Building Your Business – How To Reach Your Target Market

Hey, it's Mark Podolski, the Land Geek with your favorite niche real estate website, www.thelandgeek.com. and I'm really excited for today's guest. He is going to teach us a lot about business. But before we talk to our guests, I have to properly introduce my co host, the brain, the professor, the Land Geek Sherpa, Scott Todd from Scott todd.net landmodo.com if you're not automating your Craigslist and your Facebook postings, posting domination.com thelandgeek Learn anything about anything. Investor ninjas.com Scott Todd how are you, Mark?

I'm great.

How are you? I'm great, I'm great. I'm really excited about our guest. He's Paul Higgins from buildlivegive.com if you're not familiar with Paul, he is a solopreneur that was able to escape the corporate rat race. In fact, his story is so incredible, I'd rather just hear directly from Paul. Paul, welcome to the podcast. Tell us a little bit about yourself.

Yeah, thanks a lot for having me, Mark and Scott, and welcome to all the listeners. So, yeah, I, my short version is I spent 18 years at one of the biggest companies in the world, Coca Cola, and then almost 12 months ago, my best mate gave me a kidney so I could continue to run my own business. So that's sort of my short version of a very long story.

Wow. Wow. So how did you kind of escape? I mean, you know, you're the biggest one, you are the biggest brand in the world. So it's hard to say escape. But what was that culture like? Because I can imagine as far as jobs are concerned, that might be one of the best ones. But what really motivated you to go out on your own?

Yeah, so look, Coca Cola is a brilliant company and a brilliant brand. I think the, you know, over time the product itself started to lose a little bit of momentum. So, you know, you can tell by my accent I'm from Australia. Or if you didn't, listeners, if you don't know, that's where I'm from. And we're sort of the canary in the coal mine. So, you know, sugar in particular hit hardest here, I think, than most other markets in the world. So brilliant company. But the product itself started to lose a little bit of relevance. And, you know, I could just see, I could see the writing on the wall that it was going to get harder and harder to make profits when, you know, 60 to 70% of the profit that's generated by a Business is a product that people don't really want to drink anymore. So that was one side of it. The other side of it was my inherited condition called polycystic kidney disease was taking effect. And specialist basically said, look, you got two choices here. Do you want to live to see your grandkids or you want to continue working for one of the biggest companies in the world. So the choice was pretty obvious.

Wow. So then what did you do?

Yeah, so I started as an executive coach, and then I quickly realized I was a much better mentor than coach. And then I just worked with smaller businesses and, you know, that's where I suppose there's a parallel. I worked with a lot of solopreneurs and people that had left corporate had a great nest egg. So they invested in property and that was sort of their passive income. But they also needed to generate some cash flow in the short term. And that's led me now to helping mainly coaches and consultants run their own business. But build Live Give is about, you know, build a great business, to live your life and to give back. And a lot of that's through their investment in property.

Interesting, interesting. So, Scott Todd, what are your thoughts? You have a corporate background?

No, I think that, I mean, like, that's the thing is it all comes back down to choices. Right. Mark, we've talked before on this podcast about, like, how we put a lot of emphasis. A lot of people put a lot of emphasis on their corporate gigs. Right? Like, I mean, I know I did thought there was a lot of security in that thing. And the reality is that the security is not there. Right? But you have to decide, like, what type of lifestyle do you want? Do you want that corporate ladder climbing, chasing gig? And if so, cool, go after it. Have fun with it. But man, if you think that there's a better way of living your life, I can tell you that I think that there is a much better way of living your life than inside the walls of a massive corporation. Then go and figure out what you can do to give, like, what can you do to be able to survive? Give your family what they need, and then how can you contribute what you really want? Because honestly, Mark, you and I both know that, like, once you have the time in your life, like once you have the money solved and then you have more time, well then all of a sudden you have more time for a bigger purpose. And life is really about the bigger purpose. It's not about providing for your family. It's really about giving something bigger. And that's. That's where I think that it's kind of cool.

Yeah, no, absolutely. So, so Paul, you know, you kind of mentioned the difference between coach and mentor. What's, what's the difference?

Look, a coach always believes that the answer is in the coachee, so you know they have the answer. It's just you, you've got to ask the questions to get that answer out. So a great analogy was, you know, they always own what's in the glass if you look at a glass of water. But what you're doing is tipping the glass in different angles to get them to see what's in it. So that's what coaching is. Whereas a mentor will share their experience to draw out options that a mentee can then go and make a choice as to which ones they'll do. So one comes coaching is basically coming from the person you're coaching. A mentor is actually sharing their experience to draw out options for the mentee.

Excellent, Excellent. So from your experience, what would you say is some of the worst advice you see or hear given as a mentor?

Look, that's a great question. I know we haven't got all day, but I think there's a lot of people that look for mentors that are 10, 20 years into their journey and they're used to working with businesses that are much larger. So they'll say, look, you know, go and get this expert, go and spend money there, and they're just too far ahead of where someone might be. And they'll follow people like Gary V. Or some of the big guys. And it's. Some of the advice they're giving is where people have got bucket loads of money to spend and test and iterate. So a classic example is just go do paid ads, just go do Facebook ads. That will solve all your woes. But that's, it's not that easy. It's not that simple. And if you're, you know, a solopreneur that hasn't got a big budget, you can risk a lot of money on taking advice like that.

Oh yeah, we see that all the time. Oh, you want to scale, go into paid traffic. It's, you know, it's the only way to scale. It's the only way to get a predictable business. Well, you could predictably go out of business if you don't know what you're doing. They don't talk about that predictability. They don't talk about, you got how well you need to know your numbers and you know, all those things, how much you can spend for a lead. It's just, oh, yeah, go do paid traffic. I 100% agree, Scott. Todd, you're shaking your head.

No, I'm just thinking, you know, like, there is a very clear difference between, like, coaching and mentoring, right? Because ultimately, think about it for a minute, like, anybody could proclaim that they're a coach, right? Like, I'm a coach, and we see this all the time. Like, hey, I've done. I've been doing this business for six months, and I've done 40 deals, and I'm a coach now. Well, you don't know nothing, right? Like, hate to tell you, but you don't know anything. And so, you know, it's easy to proclaim that you're a coach. Really, the value, I think, of any type of relationship that you're going to do, even though it's called coaching per se, is not necessarily coaching. It's mentoring, right? Like, it's really what Paul said, it's really about not swinging a person saying, do this, do that, do that. Because if you do well, then all of a sudden now you've just kind of, like, created a little mini you. And I think that's fine if you're trying to learn something, right? Like, you want to learn how to do this business. That's really where flight school is. It's kind of like a virtual coaching deal. But when you get to one on one, you don't want someone telling you, go do this, because then you're forever reliant on that person to make your decisions. And how many times do we see people, they go through some process and they're like, you know, they've been doing this program for a while, and then they're like, well, what should I choose or what should I do? Well, you should have the knowledge. Hopefully you have the knowledge through our mentoring to be able to make decisions that will guide you the way that you want to. So I think that there's a big difference between. I like what Paul said. I think there's a big difference in coaching somebody, then mentoring them. Right? Like, mentoring gives them the skill set to make decisions, because after a program's over, guess what? You got to make decisions on your own. That's the way it works.

Yeah, absolutely. So, Paul, let's assume that I'm a solopreneur. Scott's the solopreneur, and we want to start getting more leads. And today the lead du jour is going to be Facebook ads. What is your take on it?

Yeah, like, as I said, I don't think Facebook ads look, Facebook Ads is great, where, you know, you got to offer the converts and it's proven and tested and then you can throw, you know, oil on the fire, so to speak. But I think a lot of people haven't got an offer that converts, and that's why their business isn't always growing to fund, you know, the money to invest personally. So to me, I actually don't think financial Facebook's the place to play. I actually think LinkedIn, if you're a B2B business, if you're selling B2B, LinkedIn is the place to be at the moment. And the great news is that it actually doesn't cost you any money other than your time. Now, I know your time is valuable, but LinkedIn I think, is a lower risk way. And there's really three key things. We've got a large community where we Support people with LinkedIn and there's three key things to do. So the first one is, is the content piece. And people always go, I don't know what to say. You know, it's 1300 characters, right? So I just literally did a post in 15 minutes while I was waiting to jump on here. So, you know, the content piece. And there's certain little things with the algorithm for LinkedIn that you ought to know, like, I. E. If you put a link out, like, imagine if you had a shop and then there's a big sign in the middle of the shop saying, hey, go next door, right? No one likes that. LinkedIn's the same, so you've got to make sure that there's little nuances of things you do with the content. The next is the collaboration. If you're posting on LinkedIn and expecting to get people to see your content by doing it solo, you're in the wrong game. It is a team sport, right? The algorithm, you've got to get a certain amount of likes and a certain amount of comments to boost that post. And if you're not working with other people, it's just not going to go anywhere. And the last one is connection. Like I always say to people, how often do you walk into a cafe and say, hey, would you buy me a coffee? It doesn't happen, so why would it happen on LinkedIn? So people send these cold messages to people that they've never given any value to and except they're going to say, yes, sure, I'll buy you a coffee. So, you know, to me, if you get those three things right, like last year for me, you know, most of it was spent in a hospital. I Gotta say, I got 680. Yeah. 683,000 views. 20,000 comments. Sorry, 20,000 likes and 6,000 comments. Right? All from just posting five times a day, great, valuable content on LinkedIn. And that ended up in 172 new clients. Right? So if you're, you know, if you're thinking, I just don't know how to drive traffic. I don't know how to be seen. I don't know how to be authority. I'm telling you, LinkedIn is the place to be.

We sell raw land on LinkedIn.

Can you?

Yeah, can we? You said B2B.

Yeah. Look, I think what you can do is find people that need education on how to invest wisely. So if that's the question, yeah, sure, you can do that on LinkedIn.

Scott. Ty, what are your thoughts? No, I think.

I think that, you know, Mark, I think that ultimately you got to find who your market is, right? Like, where's your market? Is your market on Facebook? And, you know, you know, a lot. A lot of people are using Facebook. Like, look, Facebook is go. I think Facebook is going, like, down. Usage is going down.

I don't.

I don't have the stats behind it, but I know, like, me, I don't like Facebook. You're not gonna catch me on Facebook. And so, essentially, you got to find the platforms where people are. And I think oftentimes people think like, oh, I'm gonna go on Facebook, because everybody's on Facebook. Well, I have a Facebook account, but guess what? I don't go on it. And so, you know, if someone was trying to target me, they're not gonna find me on Facebook. They might see my name, but they're not gonna be able target me. But where am I? They need to go find me. They need to find where they are. And this is really where Grant Cardone even says, omnipresent, Be everywhere, hit all of the platforms. I think that that's a mistake that people make is. I see it all the time, oh, I'm only selling my stuff on Facebook.

Why.

Only one? Why not everywhere? Be everywhere, be omnipresent. And I think that that's a big game changer. When you open your mind, think, like, I'm going to be everywhere. I'm going to hit all these platforms. Some will work, some won't work. You just got to. I mean, but you got to keep showing up, too.

Yeah, no, absolutely. Well, Paul Higgins, your. Your mentorship has been invaluable, and I know you got to run soon, so I just want to ask you for a tip of the week, a website, a resource, a book, something actionable for the art of passive income listeners to go improve their businesses, improve their lives. What have you got?

Yeah, look, I've got two. So one is a free chapter of my book. So it's called Build Live Give. And it's about my journey of leaving corporate mentoring lots of people that have done the same thing to Build Live Give. So that's if you just go to buildlivegive.com on the top right of the website, there's a free chapter. And the second thing is, I totally agree with Scott around, you've got to go where your audience is. And if your audience is on LinkedIn or even if they're on another platform, where do they go to first understand you? These days it's LinkedIn, right? Because it's, you know, it is the easy way to give your experience. Except no other platform gives that. So what I'll do is if you go to Build live. Oh, sorry, blg download.com. so that's blg download.com I'll give you five killer tips to sharpen your profile so when people do hit your profile, there's a chance that they're going to actually have that coffee chat with you.

All right, fantastic. Before we get to Scott Todd's tip of the week, I just want to remind everybody today's podcast is sponsored by flight school. Want to see how 16 weeks can start generating you passive income, transforming your life, building a business, getting you out of the rat race, getting you out of the nine to five. Well, learn more. Go to the land geek.com forward/training and see how Scott Todd can take you up that mountain of land investing without renters, rehabs, renovations, rodents. Quickly, safely and efficiently. Schedule a call the landgeek.com training and learn more. All right, Scott Todd, what's your tip of the week?

Okay, Mark, every now and then, like I might need to create a nice looking chart, right? Like a graph and I can go to Excel and do it. But guess what, check out Chartit IO. Chartit IO. You can go in there, you can add data and man, you can come up with some great looking charts. If you need charts for whatever reason, something unique, something that's not being found in Excel, you can save them to a file, you can embed them in HTML, you can put them on your website, you can have a lot of fun with this thing. So if you need to chart something, check this place out.

Wow, this is geeky.

Yeah, I like the map. The map with the colors and stuff.

Oh, yeah. Wow. And it's free. Holy cow. This is insane. But they, I do like, they have a freemium model. So they're not going to go out of business. Right. I like that. Paul, does it bother you when you see these free softwares I'm not going to sign up for. They're not going to. They don't have a sustainable business.

No. I think like you said, if they've got a step ladder, so if they've got a freemium, so you get lots of value, but then they've got a premium offer that's paid, I think that's good. Because, yeah, if they're free only, I think that is a risk. Unless they've got huge VC funds. And even if you look at Uber and a couple other companies, that doesn't always mean you're going to have long term success.

No, absolutely. And my tip of the week is learn more about Paul Higgins. Go to buildlivegive.com buildlivegive.com and Paul also gave some great resources as well. Well, Paul Higgins, are we good?

We're good. Brilliant to be on Mark and Scott. And if there's anything that listeners need, as you said, they can just find me@buildlivegive.com Fantastic.

Scott. Todd, are we good?

We're good, Mark.

All right, well, I want to thank the listeners and just remind them that the only way we're going to get the quality of guests like a Paul Higgins all the way from Australia is if you do us three little favors. You got to subscribe, get a rate, you got to review the podcast. Send us a screenshot of that review to supportlandgeek.com we are going to send you for free the $97 passive income launch kit course as well as the latest wholesaling course, how to double your money 30 days or less. Please do that. All right, Scott, you ready? I am. One, two, three. Let freedom ring. Paul's like, man, it's early in the morning. Morning for this.

It is. It's early. I mean, believe me.

Paul, when's the last time you did a Tim Tam slam?

Never.

No kidding.

No. Yeah. I'm not Aussie. I'm not a true Aussie. Veggie mite every day. But Tim Tams. No, I'll leave that for my wife. Wife and daughter.

All right, fair enough, Fair enough. Rugby.

Sorry, are we still live?

Yeah, yeah. Just.

Yeah. Victorian. In the Victorian. Victorian. We don't follow rugby. It's afl. Australian football league, you know?

Okay.

Yeah. You know, we do multiple things. We just don't run and hit each other. You know, we've got a jump, we've got a handball, we've got a kick. Yeah. As omnipresent as Scott said. Yeah. Australian footballers are omnipresent. They got all. All the bases covered.

All right, well, thanks again and see every next time.