reach 1,000 subscribers for the Creative on Purpose Substack. And from that 1,000 subscribers, I would— I am trying to get 50 paid subscribers, 50 people that are paying me $9 a month or $90 annually to be a part of the community that most of you are part of. Why is that my priority? Well, in order to build a business that effectively and efficiently provides my revenue needs in the least amount of time with the least amount of effort, I need to— and, and, and, and do great work with people that are already great clients or great— have the ability to become great clients, I have to give them a certain amount of, of training and information, uh, ahead of time. And I— and create common language, you know, so that we all understand, you know, when I say things like Close the Gap or, um, Be a Blessing Marketing or Get Clients Now campaigns or any of those things. I want people to already kind of at least have some familiarity with that so that when we are working together, it's all about making real progress and catalyzing that progress during the time that we're working together in whichever program we're working, um, working together in. So, again, having achieved everything I need to achieve in terms of my top priority, you know, the lifestyle I want to live and funding that priority with a specific annual revenue number, I am now really working on optimizing for and creating a priority around maintenance and sustainability. And what I know from what's been going on so far for the last several years is that if I can continue to grow the community of subscribers and paid subscribers, I will have created a community of great fit prospects, some of whom will become great fit clients or leads, some of whom will become great fit clients. And those clients will become my marketing for me. So that's what I'm currently doing. I'm going to go ahead and share with you just kind of where I'm at. Just to be completely transparent about all this. How do I— that's what I need to do. So at the beginning of my sprint, um, I was at 700 subscribers and I think I was at 21 or 22 paid subscribers. Um, this 815 number is actually not entirely correct. Just, you know, for those of you that are on Substack, if you go to your profile, it will actually give you the correct number of subscribers. Um, but you know, just for the sake of expediency, I'm about halfway, uh, halfway to my goal at about the halfway point in my 90-day sprint. I started with 700— started, um, August— I'm sorry, July— with, uh, about 700 subscribers. I started with about 20, 21 paid subscribers. I'm definitely making real progress with this implementation plan that I'm using. So one of the things that I do to— when I'm trying to set my priority is I— well, I start with what am I trying to accomplish? So to achieve my priority, what I know again from past experience, my past experience, your, your data, your experience may vary. If I can have roughly 100 conversations a month with people, either through Substack or social media or my email list, I can have some certainty that I will get at least 10 people to get on a call with me. I call them catalyst calls. My coaching program is called Catalyst. A lot of coaches or service providers call them discovery calls. I don't— I've done discovery, the discovery call or sales call strategy in the past. It's something that I was really good at or became good at. It is not something that I found helped me get the quality of clients that I really wanted to work with. And so what I do is my Catalyst calls are basically decision calls. You all know already that I use workshops like this and the content that I create to deliver as much value and as comprehensive information as I can provide, knowing that if I continue to do that, enough of the right people will raise their hand and say, can you help me implement this thing that you've taught me? So I'm not, you know, I'm not doing like workshops like this are not a bait and switch type of thing where I give you a little bit of value and then say, and if you want the rest, you know, I have an offer to sell you, it's, you know, blah, blah, blah. The, you know, for the last 3 or 4 months, I have been filling all of my programs purely from the, uh, Catalyst Club paid subscriber community. So, uh, there's never anything really on offer when I'm doing these workshops or when I'm sharing content. I'm delivering all the value I can, um, as comprehensively as I can, and I simply let people know that if they want more help, to reach out to me. So just to start layering on the clarity hierarchy, my belief, the philosophy that I'm implementing, the belief that I'm, that I'm validating or that I'm testing is I can get 10 people on a call to make a decision about what, how we're going to work together. If I have roughly 100 conversations every month through Substack through social media, through the email list. Principles are the things that you know to be true. And again, the rearview mirror. I think MJ and some others have been talking about this quite a bit, like looking back at what's already worked in the past, because I should just be doing more of that. Doesn't— anytime I decide to, you know, burn the ships or blow everything up and start working on something new, all I'm doing is creating breakage in a system that is already working. What I need to do is optimize the things that are already working until they can't be optimized anymore or until they stop working. And so what I know from looking in the past is that I can get 100 conversations going through organic outreach, through, through Substack, through social media, through the email list, through direct outreach. We'll talk a little bit more about that in a minute. And by leveraging low-cost Facebook ads. For those of you that need some help dialing in your priority and path, these 3 wayfinding questions that I, I've listed here, we've talked about these in the past as well, but these are really helpful to me. What's the smallest move that I can make that will create the biggest improvement? For me, conversations is the fastest path to converting the right people into clients that help pay for, uh, that help me pay the bills, right? So I'm optimizing for conversations. Another question that I use is, um, this is impossible unless, you know, this is the great trap of entrepreneurship. We love to, we love to make things and we love to experiment with things. And so we're always like, hey, I just did a thing, it worked, that was really cool, what can I do next? And we ignore the thing that just worked and we start building some sort of new thing to try and test. And then we, you know, try to optimize to make that thing happen. This is impossible, like, when I first learned this system from Laurel, her thing was, um, you have to have 100 conversations a month in order to book enough calls to, um, to reach your revenue goals. That sounded really impossible to me. 100 conversations, you know, to— but, you know, can I create, um, can I create 100 conversations is roughly 10— 100 conversations over 90 days would be roughly 10 conversations a week. How can I get 10 conversations a week? When I was working with Laurel, it was create— creating, posting content 3 times a week, right? So by stepping down, you kind of can identify the next smallest viable step. The next right thing that you need to do. And you just continue to take small steps into possibility. And that will help you realize your potential, and that will help you reach the much bigger, larger goal that you're trying to reach. And then the last question is, what move has the best worst-case scenario? Because anything that you're doing, any new thing that you do, or any iteration of something that you do, is risky. It has an upside possibility and it has a downside possibility, but you can create asymmetry to the upside and mitigate the dangers of the downside by trying to create that asymmetry to the upside. So for me, this idea of, you know, I could I could pour a ton of money into Facebook ads that could get me a ton of calls booked. That is actually something that a lot of people do and a lot of people pay for and a lot of people offer. For me, that doesn't work because it requires so much. It's not even— it does require a, a a fair, fair, fair-sized monetary investment. But for me, it's the time investment. I can't invest all that time in having calls with people who may or may not be good fits. What I want to do is through this series of small steps, posting content that gets people in, that engages some of the right people to raise their hand for a free resource or to ask a question or to reach out in, in some other way allows me to start to pre-filter the people that are good fits and not good fits. Good fits now, not a good fit now, not a good fit. I can, through these conversations, only spend my time getting on the, getting on a call with people that are actually already validated as a good fit now, prospect, lead, and eventually client. So hopefully those 3 questions will help you start to think about, okay, well, I know what kind of life I want to lead and I know what kind of, you know, I want my business to fuel and fund this lifestyle that I want? But when you're thinking about your priority and your path, those questions should help you start to get clearer. And again, I want to iterate, or I want to underline, your priority should not be something that is fixed and something you cling to. And it should not be something that you arrived at through the expectations of other people or the scrutiny of other people. You define your, you know, what does a life well-lived look like to you? What kind of business would help you achieve that? What is the current priority, the thing that you could work on that would help you take the next best step into that possibility? And what's the path that would get you there? Define all that for yourself and allow— and everything that you do should come with the reserve clause. I reserve the right to change my mind. When I am confronted with new information or an unanticipated problem. Your, your priority and path will iterate and improve over time if you don't cling too hard to it. You don't just simply grit and grind your way to something and ignore opportunities that you couldn't have foreseen when you started or obstacles that you could never have guessed would present themselves. So in terms of my 90-day plan that I'm currently on, We've talked about philosophically, I am, I believe that conversations is, my belief is conversations will help me achieve the goal that I have for myself. Principally, I know that if I, if I use these three, these three methods of building or creating conversations, that these have proven themselves to be true. For me in the past. Now I'm going to look at strategy, tool, tactics, and tools for each of the, those three, those three approaches, organic outreach, direct outreach, and ads. So the strategy question from the Clarity Hierarchy is, where am I? It's establishing yourself. Where are you in this environment that you're, you're operating in? So my strategy around organic outreach, meaning outreach to kind of a broader population without paying, is basically social media. And I would say Substack as well. And what I know is that if I can put myself in a room full of people 5 times a month, that I have a very good chance of getting some of those people to reach out to me to learn more about how I can help them achieve their priority. So what I— tactically, what I'm doing is I'm reaching out to 3 communities, masterminds, and groups every single week, mostly on Substack these days. But I did this purely through LinkedIn and Facebook for at least a year and a half. And the tool that I'm using is direct messenger conversation. Some of you know it as two-step. You know, I'm delivering that content. I'm delivering value through social media content and inviting people to raise their hand for a free resource. And that gets me 10 to 15 direct message conversations every single week. And by leveraging, or I'm sorry, every single month. And those 10 to 15 direct message conversations are getting me the 5 presentations that I need to create, um, the pro— the, the leads that will get me into calls with people that would be a great fit for the service that I provide. And so I've given you some, again, this is This is what works for me. You have to define your priority and your path. But for me, you all know I'm all in on Substack right now. It's, it's going gangbusters for me. You saw that, you know, I'm averaging 2 subscribers a day currently. And those are engaged subscribers. My, my open rates are going up and my engagement rates are going up all the time. So I'm huge on Substack right now, and there's plenty of people that have groups on Substack, um, that I can reach out to, to, to present to. So that is the, the strategy, tactic, and tool that I'm using for organic outreach. Direct outreach. These are the people that have demonstrated a higher level of interest, you know, When I'm doing organic outreach, I'm just trying to earn people's awareness and attention. When I'm doing direct outreach, I'm engaging with people that have given— that trust me enough to have given me permission to have a direct conversation with them. For the most part, that's because they've opted into the Substack. So I'm having direct message conversations with people on Substack or in the comments of the content that I create on Substack. Strategically. I am booking 2 to 3 calls per week with members from my list. The tactic that I'm using is Be a Blessing Marketing. Again, I dropped a link to all the content that I'm referring to at the beginning of this presentation. Raj, I know you came in a little bit late. I'll drop those links in again so that you can access them. But Be a Blessing Marketing. Just to, you know, give away the punchline. The premise of Be a Blessing Marketing is that instead of trying to become a full-time direct— or instead of becoming a full-time digital marketer just for the privilege of delivering the difference only you can make, your product, service, cause, you can simply actually do the work that you do, make the difference that only you can make with the people that you actually can make that change with and for, and let that great work that you do become your marketing, which will also help you achieve preeminence or mastery in the work that you do, which only optimizes your ability to work do better and better work with better and better clients and become a, uh, a choice of one in a very noisy marketplace. You know, whatever domain you're operating in, whether it's, um, coaching, consulting, product or service, uh, you know, every— everybody's operating in a very crowded, noisy domain. And the only way that you're going to stand out over in the long run is to become the very best at doing what you do in the the way that you do it. And that's the premise of Be a Blessing Marketing. We're gonna stop jumping from program to program, whatever flavor of the month the digital marketers are selling. And instead, we're just going to continue to do great work, with people that whose awareness, attention, permission, trust, and interest we've already earned. And so the tool that I'm using when I'm doing direct outreach is the Silver Bullet Campaign. Which is that 9-word email. Some of you are on this call because you got a 9-word email from me yesterday. Are you coming to the 90-Day Success Sprint? That's a 9-word email. It's not exactly 9 words. It's just, it's that direct call, a direct marketing call to action type of campaign. Very effective, especially when you're talking to great fit clients, people that already know, like, and trust you, people whose awareness attention, permission, and trust and interest you've already earned. The other campaign is the Be Helpful campaign. Um, I know Sandra, you participated in this the last time I did it. It's something I generally do only with the members of the Catalyst Club of paid subscribers, but basically it's free one-on-one coaching. I offer to help you identify and solve your most immediate constraint. In reaching, closing the gap between where you are and where you want to be with your business. I sent you 5 questions. You, if you send me the answers, I will create a Loom video where I'll actually walk you through what I think are your next best steps for clarifying and blasting through whatever your current challenge is. Um, these are both covered in the Get Clients Now campaign. Again, I'll drop that link in again, but the link that I shared at at the beginning of the presentation lays all of this out completely. So you can implement these specific tools if you want to. Finally, paid advertising. Now I know that, you know, people have all sorts of opinions and strong feelings about social media in general and about paid advertising in particular. I have been a person that has, you know, definitely hated on social media and has definitely hated on the idea of paid advertising in the past. What I have learned is, and this is, this, this is my opinion, your mileage may vary, come to your own conclusions, but social media is just a tool. The efficacy and effectiveness and efficiency of any tool is only as good as the person using it. Social media is not inherently good or bad. It can be used in ways that are good or bad, but that's kind of up to you. And what I have been able to do is create content and share it on social media that earns awareness, attention, and in some cases permission and trust from people that are— become good fit prospects. And through these workshops and through my Substack um, strategy and, and content, I can turn into good fit leads. And some of those people over time will become good fit clients, uh, when they're ready to trust themselves enough, to invest in themselves enough, to work together to close the gap between where they are and where they want to be in their business. Advertisement, again, for me is simply putting a little bit of money on content that I've already validated as engaging, that's getting the attention of people that are the kind of people that I would like to have a more direct, personal, relevant conversation with. So my paid advertising strategy— Scott Perry— I currently spend $5 a day on Facebook ads. And that is in part, that is part of the reason why I am getting 2 new subscribers to my Substack every week. It is why, um, it is how I'm building the community of paid subscribers that is filling my programs month after month. So it works for me. It costs me a lot of time and money to dial in. How to make social media and in general and paid advertisements in particular work for me. So again, I'm not, I'm not advocating this for anyone. I'm just telling you this is, this is why I do what I do with ads and how I do what I do with ads. So strategically, I can, I know that I can enroll 100 subscribers a month through Putting a little bit of money on power content. This is Laurel Portier's word and conversion multiplier lead generation campaigns that get me those subscribers. Okay. So if you need help or if you want to understand what power content and conversion multipliers are, the easiest way to learn that is through Laurel Portier's book, Super Duper Cheap Ads. Again, not encouraging anyone to do anything that doesn't align with your beliefs, values, and guiding principles. But if you have questions about that, that's the resource to go to. I'm always also happy to answer questions if you have them. So the tactic I'm using is Facebook ads, and the tool that I'm using is to post new ad content 3 times a week. So I have a campaign in my Facebook Ad Messenger. That is an engagement campaign. It's getting people to click a link and those link clicks go to my free Onward book offer, my free Art of Encore Living Handbook, and to the curriculum, the post about the curriculum that I shared with you at the beginning of this call. And Again, you know, I'm getting, I'm getting 2 subscribers a day. I will also share that recently, and this, this may be a training to do in full the next time. I am using a, I'm giving away copies of Onward. Both in ebook and audiobook format as an opt-in. That opt-in leads to a sales page of sorts that invites people to purchase a $7 program to optimize the information that I teach in Onward, which is a book about making better decisions or making decisions better. And if someone opts in for that $7 course to augment their learning with Onward, they get put into a very short email sequence that also on the backend and gives them, provides them with the opportunity to grab a free copy of Nick Peterson's book Bumpers, which puts them into another, situation where they can purchase a, a $7 Bumpers Accelerator. I'm sharing all of that because between the revenue that I'm generating from the Onward Book funnel and the Bumpers Book funnel, because Nick pays me an affiliate, uh, payment for every person that opts into the, the Bumpers Accelerator, I am paying for my entire ad spend. So if you are hung up on the idea that Facebook ads are just kind of a black hole that you pour your money into, it's like, yeah, it can be, but there are also ways that you can leverage content that you already have to get people to, to opt into things that are delivering a huge return on investment for a little bit of money that's spent. And that can pay for your, pay for your ad spend. Right now I'm getting a 2x return on my ad spend. So I'm, for every dollar I'm putting into ads, I'm actually earning $2. And my plan is to just keep increasing my, my ad budget with that money. I'm not looking to make money on my Facebook ads or through my ROA. What is it? ROAS. It's just, it's just a machine that's continuing to, or a system that's continuing to feed, create prospects that become leads that become clients. Okay. That is actually the whole thing. So that is the system that I am using. That 90-day sprint is how I am creating, or how I'm accelerating progress towards my priorities. Last, was it 2 weeks ago, I guess we did a workshop on the CASE system. So I'm applying the CASE system to collect, collect the data, analyze the data, create a strategy based on that analysis, and then execute that strategy in order to close the gap. And so basically, for the last, I, at least 2 years, probably more like 2 and a half years, this 90-Day Success Sprint system has helped me continue to help me build the business that created the revenue I needed around the boundaries and guardrails I had against how much time I spent in my business. And it has continued to help me optimize the business. So now I'm earning the revenue that I need to earn in less and less time with less and less effort over time. Using this 90-day sprint success, success sprint system in conjunction with the case process. So I put in a link to all the resources that I've referenced. So if you want to click on that, it will give you, take you to the content that if there's anything that you need further explanation on. We're about to go into closed session, so the, after these free trainings for all subscribers, the Catalyst Club community of paid subscribers, we go into a closed session for Q&A and implementation. So we're about to do that now. The second link there is to a 7-day free trial. If you want to join us in the closed session, you're welcome to just go ahead and click on that link and take advantage of the free trial. And if, if not, if that doesn't interest you right now, that's Totally okay. However, we're going to ask you to see yourself to the exit so we can go into our closed session.

So, Scott Perry, what I liked, you know, and appreciate was the last part of what you talked about, saying that, you know, you can see this. Yeah, I got the ebook and then I got it printed and I got it bound. And, you know, oh, wow. And this is after reading the whole thing completely on Kindle.

Okay.

All right, I read it completely. I give you a feedback that I really enjoyed. I found it useful, but I want to keep it as an ongoing kind of reference material. So I printed it out and I kept it. And I agree with you. I think this was awesome because you give the link to bumpers and I got bumpers also here.

Oh yeah.

And the way I use bumpers is like a really, you know, kind of like a very dedicated student. So I make notes out here and, you know, kind of work. It works. I'm saying when I take a studentship of this kind, it works for me. Thank you, Scott, for that.

Yeah, you're very, very welcome. All right, Raja, I appreciate that feedback. We're going to ask you to see yourself out and we're going to get into our closed session. Thanks very much for the feedback. All right, gang, um, who's got questions?

So, Scott, I have a question. Um, in, in going through these materials, uh, in thinking about your priority of being able to spend 9 hours a day taking care of your grandson, um, I get the feeling that a lot of these materials were something that you must have created for a span of time prior to actually taking on care of your grandson. Am I correct in that assumption, or did you actually create much of this material during the time that you had taken on that caretaking role?

It's a great question. I'm gonna Um, I'm gonna share reflections that I think speak to your question, and if I'm failing to understand your question, you let me know. Okay. At the moment that my wife and I raised our hand to become Jasper's daycare, which was roughly, you know, 9 months before we were going to have to become the daycare, I was working probably literally 10 days or 10 hours a day, 7 days a week in my business. And I don't think that that is— I think most people here can relate to at least working way too much in their business as opposed to like— and again, it really boils down to we spend so much time trying to market our business and or not enough time actually doing the work that we started our business to do. But like a lot of people, I was like, I was just unconsciously repeating the things that I was doing, right? So, and you know, and it was always more, more, more. Like, you know, I started off with a Google Doc and a PayPal link, and then it was website opt-in and all, like YouTube channel, all the things. The realization that I couldn't take care of my grandson and work 10 hours a day is what it created, a forcing function. It forced me to rethink, okay, how I was doing what I was doing. And what I began with— and it's interesting, I was just talking about this with my wife because she's actually kind of going through a similar struggle with her business. I started with— and I showed this in a recent training— I started with This is what my ideal week looks like. You know, my, my week used to look like get up at 5, work until 5. And what I decided to do was I'm only allowing my, my perfect week is work from 5 to 7 in the morning, Monday through Friday in my business, be with my grandson from 7 to noon. Every morning, and then from noon to 5, do whatever the hell I want to do. Sometimes that means working with clients or hanging out with my community, and sometimes it means hanging out with my wife and Jasper. That's what initiated this journey, and it took me 9 months to realize that schedule, right?

Okay.

Um, and it was a very— so the fundamental principle that helped me get there was engaging the field. I can— I put forth assertions about, you know, I, I figured out my destination. I looked at all the things like where I was starting and what I was starting with. The first thing I did was I stopped doing everything that wasn't working.

Yeah.

And what wasn't working was spending all day on social media.

Yeah.

Um, what did— was, wasn't working was, you know, hosting a podcast and a broadcast that almost nobody tuned into.

Uh, what's—

what wasn't working was creating content for YouTube that nobody was engaging with. And so What I ended up doing was, you know, through this process of elimination, subtracting, like, like, here's all the things I had to stop doing. That was a very healthy list that helped me recapture plenty of time, attention, and energy that could be reallocated to taking care of my grandson, but also into leveraging the things in my business that were working. And what I just, you know, what I discovered was that I was able to enroll client— the most effective lever that I had for enrolling clients was having conversations with them, demonstrating my expertise and my knowledge and the difference I can help them make, um, by actually doing the work out loud and in public. Um, so in whatever I guess that was, um, August of 2020 was when I had the epiphany that I was living to work and I needed to start working to live. Um, you know, 9 months later, or I guess almost a year later, uh, is when we started taking care of Jasper. Because he was born in 2021, um, January of 2021. Um, you know, that, that year was a very iterative process, but it was all about engaging the field, testing my hypotheses and my assertions, iterating and improving my systems. And, you know, yes, so everything that I'm sharing is— are things that I arrived at that, um, I know to be true because they work for me. But what I think sets me apart from other people that are selling systems or formulas or blueprints or roadmaps or whatever is I'm not delivering— I'm not like— I'm not pushing Facebook ads on anybody. I'm not pushing funnel strategies on anyone. I'm sharing princip— principles, things that are time-tested and have been proven to be true up to this point and have not been, um, have not been proven to not be true. And basically, what has always worked in business is create an irresistible offer, find an eager audience and figure out the most effective and efficient way to put that offer in front of that audience. And that has been Conversations, my Substack content, the community calls that are for free, like the one we just had, and then creating a paid, a community of paid subscribers has been the way that I have leveraged Conversations to to create a prospect base that I can, that some of whom become client leads and from those become clients. Am I, am I kind of sort of answering your question?

Yes.

Yes, you are. Thank you. Thanks.

Yeah, it's, it's, and it's still a work in progress. I mean, that's, you know, that's what I'm saying. Don't, Like, nobody do what I'm doing just because it's working for me, because I'm playing. Like, I will tell you, as someone that— and I, you know, Sandra and I have been in programs together, Penny and I are, and MJ and Bri, we're all in a program together right now. I mean, I have, I have tried almost all the things.

Mm-hmm.

Nobody has more experience in trying to leverage systems that work for someone else in the past than I do. And what it taught me is that what worked for someone else in the past won't work for you now because you're not them and it's not then, right? Okay, so yeah, that's why, you know, from a principal point of view, you define Kim What does success look like to you?

Yeah.

Where are you currently? And then it really only— it always— I've never been— it's never been disproven to me that it, it only takes 2 or 3 things to go right enough to get you there. And once you get those established, defined, then it's a matter of dialing them in, iterating, improving, and raising the floor on those components so that it becomes more and more effective and efficient over time.

Right.

That's the whole system reliability piece.

Yeah.

Okay. Thank you.

That was—

You're very welcome. Go ahead, MJ.

So, Scott, that was just As usual, really helpful, really comprehensive. I have pages of notes. I feel really clear, clearer. I recognize it's iterative. I recognize it's emergent. That's my first disclosure. If I was in a support group, I would say my name is MJ, and I know it's emergent. My one question is the, this is impossible unless. And I get that it's figuring out the smallest move that leads to the biggest improvement. But as I heard you describe what that is, I couldn't help but write down, do you mean this is possible because? Or is it really a this is impossible unless?

I frame it that way. And, um, again, to be transparent and in full disclosure, these are questions that, um, I borrow in my own weird way and phrasing through Dr. Jeff Spencer and Nick. I think— well, from Nick through Dr. Jeff Spencer. But basically, the reason I use that, that phrasing is because That is usually the objection that people have. It's impossible. Oh, I see. Right. Like, yeah, like, I can't.

I see.

I see. I can't earn $10,000 a month. That would be impossible.

Right.

Well, maybe, maybe, you know, but do people earn $10,000 a month? Yes, they do. Can't be impossible then. And then it's just a way of eliminating the false belief.

I see.

Right.

I see. So get them out of your head, get them on paper. You're right. Nick does write about this in Engaging the Field, now that I think about it, because I know it's come up many times. But as one's thinking about both closing the gap and the next, next thing, To me, if you turn that around and, and you've really helped me figure this out with the rearview window, window, like looking backwards, it's endless, the amount of content, and it's endless. And so it is possible because of all those things, because of being in business for all those years, having all these clients. So for me, that's my, it actually is possible because I have that reservoir.

Yeah, well, it's— and so the— it's, it's always then about like, it becomes possible when you just do the next right thing, which means that you have to figure out the step before the step.

Yeah.

And then yeah, yeah, for that step, right? Because if you, if you just do the next right thing over and over and over again— and again, right thing is right enough thing Yeah, um, then the, you know, the impossible becomes very possible. Yeah, and it's slower than you want but faster than anyone ever dreamed possible.

Yeah, okay, that's helpful. Thank you.

Sure thing. Go ahead, Sandra.

Actually, I'm just sharing, Scott, because I mean, I did, you know, I've been with you off and on for over a year, scattered through, and then the 3-month coaching that I did with you. And so in the last 2 months, I would say I've been really dropping back and looking at using rearview mirror and using that to raise the floor. Which has led me to engaging the field, but in really small micro steps. Like, I just— I ran a workshop probably almost a month ago for only people who had done my program. So like alumni group, kept it small. Had a conversation with someone who asked a question in one session group that I was a participant in., and I had, like, a different take as a response to her question. So I just asked if she'd be interested. And so I engaged the field with her, and then she signed up for private sessions for a month with me. And so I'm just taking these little steps as I'm stepping back. I've totally by accident dropped social media. Like, I haven't posted anything in ages. I haven't sent a viable email to my group. In ages, but I will be next week. And so I'm slowly improving, I guess if you want to call my products, because I've received different comments and different feedback. So I'm taking the time to raise the floor on that and raise the floor in my systems because just certain things I was, I was putting too much time into different parts of the process. And so I'm patching all those up now because I'm expecting great things to come. And so I just want everything to be smoother than it has been for me in the past and less time consuming and, you know, hands-on where I really want it hands-on rather than on the other stuff. So, and it's working well. Like I've, I've had, you know, a few students sign up for classes that had dropped back, like over the last year or last few months. I had this person sign on for private sessions and then I had some people sign on for my video set that I'm totally hands-off with and they weren't even on my list. I don't know where they popped out of. So that's all kind of happened in the last month. And sometimes when you get— well, I'm not going to say sometimes. I find that when you get the ball rolling in one area, it's kind of like Nick said, like, just do something no matter how mundane, and something's going to emerge. And that's what happened. I was just like, okay, these are some things I want to fix in my processes. And oh, look, this is opening up and people are coming without me efforting. It's just universally, it's just the flow starts opening up. So it can come from different directions than you expect.

Okay, you heard it here first. Everybody can use efforting as a word now.

I love that so much. Well, it's a great share, Sandra. I actually was just having a conversation with former client who was with me for almost 4 years. And we were talking about this because they were reflecting on this question that I was asking them very, very frequently. This Client, like many of us overachievers, success seekers, had a masterful way of doing more than they had to and spending more time, attention, and effort than they had to. And the question that came up most frequently in our coaching was, Okay, how could this be more effortless? And one of the things that we kind of arrived at together, and I've been— I did a couple of podcasts about this, like this idea of ease. Like, if you are engaged in doing work that matters, it's not going to be easy. There are hard parts, for sure. That's why it's rewarding, right? But just because something isn't easy doesn't mean that it can't be done with greater ease. And the ease comes— well, I would say just because something isn't easy doesn't mean it can't be done with greater ease and equanimity. And those two things go together because if You are able to define and do just the necessary things and continue to optimize how they can be done more effectively and efficiently. Your life, you are encouraging, cultivating, and nourishing ease and effortlessness and equanimity, and all of this boosts the things that we actually want, which is a sense of fulfillment, a sense of meaning, sense of identity, you know, the idea of legacy. I mean, these are things that, you know, we're just— this is what people like us do things like this for. We want to— we want to do work that matters because we seek significance in our life. We seek meaning, we seek belonging and identity and legacy and all that kind of thing. No worries, MJ. And this idea, you know, I get, I get into a lot of arguments about this because we live in this kind of hustle and grind era right now where, you know, lots of influencers and gurus and so forth are talking about, you know, you got to get up at 5 o'clock and you got to grind your face off and you gotta, you know, never give up and all this just absolute dogmatic bullshit. Um, like, that's not living. Um, you know, I'm, I'm really big on like, yeah, I want to matter, I want to do work that matters. That doesn't mean I— that doesn't mean fame and fortune to me. That just means doing good work with good people. Um, and my experience and the experience I have working with lots of people, you included, Sandra, is that it can— it is totally possible, and it is totally possible, um, without, without any suffering. Like, does it take work? Yes. Does it take time? Yes. But the more thoughtfully and deliberately you apply yourself and the more judicious you are about what you do and what you don't do and who you spend time with and who you don't, you know, the sooner you will arrive at that ease and effortlessness that we all want. Yeah. And I'm not sure what your current experience is, Sandra, but, you know, for me, when I stopped focusing— you know, I'll borrow Penny's words— when I stopped focusing on the money and just focused on doing the best work I could with anybody that was willing to let me do it with them, everything else, you know, the prosperity, the prestige, the peace of mind It all became just a naturally occurring side effect of doing good work with good people to the best of my ability, um, you know, while maintaining my boundaries and guardrails. And that's not— it's not woo-woo BS. That's, that's simple system, system thinking, system reliability, first principles thinking. And, and so forth. It's true because it's true, and it's always been true. You all know the drill. I've got nothing better to do until 2 o'clock, so, um, but if Penny, Bri, open to any reflections or questions you have before we give everybody the rest of our Saturday back.

Um, I really liked the, the guide you wrote up. Um, I was furiously typing because I know I need to make it mine, but I think I need something organized like that because I still— because my mind goes in like 10 different directions sometimes. I need focus, and having a guide like that with different strategies that have worked. I was also reading your post about CASE before this, and I thought— and you just said it too— I need to stop doing the things that don't have a return on investment, or at least reduce them and focus more on the things that are, which I have been reducing. But have I been reducing based on what's working and not? That I need to fine-tune. So that was helpful too. All of this was so helpful.

Awesome.

Well, I appreciate that. Yeah, it's a tricky thing because a lot of what we do, we can't like, you know, is it giving a return on investment? I mean, in a lot of cases it's not discernible. Like Sandra was just saying, like there's people signing up for things that she's never seen before and it's, you know, like I would say that 80% of the people that will engage are— 80% of the people that are engaging with your content will never like, comment, or sign up for your email. But whenever they're ready, they're ready and they appear. Um, so, you know, it's, it's not— but What really helped me as someone that was already doing literally all the things was to, you know, that was my first data point. Like, of all these things that I do, which are the ones that I can actually draw a straight line to somebody engaged with this and became a client? And when I did that, there was very few things that were still left. And all I did was I, I can't— I just focused on those things and optimized those things. Because if I get the things that are definitely proven to be working to work better, then I could figure out how to weave other things that I was doing back in. And, you know, my, my promise to myself at the beginning of this year was no new content. Like, everything that you're getting, like, yes, it's often being put into new words or being revised and improved and so forth, but I'm not, I'm not putting any, any real-time attention or effort into the things that I'm sharing with you. And I'm creating things that can be shared across multiple platforms. I mean, that's why I love Substack. I, like, the old Scott Perry would have just blown up his Twitter account because I hate Twitter. I don't know, I can hate Twitter, but I don't have to go there. Substack lets me just post directly from Substack. I never actually leave the Substack platform. So, you know, there's, there's ways that you can repurpose content to multiple platforms. The other thing is you could literally create— if you created 3, 6, 9, 12 pieces of killer content, you could just keep cycling those pieces because every time you put it out there, Nobody sees it, right?

Right.

You know, but that's— we get really hung up on this, like, oh, I did that, you know, I did that last week or last month or last year, you know, I don't want to repeat myself. Well, you're not repeating yourself because most of the people are engaging with it for the first time. My friend Martin Taylor is the one that taught me that. He's a jazz guitarist. His YouTube channel, I think, had like literally 6 videos on it. And it's at the, at the time— I'm sure he has more now because his son has taken over his, um, you know, social media and so forth. But, um, that just blew my mind. 6 killer videos of Martin playing the guitar, and he had a fully, you know, monetized YouTube channel that was just making him money. 6 videos. It's like, okay, well, I like that model.

Yeah.

Just to answer to that, Scott Perry, one of my raise the floors was to empty my inbox because it looks nothing like yours. And I came across old emails because I'll test my emails to me before sending them out. And I just glanced through some of them and I was like, Oh my gosh, like I totally forgot about this great content, you know, that I probably put out 2 or 3 years ago, but I completely forgot about it because, you know, I was fishing around in the more recent stuff or whichever. But I mean, my next one, my next project is to group all those emails and the content for a blog because my daughter is going to help me, you know, get that going. And she's like, literally, Mom, like anything that you wrote, just throw it up and it can be a blog post. And I'm like, okay, so that's my next step.

Yeah.

I'm finding that, I'm finding that too, that things I wrote a long time ago, it's like this would fit today too. And that's, um, Bri mentioned a guide. What, what was she— I probably have it, but I wasn't— I'm not used— what is it?

Which one were you referring to, Bree?

Um, just what you showed us today. Your, uh, yeah, that. So I basically like typed it up as you were typing.

Uh, okay. I, I just find that I'm Okay, now I get the idea and I understand putting out there. It's what am I putting out there? And what, what am I actually saying that I will do? Because what I've been doing obviously isn't working. And some of the things that I think about are still not things that people are used to hiring fundraisers to do. And so it seems, and I don't know, it's like I, I think that I'm not putting myself out in a way that people understand the value of if they if they connected with me. And it's my— I'm thinking either I have something that nobody would want no matter how I spoke to it, or I'm missing something that I just don't see.

I appreciate the reflection, Penny.

And I know you can't tell me specifically what's gonna work or not work, but just—

well, the, it, it really comes— so the only way, like, my answer is always engage the field. Like, I'm not showing up in a way that is engaging with people. Okay, prove it. Like, you know, you, you, you need— I mean And it, this is kind of what I was sharing at the beginning. Like I was just doing the same things day after day after day, even though they weren't getting me what I wanted. Now that's insanity, but that's the way we all, that's actually the way most of us are engaging in our businesses. Like I just post on social media every day. That's just what I do. Everybody does it. Everybody tells me it has to be done, so I do it. It's like, well, but you know, some of your most recent content is your best content. I mean, the things that you're posting on LinkedIn. So, and you are getting some engagement with that content. Now, what I would encourage you to do, like your 90-day plan, could literally be, I'm going to go through all my content and I'm going to identify the content that gets the most— I mean, when I talk about engagement, it's really comments. I mean, reactions are fine. If you want to count reactions, you can do that too. But, you know, like, what are the things that people are truly engaging with by commenting? And then how can you repurpose that content in other places? Or how can you create more content like that? I mean, treat it like a scientific experiment because your assertion that you must not be sharing something that people want or sharing it in a way that people want to hear it, that's just, that's just a, a, a false assumption at this point. Turn it into an assertion. And then test your assertion by promoting content that actually is already working in other places and/or creating and/or creating more content that's like it to other people. And then, you know, like, what are the way— like, I put up on my birthday the free Art of Encore Living Guide and I don't know, 20 people, you know, saw that and bought and downloaded it. I mean, it couldn't be easier. I didn't even require an opt-in, like hit a button, download the guide. And 20 people out of a list of 800 and all the social media. I was like, this is bullshit. This is actually a pretty good little handbook. And so I went through my, everyone that wished me a happy birthday, and I direct messaged, you know, 30 people and said, my birthday wish is that 100 people, is that I gift 100 copies of this guide. Would you like to help? Click here. And all 30 of them signed up. Did it require a little more effort? Yeah. You know, I had to copy and paste a simple message 30 times, maybe took me 10 minutes. Um, got 30 more downloads. And of those 50 or so people that downloaded the guide, at least 3 people I know as a direct result of that have reached out to say, I really like what you said here. Is there a way that you can help me with this? So, so it's about being more intense about getting it out there more and more and more intense and more direct, like the, that whole Get Clients Now thing where we talked about the buckets, like figure out how you're defining your good fit now clients and then How can you engage with them even more directly? How can you be even more generous and more of a blessing and more helpful to those people? Because if you just keep showing up and delivering actual value and, um, and demonstrating, you know, what Chris Voss calls tactical empathy with what I call empathetic antagonism. Over time, you will earn the goodwill capital that will get people to want to take a bolder step into possibility with you. The great danger is we, we do something and then it does like nothing happens and we go, oh, it doesn't work. That's not true. It's, it didn't work doing it that way. So how do I do that in a way that's more direct? Specific and relevant to the kind of people that I want to actually work with. Everybody says, oh, I don't have time for that, and then they spend 8 hours on social media. Give me an effing break.

Um, something—

this is a share coming for Penny, and it's coming to me to share with you, so You can take from it what you will, Penny.

Thank you.

But not getting so stuck on how you're sharing what you want to share, because I had someone respond to one of my videos because she didn't agree with it. And we ended up having a conversation as I'm asking her, well, what was her view on that and her experience? And then explaining. And this was over a series of emails. And then I explained, you know, where I was coming from on it. And then she ended up coming to one of my workshops that I offered, like post that. I don't know how long the time was. And she was one of the most engaged people. Now she hasn't signed up or engaged with me in any other sense, but she, she's in my good fit now because of all these conversations that we had. So maybe not get so stuck on. Saying it the right way. I'm not really sure why I'm sharing this.

Oh, I get that because I've got a couple that I'm having engaged conversations with.

Right.

Yeah. And they're kind of like where you are. Yeah. Yeah. And I don't see them as potential clients, but I may be limiting myself that way by that, you know, because you're—

Oh, yes. Because the more that you converse with them, they might open their eyes in a different way and see something differently.

Yeah, because I ask, they say they want to keep talking with me. So it's not like they don't. And I've tried to focus what, like, okay, you need a new fundraiser. I can help. And of course, when I work with them, they will, it will be to keep the fundraiser, not have them quit after. 18 months. And before you decide on a capital campaign, what are the questions you should ask yourself rather than jumping into the tactics and, and tools of how we're going to get the money for something, you know? And, um, I think part of it too is that nobody's doing this. I can't find anybody in fundraising doing this. So it's like sometimes I say, are you stupid? Why do you think you can change your impact?

Here's the thing, Penny, that's, that's, that's what you, you have to lean all the way into that edge.

Yeah.

I mean, I cannot tell you, and I know some of you have seen, like, on, I, I'm doing a lot of poking at people on Substack these days. And it's not malicious or mean-spirited, it's just like an alternative perspective. Because just like any platform, Substack has become a haven for the know-it-all experts, you know, Substackers substacking on Substack to Substackers about how to substack on Substack. I mean, and you know, when— and Bree is a big supporter of, of, you know, share— sharing and resharing and, you know, repurposing ideas she learns, um, sharing similar ideas. You know, when I talk about this whole idea about being a blessing and being, uh, helpful and giving everything away for free, you know, and the right people will come to you, I mean, I can't tell you how many people you know, how many people will message me and tell me what a fucking idiot I am. And, you know, cool.

I mean, I need a few of those. I'm not getting those yet.

Right.

But, but I've leaned all the way in. Right? I'm, I am like, hey, this is, this is who I am. And this is what I do. And I don't really give a flying flip if you like it or not. If you don't like it, Hey, hate on me all you want. If you like it, come on. If you're interested, try it. And slowly over time, I mean, and, you know, I fully believe that as the community grows and as, you know, my roster of successful clients grows, that people will start to say, oh shit, something's going on over there. And they're going to figure out how to, you know, they're going they're gonna adopt the language and the systems and all that kind of thing, and then it's gonna stop working because that's the way it always goes. Um, but I am, I am currently in a category of one. It's all, it's a fairly lonely category of one right now, cuz I'm not like, I'm not obviously having the huge numbers that you see other people on Substack having. But I have faith that if I just keep leaning into my weirdness and this crazy edge and all this, you know, language that is triggering to certain people, I'm— sooner or later, you know, it's gonna, it's gonna be, it's gonna be stupid and unsexy until all of a sudden it's brilliant and sexy. And that's, you know, and then I'll ride that wave for whatever little bit of time it lasts. And then, you know, I'll figure that— figure out the next move. But, you know, the, the great— I mean, it's so dangerous. Like, we're— it's, it's, it's our default human programming, what Dr. Jeff calls the human mindset. Like, we crave certainty. And so, you know, we, we— our default is to, um, create is to go for things that provide us with confirmation bias. I believe what I believe because I believe it, and I'm going to find out all the people that believe what I believe, um, and then we're going to get together and throw rocks at the people that don't believe what we believe. And you're just, you know, and so we all end up kind of doing the same thing, you know, and that just doesn't— like, there's no way you can stand out in this, in the current marketplace. It's too noisy, it's too distracted. The marketplace is entirely fatigued. Yes, yes. Everything that the gurus are currently peddling is not working now because the market has become wise and they can smell the charlatans and the frauds and the fakes and the gimmicks and the tricks that don't work from a mile away.

Yeah.

So, you know, fresh perspective is, yeah, is in short supply, and it's the, it's the best way to get attention. And I mean, and it's a more authentic— like, you show— you being you and doing what you do out loud and in public, nobody can say you're not authentic and real, right? They can't accuse you of being a fake.

Um, Scott, this has been awesome.

Always happy to help. Yeah, I hope you all have a wonderful rest of your Saturday and a tremendous Sunday, and maybe see you all on Monday.

Thank you. Bye.

Thank you. Yes, thank you very much, Scott.