How to Grow Your Solopreneur Business with Conversations, Not Funnels

All right, we are live. This is my very first attempt at doing a live on the desktop. Hello, Alice. Alice is one of our Circle subscribers, a Circle community member. Great to have you here. We have Ahmad, or Ahmed, and Dan. Nice to have you both with us. Dan Blair, that name sounds familiar, Dan. I don't know if we know each other. Outside of this conversation or not. And there's Emma. Emma's actually going to be our first victim in this invitation to participate in some coaching hot seats. So Emma, I'm going to bring you in in just a minute. I'm just, I'm going to give folks a chance to get the notification that this is happening. I'm going to do a quick introduction. In case I decide to use the, the replay and, and, or post it as a podcast episode. So Emma was kind enough to provide me with a little context. I'll talk about that when I do the introduction. And, uh, she's going to be our first hot seat participant. We have, uh, Kira is also raised her hand. So for those of you that are, that are here, what I'm doing is I just, I needed an excuse to try the, the desktop interface for going live on Facebook or on Facebook, on Substack. And so what I did was I posted in our Creative on Purpose community chat that I was looking for an excuse to go live and that I Uh, what I invited members to do is to sign up for a coaching hot seat. So this is going to be a flying by the seat of my pants coaching hot seat situation where I'm going to bring folks into the room with me. We're going to coach them on a specific goal they're trying to accomplish. Uh, I'm going to do my very best to give the very best advice I have for absolutely free. Uh, I'm going to prioritize the folks that are in the Circle or Inner Circle community. Circle community is made up of monthly and annual subscribers to Creative on Purpose, and the Inner Circle is made up of people that are founder-level subscribers to Creative on Purpose. Hello, Kendra. Kendra is a— can't remember if you're a member of the community or a free subscriber. Kendra, forgive me, but just, uh, jamming a little bit here while we wait for more folks to hop on. And I'm going to do a quick little official introduction in case I decide to use the replay or share this as a podcast episode, and then we're going to begin. So I'm going to give it one more second or two. Hey, Abbot, you just became a free subscriber. Welcome to Creative on Purpose. I'd love to learn more about you and what you're up to. Oh, and there's Kira. Kira, I hope I am saying your name right. You can correct me when I bring you on for your hot seat. If it's Kyra or something else, I apologize. Okay, let's, let's get this party started for real. Welcome to another pop-up edition of Creative on Purpose Live. Creative on Purpose is a publication here on Substack that is dedicated to helping people to find, develop, and deliver the difference only they can make, whether that's in the next chapter of their lives, or if they are a purpose-driven solopreneur that is seeking to optimize a business in order to fund the freedom that we all start our businesses for in the first place. And today I put an invitation just a few hours ago in the Creative On Purpose subscriber chat saying, I want to try out this new desktop interface, uh, for doing Substack Lives. And so what I basically offered is some free coaching, uh, what we call, uh, catalyst calls or hot seat calls where the folks that want to participate are going to either answer a couple of questions ahead of time as Emma has done, or do it in real time as I will invite, uh, Kira to do here in a second. And the way that this works is we follow a very specific format because most of the folks that are subscribed to my publication or our clients in either the Boxer Velocity or Cornerman coaching programs, or maybe are just members of the Circle or Inner Circle community of paid subscribers, are following what we call the Purpose-Driven Prosperity model. This is a way of building Building and optimizing a business that requires no digital marketing stupidity, shenanigans, or nonsense. It also requires no interaction with legacy social media. You don't have to build an audience or find an audience on Facebook or LinkedIn or any of the other platforms or start inane conversations by invading their DMs. You can build a prosperous purpose-driven business leveraging the resources that you already possess. And you don't have to use funnels, ideal customer avatars. You don't have to create a niche. You don't have to create a power offer. You don't have to create launch sequences. What we are proving over and over and over again at Creative On Purpose through the Purpose Driven Prosperity Model operating system is that we can build businesses on our terms that reflect who we are, what we're great at, and where we belong. And we can build businesses easier and faster than using any of the usual shenanigans that digital marketers and online gurus promote through hacks and tricks that involve digital marketing and social media. So when we are doing the Catalyst coaching call hot seats every Wednesday, which happens in a just for paid subscribers and clients in a private Zoom room. We use a structure, a format that I have borrowed and iterated and improved upon that I learned when I had a partnership with the Guardian Academy in their Arena program. I took their RATA framework and turned it into what we call a GRATA. What is a GRATA? When folks come in for their coaching session, they're going to have a clearly defined goal. They are going to provide the resource for the, the where they're gathering the information, the intelligence, the inspiration for how they're trying to accomplish what it is they're trying to accomplish. They're going to tell me the most recent action they took. Because learning that does not lead to action is useless. We have to engage the field. Enter the arena. We have to try and test things in real life, in public. We have to do our work out loud and in public and then collect the data, test for resonance. And based on the action they took, they're going to tell me what they have discovered. What's the data they've collected? What lessons did they learn? What worked? What didn't work? And then they're going to formulate an ask. They're going to formulate the question they want to ask me so that I can help them take the very next best step into the possibility they imagined themselves, into the potential that they already possess within them. And so if that is clear to everyone, I'm going to move to invite Emma into the broadcast room. She's provided me with a grata just a few minutes ago. So I haven't even actually looked at it yet. And so you're going to see me do my thing out loud and in public without a net. And we'll see how it goes. So Emma, I just extended you an invitation to join me here in the broadcast booth. I'm going to also pull up your Grata worksheet that I provided you with that I know that you've sent in. So it says waiting for Emma to join. I don't know if I— doesn't look like there's anything I can do on my end. Emma, if you can see if you can come into the, into the broadcast booth here, that will help. Kira, I'm just going to go ahead while I'm waiting to see what I need to do to get Emma in here. I'm going to go ahead and send your invite as well. So Emma and/or Kira, if you can tell me what you see when I share the invitation with you. Thank you, Ahmed. I do Ahmed says, I thank you. You seem like a good sport. I like your vibe, by the way. Also, we appreciate the help that you're going to offer us. You're very welcome. The whole Purpose Driven Prosperity model operating system is based on the simple premise that we can build a business, a thriving, prosperous business on our terms by simply playing our game, showing up, doing your thing, letting people watch, and trusting that the right people will find us. All right. So I do not see, I do not see Emma coming in and I do not see Kira coming in. Emma, Kira, if you could please let me know what you see when I invited you, you should have received an invitation. So maybe check your messages or something on the, on the app if you're on the app. And I don't even— I'm assuming that if you're on desktop, you can also join. Hey, Lenya! Wow, we have a lot of members of the community here. Lenya is a Circle member and a current client. Kendra, excuse me, is a a free subscriber. Alice is a client and a member of the circle, and Emma is a member of the inner circle. Excuse me. All right. I see, uh, some names I recognize like Nicole, who may be more well-versed in this than I, if that is, uh, if that is the case and you want to tell me, or if you happen to know how I bring people into the broadcast booth. Oh, we did it.

Oh, okay.

Nicola is here. All right. Fantastic. All right, so this is, you know, sometimes you try new things and you have to just understand that this might not work. And we were going through some definite this-might-not-work moments there for a second. But Emma is here, and it looks like Kira has also got— just arrived. So Kira, I'm going to get to you in just a minute if you'll just hang out in the wings there, uh, and, and quiet in the peanut gallery. Let's, let's not have any shenanigans while you're here in the broadcast room. All right. So Emma, I've already shared with everybody how this works. Of course, you're very well versed in how this works already. So again, just for everyone else's benefit, the way that this works is each person is going to come in and share what their primary goal is. That is the current aspiration or aim they're trying to accomplish. Often it is, involves identifying and addressing the most immediate bottleneck to the, their, the progress that they're trying to make in their business. They're going to tell me the resource, what, what information or inspiration has they, they are using to try to achieve this goal, what action they've most recently taken, what they discovered or learned from doing that, and then their question. So one of the things that we're going to get into right now with Emma, Emma, are you all buckled in and ready?

Yes, yes.

OK, so the first thing is we can't accomplish a goal if it is not clearly defined. If we are heading towards some vague or obscure destination, any path will get us there, but it probably won't get us there very fast or very easily. So Emma has said that her goal is to have conversations with brick-and-mortar businesses in her area, which is the Hudson Valley, New York. So Emma, because I, I already have a little bit of context because we've, we've had conversations in the past, I know that you're transitioning away from trying to get clients through Facebook messaging type of strategies. When you say that you are— your goal is to have conversations with brick-and-mortar businesses, can you give me any additional specifics? Is it a specific a brick-and-mortar business, how many conversations do you need to have? And do you know how many conversations you need to have to reach a revenue number that you're trying to hit or to fill or fill a program that you're trying to fill?

Okay, um, I want to— this is very broad, uh, that I just want I want to work with brick and mortar. I don't want to work with anybody who is online. It has to be brick and mortar. So I'm not narrowing to any specific business. Um, and it has to be in my area.

Okay.

That's the, that's, and how many I want to have, let's, the first 10, I want to see What is that small business owner's need? So, is STEM what I need?

Okay, great. So, you're at the phase where you are working towards creating an offer and you are in the exploratory phase where you're having the conversations that will give you the data that will allow you to find the themes and the commonalities around the aspirations these businesses want to accomplish or the problems that they're trying to solve. Is that fair?

Yes.

Perfect. OK, First 10 is a great way to think about this. First 10 is an idea that I borrowed from my friend and mentor Seth Godin. For context, for those that don't know me very well, I had a 7-year association with Seth as a head coach in Akimbo Workshops. I was on the team to to be a coach in the Alta MBA as well. And he has this idea of when you're trying to create your viable offering, whether that's a project or a creative endeavor or business or a business offer, start with just trying— can you get 10 people to raise your hand and say, yes, I'm interested in this thing? What I would say, Emma, is the real goal In my experience, based on working with a lot of solopreneurs is that are starting afresh or trying to dial in an existing offer is that it will take 20 to 30 conversations to collect enough data to analyze and, and then strategize your next step in terms of offering or diagnostic that you you're going to conduct to help with onboarding or attracting the right clients. So shoot for 20 to 30. Now you've said that what you've done is that you've done videos in the past and you want to make a poll to— for brick and mortar businesses and that you have a video that you're ready to, to before that, that you've— so Emma is, as a member of the Circle community, has access to the Cornerman Coaching app, which is a customized GPT that's constructed entirely around my intellectual property, my coaching IP. And it's basically like having me in your pocket 24/7. You can ask questions and it will give you the best advice a GPT can give you based on the information that it has available. So Emma's done some work already with the GPT to script out a video and her focus is conversations. I want to make a video using a poll. I use your Cornerman chat to improve the video and I just want you to check it.

Okay.

I would strongly encourage you, Emma, to consider a faster path to having these conversations. Put recording a video, putting together a poll and putting it out there wherever you plan on putting it out there, um, is one way that you can do that. And it may be long-term that doing something like that, that perhaps enables you to do it with a little bit more automation. Is a good idea. But right now, having your first 10 and compounding that to your, the 20 or 30 conversations that you need to start to dial in what you're, you know, dial in your audience, refine your audience if it needs refining, and start to define and refine an offer. You need to have those 20 or 30 conversations as quickly as possible. What I would suggest is work on the script, record the video, can make the poll if you want to. That can all be spun up pretty quickly using the Cornerman GPT or ChatGPT or any other AI. But I would encourage you to, to go through your Chamber of Commerce directory or, you know, go through the phone book or go through— I know you've You've done a lot of work with a lot of other businesses in the past. Go through your— any existing contacts that you have that have brick-and-mortar businesses.

Why?

Because it is much faster and easier to connect with people who already are aware of who you are, maybe have paid attention to what you do, and already, you've already earned a little bit of allegiance capital with a little bit of permission and trust. And so rather than think about the video and the poll, think of the icebreaker questions that you can send via email or text message, or if you're going to use, uh, you know, Substack or social media messaging, you can do that too. But think about the icebreaker question. How are you going to start the conversation? Again, just for context with every— for everybody that's here in the Purpose Driven Prosperity Model operating system, for those that love social media and love digital marketing BS, love to create ideal customer avatars and clarify their niche and create power offers and, you know, conduct or create landing pages and email sequences and all the stuff that you have to do that takes way too much time for a solopreneur that has limited time and money and effort to invest. If that's your thing, do that. But you can do— you can get a business spun up or optimized much more quickly if you actually just start talking to the kind of people that you want to talk to. And you can do that fastest by going to the places where those people are already hanging out, which is why I suggest something like you know, if there's a Chamber of Commerce or something like that where you can go and network and start conversations, that will be way easier and faster than trying to connect with strangers on social media with a video or, you know, cold calling with sending a video and a poll. So it's less of— we use what we call instead of social media posting and advertising and so forth, what we advocate is what we call the conversation engine. What's the icebreaker? How are you starting a conversation? The point of an icebreaker is to start a conversation. Once you've started the conversation, can you— how do you continue that icebreaker conversation to help clarify what that person is trying to accomplish, where they are now, and help them identify their most immediate obstacle? If you can help someone clarify their aspiration and clarify their biggest bottleneck. Now you have created a situation where you can create what I call a solvable problem. That comes from Dan Nicholson's book, Rigging the Game. And you can then move them into what we, what I call the diagnostic phase. I would not recommend calling it a diagnostic. There's some gray area around legality around legal language and all that kind of thing. When you say diagnostic, it has a kind of a health wellness vibe to it that could be iffy. You know, call it a clarity session, a catalyst call, whatever you want to call it. But the diagnostic is a series of 5 questions that you then provide them with. And if they answer them, it will help you provide a roadmap, the 2 or 3 things that they need to go right enough to go from where they are to where they want to be. I recommend doing icebreakers and diagnostics for free. You help them see what they're trying to accomplish and what's actually in their way. You give them a roadmap that tells them exactly how they can get there. And you say, here you go. This should help you start to step into possibility and collapse time to target to where you want to get to. And Knowing that there are inevitable obstacles and opportunities that we can't see right now. If you need any help navigating this or want me to guide you, I've done this a million times before. I'm happy to, to talk about options for how we can work together. And then you can move people into what's called the low-ticket continuance offer. How can you help someone in a defined period of time get a little traction with the roadmap that you just gave them? Here's the thing. Nobody's going to buy your signature framework, your secret blueprint, or whatever process, system, product you have that helps someone achieve an aspiration or solve a problem because it's nothing but uncertainty. There's a very, very, very narrow percentage of people that will buy something just because it's new. People buy based on information, not innovation or novelty. So what you are doing is you are proving your trustworthiness at every step. You're making a promise and keeping it. Hey, would you like to tell me what you're trying to accomplish and what's your biggest obstacle? I have to do my best to help you clarify that. If you do that and then say, I'd love to help you build a roadmap to get you there. 'Would you be willing to answer 5 quick questions and I'll give you my very best advice for how to collapse time to target?' If they answer and you deliver upon that and you say, 'If you'd like to get some traction with this and help get started by navigating any remaining obstacles or opportunities, let me know. I have this low-ticket $100 offer where I'll exchange 5 emails with you over 2 weeks.' If you do all of that, if you deliver on each of those promises, when they are done and you say, if you'd like to continue working together, I'm happy to share coaching options or my signature or flagship product. You're— bless you. They are much more likely to buy. A typical digital marketing funnel has a conversion rate that's in the single digits between the time someone opts in for your ridiculous freebie or ethical bribe or whatever it is that you're calling it. They get churned through your sequence and then kicked into your nurture sequence to get churned back into your sequence and land on your perfectly crafted landing page with your perfectly colored button and your perfectly colored CTA. And then use countdown timers and all sorts of false urgency and scarcity to get them to, to dig into their pain and make them suffer so that they pull out their credit card. And give you their money. It is single digits from the time they enter to the time they buy. And when they buy, they regret it immediately after they gave up their leverage. Buyer's remorse. They had all the leverage until they gave you that credit card number and now they have none. And now they're second-guessing. If you use the conversation engine, you're earning trust and permission at every step. You're proving competence that you can help them do what you say you can help them do. And you are boosting their confidence that if they just keep working with you, that they will accomplish what they want to accomplish. So that was a— I'm being— I'm overexplaining, not for Emma's benefit, but for other people on the call. That's the way I would do it. So Emma, I would I would choose, I would go through your existing contact contacts. I would collect as many names as you can of brick and mortar business owners, uh, and then supplement with any other resources that you can get to, like Chamber of Commerce directories or, um, going to Chamber of Commerce gatherings or networking events or, or the phone book or what have you. Have those 20 or 30 conversations, get them started with a simple icebreaker, and then move the icebreak— the, the, the, the low friction ice. So you don't lead with, hey, what's your biggest problem? That's too much, too fast for most people, even warm contacts. I love my favorite icebreaker is what excites you most about what you do? People love to ask that question and you're helping them Estab— establish identity, establish aspirations. You know, it's an easy thing to answer. You can then use that to move into the icebreaker question that will help determine direction, what they're trying to accomplish and where they are and what's immediately blocking their path. And then if you do a successful job of helping them clarify what they're actually trying to accomplish and what the gap is between where they are and where they want to be, moving them to a diagnostic would be much easier. Is that helpful?

Yes. Yes. Thank you.

You're very welcome. You know, I love picking on you, Emma.

All right.

Let's settle this once and for all. Is it Kira, Kyra, or something different?

It is Kyra. Ah, you were so close. Yes. Everyone thinks Kira Sedgwick, but I'm actually older than her. I had the name first. We split I know we spell it the same, but sorry, Kyra, it's Kyra.

There you go. All right. So I don't think that you sent me anything ahead of time. So did you hear the format?

I did. I cannot say that I could, that I could repeat it for you, Scott Perry.

That's fine. I'm gonna walk you through it. Emma, I'm gonna go ahead and bump you out just because there's some feedback stuff coming. Coming through, but I'll look forward to seeing you on the next call. Thanks very much, Ama.

Okay.

That should help with my feedback issue. All right. So, Kyra, the format that we use in any of the coaching programs, including these free calls, is called Grata, something I borrowed and improved upon from program I did with Nick Peterson and Joseph Robertson in Guardian Academy called The Arena. And it is based on you answering just 5 simple questions. Okay. What's the goal that you're trying to accomplish? And the more specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound it is, the easier it is for me to help you craft a path to get there. What's the resource that you're referencing for the way that you're trying to accomplish this thing? Are you using some sort of strategy you learned from a digital marketer or a guru? Is it something you learned in a book or a mastermind or a coach? Just give me a little context about where you're getting the inspiration for how you're going about accomplishing the goal. Tell me your most the most recent action that you took. What did— and then tell me what you learned after you did that. What did you discover? Is there any data? Is there any learning that happened? Tell me what worked or what didn't work. And then from that, we're going to get to your fundamental question, which is what's the, what's the ask? What's the one thing that I could help you with that would move you forward? So I'm also getting a message from Kendra here that there's still a little bit of feedback. Can you maybe turn down your volume a little bit?

Yes. And I had my phone— I tried to join from desktop as well, and I couldn't. So it might be because I had my phone propped. Is that better, I hope?

That is better. It's better for me. OK. OK, with everything I just said in mind, go ahead and tell me what your goal is.

All right. My goal is to, um, hmm, see, that's part of the problem, Scott, clarifying that goal. Okay. I would be—

great. Let's start. If you were a client of mine before we even started talking about all your business woes, I would be asking you what life style? What is the ideal life that you want your business to fund and fit around?

Yes. So you and I did do some, we did do some primary work together. Oh, that's right.

That's right.

Yes. So it was, it was more just verbalizing it. My goal is to use Substack specifically to begin to build an actual community around my work as an intuitive and spiritual mentor. That is, I'm also a certified retirement coach. So that's my primary goal, to be able to build a small community here that will kind of feed the— the meat of what I'm doing for the community. And it will also feed the other members in the community, become a resource.

Primary goal is to build a community on Substack that will become the source for prospects, leads, and clients.

Yes. And support for the people in it. Correct. Okay.

Do you currently What's the urgency in terms of needing the community so that you can get the clients and create the revenue that's necessary to— that's sufficient for getting by?

I would say that there isn't a sense of urgency, although there is a sense of determination. I do have a small cohort that I would like to kick off in mid-January. And by small, you know, 8 to 10 people is my goal. And that, so that is a thing.

Perfect. OK, so now we have more clarity. The ultimate goal is filling a cohort for a paid offering.

Correct.

And let's just, let's just say minimum 8 people. And How many people do you currently have in your Substack community?

Um, I don't check every day, but I believe it's about 112. It's small. I haven't been here long.

112 subscribers?

Yes.

Any paid subscribers?

I don't have it turned on. Okay.

No worries. Um, okay.

So I do have some people that pledged.

Oh, nice. That—

yeah, that's nice.

That is nice. Okay. Well, that's, that's actually validation of, of, um, of your offer. It validates the, you know, that people want the kind of thing that you can give them. So What I would say is your situation is not dissimilar to what we just went through with Emma in that, you know, the, the fastest way to fill a program, especially with a smaller audience, uh, is going to be through conversations. And I'm going to share some additional— I'm just going to share some other ideas in case it's helpful for other people that are here that are trying to develop a business or boost a business by using Substack. So I'm very big on Substack. I've deactivated all my legacy social media profiles. The only social media I use is Substack Notes. My website is not even my primary channel for connecting with people.

It's—

I'm doing it all through Substack, and here's how I'm doing it. And I'm then going to tell you how you could do it without the paid— enabling the paid feature. The way that I think about my hive, okay, to use a term from Seth Godin, the place where I'm trying to spread my idea virus, the difference that I can make in the way I can make it is by communicating, connecting, with my hive, my, my hive of subscribers. Anybody that subscribes to my Substack, I consider to be a prospect. Most of them are called prospects because I don't really know who they are. The only thing I know about them is their name and their email address, but those that are engaged in opening my my emails and reading my posts and commenting on my posts. That's all things I can measure through the Substack metrics. Those are warmer prospects. And I use the paid feature to define a lead. If you have signed up for a monthly, annual, or founder-level subscription, then I consider you a warm lead. You would be a good fit for working with me right now because you've already revealed that you're willing to take intentional action and make an investment in the difference that I can help you make, even if it's at the $9 a month level. And you know, you've fallen into my trap, Kyra, right? You subscribed, you became a paid subscriber, you bought my— you went to the icebreaker diagnostic and bought the low-ticket continuance offer. So, you know, you, you became a client through this exact process. So that's one way that you can think about leveraging paid subscriptions if you decide to do that, is that it does help put people into the buckets that they're in. One bucket is who are my prospects, who are my leads, who are my clients? And then within each of those buckets, Who are the people that are a good fit now? Who are the people that are a good fit later? And who are the people that are not a good fit? If you would prefer to keep the paid feature turned off, then you just do the same thing through the conversation engine. And the conversation engine begins with— there's, well, begins in two places. One is I'm a big fan of direct outreach to the people who have given— the people that subscribe have given you permission to, to talk to them. They have put themselves in proximity and so that they can have greater access to you and the things that you can help them learn and achieve and the problems you can help them solve. And, you know, there's ways that you could, through the metrics, through the comments, through the likes on your posts and so forth, identify people that might be ready for some sort of icebreaker question. But that's— you're essentially in the same boat as Emma there in that you want to leverage the calls to action in your posting on, you know, your posts that go out as emails to your list, get them to answer questions or to drop some sort of catchphrase to get some sort of free resource or to get invited to a workshop or a conversation or what have you. I use these things called Digital Campfire sometimes. Great resource for— it's helped me move a lot of free subscribers into becoming paid subscribers. I just say, hey, Digital Campfire, righteous hang for all subscribers. We're going to hang out for an hour on Saturday. I've got some fun games planned and I'm here to answer any of your questions and people show up. They decide they like me and they like the people that are, that show up. And so they become paid subscribers, but that's also something you could do to just say, I'm going to talk a little bit about this program or maybe demonstrate and offer some sort of deliverable that's kind of at the beginning of what people are going to accomplish in your cohort. And so icebreaker conversation, You know, just how are you going to reach out to people that are aware you exist, are paying attention, had given you permission to speak to them and trust you and therefore trust you enough to be hanging around and opening your emails? And how do you use an icebreaker question to go from awareness, attention, trust, and permission to crossing the bridge into the sales cycle, which is I'm interested in what you can do for me. I'm enrolled in the journey you can take me on. I'm ready to invest in the deeper access and journey that you can accompany me on to accomplish the thing that you're promising me you can accomplish through this cohort. Does that make sense?

It does. It does. I have a question. In reaching out, let's say, yes, I would call it something different, obviously, but let's say the digital campfire. Do you send that in direct messages to your audience, or would you just do a note or a post, or like, how do you—

It depends. I frequently catch myself talking to especially free subscribers too often, and it's, you know, can lead to overwhelm. So if I'm trying to maintain a tempo of no more than 2 communications per week, if there's a live broadcast like this that's worth sharing, sometimes there's a third. So in general, if I'm going to host a special event like a Digital Campfire or a pop-up workshop or an open Q&A, I will send that out as an email and I will, I will send it out only to my circle and inner circle members and my most engaged free subscribers. I don't blast everyone. There's, you can use the features in the email filter, right? So I would, I would be somewhat judicious and discriminating about reaching out to people that are already actively engaged. And then again, just coming up with the low-friction icebreaker, the equivalent of, "Hey, how are you doing?" Or—

I'm good at that. Yeah. I mean that. I want to know, like, how's it going? What's happening?

Well, for everyone that's here, we're, we're actually doing a workshop tomorrow for Inner Circle and Circle members, uh, on the art of conversation, because in this conversation, uh, engine approach that we use, it's really amazing, but most everyone gets hung up on the icebreaker. Like, how do I just start conversation? And it's hilarious to me as someone that also struggles with this. That when we were little kids, we didn't struggle with starting conversations. You went up to some kid in the playground and said, hey, you want to play? Or, hey, you want to be my friend? That's how you start the conversation. And somehow as adults, we get, you know, our programming and conditioning just has got all the wires crossed and we get really hung up around, you know, anxiety about being embarrassed or turned away or ignored or what have you. But Michael Bungay Stanier, who is a friend who's blurbed a couple of my books, his coaching habit question begins with what's on your mind? And that's a great icebreaker. What's on your mind? What excites you most about what you do? What's happening right now? And then, you know, again, as I said to Emma, If you can move them into a question that will help define their direction and the gap, like, this is what they're actually trying to accomplish. This is where they are. Here's the gap. If you can help them, the whole point of the conversation engine approach and the iceberg diagnostic continuance is you're never doing anything with an agenda for selling. Like, I don't ever get on sales calls. I don't do discovery calls. I don't do sales calls. I don't do any sales pages or email sequences or anything like that. When I start a conversation, the only— the start of the conversation, the only point is to continue the conversation, is to start the conversation and invite them to answer the next question. And if they answer the next question and I am able to define direction and gap, I will then invite them to answer a handful of questions that will let me help them craft their path if they're interested. And if they say no, no problem. If they say yes, here it is. If you get it to me in a couple days, I'll give you my best advice for your next step into possibility.

Yeah, that's what you got me, Scott.

Well, and it's, and it's, so you're never, it's, there's no false urgency, false scarcity, digital marketing trickery, bait and switch, any of that. You, you make a promise, you keep a promise. You make a promise, you keep a promise. You make a promise, you keep a promise. It's always by invitation and it's and you're never attached to the outcome. I'm never starting a conversation with the purpose of engineering it, that person into a client or architecting the conversation because I don't know if they're going to be a good fit for me. I may not like this person and I may not want to, you know, I'm famous for passing people on to my competitors because they get all the people I would never want to work with in a million years anyways, which keeps them plenty busy. And here's all the cool people for me. So you're vetting them, you're allowing them to vet you.

Mm-hmm.

And by the time you get to a point where you're saying, hey, I have this very affordable way that we can really get some traction momentum going, are you interested? For most people, the natural answer is yes. And just for everybody else's benefit, you know, that thinks that this sounds like a lot of work or a lot of time. It's way less time than fine-tuning your ideal customer avatar, trying to plug all the holes in your leaky funnel, and trying to refine your power offer and create another launch for your program. It's all you're doing all day is showing up as you are with what you have, doing what you can for the people that you are around, and the right people will always ask you if they can take the next step with you. And so I used to spend 8 to 10 hours a day just on the promotion of my offer. I spend less than 2 hours a day on everything that's involved in my business— community calls, client calls, and starting ice or starting or continuing conversations. All of that gets done between 5:00 AM and 7:00 AM every morning. I spend all morning, the rest of the morning playing with my grandsons, and I spend the rest of the afternoon hanging out with my grandsons and, and my wife, unless I have something else that I want to do. And that's what a freedom-funded business can really look like. And so The conversation engine, in the first 3 months that I deployed it, I was getting a 20% conversion rate on people starting a conversation to becoming a client. That's a 10x improvement on your typical digital marketing funnel. And it, and it, I was spending 90% less time and zero money on that process. In the second quarter, I optimized it and got it up to, uh, to 40%. It's a 4x, yeah, improvement on a typical digital marketing funnel. I have no idea where I'm at now. I'm in the final quarter. I haven't looked at the numbers, but, um, I've never been busier and I've never been happier, and all I do all day is help people.

Yeah, that's what's beautiful. That's what's beautiful. As a mentor and a coach, I have over 20 years in corporate work. I have no desire to be a salesperson. And just the idea of it— not knocking it, it's just not at this point in my life what I want to do. But I love helping people. I enjoy a good conversation. So this feels like the way forward. For me. I have one other quick strategy question, if I may. I do a weekly live, and I'm just curious whether it would be bad practice or bad form— I don't know how I would read it in— to have something near the end of the call that invites people to reach out. I don't currently. I just thank the people that I'm having conversation with and end the call. So I'm just curious about that, your, your feelings.

Well, here's the thing. Everything works.

Hmm.

I was a very successful digital marketer. I created a very high-performing funnel. Instead of 2%, it was 4%. Uh, I, my Facebook ad KPIs were bonkers successful. The problem is for me was the amount of time, attention, money, and effort it took. Strong, direct CTAs work. Soft CTAs also work. And so, you know, I think you define for yourself based on your personality preferences, Tom Burt temperament, like what feels right to you for right now. I don't think there's anything wrong with saying, hey, if you enjoyed this conversation and would like to get notified about future conversations and access to our weekly content, please consider subscribing to blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Like that, there's that, there's, that's a, that's an invitation. That's not a, you know, trying to jam somebody into a funnel or trying to use false scarcity or urgency to get them to do something.

Okay.

That'd be my take on it.

Yeah. Appreciate it.

You're very, very welcome. All right. So I'm going to go ahead and let you go, and we're going to wrap up. I apologize. There was still, yeah, a little bit of noise coming through there. You know, this is the thing about doing things with new technology. This might not work, as my friend Seth Godin would say. So Ahmed had put something in the chat earlier that I was going to address. But Ahmed, if you're still here, I can't scroll, at least on my desktop, up to your question. But if I remember it right, it was something along the lines of a lot of very successful people did not have a clear goal in mind when they started their business. And yes, that it's entirely possible that, um, you can get somewhere great by virtue of what I call a codiwomple. It's an old archaic English word for heading purposefully toward a vague destination, right? And that's for most of us, building a successful business is less of a linear quest than a codiwomple where we just engage the field, interact, and people, and the path is revealed by walking. In many cases, even when we set a point on the horizon that we are aiming for, the path or the opportunities and obstacles that inevitably show up and the feedback that we get as we are engaged in the field encourages us to course correct and go a different route, maybe even pick a new destination. The way that I think about it is you should, like, you should have a good enough destination in mind. I think it's super helpful. It's, you're going to get what you want much faster and easier if you know what you want. If you want $10,000 a month, but you don't know what $10,000 what you would do with $10,000 a month, then you don't really have a clearly defined lifestyle goal. My lifestyle goal was really simple. I wanted to be able to work 2 hours a day so I could spend 8 hours, 9 hours a day with my grandsons. And so my goal was to design a business that allowed me to make my annual revenue need, necessity, in just 10 hours a week. And by setting that as my goal, I was able to go from 100-hour work weeks that barely enabled me to earn the revenue I need just to survive to working 10-hour work weeks and doubling my revenue in my first year and doing much better than that in my second and third year. And in the last 2 years, I've been able to earn my annual revenue goal in less than half a year, which means that for half a year, I'm truly doing whatever I want because I don't need to do anything. So having some kind of destination in mind, knowing that we reserve the right to change our mind if circumstances, our situation, our needs, wants, dreams, and desires change. And then when you are looking at the business that you want to fund this lifestyle, I think of it as my lifestyle vision is freedom. I want the freedom to earn whatever I want to earn and need to earn. I want the freedom to do whatever I want with my time at any time and to be able to do it wherever I want in addition to whenever I want. I want freedom. And so my business has to be designed so that it funds that freedom, but it also has to fit around the freedom that I want. But now I have a solvable problem. How do I build a business that allows me to earn the revenue I need every year working just 2 hours a day? And through a series of 90-day Close the Gap sequences. This is a system that I use to optimize my business. I moved from— within a year, I went from 100-hour weeks to 10-hour weeks. I doubled my income at the same time, and the offerings have only become more and more streamlined and the quality of the people that I'm working with. Some of them are here. Emma, Kyra was just here. Lenya is here. Alice is here. These are all people that I have worked with or am currently working with. The quality of people I work with could, could not be higher. I could not be more happy or fulfilled with the business that I have and the life that I have, but it came from establishing a direction and then closing the gap microstep by microstep by using system reliability. I created a system for how my business was going to accomplish the thing that I needed it to accomplish. And after the system was dialed in and I had some traction, I simply started to refine the system by raising the floor on the least efficient component. We did a, a jam session on this just a couple days ago. There's a replay on Substack and on the YouTube channel. Um, I'm going to start to wrap it up, but I saw Lenya threw something in here. Uh, I have a question that I'm always curious. Yes, they always say you got to have a defined goal, but what I studied some famous success— oh, this is— she's repeating Ahmed's question. Yeah. So again, uh, it's entirely possible to have a very fulfilling life without a clearly defined goal. But the goal, you know, all of those people, at some point, clarity emerged, a purpose emerged, and they figured out how to make it happen. I would need more specifics to address any specific cases, but Yeah, at first I didn't know what the hell I was going to do. I was a very successful and happy professional musician making a very good living just playing my guitar at places that I really liked for people that I really liked and teaching guitar lessons to people I really liked. And that's about 15 years ago. Oh, actually, no, just 10 years ago. My life called me to do something else. I didn't even know what it was. I just knew that I was— it was time for me to make a change. And thank God for the Alta MBA and for Seth Godin and for the runway he gave me by hiring me as a head coach at Akimbo Workshops. It provided me with a runway to help me get clarity of what the next thing was going to be and gave me the runway to figure out how I was going to get there. But the path emerged by walking. And so, no, I didn't have a clear life cycle at the beginning, but one emerged over time. It changed over time, and I was able to take something that was already working and make it work better to accomplish the lifestyle that I wanted along the way. So everything works. If you want to roll the dice and just hope that destiny and the universe conspires to give you everything you want, even if you don't want know what that is, go for it. But I believe that destiny and inspiration rewards people that are doing the work, engaging the field, trying to make the difference only they can make, trying to get clear about who they are, what they're good at, where they belong. And destiny and inspiration want to, uh, they want, they want that destiny and inspiration to be expressed. And it's easier to get people that are already demonstrating that they can, that they're good people and are doing the work to express that inspiration or destiny, that it is to people that are sitting on the couch waiting for inspiration to tell them what to do or to just give them the benefit of, uh, their bounty just because, just because they want it. Yeah, I've got just a couple years on you, Kendra, but yeah, I get it. Okay. Yeah. Purpose is an emergent property. It comes from engaging with the things that you're doing in life already purposefully, your day-to-day activities, the work that you're doing right now to make a living, the relationships that you're in right now. The more intention and integrity you bring to those things, the more frequently, the more clarity that you'll get about what you're trying to actually accomplish, what your purpose actually is. You will also learn how to do it with intensity, the intensity that only you can bring based on your personality preferences, temperament, talents. And And then purpose emerges from doing the work. The path is made by walking. All right, gang, that was fun. Appreciate Emma and Kyra for playing with me today. Appreciate you both. I hope that was helpful for everyone. And wherever I see you next, I'll look forward to seeing you. Be well, do good, have fun. And now how do we get out of here? Ah, there we go.