In my last post, I talked about Elon Musk and the Tesla.

How he created a vision and then that vision made his roadmap a hundred times easier to achieve.

Jeff Bezos talks about ppl coming up to him and constantly asking “What is going to change in the next ten years..?”

No one ever asks “What is not going to change?” Wow. This is the question that is significantly more important and it’s not being asked! 

Think about it, you can build a business around things that are stable over time. 

In his retail business he knows customers will want:

1. Low prices
2. Fast delivery
3. Vast selection

Before anyone at Amazon can create a new product, they’re required to create a highly detailed press release. Logically it’s a lot less expensive for a manager (or staff member as the case may be) to create a press release for approval rather than create the product/service to find out it wasn’t going to work (didn’t solve a problem).

As obvious as this sounds, it’s very rare.  When I sold traditional “internet marketing” ($97 per month memberships to my websites as an example) I’d often sell the program to my list and if it sold well… get busy and create it (I’d have the first week done). If it didn’t sell well… I’d change the name/marketing copy and try again the following week. If it still didn’t sell well… I didn’t bother to create the program and saved myself a LOT of time and offered the option of a refund or applied the money to a one to one consultation. 

Here’s an example outline for the press release for Jeff Bezos:

• Heading — Must name the product in a way the reader (the targeted audience) will understand.
• Sub-Heading — Describe the ideal customer for the product and what benefit they receive. One sentence only underneath the heading.
• Summary — Provide a summary of the product and the benefit to the prospective customer.
• Problem — Describe the problem the new product/service will solve.
• Solution — Describe, in detail how your product solves the problem.
• Quote from You — A quote from someone in your company that will help sell the new product/service.
• How to Get Started — Describe how easy it is to get started.
• Customer Quote — Provide a quote from a hypothetical customer that describes how they benefitted from the product/service
• Call to Action — Explain how they get it and where to go next

At my company, we do the same for our business coaching community (we’re in 24 countries and have over 600 successful business coaches) and follow a similar process.

Once a week on Monday, we get together with all my managers. When a new product/service is offered (we get about 5 pitches a week from someone trying to get into our community of 600 business coaches), we have it pitched at this meeting.

We run through a similar process, less formal, and essentially decide if this is something we want to offer our community. The north star (see yesterdays post) for our company is:

“Does it help a business coach get a small business client?”

If the answer is no, it’s stopped dead in its tracks. If the answer is yes… we’ll look further at it with no guarantees.  I can tell you more often than not it’s an insanely short process (most ideas are very poorly thought through and serve the purpose of making money more than they do solve a problem). 

But a valuable one because many bad ideas become the genesis of good ones so we keep the process alive and constantly try to improve upon it.

As, the late great, Steve Jobs said:

“People think focus means saying yes to the thing you’ve got to focus on. But that’s not what it means at all. It means saying no to the hundred other good ideas that there are. You have to pick carefully. I’m actually as proud of the things we haven’t done as the things we have done. Innovation is saying ‘no’ to 1,000 things.”

-Steve jobs

I’d highly encourage you to always look for new and clever ways to help small business owners. The bottom line… the better the coach you are the more likely your success.  This industry is obsessed with “lead generation.” It’s important but often a distraction to what your real job is… to help business owners.

If you have an idea I should consider for 600 business coaches that use my online coaching system and internet lead generation system… let me know and I’ll brainstorm it with my team.

We’re looking for software solutions that help business coaches in three areas:

1. To generate small business leads
2. Help a business coach close a high-end coaching client
3. Helps a business coach make a small business owner more profitable fast

I hope that helps and I look forward to hearing from you and helping you achieve massive success with your coaching business. When done properly… it’s a super fun business to learn a lot and impact a lot of people positively. 

Thanks for tuning in,

Karl

PS. If you’re struggling to get coaching clients or the attention of small business folk… leave a comment and I’ll send you some primo resources that’ll help.

PPS. If you’re struggling to get in front of “clients with money” or immediate financial results for your small business clients (they keep canceling on you and that creates an environment where you need to generate new clients all the time) leave a comment and I’ll introduce you to our 8 strategies that put money in any business owners bank account (so you can get paid!)