Niching to wipe out competition, lead gen hacks & expanding to the USA - Q&A

Pain has always been our biggest instigator. Like right around our darkest days. Our best days are usually right around the corner. Like always. It always has been that way. Whenever we've had the worst periods in business, they're followed by the best periods in business.

If I were to do Legion or getting people to essentially raise their hand and say they want to work with me twice a week, I'd be making offers basically every single day. I'd be doing DMs and I'd be making offers and DMs. How you make offers and DMs. Foreign. Welcome to episode 62 of the Success School podcast. Today we are talking about niching Legion and expanding businesses into the usa. Steph, how are you feeling?

Yeah, actually I feel really good. We are just getting ready for our Bali retreat which we are so excited about. By the time this airs will be in Bali, we with an amazing group of people. I think we got 70 people coming along. Just under 70 people coming along. Our barley retreats are like our favorite thing ever to do. So we are so freaking pumped to go through it. This every time we do them, they get better and better. So I'm super pumped.

Lots of fun.

Lots of fun.

Started to be absolutely wrecked.

Yeah. Oh, it's exhausting. It's really big for us, but worth it every time. Like so, so pumped to be there.

So we'll get into our personal updates. This one's a little bit of vulnerable. So if you listen last week to our Taylor Swift niking strategy, I'm going to be a little bit vulnerable and authentic.

Are you going to cry?

I'm not going to cry. So I'm not going to milk it for the gram, but I'm going to be authentic with you guys. So we had some major, major back end issues in Success School which was like funnels, emails, not working calendars, all that type of shit. And it's probably the first time in a long time I've been like really disappointed in myself as an operator. I woke up in the morning after a couple of days and I was like, fuck, Tim, you got to be better. Like you're a fucking business coach for sake. Like if you can't do it, you know, then like, how are you going to be an example for your clients? And I got really hard on myself for it. But great pain creates great action. And I took massive action after that. Steph told me, she said, tim, you're working like a fucking maniac at the moment. Because I wanted to fix it, but without that Great pain. I wouldn't have elevated our business to the next level where now our funnels are elite. So the copy is epic. You know, the email sequence is epic, the texts are epic. Everything is great. Our business is right back on track, and I would say better than before. And the biggest takeaway here is you got to go through pain to get to the next level in business. Without pain, you will not have the stimulus to get to that next level in business. So every time shit's going wrong for you in your business, just look at it as an opportunity to improve and get better rather than being hard on yourself. I was very hard on myself, but I think it was a great thing for the overall scheme of success school.

Yeah. And look, we have this conversation with clients a lot, you know, like, well, not a lot, but when a client comes to us in great pain, I very rarely try to save them from it because I'll be like, look, I'm so sorry you're experiencing this. Like, it has to be bad for us to make a change. So let's figure out what we need to change and what's not working and what didn't work. And let's, you know, I'm not going to be like, you know, it's okay. Like, it is okay. But ultimately, like, pain has always been our biggest instigator. Like right around. Our darkest days are. Our best days are usually right around the corner, like, always. It always has been that way. Whenever we've had the worst periods in business, they're followed by the best periods in business because you fix it and you go, that's not working. We need to change this. And this needs to change immediately. And. And it causes pain and it causes a lot of hard work and it causes things to need to be fixed. But, gosh, once you've done it, like, it's the best thing ever. And so thank you for all the hard work you've been doing in the back end. You really have been working really hard and it's gonna be phenomenal. Like, honestly, the next couple of months, I would say over dare say you're gonna be our biggest. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Because we've dialed it all in. So, yeah, sometimes if you're feeling pain, it's not about feeling the pain and then staying there, because that's gross, that's not good, and that's not fun. But if you feel the pain, figure out what needs to change and put everything you can into changing it. You will get out of the pain really, really quickly and things will be Better than ever before.

Just let me note here. How's Steph trying to hijack my personal updates and turn it into a lesson for her. This is definitely becoming a competition right now. So I think we just as soon as I'm done cuts over to Steph anyway, I'm going to give updates on your updates now.

I feel like, I feel like I'm just a bit more like I'm just a bit of an inspiration. Yeah, you know, of course you are. Okay.

My lesson, which I was the funnel fishing. I'm a business inspiration.

My personal update is that this is not gonna be the same. Although I reckon I can turn it into something inspirational. Yeah, we have flown business class a lot now and that's. Hold on.

Inspirational, guys.

Most of the time we've flown business class, we've flown with points. So I just want to be really. There's only one that we've actually paid for. Okay. So we're not big noting because we don't actually pay for them. And if you need help with point hacking, send us a message because we'll.

Give you a referral code. 350,000 points in your pocket. That's basically a business class. Send us a dm.

If you need anything, let us know. But effectively we've been flying business and what we've learned is that and anyone else who flies business will know this except we are new to this and newbies at it. And not all businesses created equal. Okay? So like you need to make sure you get the best planes because they are not all create equal. There's the sum of them that you get on.

It's like a bus with wings.

Some of them you get on, they just pull a curtain over and you're like, that's it. That was. The seats are the same. That's like, it's, it's terrible. Right? And I don't want you to use all your hard earned money and all your hard earned points and get on a shitty plane. And so we have been like, we flew business class to Fiji recently and again on points and the, the first plane was really bad and then the second plane was incredible. The best plane I think we've ever been on full stop. And then the, on the way back, extra, extra bad. And then the second leg was. It was better. It was better. And what we learned was that you really have to do your research, guys. So if you end up point hacking and if you are booking business class flights, do yourself a favor and just do your research, which is actually quite interesting. Leads into Some of our stuff that I think we're talking about in today's topic.

Yeah, give us your top business class. So we've been Air Fiji, we've been Qantas, we've been Emirates and we've been Qatar. Qatar and Virgin.

I'd say overall Qantas, we've flown Qantas most. I'd say overall Qantas is probably the most disappointing. Yeah, yeah, it just. It's just average. It's average.

The staff are like, pissed.

Yeah, yeah, all the time. It's average. Fiji, which is actually operated by Qantas, funny enough, but yeah, it's Fiji Airways and they're all Fiji. And that, that was amazing. But we had a brand new plane, so that was amazing. Qatar, best on ground for everything so far. Everything. We've taken four legs with Qatar, all perfect. Every single time. Could not complain. Literally perfect. Emirates, a bit average. So, like, nice. Just not as nice as Qatar. And Qatar's cheaper. So, guys, if you're planning on doing business, go Qatar. Yeah, but, yeah, I would say Qatar, Fiji, Emirates and then Qantas.

Yeah. And if you get the plane Choice, get the A380, but you need the Airbus A380, but you need the new E1. If you get the old one that Emirates has, you'll get mud. And then They've got the A350, which does the Middle east to Europe, that's like the main legs, but Australia is the A380. Australia to the Middle East.

Yeah, yeah. I mean, just do your research, like, look it up. Like when we're booking, we always go and like, look up the plane, look up business. Like, I go to Google, I like type in the plane, I type in business class. So, like, Qatar, a 380, business class on this leg. And I'll look at which plane it is and do my research and I think that it ties in. Lesson of the week. Do your research, guys, on anything that you are purchasing in business right now, which I think does tie in today's conversation a little bit, because I do think that there are a lot of people out there now being very desperate, making a lot of big offers on the Internet. I've seen more and more people. I actually went on a little rant about it on my socials this week, like claiming that they have million dollar masterminds and million dollar master classes and all this stuff for people who have never made a million dollars in their life. And so I think there's a lot of scammy shit going on in the Internet right now. So just especially in coaching your research, before signing up, please ask us if you. Yeah, we know people. Yeah.

All right, so we're going to get into our topics today. So we call today schooling. So we go through three audience questions. We've actually plucked these from our school portal. So when you're in success school, you get access to our school portal. And that's where Steph and I answer any questions you have within 24 hours. So if you have a problem, you post it in the community. We answer it within 24 hours. So we've plucked them from there. Because I want to give you a bit more context than just the written and I think audio is a really good way to get out some context. Steph, you excited for these questions?

I love these questions.

Alrighty, so I'll read these clients. Yeah, I'll read the first one out. So this from Kat Mason. I've been thinking about your feedback on finding a nation and nation for Instagram. I was wondering if, say, focusing my content on one sport, AKA runners, is a good idea or too narrow, given what I already know about niching in the fitness industry.

I love this question from Kat. And just so you know, guys, Kat works obviously in the sporting field. Flexibility coaching. Credible flexibility coach. Actually, we've used in one of our programs before. Tim, before we talk about Kat and answer Kat's question. Why do people need to niche? Why do you think niching is a good idea?

Yeah. So, you know, we can look at the big picture here. Like, the world's population is ever growing, which means there's more people all the time, which means there's more competition and everything. So a lot of people are going to be making noise, but they're going to be looking for specific answers from specific people. So we want to be that specific person with the specific answer for a specific type of audience. Okay. When you just go out and like, for Kat's example, she's a flexibility coach, which is niche, and that's good. But there are levels to their niches. Okay. The more competitive your industry is, which fitness industry is one, Flexibility is not super competitive, but there is still some competition in it where a lot of the big players are sucking up a lot of market share with really cheap flexibility programs. When that happens, you want a niche to another level just so you carve yourself out a blue ocean. So the theory of red and blue oceans is red oceans are where there's a ton of competition. Everyone's price gouging and prices are going down. Blue ocean is when you're in a nation, it's clear sail there's no dangerous fish in there and there's no dog eat dog. In business, you want to be in a place where there's little competition. But you do need to note that all markets become competitive in the end, just as you've probably seen in the last, you know, couple of years. Business coaching, like everyone's a business coach and they've never even had a business. Flexibility coaching, nutritionists, what else mindset coaching. This like they just get flooded. Everything gets flooded. So then you need to niche to another level or be the best in your market.

And I think in Kat's question here, so Kat's a flexibility coach. She's been thinking about becoming a niche and a niche and a niche for Instagram. So her question was wondering if I stay focused on my content for one sport. So for example, runners, or is that too narrow given that I'm already in a pretty niche. Niche being that she's in flexibility. So I'm gonna answer first. I think that yes, the answer is yes, but I just don't, I don't know if it necessarily has to be that runners is her niche or it's a sport based niche. It could also be like, you know, one of the biggest people in the world is, is a knee based knee. Knees over toes, guys, just like four knees and so. And there are a lot of people who specialize in hips or knees or shoulders or whatever. So it could be that your flexibility for that one problem with a problem area versus an exact sport. But we also have a guy who's in our program who has done phenomenally well since he has joined our program. Ryan Everett, you legend. And he joined us. He's a strength coach, but he's a strength coach for swimmers. And so he writes swimming programs for people to go pro in swimming. And it's very specifically around strength coaching in the gym for swimmers. And because it's so niche, he does super well. He is destroying, he is absolutely destroying.

His ad costs are like minimal as well because there's no competition to what he does.

So smart. And so yeah, cat, like this answer 100. I do think that you could niche down one more time at this point if it's, you know, we've been coaching you for a little while and I do think there's an opportunity for you to go down. Whether you go directly into one sport or to solving one problem, either way would be totally fine.

Yeah. My answer to this is yes. I don't think it's running. I think it's something else. Like, just look at what everyone's doing that is killing it in your niche. And like my friend Keegan, coach Keegan, you can check him out on Instagram. A lot of his students do really well, and we met a lot of them in Montenegro. They are niching specifically on that joint health, that hamstring health, you know, that kind of area. And they've all got a hundred thousand followers from that. So I think having a niche or a topic you talk about is definitely a good thing in the fitness industry because there's so much noise in it. Everyone's a fat loss coach, Everyone's a strength coach now. It's just like, what's the niche within the niche? I do think you need to go one level deeper on this for the aforementioned reasons.

Definitely. And I think, Kat, like, you love surfing and I think some of your clients are surfers. I think surfing is a really cool niche for you. I think that makes sense. Yeah, I love it.

All right, let's get into question two. This is from Tash. I'm just going to say their full names. Just give them a shout out. Tash Miller, if you had seven hours to spend purely on lead gen for cash injections, what would you prioritize? Man, there's so much to unpack with this one.

You go first.

Okay, so this kind of mindset of quote unquote, cash injections is great, but it is also dangerous because if you're always looking for cash injections, you're always burning out your audience. So you build up a level of trust and equity with an audience when you provide content for them. Every time you make an offer, you drain it. And what happens if you make consistent offers? You're just draining the piggy bank and it becomes less and less and less and less effective. So Legion is great when it's great and when it's not, it's not because you haven't built up enough equity with audiences. And this goes across the board for everyone. So just to answer your question plainly, without getting into the hypotheticals and the philosophy of it, if I were to do Legion or getting people to essentially rate their hand and say they want to work with me twice a week, I'd be making offers basically every single day. I'd be doing DMS and I'd be making offers in dms. How you make offers in DMS is you say, hey, Steph, I was wondering if you knew anybody that would be interested in insert results so that would want to lose 5 kilos in the next 30 days. The hack here is you're actually not telling the person that you want them to sign up with your program. You're asking them if they know someone else. And a lot of the time they say, hey, yeah, actually I do want to lose 5 kilos in the next 30 days. So thank you very much. So offers and then DMs would be my first two. I would be farming this out to a VA eventually as DMing lots of people becomes very boring over time. Steph, what do you got for me here?

So I actually did answer this question for Tash in the portal and I think that, yeah, like I'm so with you on let's not constantly need to do cash injection DM or cash injection lead gen because it's not great for long term. No, like trust building and nurture. Um, however, if you do need to do it. The advice that I actually gave Tasha, I think she jumped onto a group call and we talked about it, was she had a really hot lead magnet that was just laying around that she hadn't used yet. And it was, you know, I, I think it solved a really specific problem for her audience. And anyone who downloaded it would be effectively like waving a big red flag saying, like, I need help with this thing. And so I said to her, like, get the lead magnet out there and then, you know, contact every single person who downloads it and you know, invite them to. To had a masterclass coming up in a couple of weeks time. Invite them to the masterclass and then see if they need any help in between times and maybe get them on a call. And if she does that, you know, and she's very. Tasha's very hungry. She'll do very much do the work easily. She'll get a cash injection like easily she'll be able to get 5, 10 grand in the door pretty, pretty quickly, but you just don't want to have to rely on that. And so what we actually worked on on the group call was how do we create something that's more sustainably strategic for her long term. But yeah, I have no doubt that she'll absolutely smash that out.

Okay, awesome. All right, we'll get into question three. This is from Jess Watman. I'm getting a lot of inquiries from America and I was planning to launch this soon, but I will likely fast track that. Do you continue with business as usual and pay the same aud for the packages as they're getting a crazy deal as the US exchange rate? Do you separate the website and only US residents can access it with different pricing, etc. Do you open up another business entirely to safeguard the Australian business? Any tips would be great. Oh, man, so much on this big one. I'll let you kick this off. So stiff.

Yeah. Look, I want to preface this with there's no right or wrong and whatever you do is what's right for you. And there's just. There's no right way to play this except for definitely creating a second entity, I believe. But consult your legal advice. But I believe you would need to create a second entity for it to protect it. But in terms of the first question, which was is it business as usual and do you get them to pay the same AUD packages as they do in us? I personally think that they should pay in whatever currency they pay in. And most of the people that we know that have people all over the world charge in the currency of the country that they're in. So it's. But there is no right or wrong. You can charge an AUD if you want to. I think it's a. You know, and it's great for right now, you know, because it's great for the consumer. Right now the client on the other end is going to love you because you're going to be like half price compared to America. But also then as the Australian dollar gets stronger, their rates are going to go up and up and up as well, which long term could lead to. To some problems with the client later down the track. And I really believe that they're comfortable paying for things in US dollar. And so I think that it's smart for your business to charge in US dollars even though you know the rates in Australia. And I know that in Jess's case, I know that your business pays also in US dollars for a lot of your team. And so I just think it, it makes sense for it to be a platform where it automatically transitions to their dollar when they are actually signing up and converting.

Yeah. So if it's 2 grand a month AD, it's 2 grand a month USD for the same package.

Yeah.

The only other things I've got to add here. Yes. Consult with a lawyer and then maybe consult with an American lawyer on this. Maybe get multiple ideas on this from multiple people as you just don't want to get pigeonholed and scared into this. There may be a simpler way of doing things rather than setting up a whole LLC and company and stuff like that. I know people that have done this from Australia and all they've done have just charged in USD and then they just have a new terms and conditions that's been written by an American lawyer. So I just think that's a route to go down there. The other thing is there is a grant from the Australian government for businesses that go from marketing in Australia to the US market. They will pay you for your marketing expenses. So essentially how this works is they have this grant once a year. I can't remember the name. You better Google it. But essentially what you do is you just show proof that you've spent ten grand on marketing to the US only and they basically give you a refund for that 10 grand. And then marketing in the US is free, which is incredible. It only comes up once a year and there is a limit to it. So you have to apply for it and you have to approve a case for it. So there is an application process. But in Jess's case here, she could probably just get a virtual assistant to do it for her and then it would be done very quickly. And that means your expansion into the us you're basically getting one and a half times the amount of aud. You're not paying GST either. Yeah, usually the clients I've heard are much better than Australian clients because they're a little bit more hungry. And then you have a grant from the Australian government to go and do business with Americans as well. For me, that's four ticks. I only need one of those ticks for. For it to be a yes for me. And Steph's like, yes. We're expanding to the U.S. we are.

We are expanding to the U.S. we Are about to open up our doors and, you know, we're making some back end changes to be able to allow for that. Now one thing that the. It all sounds like a pro. One con to consider is that, you know, Americans, they don't mind a legal battle.

They like some litigation.

They do not mind litigation. So the point that Tim made about get a US lawyer, just make sure you've got a US lawyer to just sign up on your documents, things like that. It is different over there. They do not mind taking people to court. So it's just something to be really mindful of. Going into that market. That's the only con. So I would definitely get on it because I think it's a really, really cool opportunity for your business.

Everyone that we've spoke to that works with US clients, like the fucking best. Yeah, the best thing ever. Like, they show up, they do the work, they hustle, they go hard. They're super grateful, they're appreciative. They credit you for the work.

In a really different culture over there. Yeah, a really different culture.

Let's just think about it logistically here. I just want to hit this from another angle. Australia has 25, 26 million people. America's 350 million. Like that's a over 10x population increase. That means the ideal clients you have right now, there's 10 times more of them in America. Just in another country that you've never accessed. Marketing, language, strategy, it's all a little bit different over there. They respond to different stuff. So you just might need to change up a few things and how you do it.

How would you go about breaking into a new market? Whether it's America, maybe it's the uk. You know, I know a lot of people who break into Singapore markets. Apparently Singapore is also a phenomenal market to break into. They got a lot of money, they're very entrepreneurial. So I've heard, like a lot of people break into Singapore market as well. Like, what would you do if you were like, okay, we're going to break into Singapore, then we're going to break into the US and then we're going to break into the uk. What would your process be for moving into a new market?

Yeah, so two strategies here. I'd go boots on the ground and boots on the Internet. So we'll go boots on the ground first. I would set up affiliate partnerships with American businesses that have your clients and I would make it super damn juicy for them to get involved in it. So there'd be some kind of intro, there would be zoom chats, There would be you proving that you're not a con artist and you know what you're doing. And then you would present some kind of affiliate offer to them, obviously make sure it's working, spice it up, increase the relationship and then go for there. And then I would be setting up affiliate partners around America on different places for it. Then they can all obviously start generating new clients and then there is like some benefit back and forth. The second is the boots on the Internet. Because America is so big and the population is huge, you reaching all of those people is very hard. So if we run an ad in Australia is 25 million people, but you're running one over there, 350 million people. So you're going to be spending lots of ad budget. What I would do, if it were me, two ways to do this. I would probably have like a list of targets, interests, and I would be setting up some kind of demographic inside meta Ads, a manager or do a lookalike of your current audience. And then I would be specifically targeting them with top of funnel campaigns, just like a bit of know like a trust awareness stuff. Then I would be targeting the ones that have seen that with an offer for a lead magnet or whatever it is. And I'd be doing it that way. You can also do a cities approach, so you could go la, New York, wherever you want to do business with them rather than doing the whole of America. There's tons of ways to do it. But I think the key concept here when you're expanding to America is partners that are going to promote your shit and that have a vested interest in you doing well. And the other one is finding the right people on the Internet rather than just making a heap of noise on the Internet.

Totally. I think where I've seen most people go wrong with branching out to America, so like, yeah, I'm just gonna target all of America. There's just so many people and there's even every state has its own demographic system in terms of like beliefs and the types of values that they have and the types of work ethic that they share and all those sorts of things. And so I think like you need to be targeted when you're going to a country that large. I think in the UK it's probably a bit different, a lot smaller country and even though it's got a really large population, I think that they're very, they're all quite like minded.

Yeah.

So I think it's a bit different and yeah, I think that just having a bit more of a. I love the boots on the ground, boots on the Internet approach. I think it's really cool.

Made that up. Yeah. All right, guys, if you got some value from the show, please let us know. If you've got some questions for us, drop them on our Instagram account. Send us a dm. As always, guys, if you got the value from this, subscribe to the show or share it with a friend, we would strongly and lovely appreciate that.

We hope that you enjoyed getting school today.

Yeah. See you guys.