BCS: 181 | How To Spend $100K On Coaching Business + Recurring Revenue

Business Coaching Secrets with Karl Bryan

BCS 181: In this episode, Karl answers questions about:

–  How to spend $100k on your coaching business?

–  How important is recurring revenue?

And more…

Karl Bryan helps business coaches get clients. Period.

For more magic on how you can grow a coaching business by attracting small business owners, filling local live events, and closing more high end coaching clients… go to focused.com

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION –
(transcription is auto-generated)

SFC 181
[00:00:00] Karl: Welcome to Business Coaching Secrets with Karl Bryan. If you wanna attract new high-end coaching clients, fill live events and build a wildly profitable coaching practice where business owners pay, stay, and refer, you’ve come to the right place. In this podcast, Karl provides his keys to the kingdom for finding and signing. High paying clients and building the coaching business of your dreams. Here we go.
[00:00:40] Christian: Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, coaches around the world. Welcome to another episode of Business Coaching Secrets. It’s Your Boy the Road Dog, with none other than the man, the myth, the business coaching legend Karl Bryan is in the house, ladies and gentleman.
[00:00:56] Karl: Shoot. Do we need, I’m waiting for, that’s not you. You have beans in your pants today, bud. You’re on fire
[00:01:05] Christian: after the audio. Like I need to have like the clappy hands and the woo woo, like all that stuff. This needs to happen. Like it’s just not the same. I was just mentioning on the pre-show about how, hey, this podcast is available in all sorts of streaming service.
Dude, that Spotify Netflix series you recommended. How good is that?
[00:01:29] Karl: Oh, home run playlist. You’re talking Spotify. Oh, so
[00:01:33] Christian: good. Yeah, so good. Like it’s, and the coolest part is here’s what, here’s sort of my initial takeaways. I think I’m like three or four episodes, and I think there’s only six of them, but.
What was interesting to me was how unique everyone is. Right. The first one from the founder and like when it truly clicked for him, I’m like, I paused it and I looked at my wife and I’m like, like, that was his, his moment where he was like, oh, that’s who I need to target to get this to fly. Right? It was that next generation.
And then the, the resistance of the record industry and how they just were clinging on. To this dying industry. Like, it’s just, there’s so many fascinating sides to that story. It was anyways, I, I loved it. My question to you is, what were your main takeaways and how does it compare to the founder for you?
[00:02:22] Karl: doesn’t, nothing compares to the founder shoots, but nice one. Yeah, I finished it as you know, and yeah, very good. Ultimately solve the problem again. Two things, solving problems, and then a trend, right? You’ll see that they referenced multiple times throughout that, like, everything’s going online anyways.
Right? They called it Pirate Bay, right? On the, the competition on the, the show. So everything was going that way. So he just thought at some stage, you know, it’s gonna become legal. It’s gonna pass regulation. Like it’s, it, it, this is the way it’s. He jumped on, you know, like you can’t stop the parade, right?
Like, again, I’ve talked about a wave, but you surf. What you really need is a wave. You don’t wanna be lying on a surfboard, , kinda paddling along Kelly Slater without a wave, right? Looks like a seal. Lost it in the middle of the ocean. So there was trend. And then he just solved the problem that, you know, the other streaming services were very blotchy difficult.
You know, in order, cuz you, you’ll see there’s. The episode I think that you’re talking about there, where he had his aha moment. But basically he’s sitting there and he’s trying to download this song and he’s looking at it and he ends up turning away, doing something else, comes back and it’s like, you know, circling around.
Like, it’s about to come, it’s about to come. And then the sh you know, the song finally clicks and then he gets to work. So those are a couple takeaways. And I, I love, and again, if you haven’t seen the show, highly recommended but what they do, which I like, is. Everybody’s got a totally different perspective of how it went down, right?
So like they’ve got the artist and she’s like, yeah, yeah, that’s not how it went. And then they do the co-founder and he’s like, yeah, yeah, that’s not how it went. And then you’ve got the developer and he’s like, yeah, no, no, that’s not how it went. And then you see it from all the different vantage points.
And I thought that was insanely unique. Insanely cool. And I think there’s something there to, you know, when you, you know, you’re taking on staff and you’re building your team, you’ve gotta understand that. You know, they’re seeing things from a very different vantage point. Like, I dunno if you saw the bit, but the, the developer, like, he’s pissed right off, like the thing’s worth, you know, many, many billions.
And he’s staring at the lawyer and he’s going, you ruined this, right? Like, you didn’t follow the original roadmap that we had. For, you know what I mean? You, you didn’t follow the original game plan. She’s like, I got you without me. We went bankrupt. We had two weeks until we ran outta cash. I solved the problem.
I got us live. I got us the partnership, and you’re looking at me telling me I’m the problem. Are you nuts? But understand that he sees things very, very differently than, you know, the lawyer sees it different from. Developer who finds it, you know, sees it different than the visionary, et cetera. So anyways very cool.
And I consistent with the last couple episodes, I think. Yeah, go watch it. It’s awesome. You
[00:05:06] Christian: know what was cool too, the, the, the record guy, the executive, right when he goes home and he, and he’s out his jukebox and that’s when it clicks for him of when he finally got what it was, right. He was like, holy smokes.
It’s like an online jukebox. Every song ever recorded instantaneous.
[00:05:26] Karl: So cool, right? So anyways, very cool. Very cool. But love it. Recommend it.
[00:05:34] Christian: All right, so on on I guess on that note, let’s pivot into a completely different conversation. Let’s, let’s just imagine for a second because it’s, this is, it’s an interesting question that we got.
Let me read you the question because I, I’ve got so many different ways of, of, I don’t wanna say skidding, this cat, that’s horrific. If, if you had a hundred grand to promote your, your business coaching company, what would you spend it on? What’s interesting to me with that question, as somebody you know, that used to be in the financial services, I like, it’s so funny cuz it was, there’s so many people that are like, oh, just buy parts or buy somebody else’s business.
And it’s just like some of the biggest mistakes I ever made was that Yeah. Years buying somebody else’s a headache. When at the time I’m like, man, looking back now, it’s like if I only knew how to market like, and you could just attract the right type of clients, but if you had a hundred grand. Yeah. Right now and we did a grant Cardone style drop you in a community or whatever, what would what would Dr.
Karl
[00:06:35] Karl: Bryan do? Not a doctor. Same answer I’ve given for decades. I would buy clients different than the way that you’re describing them, indigo from financial services, but like an example I would go to the gal, like there’s a gal or a guy that works at the chamber who sells a lot of memberships.
I would introduce myself to that person. I’d probably spend a little bit of money with that person. Grand total of a thousand bucks probably. Whatever it is, it’s gonna be nominal. I would build a relationship with that individual and then I would offer a thousand dollars if this, if they introduced me to somebody who ended up taking me up on my business Coaching slash consulting services.
And then I would gauge, you gotta be careful with that. Don’t go in too quick and come in too hot. Cause you can make yourself look a little foolish, but build a genuine relationship. Show them that you really care. Talk about the level of passion, maybe, you know, saving lives, saving families, saving marriages, et cetera.
And I would, and I would pay her upfront. I wouldn’t wait for her to send me the first person. I would get an agreement. And then ideally you get her to, you know, she’s gonna send you a lot more than one is the theory. But I would pay her that first thousand bucks up front as soon as she commits to sending somebody.
That would be an example of buying a client. And by the way, so now somebody’s listening and they’re worried that she might not actually follow through. Get over it. Do it three, do it five, do it 10 times, and yes, you’ll get screwed, say three. But the seven will pay for the three times a lot. So don’t worry about that.
So the Gallup, the Chamber and then there’s also, look, she makes 35 grand a year. So believe me, a thousand dollars in her hand goes a long way. Careful of conflict of interest. This is where you gotta talk to her and see where she’s at and her role. You know, you gotta. Asked question. There’s also like an advertising guy that sells advertising radio you know, billboards, the sign in the, you know, the washroom.
You’re standing there and there’s like an ad pops up. You know, there’s the online directory. Whatever, anybody’s magazine, newspaper, et cetera on, you know, the blog there’s somebody selling ads for that local newspaper, that local magazine, the, you know, the real estate times locally. I would go to the ad guy again, take him out for a burger, have a chat to him.
What do you see? What are some of the trends? Where are people spending money? Which clients are happy? Which clients are unhappy? Like you’re getting a bit of a feel building some. And then offer the guy, I would give him a thousand bucks to send me say, I’ll give you a thousand dollars per closed client.
We can keep our relationship totally confidential if that’s what makes sense, but at the end of the day, anybody you introduced me to, I will offer a money back guarantee. What do you think? He says yes. You say, well let, what I like to do is like to show that I’m serious. So I just like that. Here’s a thousand bucks to get us going.
I trust that you’ll actually send somebody who does become a client. So you’re paid upfront for the first one. You’ll probably get his attention. You know, there’s a guy, there’s a promotional guy selling hats, t-shirts, whatnot. Again, get in front of that guy because what are people buying? Are they buying a membership to the chamber?
No, they’re trying to grow their business. Are they buying an ad from the ad guy? No. They’re trying to grow their business. Are they buying the promo guy selling golf balls, selling t-shirts, selling hats, selling pen? Selling, you know, shirts and uniforms? Is that what they’re really looking for? No, they’re looking for branding, looking to grow their business, trying to, you know, up their game.
So do they really need uniforms? Do they really need ads? Do they really need a membership at the chamber? And the answer is maybe. But what they definitely need, Is an excellent business with recurring revenue, excellent profit margins, a business model they can be proud of. And that works, you know, that’s you know, sustainable, predictable, massive growth opportunities.
Low risk and potentially scalability. So that’s what they really need. You know, the digital marketer, same thing. Advertising, like, you know, you go to an account. And like an accountant has a website, right? Here’s a question. Is the accountant selling any advertising on his website? And the answer is a hard no, right?
Well, why not offer to grab a banner ad on the accountant’s website? Did that maybe get you in the door? That would be an how much are you gonna pay the guy? A hundred bucks a month, 1200 a year, maybe 500 a month, six grand a year? Well, if you paid him six grand a year and he wants to keep you as an advertiser, wouldn’t he send a couple people your way?
Wouldn’t that show him that you’re a little bit more serious than somebody else? She’s putting, and does he want a banner ad on his website? I don’t know. Probably not. Maybe he’s, nobody else is asking. It’s gonna get you in the door. So, but if you were to write the check for 500 bucks a month, six grand a year to buy advertising on the accountant’s website, that’s the equivalent of, that’s a, that’s not directly buying clients pretty damn close, but going to the gal that sells the membership.
So the advertising guy, the promotional guy, the digital market. Or whoever, the guy who owns the local networking organization and writing him a check for a thousand bucks before he sends anybody. This is an example of what I’d refer to as buying clients, and it works really, really well. I, that strategy I absolutely crushed it with, and I would encourage you to do so, but if you’re worried about the one person or the three people that are gonna rip you off outta 10.
Stop it. Stop it. That’s, that’s the equivalent. Meet people all the time and don’t take credit cards. Why? Because of the, you know, the merchant fees and it’s like, oh my goodness. Right? Like by allowing people to pay by credit card, you’ll make so much more at the end of the year that it’s gonna make the percentage points embarrassingly small.
It’s just, that’s hundred percent the wrong way at looking about doing business. You gotta make it really easy for people to do business with you, right? So again, handing somebody a thousand dollars is an example. You know, putting that relationship on steroids, whereas what’s, what’s the competition doing?
They’re offering a thousand bucks too, but they pay on results, right? They pay afterwards. I’m paying before my, my dad, my dad was a professional gambler and one of the things that, like, we’d go to a fancy dinner, he’d get up, find the waiter, you know, give the guy a hundred bucks, say there’s your tip.
Start off. See that family over there? They mean a lot to me. This is a big night for us. It’s her birthday. If you could, you know, give us some better than normal service, that would be appreciated and we got weighted on with, you know, rose petals and red carpet, et cetera. So, I dunno, you tell me if that, you know, makes sense.
But that would be an example of buying clients. And you. Like you gotta be, you can’t be scared to lose money on the first few months of the client relationship to prove your worth. So another example of buying a client would be you get in front of somebody and let’s say that you’re, you’re three grand a month.
Right. Well, month one, make it 500. Month two, make it a thousand. Month three, make it 1500. Month four it’s 2000, then 2,503 grand. We’ll assume at 500 you’re actually losing money, which I don’t really think you, you know, depending upon how you wanna do your math, but you’re not really losing money. But let’s assume that you’re breaking even.
Maybe you do a hundred bucks for month. Right at the end of the day, you got started, you got in the door, you got to get that relationship going a hundred bucks. You are losing money by the time you pay your phone, pay for some gas light, some time on fire, et cetera. Okay. Well that would be an example of buying a client, right?
Taking somebody into the loss, knowing that long term they’re gonna be well and truly worth it. So And maybe just, again, for those of you that are newer to coaching, is just most people are one letter away from greatness. And then it’s, it’s not what you earn. It’s what you put an L on the front. It’s what you learn.
If you wanna ultimately build, you know, becoming a six figure, multiple, six figure, and then hitting a, you know, becoming a unicorn of the coaching industry and hitting seven figures, you gotta be bloody good at what you do, right? So, so bottom line, you know, earn versus learn. And speaking of predictability, but our boy Tom Brady look, he threw the football for a while before he started getting.
Right. So again, think about that. He was pretty damn good at throwing that football before somebody wrote him a. And he, you know, he suited up for the the Patriots. So, you know, the, some, what am I getting at? Some people in the coaching industry will tell you that under no circumstances do you coach for free, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
You know, it’s like under your, undermining your value. I don’t care if you’re starting tomorrow. That’s just horrific advice, right? Telling Tony Romo that he needed to get paid for throwing the football before he got good. It’s just embarrassingly stupid advice, right? So, but, but that being said, should you do anything for free?
Look, you, you know, you’ve got a mortgage, you got kids to feed, you got your grandkids to feed you a.
Charging your clients, but maybe you could think about doing it the way that I just described, like in a scaled way. But I would refer to that as, you know, if you’re losing, if you charged a hundred bucks, 500 bucks in month one and let’s assume that that’s at a loss or break even, that would be an example that would fall into the family of buying clients and my same strategy.
So I use that a hundred grand to. Whilst I was building up my client list and building up my, you know, 5, 10, 20, ultimately $30,000 a month for my coaching. So Ro, Doug, that’s my answer. Shoots I’d buy clients.
[00:15:50] Christian: Okay. So first off, is the reason that you’re actually not a doctor because you keep prescribing steroids to things, is that what it is?
Because everything apparently is on steroids, it’s. So that’s my first question. If you lost your medical license to practice, because just put everybody on steroids, , listen. The other thing I was just gonna say, so good, good that you touched on that in terms of the discounting, I guess initially.
I, I just want to, I just want to go a little further on that because what if somebody doesn’t have like, oh, Karl, I don’t, I don’t have a thousand bucks that I can just basically give out. You know, like it’s just times are tough. Whatever. I’m, I’m barely making it as, as, as it is. Like what else can I do?
And, and that’s a good one, right? By the way, if, cuz if you are looking at this going, well there’s, if you’re prepared to take a loss, but at the same time, it’s a lot easier to get clients that way. Well, how many marketing dollars are you saving? Right? So there’s, there’s that equation. And imagine if you could just basically go in and, and have a model where it’s, you know, 1, 2, 4, And then whatever, 1500 and you just went out and got 10 of those this month at a hundred bucks, half of those are gonna stick within six months.
You’re full . A bare minimum. Probably not even Right. Like crazy to think of. We go,
[00:17:05] Karl: because what you’re saying right, is if you get people started at the low end, like just, just say, let’s just go at what I used earlier, 500, a thousand, 1500 to 2,503 grand ongoing. Right. Take six months to get there. What you’re doing, like every month, recurring revenue is like the recipe for success, right?
Like, again, if you don’t have recurring revenue, you have a promotion, not a company. So what you’re describing by, instead of, you know, writing the thousand dollars check, you’re willing to coach somebody. So you, you go to the gala, a chamber, and rather than write or a check, you say, look, anybody you introduced me to in the first month, I am gonna be willing to discount my fees by $2,500 a month in order to get them.
Right, and then you explain the, you know, 500, 1,015, you know. Wow. Okay. Look, I know a couple people that are scrambling a little bit, and they would love to take you up on that offer, so it falls into the same family. It’s just a different approach, but you’re recurring revenue in three months from now. If you get, you know, four or five of those clients, you know, do your map and see where you end up in three months and you’re gonna be looking fantastic and, you know, moving well and truly towards your six figure goal of 8,333 bucks a month.
There you go.
[00:18:18] Christian: So the other thing I wanted to add to that, what else do you have, right? Do you have an elite, an e-learning? Do you have something else that you can give away in exchange? Is, is there, it don’t, like what else can you, I guess, quote unquote give away? What else can you leverage, I think is a much better word.
Yeah. What, what else can you leverage that you currently have that really doesn’t cost you anything to give away more of, to to, to build off of that? So I, I, I think there’s those pieces as well, Karl, that I think sometimes get over. And I just think that that’s a, a fantastic way of, of leveraging the assets and, and some of the value items that you might be taking for granted or that you are too obsessed with charging for, when really, at the end of the day, it’s like if I gave you access to my, my online e-learning system, For the first three months, or you put together a bootcamp for 99 bucks, for, you know, for 30 days and you got 20 people into that, how many of those could you convert?
Right? Yeah. And, and again, like bootcamp, what? That’s not, that’s not the model from focus.com. That’s not what Carl would do. But this is you, this is your business, it doesn’t matter. Get creative, have some fun, right? Like that’s, that’s
[00:19:36] Karl: road dog is currency is what you’re saying. So basically, what other assets do you have?
That you can provide. So currency, ultimately my $1,000 I described earlier is me handing over my cash, right? So when I give you my time and I work for a hundred bucks in month one, free and month one or 500, month one, which is dramatically under my market value, I’m giving away my time and my expertise now, right?
So you’ve got money, you’ve got time, you’ve got expertise, you’ve got relationships. You know, you could introduce the mortgage broker to the realtor, the realtor to the mortgage broker. The personal trainer to the gym and the gym to the personal trainer, the florist to the wedding planner. The wedding planner to the florist.
So you’ve got that asset right. Relationship. And then one of the other things, rod, Doug, you’re referencing right? The membership site. So we have a membership site. We provide all of our. If you valued that at $500 a month, six grand a year, if you gave, if you went to an accountant and gave him 10 memberships to that, that would be $60,000 of value that you’re giving up front to the accountant.
Or you go to the gal at the chamber and instead of giving her a thousand dollars cash, you give her $60,000 of value that she could give away. Which is basically 10 memberships to business owners looking to get ahead with their marketing and whatnot, where she can give away those, you know, if you buy today, I’m gonna give you access to this.
So that’s another asset you could give away. So, so road and what you’re defining there is currencies, but there’s different forms of currency. Make sure you make a yeah, make, it’s, it’s not just cash basically. So. Very good point. Well,
[00:21:12] Christian: Okay, so actually in it’s crazy, our chat is lighting up today in inside for the insiders here.
And there was actually a really, really solid question in here. And this one, I’d love to hear your answer on this, Karl. So this, this individual wrote that he stuck with a prospect, right? He did. He used your software and used the jumpstart 12 found additional 600 K in revenue and 200 K in profits. Like wow.
Right? Providing an agreement and a summary document and here it is. You ready for it? I’ll get back to you on Friday. Yeah. And now , guess what happened? Nice. Right? It’s Monday, you know, you know where this is going, so like what? What would you do? It’s like here you are. You found this guy just a boatload of potential revenue and money for him, and for whatever reason the guy’s just like not getting back to you.
What do you.
[00:22:09] Karl: Okay, great question by the way. I gotta tell you, unfortunately the answer is this. You can’t leave without the deal, right? A mistake you can’t, like, so when you do a consultation, right? So some folks are, you know, are using the software that are listening and then others aren’t. At the end of the day, you need to have a process where you basically, Look, if you do a q and a process, do you have a business plan?
They say, no. Little cut. Do you have a marketing plan? They say, no. Little cut. Do you have a sales process? No. Little cut. Do you have joint ventures in place? What’s that? Got no idea. Little cut. What are your profit margins? Don’t know. Little cut. Right? So again, I don’t wanna give out bandaids to people who aren’t cut.
So what I do is I cut you a hundred times, then I say, Hey, do you want this massive bandaid? And it’s hard for them to say no, right? Significantly reduced version of everything that we’re doing. But you should, you need a process like that. What happened is went through that Prophet Jumpstart 12. At the end of that, you can never recreate the intensity.
Of that moment. So what you’ve gotta do is make sure that you close ’em while you’re there. And as I always say, don’t do your best while you’re there. You do what it takes. Like what would it take to get this guy or gal to agree for you to coach them? So what happened is we did the jumpstart 12, and then we left.
Without the deal, and now we’re coming back with the roadmap. And the guys just didn’t maybe land right, because, and, and again, cuz he’s outside of the inten, you know what I mean? The, the intensity was lost and you won’t be able to recreate it, by the way. So what would I do? We have that there’s a, yes, I used to call it a yes document, but the, the report that the software populates is literally my old yes document.
15, you know, 15 more than 17 years ago, 2005, six, seven, and eight when I was, you know, so basically that was the roadmap that we used back then. And I created it specifically for this situation where somebody said, maybe so you put a yes document in front of ’em, but the reality it was done, it’s the conversions on that aren’t gonna be what you want them to be because again, you lost that intensity.
So here is what I would do. First of all, you need to, you know, next time. Gotta make sure that we close ’em in the moment and then say, look, as we’re working together, I’m gonna show up next week with the report. And you’ve got their credit card already right before you produce it. But here’s what I would do.
You gotta get this guy or gal back on the phone and the best way to get anybody on the phone is with an idea, or certainly one of the best that I know of is to have an idea. So let’s just say that this is a chiropractor. Maybe it’s a candlestick maker road dog. But let’s just say it’s a chiropractor.
You wanna get back in front of him. You say it was awesome meeting you last Tuesday. Great meeting. So many unbelievable opportunities. Ironically enough, when I left, I remembered a couple of the, I I thought of a couple of ideas that we didn’t go over that I really think would get you profitable day one and that again, I think we should go over anyways, hope you’re doing really well.
Let me know when you’ve got some time. Let’s grab 45 minutes so in case you have some further questions, I’ll be able to. Handle them. Right? So what happened is this guy, there’s a really good chance he’s gonna read that you’ve got ideas and he’s gonna be like, what’s his idea? Like when I used to sell advertising back in the day, I basically, I didn’t sell advertising.
I sold ideas. And every one of my emails that I sent out, it was idea, idea, idea, idea, idea. I’d get you on the phone, boom, I’d get your credit card number, I’d get your commitment, I’d get your signature. And bingo, bango, bongo, right? So that’s what I would do is I would not try to close this coaching client.
That’s not the next step. The next step is to get them back on the phone. If you’re, if you’re looking for a yes via email, it’s just not gonna come. Right? And of course, there’s always the anomaly, but we don’t play anomalies, we play percentages. So you don’t wanna do that. You wanna you, you need to get the guy or gal back on the phone.
So, So that’s what I would do. Road dog.
[00:26:04] Christian: And, Hey, I, I got one for you, Karl. Lemme know what you think of this one.
[00:26:08] Karl: Just one second. But the, you gotta just make sure, you gotta come up with a couple of ideas that you didn’t expand upon or maybe even touch on during that meeting so that when he does ask, you mentioned, you know what I mean?
Like, oh, this is the idea. But by the way, when you get ’em on the phone, that’s the last thing I’m doing is going over the ideas. I go, so Dave so tell me, what are you thinking about moving forward? Open-ended question. I wanna hear what he says and then what he says. And I’m not just listening to what he says, but I’m listening to the tonality.
The assuredness in his voice, or lack thereof. You know, like 7% of communication is the word. So again, the way that he’s saying it, I mean, if you can get in front of him face to face, that’s even better. Again, depends if he’s a local guy. So, so that’s what I’d be doing. Road, Doug, is the next step is not to try get a yes via email.
Cause I just don’t think that’s coming. The next step is to get him on the phone and those first couple of questions are getting a feel for, you know, like if he said that he had to speak to his wife. Right. Which again, is a bad sign, but the, again, so tell me, so you know, what did Joanne have to. So I first few questions.
I’m getting a really good feel little red arrow. You are here. I’m getting a really good understanding as to where this guy is at and that’s gonna tell me how much selling I gotta do on this call and the intensity at which I gotta go about it. So, so there you go. I hope that helps. Hey, can I go now? Yes.
[00:27:42] Christian: Okay. So this is a real life example of, of something I did. And it’s sort of my no BS direct to the point approach. I got on the, I got on a call and I just said, listen, like you guys love the presentation. You guys saw the value that I can add. You saw the benefit in working with me. What’s it gonna take to get this started?
And that was it. Like, it was like, how, basically what do I, what do we need to do? Like, where do we need to start at for me to come in and prove myself to. And that’s how it started. And guess what I had them for? I think just shy of two years as clients. So that, which kind of leads to the next question, Karl, because it, it, it’s an interesting one, right?
Is there a good time for a coach, a coaching client, even to offer a discount? Like even for coaches is like discounting, like, we hate it, right? Like, we hate, hate, hate that. Is there a good time for that?
[00:28:41] Karl: Yeah, like anything. Look, I mean, yes and no. It needs to be done with strategy. When done without strategy, it’s almost always horrific.
The first thing you and your high end coaching client need to do is decide why they’re doing it, right? So start with a clear understanding of the objectives you know, and how are you gonna know if you’re successful or not. Like, again, like create that finish line. Reason, the why is a world record gonna be broken at the next Olympics with a hundred percent certainty and almost in, you know, Not so much in every event, but there’ll be a swimming world record.
There’ll be a sprinting world record. There’ll be a long distance world record. And the reason is because they get a start and a finish line. Very few people create that finish line. So you know, how are you gonna gauge success? And, and by the way, unless you’re looking to establish yourself as a discount retailer, your client is looking to establish themselves as a discount retailer.
You wanna make sure that you’ve exhausted other options so that you can preserve those, those profit margins. Right? But the, so the obvious threat here is it’d be a discount too. You run the risk of acquiring clients that will never pay full price or an inability to compete with other businesses that are fooling, you know, charging full boat.
So this is if you followed the story of Groupon, right? Speaking of movies a good one but, or. Netflix series. Right? Let’s, let’s get the word out road, Doug, but Groupon. Groupon basically had this exact issue or created this issue for the clients that bought it and ultimately was their undoing, right?
So they would ridiculously unloyal clients ended up you know, following Groupon around. So determine what you or maybe your client can afford. And for a frame of reference to, to offer a 10% discount, the average business needs to increase sales by 33% to break even. Okay? I’m gonna say that again. If you offer a 10% discount, the average business owner needs to make 33% more sales to break even on previous numbers, right?
So that’s kinda mind numbing and a very good reason to you. Throw caution in the air prior to doing it, but, but each business is different. And maybe there as in your high end coaching client, right? And business is different, but probably not, right? So therefore you gotta run the numbers with the goal of determining what kind of sales volume.
Slash increase you’d need to account for your clients. Again, I just said 10%, but unfortunately, you know, clients are thrown around 2030, and of course, 50% discounts are sending normal, right? So ask yourself. Is that target realistic given the way customers typically, typically respond to special offers, which by the way, would assume that they’re doing the math in previous promotions, which they’re probably not.
But that’s where, I mean, again, you’re gonna get strategic if you’re gonna do a, a discount. And a promotion. Make sure that you’re collecting data, right? So like if they’re trying to get rid of old merchandise and a 30% reduction in price only requires a 10% increase in volume to cover costs, like that’s palatable, right?
But it, again, it takes a math equation to determine that. That’s not gut instinct. It’s a math equation. Right, or like when they wanna boost the average dollar sale. So just think, do you wanna supersize that? Do you want me turned into a meal? Make sure that the amount they require customers to spend is high enough to account for the discount and still include an increase in revenue, right?
So all of that to be said, road, they gotta be cautious with it. The answer is maybe, but. You’d have to have a a reason in order to do so. No,
[00:32:23] Christian: that’s answer the only time. I guess. You also would never take a discount, and this is Karl speaking from experience. If you’re going to a plastic surgeon to repair your nose as.
That may may not have happened. My nose is listen. Dude, they’re speaking of parades that you like to get in front of. Boy there, I could take this many different directions right now.
[00:32:45] Karl: You could,
[00:32:45] Christian: Especially with some of your Mexico stories. But listen can you give us some examples, if you will, of other acceptable reasons to offer a discount?
Like, does that, does that make sense? Like you get where my mind’s at with that question?
[00:33:01] Karl: Yeah, like why are we going to Yeah. Okay. So I dunno, to move old product as an example, you know, like a outta season merchandise and products that might be nearing an ex an expiration date. Like car dealerships do this when the new models come in and you’re into the grocery store, right?
And the cheese is magically on sale. Well look at the expiry date, right? You’re gonna see that the closer it gets to the expiry date magically, the cheaper it gets, right. Maybe you do it to lu lure back old customers, right? They’ve already paid to, they’ve already paid to acquire the customer. So you’ve got a bit more wiggle room there, right when you start factoring their their margins.
So to lure back old customers Maybe to promote a new product, right? Like they’re launching a new product line. They could use like a short term discount strategy to encourage people to try it out. Like, so this would be a beta tester, an early bird special of some description, or, or maybe what they’re gonna do is put them on, put themselves on a list, right?
You could call that the early bird list and then get you know, X product or X discount. To say fleeing customers, I guess would have to be a reason. Like the competition is offering lower prices. You may need to win the price war over the short term, right? Like bring in competition, like bring in the competitors of the competition’s coupon and we’ll redeem it.
Right. As in like, match their pricing. And, and that being said, I, I have to say this, like an added value strategy, maybe more like a, a more effective way than following that. But, you know, I guess your profit margin is gonna thank you there. Right? But like, you know, a happy Meal at McDonald’s as an example of like adding more value as opposed to.
Discounting. So, you know, but fleeing customers, that would be one. That’s what I was just talking about. Increase the average dollar sale, like offer a discount on all purchases above a set value to encourage greater spending. So you used to have this, used to have a client that did birthday parties.
Right. Like it was like a. What do you call like a store? You know, you come in and buy a bunch of stuff for the birthday, you know, like the streamers and the balloons and all that sort of stuff. So we created the checklist. Most important thing we did, we created the checklist, which just changed everything.
And so what happened is mom would come in, you know, and she’s gonna get the streamers and she’s gonna get the invites. But then a 16 year old was there McDonald’s style. With a checklist. And it was like, okay, do you need this? Do you need this? Do you need this? Do you need this? Do you need this? Do you need this?
And then, by the way, as they’re going through it, oh, by the way, if you spend x call it three, you know, let’s say that the average unit of sale is 200. And then it’s like, okay, well if you spend 300 you automatically get this discount or you automatically get this you know, you know, a $50 coupon for next time or you get a free cake.
So anyway, so to increase the average dollar sale, you know, like supersize it as an example of that. So that would be it. I don’t know. Ro like to generate leads, like that would be obvious, right? Building a list, I guess they kinda said that a minute ago to increase sales. Like if increasing sales is the objective, make sure you’ve reviewed these other strategies of adding value.
Right? It can be very difficult to make a decent profit with discounting. You know, you’re increasing sales, like the increase in sales volume needs to cover the cost and the loss of profit margin basically. Super important. So anyways that’s what I’d say. Can,
[00:36:12] Christian: can I, can I just point you the other way just for a second because as we were talking about the Spotify stuff, right?
In terms of getting in front of that, your famous parades do you think that an astute business owner, I guess depending on what you’re selling, I’m thinking more specifically retail, but I guess it could be anything. It could be a. If you are ahead of the, the curve, if you will, and you are, you are aware of sort of the next wave of what the next demand and everything else is, you could probably charge a premium, like let’s go the opposite direction.
Would you agree with that?
[00:36:45] Karl: And again, adding the signi, let’s make sure that you’ve exercised, you’ve explored these options before you go and think discount, right? Because again, this is like the problem with the average business owners, they’ll immediately go to lowering cost, like lowering their prices.
I mean like discounting and then adding more products and services, right? And. I always say like literally straight from my opening in Cancun, we did Business Coaching Mastery. Like there’s a little company called Apple you might have heard of and like what do they do? Only premium pricing on literally everything, as in they’re raising their prices.
And they have so few products and services that would blow you away for a company doing the volume that they’re doing. So basically the average business owner is going exact, if left of their own Spidey senses is going in the exact opposite direction that we’d recommend. Well, that Apple, that Steve Jobs would recommend, right?
I dunno. Probably not the best idea. So,
[00:37:44] Christian: Before we, before we wrap, I’m, I’m just gonna just randomly pull a question outta my mind, which is a dark and scary place, . But so you’ve watched the, you’ve watched the playlist. What, what else is on your radar right now in terms of what, what is Karl Bryan watching, reading, listening to, and, and more, better than that?
Out of all of that, whatever it is, cuz I know you like, you’re ridiculous in terms of the amount. Consumption that you put into your humongous brain of yours. What’s, what’s catching your attention now?
[00:38:20] Karl: Shoots. These are compliments, I dunno.
[00:38:23] Christian: Don’t worry, don’t worry. I’ll cut you completely down on the close.
Don’t worry. So you’re waiting for this answer then you’re gonna
[00:38:29] Karl: hammer me now. So look, good question. I can tell you that. Very effective again, did a video yesterday from the beach. My daughter hanging out and I may or may not have been drinking a beer right close to snorkeling and like having the best Sunday ever.
But anyways that’s not what I’m talking about. But integration is what I touched on in the video. Just hired a new c e o and we kind of got this you know, just un I wrote an email last week about being unsettled and I said, you know, like it’s not that you’re unsettled, it’s that, you know, it’s, it’s not anxiety or some condition.
That’s not why you’re unsettled and feeling anxious. It’s that you know that you’re capable of so much more meant for so much more. Anyway, so just talking about that a little bit, it got a lot of feedback. So with the changes that we’re going through here@focus.com, it’s just what I was, what I’ve been concentrating on at the super high levels where I’m trying to go is integration.
Okay? So Blackberry and the iPhone may or may not have heard me talk about this, but iPhone didn’t kill the Blackberry. The app store killed the Blackberry, right? Like you. That keyboard, just like Road Dog did. And so did I. But the iPhone won over, but it wasn’t the iPhone. It was the app store You fell in love with, checking the weather, checking your stocks, checking Facebook shopping on it, what, whatever it is that you’re, you know, you’re clicking, right?
Certainly surfing the net. Hitting Safari or Chrome or whatever you’re hitting. So it’s the apps of the equivalent. Steve Jobs worked for Atari back in the day. They didn’t fall in love with Atari. You fell in love with Pacman, miss Pacman donkey, right? So you fell in love with the games. The games, Pacman and Miss Pacman and Donkey Kong are the apps of Atari.
So Atari is the iPhone and then the games are the, the delio, the apps. So we integration, right? That, so basically you can go create an app tomorrow, put it in the app store, and then I can download it and effectively, or upload it, I guess, you know, to my iPhone so that it’s looking at, you know, that it’s looking at me and it’s, it’s functional.
That’s integration. So with our software, the goal. The big picture is that you’re ultimately going to be able to run your entire business coaching company off the back of our software. So everything will be integrated, zoom will be integrated, go to webinar, will be integrated. Your calendar certainly be integrated.
We’ve already got a coaching portal, so all the major You know, applications will be integrated into our thing. So anyway, so that’s the answer. And there’s another one, friction. An example of a frictionless business, like just how much friction is there? Like if, if you do all of your sales, how much friction is there in Facebook?
And the answer is insanely low amount. Try get somebody from Facebook on the. It’s not happening, right? Like they don’t have to like people answering the phone. It’s not like Zappos. So basically every, you’ve never spoken to somebody at Facebook ever. I can almost guarantee it. Okay. Well think of the low level of friction versus if they had to hire, you know, telemarketers to answer all the calls and whatnot back and forth.
Significantly less friction. Doing a bad job of explaining what I’m trying to explain. When you take somebody from a lead to. And you don’t need to speak to anybody. That’s frictionless business right there. And what you ultimately want to, you know, provide. And if you wanna build a billion dollar valuation, you’re one of the first things that, you know, people are looking at, high-end investors, et cetera.
They’re looking for a blue ocean, and then they’re looking at the amount of friction you’ve got within your business. So anyway, so, you know, just looking at friction like what Jeff Bezos will say is that raving fans don’t send support tickets, right? So every time we get a support ticket, what we’re doing is we reverse engineer that, right?
And it’s like, okay, well why are they asking? At what point are they asking and how can we make sure that nobody ever asks that again? Right? Like again, a support ticket would be an example of friction, right? So So yeah, these are road dog integration and friction. There’s what is on my mind, how is that,
[00:42:31] Christian: Listen.
So three, three points. First off, I have no problems getting Facebook on the phone, but that’s just because I’m an advertiser. And funny enough, how much easier that got when TikTok started eating their lunch for them, by the way. Hilarious how that just kind of changed the game a little bit. But it, it, you know, you, you talk about raving fans, so there’s a certain all in one, if you will, funnel software.
I’m, I’m not going to, if you want to know, just message me, like I’m not gonna promote them for free on a podcast. What’s interesting to me is, even in speaking with them, it’s like they know what they’d like to. They don’t do that typically because they’ll end up just adding more of the features that their clients are demanding.
Like it’s just so fascinating how it’s like we know that we need a more comprehensive C R M, but we’re not gonna take the time and resource to do that. When clients are deliberately asking for posting directly to social media or whatever it may be, or integrating with Google for reviews and stuff like that blows my mind.
Right. Again, no serving your clients and understanding their, their needs. When you talk about Blackberry, I just, this is because again, you and I, we freaking loved Blackberry where they went wrong. And here’s the craziest part. I, I, I should pull it up. Maybe you can Google this. Like what did WhatsApp get sold for?
Like how many billions did, did Facebook pay for WhatsApp? BB M was the absolute best, fully encrypted messaging platform ever created back in the day who wasn’t on bbm, and you could use it anywhere. I remember being in Vegas years ago when we’re all on Blackberry, we didn’t have to worry about what wifi plan we’re on because we’re all using bb m.
It was the one weird dude on the iPhone that wasn’t part of our group chat. Like, think about that and what did they do? They didn’t double down on the. That could have made them billions. Right? Like it’s just so, and, and then what happened? Nothing. Like, that’s the crazy part. Like when I, when I look back at that, I’m like, holy smokes.
They were sitting on a freaking gold mine and they didn’t do anything with it. Thoughts on that? Yeah.
[00:44:42] Karl: That look It’s an, at the end of the day, it’s intellectual property, right? Like it’s like a blackberry. It’s not just about the Blackberry and the, you know, the what the magic of Blackberry and the magic iPhone is the intellectual property behind it, right?
You got Android debatably better, maybe iPhone’s better, maybe Android’s better, but at the end of the day, it’s intellectual property and the ability to, you know, how functional it is. So, so Blackberry had that, they had private. Licensed lockup locked up in the story back in the day, and they let it slip to their fingertip shoots and yeah,
[00:45:15] Christian: I, I just Googled it.
Do you wanna take a guess what Facebook paid for? WhatsApp?
[00:45:18] Karl: 10,000,000,016. 16, boom. There you go. There you go. And it was, everybody was like, Facebook is insane. And they said the same thing about Instagram, by the way. And they’re saying the same thing about Metaverse. And my guess is in five years he’s gonna look pretty smart about metaverse, but shall.
See
[00:45:39] Christian: Chelsea. Exactly, exactly. Wow. Who knows, man. Now with with Elon, with Twitter, there’s a whole random, we could keep going, but we gotta wrap this up, Karl, because that would be a fun conversation. Maybe for next week, we can talk about the brilliance or the stupidity of, of Elon and Twitter, because that’s a whole conversation in and of itself that I’d love to pick your brain on.
Why don’t you close us out with one thing of the many things that we discussed today that somebody can take and, and put into place today to help them grow their
[00:46:10] Karl: coaching practice? Okay. Before I do that, I wanna hear part of the, the joke from today in my email,
[00:46:19] Christian: always bud. Is it What Dangerous Dave,
[00:46:21] Karl: before?
No, no, before before electric cars. Elon Musk was just Lon Musk. Oh my god.
[00:46:36] Christian: oh my God. Like, like put that on the dad joke list. There it is, folks. You know what? They just call ’em dad jokes, and then at least you can get away with like some of these jokes, bud. Like, oh my god, lawn. All right. Besides not using that joke ever at a party, what else would you recommend somebody takes from today’s podcast,
[00:46:58] Karl: For buying clients?
So
company. Their company, the candlestick making company, I would hundred percent buy clients. Like an example of that in a retail dynamic you take product, like let’s say, you know, you take 10, $10,000 a product, and that might be a bit high, by the way, on an experiment. But take $10,000 a product and basically put it on shelves, right?
And then once that product runs out, you’re back and say, hey. Here’s your next $10,000 order. But it, rather than buying advertising, right, what you’re doing is you’re buying clients. You’re buying, and, and by the way, you’re not just buying clients, but you’re buying data. And ultimately data is the number one commodity in the world by about a hundred million miles.
You, when I say the number one commodity in the world, you probably think of oil and then you probably think of coffee. And that is not the case. Not even close. The world has changed dramatically and the number one commodity by a million miles is data, data, data, data, data. And your coaching client isn’t collecting any.
So before you go and spend a hundred grand buying clients make sure that you do it in an intelligent way. Collecting data so that you can win, win, win, win, win, right? So, so anyways, buying client shoots, it’s a ripping strategy and works with ridiculous predictability when deployed
[00:48:21] Christian: properly. Okay?
And now, from my opinion that nobody asked for, but you’re gonna get anyways is if you want, as Karl just mentioned, data or data, whatever you prefer. Take a look at what you’re posting on social media and take a look at who’s engaging with what content, and then you’ll know exactly what to talk to them about.
Boom. Alright, on that note listen everybody, thanks for tuning into another episode of Business Coaching Secrets with myself, the Road Dog. Always underrated, of course, and the small man himself on steroids. Karl Bryan. I’m trying to cut you down as best as I can right now. He is number one in your hearts, but he was number what?
22 on the schedule. What was your number again? Shoes. I
[00:49:02] Karl: should, it’s always, otherwise I went home. That’s
[00:49:06] Christian: it. Wow. Wow, wow. All right. Take your ball and go home. Karl Bryan, was that your middle name? Take your ball and go home. I can’t wait to talk to Hunty about that. Hey, listen, if you’re not on the inside and getting asked to the pre-show or you aren’t taking, getting Karl’s daily dad joke emails, which by the way also are filled with a tremendous amount of value inside them, go to focus.com and subscribe today.
And also there you can learn much more about all of the group coaching software. The quick start and all that sort of that step fast start, pardon me and everything else that we’ve been talking about. And also to join us as an insider, go to focus.com. And again, if you enjoyed the podcast, please share it with a fellow coach or someone that you think might make a great business coach.
And of course, as always, if you enjoyed it, please leave a review as we know that that is gonna move us up the old ranks of those streaming services. And that is it for another week. And as I like to finish every single time, remember folks, progress equals happiness. Take care everybody. We’ll see you in the next episode.
[00:50:04] Karl: Karl bryan built profit acceleration software 2.0 to train business coaches. How to find any small business owner, more than $100,000 in. Five minutes without them spending an extra dollar on marketing or advertising. This becomes a business coach’s superpower. So as a business coach, you’ll never again have to worry about working with business owners that can’t afford your high-end coaching fees.
Check us out at focused.com.