BCS: 182 | Great Business Quotes + When To Discount

Business Coaching Secrets with Karl Bryan

BCS 182: In this episode, Karl answers questions about:

–  Great business quotes

–  When to discount?

And more…

Karl Bryan helps business coaches get clients. Period.

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EPISODE TRANSCRIPTION –
(transcription is auto-generated)

SFC 182
[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, gentlemen, boys and girls, coaches around the world. Welcome to another episode of Business Coaching Secrets. It’s your boy the Road Dog, a k aka Christian, with none other than the man, the myth, the three and a half foot legend, Karl.
[00:00:55] Karl: I’m getting shorter shoots.
[00:00:57] Christian: You are, but you know what? The stilts make you at least five, six. So there you go.
[00:01:02] Karl: Nice. There you go. What’s going on? Road dog. What’s happening in road dog’s world?
[00:01:06] Christian: Lots, bud. Just absolutely lots going on. Gonna get more involved in a little political manner locally here. I’m gonna try and I’m fighting the good fight for.
Youth sports in this community, which was gonna require me shattering one man’s fragile ego. But it will be fun. And I believe a million dollar lawsuit will probably gather his attention. So good times ahead.
[00:01:35] Karl: I might leave that right there. Shoot. Sounds like Well, let’s keep us
[00:01:38] Christian: updated. Yeah, it’s gonna be, dude, it’s gonna be it’s gonna be fun.
It’s, you know, it’s what was interesting. Because this is, this is all in regards to a soccer facilities, indoor soccer facilities up here in Cologna. And what I never factored in was second series of consequences, right? Second order of consequences. So by us as my soccer club, that I’m a part of not being able and granted access to one facility because they deem us to be competition.
We now have to go rent space from a school. Well, I was at my daughter’s strength and conditioning training last Wednesday and I was talking to a coach there and he coaches basketball and he was like, man, this really burns me up because we cannot for basketball, find gym space. So there’s your second order of consequences, right?
So I’m like, okay, now where are they going? What’s the third order? Where are they going to now rent space, which is now robbing space for somebody else? It’s amazing how. Things run, but how much we typically don’t factor these things in. So anyways, I thought that was kind of interesting
[00:02:48] Karl: dominoes, ladies and gentlemen.
When you do one thing in your business, it’s very little about that one thing. You gotta think what happens next? What happens next? What happens next? Exactly.
[00:02:59] Christian: There you go. There you go. Cool. Hey, listen, I, I’m just gonna dive right in. Obviously. You send out, you do a ridiculous amount of content including of course your, your prime crowning jewel, which is this podcast which like, let’s not kid ourselves, it’s just me supporting you is really what it is.
I’m just, you know, propping you up here. But anywho it’s a lot of propping to do, but it’s a good thing. You’re short and. Now the with all of those emails that you send, right? Like the amount of content that you put out, is there a favorite quote from a recent, let’s, I, I was gonna say just email, but even from one of your YouTube or here or wherever is there a favorite quote that you have from a recent sort of anything that you shared?
[00:03:44] Karl: Hmm.
Don’t know. Lemme so, okay. I better give an answer here quick. You, what’s that? You can’t, you couldn’t heal because you were pretending you weren’t hurt. I think there’s a lot of. I think there’s a lot of value in that, right? Like personally, but also, you know, for your business. Like think the marketing guy or the business coach that suck generating leads pretending it’s not a thing, is not gonna solve the thing, right?
So hit it head on, but you couldn’t heal cause you kept pretending you weren’t hurt. I might, again, it might be a little bit different than that, but that’s the premise. Well and truly here’s some, I don’t know if this was a quote, but over the weekend I’m thinking a lot, just kinda. Asymmetrical risk reward.
You know, a better way of saying that in layman’s terms would be small hinge that waves a big door. You know, what’s got low risk and big returns again, like Okay, so like a a, an investor, a a professional investor has rules. Yeah. What’s the difference between an amateur investor and a professional or an amateur business owner?
And a professional business owner? You’re gonna find rules. And, and by the way, if you want an example of that, you wrote, Doug, you just mentioned soccer, right? Like again, I don’t need to be heavily involved in soccer to know that you go to the match and there’s a rule book, whether you know it’s your 11 year old’s daughter game, or you’re watching Ronaldo with a hundred thousand people in the stadium.
The first principles of a sport is the rule book, right? So again Asymmetrical risk reward dictates like, you know, sorry, I was gonna professional investor. If a, if an investor doesn’t feel like they’re gonna get a five x return, at absolute minimum, they won’t put their money in harm’s way. So that’s one of their rules.
Does that mean that every investment they make you know, hits a home run and they get a five x on it? Absolutely not because they know that despite their rules they are gonna have some swing and misses. Why? Because business is complicated. And Warren Buffet will tell you, anybody who says it’s not complicated or complex is an idiot.
So it’s not always gonna go as planned. So that being said, if you’ve got a five x return, do the math and you only gotta hit, you know, two out of 10 and you’re looking pretty good. So anyway, so asymmetrical risk, reward, like what? So starting like this podcast. You know, like, again, this podcast has done very well, I gotta tell you, very, very low risk, right?
It was some time. Hey, road dog, wanna show up and field some questions for me? You know, here we are. Many, many, many, many, many, I don’t even know, but, you know, a couple hundred episodes later. Here we are. So anyway, so asymmetrical risk, reward, doing a local, doing a talk at the local chamber. Very low risk, very high reward.
Organizing 10 people to the local chamber and doing your first event. Yes, maybe you’ll make a meal of it. Maybe those people were gonna like, you know, leave and go, my gosh, I just lit two hours on fire spending it with that guy or gal. But at the end of the day, it’s a very low risk, high reward dynamic.
So anyway, just thinking about different things like as you become more successful in business, you’ll see that it doesn’t make sense. To take on things that really can’t hit a home run and know you won’t always hit a home run, but that will stop you you know, from chasing around you know, chasing multiple rabbits kind of thing.
So again, create some rules around it would be kind of a hack. I said this in Cancun in the fact that I said this to somebody last week and they kind of liked it and then sent it back to me in a text message. But it said you have dreams to pursue, not people to impress. Road dog. I think that’s got some value.
You look, I just, I don’t know, tho Those are some, I think that’s what we’re looking for might be helpful for those listening. But I would tell you that quotes, what you should really do is not listen to me, but go to the greats of the greats. Remember, very uncommon to be two things, and that is old and rich.
So in Warren Buffet speaks, Charlie Munger speaks. Ray Dalio speak. I think that you should listen cuz they are old and rich, important. Lots of old people, lots of rich people but old and rich at the same time is rare. So one of the things that they’ll say is, it’s not how hard you row, it’s the boat that you’re in.
What they mean by that is the industry. We talked about that a little bit in the last. Whatever number of episodes, but like, you know, if you went into Bitcoin three years ago, you were the smartest guy ever. Right? You couldn’t miss, you could be dumb as a doorknob and you would’ve crushed it. It wasn’t you, it was the industry.
It was the you know what I mean? It was like, you know, cryptocurrency that was, you know, riding like a waved shore and now all of a sudden you’re not looking quite as smart. Does that mean that your IQ dropped? No, it’s, it’s, the market shifted. So looking at the market, looking at the trend, As opposed to how hard you’re gonna work on your boat or your industry.
Of course, if you do both, if you work very, very hard in a fast boat, that would be a good idea. What’s another one? You know, Warren Buffet says that he looks for something he can buy for a penny, sell for a dollar, and that is habit forming. Just that quote takes my breath away. It’s that intelligent again.
Just buy it for a penny. What I said a minute ago, asymmetrical risk reward. Buying it for next to nothing. Sell for a dollar. What are you saying? There is insane margins. When you buy something for a penny and sell it for a dollar your margins are obscene. Most people are buying something for a penny and trying to sell it for two pennies and then wondering, you know, why they don’t do so well.
And then habit forming. Look at Facebook, habit forming YouTube, habit forming gum, habit forming, chewing tobacco. I used to, when I played hockey, I always chewed tobacco. Again, insanely habit forming. Anyway, so habit forming is important. And Rhoda just, or boy, Jeff Bezos, right? He, what he says is that a raving fan doesn’t send a support ticket.
And again, I’m probably making a meal of that, but that’s effective what he’s saying. Like, so what we do internally here is when we get a support ticket, we try to reverse engineer it reverse engineer it. And then make it so that we don’t see that support ticket again. Right. Always possible. No, but that’s effectively a pol, you know, a process we have.
And then always another thing that Bezos will say, this will be the last one I’ll do here, road dog, but always day one. It’s always day one at Amazon. And what he means by that is that what happens to big companies, they become like the Titanic, right? Like a massive. In the middle of the water, and then they’re coming towards an iceberg.
And because they’re so big and so much momentum, they can’t do a left or a right. They can’t avoid the iceberg. And then what happens? Everybody drowns, right? So that is al always day one, I think is and again, for these direct quotes, you know, like just, you know, hopefully you’re getting the premise.
I’m not trying to just give you quotes here. I’m trying to give you the, some you know, the, the premise behind them. So there you go. Ro Doug. How was that? Anything you’d add? Yeah, I,
[00:10:14] Christian: I would add it. If you don’t play to win, don’t play at all. That’s a quote from your favorite male quarterback of all time, Mr. Tom Brady. There you go. Shit. And listen, you know why it’s, I never understood why I listened to you, but now you’ve made it very clear. I get it cuz you’re both rich and old. So there it is. That’s why I listen to you shoots there. It’s
[00:10:36] Karl: nice. Shoot.
[00:10:39] Christian: It, it’s like a, it’s sort of like a backhanded compliment, folks.
That’s that, that’s, that’s how it works in this, this this show. The other, one of the favorite quotes that you that you shared that I love is if you lend somebody money, make sure you lend them enough. Something like that. Is that how it
[00:10:53] Karl: goes? Nice. That’s my old man. Yes. There you go.
[00:10:56] Christian: Love that. It’s no different than like just investing in anything, right? Like if you’re gonna invest in your marketing or whatever, it’s like, just like Don. Invest for the next week, right? Like, be committed for what it’s actually going to take to deliver the result that you’re after. And that’s, yeah.
[00:11:15] Karl: Warren Buffet will say he won’t invest in a stock that he doesn’t wanna own for at least a decade.
And quite frankly, he will say that he, he doesn’t invest in a company that he doesn’t wanna own forever, right? Mm-hmm. . So yeah. Different way of thinking. Very different way of thinking than the average.
[00:11:32] Christian: Listen, last week we were discussing discounting and obviously an interesting conversation because you typically hate discounting but yet you love things at a discount.
Huh, interesting. Anyways, I’m guessing that there are some, you know, sort of particular scenarios where you’d actually encourage. And situations which I would imagine far outweigh the opposite, but you can prove me wrong, where you would discourage it. Can you, can you give some
[00:11:58] Karl: examples of each?
Yeah.
Okay. Well, look, yeah, you’ve always got options, right? Consider whether they need to offer the discount to their entire market, or if they can segment it and limit the offer to those who need it. Like, for example, an offer to existing clients or members. Of your, like let’s say you got a customer loyalty program to serve your objectives without going to the public.
Right? So again, treating, you know, different, like having like a little, you know, silo in your database and, you know, do you have a, do you have to offer a discount to stay competitive? Right? Or can you create a new product line that will have longer term impact on the competition and increase market share?
Right? Like, can the market afford what they’re selling right now or is it a seasonal offering regardless of the discount? You need the time, the offer correctly, I guess is what I’m saying. Like January is generally a rough financial month for most consumers, right, right after Christmas. So your discounts will be focused on moving old.
Not necessarily increasing sales volume or maybe like another example, north Americans in July and August. Are going away. Away. Right? So adjust accordingly. And then by the way, if your database is in Australia, your clients are in Australia the equivalent of July, August is like dec December, January, right?
And if you didn’t realize that, you didn’t know that you might make a gly error and do a big promotion at the wrong time of the year, and you know, subsequently your discount, your big offer might not. Fall the same. Maybe road probably like winter clothing, right? Snow skis at the beginning of winter.
Look, this is a bad idea, right? Just a way to make less money. Whereas discounting winter clothing, snow skis, snow, snow mobiles in the summer. Is probably a really good idea. And what are you gonna be doing? You’re gonna be moving dead stock and you’re gonna be making move room for next year’s inventory, right?
And then another thing to be thinking about too is you’re doing this, like, what does the model look like? Remember, I think it was last week or the week before, we talked about Tesla versus Ford. The Tesla model. Like are you selling your wares online? And then you don’t need to have massive stock. But remember Tesla, you walk into a Tesla dealership.
It’s downtown New York, downtown LA downtown Vancouver, Sydney, London and there’s like five cars in a computer. And then you pick your car, you design it, and then it gets shipped to you, right? Versus Ford many acres and hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of vehicles. Without looking at the, you know, you don’t need to walk into the two dealerships to know that Ford is, you know, letting go of some stock when the, the 22 or the 23.
2023 new, you know, cars come out. What are they gonna do to the 20 twos and most certainly the 20 ones that are still brand new, they gotta run ’em out. Right? So the model that, like, are they selling online, is what I’m getting at? And again, probably not right now. And the question is, you know, could they find a way?
And what they’re actually doing, by the way, is making double margins. Think about this. The internet is the middleman. Okay? By selling direct to consumer online effectively what you’re doing is making a double margin or able to discount and make higher margins than you would otherwise with the middleman.
Right? Some nuances there clearly but, you know, not too yeah, those are some of the things I’d be thinking about, you know, and maybe like, so questions that I’d ask like before you make your decision, right? How deep does the discount need to be to have the desire and effect. That might be a question you need to throw out there, or how much can they afford to discount?
Like again, look at their margins and then go, okay, well hang on. You don’t wanna be, you know, losing money and if you were gonna be losing money, you’d have to real good reason for doing it and run and open up. You know, open up you know, counter space for, you know, other more popular inventory and get the superseded stuff out.
You know, do they need to discount all products equally? Again, having a 50% off sale on the front window, I mean, again, is, is that necessary for everything in there? A lot of less experienced retailers have done that in the past and really just found what they’re doing is they’re, you know, they’re not getting rid of their old stock and then they end up selling some stuff they otherwise could have sold for full margin.
For half price and not a good idea. You know, can they use coupons to code the offer? Like again, you know, like, you know, have a certain phone number or have an, you know what I mean, like a specific link so that they can track all of that stuff. So anyways, those are some of the You know, some of the things I’d be thinking about, and by the way discounting, I should definitely say this.
Like you’ve got 50% off two for one or buy one, get one free. Right. 50% off, two for one, buy one get one free. They’re all fundamentally the same discount, but the buy and get one free will beat the others hands. Okay, so buy one, get one free is gonna beat 50% off and two for one every day of the week and twice on Sunday.
And then by the way, you’ll, you’ll see like you go to Mexico and you’ll see this, I can’t remember the name of the watches, but they would have buy one and get two free, buy one and get three free in some cases. But when you did the buy one get three, it wasn’t all of the watches. It was like specific ones.
So there you go. I don’t know. That’s just be strategic when you’re discounting for sure. And, and remember, people get addicted to discounts. We say this last week, people get addicted to discounts. They don’t get addicted to free, right? So careful when you’re, you’re doing discounts. So if you own the local bar and the regulars come in and you wipe off 20% significantly, You know, like it’s a bad idea in comparison to here.
You know, you’re the owner of the bar and you just bring over four shots, or four ru Cokes or four beers or whatever for the four guys to the table and say, this one’s on the house, this one’s on me. You know, the first pitcher is free. What? You know, they’ll do that for our hockey team, right? Like they go to the bar and then the first is free.
Right? But, you know, wiping 10% off, 20% off. Generally speaking, not a good idea. Cause again, they’ll get addicted to the discounts. So, you know, and, and maybe like, like the business model that they’re using, like I mentioned earlier, like the middleman is like the internet is the middleman, right? Like rodg, like what’s the business model when you’re kind of rise above 30,000 feet and looking at.
So maybe like before discounting, I would definitely do a little bit of a stock take, what I would refer to as the little red arrow you are here. Like, like if I was gonna coach your business, the chiropractor, the dentist, the butcher, the baker, the candlestick maker with a hundred percent certainty.
When I first start, when I go in, what I’m doing is I’m assessing the little red arrow you are. Okay, I’m assessing that. And then the second thing that I’m doing is, I’m getting a point that you wanna get to so that, again, I understand cuz remember not everybody wants the same thing. You want a seven figure business, they’re semi-retired and just wanna make 150 grand a year and watch their kids, watch their grandkids you know, be able to, you know, travel like, and again, that will come back to freedom.
By the way, business coaches, business owners, They got into it for freedom in a roundabout way. Time freedom, lifestyle freedom financial freedom. So understanding what it is that motivates them and where they want to get to would be important. So then the coaching is, you know, basically bringing those two destinations together.
You know, like don’t, you don’t wanna be the best, you want to be the only, right? So again, before I come in there, road dog and I’m like helping you discount to move out some inventory, I wanna really get an assessment as to where you’re. And how I can jack things up, right? So anyways those are some of the thoughts around discounting.
I get it, you know, from last week. But you know, careful with that, be be strategic. That’s the business owner with left of their own devices. They will lower their prices and add products and services. If we look at the most successful company of all time, that would be Apple and they have premium prices and very few products and services.
In other words, They’re spidey instincts, their, their, their natural instincts will take ’em in the exact opposite direction of the most debatably, the most successful business of all time, which would be Apple. So there you go. Shoot, that’s my answer to that.
[00:19:50] Christian: So just when it comes to discounting, I, I’m just wondering what your thoughts are cuz people like to obsess with it.
Right? And, and it’s interesting because like, what, what percentage do you think you actually have to discount to get someone’s a.
[00:20:07] Karl: Look
[00:20:07] Christian: Because 10% is a, who cares, right? Like ultimately.
[00:20:11] Karl: So again, cuz everybody, cuz they don’t understand how to read, financial statements, don’t understand margin. Why?
Because they don’t understand how to run a business. They’ll, they’ll throw around 50% here, there, and everywhere, right? So this is why you’ll see anybody worth their chops in business will always say add value as opposed to lower prices or discount. But that being said, road dog, like I said, there’s, you know, they’re, you know, the you know, like understanding that buy one get one free will significantly out, pull the 50% off.
Understanding that is, is critical. But, but I’m gonna say, You know, you look, buy one, get one free is where I would, where I would, if they damned and determined, that’s where they gotta go. I would go there, right? Buy one, get one free, and then that will raise eyebrows. That will bring in traffic that will increase sales.
But again, there’s a better way, you know, there’s a better way. That’s my answer.
[00:21:08] Christian: All right. So when it comes to. I guess I’m just looking at it from the coach’s perspective, right? It’s like I’m dealing with my clients and maybe we’re having conversations about discounting and helping them sort of understand that, and they’re, you know, they may be in a, in a pinch to try and get some sales, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Can you give an example of using I guess sympathy versus empathy when dealing with coaching clients? You know what I mean? Like sort of. A fine line, if you will, but like, what, what are your, what are your thoughts there?
[00:21:41] Karl: Yeah, my thoughts are Okay. Si Well, first let’s define simp. Look, let me give you an example.
Sympathy versus empathy. Road dog is throwing up on a boat, right? Me. Sympathy is me coming and throwing up with him, right? Empathy is, I get his wife, I bring him a glass of water get a blanket, put her around his shoulders. This would the chance of this happening, Larry Remote Rog. Remember the time you wrote on the back of I see.
Shoot. We, I feel like we should be talking about that. So there’s nothing to talk about.
[00:22:13] Christian: I did not put my arms around you. It’ll never happen. As much as you tried to intentionally make sure that I landed in the lake, it did not happen. And there’s no way. I’m not sure. Anyways, that’s a whole nother conversation.
That’s that’s a whole nother
[00:22:28] Karl: empathy versus empathy. Right. So road dogs puking in the side of the boat. I’m throwing up with him. Empathy is that I’m like, road dog shoot. And you know, you’re seasick. Here’s a gravel, your wife’s here, here’s the blanket. Put him to bed, put, you know, a pot beside him so he’s got a barf and a glass of water.
Like, that’s empathy, right? So what I mean by that, when your client, when you, when you’re like, you go to three grand a month for your coaching and you’ve been 1000 for like three years. When he says, I can’t afford it. Sympathy is, yeah, I know. I can’t afford it either. Right. Empathy is, look man, I get it, but you know, are you just gonna stay in the same spot?
Are you gonna keep doing what you’ve been doing? Are you happy with where you’re at? Like, just get it. And what Zig Ziegler would say is when he sold pots and pans back in day, he knew if somebody was gonna be successful if they bought the pots and pans, if they didn’t sacrifice for their own family and spend the money to get their own family hooked up with these pots and pans.
They weren’t sold on the pots and pans and therefore, You know, they, they weren’t sold on ’em. So they, you know, if you’re not sold, you can’t sell it as the thing, right? So, so here’s a question, right? That’s why we know that people sign up with us magically, they become more successful in a big, bad way.
All of a sudden, guess what they’ve done? They’ve take us, taken us on as their coach, as their mentor, right? Like, they’re all of a sudden, you know, they’re, they whip out their credit card and show that I’m serious about getting ahead. So the question is, have you sacrificed, have you followed, have you paid for a coach?
Have you paid for a. It’s like, you know, when somebody hums and haws and that sort of thing, and again, sympathy. I said this on one of my YouTube videos, right? And it’s like, you know, you’re not skeptical. You’re guus like, say that and mean it, right? Like, believe me, people want to be led. That’s the truth, right?
They don’t wanna follow or they do wanna follow, they don’t want to lead, they want to be led. Remember, when you get on a horse, the horse knows who’s in charge long before you do, right? So, so you can, and. Maybe here’s something Rod Doug, like you can move people in a few different ways, right? So I want you to think like three levels.
Action, motivation, and then identity. I think Tony Robbins 1 0 1, so like action level is I get you to do something. Right. Motivational level is I get you to do it with a bit of a why. So in other words, it’s got some meaning, but if I go to identity, I change who you are at a fundamental level. Everything ships right.
And, and that’s one of the beauties of becoming a business coach, cuz what happens is, like the guys in Gall who get it and not everybody gets it right, this is not the easiest thing in the world to do, right? First one to tell you that. But when you become a business coach, a business consultant that you know a mentor at your core, Oh my goodness.
Like, you know, the, your identity shifts in a very real and tangible way. And who you become like, okay, well what happens is you become a business coach and you start solving problems and you’ll think to yourself, where in the world did I come up with that? Well, what happened is we shifted your identity.
That’s what happened, right? So, so you, you wanna move people not just at like an action level and get them to do it, not just the motivational level where they’re like, you know what? I’m really pumped up and I’m gonna do this for my daughter and I’m gonna do this for financial freedom. When you change who they are and turn them into a successful person in their being, which will not happen overnight, but it does tend to, you know, kind of all of a sudden just happen.
And nobody notices, by the way, again, like when you become wealthy, I had this conversation on the weekend. When you become wealthy, you, you speak to somebody who’s wealthy. It’s not like all of a sudden a different feeling. Believe me, I could introduce you to very, very wealthy people and they will tell you that they are, they’re paranoid at a very high level.
They, they do not feel wealthy in a lot of ways. They deal successful and they’ve got an iden identity about them. Generally. Not always, but generally speaking. But I can tell you that it’s not all of a sudden this feeling that, wow, all of a sudden I’m wealthy cause I’m. You know, five, Chanel, 10, whatever the number is for you.
Anyway, Steve, the identity, you know who you are. When you shift that for your clients, you shift that with your coaching clients, with your prospects, with the attendees at your local live event, you shift who they are. This is when you start getting referrals on steroids and people saying it’s too good to be true.
All that sort of stuff in, in a good, positive way, right? So again, look at what level are you moving people, right? Like Nike commercials, think like Nike commercials, apple commercials. They’re not about the product, right? They don’t even mention the products. You know, and Nike isn’t mentioning that the soul is better than Reebok or Apple’s not, you know, mentioning that their computer, their laptop is better than HP’s or somebody else’s, right?
They’re aspirational. It’s a celebration. You look at their ads and they’re a celebration of people and very, very visual as opposed to, you know, it, it’s, it’s showing as opposed to telling, right. So like the type of people app, apple and Nike wanna be associated with are in the app. Right. So, and the type of people, it’s audience and clients wanna be associated with.
So like Apple, think of that, you know, the debatably, the greatest commercial of all time, but it was like Apple. They had Gandhi Richard Branson, Martin Luther King, Muhammad Ali, Einstein, Amelia Earhart like, like, you know, the, what is it, the crazy ones right? And then Nike. Think of the people that they put in their commercials for years.
Back in the day, there was Agassi and there’s Michael Jordan, there’s Serena Williams, there’s nao LeBron Ronaldo, right? Like, those are the types of people that they want to be associated with their brand and the kind of people that their clients, their ideal clients wanna be associated with, right?
So when I wear, whether you realize it or not, When you put on a pair of Air Jordans, a little piece of you feels like, you know, you’re getting a little bit of his magic and you probably, you know, if you know Road Dog me and everybody else, and just like in love with the guy, right? He’s just a total legend.
So, like when Steve Jobs, when he took back over Apple his goal was to turn the company into an aspirational company. And, and remember it started with two words. Think d. Right, think different, nothing to do. Like what in the world does that have to do with computers? Right? The answer is very little, think different.
And then he puts, you know, and it’s Einstein, it’s Muhammad Ali, et cetera. So, yeah. Shoot. Maybe is this relevant? Okay. When you tell your story, right? So you get up on stage and you’re gonna tell your story what you want them to do. You need them to say, me too. And if they don’t say Me too, they’re saying, so what?
Right? Like the number of times that I’ll write an email and then I’ll get somebody to reply. It happened this morning, but somebody says that they feel like my email is speaking directly to them. Happens all the time. So it’s me too or so what, you know, again, like Me too, Muhammad Ali, Einstein you know, Agassi Jordan, Serena Williams, Nadal, et cetera.
It’s like, you know, you wanna be a little bit like them when you tell your story. You know what, what, what do you have to do when you tell your story? You gotta bring yourself down and then prop yourself back up. You don’t. With propping yourself up or again, it’s, it’s not gonna be me too. It’s gonna be so what?
Because they’re not. You know what I mean? They’re, they’re probably not in the room if they’re achieving these lofty successes. And by the way, even if they are achieving these lofty successes, they, that’s like what I said a minute ago. They don’t feel that way. Right. Anyways, so Me Too are, so what I think that there’s, there’s relevance there, but Nike’s goal was to become, you know, Mike, or sorry Steve Jobs, when he took over Apple, he wanted to turn the company into an aspirational company.
And again, he used the two words, think. I think that there’s some. Serious magic in that road. Doug, hang on, rod, Doug, just before I finish and see when you’re generating leads too. So there’s tactical, strategic, and then spiritual based. And what I mean by that is when you promote, hey all, you know, if you see somebody advertising for more leads, they’ll get lots of opt-ins.
And then you see somebody advertising with a strategic offer, and we’ll call that, you know differentiate your business coaching company. It’s kinda lame, but whatever. That would be more strategic. They’re gonna get less opt-ins. But generally speaking of higher quality and then a spiritual based let’s call that become the best business coach you can be.
And one of the things we do like, so internally, you know, it’s how to read financial statements. We’re re we’re, we’re doing that training again here very shortly. It’s an internal thing. If you’re not a client you can’t get access to it. But what that’s gonna do, like it will bring in it, it’s not the sexy, delusional Facebook ad kinda.
You know, get leads in your sleep, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, kind of promotion. But it’s gonna attract the higher quality prospect as opposed to, or a higher, higher quality coach. Right? Because a, a coach that really doesn’t see themselves is with a superstar, isn’t really worried about being able to read financial statements, whereas somebody who really wants to become the best business coach they can.
Is they may say to themselves, I suck at numbers. I suck at accounting. I hate that Accounting’s, just not me. I’m not a numbers guy. I’m not, not a numbers gal, but they’ll push through that and say, look, I gotta become the best business coach I possibly can be. And understanding how to read financial statements in a very real and tangible way.
To find my fees before I even get started with my new coaching client is something that I need and I don’t need it for me. I want it on behalf of my clients. And again, that’s where the identity comes in, right? We shift who they are. They start doing things for their clients as opposed to doing things for themselves.
I don’t know. I think there’s real power in that, but it’s not as sexy of an offer. So you’ll get less oftens, but you get a higher quality. So you’ve got tactical offers, strategic offers that I call spiritual offers, you know, going to the spirit of somebody, their identity, I think huge value in that.
Shoot. So, that’s my answer, bud. What do you think?
[00:32:12] Christian: Well, just on that, I, I literally was checking the stats for a client I’m running some ads for and the emotional appeal, so I’ve never seen numbers like talk about, I found the exact right audience because the emotional appeal that I threw out to them, it was pretty much every single person that clicked on that ad clicked through to the landing page.
I’ve never seen that before. Like I was within 98%. I’ve never seen that before like that. It’s huge. And by the way, speaking of the You feel better like in your Jordans cuz you feel like, you know, there’s a piece of Jordan in you and all that stuff. I’m not sure if it’s too soon to announce your, your your new launch of your sweatpant line.
I’m not sure if that’s is that, is that too soon to announce pair of sweatpants? Everybody so you can feel so, you know, just the problem is they’re only in child sizes, so there is that .
[00:33:06] Karl: I gotta, there’s a picture of Jordan on one bum. A picture of Tom Brady in the other cheek. I
[00:33:12] Christian: thought the Brady would be at the front.
Anyways, there’s, I I thought you’d appreciate that. Hey, listen, you talked about pushing people right in, in terms of like moving, moving people and all that. Choose to take it to whatever level you want. We can bring it back up just to business in general. But have you found like just being aggress.
Is is a better way to, you know, quote unquote play than, than being helpful. Like, what are your thoughts on, because again, it’s, everybody say, it’s like, gotta add value, you gotta help people, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But is there a time where it’s just like, yeah, no, screw that. It’s time to be aggressive.
Like what are your thoughts on all of that?
[00:33:49] Karl: Hmm. Aggressive. Yeah. It’s a good one. Times a million I’d adopt and I have adopted the rule of reciprocity, is what I’m thinking. Like when I sold coaching, I did marketing events and marketing boot camps locally. You know, they’re educational. I’d like to think they’re entertaining.
You know, again, music, dancing, getting people up, telling jokes, making fun of myself, making fun of them in a, in a, you know, cla, you know what I mean? In a good way. Not like poking fun at people like, but you know, like when somebody says something or you know, like, you know, before the, the show here we do name envy, right?
You know, that kind of thing. But just having a little bit of fun I think they provided huge value and some people like pretty much just threw money at me. Like that’s just the truth, right? Some people were seminar junkies just followed me around, right? And I dunno, they were trying to steal clients in some cases and others just.
Kept, you know, I don’t even know. They just kept coming back and it was the same jokes every time, you know, like, but whatever. But I, and again, I didn’t deviate, I didn’t worry about that, right? I had a job to do and my job wasn’t, if they’ve been four times already, you know, I wasn’t gonna adjust my jokes for these guys.
Didn’t make any sense. It’s like, hey, they must like the stuff I just kept going. So that’s something to think about in terms of what are those? You know what I mean? Like rule of reciprocity. Start, don’t do events for you. Do the events for the local community, for the local business owners because they’re hurting, because they’re lowering their prices, because they’re discounting, because they’re doing 50% off and not realizing what it’s doing to their margins, which.
The answer would be crushing them. But, you know, like deterrent strategy, I had, you know, like I played some hockey in my day, right? Small guy. I’m five six and I played against guys that were six six a lot of the time, right. Had a bit of a big mouth and a propensity for sticking up for myself and in some cases, teammates.
It was a bad combo. Bottom line. You know, I, I wasn’t sh you know, shy to. Shake it up a little bit, but I remember watching the the Michael Jordan documentary, right? And he had this rivalry with Clyde the Glide Drexler. And it, what happened is it upset Jordan to even be compared with him, right? So the story goes that Clyde had a great three point shot, right?
And someone asked Jordan prior to game one, right? So they’ve gone through the eastern and western finals, right? And then somebody asked Jordan prior to game one, what about the three pointers? Right. And the, the journalist was insinuating that Clyde had his number in that part of the game. And then Jordan replied something to the effect of, I choose not to shoot three pointers.
Right? Well, game one of the finals and it’s, it’s right there for you. You could go and watch this, right? But game one of the finals where both teams were kind of establishing ground, you know, it’s early in the series. Game one is, you know, you’re. You’re establishing ground. And keep in mind they’re playing for the NBA championship like this.
So this isn’t the local scrimmage, right? Well, Michael Jordan broke the NBA record in the first half for hitting three pointers, right? Need I tell you who won the game, and I’m not to mention the NBA A championship that year. Right? Maybe like, consider it this, it may seem strange, but it’s exactly what, like I mentioned, hockey, the toughest hockey players uses their playbook, right?
So every day, every team back in the day would have a goon, right? Like a buddy of mine was a, a goon and a, a real good one. He was the kind of guy that could put the puck in the net, but he’d also scrap anybody. You know, not, not a huge guy, but he’d just go, anybody. But at the end of the day, the goons job is to fight and defend their teammates if anyone acted up.
Right. Also used to create energy for a team, right? Because after a big fight, the, the place, you know, the fans are absolutely rocking. The players tend to get up and bang their sticks. The whole place gets amped up, and it can really shift momentum one way or the other, right? Like, nobody sits during a fight, right?
You can, you know what I mean? Like, nobody sits during a fight. So, So actually, so there’s some deterrence you know, in that, right, in that they’re not shy. So they’ve gotta use intimidation as a way to do it, right? Or, or maybe like, so a buddy of mine served in the military, right? And like hockey players, Michael Jordan in the military have all that in common, right?
Where again, it’s like the deterrence, it’s reverse intimidation. And you know, I don’t want. Compare Michael Jordan’s approach in game one of the N B A finals against Clyde to dry Drexler. And maybe the military, but like, like, think about this here. Here’s what I’m trying to get at deterrence. Like they wanna my buddy the goon, right?
Wanna seem unpredictable and irrational, right? Don’t wanna allow your appoint opponent to see a pattern in your movements, right? You want ’em to think you’re irrational and that a close encounter in you could be like a really risky. Right. Like again, so that’s why when there’s an enforcer skating around the rink, you’re a lot less likely to go after the smaller elite player on a hockey team.
And then just think about what that might mean to it’s like, you know, in baseball, how do they do it? They establish ground by throwing inside. And what do they follow up? You know, a, a inside pitch with a pitch. Right. Like it’s kind of one-on-one, but you don’t, you, you don’t always wanna shoot to the, you don’t pitch to the inside and you don’t always wanna pitch to the outside.
Most definitely. Right? So being unpredictable and irrational would be like, good advice. Play on their natural paranoia. Believe me, everybody has it, but like, indirectly inform your opponent of your strengths. The more, the more unclear, I think the information is, the more paranoid they will. Like again.
So just kind of scooting around using your, think about how you use your eyes as a pitcher, as a hitter. As, you know, somebody whose job is to fight in hockey, maybe that’s in the warmup, right? Or, you know, use the element to surprise by using a bold maneuver. You know, like take risks in the presence of your enemy or like your opponent that highlights your strength rather than your weakness.
Like remember Right? Like when Russia just, you know, invaded the Ukraine, did anybody know, like they were saying, we’re not doing it, we’re not doing it, we’re not doing it. And did they do it at one o’clock in the afternoon or did they do it at midnight? Right. Again, nobody knows. Nobody knows. And they do it in the middle of the night when hopefully some folks are sleeping.
Right? So, so that’s the way, again, as you’re, you’re thinking about this you know, like with your business coaching, you wanna be a little bit You, you want to be a little bit unpredictable, right? You want your clients to be a little bit unpredictable. If, again, what we’re talking about here is you know, being super you know, what do I wanna say?
Like, you know, like, just super easy to get along with. You know, you want your, you want your competition to think that you might be a you know, a little bit ruthless, right? Yeah, like if, look, what am I trying to say? Michael Jordan had an intimidating reputation and things like saying before the game, I choose not to shoot three pointers and then breaking the N B A record in the first half.
What do you think Clyde de Glide is thinking And basically, you know, the the bulls absolutely crushed him. And then, and then it has a compounding effect, right? Cause you get on top of them. In hockey, a really good goal league can also do. In baseball, a really good pitcher can do this. You could have a great pitcher and everybody else could be totally out the lunch and, you know, they hardly get the ball.
So here’s a, at the end of the movie, the founder, we talked about that a couple of times. Maybe if my competitor, what does he say at the end? If my competitor was drowning I’d find a host sticking in his mouth. And then can you say the same? Right. And he said that to the McDonald’s brothers. They basically said, uncle, they realized this guy’s never gonna let up.
He’s got us right where he wants us. And you know, they sold the Ray Crock and the rest is absolutely history. Am I in any way saying that you should be ruthless in business and that aggressive n no, I’m not, but I would say that there’s a lot of business owners out there trying to pretend like, you know, this is.
You know, playing Lego like businesses war. And you best approach it in that manner, in my opinion, in that, you know, be competitive. Look at what the most competitive people in the world are doing, I e Jordan, you know, being unpredictable, being irrational playing on natural paranoia of their competition, right?
Using the element of surprise and using a bold maneuver. Maybe that’s a big promotion. Maybe that’s a sign out the front. You know, whatever that might be. But you know, are, and again, are you compar, like if there’s local business coaches locally, again, I’m, oh, I. I would want them to know that I’m serious, right?
And that I am not to be mucked about. And I am gonna go get coaching clients and I am gonna move the needle with my clients. And I am going to be running local live events and I’m gonna be promoting myself heavily and that I’m gonna be growing. And that if they wanted to compete with me, they are free to do so.
I’m gonna be a real force locally. And they best keep one eye on me. Now there’s that saying that, you know, winners, losers concentrate on, you know, losers, focus on winners, and winners focus on winning. You know what I mean? Again, I’d be keeping my eye on the prize and pounding along. So that might be a little aggressive for some folks.
I don’t know. But you asked me about you know you know, being aggressive and is that a good tactic? I don’t know. I go to, you know, what, what do you think? What do you think? Jeff Bezos would say, right? He’s, he’s known to be absolutely ruthless. What do you think Steve Jobs would say? No known to be absolutely ruthless.
Right. So, and I think some business coaches, cuz it’s, we attract folks that love Tony Robbins and, you know, kind of the feel good folks and that’s a good thing. But maybe being a little bit more oomph in your face might be a good thing. So, I don’t know. Shoots, what do you think That, that’s my answer.
How?
[00:43:07] Christian: So what do you say to the local business coach who maybe doesn’t know if there’s other coaches in town, because they likely are, but who is their biggest competition? Who is their biggest threat, do you
[00:43:18] Karl: think? Nice. I’m gonna say it’s like, it’s the accountant saying, oh, you don’t need a business coach.
It’s the, the gal that works at the chamber who’s not promoting them, maybe promoting somebody else, maybe promoting a different speaker. Like that’s, a lot of the time it’s not your competition. Like in, you know, Michael Jordan’s competition was the opposing coach. A lot of the. Right. Like he’s wondering Strat, he’s not thinking about what Clyde the glides do, and he’s wondering, he’s thinking about the strategy of the other team, right?
Like, what does Tyson say? Everybody’s got a plan, and until you get punched in the face, right? Well, I’ll tell you, Michael Jordan’s plan was to punch you before you punched him, right? So, yeah, that’s the the, the competition is often not who you think the competition is and the local accountants and the people that you know, not promoting you, et cetera.
This is the competition shoots.
[00:44:12] Christian: All right, so with all of that, close us out with the one thing from today’s episode that people can take and implement into their business.
[00:44:21] Karl: I think what I was just saying a minute ago, like, I, I, so look, I think you should operate in a way that is very aggressive, very.
Pull no punches, apologize to nobody, and just go in a straight line. And that’s not to say that you’re ruthless murder you just, I encourage you to be highly aggressive with your coaching. That’s it, you know, like highly, highly aggressive and make no apologies. Like I said, run the events. Like I said, I, I’d be running, if I’m running your coaching business and I want to hit seven figures, and I wanna be legit and I wanna make a dent.
And I truthfully believe that marriages, you know, separations, divorces depression, suicide is the thing that I’m out there to save people from. And I absolutely do. I would be running an event. Every single Tuesday morning at roughly 7:00 AM with about 10 to 25 people. And I would do it ruthlessly and I would make tons of money as a result, but I would be doing it for the local folks and I would be doing it.
Yeah, that, you know what I mean? Like I, again, Ray Crock made no apologies, and did, and did he look, and you might mo watch the movie and then think he was some sort of bad guy and I probably somewhere in the middle where he probably did some wrong things, but he did some amazing things and he made some very, very rich people along the way, as did Bill Gates and as did Steve Jobs, et cetera.
You hear different stories out there, but I’ll tell you what they were. It was ruthlessly aggressive. And the parallel that I was trying to give a minute ago, whether I did a good job or not, is that, you know, the goon, when he steps on the rink, everybody’s watching for him. When Michael Jordan stepped on the court, cause he was similar to that, but in a different way, everybody knew where Jordan was on the court.
You know what I mean? It’s, it’s not like the coach, the assistant coach, the players on the bench and the players on the court weren’t keeping one eye on him. Right. Cause again, He was crazy. I want your competition going. Oh my gosh. What’s she doing now? What’s he doing now? This guy’s so aggressive. He’s got all the clients, he’s got all the prospects, he’s got all the attention, he’s got all the eyeballs.
You seven figure I’d be being aggressive, 10 people every Tuesday. At the Chamber of Commerce or a local event that’s what I’m trying to say. Shoot, don’t do your best, do what it
[00:46:34] Christian: takes. So I, I would add to that, and I would just simply say, your inability to stay focused and your inability to get aggressive is 100% a direct result of a lack of clarity of your vision and the purpose behind.
Yeah.
[00:46:56] Karl: What do you think? I, I think shoots You nailed it. I would totally agree with that. Shoots totally agree. All right. And
[00:47:02] Christian: right there. See folks, you gotta, you gotta pull a castanza and you gotta end on a high. So I just got a compliment from Karl. So we want to thank you for tuning into another episode of Business Coaching Secrets with the King of the Caribbean himself.
If you’re not on the inside and getting those daily emails, you want more information on that Accounting. How to read financial state. You want to get a, a business, like a group coaching program. All of the things you want, all the things to run a successful coaching practice, visit focus.com. You got everything there.
Subscribe to that. Also, if you enjoyed the podcast, please share it. Share with somebody that you think might make a great coach and of course, leave a comment and, and you know, cuz we know. Leaving reviews and all that stuff has a tremendous amount of weight when it comes to these streaming services.
And that is it for another week. We will see you on the next episode. Remember folks, progress equals happiness. Take care, everybody.
[00:47:58] 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.