Leveling Up Your Business 2024 (Business Bootcamp pt. 1)

one of the reasons why I was very successful with my business coach was I didn't have a marketing problem not at all we had probably between two to three new business calls every single week between say $100,000 to2 200 $300,000 every single time somebody called us it was for a job of that size and so what my business coach was able to do was just help me make small tweaks because I knew in that week I was going to have another opportunity to take a swing of the bat and make an adjustment so when you're dealing with a frequency you start to develop patterns and habits and you start to see what you need to do now each and every single one of you if you were to go to the gym and only work out once every six months it's like you never worked out you have nothing to sell if you have no marketing if you have marketing you don't have to close a job you have no business so everybody's put into this category and you could probably already assume it's probably one of the most important categories what is category number two operations what Finance okay that's another category perhaps so Aman called it delivery I call it production so you're going to go sell something now you got to go make that thing whether it's a widget or a service he calls it delivery I I like that term because it seems pretty Broad and it's much nicer in the ear than production but I call it production man we're just going to make something right we're cool with that everybody so delivery production the third one he just calls like other only these two make you money this is an expense okay you need to understand this so what is other anything that's non-billable legal team admin office manager it everything that's non-billable that doesn't make you money is considered an expense and his advice as a person who helps entrepreneurs go from seven to nine figures in business is to reduce this down to as little as possible like do you really need that person full-time can you do that on a fractional level can you pay for Subscription Service you want to try to reduce this down and we kind of make this mistake that we start stacking our team too heavy on this department right and he has another general rule for a healthy business he's like for every every dollar you pay one of these people they should help you make $5 it's that simple so if you pay someone $100,000 they should bring in half a million dollars in business either through marketing and sales or delivery because if you think about it it's like if you're on the payroll and you don't contribute to the way that the company makes money or profit then you're an expense to the company we need to reduce sit down so if you're if you're upside down in your business and not right side up then you already know if you look at your your uh profit and loss statement in terms of overhead you're going to see this is too high and these people are not building out at 5x it's a good rule of thumb okay um and now I want you to do just a little kind of check-in with yourself which is are my people making me 5x not we have to work on it ultimately it's not their fault it's your fault we're going to take a lot of responsibil ility today no matter what happens in your business it doesn't matter if it's good or bad it's your fault it's your responsibility okay so now we're like everybody's like looking long in the face all of a sudden we were happy a minute ago but now we're like 5x are they making us 5x and we have to make different decisions okay so it's just three categories that makes sense right we're going to make it super simple okay now there were a lot of questions like what the heck are we doing today what am I going to teach you I'm going to teach you nothing today I promise even less than that what I really wanted to do was give everyone who was part of our boot camp family and I was asked like how many cycles have we done I don't know I want to say seven to nine but I just don't know it's been several years and usually we'll do them three times a year um and and the next cycle could be the very last boot camp we do because it's just taken up too much of my time so what I wanted to do was to continue doing something like this periodically to help you guys tune up your business because you've you've done the workshop or the course and then of course there's new things that come up that I want to be able to answer for you so my intention today is just how do I fill the gaps and help you get to the next level so we've been calling it like a tuneup or maybe a level up or something like that and there's a lot that I've learned since if you took it with me in the first cycle and there's some people here are part of the first cycle I need to get you to where I am at mentally so that's the intention okay so I'm going to encourage you every single person here is to push me as hard as you need me to go so you walk away feeling satiated like you have the tools that you need so we're going to get really tactical when we need to and we'll stay high level when we need to okay let's get back into this so there's three categories think about all the people that you have in your company are they in the marketing and sales are they delivering the product or service or they other others not saying less than but we have to keep our eye on this otherwise um what Erol Garrison is if you don't manage your outflow and focus on what say if you don't manage your outflow then your inflow or something will be your downfall he has a great expression we have to look at our expenses relative to revenue all the time cuz we don't want to just grow our Revenue we need to grow our profit this is really an important thing okay all right now continue on with this um there's something about finding the market and if you can find your market then maybe you don't have to communicate your value because your Market understands the value right and this is really important thing and if you're in the right Market I believe they will value you and they will want to have a long-term meaningful relationship with you so you're not just constantly chasing them down but I can help you with relationships and then this is a very different category alog together the business versus the personal brand I would love to talk to you about that all day long I'm not sure everyone wants to talk about it but I'll try to do my best okay Abby all right so of these things where should we start everybody sales you say sales because you have enough inflow like you have enough leads you do okay and then there's Market marketing so you have a good problem right you have enough leads huh yes between the two problems I'd rather have a sales problem than a marketing problem so let's understand the difference okay marketing is I have a lot of people knocking at the door sales problem is like I don't know what to do with them when they come in and I can't close Okay most of the time my presumption is you have a marketing problem not a sales problem you may have a sales problem of the to I'd rather have a sales problem because I can fix that now I'm going to share a little personal story and I I I'm doing this with the intention of maybe you don't feel comfortable enough to ask me the questions that you need to ask to get what you need so I'm going to start there okay um one of the reasons why I was very successful with my business coach was I didn't have a marketing problem not at all we had probably between two to three new business calls every single week and the average size of those news new business business calls were six figures uh I would say low six figures between say $100,000 to $200 $300,000 every single time somebody called us it was for a job of that size and so what my business coach was able to do was just help me make small tweaks because I knew in that week I was going to have enough opportunity to take a swing of the bat and make an adjustment so when you're dealing with a frequency you start to develop patterns and habits and you start to see what you need to do now each and every single one of you if you were to go to the gym and only work out once every six months it's like you never worked out so you have to have that frequency and that Rhythm and when you can find that then you will be more confident and because you know if you don't if you blow this one let's just say you totally effed it up another one's coming in a few days you just know it so most of you just really need to work on your Marketing sales game now there's a couple of things because it's tied to the offer that you have and to understand the market and then that's kind of like the triangle you have to sort out okay so let's work on that together so at the core of what you do and I'm drawing this in real time so it may look ugly we might have to work through this a little bit right so this is your offer offer and then what is the market right so who's your your target market and they're really tied together and there's a couple of things is if I had a lot of gold to sell but you have no money and you're not interested in old it doesn't really matter I don't care how good the offer is so the offer is tied to the market and understanding what their needs are and as much as I can tell the clearer you can see who the market is outside of what you want to offer the more likely you're going to succeed we walk in with way too much attachment to what we think we have to do that the opportunity will present itself and you will not see it okay and the one thing that we need to do is most of us uh in our offer Focus too much on what we do versus um the result that we achieve when you can shift your mindset away from what you do to the result that you can achieve for the client or the market it'll be much much easier to sell and unfortunately we focus way too much on the thing that we do the things that we make so you're you're going to see relationship now what Market finds this result to be valuable you won't even have to sell it to them because it'll be very apparent okay so if you're in the video business and I used to be in the video business myself so I know a little bit about it so we'll just take that as an example to unpack for all of you you know what Mo told me the other day he told me there's literally some people in India who cut your video for 12 bucks they'll cut your Shir seven bucks I'm sorry I gave a raise so if you're in the video in the video editing business for social media shorts can you compete against $7 that's the problem so if you just sell what you do the video you are screwed but there are a lot of people who cut videos who aren't even scared at all and why is that what is it that they're selling that people who are in this market are dying how could they be thriving while other people are dying what do you think they're doing that's different H you have to give me more words yes a little bit of context I do presentations and I started when the market was like $5 per presentation on Fiverr On upwork and nobody cared and so there was no high ticket value and I have one so my most educated guest will be to attract the right audience you have to basically know what they what do they need and what result do they need both physically like presentation but also mentally how would they have to feel and to communicate that value to them that you can help them achieve that through wording through design and basically positioning yes it is in positioning and in order for us to position we kind of need to know who the market is and what our offer is right yeah this is where we all get stuck everybody for some reason we just cannot commit to a certain person we'll call him an avatar whatever it is and when you understand the person all the solutions become really easy and I'll give you an example okay uh a little while ago I had this brilliant idea that somebody told me uh to start a mastermind I couldn't figure out who the person was I was thinking okay there must be enough creative entrepreneurs who want to do a mastermind with me and pay me $36,000 a year is it 36 yeah it's 36 Grand 36 yeah and I was like wait a minute do I know enough entrepreneurs that are creative that do over a million dollars in business that want this from me probably not here's the problem with a lot of creative people we we suffer from some kind of uh poor relationship with money that when we have it we don't want to spend it on anything you guys know what I'm talking about I have many friends like this they don't want to hire anybody they don't value coaching they don't value uh this the general concept is it takes money to make money they just want to rely on their craft and that's why they get stuck in that million-- dollar range is so a person has a problem what product are you going to create that solves their problem right and then what kind of promotion or pitch will you do to get that in front of them so every single one of you like what happened with eigor is he's on Fiverr and Fiverr has a Marketplace and what it's doing is it's just trying to to connect a buyer with a seller there's no relationship building here there's no value to the Fiverr thing except for I have no ability to reach a client because I don't know how and I don't want to do the work and so I will make as little as possible and that's fine they just make a percentage on volume so you start building a website now you have to ask yourself who am I targeting who has a problem feeling a pain that they desire a solution for that they're hungry or starving to find that solution so let's start there everybody are you clear on the person that you're trying to help okay so get back to my my Mastermind now and I'm thinking how do I launch this thing and I write all the sales copy and I'm looking at it's not doing anything for me because my desire is to serve creative people with business skills but then I'm thinking what more can I teach them how and why they join this group and so it's not until I'm speaking in front of a bunch of finance and marketers not marketers Finance uh and real estate people who are not my tribe at all and they express interest in buying creative services and needing help with their personal brand that then I'm like wait a minute all these people do between a half million to $10 million a year they can clearly afford it do they desire this solution I never thought that they would desire the solution until I gave my talk on personal branding and they literally came up to me afterwards and said I want to buy something from you what do you have for me I had nothing for them so then the market told me this is what we want from you and I had to let go of my attachment to what I thought I needed to do knowing that internally with my team they're not going to be happy about this I also know that my community is like you turn your back on us Chris is just chasing the money now but I have to make the tough decision if I want this master ofmind to go well I have to serve this market and the interesting thing is I've spent 0% of my life thinking about this Market what they are are mortgage brokers loan officers and real estate professionals they're super Alpha broy types even the women they really all are they're so aggressive and it's amazing like how aggressive they are versus the meek timid creative person like I don't know do you have business I mean $2 I don't know something like that right so it was a whole different energy I'm like oh my God right and so now I have to make the the adult decision like okay I want to serve them let's see what happens so I go back I rewrite the sales page and you know what it's really clear my mind now because I didn't know who I was talking to so then uh with the bouncing of ideas uh and then finally we come up with a line helping left brainers think right because I didn't realize this but they all want to be creative and here's a really cool part you know I try and teach creative people I think I'm a pretty good teacher of creative people like me me you know what you fart a little font on them and they're like oh my God that's genius how'd you figure out that font Chris the colors amazing the style super duper I'm like what am I doing wasting all my time with these creative people right cuz the market is hungry for a solution that's so easy for me to deliver on because they experience this pain point because they swim in the sea of same right whereas creative people every single one of you are so Divergent and different you're like screw the man I don't want to be in a box I'm going to be wild and crazy but for them they're so hungry just to be a little bit different a little bit different for them is like two and a half degrees and I know I can deliver that so as I'm sitting down writing and is the more conversations I have with them and their objections it just becomes clear and clear what I need to say and I'm telling you right now I'm super confident this is a $3.6 million business venture at least and it's much easier to sell to them because they're hungry have the money and they desired the solution so we're good so let's take a minute here everybody let's sit down and think about who your target market is what problem do they have and are they urgently seeking a solution when you can identify that all the communication all the marketing position becomes super clear all right so let's do this let's spend five minutes silently create an avatar okay and you have to divorce yourself from everything you knew up to this point because what you're going to do is you're going to create an avatar of the exact same person you cannot sell to who doesn't value what you do make sense you have to just let go now here's the crazy thing Jason you shoot um Mid to high-end commercial like Productions right yeah and you're going to use fancy cameras and color grade and just all this kind of stuff that market is so funky we know that we used to be in that business you know what's astonishing to me I'll tell you two two things that are going to just maybe Break Your Heart a little bit a guy that I coach pays someone $3,000 a month to write a couple of tweets for him I'm like this is stupid this is stupid it's probably one day's worth of work for the entire month and it's all Autos scheduled he wants a couple of tweets a day and he wants a thread every once in a while and I tell him he's like are you crazy why would you do this he goes Chris I do not want to get on Twitter but it's important to marketing my product that i' be on Twitter you see what he's saying to me I got a problem and the problem hurts me so much because I value my time so much I would gladly pay someone $3,000 a month so that I don't have to look at that thing you want that kind of person okay I know another guy who edits VI uh podcasts one a week editing a podcast like an hour long podcast does the titling posts it up I think he does $5,000 a month $6,000 a month this is insane to me and you're sitting there I'm running around shooting video I got to coordinate with stylist and wardrobe like what are they paying me this is ridiculous it is not the thing that you do it's solving the pain point of the person who's going to write you the check that I know is clear because what what both of these people are selling to is a a person who's making a product or service and understands the value of their time and this person does about a half million dollars a year doesn't have a lot of overhead so $3,000 a month to them is nothing the person who's cutting video is working with a person who's exited out of a 8 figure n figureure business they don't care they're not looking at influence and Authority building and being a thought leader you just sell what you do to a different Market because the result that they desire they'll compensate you for it and the person I'm talking about his name is Alex Heros and every time I hear him say how much money he spends on content it blows my mind and we're out here trying to get $4 so whoever's working with them they're paying a lot of money right and I'm not on that scale but I'm like I pay these guys to make videos for me and I'm like it's if you start adding up all the people who work on our social content it's not that shocking because I have a business that benefits by having content as the primary way of the top of the funel awareness so when someone values this service that you provide you won't have to convince some of anything okay so let's spend five minutes and think about the Avatar the person not a whole group of people the person that you think has a problem and they're Desiring a solution and they're starving for it the person like we're about to brainstorm for five minutes who our person is right you're Ellen right Ellen yeah and you thought you had your person the creative and then you almost had this happy accident of speaking in front of these professionals and that's when it exploded for you like oh it became clear became clear that and so I think this is like I think I know my person but I'm not really going to know who my person is until I'm actually trying to work with them and I'm having these conversations and figuring it out so there's like something in the do I'm going help you though okay so I'm just still I understand yeah so here's what we're GNA do it's good it's good question right so what I do is I go into my cave and I'm like I think there are these people and as I'm writing I'm like looking at the logic it doesn't line up but my heart tells me please keep doing this and I'm struggling for writing the sales page for weeks the team's like where's the sales page and I can't figure out and you've been here before if you try to write a long form sales page to a person you don't understand you're just throwing up garbage and that's what I was doing just straight hot garbage right I keep looking at I like I don't want anybody to share this is not good and then you know what I do I tried to help myself by using chat GPT I took all the copy I wrote and said rewrite this and just gave me more generic version of this hot mess that I got it didn't fix it cuz it's built on like a pile of garbage right so I'm like what am I going to do here and I can tell it's not working but I can't figure it out so here's what we're going to do yeah there's a good chance you don't know who the heck you're going to Target because you don't know them if you knew them you wouldn't be here you got it all solved right pretty sure so what we're going to do today is you're going to tell me who you think it is and all of us going to argue with you all of us and if you can survive the and we're like yeah that's a pretty good person but here's the other cool thing there is a couple of things that you can build personas for and you can just look at them and say does that work you can use chat GPT and see if this works okay what you want to do is you want to say I want to build a a a buyer persona for a person who's looking for X in this market where they can afford to spend X and then see what it gives you just I don't know how to phrase it but the cool thing about chat gbt is kind of like grenades it's like you just got to get close and it'll tell you right it'll give you hot garbage back like okay try again let's try let's keep thinking about it um one thing that I learned from from Daniel Priestley and then my my brother who's a software engineer from Stanford told me how it works Daniel Priestley said whatever chat TBD tells you just say reflect on your answer and try to improve it and he says often times it gets better and then what my brother told me is it doesn't really think about it humans are are silly cuz he's kinding half robot himself he say what it's doing is it's rrolling the variable again with adding some more data points that's all it's doing it's not really sension and it's not really sitting there really thinking like I could do better it rerolls the data and it's just adds the latest input to it so it's going to try to refine it a little bit yeah okay so let's just spend five minutes and I would love to have a couple of people in this room have one of those light bulb moments when they like dude I think I found it and then we're going to attack you like wild animals