How to Start a Coaching Business Q&A with Terry Rice | 3/11/2021

Okay, welcome to Q and A. We have a small number of attendees here today, so I'm going to go ahead and read the questions that came in advance, and if you ever can't make it, you're welcome to do so as well. So just send some questions in, can grab them for you during these sessions. First one is, what if you have a contact that you don't know very well, but they're your ideal client profile? How do you best leverage that connection without coming off as salesy? So whenever I have someone that I really, really want to connect with, but again, it's like a casual connection and you want to be just more genuine, I guess, is one way to say how you reach out to them. I've enjoyed creating videos using a tool called Loom L o O M. And you can create a video saying, hey, hey, Walden, you know, I've been following you for a while, and I wanted to reach out because I think it'd be great if we work together. Here's a few ways that we could do so. And I saw this post that you put up two weeks ago on LinkedIn, and that's really what made me want to reach out, because based on that, I think we can do this together and it would be great. So if you send someone a personalized video, it's very clear you're not just throwing stuff at the wall. And the benefit with Loom is you can send them a link, a URL, where they click on it in the video plays. And then beyond that, like beneath the video player, you can put in additional content, like maybe a link to your website, testimonials, whatever you want to give them more information. And what I really like about the tool is you can tell when someone played your video. So you'll get an alert saying that Walden watched your video, and you'll know that you're not getting ignored. And I've seen people use this successfully, including myself. But one of my friends, this woman, Jessica Tork, she works at Teachable, when she had a podcast, that's how she got some of her best guests. She would make a video about them saying, you know, I've been following the news and, you know, I commented on your post on Instagram a few weeks ago, so on and so forth. Now she got a bit more complicated. She would actually have these videos edited so there'd be clips of the person she was talking about as she was talking about those specific things. So. So she went, well, she knows how to do this stuff. But again, just the tool Loom works very well for that. And as an extension, what I've done before, especially back when I focused on digital marketing, is I would solve people's problems for them. I would say, hey, on your website there's this problem. If you move this here, this will work better because of this. Or I did some research on your social media feed and I realized these posts get more engagement than these posts. Like I'll show you right now, when you have just text, you get this much engagement. When you have a text in a picture, it's this. So I proactively solve problems for people and said, hey, if you have any questions, you know, my information is below, go ahead and check it out. So I strongly recommend doing that. And maybe what you do is you have like a top 40 list, the top 40 people that you really, really want to work with, and you make four of those videos a day. If you do that, within the course of two weeks, 10 business days, you would have gone through that entire list. Are you going to get a response from all of them? Probably not. But again, it's better than just sending some kind of random message on LinkedIn or through Instagram where you can actually show that it's personalized because you're saying their name, talking about things they've done, and in my case, solving problems for them proactively. So that's what I would recommend. Another question is how to confidently price and sell yourself when you don't have a sales background but have a valuable skill. That's tough, right? Because maybe you're an expert at like graphic design or you know, some kind of consulting. You know, I'm sure a lot of you that's the case, but you're not a salesperson. I think it's very important to focus on the long term benefit of the advice that you're giving someone. So let's say you help them like clean up their leads, help them implement Salesforce or HubSpot, right, a CRM tool. And it might take you 10 hours to do it, but if their lead flow has been improved going forward by what, 20%, that could be millions of dollars per quarter, per year, whatever it is. But unfortunately, as experts, sometimes we don't think about the long term benefit of what we're doing. We're like, oh, it's obvious, everybody knows how to do this. No, they don't. That's why they're hiring you. So realize the impact you're having after you're done and then charge accordingly. So that's why you have to ask These questions, right? Let's pretend in that situation you are helping them with their, you know, their leads. You would say, okay, well, you know, how many leads do you get per quarter? What's the average conversion rate? What's the average deal value, meaning how much do you get per deal? And you'll see what their revenue is. So you would say, well, if I help you fix your deal flow and you get 20% more of these deals closing, how much more money would you make? $300,000. You know, I'm making this up. Well, heck, if you charge them $30,000 for that, that's a good deal. But the thing is they're making another $300,000 per quarter. So for the rest of the year, that's 1.2 million. But again, you only charged $30,000. So now there's a 40x multiplier on the value that you provided. So think about it from that perspective. But that also involves asking more questions. And sometimes, you know, you just want to get through the call or you just want to like, you know, sound smart or whatever it is. So when you're asking these questions, it might seem like digging too deep or you're, you know, maybe you're bothering someone. But if you don't, you don't know what ROI you can provide. In this case, if you don't know how much revenue is at stake. So be, be sure to ask that, that question or those questions and that way you'll feel more confident charging, you know, your rates. But you're not going to get a yes from everyone. And that's just how it goes. Typically, if you're closing at least 30% of your of your calls, that's good. So that means 70% you might lose. You know, it is what it is. But what you can't do is let that impact your self worth or, you know, how you perceive yourself, right, because, or how you, how you charge it for your services, because not everyone thinks that way. I'll give you a good, a good example. Back when I did digital marketing consulting, I worked with this company that made like a plus size woman's clothing and they spent I think it was around $40,000 that year on paid ads. And they got one conversion, meaning they sold one dress. So not doing too well. And in fact they lost money on it because they were so happy to get a sale. They took that woman out to dinner to ask her questions about why she wanted to buy their product. They're doing some research. They lost money on dinner, right? So I said to them. Okay, I can audit your campaigns for you and I'll see, you know, what's going on with your ads, what's going on with your tracking all this stuff. And I think I was going to charge them like $2,000 for it. And like, oh, that's way too much. And I'm like, you just spent $40,000 and got one sale. I'm this expert coming in with all these testimonials. I used to work at Facebook, and I'm telling you right now, I can at least diagnose and probably fix this problem for 2000. And you don't want to do it. So if I were to like lower my rates for that person, that would have been ridiculous. There was something clearly wrong with them and how they valued my work. Right. So that's an extreme example, but it happens all the time and it still happens to me to this day. I mean, and I'm not nitpicking, but there was this organization that reached out to me for a speaking event and it was like an hour long, so I think I was gonna charge him like a thousand bucks or something because I already had the content done. And, and they said to me, like, oh, you know, you want a thousand dollars just to talk? And I'm like, dude, it's more than talking. Like, when I talk, people make money, right? So. And I gave you a discount, actually, because it was a newer company. And I was like, that's, that's my rate, you know, like, I don't. What, what you want me to tell you? And they came back later, they're like, oh, can you do it for $200? I'm like, no. Like, I would, I would have done it for free for a nonprofit, for, for, you know, for the right situation. But if someone doesn't respect, you gotta walk, right? So just, just be aware of that. Actually, this is funny because this person saying, I have an opportunity to speak for a well known organization and their budget is only $300 and there's 15 people in attendance. Should I still do it? I am. If you're, if you're trying to like test out new content, I don't see a problem with doing it for free, to be honest. Because with 15 people in attendance, there's less pressure to be perfect, which is never going to happen anyways. And you do want to get those reps in. That's what comedians do. Like before they have like a big Netflix special, they're going to dive bars. Like in Buffalo. I used to live in Buffalo. I'M not dissing the city, but I'm saying like they'll go to dive bars and they'll keep on testing out their material. They'll get feedback by way of, you know, laughter in this case. And that's how they tweak it. So on your end, what you can do is just use it as an opportunity to test it out in front of a live audience and think you're paying for research. If you go back to market research for a product, you might pay tens of thousands of dollars for it. You're actually getting paid to do it if you're getting 300 bucks. So if that's the mindset you have, then you don't feel like you're getting ripped off for delivering this content in this way. So I think that makes sense. Another lot of speakers today, another question regards to speaking. And this woman's being asked to speak at a public library. But the content is going to be recorded and they're not willing to pay. Okay, so not get willing to pay for that one either. Again, on my end, if it's a recorded course, say like an hour long and the library is like at a larger municipality, you know, it does make sense to have them expose you to that many people. If you're just starting out, once you're established, like maybe that then it's a little different. But if you're, think about it this way, if 20 people watch it in a month, right? That's 20 people who saw you speak for an hour and you might be on social media begging to get the time of days from someone and they're ignoring you, but this organization got 20 people to watch you for an hour. I think that's worth it. And what I would do is this, I would use that as an opportunity to reach out to other libraries and say, hey, I see you have these, these resources on your website. I have this recorded workshop I did on best ways to understand your go to market strategy or whatever it may be. How do you feel about putting this on your website as well? So now you're at two libraries, right? I would do that for like the 50 biggest libraries in the US and say anyone that has like a resources like video resources on their website for business, in this case, I would just pitch them that. I would say, am I already on this library's website? So you have that third party validation. Would you be interested in me, you know, appearing on yours too? Not going to charge anything. But from there, I mean again, there's all these eyeballs on you and Your content. So what I would actually do to get more strategic is I would hire a virtual assistant to get the contact information for all these libraries and maybe even pre qualify the ones that already have recorded content on their, on their website. So you're not asking them to do something that they haven't done before. Then you're reaching out and saying, I see that you have this type of content on your website. I noticed you don't have this topic covered. I have a video that's already prepared. Would you like me to. Would you like to host it on your site for me? Hell, that's worth spending a week sending out those emails. Because again, if you get 10 yeses, that's thousands of people. Thousands of people. They're gonna see you for an hour being this knowledge based expert, sharing your information and then reaching out to you afterwards. And I want us all to think from that perspective because we're often like, oh, how do I get more likes on Instagram or whatever it is. But it's like that's not focusing on impact. Right. Impact is getting someone to hear you express your zone of genius and then encouraging them to follow up with you afterwards. Right. So if you can do that by being on some library's website, so be it. You know, I think it's a good idea. All right, we do have a question that came in here. What are your thoughts about training videos where the presenter does not appear on camera? Are they as effective as those where you appear on camera? So I've done both. Gosh, I've done both. I've done the on camera ones. Obviously that's what I did for this course. And it took a while because it's like, oh, my lighting is wrong. Oh, I forgot to turn my microphone on. Oh, like someone walked by or whatever. Oh, they're doing construction. Great. You know, it takes a while to make it perfect. Whereas if you're doing a voiceover, you know, you can easily fix those things if there's mistakes. So I've done some where it's completely me not on camera whatsoever. I'm just going over slides. I did that for more than one occasion. But what I've done in the beginning is I'll just show a picture of myself. At least. I'll say, like, here's, you know, if you want to put a face with a name, here you go. And I've gotten great feedback from those. You know, it worked very well. So I don't see a problem with that whatsoever. I've also done a hybrid model where I'll talk. Let's say there's five modules. I'll talk at the beginning of each module for like 30 seconds. Like, hey, everyone in this module, we're going to talk about creating content on LinkedIn and the five ways to do it. So get ready. I know some of you might have some jitters, but I'm going to be there with you every step of the way and then I'm gone. I'm off camera for the rest of the presentation. You can do that too, or just have a very brief intro of you on camera at the beginning. But it can still be as impactful without you. I took a course last year, I think it was on LinkedIn marketing actually, which was amazing. And the guy was on camera, but the majority of the time was just like that talking head where it's like you can see his whole screen at the bottom part down here, his head's there. And Loom is a tool you can use for that, by the way. Just use loom.com I think it is. So you can do that too. If it's stopping you from creating the course, being on camera, definitely do that. But then beyond that, when you're just sharing your screen, it's so much easier to edit because again, it's like you just change that one little section. You're not like, oh, great, now I have to go rerecord this whole course. So I've seen that happen a lot. Especially you're talking about something that changes quite often, like digital marketing. My first course that I made, actually this is years ago, was a Facebook marketing course. And unfortunately that platform changes all the time. So I had too many videos where I was talking like this saying, hey, one way to make ads is like this. It's the best way. Then that way went away. So I'm like, great, now this video is useless. So I actually stopped selling the video because it was outdated. So yeah, the more that you're not on camera, the easier it is to edit things, either as updates occur or if you just kind of slip up a little bit, makes it 10 times easier. So that's what I would suggest. Hopefully that helps. Yeah, cool. Awesome. But all of us should be striving for that, really. I mean, if you're a knowledge based expert and you want to scale your time, you want to have a course, and I talk about this in the course, you can have like the three C's. The first one is an online course, has, you know, great content. It's going to get people to their desired Outcome, exercise and activities, all that good stuff, then you can also do coaching. It could be group coaching, it could be individuals, but they also get access to that course. So when you are doing any kind of coaching, you're answering questions, you're not really teaching as much and therefore you can be more impactful in the time you have with that person. And then lastly, there's more consulting where it's like you're more hands on work and you're charging more for that, obviously, but you can still give them that baseline course as the core curriculum. So once you actually let me take a step back, that's the benefit of delivering content live, because you know what tweaks to make before you make the course. So again, if I can talk for free for some library I've never heard of, live and get feedback, heck, that's better than me making a course knowing that some questions my audience asked weren't addressed in the course. Cause I never did it live. Right? So again, that's the benefit again, comedians before they do the Netflix one, they're in Buffalo, right? Seeing if that joke was funny or not or how they can tweak it before they go record it for Netflix and charge them $60 million. So yeah, that's something we should all strive for once we feel comfortable with the content. And if you want to make updates, you know, you can do it too. Got another question here. Oh, I love this one. How would you describe the difference between consulting and coaching? I have been so guilty in the past of using those terms interchangeably. And actually it was teaching a live workshop on the consulting business where I learned really the operational definition. So coaching is when you help people find the answers to their problems by asking them the right questions. So the answer comes from within. And I'll give you an example. I was talking to one of my clients today and she wants to find organizations to speak at and she's like, you know, what organizations should I, should I look for? And I said, you know, you know your audience better than I ever will. So knowing what you know about them, what organizations do they belong to, what conferences do they attend? Like what you know, I want you to crawl inside their head and tell me what you think. And then she just spit out the answer, right? So that's coaching. Another thing could be if she was saying like, hey, you know, I'm afraid To post on LinkedIn, I just don't feel comfortable, I would say, well, what do you think's holding you back from that? And what you can do with something Called the five whys. I think this came from Toyota. But the five whys is where you ask the question why five times and you'll eventually get to an emotional response that the person can somewhat solve for themselves or they'll have that aha moment. So it might sound annoying asking why, why, why, but yeah, that, that, that approach helps people kind of just keep on digging deeper and deeper and deeper and, and to the source of their challenges. Now, consulting is different. Consulting is you being this expert, them describing the problem, and then you prescribing a solution based on their problem. So again, the person might say, hey, I don't know how to post on LinkedIn. And I'll say, okay, well, here's some steps for doing it. You need some kind of engaging headline, valuable content, an engagement prompt at the end, and then some kind of hashtags, right? That's, that's, that's me consulting. But I strongly feel the best consultants have some aspect of coaching that goes into as well. Because I could still say all that stuff. And if she's like, oh, I don't feel comfortable, I would say, well, why? You know what I mean? Like, I can't just say like, okay, well, that's my job. You know, I'm done. So they might not get to that outcome if you don't coach them on how to get over those, those challenges. Same with coaching. I think if you realize someone's just stuck, you're asking them questions, you're like, why? Why, why? Maybe after a while you just kind of chime in with some advice because otherwise you're never going to get anywhere. So in my opinion, the best coaches, the best cult consultants have, they leverage both of those, those approaches. So that's the definition. I think some practices lend themselves more to a consultant than a coach. Because if you're like a management consultant, right, you're like McKenzie, you would be charged with making an assessment and suggestions. You wouldn't just say, well, what do you think's wrong here? You know, you would have to say, all right, I got some ideas on how to fix this, so. Or like a life coach is more likely to ask you questions as opposed to, you know, it's telling you how to live your life. So question here is, so it's safe to say that consultants need to be an expert, while coaches don't necessarily need to be experts. I want to be guarded the way I answer this question. So, yeah, consultants have to be experts at a process that's applicable to whatever industry they're consulting in. Right. They absolutely have to. Whereas coaches, and I'll take a step back, I'll explain why. Like this guy I know, Justin Doyle, he's a high performance coach for like high net worth individuals. They work at hedge funds, so he's a coach, but he used to work at a hedge fund. So he knows what's going through their head and how much pressure they're under. So when he's asking them questions and he's pulling, you know, answers out of them in the back of his head, he knows where he's going. Sometimes he just wants to guide you there. So it does help for him to be an expert in that area. But really, coaches are experts at pulling it out of you. And I think many of them may be industry agnostic. They might specialize in one thing versus another. Right. So career coaching, for example, as opposed to, you know, a high net worth individual. But I feel like if you kind of threw them in a situation, they would be kind of able to hold their own to an extent just by going through, you know, maybe chapter one of their coaching playbook. Because their goal is to ask impactful questions that pull the answer out of you. So that's my, that's my response because I do want to be respectful to coaches because I didn't understand really how hard it was until I learned more about the process. It's not just like saying why, why, why several times. It's, it's, there's an empathy that goes into it where maybe you realize someone's not being as honest as they could be for one reason or another. And it's, I don't say it's like being a psychiatrist, but like being someone who you want to open up to and have those conversations with. Whereas a consultant can be more of authoritative figure. And to say, no, this is the way to do it. You know, a coach, if you don't have a good relationship with them, you won't get a good outcome because you don't want to open up to them. So that's, that's why there is this, these, these, these soft skills I think are very important. And maybe not everyone has to be honest because, you know, not everyone has good bedside manner. Right. I'm sure you have friends like that where, like, they'll give you bad news and like, you couldn't have said it in a nicer way. You know, like, what's, what's your deal? So, so I don't think everyone should be a coach and maybe not everyone can be a consultant either. If you can't explain, you know, complex things. Well, that's a skill you can develop. But empathy is sometimes more challenging, I think, to develop if you don't have that necessarily neatly in you. I have to. I actually have to work on it a lot because I'm. I'm stoic. So I'm like, yeah, it is what it is. You know, we have to. We have to do this. But fortunately, over the years, I've learned to soften up a little bit. So you're saying, sounds like coaches. Do you need to be experts at the skill of coaching? Oh, yeah, absolutely. I hope to be able to wear both hats in different contexts. Yeah. I mean, I think, because, like, it happens to me all the time, and I enjoy playing this role, but, like, I'll give my clients a task. I'll say, hey, you know, go do this stuff. You know, it's gonna be great. And they'll come back to me to say, look, I'm doing this stuff. And it's just like, I get it, but I'm just really disappointed that, like, it's taking so long to, you know, to happen. And I'm like, well, hey, I hear you there. Let me share my personal philosophy. It's to be purpose driven, prepared and patient. And right now, you're purpose driven. You love what you do. You're prepared. You know, you're doing these. These action items. But now you have to be patient. And patience is a form of wisdom. Realizing it takes time for things to unfold. Right. That's not consulting. That's coaching. Right. It's showing, you know, to an extent that. That softer side and saying, you know, what does it mean for you when you achieve these goals? What's the vision you have once you do accomplish this? Okay, so are you willing to put in this hard work? You know, can you. Can you push through for another three or four months? You know, how would you feel if you quit right now and went back to your, you know, the way things were before? Those are questions I've had to ask my clients, even though I'm not a coach, I'm a consultant. So, again, I think the best ones can blend either one when it's. When it's appropriate. So, yeah, another question here, circling back from what type of camera and equipment do you use for your videos? Okay, good question. So right now, the camera I'm using is not the one I would use for my courses. I'm using a webcam. But for my. For my courses, when I'm on camera. Let me take a step Back the course that you're all seeing. Where I'm on camera. That's a Canon Rebel 3 to DSLR camera. And the benefit is if you want, you can shoot in 4K, which is like higher resolution. And this is really cool actually. Let me just explain this. So you're talking, you're like, hey everyone, there's five boroughs in New York City. Manhattan, Queens, the Bronx. And if you forget, what you'll do is you'll pick up the line right where you left off. But then the editor will zoom out or zoom in between cuts. So you might be saying 10 words, but it's not continuous. But they'll zoom in for 10 words, zoom out for 10 words. So it seems continuous. But you want to shoot in a higher resolution in order to do that. So if you can't remember your lines, like I can't, you would do that. I also have a teleprompter. So I have a teleprompter. There's a link on my website to all this gear, but it helps. I don't really use it as much as I used to, but what I'll do is I have the teleprompter set up and it'll just be bullet points on it. It's not actually scrolling, it's just like five bullet points. Remember this, that, that and that. So I can speak more continuously without doing those cuts. So that's one thing. So first of all is the camera, then a tripod obviously and then lighting. So I live in New York City, I'm in an apartment. So there's light, but it's like, you know, kind of depends what's happening. So lighting is important. Like right now I just have like a selfie light on my desk. So if I turn it off, like look like this, which is probably not too appealing. If I turn it back on. There you go. So I have two 18 inch ring lights, so larger ring lights and then two like box lights because you want a light more or less in front of you, one to the side, like your side light and then might be have two behind you that are hitting the wall or whatever's behind you to get rid of the shadow. Next thing, if you don't have like a white wall behind you, you can just buy paper from Amazon, like, like a four foot wide paper, whatever color you want or whatever kind of backdrop that. And then the last thing would be a microphone. So I have a lapel mic that I wear and that hooks up to my camera. So there's all that. But honestly, I don't need to buy all that gear the first time. I don't think you can just use your cell phone and the quality will be decent enough, especially if you have an iPhone. I would start there first and then make sure you have light and make sure you can hear yourself. Okay, but I probably spent like $2,000 on all that gear and I'm glad to have it now because I take pictures of my kids too. But you to your point earlier, you can just record yourself talking over slides. And my camera right here isn't that bad. This is like some Logitech camera, the actual name right now this probably cost like a hundred bucks. So this is probably okay too. It's just if you really want to be able to edit a lot, like do the zoom in, zoom out thing and you're further away, then you'd want to have more gear. Hopefully that helps. I know that was like a mouthful. Which website do I have links to? My equipment actually have an Amazon store, so I'll put that in right now. So one thing you can do is have an Amazon affiliate account and I just put the link into it. But I'm curating all the books. I like the gear that I use different. Actually they have some like my supplements and stuff I use for working out too. But let's just talk about this for a minute. As, as a knowledge based expert, you should strongly consider doing some kind of affiliate marketing. So on my end, the app that I use for my emails is convertkit. So convertkit, you can automate your emails, you can set up different flows based on what we're doing on your website, so on, so forth costs like 50 bucks a month or so. But if you signed up through my affiliate link then I think I get like 30% commission. So I would get 15 bucks a month which is pretty good because times that by, you know, 50 people, that's like 650 bucks a month or no, 750 bucks. 750 bucks a month. That's good money, right? So people are going to start asking you questions already. Oh, what books do you read, what gear do you use? All this stuff, you should be prepared to monetize it. And that's another good reason to build your email list because you can say, hey everyone, you know when I'm doing podcasts I use this. What mic do I have is like the shure, whatever, some sure microphone. Uh, this one's expensive but my wife was able to expense it through her her job so that was good. But be prepared to do that because your knowledge is one revenue stream. Do you consult, do coaching, do consulting, also create an online course, but also make money through affiliate marketing. Also make money doing paid speaking gigs. Right. There's several different ways you can monetize your knowledge because it's the same, it's the same hub. These are all different, different spokes though. So long winded answer to a short question. But that's what I would recommend is setting up affiliate accounts with tools that you use on a regular basis. One that I use a lot for invoicing is Honeybook. So the benefit of that tool is once you have your, your proposals and your contracts set up and I give you sample contracts in the, in the course, by the way, I think it's a module. Five. Yeah, five, I think. So you'll see sample contracts there. But once you set them up in this tool called Honeybook, you send these off in like five minutes. You just put the person's name in their start date, all this stuff. That tool I think is 400 bucks a year. But if you sign up now, there's some kind of discount. I think it's like a dollar a month for the next five months. It's pretty cheap, but on my end I would get 50 bucks every time someone signs up. So I was looking at my phone and I was like, Well, I made $2,000 this year from that. That's pretty cool. You know, just having it on your website and mentioning a tool that you actually use and all of a sudden you made $2,000. Right. I'm not doing ads around it, I'm not doing SEO or like YouTube videos or anything like that. But like just from talking about it casually, that's good money. That's like for one of my kids, that's their, that's their daycare that I have to pay per month, which is a lot of money. So when they start daycare again in summer, at least I have one month paid for one of them. But that's, that's how it goes and that's the way I think about it. I'm like, okay, I paid one bill with this affiliate revenue stream, now I'm going to pay another one. So we call it the snowball method, where it's like one small bill, then another, then another, then another. It started with just my cell phone bill, now it's like my kids daycare so and so forth. But when you do that, you start getting paid for who you are, not just what you do. And that's also the benefit of Building a brand, right? So not just a knowledge based expert, but this personal brand that you have, which we talk about in module three, I believe, three and four. So it's super important because of all those additional revenue streams. There's been times when I've done talks for like Squarespace, haven't really been paid for it, but people go to my website afterwards and they'll buy stuff. So I'll make like $3,000 off that. So it's pretty cool. That's all part of being prepared, right? Another question here. Do you recommend using scripts in order to stay on track for videos? I don't want to be too tongue tied, but want to keep a smooth flow. Yeah. So scripting is beneficial for two reasons. One is just the act of writing it down will help you think more clearly about what you want to say. And when it is time to record there's options. One is you can just kind of look at your script and say, okay, I got the gist of it, you know, I'll talk. Or you can script the whole thing. Right? That's the benefit of when you're doing it, just sharing your screen. Your script is written, you know, like literally in the notes section. So you can just easily read that, sound more confident, so on, so forth and not mess up as much. But what I would say is for me, like I often I'll have a script, but I'll go off script and my editor, I'll just say, okay, pick it up from here. Cut this part out where I messed up. Because sometimes you know what it's like when you're, you go too far. You're like, okay, forget it, that was bad. You can just cut that part out. But to answer your question, yes, have a script. And when you do the text over, when you're just talking over slides, it makes it 10 times easier. But when you, okay, here's the big thing, right? When you write the script, write it like you talk, not how you write, which is totally different. Because right now, if you looked at a script from this conversation, there's sentences that are blending in together. I'm starting words, sentences with the words and which I normally wouldn't write. But write the script the way you write, not the way you talk. And if you want, what you can do is this. I like this is. I don't like the word hack because hacks don't last. But a tactic you can use is you can use Google Docs, but Google Docs has a transcription mode. So you would just talk and it would Write what you're saying on your screen. So you can kind of just say what you want to say. That's going to be the baseline of your script, and then maybe edit it if you want, or if you do a good job, leave it that way. So Google Docs is a way to do it for free. There's also an app I have. It's called Otter AI O T T E R dot A AI and what happens is, as you talk, it will transcribe what you're saying. I'm going to try to give you a live demo of it, but what I found is it can be a little bit more accurate than Oops can be a little bit more accurate than Google Docs, but that's what the app that I'm using right now, if you look, it's doing a pretty good job of picking up what I'm saying, and it'll transcribe it for you in real time. What I'm saying is you can do the same thing with your scripts, and then you can just talk and then edit it later. Pretty cool. This one's called Otter AI O T T E R AI and I wish I had an affiliate link for that. I would give it to you, but I haven't signed up yet. Yeah, I know some people use these during their sales calls. So if I'm talking to you right now and I'm trying to assess what's going on or try to sell something to you, I could use Otter AI to transcribe it. And then let's say I'm trying to figure out the roi, I can just skip to the part where I asked you, oh, what was your revenue last year? I can just do a control F for it on my desktop and find that part of the conversation and say, okay, cool, here it is. So instead of me trying to fumble through my notes or even watch a video, like trying to fast forward to that part, you can use Otter AI to record your conversations. And I think there's an integration with Zoom, actually. And as a result of that, you would just have the transcript like right in front of you as you're talking, because it's live. So you're just looking back at like, wait a second, what did he say about that? Okay, cool. You know, so yeah, these are all, you know, tools you can use for increased productivity. But the ones that I, that I use are normally pretty cheap. I mean, this is like 8 bucks, I think 8 bucks a month. So it's a pretty good deal. Those, those $8 add up pretty Quick too. So don't buy too much stuff. It's only 8 bucks, only 12 bucks, only 13 bucks. All of a sudden, like I'm spending $500 a month on random apps. So make sure you're using them. There's a question that came in. Any thoughts on best digital marketing forms for B2B? Other than LinkedIn, I'm considering a marketing solution to HR professionals. Facebook doesn't seem to be the best place. So digital marketing forums, I would start looking. Well, Reddit is always a good spot. Reddit, so check that out. Look for threads that include digital marketers. What I'm seeing more people do though is join Slack communities. And I'm not sure what it is about Slack, but for some reason like the conversations flow a bit. I don't wanna say better there, but it seems to be less spammy than some of the Facebook groups you might be used to. So that's an option. I would say anytime you have to pay to be a member of a Facebook group, the outcomes there are a lot better. So I'm a member of this group called adleaks A D L E A K S and I'm not a digital marketer anymore, but I do some work with the company so they let me in a group for free. I think it's a hundred bucks a month. I'm not saying join this one definitely, but the conversations I see there are very high level. They're not, and I don't want to make fun of any, but they're not like basic stuff like oh, what's click through rate mean? It's like these are good conversations where people are just supporting each other, they're sharing case studies and that's really the circle you want to be in, is where people are putting some skin in the game and actually paying to be a member of a community because there's less trolls, there's less, you know, basic questions. I would look for some like that. I know adleaks does have a free version. You can take a look at that too or other groups like that. But hell, even if you start like five bucks a month, it is weeds some people out. So look for that. And then also look for Slack communities as well. I would do that. Another thing is let's say like there's like workshops or webinars you can attend that are focused on those topics. Maybe interact with some of the other attendees while you're there because you can form a network of other professionals you can talk to as well. But you got to find those tribes or when I first started out doing digital marketing, I joined this guy, John Loomer. He had, like, this Facebook group group that was really good for Facebook marketers. And it just helped me stay abreast of all the latest updates. Because, like, you're busy working, right? You don't always have time to, like, read blogs and stuff. But I could see the conversations going there, and I knew if I got a lot of engagement, a lot of likes, that it was a good conversation, so I would pay attention there. But it can. It can get so lonely, you know, as you might know already when you know your friends and family don't understand you. Right. They have, like, nine to fives, and you're like, I need someone to talk to about this stuff. So, yeah, I would definitely recommend that. So you have this marketing solution for HR professionals. I like that a lot, actually. Yeah. All right. Any other questions I can help you out with? This have been a fun conversation, like, for me, like, and you'll get this experience, too. But whenever you do any kind of speaking engagement, the most fun part is always the Q and A, because you know what you're gonna say. You're like, okay, let me do my slides. But you never know what. What questions are gonna come up. And that's the fun part. And when I first started teaching, it was like, six years ago at general assembly. I was so used to not being able to answer questions, and it was embarrassing. But that's how you get stronger too, right? Because the next time, you are gonna learn it. And I don't know how many tens of thousands of questions I've answered since then, but it's a lot of fun. All right. Yeah, you did have a lot of questions. That's good, though. I'm glad to hear that. Like I said, it was fun for me like this. For me, it's like working out, you know? Like, you never know what's gonna happen. And, you know, you're testing yourself and learning something new. And when you can't answer the question, you're like, okay, well, let me go learn something new, and I'll come back. It. Awesome. Well, this has been great. So let me know how things go with all those suggestions and hope to see you here next week. But for now, enjoy the rest of your night and your weekend. So take care.