Copycats, Hiring Senior Roles & Maximising Sales In Quiet Periods

I've had a few debates with friends and those close to me about creating content for virality and creating content for ideal clients. The problem with creating that type of content is sometimes it doesn't really attract your ideal client. So it's kind of like shooting fish in a hay barrel, I think, where.

People go wrong with offers like this or they don't want to make offices. They're like, oh, I need cash now. And it's like, okay. If you are month to month needing cash flow to solve your business problems, that's a problem.

Foreign. Welcome to the Success School podcast. We're on episode 74 today. We're talking about copycats, hiring senior roles and maximizing sales during down periods. Steph, how are you feeling?

I am feeling really good. We actually just wrapped up another podcast episode, which I'm not supposed to say, but I'm gonna say it anyway. And it was so good. I loved hearing all about you.

Yeah. I was talking about myself, which feels so weird. I'm like, yeah, people even want to hear this.

Yeah, we finished the podcast. Tim was like, God, I felt like that was so bo. Boring for everybody. And I was like, nah. But it does feel like that when you talk about yourself, which is super interesting, right? Like, especially when it comes to, like, creating content. People like, oh, I don't do anything interesting.

Yeah, everyone thinks they suck.

Yeah, totally. So what is your personal update?

Yeah. So we've been on this content creation journey, and by now you're probably seeing me smash your feed and you're smashing people's feeds as well. And I've had a few debates with friends and those close to me about creating content for virality and creating content for ideal clients. So there are two, like, separate schools of thought with this. So the virality is obviously very obvious, that you create content that gets shares and sends and whatever, and you're trying to go viral. The problem with creating that type of content is sometimes it doesn't really attract your ideal client. So it's kind of like shooting fish in a hay barrel. So you make 100 pieces of content. Let's say one lands and actually attracts ideal clients to you, versus the other way around. We create content to attract your ideal client. It might not go viral, it might not get shares and likes, but it will attract the right people. People have been giving me advice being like, this type of content is probably not going to go viral. That's the point, guys. I'm not trying to go viral. I'm trying to create content that my ideal client Attracted to. And it just goes to show there's so many, like, armchair coaches out there, I guess, and it's like they actually don't know what is going on behind the scenes to attract the right type of people. So I guess the lesson here, or what my personal update is, like, just take advice from people who actually have the full context as well what you're trying to do.

I love that you're so right. And most people, us included, don't need 100,000 new new people to buy from us and probably couldn't handle it if a hundred thousand new people came to try and buy from us. Be very stuffed. So we. We need, like, you know, 20amonth. Like, it's not a huge amount of people. And so, like, there's no point in going viral, but you do want to kind of.

Really?

Yeah. Like, speak directly to people on the Internet, which I love. Okay, my personal update, I've just got two words here. And I almost just forgot what I was going to talk about because I was like, what the hell is this? Napkin AI.

Napkin AI.

Napkin AI. What a crappy name.

Yeah. Creates napkins for you.

Yeah, Just what I always needed was more napkins. No, Napkin AI. Worst name considering what it does. But I. I guess you could say, like, you draw it on the back of a napkin. Could be like, the concept, but effectively what you do is you kind of put words into this AI, of course, and it spits out images for you. So not images like photos, more images like tables and graphs and infographics and things like that. Obsessed. Loving it.

Yeah.

Using it for all of our YouTube trainings. Using it for, like, any presentation we have going up. Like social media. Super, like, easy to copy and paste. You can just chuck it into canva straight after. Brilliant.

Give us an example.

Okay, so for one of the YouTube trainings I was just doing, I was trying to explain that, like, you need three pillars, and within each of those three pillars, you'll have to create a reel and a carousel as an example. And I put that text into the generator and it spat out, like, an infographic that had a table effectively with a pillar, and then had some, like, arrows and some down arrows. And it just made it look the, like, visual representation of a simplification of what I was trying to say. And it was phenomenal. And we know that 90% of people need to see, to believe or are visual learners. And so I think having these visual aids in anything that you're presenting or on your websites or on your social media content, it's like super helpful. So I love Napkin AI. It's free. Go check it out.

And the team will pop it in the show notes. So today we have a schooling episode. We get into three audience questions and we answer them for you. I'm going to kick us off. And we have Tatum. So she has asked what to do when someone asks you to maintain privacy in a group setting. The person always gets nervous asking people as they will steal their ideas. What do you think?

Love it. Okay, so Tatum, just for everyone's knowledge, is a coach. And effectively what she's asking here is like, should I protect my clients? IP and group coaching containers. Is it safe for people to share in group coaching containers if they have ip? What does this look like? And so I just, I think that you need to use your emotional intelligence here. Like, there's a lot of things I have to say about this topic, but the first one would be like, if I had something that was super private ip, I just wouldn't share it. You know, like, it's just not the container for it. Like, go and find someone else. Just don't do it. Just share it with somebody else. Like, if I was the kind of person who had something that was like, really? Like, let's say you have a patented product or you've got something coming out, like, yeah, don't fucking share it. Like, I feel like that's just so obvious, right? Like, just use your brain like you're in a group coaching center. But maybe you can just message the coach and say, like, hey, can I send this to you privately so you can have a little look like, I just need to look at it. Just ask the question. Like, don't be weird about it. Like, obviously there's going to be some stuff you don't share, right? On the Internet, full stop. Okay. So that aside though, outside of this, pretty much you're going to get copied. You're going to get copied and the more success you have, the more copied you will get. And the closer copycats will come as well. And what I mean by closer is, like, the more directly they will replicate your stuff because they want the exact success that you have. And so they're just going to replicate it exactly the way that you've done it. How do you handle copycats?

Yeah, I 100 agree with you. And I also think business is like a zero sum game as well. I just don't think there is any winning at all. And worrying about something so minor, in my opinion, is, is kind of like a waste of energy. How Do I handle copycats? I just see it as a compliment, really. If someone wants to copy you. It is annoying. And I'm going to swear here because it's happened to us so many times. Like in the gym, we had it all the time. In business, we have it all the time. People call their stuff, you know, whatever. Like, very similar to success.

Don't say it.

But yes, very similar to successful names because they take inspiration from it, they copy our content, they like duplicate stuff. When we have a marketing campaign, they have a marketing campaign. Like, we know this stuff happens all the time, but I essentially, I just see it as inspiration, which is what it is. If there's like a direct infringement on ip, then we'll send a cease and desist if that did happen. But I feel like we're worrying about something that hasn't happened in this situation.

Not even that. Yeah, correct. In this situation that Tatum's talking about.

Yeah.

Her clients worried about something that hasn't happened yet.

Yeah.

And I think the biggest train of thought or the biggest takeaway that I could give you, if you're listening to this right now, and I guess this is what really helped me reframe it because there was a period of time a couple of years ago where I was getting copied a lot and where code coaches that I had hired to be coaching in my containers were leaving. They were taking clients and creating programs that looked and sounded like mine. And I was very hurt. And I think a lot of this comes back to hurt for the most part. And one thing that I had to remind myself was that people are going to copy. There's not a whole lot you can do about it, unless it's a direct infringement on ip, in which case you can set a cease and desist. But for the most part you have a choice of what you focus on in your day. And I can't do anything about that copying. So me focusing on it is just a waste of my energy. Like it's a fear based energy. It's a scarce face energy. I could go love and light. Good luck to you. Honestly, if you're copying, you're probably never going to have success. So at the end of the day, like if you can't have an original idea that, I'm sorry, you're probably not going to make it. And so I just kind of go love and light. I'm going to go focus on things that make me feel abundant, that make me feel excited, that get me lit up, because that's a way better space for me to Operate in. And I can only charge forward and outpace someone who's directly copying me if I'm in that sort of energy. So you have a choice. If you're listening to this and someone's copying you, say something if you want to say something. And then just put it to bed and move the fuck on. Because you absolutely like need to stay hyper focused on like your energy matters when you're an entrepreneur so much.

Yeah, we have this shit happen all the time and we get a ton of messages about it. And it generally can consume someone's day, week, month, even quarter that someone's copied them. And they're just probably like wasting their time.

So much momentum by worrying about that. Because the energy that you have to get into to worry about copying is scarce. And it's like, it's really yuck. Like it's a really yucky energy. It's not exciting, it's not b, it's not free, it's not wild, it's. It's a really heavy, gross, bad energy. And when you're in that space, what you focus on, you attract. Right. So when you're focusing on that bad energy and those bad things that are happening in your business, you're only going attract more problems into your business. It's just a crappy time.

Yeah, it's gross.

It's gross. So if you're getting copied, either send, assistant, desist, put it away, or move on with your life. The second question here is from Tristan. So she's a wedding planner and she's just put a very senior hire into her business. She said, I've just put my on my first general manager and I'm starting to feel very oh word. We don't say the word overwhelmed in our program, but oh word with other people going on leave at the same time and all of the roles that I have to do. And so I wanted to talk through this question today, which was like she didn't even have a question. Was more so like, what do I do? Like, I had this new person, I just started a general manager, but I also have like five other team members going on leave at this time. I'm feeling overwhelmed because I have to jump in and do a lot of it myself and train this new person and bring this new person to business.

Yeah. So a friend of mine, Simon, he has a gym in Sydney and he had this problem as well at his gym, really high end premium gym, and he had a business coach and he told me and the business coach said, this is the simplest advice you're ever going to get. But everyone in your company should be able to do all the roles, if not all the roles, some of the roles for when this stuff happens. So I think pigeonholing every single person with a specific role and they can't jump in and do the other people's roles is probably where the problem is here. I'd imagine in Tristan's business, there's some stuff that some people can do that some other people can do and learn as well. So if they would commit two hours a week to learning someone else's role and that was just a policy that they had in the company, I think this is going to be alleviated very quickly. I think, like especially within departments, if we have a sales department in success, I think everyone in our sales department should be able to do each other's roles as well to stop this from happening in the future, which we will definitely get onto. But I think like some cross training to all the responsibility isn't on someone when they go on holiday is great. Or I think that the person who's going on holiday, it should be their responsibility to train up someone else that's not the owner of the business to take over this role when they're on holiday.

Just to give some context here, Tristan, the size. Tristan's business is very large. I think they're on Track for a $5 million a year this year. And one other thing that I will say, it wouldn't matter if she was at 1 million or even a 500,000 if this was the problem.

Yeah.

But one other thing that I will say is especially at the size of a 1mil plus business, the owner shouldn't be jumping in to COVID leave ever.

Yeah.

So if the only other person who can jump in to cover the leave is the owner, that's not the answer. Because at some level, especially Tristan's level, you're the CEO. You cannot jump in to do a full time role while someone's on leave, regardless of how much space and time you have and energy you have in the business. So I think there's one more thing I'll add to this is just like leave planning.

Yeah.

So, you know, I know Tristan just had a really big season and lots of stuff going on, but I know one of the people was also going on maternity leave. So there was plenty of time to plan for the leave. And I think that sometimes we can leave it to the last minute. It's easier to sometimes just put yourself in as I'll fix it, I'll jump in I'll do it. And we did the same thing. When one of our girls went on Matt leave, we were like, oh, we'll just do it.

We were stuffed.

And we. We learned the really hard way that that's not the answer. Us jumping in to do it is not the answer. We need to find somebody else. And so that's a lesson that you sometimes learn the hard way. But, guys, if you have team and if you have people who are planning on going on leave, I love what you said. Everyone in the business should know what everyone else can do so that you're not pigeonholed with having to jump in and do it yourself.

Yeah, for sure. All right, I'll move into our third question. Jess has a VA agency. She found last year that a people were shopping around for prices over Christmas and objections were always that they would start and commit in 2025. How can I get people to buy it now?

Such a cool question. So we've been working with Jess on this the last few weeks, and I think that, you know, if people, as we come to this point end of the year, and, you know, I think this episode airs probably mid December. So as we get to this point end of the year, I do think that you need some offers, especially if you have the kind of business that people will typically put off to the following year. And I think if you know that December is typically a down period for you, your November December really needs to be heavily planned out to avoid this. And so one of the things that we worked on with Jess was just an offer. So let's get you locked in so that we can start get a deposit, get a contract signed. We'll start doing the recruitment and the stuff for you on the back end of this year so that next year when you hit the ground running, like, your VA is ready to run with you. And so we put in a lot of really cool offers around getting started now, like, you know, 50% off onboarding fees or things like, you know, pay now, but, you know, get a month free or all these additional stuff that you can potentially like, put into a business to make saying yes today a good deal. What about you?

Yeah, so I love all those. Just like a real world example here. We used to run this at the gym. Imagine, like a gym is the worst for this at this time of year. Everyone's like, just turns into a sloth of Christmas and doesn't do anything.

Yeah, Pretty much end of November, people like Christmas parties. That's it. I'm getting fat.

Yeah. Yeah. Literally, like that 10. This is terrible. And no one's signing up. So we just implemented a train for free in December if you signed up. And we would get the commitment and contract signed. So they would officially start on the first of Jan, but they were locked in from like a payments point of view. So we would do train for free in December, and usually December would be one of our biggest months in terms of signing new people up. So it was just. It's just about making an offer.

And I think just on that, what I love about that and the thing that I really want to convey to anyone that's listening is like, you have to know your numbers. So, you know, we know that the average lifespan of somebody at Helix Gym was like, let's say 18 months, right. And so if we give them a month for free at the beginning, while that doesn't solve our cash flow issues for December, if you play a longer game, it still grosses us. I think the average value of a client was like five grand. Five grand. $5,000 for a month free. Yeah. It doesn't solve our problem today, but it does solve our problem in January and February and March and for the next 18 months. And so I think where people go wrong with offers like this or where they don't want to make offices, they're like, oh, I need cash now. And it's like, okay, if you are month to month needing cash flow to solve your business problems, that's a problem. There's an absolute issue, like, you definitely need to figure out what your average lifetime value is, figure out what offers you can get to get people in the door so that you can start building up some more recurring income through the door, you know, and start stacking that cash flow throughout the year. And I think it really comes down to you, like, you can't make those offers, or people might be thinking, I can't make those offers because I'm not going to get paid for a month. And it's like, you're playing the short game if you're thinking about it that way.

Yeah. We had a call with one of our mentors a couple years ago, Charlie, and he kind of gave us similar advice. We were like, yeah, we're having a bad period. And he was like, oh, how long's the period been? We said two weeks. And he goes. He just laughed. He literally laughed at us. And he said, do you think big businesses count their success in weeks? And I was like, oh, he's probably got us here. And he said, big businesses count their wins in quarters. If not quarters, years. So like, if you're just focusing on getting enough cash flow in the quarter, like Steph said, you're probably doing it wrong and you probably need to zoom out a little bit and look at that quarter as a whole and say, how can we front load the quarter to make more money at the start of the quarter versus the end so we're not like super desperate and doing crazy shit in December. I wish I had that advice 10 years ago in business because I wouldn't have freaked out every December because January is fucking mayhem in fitness.

Totally.

It is absolutely crazy.

And there are just seasons, like in every business, in every industry. Like, you know, we talked about Tristan before. Tristan's in the wedding industry. So there's an entire like four month period where they basically make no money. And that's where she's going to upskill all her staff, which is really cool. But I think it's like there are, in every business, there are seasons. We have months in business coaching where they're quieter. You know, at school holidays we work with, we have a lot of female entrepreneurs. So school holidays is mayhem. No one buys anything in school holidays. So that's like a heap of weeks of the year that, you know, we basically have slower sales periods or we, we have to change up our marketing tactics to fix that up. And so every business has periods. If you're having a down period, that's okay. Especially, you know, if you've been in business for a few years. Just look at the last year. Like, when were my down periods? What can I put in place to potentially like, Jess, perfect question.

Yeah.

How I know what's going to happen? I know what's coming up. How can I stop that from coming up? How can I fix that? What can I put in place?

For sure, it kind of like when we got our tax bill recently and we doubled our revenue and quadrupled our profit. I was like, ah, you know, maybe I should have just zoomed out a little bit and looked at the year to date rather than the week. The week, the month, you know, the month. Because we like freak out about that. But there's no point.

Yeah, if you have like a zero sales week that happens and then the next week you might make 10. So it's just like if you get hyper fixated on the week or the day or the month, you, you really probably aren't playing the. Well, you're not playing a game like a big business. And big businesses are big businesses for a reason is because they are willing to, you know, stand the test of time and. And let things play out over a season rather than just making it, you know, all means something this week and. And potentially being very reactive and changing things in the business when it was just a bad week.

100. Couldn't agree more. All right, guys, if you got some value from that episode, don't forget to subscribe. That is our major metric that we track in success school. Just kidding. It's one of the metrics we track. But if you guys don't subscribe, I'm gonna get fired, and that is not good.

He's very close to getting fired at this point. You know, the last few weeks, you guys have been subscribing, but not to the level that we necessarily need you to. So if you could just go over there right now, if you're listening to this episode or, like, there's a lot of you listening. Yeah, go subscribe. If all of you went and subscribed, maybe we should do a giveaway or something.

Yeah, we should do another giveaway. Yeah, that would be epic. All right, guys, until next time, we're going to hear Steph's story coming up soon, how she went from. How would you describe it, Stephen? I was gonna say some. Something offensive.

Well, I mean, good holding of tongue, but how would I describe it from. Well, nowhere to here, nowhere to you, nowhere to hear.

Awesome.

We've also got some predictions coming up for 20, 25 in some episodes coming up. So we've got some really cool episodes coming up. You guys gonna.

This baby of the year. Oh, my God. Coming up.

Not biz baby of the year.

All right, guys, chat soon.

Bye.