The 90 Day Solopreneur Success Path That Actually Works!

Hey everybody, welcome to another episode of Creative on Purpose Live. This is a special installment, and what we're doing for the next 3 weeks is we are going to offer every week for the next 3 weeks a special installment on the Purpose Driven Prosperity Model. It's— so we're going to feature the 3 main components that make up this model. Today we're going to talk about the Close the Gap Accelerator process. This is how you set a 90-day priority and success path and collapse time to target. In future sessions next week, we'll talk about the forever offer model, how you can, how you can create one offer that is perennial that you just keep practicing and doing out loud and in public. And you don't have to go through all the stress and the anxiety of going into launch mode every month or every quarter or every year or anything else. It's a process that just allows you to show up, do your work out loud and in public, make a difference and get paid. In the process. And then in the third week, we'll go through the Be a Blessing marketing approach, which is deciding— a decision to go stop trying to hack funnels and trying to trick people into getting interested in you and what you do, but instead create what we call a marketing web that naturally and organically attracts people to you and the great work that you do and makes them— moves them into becoming more enrolled and interested and the difference that you can make for them with your, with your service or product. So again, today we're going to talk about the Close the Gap piece of this 3-piece program. We've got Molly and Penny standing by. They're gonna— we're gonna do a little Q&A and implementation after I get through this screen share and going through some of the process. What I'm going to do right now is I'm going to show you the Close the Gap white paper. So if you are a member of the Solopreneur Success Circle, which are the paid subscribers to this, the Purpose Driven Prosperity Model Substack publication, just $9 a month, you get 3 calls a week, 1 call, deep dive call a month where you're getting real coaching and you have access to all the resources that, like the ones I'm going to be sharing right now, including this white paper, including the workshop replays and resources for each of the core components. So if that's something that interests you, there will be a link when I post this to get— learn more about the Solopreneur Success Circle community and take advantage of all the benefits of membership. So what I'm going to do is I'm going to show you the— a little bit of the Close the Gap white paper and just kind of walk you through it so that everybody that's tuning in can understand what the Close the Gap process is for and who might benefit and why you might want to do this and how you can go about implementing it even, even on your own. But obviously happy to help you accelerate that process if you would like to join us in the Circle. So with that, I'm going to go ahead and hit the screen share. So the Close the Gap, uh, process is a way of clarifying your direction, crafting your path, and collapsing time to target. So this is a very intentional goal setting and achievement process that works in terms of 90-day objectives with a very clear, effective, and efficient process for achieving that, usually made up of just one or two or three things that have to go right to make that happen. And then a process for collapsing time to target, meaning that you're going to accomplish your objectives with less, in less time, with less effort, with a lot less stress, and with a lot less risk. So it's all about building the system for achieving your immediate priorities so that you can then move on to achieve your next most immediate priority and then your next most immediate priority. And by waterfalling these priorities, you're to collapse time to target, achieve the prosperity level that you want, that you need to fund and fit the lifestyle that you want your business to fund and fit around. And you're going to have a lot more fun and take a lot less time in doing it. So there's some pieces here that are pretty self-explanatory. The solopreneur dilemma is most of us are trying to do way too many things and we get trapped into buying every quick fix to our problems, which only adds more to our plate, only makes us do more things, which only makes our success system less efficient and less effective. It's a system reliability issue. If you're— if your system for achieving a goal, whether it's a revenue goal or a client goal or building an offer or program, the more elements that are in that system, the greater the inefficiency of that system. So what you want to do is prune your, your optimization systems down to the essential components, and then you want to raise the floor on whatever the least effective or efficient components of that system are. And so that's the fundamental approach we're operating from— clearly defining our goals, clearly articulating our success path with only the necessary components and then collapsing time to target by creating greater efficiency in the system. So first, reasoning from first principles— what has to happen to get where we want to go? Systems reliability and systems thinking— how do I craft a success system that makes my success inevitable? And then microstepping your way into achieving that goal and boosting the effectiveness, the efficiency, the speed, the velocity of Time to Target as you go. So here are the elements of the Close the Gap system. The first thing that we want to do is make sure that we have a clarified direction. Direction means that we know where we're going, and it means we know where we're starting and what we're starting with. And so we have to make sure that, number one, that we're clear about the current vision of our ideal lifestyle that we're trying to accomplish through our business, how many hours a week we're working, how much revenue we're making on an annual basis, making— being more clear about what we want to be doing to earn that revenue and how we want to be showing up for ourselves in our business for the people that we are serving and making sure we're clear about what we don't want to do. And who we want to do it with and who we don't want to do it with. Once we have done that, what we want to do is conduct an honest audit of where we're starting from. What are the resources and assets that I already have? What are the skills and the talents and the social media assets or the content assets? Or maybe you've created a podcast or a course or a YouTube channel or any of those things. Those are all assets that you can you can leverage, there's no need to create any additional assets or collect any additional learning. You already possess everything you know to succeed. If you've been in business as a solopreneur for more than a couple of years, then it's not about needing to learn more or do more. It's about optimizing what you already have, which means you're actually gonna end up doing less and getting where you want to go faster and with, and earn more along the way. So again, this idea of inventory of your available resources and leverage points is part of this process. So being clear about who you are, what you're good at, and where you belong. The second step in the Close the Gap process is crafting your path. This is your success path. This is your system for achieving your goal. This is your system from getting from where you are to where you want to be with the greatest level of effectiveness and efficiency, with greater velocity and greater ease. What we do in the Close the Gap process is we set a 90-day goal. What's the one thing that if I accomplished it this quarter, in the next 3 months, would fuel my forward progress the fastest and with the most impact? And once we have decided what that objective is, we're going to identify the 2 or 3 things that have to go right enough for us to accomplish that objective. And what we're going to do is by applying systems reliability and first principles thinking, we're going to prioritize what we are doing and what we are not doing over the next 90 days to accomplish the objective that we have set for ourselves. And along the way, this collapsing time to target piece, we're going to be every single day or week or every other day, whatever tempo works for you. You have to pinpoint your most immediate constraint, and you have to come up with a systematic way of navigating your way around, over, through that constraint. And the, the object is creating the increased flow to our objective. If we address the most immediate constraint, we have increased the flow to our target to the next most immediate constraint. If we take care of that, we'll get to the next constraint. And by doing this in order of magnitude, based on what's the most, the biggest obstacle or challenge now, what we often find is that by addressing the most immediate constraint, we actually eliminate constraints downriver or down the hose, whatever metaphor you want to use. And then this idea of adopting a posture of intentional action. Again, we don't need to be distracted by what the the digital marketers and gurus are trying to peddle us in terms of the quick fix solutions or the blueprints or the magic formulas or whatever. If we take a dis— if we adopt a daily discipline of intentional action and do the work that's right in front of us right now, or handle the conversation right in front of us right now, and we do that with intention and integrity, we will automatically start to make progress toward our goal. And what we are doing here is applying what's called the Barbell Strategy. There's lots of resources in the Substack about the barbell strategy. But what we're doing is we're taking something across the barbell. We're taking something that is not— that has potential and moving it across a barbell to a proven asset or a, a completed goal that is helping us get closer to what we want. The great danger in most goal achievement and most systems is that we get a whole bunch of things going in the middle of the barbell that we think might turned something into an asset or into a completed task or goal. And what we have essentially done is created a bunch of homework for ourselves. What we need to do is define what do I need to do to take this idea from possibility to proven asset, work it across the barbell, focusing on just the things that are necessary. And once it gets across the barbell, we go from the maximum recoverable volume of our time, attention, money, and effort that we need to invest to get it going to the minimum the effective dose of time, attention, money, and effort that's necessary to keep it going on its own. And by doing that, we free up resources, time, attention, money, and effort to take the next thing across the barbell. So there is, uh, in this, the rest of this white paper, there's going to be a step-by-step process. Everyone that is tuning in will have access to this resource on Friday, which looks like it's going to be April 5th. Uh, again, this is a resource that's available to all members of the Solopreneur Success Circle community of paid subscribers to the Purpose Driven Prosperity Model Substack. Uh, so hopefully with what we've talked about in Monday's post of this week, what we're talking about here in this broadcast and with the white paper, you should be in a position to start working through this on your own. And of course, if you ever need additional help, it's very easy to do that. Just reach out to me and I'll, I'll let you know what the options are. So that is what we are talking about when we talk about the Close the Gap system or process for accomplishing your next most immediate goal for the quarter and defining the most effective and efficient success path and collapsing time to target to that goal so that you can start to optimize your overall system for achieving the ideal lifestyle that you actually built your business to accomplish in the first place. So with that, I'm going to invite Penny and Molly into the conversation. If you have any questions or if you have any, uh, implementation advice that you would like to get, this is your time to do that. And if you want to just sit there in stunned silence, that's fine too.

That was a lot of information.

That was very good, but it's like, okay, you mean I gave you a fire hose to the face, Penny? I, I've never done that before.

Of course you haven't. I'm learning how to deal with it though.

Is there anything that comes up immediately for you that you have a question about?

Well, what I'm thinking about is when you were talking about the Q2. So, um, I was way off on the Q1 in terms all of the work you're doing to lead us through this. I'm feel like I'm finally connecting with it. I see it and I understand it, and now I'm putting it with me so that I— and then put it with people that I want to engage with. That's so right now I'm, I'm much more at the beginning of engaging with people that I engaging with them, and some of it is me putting my own information together. I don't have all of the things that you're suggesting we have. And so maybe that's the cue to directions. Like, I'm just— it's not like me to set direction and be intentional every day and have all of this. So, and I like it though. I mean, because I feel good, but, but how— learning it is a curve for me right now. I hear it, I understand it, but now, okay, how, how can I use this? Does that make sense?

It does. And there's actually quite a few threads to pull on there. So the first is, um, and thank you for bringing this up because I think it will be helpful to everybody that's tuning in. When you are defining your— the ideal vision for the life you want to be living that's going to be funded by and fit around the business that you're building, the more specificity you have about that, the better off you will be. Now, because you want the North Star— North Star does not have to be fixed. You can have a vision for what your ideal— the ideal vision for your life looks like, and you can change your mind along the way because there will be unforeseen obstacles and opportunities that were require or suggest course correction. In general, what some of the things that you can do to help with that are take a look at what your average week looks like on a day-to-day basis. On average, how do you spend your time every Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday? Then once you've plotted that out, the way that you're actually spending your time, Go and do an idealized version of your weekly schedule. That will give you a, a place to start. For most folks, what they are looking at is I'm working way too many hours in my business with very little return on investment in terms of revenue. And, um, I need to reduce the time that I'm spending in my business so I can do the other things I want to do with my life. And I need to maintain or increase my revenue. And it sounds like, oh well, if I work fewer hours, I'll earn less money. That's not true. If you do the few things necessary, uh, and do them with more intention, you will actually optimize the time that you do spend your business. So just a quick anecdote. When we decided that our lifestyle goal was to become full-time grandparents and take care of our grandson 45 hours a week, Monday through Friday, I had to reduce the time spent in my business from close to 100 hours a week to 10 hours a week. And I was able to accomplish that over the course of a year. And my revenue actually doubled in the first year that I was full-time grandparent daycare for, for, for my grandson. So that's one piece. The next piece. When you are setting your 90-day goal, it has to be something that is measurable because you have to— it has to be the kind of goal that you realize you accomplished it when you accomplished it. And if you didn't accomplish it, you have to know how close you came to accomplishing it. So again, a little, for instance, my strategy, my system for client acquisition, which earns me the revenue that funds the lifestyle that I want to be living, is based on training up ideal leads or good fit leads by having them join the Solopreneur Success Circle so that I can educate them, they can understand me, I can understand them and their business so that when they're ready to take a bolder step into possibility in some sort of client relationship, whether that's the Close the Gap Accelerator or the monthly sprint or coaching by email, they are ready, they are primed for success. And so my 90-day goal historically for the last year has been to increase the number of overall subscribers to my Substack and increase the percentage of overall new subscribers to paid subscribers. And over the course of the last many months or last several quarters, I've steadily increased that percentage. So I just wrapped up Q1. My goal was, uh, 1,100 overall subscribers and 50 paid subscribers. And I didn't meet my overall subscriber goal. I, I only added about 50 overall subscribers in Q1. But I added 16 paid subscribers and my percentage of paid subscribers, uh, uh, to overall subscribers in Q1 was 22%. That is 10 times the average. Now that doesn't happen every quarter. It's been a, a learning process, but what I've been able to do is measure actual numbers and optimize my system for boosting the overall number of paid subscribers and the percentage of paid to overall subscribers so that I can reach my goal. And I know that if I reach that, if I do better with that goal every, every quarter, my overall client acquisition and revenue goals are going to improve over time. So that's the level of specificity that you want to have when it comes to creating Setting those— so first step is set goals that are measurable and achievable, right? They have to be realistic. When you're just starting, it might very well be that my first goal is to collect the data that I need to start to understand what kind of numbers I, I'm capable of achieving. Like the first year, the first quarter that I did an overall subscriber to paid subscriber count. I didn't know, had no idea what I was gonna be getting. So my first goal was collect 3 months of data on how many overall subscribers I get and how many paid subscribers I get. Once I had that, the next quarter, I just increased both of those numbers by a little bit and tweaked my system to get those numbers to meet or exceed those numbers. And I never did that for the first 4 quarters. Of applying this process. But in this last quarter, obviously I had a huge outsized gain in the number of paid subscribers. That's the power of a data-driven, data-collecting, analyzing the data, strategizing based on data, and executing based on the data. And it doesn't sound fun until it starts working. And then it becomes really fun. It doesn't sound sexy until it starts working, and then it's really sexy.

So, well, does you like, if you, if I, when I go on Substack and they have a dashboard, and on that dashboard they talk about subscribers and they tell you how many is, can you use that for your That's exactly what I do.

That's what I'm using when I'm counting my— when I'm collecting my data at the end of every quarter. I honestly don't pay attention to it very much day to day, but I do check in at the end of each month in the quarter, and then at the end of the quarter, I just let the data tell me how I did, how close did I get, how far away was I, and then I can optimize and execute the next quarter based on the analysis of that data. I'm not suggesting that you do this as your 90-day goal. I'm just saying that's what you want to do is make sure that goal, 90-day goal is measurable because you have to know if you were caught, like when you accomplish something, you need to know that you accomplished it. And this is a great risk. Most people go to say, I need more paid subscribers. And then they get 2 more subscribers or they lose 2 subscribers or they get zeros, you know, and now it. Like, what does that, you know, what does that say? So if you want to set goals that are actually— and there is a kind of a SMART goal element. I'm not big on SMART goals, but there is in this instance, that SMART goal process actually is a worthwhile framework to set your quarterly goal. How about you, Molly? Any questions or asks?

I feel similarly. Uh, I agree with what I feel like. Um, the way Penny put it, it's so funny when it's recorded, I suddenly am like, I get nervous. So I agree, I'm with Penny on the This is really helpful, but it forces me to think in a way that doesn't come.

Yeah, my brain is not designed that way yet.

Yeah, and yet, yet, and yet it— I know it's gonna work. I have the— yeah, and I know it's gonna work in part because I feel it working with you. Like, I'm actually tempted to really kind of copy the thing you've been doing, Scott Perry, with— and I'm feeling finally ready to start a group, do a membership. I'm actually, just to say, I'm having trouble with Stripe and the integration thing, Penny. Like, so I'm gonna try to do it with a PayPal link and keep this— have to do the statistics myself, sort of old-fashioned way, with just a link for them to pay and buy. But with PayPal, you can actually do an ongoing membership as well. And there are places in the world that don't accept Stripe payment that can't use Substack. So anyways, I'm gonna— I've pretty much decided to do this. I'm saying it out loud because I'm terrified for a million reasons that make no sense. But I see that it works. And I feel myself getting ready to be like, okay, I see the progress I've been making. And I could use a little more personalized support. Maybe I can find a way and I'll, you know, see if I can do more, you know, see if one day. So I realized that's also what I can offer clients at a lower rate and allowing them to connect and get more. So, okay, question I have: how do you just— and I don't know if this is where you might want to go or not, but, um, I, I know what you mean about having a lot of resources and assets and like these things that we could use. I have almost too many of them that I go, oh, I found a thing I could just— I spend 10 minutes doing it and then I realize, no, that's not the perfect thing, I could use something else. How do you decide what to repurpose, what to move in this barbell thing?

So that's a great question, and you're— it sounds like you're in a situation that's very common, which is I've been doing what I've been doing for a long time. And even though I haven't had a lot of, you know, success in terms of revenue, I've really enjoyed doing, creating all the things I've created. And I think they're all really brilliant because of course I made them, which means they must be brilliant and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And this is a great time and, you know, an excellent quarterly goal would be just to audit all the things, all the assets that you have. And I have a worksheet that's going to be available when we do the Be a Blessing piece, but I can get it to you sooner, Molly. That is an asset audit, and it's an asset audit of not just your content. You know, here are the, you know, the YouTube videos I have, and here's the courses I've created, and here's the worksheets I've made. And and so forth. But also, what do I have in terms of connection assets like social media, email list, Substack subscribers, what have you, and an asset of your skills and talents? Like, these are the things I have a proven track record of being good at, or I have feedback on. That's a, that's a great place to start after you've kind of defined what it is that you're trying to ultimately accomplish. So if I am correct, you, you, you've got a Substack and it sounds like you want Substack to be the hub of your Be a Blessing marketing web. Is that correct?

I wanna connect my English language learner learning students, and I've pretty much decided I wanna start with women. So that's been a big debate, but I think I've decided that.

So when you're thinking about the, the web, what you're trying to do is, regardless of all the other places that people can, can learn about you and connect with you, where's the place where you're going to have the, the most personal, relevant, and anticipated conversation? That's the Seth Godin Permission Marketing framework.

Substack.

And so Substack going—

not for every Yeah, the thing is it's not gonna make sense to some people that are subscribed to me right now, but I should probably— that's the piece I may be— like, I don't know if I should start over in a place that's more for the—

no, I don't think there's— it makes very little sense to burn something to the ground and start over most of the time. Most of the time, if you just fix or fine-tune what you already have so that it works better for the purposes that you now have it will take less time, attention, money, and effort. So optimizing a system is always less of a resource strain in terms of your time, money, effort, and attention than starting something brand new. So I would suggest getting really clear, and it sounds like you have some clarity about who you want to serve and what you can do for them and what you can help them accomplish. So start by, uh, fine-tuning your core information hub, your distribution hub, your Substack. It sounds like you have a workaround for how you can leverage getting people that are free subscribers on Substack to pay their way into a community through PayPal, which I totally understand. It's, you know, internationally Stripe doesn't work for everybody. And once you have, you know, that you've got that, that all dialed in, then what you need to think about is what are the existing assets that I possess that will help people get to the Substack as subscribers, and what is the mechanism that will encourage the people that are ready and that are the right fit to to move into the paid community because now you have your system. Now you can start to measure how many people are coming into my sub— Substack. What's the conversion rate in terms of open rates and all that? What's the click rate of people that are clicking a link to learn more about the paid community? You can start to collect that data over the course of the rest of Q2, and then you'll actually know what your system is. So it's very much like I experienced when I started my Substack. It's like, okay, well, I imported my subscribers over to Substack from my, my existing email list blog. And for one quarter, I just measured how many people, how many new subscribers I got and how many of those subscribers became paid subscribers and how many of those paid subscribers became clients. I had numbers after one quarter, after 3 months, I had, I knew how many free subscribers I got, had at the end of a quarter, how many paid subscribers came in that quarter and how many clients came in that quarter. Now I have my system detailed with numbers. Now I can decide, okay, so if my system is free subscriber, paid subscriber, client, where's the black hole, where's the inefficiency that I need to optimize? And what it was, was at the beginning, I needed to optimize the paid subscribers becoming clients because I need the sustainability piece, right? And then as the, the client, as the client piece became more consistent and reliable, I then moved to how do I optimize for paid subscribers? At no point did I say I just need more free subscribers because the effort it takes to get more free subscribers doesn't pay any return on investment, right? It's like, great, if I get 1 out of 100 free subscribers to become a paid subscriber and it takes when I reach 10 paid subscribers, I get a client. Every element of that system is operating at 10%. If I opt— so in order to double my, my client, I have to do the work that it took. I have to double the work that it took to get 100 free subscribers. I have to double the amount of time, attention, money, and effort I'm putting into free subscribers. On the other hand, if I look at my system and I go to the end, and look at how do, how am I converting paid subscribers into clients? And I boost that number, I'm going to get a much bigger return on investment for a lot less effort, a lot less attention, and a lot less risk and stress. So optimize your system for sustainability first and then optimize it for efficiency afterwards.

It's amazing. And I see how this is so beautiful because it makes it so the community— you're, you're finding the perfect people. If the people work in community, they will work as clients. If they don't work in community, if they don't, you get a way to see and work with them and then make an individualized thing for them.

This is why I play this longer game and advocate this more intentional approach over any of the growth hacking strategies that most of the Substack gurus and, and, and the digital marketers that are talking about scale and showing screenshots of their subscriber numbers growing exponentially. Like, it, it, it does— if I get 10,000 free subscribers, I'll have a very good-looking chart if only 1% of those become paid subscribers, it's not doing me much good. Like, it— I, I have— I make a bigger impression, but I'm not making any kind of impact. So what I'm focused on is I'm totally cool with a low free subscriber count. In fact, I frequently get free subscribers that become unsubscribers very quickly. Good. They're not for me. I'm not giving them what they want because what they want is what they got from the growth hackers that recommended my publication. They want the flashy, sexy tool, tactic, whatever that they can add to their system so that they can work harder, grind harder, do more, and still make less. And I get it, but that's not me. Like, you do you. So if, if I only get 50 subscribers in a quarter, but 22% of them become paid subscribers, I'm totally winning because I'm— not only do I have more, twice— I'm sorry, 10 times the average free subscriber becoming a paid subscriber, I have a better quality of community member in the Solopreneur Success Circle. And I have, I have someone that is more ready to become a client that will achieve their goals much more effectively, efficiently, and with a lot more fulfillment and joy, which means that they're going to be so thrilled and happy that they can't help themselves but talk about how they got to accomplish what they've accomplished. And now I don't have to do— at a certain point, the flywheel is turning, so I don't have to do any promotion because people are promoting it for me because they are thrilled with the results that I helped them get. Go ahead, Penny. What was your question going to be?

Oh, I was just thinking the way you were explaining it, that It's easier that way because they're deciding not to stay with you. So you don't have to do that.

Exactly. You know, yeah, I have had this conversation before. I am not trying to convince anybody of anything. If you go to my site, if you go to my Substack and you're trying to figure out how much does it cost to work with Scott Perry, you cannot find out. Because if I'm not starting the conversation, around working together with how much does it cost you to work with me? Because that's making a purchase decision, buying on price is a race to the bottom. Because people that are shopping based on price are looking for the lowest cost and are willing to settle for less effective help. And so instead, what is happening is inception. If you sign up for the publication and find out that I'm not selling tricks and hacks and decide you want to go, great, go. You're not right for me and I'm not right for you, and you should move on to find who's right for you, and I should focus my attention on who I'm right for. If you are able to get the— make the progress that you need to make just by being a member of the free community or the paid community and taking advantage of the content, then the likelihood that you are primed and ready for a deeper, uh, level of access and implementation help as a paid subscriber or as a client is much higher. Our chances for success are much higher, and the joy and fulfillment for all of us is going to be much higher. And at no point do you ever have regret for the buying decision that you just made, whether that's the free subscription that you paid for with an email, or the paid subscription that you made for just $9 a month or $90 a year, or the one-on-one relationship that you paid for that helped you accomplish what you were trying to accomplish in 1 month or 3 months instead of 1 year or 3 years. At no point do you say, I really regret having spent that money because I never, I never asked you for money. I never tricked you into money. I never created false urgency to get your money. At every step of the way, you are deciding for yourself that it's time for you to take the next step with getting help from Scott to accomplish what you want to accomplish. Yeah.

And then that is even— and then that also makes it that the person who's ready— I'm sort of at that point, just putting myself out there, Scott— but like, it also means that I'm ready to take the actions to get the results, which I will give you credit for happily because it's because of the community, then I feel ready to have, you know.

And that's been my experience too. And it was interesting yesterday, or this week, when I spoke to about 20 nonprofit consultants, and it was the very first time I presented the whole idea that— and I'd never done that before. And so the response was very interesting to me because clearly they were It helped me see what they weren't ready for, what they didn't see. And it was just really— and I got a couple of people interested where it's going to— or they're interested enough for whatever reason. I haven't followed up enough yet. But like when I connected with you, maybe it's— I need something I don't have is like the white paper. Like something that lays it out. And, but I also need that activity, you know, what's the flow of work? So that's, I think that if I can just put that all together, so I've got some, my tools, I guess you would say, to share and to help because right now I can talk about it, but when the conversation's over, there's nothing. So I need to do that. I guess that's what I'm—

well, this, uh, that's a great insight from both of you, and I appreciate both of you sharing. And it speaks to what I call the 3 levels of coaching. And whether you see yourself as a coach or as a teacher or as a healer or as a consultant or just in general a difference maker. It doesn't— like, don't get hung up on the term. In general, coaches, good coaches, are people that can help someone get from where they are to where they want to be with the greatest amount of effectiveness and efficiency, in general. So we're all acting like coaches through most of— many of our relationships. As a father, I was coaching my kids, my boys, to become men every single day. I didn't call it that, but the way I approached it was very coachy. And so when you are thinking about the 3 levels of coaching, and this speaks to what Penny was just sharing and the experience that you're having, Molly, there are coaches that are coaching for insight. They're using the Socratic method and they keep asking you questions and, and helping you arrive at your own insights. It's very tedious and it takes a long time because people are loaded with cognitive biases and distortions and narrative fallacies and false beliefs and all that. So it takes a lot of questions for— to help someone arrive at their own insight all of a sudden. So That's, I think, where most of us begin, and it's a good skill to build, but it doesn't result in anything because arriving at the insight yourself feels like you just accomplished something when actually nothing has changed. You just finally figured out the problem that you actually have. The next level is where most coaches live, which is their they're instead of coaching around inspiration, they're coaching for— instead of inspiring a revelation, they are coaching for insight, like trying to get to that level of insight that will help a person grow into their potential or, you know, start to become the kind of person that can accomplish the thing that they want to accomplish. Again, coaching for insight, when someone arrives at this revelation, this idea about where they are and where they want to go and what's in their way. Just getting the roadmap feels like it accomplished something, and it hasn't. Like, you can see the path, you can see the destination, but you're— there's no incentive to do anything because dopamine is kicked in. And just the fact that you see it all feels like you did it all. That is like, this is why announcing that you are going to lose 30 lbs. feels like you lost 30 lbs. and you end up being the same 30 lbs. overweight that you were at the beginning of the year. What I think is the, the, the 3rd level and the level that I certainly am always trying to coach at is coaching for intentional action. Yes, I am going to help you arrive. I am going to inspire you. To arrive at an insight. I'm not going to just use the Socratic method. I'm going to use empathetic antagonism to help you see what you don't see, see your blind spots, see your black holes, see the faulty reasoning, see whatever it is that you need to see as quickly as possible. And then I'm going to get under your skin just enough to inspire you to take intentional action, to actually take the next step and do the next thing, help you see not just where, where you want to be and where you are and what you have and see what has to happen, but inspire you to identify or help you see the next most immediate constraint and then give you a clear mechanism for navigating that most immediate constraint. And the act of taking intentional action session after session, week after week, day after day, you know, there's also, there are people that work with me every single day, Monday through Friday. Um, that's how you're going to make meaningful progress towards what matters to you. And, and the big distinction is that the best coaches that I've ever worked with, and the coach that I aspire to be, is I want to coach myself out of a job as quickly as possible. Most coaches that are coaching for inspiration and insight want you to stay with them for as long as they can get you to stay with them. It's in their best interest for you to not make progress, but to continue to feel like It's, it's helping because your subscription, your payment will just keep coming in month after month after month. I'm not worried about— I don't want anybody to be loyal to anybody but themselves in your journey. And so as a coach, I want to get you to accomplish the things that you need to accomplish to get where you want to be and earn the skills and, um,, find the principles and the processes that will help you repeat that progress over time without me, because then you are on your way. You're making the difference that you want to make in the world. You're helping make the world a better place, which is part of my legacy. And I can move on to the next person that needs my help identifying where they want to get to, where they actually are, and how they can get there and help them start to make that progress. And so it takes quite a bit of intellectual security and, um, a lot of practice to earn the faith in your— and trust in your abilities to help people get results to get to that point. But the only way to do that is to start doing it. And I did it very poorly for a lot of years before I started to do it well. Um, but that's the journey. That's what you're signing up for. So we're going to have to leave it there because we've gone almost a full hour with this broadcast, which I intended to be 30 minutes. Fire hose to the face, right?

Thank you.

And I hope this is helpful. Hope to see you both next week. And for everybody else that is listening in replay, if you reply to and restack the post that I'm putting out every Monday, you will receive— if you are a member of the Soulpreneur Success Circle of paid subscribers, you'll receive an invite to attend our next session, which should— we plan to talk about the forever offer, how to be able to make what you do and how you do it be the marketing so that you can achieve preeminence in your craft and perennialism in your offer and establish yourself in a position of the one and only choice for the people that need you to accomplish what they want to accomplish. So until then, thanks very much. Appreciate you, Penny and Molly.

Thank you. This is very helpful. Yes.

Thank you.