Transcription

All right. Welcome guys. Excited to be back. Amy and Jackie.  Well you guys ran the show. Was Steph on the calls the last two weeks as well for the between the ears?

Stephanie:                          Yeah. For some of them I was. Yeah.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Okay, awesome, I got to get up to date, get up to speed, I need to listen to those, so I need to catch back up and I’m sure you guys were awesome. So anyways, we’re back in the flesh, all four of us, no black box, I think we’ve kind of figured out the black box issues. It’s a thing of the past.

Today, we’re going to be speaking about an important topic that has come up and that’s why I love these conversations because it’s just like, what’s happening? And let’s talk about that. And so one of the things that we want to talk about today, or the main thing, is what to do when you want to hit the panic button? Right, because this is a very normal response. It’s a knee jerk response.

So we’re talking specifically about our health business accelerator or our luminary’s clients who get their perfect client pipeline deployed, or really anything deployed for that manner, and for whatever reason things don’t work out the way you want them to initially.

And listen guys, I can’t even begin to tell you how many failures I’ve had in my life in business, of things not going the way I thought they would. Most notably, one of my first launches that I told everybody in the industry was going to be the biggest seven figure launch in fitness and we ended up doing five thousand dollars. So, I can speak from experience when, things don’t work out the way you want them to, however, with that said, I want to use this opportunity with Stephanie, Jackie and Amy to really give you guys a bit of context, and just a way of approaching this whole thing because the reality is, most times things are not going to work out the way you want them to, so I’m just going to open this up right now. We’ll get you guys to jump in.

Understanding the process and removing emotion from the equation

Steph, you do a lot of calls on the coaching side for our clients, this is obviously something you’ve probably seen over and over, what do you say to somebody when things aren’t working out the way they want them to initially?

Stephanie:                          Well, I think the most important thing for people to understand is that this is a process and if it was perfect every time, then everybody would do it, but that’s the thing is that, everybody won’t do it, because it isn’t easy. We make it easier, but I think the most important thing again just to kind of circle back to take the emotion out of it, and if you can kind of look at this almost like a scientist, right? Where a scientist doesn’t get really upset if their experiment doesn’t work, they just re-tweak things, and recalibrate things. And so, the other thing that I like to do too is, think about what the highest level people are doing, right? So let’s say like the Oprahs, or like all the people on Shark Tank, right? If they freaked out every single time something didn’t go right, they wouldn’t be where they are today, which is in the billionaire level, right? So we have to kind of think, what would they do? And then recalibrate ourselves to match what they would do. That’s what I do, because it’s easy to say this, I know in my own business I’ve gotten caught up in the emotion of it, but I always circle back to, “what would they do?” And then I try to mimic that, if that makes …

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah, that’s great, I love that perspective, it’s like, “what would Oprah do?” Right? The thing is, problems never go away right? The thing is, as a business owner you want bigger problems. That’s a sign that you’re moving in the right direction. If you try to eradicate all problems, that would basically be a very mundane, mediocre life I think. And so the goals guys, is to be able, you want to be able to take on bigger problems because that is a reflection that your business is growing and that you are growing in response to that.

Letting go of resistance, living in the now, and breaking bad thought habits

So, as many of you know, I was on a cruise in the Mediterranean the last few weeks, and I was on an Abraham Hicks cruise, which is, if you don’t know Abraham Hicks, their pretty much like the founders or the people who brought Law of the Attraction to the mainstream I guess? The movie, The Secret, was largely based on their work. And then they decided not to be part of the movie because they didn’t like the direction of it. But anyways, Abraham is basically, as for Hicks, she channels this higher power, Abraham, and it’s amazing. So I was, we’re on this cruise. There was four workshops, so twelve hours total and thousand people okay, so, a thousand people in this theater, and I’m talking about, talking about people the Kool-Aid? It’s insane.

So essentially how this works is, you have a thousand people in this theater, as for Hicks, who’s now channeling Abrahams up on stage and it’s simply hot seats. So now you guys, what do you want to talk about today? And it’s like, everybody’s got their hands up. So, what they do, is they bring one person up at a time, they talk about whatever is going on and I was fortunate enough to have been up on stage twice which is pretty cool, and then my wife Amy was up, also up on stage. And everyone was like oh my God you guys are celebrities and I’m like, no, what are you talking about? We were just up on stage like, it’s not a big deal but for some people it was crazy.

Anyways, one of the biggest- what I love about Abraham’s teachings is that it doesn’t matter if you believe in this stuff or not, it’s happening, it’s just like gravity, it’s happening, whether or not you believe in the Law of Attraction, just understand that it’s happening. If you- Whatever it is you get in life, you’ve created, that’s essentially what it is, okay? So good or bad you’re the creator, accept it.

So, going back to kind of what you were alluding to Steph, is one of the biggest things that I got out of this is like you can’t, with respect to money, you can’t attract more money if you are worried about it. Because there are contrasting energies there and they use the example of people lifting up their hands to get into the hot seat and every single time, it was when people came up on stage they were like, I really wanted this so badly and I never got up here and then I just said you know what? Whatever. And I just kind of let it go.

So, they detached from the outcome and all of a sudden they allowed that to happen and the thing is, and this is something that, and maybe you guys can speak to this too, what I’ve realized is that it’s a feeling, it’s a feeling literally in your solar plexus or your stomach. If you feel that knot in your stomach, that is a feeling of resistance, that’s usually fear or some type of anxiety. That is resistance, that is going to stand in your way in some way, shape, or form. So, what you want to get to and this is the challenging thing with business, is that you want to look at what’s happening now, like you have to have a pulse or a finger on your pulse, but you also cannot get stuck in what is now, because everything you want to create is already, you’ve already set those intentions and you need to focus there. And so that’s the balance of, okay I know this is all coming and I just have to get out of my own way to remove that resistance to allow it to happen.

So, when you’re thinking of, oh my God this is not working out, I’m about to hit the panic button,  and this is where, again, where business is such a great means to grow personally, but you really have to do the inner work to just allow things to come to you while you’re putting in the action to make it work. So, that was one of the big lessons that I really resonated with- That really solidified for me this past trip so I wanted to share that with you guys, so when you’re looking at your stats, when you’re looking at your data, don’t panic because you’re not getting enough calls booked. In our business, we don’t get consistent calls every week in terms of the same number all the time, there are weeks where it’s down, other times it’s way up, other times it’s down, and that’s just the way it goes, right? So you just have to understand that there are more than enough of your clients out there and just have faith in the process while you take action towards improving things, so … anyways …

Amy, what about you? What do you got? What do you got on this topic?

Tips for breaking bad thought habits

Amy:                                   You know, that is awesome and I love, you know, I wholeheartedly do believe in the Law of Attraction and what made me believe in it was, I worried myself into being broke. I was, I had plenty of money, like I was not hurting, my bills were paid, but I was so in this mindset of lack from the way I grew up and I didn’t take the time to break those thought patterns that I worried myself into a money problem, and when that happened, maybe- I won’t even say maybe, that’s exactly what I needed to do, to learn how to control my thoughts, how to change my thought habits, because your thoughts are habits, just like anything else and then we act on the thought.

So if it’s like oh my God I have no money, that wasn’t really a lot of fun for my family because we didn’t do anything because I was always like oh my God, you know, and as that’s changed and I, and Yuri, we spoke about this last year, in October, I just started to picture myself as a money magnet and I started to really get the feeling of like, I love having money cause guess what? I love when I give it to people, I love what I can do with it, I love what I can do for my family, I love that I can help people, so it’s a really wonderful tool, but when I looked at it as this evil thing and worried, was I going to have enough? Like, now I don’t worry, like it doesn’t matter what’s in my bank account because I know, in my heart, and that feeling you talked about, that I am where I need to be.

I am serving people and so when I got out of, oh my God I have to close this person cause I have to pay my bills, and I said, wait a minute, my life’s purpose, which every one of you in the HVA and in the luminaries on the phone at least, and I’m making a grand assumption that it’s the same for you guys, so correct me if I’m wrong, when we ask you is this a must for you right now? Even if you’re broke, you are not telling me it’s a must for you because you need to pay your bills, you’re telling me that this is a must for you because this is who you are.

You have a feeling in your solar plexus and in your gut, that there is something that you need to do and so, to change your thought habits, all those people are out there waiting for you and if you push panic, and you turn your ads off, and you don’t instead look for a way over, around, under, through, lean in, those people are going to be sitting there waiting for you and you’re not going to be serving them, so let that light the fire under your butt, let that be like, “Oh my gosh, I have to serve these people,” and I finally get it what Zig Ziglar said is, “If you serve enough people, you help enough people get what they want, you will get what you want,” and if you don’t understand that now, I think it’s taken me probably 12 years to understand what that means, or like, how to do that, but it’s so exciting and then every one of these panic button moments lead you to this amazing place where now, the expansion, the next problems come and now you can stay steady because you’ve been there.

You’ve practiced staying calm. You’ve practiced having an attitude of gratitude even if the shit is hitting the fan. Even if no one’s booking a call and you’ve just invested two grand in your ads, and you’ve done all the things, if you stay focused on who you’re serving and you’re going to take that action to make sure you serve those people, guess what? Your bank account’s going to blow up, your confidence is going to blow up, and you are going to serve so many people. I’m fired up, you’ve got to focus, so change your thought patterns, don’t focus on you. It’s not fun to focus on you, seriously, like it’s so much more fun to help other people.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Totally.

Amy:                                   Don’t worry yourself into bad things. If you keep focusing on the bad stuff, or, “it’s never going to happen, I’m not getting calls,” and I was there, I know, I understand, but if you keep focusing on that, that’s exactly what you’ll get.

So, instead focus on, “I look forward to my calendar being full, I look forward to dialing in this copy and I’ve got copy coaches that should wear capes because they’re able to wordsmith in the snap of a finger.” So, lean in, get clear on your purpose, focus back on why in the world you’re doing this, because honestly, in the health business, it’s not about the money. We don’t enroll you because of the money. We all need money, money’s awesome, but that’s not why you’re here.

So, focus on why you’re here. That’s what I get out of this. Stop pressing panic, just focus on your passion.

Yuri Elkaim:                         And really it’s a habitable way of thinking. This is the challenge, we’re just wired, we’ve paved these neuro-pathways in our brain to go to these thought patterns consistently and that’s why change is very hard, because it’s requiring a new way of thinking and then obviously actions you to move towards a different outcome. But, one of the things I love about Abraham’s teachings is that, they’re very focused on your emotional guidance system, which is essentially how you feel, is your best coach.

And, so, if you feel fearful and anxious, that’s a sign, those emotions are telling you that something- Your basically attracting something that’s not going to be good in that situation. So, the whole idea’s to always find a better feeling thought. And it doesn’t have to be specific to the situation and this is another big revelation. I used to think that if I wanted more success in business, I would have to focus on something specific to that, but the reality is that you don’t have to focus on anything other than what makes you feel joyful. For instance, for me, if I’m feeling a little bit crummy, I’ll throw on some tunes and I’ll dance around a little bit, or I’ll picture, if I’m not with my dogs, snuggling with my dogs. Like, that apparently, is my first go-to for feeling even more joyful. So, those are great insights Amy , thanks for sharing that.

I want to share one thing with you guys. Talked about kinda being the calm in the eye of the storm a little bit. This is the screensaver on my screen. Can you guys see this?

No?

Stephanie:                          I can’t, but maybe they can in Facebook.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Whatever. It’s um- Anyways, the screensaver’s, if you’ve watched any of the trainings inside the program, the background is a guy just like sitting in meditation. And that’s my screensaver because my whole mantra is, “calm in the eye of the storm.” I don’t necessarily live that all the time, because I’ve got three kids that drive us crazy, but it’s a good challenge, right? Because-

Stephanie:                          Oh, yeah.

Yuri Elkaim:                         It’s a great learning- To have kids. For instance, when we’re in the airport, our youngest son Arlo,  I shouldn’t call him this, but I call him Mt. Arlo, in terms of volcanic eruptions. And he’s very stubborn, but it’s a very good thing that’s going to serve him later in life, but in the airport, I’m like, “Hey buddy, can you carry your sweater?” because he didn’t want to wear his sweater anymore because he was hot. And we’re walking off the plane and he’s like, “No, I don’t want to wear it.” So, he falls on the ground, like just collapses, like this is what he does. And then an old lady’s right behind him, almost falls over him. Right, and these are things like, I’m like, “Oh my God, I’m going to like, ah,” but these are all blessings and this is one of the big things I got from the cruise as well is, you look at the contrast in your life with gratitude, right. Thank you for freaking out all the time, because you’re showing me how I can be a better version of myself to deal with this situation.

And it’s not about being happy based on circumstances. Like, if your life is, “I will be happy when … ,” you will never be happy. Right? You cannot be conditional, you have to be joyful, happy, whatever, all the time, regardless of what’s happening around you, because it’s you who is the creator of the conditions. And this is very challenging for a lot of us to dial in, because we’re so conditioned to being, “I will be happy when I have a good day,” or, “I will be happy when I have a lot of calls booked,” or, “I will be happy when I’ve made a hundred thousand dollars a month,” but it’s the reverse. You have to be happy and then that stuff happens.

Resilience, building a legacy, mindset, and manifestation

Amy:                                   You know Yuri, that’s a great point and one of the things I love about Abraham Hicks’s teaching is, folks, if you’re like, “Okay, that sounds great, how do I do that?” When you open up your eyes in your warm comfy, and I love my bed, when you wake up in the morning, first thing to think about is how- That you have a comfortable bed in a warm house, how comfortable you are. Start your day with that thought instead of grabbing your phone and reading your emails and freaking out right from the second you open your eyes. Even keep your eyes open, breathe deep, feel how good that feels.

We get to get up and do whatever we’re doing. We don’t live in a third-world country, where we don’t know if we are going to have water or be bombed, right? We have a warm bed. So you can start with that. I remember simply looking out- I was skiing and depressed. Hello? I remember just looking out the gondola window. It was crappy day and just saying to myself, “it’s Tuesday and I’m on the gondola. I’m skiing.” And that was it, right? So, it’s one thought, it doesn’t have to be about your business. What’s one thing you can feel good about in your life now and we all have that one thing. So just focus on that. I love that about the teachings.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Cool. Jackie, what about you? What do you see with our clients, with this stuff?

Jackie:                                   Yeah, you guys all covered it all, but I want to go back to hitting that panic button, because I’ve done this before as well in the past and as I continue to uplevel myself, I’m going to probably hit it too soon and that’s what scares me for our clients, is like, even when you’re panicking, it’s of course great to lean in and try to find the best of what you can still learn and grow from it, because that’s the only way you can create resilience in your life. And so, hitting it too soon, you may have been a hundred dollars, a thousand dollars away from that breakthrough, when it’s a Facebook ad for example. Or you may have been another day away from making that next thing, whatever, because you completely hit that panic and shut down, right?

So, I practice this with myself and I check myself. And it is feeling. We have keen awareness and like Yuri said, kids can teach you this. His kids are going to keep acting out until he’s a master at being patient, or you know, bouncing back to whatever that is, it’s going to keep showing up until he’s accepted the flow of that, right?

And fortunately his kids will also outgrow it, so maybe that’ll happen at the same time. But, in reality, you really just have to think about, how you feel is how you’re going to show up. So, if you’re pissed off and angry for a day, a two, three, four, a week, a month, whatever, you’re going to show up that way and how are you going to serve people in that type of attitude or mindset, right?

So, you really gotta think about these challenges are going to build your resilience. You have the framework and the team to work on this. We’re building a legacy, it’s not a sprint. It’s not like we’re done in an hour, done in six weeks, this is a legacy. We’re going to keep doing this, and if it’s not for you then let us know. If this is a hobby, we didn’t cover this right on our phone calls, we’ll check you, we’ll check ourselves.

Like, I just got off the phone with a lady right before this and at the very end, I mean she was a perfect client until the very end, I asked her, “Is this a must for you or nice to have?” We didn’t even talk about the price yet. And it was a nice to have and I’m like, “Well, when it’s a must for you, then let’s continue this conversation.” And she appreciated that, right? ‘I could’ve enrolled her too soon. And I could’ve panicked, right. I could’ve been like, “ah,” right? But instead, it’s like, “No, I’m serving the way I was taught.” I felt really good about it and that’s why we’re given these serving mechanisms and these feeling mechanisms, is because, again, our head can talk us into or out of the right or wrong thing because it’s been wired- Some of us are 30, 40, 50 years old and unless you’ve had real mindset coaching, which all of us in this call have, and that’s what we’re here to help you with, you’re still operating out of this system that’s 30, 40, 50 years old people.

And it’s okay. Just be aware of it. So don’t hit the panic button too soon. Realize these challenges are building you resilience and where your focus goes, your energy’s going to flow, right? So, if you’re coming in with this nasty attitude, you’re going to continue to get that and you’re going to serve that out to the world and we don’t want it in our group, because first of all, it’s contagious, right? It’s like the flu. I know I sound nasally right now, because I’m battling a head cold, but you know, we want to help, we want to know when real life is happening and shit hits the fan, but let’s come together and act like adults and act like scientists like Stephanie said. Let’s dissect it, let’s regroup, let’s look at it, let’s relaunch, right? Whatever that means.

Yuri Elkaim:                         My buddy, I don’t know if you guys know Jim Kwik. So he runs a company called Kwik Learning. He works with a lot of Hollywood celebrities to help them with all sorts of stuff. I mean, memorizing, and learning quickly. So he has this story where he talks about when he was talking with a mentor years ago. The mentor asked him to write a few things down on a little pad of note paper, like, “What do you want to achieve in life?” Like, his biggest goals. So he wrote them down and he went to put them in his pocket, but the mentor took them out of his hand and read them back to him and he’s like, “Oh my God, I wasn’t expecting you to read my goals out, this was just kinda for me.” And he looked at the list and he told Jim, he’s like, “You are this far away from achieving your goals, your biggest dreams.” And Jim’s like, “What are you talking about? This is going to take me a lifetime to achieve these.” He said, “You are this far away,” and put his hands up on his-

Jackie:                                   Awesome.

Yuri Elkaim:                         “That is such a great story, because I’ve-

Jackie:                                   That’s so good.

Yuri Elkaim:                         You’re all this far away and everything happens between the ears, which is why we have this segment every week called, “Between the ears,” because everything is between the ears, that is the only difference between massive success and a life a struggle and mediocrity and it’s not about ability, it’s not about skills, all this stuff is learned. And it’s just a matter of having some type of awareness to say, “I’m going to focus my thoughts here, I’m going to feel good in general, I’m going to celebrate and appreciate the small, little wins.” And this is another big thing is- And this is something that I’m not- I guess it’s not my first nature to just recognize the small wins, because I’m always like, “What’s next? What are the big things.” And this is something that I’ve had to work a lot on and that’s recognizing manifestation all around you all the time.

My wife Amy’s- She’s good at this and for a while I was like, “Why do you keep looking at these license plates and who cares if it’s 444 or 111?” And I got it, I finally got it this past cruise, because those were signs that she’s tapped in and manifesting in some way, shape, or form. That the universe is giving her signs of this stuff and I was like, “You know what, alright, that makes sense to me.”

So, we’re on the plane flying home from London.  I love flying, you all know that probably, and it was the perfect, unbelievable setting, I’m in my favorite airplane, the 787, looking out the window, sun’s setting, I’m listening to these tunes and this song comes on that was the perfect song for the exact moment, as the plane is starts to take down the runway and the words were, “This is your life, this is your happy spot.” I was like, “What the f-.” This is crazy. And I was like, “Thank you, thank you for this sign of abundance. Thank you for again showing me-.” And I’m like- When that stuff happens, nothing can go wrong, like nothing can go wrong and you just have to be aware, you just have to recognize that stuff because that stuff is happening for every single one of you, all the time. And it’s just a matter of being aware of that and being appreciative of it. So.

Jackie:                                   It’s a choice Yuri. Amy has been choosing to do that for a long time and you’re like, “ah.” And you’re turning on your awareness so that’s a thing in the script guys, we all have choices, right? We can go with that and I do the same thing, I manifest good parking spots all the time. I know it’s so silly and crazy, but that’s where I started five years ago to start practicing this manifestation muscle, right? And it brought me to awareness, it brought me to gratitude of a silly- Which would probably be stupid for other people, like, “Who cares, you can walk a little further, but-.” Everybody said that. They’re like- Get in the car and be like, “You always get the best parking spot.” Like …

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s funny because you have no resistance around it, right?

Jackie:                                   No resistance around it.

Yuri Elkaim:                         And the cool thing is- In the universe, there’s no difference between a dollar and ten million dollars. There’s no difference between parking spot and building a billion dollar company if you wanted to. The only difference is beliefs.

Jackie:                                   Is our feeling around it. The way you feel around it.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Exactly. So, guys, it’s about creating desires without doubts. If you have doubt in what you’re desiring, you are blocking what you want from coming into your life. So, you have to, again, just check in. Like, “How am I feeling? Am I feeling that knot in my stomach?” Alright. Let that be a sign to be like, “Alright, change my point of focus, focus on something good, just step away from the computer for a bit. This is not serving me to grind into details here.”

So, yeah.

Taking responsibility vs. blaming others

Jackie:                                   Another thing I would love to add real quick, just because I think it’s so important is- And I think that it’s hard, but it’s also one of the most powerful things that you can do, is to take full responsibility for what is showing up in your life, instead of blaming the system, or the strategy, or the techniques, or the people, or the coaches, or the whatever it is in your life, not even in just the system, but just in general. The more you can take responsibility for yourself and live as the victor instead of the victim, the more amazing things will start to show up in your life. So, I just wanted to kind of point that out.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah, and it leaves you in a position of power. Like, if I look back at- So this year we had, what, six Facebook ad accounts shut down? I’m like, “Oh my God, Facebook.” I mean, I could take the, “Why are they doing this to us,” but if I take the position of, “How did I create this?” Right? And the reality is there must’ve been in somewhere in my thought pattern, some type negative or resistance, whatever, or focus on the wrong things. At some point. And it may not even have been about Facebook. It may have been like I was pissed off at my kids or something, on a consistent basis. Because, abundance is abundance. Like, if you get abundance coming at your life, it’s a tidal wave that is money, that’s love, that’s happiness, that’s everything together, it’s not just like, “Oh here’s a piece of a tidal wave that’s only money, or here’s a piece of a-,” like, everything comes at you at the same time, because abundance is abundance and money is simply energy.

So the more you  raise your energy, your vibration, right. The easier all this stuff comes into your life and I know we’ve kind of gone on a bit of a spiritual tangent from this, but this is where it all is guys, this is where it all is. It’s a mindset, it’s about your energy, it’s about point of focus, it’s about feeling good all the time, or most of the time, no matter what is going on in your life.

So-

Stephanie:                          … And the belief, like, they have it-

Oh, sorry, yeah-

Yuri Elkaim:                         No, go ahead, finish up, I’ll just-

Stephanie:                          … Just have to say the whole thought pattern and thought habits, ultimately, that’s what a belief is. So, if you believe like, “Aw, this sucks, it doesn’t work-, blah, blah, blah,” guess what? You’re right?

So whether you believe “this” or “that,” you’re always right, because your beliefs are ingrained in you. So, I just thought when you said that last piece there, I’m like, “Yeah, you got to be aware.”

Yuri Elkaim:                         Awesome guys. So I want to leave you with, every single challenge is an opportunity for you. Right? Look at every single obstacle as a blessing and just thank it, because on the flip side of that, you’ll be like, “Thank God this happened.” When you guys are struggling, I’m thankful for that, because it allows me and us to innovate solutions to better serve you. And if you guys didn’t bring up these challenges, we probably wouldn’t have thought of them in the first place. So, thank you for having your challenges, because it helps us help you. And just look at everything as a blessing as much as you can. So, hope this has served you well, guys. Again, if you’re not in the groove, if you’re not a part of HVA program, our luminaries, and you want to work with us, if you like this kind of spiritual slant on growing a great business, that’s part of what we do. Right? Not only are we hardcore on the strategy and the tactics and so forth, but we’re also very supportive on this stuff as you can tell.

So, if you’re listening on the podcast, you’re interested in going deeper with us, check out our training healthpreneurgroup.com/training. Go through the presentation if you like it, if you jive with it. Then book a call with us and we’d be happy to serve you.

That’s all from us today, Amy, Jackie, Stephanie, thank you once again for being with us. You guys are awesome.

Stephanie:                          Thank you.

Yuri Elkaim:                         For everyone listening, we will see you in the next episode. Have an awesome day guys.

Jackie:                                   Bye everybody.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Bye.

Transcription

Healthpreneurs what’s going on? Yuri here and I’ve got the amazing results coaches in the house once again. Welcome to another edition of Between the Ears. Yes, we have finalized the name of the show and I’m super pumped to be here with you guys, Steph, Jackie, Amy, welcome.

And I’m a little bit buzzed today because I had a coffee this morning which was caffeinated. So before this I was doing some work and I was just dancing to some beats and stuff and like, “Man, I’m like on drugs here.” So I’m a little bit more pumped up than usual, which is actually not a bad thing.

Anyways, today we’re talking about not expecting the journey to be easy. Why I think this is important guys is that we’re all for setting an intention that you can achieve and really have whatever you want in life and visualizing that and expecting it to come to you with ease and flow, but at the same time we have to live on planet earth as well.

We have to understand that there are going to be challenges that if you’ve never done something before, it’s not going to be easy. Just like teaching our kids how to ride a bike is not easy and if they think that they’re going to be perfect at it the first time, they’re going to give up because they get frustrated.

So the whole topic of today’s discussion is to really be reminded that there will be challenges, that the journey isn’t necessarily easy but as a result of that it’s the most rewarding part of this whole process.

I’m excited to dive into this. So why don’t we get started off.

Introducing reality, assessing mindset, and knowing what it takes to transform

Amy, you and Jackie do a lot of our enrollment calls now. Steph’s going to start to do a lot of them as well, but when you speak to some of our prospective clients what do you think?

Do people come into these calls with the mindset that, “All right, I’m willing to do the work? I understand there’s work involved.” Or it’s like they’re just going to sit back and allow us to do everything for them. What do you find is a lot of the common mindset? Maybe it’s a bit of both.

Amy:                                    It’s a double-edged sword because you have taught and you employ such a simple system in the perfect client pipeline, and you are pre-qualifying people to come onto that call with us, for the most part people are answering.

We ask a question are you a do-your-best kind of person or a do-whatever-it-takes kind of person? And I love that question because I love to hear the answers that all of you give, and there’s all different ones.

I usually get, “Ooh, that’s a really good question.” Then a lot of people say they’re a combination, right? If you’re into it, if you’re passionate about it, you’re going to do whatever it takes and you want to do your best. We talked about that though. We don’t want to do your best to be perfection and to I’m going to do my best kind of person so I never actually put myself out there.

The people that we bring into our tribe are a do-whatever-it-takes kind of person. The people that are successful, that follow the system because they understand when we get on the phone and we say, the reason that I ask this question, and I love having this part of the conversation is because we’ve already established this most likely as we’ve already discussed building a business can be simple or it’s certainly not easy as you already know.

Most people are coming to us with experience. They’re struggling. They know it’s hard and they want to know what to do. So most people are coming in knowing that there’s work involved and that’s also the piece where we can’t want it more for you than you want it for yourself, because it is going to be difficult.

I loved what you said Yuri, anything worth doing there’s going to be a challenge and the joy comes in overcoming the challenges. I think everything I do, I wanted to learn faster.

I can’t wait until I know it and I’m finally at this point in my life being like, “Okay, but it happens every time.” That’s where the flows comes. The acceptance of you don’t know but here’s the path and you guys have amazing support system in the team. That’s where you can flow. Follow the path, know it’s going to be challenging, take on the challenge like you said that you would when you enrolled and then reach out for help. It is a multi-field there Yuri. I hope that answers your question.

Yuri:                                       Yeah no. I love you talked about how usually we give more value to something we put a little bit more effort into.

Amy:                                     Yeah.

 

Hand-ups versus hand-outs

Yuri:                                     I was at an event this past weekend and did an Instagram Story about it. This week Arlene Dickinson who is one of the Dragons or was one of the Dragons on Dragons’ Den, which is the Canadian version of Shark Tank, she was talking about when she was 30, had four kids, didn’t have a job, just recently divorced, had gone through a depression, was sleeping on her parent’s couch and was in a funk.

Her dad came to her one day and said, “Hey, who do you think is going to get you out of this situation?” She looked up at him and said, “You?” And he’s like, “Nope. You’re going to figure this out.” The whole lesson that she got from that experience was in life it’s way more empowering to give people a hand-up than handouts.

Amy:                                     Yes.

Yuri:                                       This is an important thing that we talk about with our clients and this is where as a coach, I really believe we’re not supposed to give you the easy way. We’re not supposed to answer things for you.

A lot of times we want to prod you, push you, question, ask you questions that will help you come up with the answers. Because at the end of the day when you figure things out on your own, that’s when it sticks. That’s when you’ve developed the skillset and knowing that you can never get from a handout.

So yes, we could give you the answer. We could give you the fish but I think as coaches and even for you guys as coaches for your own clients, teaching people how to fish is going to help them become much better versions of themselves in the process and they’re going to value that transformation so much more because they went through maybe some of the hardship of having to learn and grow and they stumble and fall along the way. That’s a great point that you bring up Amy.

 

Simplifying the learning process and accepting the challenge

Jackie, you had, I think yesterday or the day before, had an application come through for a call. When I saw this application, I took a screenshot of for me, this is the ideal type of application you want to see come through, and I’m sure you know which one I’m talking about.

Where this person is something along the lines of, “I know it’s going to be challenging but I know I can’t do this on my own, I know I need the support, I’m ready to do this now and let’s just do this.” Kind of Hell or High Water type of thing.

How do you feel when you see these types of applications come through or even having conversations with these types of people where they recognize the journey is not going to be very easy versus maybe those who expects it to be?

Jackie:                                   Yeah. Actually that’s a good call, and I know which one you’re talking about. We’re still talking today. She’s in our 24-hour window. To be honest, it comes down to sometimes I think, and this goes to the practitioners.

Like Amy you spoke very well of 99% of our applicants. But I know I’ve even brought into our workshop healthcare practitioners who are in the office still, like naturopath chiropractors.

They could easily just missed our workshop but because they didn’t want to do the tech, they didn’t want to learn certain things, but in that strategy session, in that results call, I make it very clear, it’s like, “It’s good for you to understand this because you’re giving away all your power.”

Yuri:                                       Totally.

Jackie:                                   “If something were to happen and everything was shut down, you need to at least understand it or understand who to hire to bring in and help you.” We’re up leveling people to empower them to say, “Okay, how can we make this a simple process, right?”

Because there is going to be challenges, there’s going to be struggles and we’re not going to just say eek to our dream because we can’t take on more because some of these practitioners physically can’t take on more. They’re spending hours and hours seeing patients and clients and they don’t want to necessarily give that up yet.

I know I brought in some practitioners with support help, right? It’s like, “Okay well if you don’t want to fully understand all of the nitty-gritty details, do you have someone in your team?” They’re like, “Oh yeah. Can I bring them to the workshop?” “Absolutely.”

It’s still not going to be easy but we’ve simplified it one more step. I think that’s one key thing. It’s like, okay same thing with my situation today. I’m like, look I’m in my kitchen because I have one toddler over here, I have a one year old in her crib because my nanny had a situation this morning and my two backups are on vacation. It’s like what are you going to do, right?

You foresee what you can and you make it happen. I could have freaked out and said I’m not going to do this today, right? But instead it’s like, okay I have 45 minutes, what’s the best situation to best handle this, and here I am.

Yuri:                                       Yeah.

Jackie:                                   It’s like when you know you have a passion about it, it’s do or die, and that’s all of our applications. There are some that come through that are wishy-washy and we reply to them via email. It’s like if this is 100% go for you, then I need to know these answers better, right? I even had another chiro that’s like, “I don’t want to give you any more answers. This isn’t a go for me,” and then he opened up this big storm of life’s happening, right?

Life’s going to happen. So because life’s happening and you’re trying to run a business, you don’t just give up. You’ve got to push through, you’ve got lean on your team, you’ve got to lean on us, you’ve got to say this is what’s going on how can I make sure this doesn’t happen again, right?

So we share our stories, we try out together, we celebrate our failing forwards, we do all of it as a tribe, as a family, as a team, and I really think that’s what keeps things greased, right? So it’s, again, it’s not easy but it keeps everything simplified.

Yuri:                                       Yeah totally. I think what it comes down to is how badly do you want it. If it’s, I’m just putting together my courage code talk right now. One of the things I talk about is one of the ways to build courage is you have to make it a must, right?

So for instance, when you’re on your own and you have to fend for yourself or figure things out and there is no food, you have to learn how to hunt otherwise you’re dead, right? You’re dead in the wild, you’re dead.

I’ve seen this many times over the years and it’s sad where a practitioner who just wants to do their thing partners up with a marketing expert. And they’re like, “Just market whatever you have to market, get this message out there, I’m just going to do my thing, I’m going to see my patients and create my content.”

I’ve seen this too many times where those relationships or partnerships dissolve at some points and now the practitioner is like shit out of luck because they don’t know how to do anything, right. That’s a challenge.

So it’s not to say that everyone has to become a marketer, but you have to understand the basics of, for instance, the tech. Yes, we’re going to help you set it up, but you have to understand how to log into ScheduleOnce, for instance, or your Facebook Ads Manager.

Because god forbid, if something goes wrong or the person who’s helping you is on vacation for a week or so, you have to know the basics of how to mind with that whole situation or navigate that whole situation. Because otherwise you’re again, as you said Jackie, you’re giving away your power to someone now who god forbid, something bad should happen. So yeah, that’s a really good point.

 

Giving up, expectations, and discouraging yourself

Steph,  why do you think that people give up? Why do you think that when someone says their New Year’s resolution is to lose weight, why do you think when someone has this really big drive to start a business and start enrolling clients, why do you think that they go from this high emotional intensity of yes, I’m going to make this happen, to seeing it fizzle out over the coming weeks or months? Not in all cases but in some cases.

Stephanie:                          I’ve had a lot of experience with this myself. I used to think that everything was going to be so hard that then I would just not do it at all.

So, for example, sometimes people start, “Okay, I’m going to do this, I’m going to do this, I’m going to start this weight loss journey or I’m going to start this amazing program that Yuri has done so I’m going to have this amazing business at the end.” Then as soon as it gets hard it’s like, “Oh my gosh, this is too hard. I’m not good enough.”

All of these thoughts start to pop into the head that again are just … they live in the subconscious mind. It’s almost like the challenge starts to poke at you and prod at you and you’re like, “I got to give up, I can’t do this.”

What’s cool about this program in particular is that you provide us, these results coaches, right, that we can actually help you get past that little hump. So a lot of people who start these New Year’s resolutions they don’t set themselves up for success because they’re running on this high of New Year’s, right? Or this high of just signing up or this high of whatever it is. That high does not last, right?

Again, we’ve talked about this before I believe, but I actually did a podcast about this on Mindset By Design where everything is like a battery. We have these highs and then the battery dips down low.

And guess what, you got to re-plug in and then it charges back up and then you go down low again and then you charge back up. So you just have to expect it to be challenging but also understand when to ask for help, understand when you got to push through. Circle back to why you started, right?

So Jackie has just mentioned we have a lot of practitioners who are in brick and mortar who literally cannot take on another client. So how do you scale if you only have X amount of hours in the day, right?

 

How things can be made easier

So circle back to that idea of, wow I can help more people if I push through. How many more people, how many more sales can I get, how many more people can I help? Then once you circle back to that, it’s like, “Okay, this tech is challenging. It’s just something new, I can do. If other people can do it, I can do it.”

Again, another thing about it is that we have a lot of really smart people in this group, right? A lot of smart people are listening to this right now, a lot of smart people are in the group, and that can often be a challenge because the brain thinks of, “But if I do this and I do that then this could happen and that can happen. Oh my gosh, and what if it explodes and what if I hit this button and everybody dies and blah, blah.”

It’s like we think of all these things. So if you can just kind of dumb it down a bit where it’s like, “Okay, I don’t know how to do this. Let me just press this button. Let me hit … Let me Google it. Let me tag somebody in the group. Let me …” You know what I mean? It’s like we just have to allow ourselves to understand that things can actually be a little bit easier than we make them sometimes.

I did a Facebook Live recently in the group about this where if we think about our archaic ancestors and how hard their lives were. You just said if you’re hungry you got to learn how to hunt, right?

Well these people had to do so many things where it’s like we’re literally giving you a system that is a proven system, and yes it will be challenging, however, what’s more challenging, figuring out on your own, right? If you can just circle back to that, it’s like, “Okay, I can figure this out. I can do this, right?”

 

Moving past challenges and struggle

Yuri:                                       Totally. Yeah. Guys I think perspective is helpful too. One of our clients Tim is in the group. He’s actually climbed Mount Everest twice. Once he didn’t summit but still come on, right, at least he was there. Second time he got to the summit of Mount Everest. I told him, I’m like, “Listen man, that is an amazing reference point because honestly anything else you do in life is going to be a lot easier than climbing Mount Everest.” Okay?

So guys, we all have these reference points and it’s really important to think back to man, I went through this really tough time, whether it’s personally, in your business or whatever, and think of, “Okay, I got through that, I can figure out how to sync up this ,” or whatever we get stuck in with the weeds.

And I think part of the problem is that we … so many people get stuck in the weeds and they get so entrenched like they’re in this swamp and they’re just covered in all of these stuff and you got to come out of that. You got to come up to the high level, big vision, big picture, and as you said Steph, reconnect to the why. Really reconnect to here is why I’m doing this and the consequences of me not doing this are going to be this, this and this.

So a lot of this process guys is you have to operate at a high level but also come down to planet earth to take action. That’s why I think it’s important to have some type of routine every day, whether it’s in the morning or at night or both, where you’re reconnecting to your goals, you’re reconnecting to your why, because there will be times and believe me it happens more often than we want, where you don’t want to do the work, where you don’t want to get out of bed.

Where for instance, as you guys know I love playing tennis and I realized this summer that okay cool, the level I want be at is way higher than I’m currently at. So I said, “Okay what are my limitations?” One of my limitations is my shoulder because if I’m playing in matches and my shoulder starts hurting, now my technique goes and my mind goes and all this stuff goes.

So I’m like, “Okay, over the next year, I’m going to work my ass off to improve my shoulder, to improve my conditioning so that when I play guys that are 17, 18 years old, I’m going to wipe the court with them. Okay, so what does that look like?”

So I put together a whole schedule for me and I realized I’m going to have to work harder than maybe I’ve done before and not a harder in the sense of laying on the ground after a workout, but maybe it’s working through things that I didn’t want to do like being more consistent with mobility drills that I may have done once a week in the past.

Then all right, that’s all cool. The plan is laid out, I’m ready to go. Couple of days ago I’m outside doing some work, some agility stuff in the field and I finish, I’m like, “Oh my God, I just tweaked my back.” So it’s like, “Shit, all right. Now I’m sidelined for a couple of days or maybe more.”

And we have to be careful with these things that pop up because they can very quickly derail us. In your life with your business, that might … And guys this is why it’s so important to figure out a way to do this no matter what because life is going to happen. Family members are going to get sick. You’re going to get forced to move. A hurricane might hit.

Whatever is going on, life happens and we have to build up fortitude and plans and strategies that are going to keep us moving forward no matter what because it’s very easy to say, “Sorry I can’t do that, this happened.”

That’s not a good place to be in because it’s always going to be an external force outside of yourself that is holding you back from your dreams and when you give your power away, you don’t have control of your life.

So, that’s the way I see this and just want to tap into some of the comments here in the Facebook thread. Allison, what’s up? Amy Ford White saying, just going back to what Jackie was talking about with delegating a lot of stuff in your businesses.

The people that are working with you also don’t have the same motivation that you have for your personal business, which is true and there’s obviously ways you can build culture to mitigate that.

But at the end of the day guys, just like a financial planner won’t love your money as much as you do, you love your business more than anyone else, right? So you have to take responsibility for that. Yeah, so that’s just my little soapbox rants on taking control no matter what and getting it done.

I think a lot of example here can be applied. So part of the discussion here we wanted to bring to you guys is not only for helping you guys build out your businesses but I think this is an important framework that you can share with your potential clients too. Because if you’re on the phone with someone and they want to lose weight and nothing has worked for them in the past, for instance, or they’ve gone up and down, I think it’s really important to be honest with them to say, “Hey listen, it’s not going to be easy.”

I think people appreciate that because I think we’re in a time where there’s two camps. There’s the camp that says, “I want these results and I want it tomorrow. I want to press a button, get it done. I want to take the magic pill and I lose the weight.” But then there’s another camp that is like, “I’ve seen so much of that garbage that if I see any more of it I’m going to go crazy.”

I think humans, at a fundamental level, we understand that there’s going to be a bit of work involved. So what do you guys say? When you’re speaking with your own clients or our own clients, what message would you want them to be able to take to their own clients to be able to get this message across to them to not only make it more realistic for working/enrolling with them, but also acting maybe more from a place of service and really serving people at that higher level because they’re more honest with those potential clients.

Amy:                                     I think that’s a great point Yuri and I think as you said it’s really refreshing for people to have that honesty because no matter what, we’re being bombarded. And I spoke with a girl on the phone the other day for our result accelerator call that was really all about the relationship building and with the pipeline, was not able to wrap her head around yet, but how are we building this relationship if I’ve never spoken with the person and the first time I get on the phone with them I’m now offering them my program?

You know what, that wasn’t something that had come up before. I hadn’t spoken with anyone in the HBA but maybe that’s happening for some of you, and I think, and I did talk with her, I coached her around that and she wasn’t ready. She’s a great candidate and we can build a relationship with her certainly, but what happens is that everything that we do in the HBA, and Yuri I just, I’m always so grateful for your example and your lead because everything that you model here we take into our businesses.

So if I’m going to whine and complain and say, “I really wanted to go mountain biking today but I have this call and I have to go home to do it.” No, I don’t. I’m going to go mountain biking as soon as we hang up, right? There’s always a solution.

So if I get into a funk and I’m making that up in my head, I say to myself, “Wait a minute, there’s always a solution.” I think my kids are probably sick of hearing that now at 15 and 11. But I always tell them there’s always a solution and if they’re like, “I can’t do this,” or I say that to myself, is that true?

When you’re working with your own clients you want to help them because whether you are business to business, whether you are weight loss, whatever it is mindset comes in and those stories are going to come in.

“My parent is sick, I can’t do this.” It’s online, you can do this. There’s internet everywhere. I know some of us go places where there’s not and that’s refreshing too, but there’s always … Just like we don’t need weights to do our workout, right? If your clients are like, “I’m going on vacation and can’t work out, no gym.” No, there’s always a solution. You can do body weight. There’s other things you can prep if you’re not going to have access to internet.

So really how to work with those clients and keep them focused and knowing that, “Okay, here is the system we’ve laid out for you. It’s step by step, it’s proven.

We’re here to support you along the way so that when you fall down we can say, “Hey, you just tripped over that root over there. That’s why you fell. Get up and shake it off and let’s notice that root next time so you don’t fall.” We don’t cuddle. If you do that to your kids they’re going to cry every time they fall and they’ll never brush themselves off.

So it’s really … Think about when you’re doing the HBA work, when you’re approaching clients, how do you want them to come in? Do you want them to come in arguing with you over everything like a teenager does like contrary every, every, everything you say? No, you want them to take that path. So on the phone call, you’ll get a feel for that. Some people do come in hot and they’re not allowing you to go through your process, they’re not for you.

Yuri:                                       Yeah.

Amy:                                     So it’s really everything you’re doing in the HBA, Yuri, has simplified it for us. Follow it, notice how you feel. Your clients are going to feel the same way no matter what field you’re in.

Yuri:                                       Yeah. Guys, I think going back to perspective, it’s helpful … The reason why we’re putting these sessions together and our podcast, for instance, is that we want to share stories of the journey.

Because I really, as I’ve mentioned, I think we live in a world where everyone is seeing for instance on Instagram the destination. They see the private jets. Nobody owns a private jet unless you’re The Rock or Celine Dion. Everyone else is like they’re on the airport tarmac with a friend and they just happened to take a picture with a jet. That’s not the journey. And we don’t really know what the person went through or what their story is to get to that level of BS, if it is in some cases.

So I think it’s important to … What I find really helpful is not so much to read or listen to the how-to stuff, it’s to listen or read biographies or listen to people’s journeys. Like Winston Churchill, read his biography. You’re going to learn what this guy had to go through in spite of everything to be one of the best leaders of all time. I think it gives yourself or your clients hope that man, what I’m going through is really not that bad.

When we were in Alaska earlier this year, someone was sharing the story of the early explorers in the whole Klondike gold rush. Guys, if you have any idea what these people went through, man, everything we’re doing is really a kindergarten compared to that.

These are people who left their homes, their families, et cetera, in the pursuit of this amazing dream called gold without knowing what they were getting into. They didn’t know the weather, they didn’t know landscape, there were no roads, there were no paths, pavements, nothing.

And in a lot of times they were opening doors that they didn’t even know what was on the other side. They were leading to imminent death. There was tens of thousands of these explorers who died in the pursuit of this. There was just so much craziness that was going on back then, we have it so much easier now.

I think it’s helpful sometimes to learn these stories to real things and to get a little bit perspective to understand like hey, all right, this is tough but this is part of the process. It’s been a frustrating couple months for us. We’ve had six Facebook Ad accounts shut down. I could have said, “All right, this doesn’t work, right? We’re not going to do this anymore.” But we’ve figured out a way.

We initially hired an agency to get this sorted out for us. It took them five weeks to even do a review of our account, which didn’t happen. So we said, “Screw that,” found somebody else to run it. In the meantime, we said, “All right. We got to figure out some redundancy so Rudy has been cracking the YouTube code for us, and so now we have our YouTube ads that are running and doing great. So you just have to pivot, you have to roll out the punches and you can’t give up because it’s not easy guys.

You guys are going to have issues with your Facebook Ads. You’re going to have people are not clicking on them, or people are not registering or you might spend more money than you want before you get people on the phone or whatever. You have to have the fortitude to go through that.

 

Parenthood and personal development

Amy:                                     You know Yuri I live in Killington, Vermont, which is an amazing place.  I’m not from here, I’m from New York. But my husband and I when our son was born 15 years ago, we were not stopping skiing.

So my in-laws sat us down and were like, my son was one, we were renting up here and we were determined we wanted to live this Vermont lifestyle. We wanted out of New York, out of all that energy, we wanted the slower lifestyle.

I just remember sitting across in this little tiny apartment with my in-laws saying, “You need to be grownups now and you need to pick a place to live.” Now we had a 15 year business. We had a home in New York. We were like, “Yeah, we’re selling everything and moving to Vermont.”

They were like, right, jaws hitting the ground and we did do that. We live here now. I mountain bike. I ski. My kids mountain bike and ski. They’re homeschooled. Is it easy? It’s not but you know what, we want this experience for our family so we do whatever it takes.

There are times we have like … we’ve had no money. People are always like, “We’re happy and we have no money.” I don’t want to live that way. I like money and I like what it can do for me and I like how people feel when I give it to them and all that good stuff, so I make it work.

The Spartans are going to be here this weekend. This week behind me, I climbed it. I hate heights, right, but I was doing that Spartan Race and I can do burpees all day long. I climbed that. I’m not saying this to say oh I’m so amazing, I have the same exact like, “Holy shit, I don’t want to go 40 feet in the air. I know that’s sturdy but what if it breaks while I’m on it?” All of that stuff. I dally across it.

You do whatever it takes because you’re driven, because you have a passion and if you are finding yourself not motivated, go back in, remember why you enrolled, remember why did your clients enroll with you. Get passionate. Get excited and that vibration, and Stephanie I love the science of it. You talk a lot about that. Get that vibration going and you just you can’t be stopped then. It’s amazing.

Yuri:                                       Jackie, you’ve got two little ones. Before you had kids, was your expectations of being a mom with little ones different than what it is now in terms of the reality?

Jackie:                                   Yes. I am a type A entrepreneur, right? I had no dreams of being a stay-at-home-mom at all. I thought that was for the birds. No disrespect to stay-at-home-moms because I am now one and I love it. But I had to embrace the challenges of that and my type A personality.

So that’s why I figured it out.  I’m like I can hire a nanny. I could take them to daycare. I can do all these things. I looked at my options and what felt right for my lifestyle, the impact I want in my life, impact I want for my children and to be authentic about it. I’m not going to say it was easy because it wasn’t. It’s still not. Like look, I had two backups and a no show. So what do you do? I need a third backup.

Or you just figure out the challenges and muscle through it the best you can. It’s not the easiest thing but I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I would definitely not trade it for the world and it makes my story much more authentic, much more real and not like everybody else’s.

There’s a lot of noise out there, there’s a lot of different programs out there. I like creating a path that nobody has ever gone down before in my own way and that’s what I think we do as coaches is support everybody else instead of telling them exactly what to do, exactly what to say, we kind of pull out the magic, right? We pull out the authentic reality that they want to create for themselves and for their clients.

And you can’t put a price tag on that because there’s so much cookie-cutter crap out there that might give you results or a quick fix for a couple months but how are you going to feel after a few months. How are you going to make a business that’s 3, 5, 10 plus years thriving and not just trying to get by?

Again, I’m not saying there’s going to be challenges, right, but something that is worth the challenge. Like having my daughters and delivering them was worth every challenge. I do not love being pregnant. I love pushing babies out. I think that’s a bizarre thing to say but I love that part of it. I love having them around. I love the challenge and the balance and the ebb and flow.

But there was a lot of things in that that aren’t fun, but I wouldn’t, again, trade it for the world. When I used to coach people in weight loss, I always brought it back to their weight loss why. And if they couldn’t have a strong enough weight loss why that was beyond vanity, then I wouldn’t work with them. It’s just like we don’t take every client.

Yuri:                                       Yeah.

Jackie:                                   They may have a strong application, they may have a weak application, we have situations to go around that to really pull out is that person a great fit for this? Great. If not here’s another program that might be better for you, right? Because we don’t want to just show up and have people in this group.

This is our family, this is our tribe, so all of you know when you get on phone calls with us and when you hear this stuff, this is our passion. We may be gifted in certain areas, but this do or die for us because we love the mission we are in and if you don’t know our mission go back to our website Healthpreneur and look at it because this is what we stand for.

Yuri:                                       Yeah.

Jackie:                                   Be great that’s it. If I still can work to it, that’s the long-winded answer to that.

Yuri:                                       Yeah, and if you look at kids, humans are pretty useless for a long time, right? They’re with us for at least, what, 16 years in most cases and why is that? Well it’s because we’re social animals, right? We need that connection to thrive. If we don’t then we’re toast.

There’s, I think the reason that parents beyond the fact that they’re our own, right, they came from us, I think part of the reason that we are so, we take parenting so importantly, it’s so valuable to us is because we invest so much time and effort into raising these kids, right?

If we adopt, and I’m not saying there’s anything wrong with adopting because I haven’t done it personally and I can’t speak from that experience, but if you adopted a kid and was kind of set them out, I think there’s a different level of vested emotion and maybe interest versus going through the pregnancy, having birthed, raising them for 16 to 18 or 20 or 30 years in some cases, there’s just so much more investment and as a result of that …

That’s why I think that parenting and business are two of the most spiritual journeys you can ever go on because they’re like personal development seminars every single day. You’ll be challenged, you’ll get calls from the tax man, things are not going to work out, your ads are going to be disapproved, people are going to say they don’t like you, whatever it is.

I think because we go through that stuff, we evolve and grow and become such better versions of ourselves and that’s why guys I really do believe it is an absolute blessing to have your own business and be an entrepreneur because there is no other path that’s going to help you grow as much as your own business. Obviously having kids I think is way up there as well.

That’s why we wanted to share this with you yesterday because our goal is to make the path simpler for you guys. It’s not necessarily to make it easy because we can’t, right? A lot of the challenges are up here. A lot of the challenges are going to be how you respond to external situations in your life and we can’t control those.

So what we can do is we can give you the support. We can provide an environment that’s going to encourage you and help you go grow and help you become a better version of yourself so that you can handle these problems and challenges a little bit more effortlessly or with more ease.

So, for all of you guys in the program, first and foremost, I want to thank you guys for stepping up and having the courage to go through this path, to go through this journey because for a lot of you, I know it’s a big step out of your comfort zone. And I want to acknowledge you all for doing this.

Second, if you’re not part of the program and you want to help to really take what’s up here, your wisdom, your ideas, this passion you have for helping other people, but you just don’t have the support, the coaching, the strategy to make that happen, well how much longer are you going to let that go on? How much longer do you think you can figure this out on your own? That’s up to you. How much more you want to suffer in silence or suffer in isolation.

But if you do want a slightly easier path, and again it’s not easy, but a slightly easier path with the right support and encouragement and coaching and the right strategy to get you from where you are to where you want to be, then obviously we’ll be delighted to help you.

So step one is watch our seven-figure health business blueprint training. It’s over at healthpreneurgroup.com/training.

It’s a seven-minute presentation. It’s going to give you some really big insights as to what you should stop doing, what you should probably do a bit more off and it will walk you through exactly how we help our clients.

If it resonates with you, then the next step is to book a call with is and you’ll jump on the phone with one of these fine ladies. If you’re a good fit, then we’re happy to bring you to bring you into the program. If not, at the very minimum, the call will be extremely valuable to give you more clarity moving forward with what you’re doing.

So that’s what we want to leave you with today guys, is you can do this, it’s not necessarily going to be easy, but if you do want our help start by watching the training, jump on a call with us and then we can take things to the next level with you.

So Steph, Jackie, Amy, thank you guys so much for taking the time today, for sharing your perspectives and wisdom. For everyone tuning in in the group, thank you guys so much for showing up. For everyone listening on the podcast, hope you’ve enjoyed this episode and we look forward to seeing you in the next one. Thanks guys.

Transcription

My guest today needs no introduction. You’ve probably seen him pretty much everywhere. His name is Lewis Howes, and I’m digging back into the archives again from a great interview we had about two years ago. This interview Lewis talked about or speaks to a greatness, how to become great. In this interview, Lewis is  going to walk you through his, six step process that he’s used, and he’s talked about in his podcast, in his book, The School of Greatness.

And if you know Lewis, he’s just such a caring, real human being. If you don’t know who Lewis is, just go to lewishowes.com.That’s L-E-W-I-S H-O-W-E-S.com.

He’s become one of the most prolific influencers, I guess, if you want to think of it that way. He’s someone who’s extremely well connected. His podcast, The School of Greatness is awesome. I’ve been very fortunate that I’ve been on the show twice. He’s had some amazing guests on the show, the really big movers and shakers in all sorts of aspects, of business, health, relationships, all sorts of great stuff.

And Lewis, who you see on the video, who you hear over the podcast is exactly who he is in real life. He’s one of the most authentic, genuine people you will ever meet. And I’m fortunate enough to know him and call him a friend. And to be able to bring back this interview to you, who may not have heard this the first time is the least I can do to pay homage to the work that he’s done, to the work that he continues to do, and for being such an impactful leader and really elevating people to the next level. So, I’m really, really excited to have this interview brought into the Healthprenur Podcast. Without any further ado, let’s bring Lewis on to the show.

Lewis Howes:                     Thanks, Yuri, appreciate it brother.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Absolutely, buddy. I’m excited man, ’cause you’ve done some amazing work online and obviously kind of a pseudo-celebrity if you will.

Lewis Howes:                     Oh, I appreciate it.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Not because you live in LA, but because of all the amazing impact you’ve had for hundreds of thousands of people around the world who want to start their own business, who want to step into their greatness, and who’ve followed your podcast, The School of Greatness, and your other work. So, I just want to acknowledge you for all the amazing stuff you’ve done, and I’m excited to-

Lewis Howes:                     Thank you.

Yuri Elkaim:                         … dig deep with you here.

Lewis Howes:                     Thank you. I thought you were going to say pseudo-celebrity because of my Facebook ads are everywhere.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Well, yeah. That’s true. That’s the beautiful thing about online, right?

Lewis Howes:                     Right, exactly.

Yuri Elkaim:                         So, you follow, you land on the website, or wherever, and then it’s like you follow it everywhere.

Lewis Howes:                     Exactly.

Yuri Elkaim:                         From retargeting. Beautiful.  I think a lot of people will obviously, will share your story. Really quickly, to start it off, we actually kind of share a similar background. We started off as pro athletes and then realized that there may be something greater.

Lewis Howes:                     Yes.

Yuri Elkaim:                         And during that journey for you, for me, I realized, I couldn’t stand the fact that as a pro athlete, I was an employee pretty much. And I realized that freedom was a really important value for me. For you, what has been the big shift from playing pro football to being an entrepreneur?

 

The challenges and adversity Lewis has faced during his journey

Lewis Howes:                     The big shift was the lifestyle, for me. I guess I would say the shift was going from being a pro athlete to not having anything and realizing, hey, I want to have that lifestyle still, where I get to essentially workout for a few hours, then have the rest of the day free to do the things that I want to do and to have fun, and not be confined to being an employee, excuse me, being an employee for eight to 10 hours a day somewhere and not being able to do the things I love to do.

In a lot of ways, it created this, okay, I want to continue to have this lifestyle where I can be free and have flexibility and just do the things that I love to do. I didn’t like the politics of it. And for me, the pay wasn’t that great, playing arena football. So, I didn’t like that, but I knew I wanted to have everything else where I felt like I was living my dream. I just wanted to have that feeling of living my dream.

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s awesome. And you’ve openly disclosed that you were kind of broke at one point, living on your sister’s couch.

Lewis Howes:                     Yep.

Yuri Elkaim:                         And I want to ask you, in your business, ’cause a lot of times, especially on social media, we kind of portray what’s working. But what’s been a time in maybe the last couple years where there’s been, as you’ve built your business and your quote unquote fame, what has been a time where you’ve actually faced an uncomfortable challenge or maybe a moment where you didn’t think something was going to work out, or you were kind of in a bit of a moment of despair?

Lewis Howes:                     I’ll be honest with you, this probably is not the answer people want to hear, but in relationships, in intimate relationships that didn’t work out, I find that if I’m not able to be able to flow emotionally in relationships I’m in with my girlfriends, that it affects everything else in my life. And it affects my business, it affects my vision, it affects my health. I start, I don’t know, not taking care of the things I need to take care of. So, learning how to still be in the flow in relationships that aren’t working or that are dealing with some adversity in themselves, and not allowing it to consume the rest of my life.

That has been a challenge actually in the last three and a half years as I’ve gone through two breakups now in the last three and a half years, where I was deeply in love with the women, and it just wasn’t working. I wasn’t able to really navigate through that experience of that well in my own life, and it kind of held me back from being clear and staying committed to my vision and taking action with focus. So, that’s something that I’ve continued to learn and grow is being in a relationship, intimate relationships, that aren’t working, and learning how to still make my life and my health work at the same time.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Sure. You have a great new book out called The School of Greatness and you’ve got an entire chapter devoted to turning adversity into advantage.

Lewis Howes:                     Exactly.

Yuri Elkaim:                         How did you take that adversity, if you want to call it adversity, or those lessons from those relationships and turn them into a positive for your own growth or for your business growth?

Lewis Howes:                     You know, when I look back at them, I look at all the lessons I learned, excuse me, about myself during those months or however long a period is of the adversity, the challenges in these relationships. And I realized that, okay, here are some things that I still need to learn. I question myself, I’m like, “Okay, why did I get in that position? Why did it take that long to get out of that situation? Why did I do these certain things that didn’t serve me?” And so it’s a great reminder and feedback for myself in those moments to see, okay, what’s working, what’s not working? And how can I ensure that I learn from this moving forward? I look at everything as a great lesson.

All the challenges you’ve had, I’m sure the injuries, the things like that you went through are probably great lessons for you and great opportunities to look and see at what you want to create next for your life. And that’s the same for me with these relationships, or with any adversity, injuries, they’re great lessons. They’re great ways to reflect, to be more self-aware of, okay, what do I really want next? What didn’t work in this situation and how can I move forward?

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s awesome. What’s interesting is I have your book on my bookshelf and right beside it was a book by Norman Vincent Peale called You Can If You Think You Can. And the whole book is about how problems are opportunities. And it was so interesting that it came to mind as we’re talking about this because I think a lot of people, they’re looking to avoid problems. But in the book, he talks about how the more problems you have, the more alive you are.

Lewis Howes:                     Right. Yeah. What’s interesting is, I was having this conversation last night, is that it’s hard to be great at anything if your life is all easy. And if you grew up and you’re just automatically smart, everything comes naturally to you, you’re a pro at everything you touch within moments. You have no injuries, your family is complete and whole, happy, healthy, consistently throughout your life, that’s not an inspiring story. And no one great in any situation, athletics, business, leadership, they all face some type of adversity, and typically, multiple extreme adversities both internal and external throughout their life.

And if you ask them, “Would you take any of that back?” They would all say, “No because of the lessons I learned and who it’s made me today to be able to handle adverse moments and serve the world and serve my mission in a powerful way.” For me, it’s, Ryan Holiday says, “The obstacle is the way.” That’s the title of his book, and it’s really true. It’s like, we need to lean into these obstacles and this adversity and embrace it to make it our advantage, not hold us back from moving forward in what we want.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah, no. That’s great gospel, my man.

Lewis Howes:                     Thanks. Thanks.

 

The top qualities of high performers

Yuri Elkaim:                         … good words of advice. With your business, so let’s talk about the podcast for a second, ’cause you’ve interviewed hundreds of awesome entrepreneurs and different influencers on The School of Greatness podcast, which by the way, if you’re listening to this and you haven’t listened or subscribed to Lewis’ show, you have to. School of Greatness, you can find it on iTunes. It’s one of the top podcasts. It’s awesome. What have you found to be a common trait or theme amongst a lot of the top performers or influencers that you’ve interviewed on the podcast?

Lewis Howes:                     Yeah. Well, I cover eight principles in the book, but maybe the top two that I see that all of them have is, the first one is vision. And it may sound so simple and basic, but they have very clear, powerful, intentional visions for their life or for their career, or for the next year, whatever they’re doing. Whatever they’ve done that’s great, they had a very clear vision about it. When I think about a Super Bowl competitor or someone in the World Cup in soccer, they didn’t just happen to show up in the World Cup or the Super Bowl, it was probably a dream they had when they were five years old as a kid, playing soccer or football in the backyard watching the Super Bowl or the World Cup and they said to themself, “That’s what I want to do when I grow up.” And so for the next two decades, they took massive action and went through extreme adversity to give themself the chance.

And that chance only comes for a handful of people, but those people that got there, that’s what they were doing. They didn’t just say, “Oh, everything was easy, and I just happened to show up on the Super Bowl today, and I never dreamt of it, and I never had a vision.” All great leaders, we create a business from vision. We don’t just say, “Oh, this is happening, so let me just create it as I go.” It’s like, we have a vision, there’s usually something we want to do that’s fun for us or exciting, or there’s a problem we want to solve. We have this vision of what we want to create, and then it takes time and energy to build this momentum and overcome the obstacles to make it come to life. And that’s what all the great minds I’ve interviewed have is a very clear, powerful vision.

And I would say the second thing, which is the final principle that I talk about in the book that a lot of people have is this mentality and this, they want to live a life of service. Now, that may be inspiring people through living their dreams that may be giving of their time, of their money, that may be trying to solve problems to serve people in a bigger way. Whatever it may be, they’re constantly coming from, how can I serve people, and how can I give to other people? That may be in a big way, or just with the people that are around them, but they come from that place. And I think, I read a book one time, I think it was called The Richest Man in Babylon, I may be wrong.

Yuri Elkaim:                         I have that knapsack right now.

Lewis Howes:                     Do you? I wonder, tell me if this is the right story. It’s either this one or The Greatest Salesman in the World is the other book I’m thinking of. But in one of these books, the richest person, the person who accumulates the most wealth, he shares his secret to how he got it, and how he keeps it and how he grows it. And the secret is that he gives half of it away like every month, or something along those lines. Is that right?

Yuri Elkaim:                         … Yeah, I think it was about like 10%, but yeah.

Lewis Howes:                     Yes, yes.

Yuri Elkaim:                         You’re on the path. Yeah.

Lewis Howes:                     I thought it was like 50%, but maybe it was only 10%. But essentially, he’s constantly looking for ways to give away his money, his time, his talent to the world. And he’s not just hoarding his gifts. The way I look at that, that metaphor is that really, whatever gifts we have, it’s our duty to give it away and serve people with those gifts to maximize our gifts, and then serve the world around us however we choose to do it. And that’s why the richest people are that rich in a lot of ways and the people that aren’t rich, but are rich in greatness become that way as well.

Marketing, webinars and Facebook ads

Yuri Elkaim:                         No, that’s great advice. Create a vision, be of service to others. Chapters one and eights in The School of Greatness book. Awesome. So, I want to shift gears a little bit to a little bit more of the marketing side of things with respect to what you’ve done online. So, you have recently eight million downloads on your podcast, which is amazing.

Lewis Howes:                     Almost nine million by the time this comes out.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Probably even more, who knows?

Lewis Howes:                     Exactly. Yeah, yeah.

Yuri Elkaim:                         So, how have you been able to take listeners from your podcasts to email subscribers, and then to customers? What is that flow, what does that funnel, what’s the one simple funnel that you’ve used to get that all done?

Lewis Howes:                     It’s interesting because when I go online now, and I ask people, “Where did you first hear about me?” A lot of people say, “The podcast.” And it just blows my mind how powerful this is. And I know with your podcast, you probably get the same thing. You have so many people that are listening, but it’s hard to really tell where they go to next. I send them all to, right now, I’ve been sending them all to a linked opt-in about my book. But before that, I would send them to the show notes for each show and there’d be opt-in forms there to get extra bonuses from that show, downloads. And so, I’m testing a lot of things. I’m testing sending them to a text, a message, or text a number so you can get opted in that way, and that’s worked really well. But it’s a constant evolution of testing.

But typically, I send them back to the show notes where they opt-in there, and then they just learn more about me and what I’m doing. And I’ll just announce things, I’ll announce the School of Greatness Academy, or something I’m launching on the podcast, and then people will go direct to that site and opt-in and sign up for my programs. But it’s been really powerful as a brand builder, as a connection point. When I’m in New York City, it’s crazy. Every time I go to New York City, at least a couple people come up to me and say, “Hey, I’m listening to your podcast right now. I love it.” And it just blows my mind that this medium can affect people and connect with people that well all around the world.

And I wish I had better advice on converting, but for me, it’s like I tell people to share it on social media, I tell them to follow me everywhere. And so I never know exactly which point of contact they come into on to social media or which email list they come on to for converting it into sales. But when I ask the question, so many people say they found me first on my podcast once they bought my course. That’s powerful.

Yuri Elkaim:                         And it’s a very intimate experience. And for me, I typically, I’ll walk my kids to school, and then I’ll take my dogs for a walk, and that’s when I’m listening to my podcasts. So, it’s a very in the moment experience. You’re not doing other things, you’re not distracted, and I think there’s a lot of value to that.

Lewis Howes:                     Exactly.

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s great. We also talked, really just kind of skimmed the surface of Facebook ads earlier. I know you’ve done within the last, quite some time, have really focused a lot more there with various webinars that you’ve done and stuff. So, what’s working well for you on Facebook ads?

Lewis Howes:                     Man, what’s really working well? I started really diving into Facebook ads on a consistent basis in about January of 2015, so earlier this year. And what’s really working well for me right now, we spend close to $1,000 a day, sometimes a little more, sometimes a little less. But we’re sending people right to automated webinars, free webinars. We run four a day with different times for people to opt-in whenever they’re free. And we’ve been doing that, what, over eight months now or something, and it’s working really well. The key is, you’ve got to stay on it and you’ve got to be consistent. We have a team now that’s running them all day and constantly finding new people to target, constantly changing in the ads, things like that, the images. So, you can’t just throw it up and have it running for months with one thing. You’ve got to have one person or a team of people on it for it to work from what I’ve found. But it works really well.

We’re building a big list from that. Our list has probably more than doubled this year just in doing Facebook ads, and it’s essentially running everything in my business from one webinar is paying for, I don’t know, 20 people. And it’s building my business and my brand on top of it. So not only is it bringing in an income every single day, it’s generating more leads to promote other products that I have.

It’s also, my face is everywhere, which is great brand recognition and building because you never know when someone’s going to buy. They may see a Facebook ad for a year and never buy that product, but then my book comes out and they’re like, “Oh, let me go buy this,” or another course, or something that they feel connects better to them. So for me, it gives me that as well. And it’s building my following, obviously. My Facebook page is growing because of it and I’m able to drive more traffic to my site because I have a bigger audience and reach now. So, there’s just so many great benefits to it.

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s great. And just so our audience knows, what software are you using for the automated webinars?

Lewis Howes:                     I use Stealth Seminar, and yeah. So, they’ll run multiple times with Stealth Seminar. I think it’s like 50 bucks a month or something like that. It’s great.

 

Greatness, finding your unique gift, and doing what you love

Yuri Elkaim:                         Awesome. Nice. Excellent. So, I want to reverse the question to you ’cause I know you ask your interviewees this all the time in your podcasts. In your minds, what does greatness mean?

Lewis Howes:                     It changes all the time and it could be a different answer based on where we’re at in our lives. But for me, at this moment, greatness means discovering and maximizing our gifts. Figuring out what they are and making the most of those gifts to make the biggest impact on the maximum number of people in the world.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Nice. That’s awesome. So, what does that mean for you? What is your unique gift and how do you maximize that on a daily basis?

Lewis Howes:                     Right now, my unique gift is teaching people how to make a full-time living doing the things they love. I think I’ve become really good at that, showing people how to get creative with their dreams. No matter what their dreams are or what the things they love doing the most, getting creative with it, so they can make a living around it and make income, and build a business around it or find a job that supports that ’cause not everyone wants to run a business.

But figuring out ways to make money doing something you love I feel like is the greatest gift that we can have and receive because what better way is there … I mean, I don’t know a better way to live life when you’re making money, making a full-time income and you get to do everything you want to do every single day around that. I feel like that’s pretty sweet. And have a good life, be around people you love, take care of your health, and I mean, there’s not really much more to that.

 

His optimal morning routine

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s pretty awesome. That’s great. I want to finish just talking about one of the things in the book. So, you have a whole chapter on practicing positive habits, which I think is huge, right? ‘Cause we are the result of our habits.

Lewis Howes:                     Yes.

Yuri Elkaim:                         So, you have, I guess a daily morning routine. Do you want to describe what that is for our listeners?

Lewis Howes:                     Yeah. And just to be-

Yuri Elkaim:                         And why it’s so powerful for you?

Lewis Howes:                     … Yeah. And just to be clear, my intention is to follow my habits and my routines every day, but there’s some days that I don’t, and I’m a human being, so it doesn’t have to perfect all the time. But when I am in that flow and I’m doing those habits on a consistent basis, I notice and I see results coming much easier and much better, and my health is better and all these different things. So, you just want to be aware of it and really do them with the most you can. For me, the morning starts with waking up in gratitude. I wake up with gratitude. I’ll either express it to the first person I see, I’ll write it down, or I’ll just take a mental note to myself. And for a minute, think about the things that I’m grateful for and appreciate another day because I have another day to live and that’s a gift. So, I look at that and I think about that in the morning.

Then, I do about a 12 or 13 minute guided meditation usually every morning and every night where I’ll just lay there in bed listening to this and wake up to it and visualize what I want to create for that day. Again, vision is one of the most powerful things we can have. Without a vision, we’re just wandering around aimlessly trying to just react to life, what throws at us. So, I try to really set clear what I’m going to create that day, recommit to who I am, my beliefs, my vision, what I want in the world. And I feel like that sets me up to win for the day.

From there, I go and usually do some type of a workout, and this depends on the season of my life what I’m doing, but I’ll do something where I’m sweating and feeling some type of physical pain. I feel like the more pain my body and mind can experience, the greater that I can take on adversity and be able to handle it with ease. And so, I train myself as often as possible to experience pain. That could be literally just running a mile and doing it to the point where my lungs hurt. It doesn’t have to be killing myself every single day, but doing something that’s uncomfortable every single day.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Nice.

Lewis Howes:                     Physically, I like to do, so that my mind can be trained to take on that type of challenge. From that, I’ll come back and do a little bit of light stretching, shower, clean. I always make my bed. That’s an important thing for me because-

Yuri Elkaim:                         It’s so overlooked, it’s so important.

Lewis Howes:                     … Yeah. I mean, for years, I didn’t until a couple of years ago. I listened to some Navy SEAL talk about the importance of it and what it actually does for you. And I was like, “Wow, I’m actually going to try this.” And I’ve seen the results of it. I never did this as a kid, even though my mom always told me to make my bed, I never did it. And now finally, as a 32-year-old man, I’m making my bed. But it’s really powerful to clear the space, the space where you sleep. We spend a third of our life in bed, in the bedroom.

So, it’s important in my mind to have it clear and nice looking and clean, so that when you go back in there, you’re not just going into a messy space to sleep and dream, you’re going into a clean, clear space. I think that’s very important. And then from there, I have a green smoothie or a super fruit smoothie and some breakfast, kind of depending on what I’m doing with my workouts, and then I start the day.

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s great, man. That’s awesome.

Lewis Howes:                     Thanks.

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s a greatness routine.

Lewis Howes:                     There you go.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Well, Lewis, thanks so much for taking the time to join us on the podcast here. So again, for all of you listening, the book is The School of Greatness. A real world guide to living bigger, loving deeper, and leaving a legacy. I’ve almost finished reading it. It’s awesome. It’s like 10, 15, 20 years of your life condensed into-

Lewis Howes:                     That’s it.

Yuri Elkaim:                         … That’s the beauty of a book, right? It’s like, why reinvent the wheel if you can just get everything in a book? It’s such an amazing medium to share knowledge and wisdom.

Lewis Howes:                     Exactly.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah. Thank you so much for writing this, it’s tremendous. I highly recommend you guys grab a copy of it. You can grab it on Amazon or pretty much any bookstore. I will have a link to it from the blog as well on this episode’s show notes over at smartermarketerproject.com. Lewis, thanks so much buddy. Any kind of final words of wisdom before we finish off today?

Lewis Howes:                     Yeah. I appreciate it, Yuri. And my final words of wisdom is, I would say, continue to listen to this podcast because the greatest gift you can give yourself is education and growth. And if you’re not growing on a daily, weekly, monthly basis, then you’re slowly dying in my mind. So, continue to listen to Yuri’s podcast. Continue to take on the wisdom and try new things and challenge yourself on a daily basis to grow a little bit every single day, and that’s living a great life.

Yuri Elkaim:                         There you have it. From the man himself, Lewis Howes. New York Times bestselling author. All around amazing guy, and one of the most influential people in our world today. If you want to follow him on Instagram, just search @lewishowes. If you’re on Twitter, same idea, on Facebook, you know the drill. Once again guys, thank you so much for joining me today. I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode.

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Yuri’s Take

Got some great stuff coming your way. We’ve got Mr. Todd Herman from The 90 Day Year coming up on the show. We’ve got Emily Rosen from the Institute for the Psychology of Eating. We’ve got, who else? We’ve got some Kevin Rogers action. We’ve got some really great people coming up on the show, so do not go anywhere. Stay here every Monday, Wednesday, Friday. We’ve got solo rounds, we’ve got our result coaches between the ear sessions on Wednesday, usually. We’ve got the interviews coming your way on Friday. And hey, we’re here to serve you. We’re here to help you take your business to the next level, to take your expertise and really impact more people.

So, if you’ve enjoyed this one, remember if you haven’t yet done so, then check out the free training over at healthprenurgroup.com/training, and let me walk you through our 7-Figure Health Business Blueprint. It’s our four step business model to help you attract your best clients on autopilot like clockwork pretty much on demand. And if that’s something you’re interested in, to really attract the best, highest paying clients, to really serve them at a very high level, then I’m going to show you exactly how to do so. And that’s exactly what you’ll discover in that 70 minute online training. It’s 100% free. Again, it’s over at healthprenurgroup.com/training.

Once again, thank you so much for joining me. Hope you have an amazing rest of your day. Continue to get out there, be great, do great, and I’ll see you in our next episode.

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Follow Lewis Howes at:

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Transcription

Did you know that a sale always happens? Yeah, when you’re on the phone with someone or if you’re in person with somebody at a store, for instance, and you are being approached by the sales clerk or you’re on the phone with somebody, whether you’re on the receiving end or the coaching side, a sale is always made. A sale always happens.

 

How a sale is always being made

Now, the distinction is that either somebody is buying you and your offer or you’re buying their story about why they can’t do what they say they want to do, so a sale is being made every single time. If you have a phone call, if you have, let’s say, 10 phone calls with prospective clients, and only one of them enrolled, a sale was always made in each one of those 10 cases. The only difference though is that the nine times you bought their story.

“Oh, I don’t have time,” “I don’t have money,” “This is too expensive,” “I didn’t talk to my wife,” “I didn’t talk to my wife,” “I’ll do this in a couple months,” “I don’t really need this right now.” That’s a great story, but there’s a reason that people book a call with you in the first place. We must never, never forget that fact. People are busy. We have things to do in our life. There’s a rhyme and reason to why someone would, in our case, watch your webinar, fill out an application, and book a call with you.

Talk to anybody and ask them, “Hey, do you have all the time in the world?” Most people would say no. There’s a reason someone would schedule a time to chat with you to spend 30 minutes or an hour on the phone with you. They have a problem they want solved, and at the end of the day, what it’s going to come down to is are they buying you or are you buying their story?

 

Selling and why our sales process works

Understand that a sale is always, always, always being made, and part of your job as a coach, as somebody who I would strongly recommend becomes very, very good at, quote-unquote, “selling,” which is not … Again, I don’t want you to have a negative connotation about selling because a lot of people are down on selling because they don’t understand it. They don’t understand what selling is, and selling is essentially just an exchange of … It’s really you influencing somebody, an exchange of value, so you have a solution to their problem, and it’s influencing them to the point where they’re like, “Yeah, this makes sense. Let’s do it.” That’s all selling is.

The cool thing is that the better you are with your marketing, the less you have to sell. That’s why with our Perfect Client Pipeline, when somebody reads a long Facebook ad, which everyone’s like, “Oh, my god, no one’s going to read a long Facebook ad.” There’s no way. It’s gotta be short, to the point, one, two sentences, and a link. Yeah, you can totally do that, but do you think that we would’ve built a multiple seven-figure business off ads that are really long without a reason? No. It’s the same reason that we help our clients build out these long ads as well. They’re not ads. They’re stories. They’re stories that connect with people.

 

Getting past an uncomfortable conversation with “why”

When someone reads that, and then they register to watch an hour-long webinar, and then they fill out an application divulging some really personal information sometimes, and then they book a call with you? There’s a reason someone’s doing that, so you must never forget that. That’s why the first thing, one of the first things you want to be asking people on the phone is, “Why did you book this call with me today? Why are we having this conversation?”

See, you have to be comfortable on the phone asking hard questions. This is a learning process for a lot of us. I’ll be very honest with you. My natural instinct is to avoid conflict, is to avoid confrontation, so I will avoid those types of situations. I will avoid bringing up something with a team member, a friend, family member, whatever, because it’s like, “Oh, my god, it’s uncomfortable. I don’t want to have this conversation,” but we all have been through these conversations in the past, and we always felt better on the flip side of them. The other side, once it was just opened up, we talked freely. You have to bring that to these conversations you’re having with your prospective clients. “Hey, just out of curiosity, why did you book this call with me? Cool. Awesome. Thank you so much for telling me that.”

As you get through the call and you eventually get to your, quote-unquote, “close,” “Hey, would you like my help in making this a reality in your life?” “Would you like my help to lose weight?” “Would you like my help to whatever?” and they say well, “Well, I need to think about it or whatever,” all you have to do is go back to the why. If you’re asking the right questions in your conversation, you should be asking more whys than what. “Hey, what do you want to achieve over the next six months? Cool, yeah, you want to lose some weight. Awesome. Good. Good.”

Now, instead of jumping to the next question, what you should be doing is asking why. “Let me ask you, why is it so important for you to lose 20 pounds?” “Because I just kind of hit a wall. I don’t really feel good in my body anymore. I know that I can get back to where I was 10 years ago.” “Okay, great. I totally understand where you’re coming from. You want to lose those 20 pounds because you feel like you want to get back to where you were 10 years ago. Why is that so meaningful to you?”

 

Tips to sell instead of being sold

What I’m giving you an example of here is digging deeper with questions that are going to bring true emotion to the surface. As I’ve said before, the goal of these enrollment calls is not, they’re not sales pitches. They’re coaching calls that get to the truth, and the truth is that if someone is in pain, the fact that they booked a call with you means that they want something solved. They’re not just going to waste time and be like, “Yeah, I’m just going to book calls all day with different people.” They’re not just browsing and they’re happy with their … If someone goes into a car dealership, do you think that they might be thinking of buying a car? Maybe not today, but maybe. Yeah. We don’t just randomly walk into a car dealer if we have no intention of ever buying a car.

You have to understand that. If someone brings up an objection later in the call to say, “Yeah, it sounds right. I just need to think about it.” There’s obviously ways of handling all these different situations. I’m not going to go into the details right now, but if you turn back to the first question I talked about, “Okay, well, I completely understand you want to think about it, but let me ask you one thing. Earlier when we started talking, you had mentioned X, Y, and Z of why this call was happening, like why you booked this call. Just out of curiosity, what has changed in the past 30 minutes? You told me that this was a must, you had to make this happen, that your family depended on you achieving these goals, that your happiness was dependent upon that, so just out of curiosity, what’s changed in the past 30 minutes?”

The whole idea here is that we’re getting to some way of just obliterating these excuses. You want to get to the ultimate objection. If it’s a price thing, hey, that’s totally fine. It’s a price thing. Let’s talk about it. Let’s figure out some payment options, whatever, but what you don’t want to have happen is you don’t want to get into conversations where because you don’t know how to handle yourself and you don’t know how to handle different situations, you’re just like, “Oh, okay, cool. Yeah, totally, it’s not good timing. Maybe we’ll connect in a couple of months. Cool. Awesome. Thanks so much for your time. Have a great day.” That’s what you don’t want to have happen.

 

Crafting the process so it doesn’t feel sales-y

The reason a lot of people fear sales is because they don’t know how to handle a selling situation. When someone says, “I want to think about it,” how do you handle that, or when someone says, “It’s too much money,” how do you handle that and turn that in such a way where they actually see the value in paying more for your services? If you don’t know how to handle these situations, obviously, selling is always going to feel uncomfortable, and ultimately, you will be buying that person’s story about why they can’t work with you.

This is one of the biggest opportunities for growth and improvement in your business if you are like, all of our clients are, for the most part, talking to people on the phone, and you’re not really well-versed on the phone, we can certainly help you because that’s a big part of what we do in our Health Business Accelerator program.

There has never been a more effective way to have a conversation with someone other than one-on-one and offer them something that is of premium price to somebody who’s never met you before who’s maybe has spent 30 minutes with you and is willing to invest several thousand dollars to work with you. There’s a way of doing that. There’s a way of crafting that process, and there’s a way of talking to people on the phone where they don’t feel like they’re being sold, they don’t feel high-pressured, and it’s an honest conversation where there’s actual back and forth real true honest, no fluff, no superficial nonsense conversation.

If you don’t know how to do that, you are massively limiting your potential in your business, and the easiest thing to do would be just to get our help because why try to figure this out on your own? I don’t understand. It’s one of these things where if you don’t know something, you can try to figure things out on your own and hope for the best, or you just ask yourself, “Well, who can help me do this?” I’d like to be that who because we help a lot of clients who are health professionals, practitioners, trainers, health coaches, you name it. Take their expertise, package it in a way where people are super excited to pay premium prices for them to work with them.

If that’s of interest to you, and you want to build out a more profitable and predictable business where people are knocking on your virtual door instead of you hoping for clients to come in somehow, then we can definitely help you, and we’d love to.

The first step is to watch our online training. It’s called the 7-Figure Health Business Blueprint, and you can watch over at healthpreneurgroup.com/training. If you resonate with what we’re talking about, then at the end of the webinar, at the end of the online training, you can book a call to speak with us, and honestly, just on the receiving end, you’re going to learn a lot about how to conduct these calls because, I’ll be very honest with you, my team and I, we spend every single day, we meet every morning, and we train on how to handle these calls, on how to be of better service, on how to improve our communication with prospective clients.

It’s something we do every single day. It’s not something we do once in a while. Every single morning, 9:30 a.m., my self, my team, boom. We’re training. This is our commitment to mastery, and this is our commitment to not only becoming better for ourselves, but also just really find those nuances that we can then help our clients with.

If you really want to be making the money you feel you deserve, because you can be making a lot of more money than you are. I don’t know your specific situation, but I can tell you, you can probably be making a lot more money, impacting people at a lot deeper of a level, and if you’ve been in situations where you’re just frankly frustrated with being on the phone with people and feeling like, “Man, I just lost the sale again,” then you’ve got to stop. You have to figure out a better way to do things, and we could help you do that.

It all starts with the free training online. Go today right now, healthpreneurgroup.com/training.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode. I look forward to seeing you in the next one. Continue to be great and do great, and have an awesome day.

Transcription

I was recently at a Grant Cardone event, and regardless of what you think of Grant Cardone, he’s got some really great nuggets of wisdom. He opened my eyes to a really great perspective on this topic of money problems.

I want to share with you, and maybe you’ve experienced this yourself with people that you’ve spoken with who are interested in enrolling in your coaching, and then it comes down to the money, and they’re like, “You know what? I just can’t afford it.”

 

Money isn’t the problem, revenue is

If you’ve ever caught yourself saying that as well, then here’s the distinction I want to share with you, is that, you don’t have a money problem, you have a revenue problem. That was one of the key take homes I got from Grant Cardone’s 10X Business Bootcamp, and it was such a great insight, because it’s true. No one has a money problem. No one has like, “I’m in debt.” Like, that’s not the problem. The real problem is you’re not generating enough income. You have to generate enough income to overwhelm your expenses.

You might say, “Okay, well Yuri, if I make a lot more money, then I’m going to spend a lot more money.” Well, that would be a problem, right? You also have to manage that. But when you can make a lot more money, you have more … If you’re setting things up properly and forcing yourself to save and put things aside for investments, and really living not a lavish lifestyle that you don’t need to live … If you’re making 5 or 10 times more income than you’re making right now, do you have any more money problems? No, right?

It was funny, he was doing a handful of calls from stage. He would ask someone in the audience, “All right, so give me someone on your team, we’re going to give them a shout.” And he’d call them up, out of the blue, and be like, “Hey, it’s your uncle G. How’s it going? So let me ask you a question. How much money did you make last year?” A total stranger, no clue who this person is, they don’t know who Grant is. Obviously, there was a bit of an awkward back and forth, but eventually it was like … This one lady was like, “I made $20,000 last year.” $20,000, that is well below the poverty line. How do you live on $20,000 a year?

 

How to earn what you want and resolve your income problem

Just think of this, no matter where you are on the income scale. Let’s just assume for a sec, that all of your expenses were the same, but you could earn five times more money. Would that solve a lot of problems for you? The answer should be, yes. The next question is, well, how are you going to earn five times more money?

If you’re earning $100,000 in income. Most people think, “Oh, that’s great. That’s six figures, awesome.” 100,000 dollars is not a lot of money to live on. If you live in an urban city like Toronto, you can’t really get very far on $100,000 a year.

So, let’s say you want to go from $100,000 to $500,000. How do you do that? Well, I don’t want to make more money, I’m going to save, I’m going to lower my cost of living. I’m not going to have my favorite latte every day. You know, the latte factor nonsense. I’m going to save $6 a day and that’s going to turn me into a millionaire. Please, come on.

I’m going to move out of the city. I’m going to live in a small town. I’m going to feel miserable about that. I say that, because that’s kind of what I did 10 years ago. I wasn’t miserable, but I realized that wasn’t where I wanted to live.

So what I did, is I set my sights higher. We had moved out of Toronto to start our family, a slightly lower cost of living, obviously. But then we realized, this is not the environment we want to raise our kids in. This is not the surroundings that really inspire me. I was like, “No, no, no. We want to live in this area, we want to live in this kind of house, and how’s that going to happen?”

It’s not going to happen by saving. You cannot grow by saving. You cannot save and grow your business, you cannot retract and expand at the same time. The only thing as the business leader, the only thing as the CEO of your life, of your business, of your company, that you control, the number one thing you control is the top line on the financial statements, which is also known as income or revenue.

If you want to change your situation, make more money. That’s it, make more money. If you’re making $100,000, and you go to $500,000, you don’t have the same situation anymore. It’s a very, very different ballgame.

If you have a money problem, I just want to give you a mindset shift, is that, it’s not a money problem, it’s an income problem, and you have to learn how to earn. If you don’t, you’re continually going to have the same problem over and over and over again. This is one of the biggest things that we see on the phone calls, when we’re talking to perspective clients is, “You know, this all sounds great, but I just don’t have the money for it.”

 

Our Luminaries Mastermind opportunity

Obviously, that’s why we’re talking, right? I completely understand that you don’t have the money for it, and that’s exactly why we’re having this conversation. But let me ask you, what is going to change between now and the next time we speak? Nothing. You’re going to learn nothing new, you’re not going to have a strategy that’s going to help you build your income, but what we can give you, is the exact strategy to multiply the amount of revenue you’re making. Which, as a result, is going to really just do away with a lot of your money problems.

As people have said in the past, I don’t know who said this, but if you can write a check, you don’t have a problem. But most people have problems because they can’t write a check, so they’re trying to save their way to freedom, which doesn’t make sense. I hope this makes sense for you, right?

I have a lot of conversations on social, Instagram, Facebook Messenger, and a lot of times I’ll be speaking with somebody, I’ll say, “Hey, listen, we’ve got this great opportunity. For instance, like our Luminaries experience, our Luminaries Mastermind experience.” Which by the way, is coming up next week. Yeah, that’s crazy, already. Next Thursday, Friday, it’s insane.

What we decided to do was open up a couple of spots, for non-members, to sit in for the two days and join us at significantly reduced rates. I’m talking about just covering the food expenses for the two days, so you can kind of do the math on that. It’s not thousands of dollars, not even close. And I’ve never done that, I’ve never really made it so affordable for anyone to sit in and allow me to … or kind of benefit from my coaching and kind of our awesome surrounding and group, and so forth.

I said, “Listen, I just want to do this because a lot of our stuff is maybe out of the reach of some people, so this would be a great opportunity to serve people at a more accessible entry point for some.” And I had a couple conversations with a few people about this over DM on Instagram, and again, we’re talking about literally a couple hundred dollars, okay? Like not a huge amount of money here, and I understand everyone’s in a different place.

This one lady was like, “Listen, this really sounds great, but I just need to get a bunch of stuff in order, and I’m really looking forward to attending one of your events someday, somewhere.” I was like, “Wow.  I understand where you’re coming from. You probably have a lot of stuff going on, nothing’s really working.” And that’s not what I said to her, that’s kind of what I was thinking.

But I kind of gave her a little bit of a coaching session, as well. I said, “Listen, I understand you got stuff going on, but let’s put a date on that. Because someday, somewhere, turns into never and nowhere.” Then she started talking about how she had some stuff she was getting lined up, and XYZ, and then she’d have the money to afford and attend, and stuff.

I said, “Listen, I totally understand that, but the very reason that you should be in this room with us, is for the money making strategies you are going to learn and deploy so that you don’t have to run into these situations anymore.”

 

What works, what doesn’t, and how I learned

Remember this, is that anytime you have the opportunity to invest in yourself or in your business, that is where you should be spending your money. That’s where you should be putting your profits just back into yourself. Learn, grow, become better on the phone, become more effective as a marketer, learn how to get your message in front of more people, learn how to make more money. Get out of your comfort zone and follow up with people 10 times more than you think you need to.

These are things that are going to move the needle for you, not putting up one message and if no one takes it, it’s like, “Oh, this didn’t work.” That’s what poor broke people do. That’s why most entrepreneurs don’t succeed, because they don’t know how to generate revenue. The important thing is that a lot of what you do, in terms of income generating activities, should be automated. You shouldn’t be having to knock on every single person’s door. I mean, you could do that. It’s a lot of work.

But what we help our clients build out, as I’ve mentioned several times, is a four step pipeline, really a marketing or sales process, called The Perfect Client Pipeline. It starts with an ad, the ad invites people to a webinar. The webinar does all the heavy lifting, and you invite people to fill out an application to speak with you. That’s our entire business model, okay? I’m happy to share exactly what we do, and we do this very, very well. We’re the best in the industry at this.

If you want to be able to generate revenue quickly, there’s nothing I have seen that even comes close to this, because here’s the … I’m very, very opinionated about this. It’s not even an opinion, it’s just understanding the facts. Because you have two ways you can do things.

You can create an eBook, where you can create a challenge for 10 bucks, 20 bucks, 100 bucks, and a lot of people start there. That’s the challenge, is they come online and they start with this low end nonsense, which is exactly what I did when I started in 2006.

What would I tell myself, knowing what I know now? “Hey Yuri, when you come online, the first thing you should be doing, is you should be rolling out some type of service or coaching program for thousands of dollars. That’s the first thing you should be doing.”

“Oh why, old Yuri?” “Here’s why, young Yuri. Because unless you are a master at direct response copywriting and driving traffic, there is no way in hell you are going to sell enough $10 eBooks to pay for your lifestyle, okay?” The margins are just way too slim. Even at a $100, there’s no way you could make that work unless you are an absolute triple A rockstar at the things I just mentioned. You’d have to be writing sales copy that magically makes people take their credit cards out and gives you money right there on the spot. Most people are never going to get to that point.

I mean, I’m very grateful that I’ve been able to master, I wouldn’t say master, but get very close to that level. I know a lot of my friends are generating $10, $15, $20 million a year from mastering that very specific process, but they’re unicorns. They are unicorns, they are anomalies.

Most health experts don’t want to do that stuff, and you don’t have to. Because you have expertise, that if you just work with a small group of people or a large group of people, you can charge premium prices and impact them at a much deeper level. The way you enroll them is by having a human-to-human conversation, and you don’t even have to have a website. That’s the beautiful thing.

I see all these Wix commercials, like Wix.com, like set up your own website. Why would you build your own website? Okay cool, you have a great website, then what? Build it and they will come, The Field of Dreams does not exist online.

 

Income before influence and how we can help

If you don’t have a predictable sales process, and I’ve mentioned this from stage, when I speak at events, and I’ll say it again. You have to play the long game because business takes time to really grow, but you have to build a predictable sales process from day one. Because you have to focus on income before anything else.

I don’t care how many social media followers you have, how many fans you have on Instagram or Facebook, none of that matters. All that matters is what your bank account says, because that’s how you pay for your life.

If you’re having a tough time with money it’s because you don’t have a predictable sales process built in your business, or you’re trying to sell stuff that’s like $10 to $100, which sadly is where so many people are stuck.

I want to help you, that’s why I started Healthpreneur. I just saw there’s such a huge gap. It was like, all right, I’m going to come online. I’m going to learn from all these experts, who are New York Times best selling authors. I’m going to write a book, and I’ve got my book. Cool, I’m going to get it out there. Oh my God, no one’s bought my book. What do I do now? Or, oh great. I just sold like a thousand copies of my book, but I’m still not paying the bills.

The most important thing, the most important thing. The only thing that matters is driving revenues, making money in your business. All of the other flashy stuff, becoming a New York Times best selling author, being on PBS, doing all these stupid radio and TV shows … They’re not stupid, I shouldn’t say that.

Being led to believe that that’s the way to do things, that’s fine. That’s fine, please do that stuff. But only after you have generated significant income, or you have a predictable process in place, so that when you are flying to New York to do the Morning Show, in the background, your business is generating clients and money every single day without you having to be involved in the whole thing.

That’s the biggest lie that we’ve been led to believe, is that you have to do all this online platform building stuff and become an influencer. You can certainly do that, but you have to focus on income before influence. Income before influence. The more income you make, the more influential you’ll become.

If that makes sense to you, and you want to take things to the next level and really figure out and get to the roots and fix your income problem, not your money problem, then we can help you. We can help you with 1000% certainty.

It all starts by watching our 7-Figure Health Business Blueprint. It’s a free online training. If you have not yet watched it, go to healthpreneurgroup.com/training. You’ll get a much better sense of what I’m talking about, you’ll see how this can actually manifest … I shouldn’t say manifest. How it can really make sense in your business and in your life. If it makes sense, and you want to really take things to the next level, then you can book a call with us, and we’ll give you the link to do so at the end of that training.

Again, we’re here to help you. We’re here to serve you. We’re here to give you the strategy and an overwhelming amount of coaching and support to make that happen.

I’ll finish with one final thing. I’m not going to mention her name because she’s awesome, I love her, she’s part of our Healthpreneur tribe. She was at Healthpreneur Live, our annual event, and I was speaking about webinars. I gave our one page webinar template, I also call it the 7-Figure Webinar Template, and I was walking through … We did a couple breakout sessions on how to create an amazing webinar.

She took some of this stuff and went back home and created a webinar, and is doing her stuff, which is great. She took action, got it out there. Then she had some questions, right? She had some questions, “Okay, like how do I improve this? How do I tweak this? What do I do next? How do I …” You know, all the how-to’s.

This was a perfect example of someone who had the best of intentions, but for whatever reason, wasn’t ready to step up and make the investment to work with us. And that’s that’s totally fine, I get it. Listen, I understand. But it kind of breaks my heart in some way, because I’m like, oh my God, if you were only part of our program, we could help you so much more.

Anyways, we love to serve you, if this fits, and it all starts by going through the training, healthpreneurgroup.com/training.

Thank you so much for joining me in this episode. On Wednesday, I’ve actually got another solo episode coming your way. It’s actually a nice segue from this, which is all about, are you selling or are you being sold? It will make a lot more sense of that on Wednesday.

In the meantime, have an amazing day. Thank you so much for joining me. Continue to get out there, be great, do great, and I’ll see you in the next episode.

Transcription

Hey guys, what’s going on? Yuri here. I’ve got another treat for you today. I’m digging back into the archives today, because I took a little bit of a hiatus from live interviews for a while. I’m not sure what happened there, but I was obviously on a cruise for two weeks and I kind of forgot to interview people, so I’m like, “Let me pull back into the archives of some of my previous podcast interviews back in the day.”

And when I say back in the day, I’m talking about within the last two, three years. The stuff we’re gonna be sharing is still very, very relevant, but today I’ve got my good friend Per Bristow who I’m bringing this interview to you, and the reason I’m doing this though is because Per is not really in the health and fitness space, but here’s the thing: when my first book, The All Day Energy Diet, came out Per was my number one affiliate. Like, the partner who sold the most number of books.

And he is in the voice and singing space. So like, how on earth does that happen? Well, people who wanna sing and improve their voice and performance obviously need more energy. The reason I’m bringing this to you today is because what Per does with his audience is very applicable to what you do in your business, and if you don’t know who Per Bristow is, check out his website perbristow.com

If you can spell that right the first time, I’ll give you $100 bucks, but essentially it’s perbristow.com. Per is an amazing person, originally from Sweden, now lives in LA. He is the world’s most followed voice and performance coach, having helped people in 132 countries become more empowered as communicators, performers, and human beings. The funny thing is Per doesn’t even know I’m releasing this episode again. So I’ll probably just send him a note, be like, “Hey buddy. Hope all’s well, just so you know, we’re gonna be re-submitting this podcast in a new format.”

So it’s gonna be awesome, and this is a really good episode because you’ll get to the core of what it takes to be a good performer, and a good performer means how can you communicate more effectively on your webinars, or from stage, or when you’re on the phone with somebody, or in person with someone? And little quick story for you, Per and I were in Strategic Coach together, and we knew each other from a previous mastermind. We got to hang out quite a bit, and he attended one of my masterminds maybe five years ago. I think it was about four years ago, in Orlando.

And I may have shared this story with you, I’m not too sure if I have, but in the room we had an exercise. One of the things we do in our HBA program, the Health Business Accelerator, is we give people a really simple way of attracting clients without having to do Facebook Ads right off the bat. It’s called conversational closing and it all stemmed from this one meeting, and we had people in the room. We say, “Hey, who wants to give this a shot first thing in the morning?” And it was basically like a simple message out to the email list. Per has an email list of over a million people, okay? So just to give you some context. It’s probably even more now.

So he was like, “Yeah, I’ll do it.” Because I’m like … I’m thinking of doing the event in Toronto, but I really haven’t done much around that. So we’re like, “Okay, cool. Send this message out. We’re gonna see who’s interested and we’ll go from there.” Sent it out at nine in the morning. By lunchtime they had 250 people in Toronto be like, “Yeah, I’m interested in attending, let’s do this.”

So fast forward a couple months, he sets up the event in Toronto, one of the nicest hotels in the city. I think he had about 250, 300 people attend, and that became the beginning of his world tour, and since then he has done huge events in Australia, New Zealand, England, all around the world, and it all started from that small incident meeting several years ago back in Florida. So I’m super excited to introduce Per Bristow to you. He’s a great human being, and I think you’ll get a lot out of this episode, so let’s jump right in.

Per’s journey, online business, and how he helps people get “a voice”

It’s always great to connect with you. We spent a lot of time hanging out together in Toronto and LA and elsewhere, and we’ve known each other for a number of years, and I’m always amazed at what you’ve been able to do with your business of helping people really kind of express themselves. Like, through singing and voice work and stuff, and it’s pretty amazing. Why did you start an online business? What was the whole motivation behind that?

Per Bristow:                        Well, I’d been working as a voice and performance coach for quite a while before I started my online business and the voice is such an interesting instrument to me. Many different reasons, the physical aspect of the voice, we know that it’s not fun to lose our voice. We can’t communicate, we wouldn’t be able to do what we’re doing today if we didn’t have a voice. So I mean, everybody needs a voice, and I was kind of shy and introverted when I was in high school so I’ve always … this thing about being able to express and being able to have an impact and be able to influence a situation, it’s really really powerful stuff and that’s what we need when we run a business or when we coach, when we do videos, when we do audios, all that kind of stuff.

So I really trained myself to become good at that, the communication aspect of it, and I come from Sweden so now that I’m in the US I’m dealing with a different language also, so therefore when I was coaching it was really to help people with the issues that I had issues with myself. How can you actually release the voice, how can you release not only physical restrictions but also psychological restrictions? The fears that we have. Singers have a lot of fears, of course, when it comes to how do they sound, and singing those high notes, and being able to sing on pitch.

How can we develop that? And then with speakers, really similar issues. A lot of speakers want deeper, richer, more resonant voices and when they get that it has an enormous impact on their communication, so that’s what I really really set out to do to help people. And that was all one on one, so the online thing was never, ever a thought really, because well frankly, the internet was in the beginning, right? But my passion for helping people release what they’re capable of, that’s really what set it out.

So then when I started my online business was really because I realized I had a very, very powerful method, a lot of people were getting helped, and I needed to figure out, “Okay, how can I publish this? How can I publish this so people who can’t see me in private can benefit from it?”

Yuri Elkaim:                         So that’s an awesome story and there’s so many people that can relate to that. So what was the first thing that you did? When you came online you had this amazing ability to help other people, and one of the things you’re great at doing and you love to do is learning and developing skills; what’s the first thing that you did to get your business online going?

Per Bristow:                        Yeah, and I’m glad you mention that word skill, because that’s something that singing … a lot of people think that singing is about talent, right? Either you have it or you not, and I have always despised the word talent. I’m always about skill development, and I love to develop skills, so when it comes to building a business I had absolutely no idea how to do that so I had to tap into my desire, my love, and my strength of developing skills. I need to learn stuff that I have no clue how to do.

So my initial thought, my thinking process, was then, “How can I create something so that people have the same experience that they would have if they would see me in private?” And I knew I could not do that through audio, I needed to do that through video, so that was … and there were a lot of singing programs out there, which basically is people playing scales and audio programs, and I didn’t want that. I needed people to be able to see me, to be able to engage with them and develop a process that people experience themselves, since I can’t tell them what … well, I can tell them what to do, but I can’t comment on how they execute something.

So I have to then develop a process where they experience themselves, so they start feeling themselves, and I knew I needed to do that with video. So when video was starting to get good online, that’s where I jumped in, and I started to learn everything I could about all kinds of aspects.

Problem solving, Google ad words, and investments

Yuri Elkaim:                         Sure. So let me ask you this: if you started today in a completely new market, what would be the first thing that you start doing knowing what you know now, in your business? To build your business?

Per Bristow:                        If I started in a new market?

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah. So let’s say you went into a market of like, dog grooming. Right? Something you don’t know too much about maybe, and you saw an opportunity there. What would be the first thing, knowing what you know now, what would be the first thing you do setting up that new business online?

Per Bristow:                        One of my strengths is having a deep understanding of the other person, so the psychology behind the fears that we have, the restrictions that we have and our desires, and all that kind of stuff, that’s why I become good as a coach. How can I actually draw something out of you that you didn’t know you were able to do?

So I would really probably have the same mindset now, or I would have, and that starts them with the other person. What is their problem? What is … ? What holds people back in whatever situation in life?

So whether that’s grooming your dog and how can you do that in a more effective way? And I would learn, then, what is the … well, I don’t know if I wanna use the word problem, but you know, what are the challenges someone has? And then I would probably be able to figure out a strategy on how to get that person to where they wanna be in a more effective way, and then how can I create a coaching program that would actually make that happen?

So I would look at it from that customer’s point of view. How do I actually get into the skin of that person and see what their dilemma is and then figure out how I can help them.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Awesome. That’s good.

Per Bristow:                        And then the marketing and all the sales and all that kinda stuff really becomes second hand, and that actually becomes pretty easy once you understand that.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Start with the customer first. I think it’s great advice, ’cause a lot of people, including myself when I first started, started with the product. So, “Okay, I’ve got this product that I wanna create. Now how do I force it onto the marketplace?” And that leads to a lot of frustration, so it’s great that you brought that up in terms of really thinking about the customer first, and what they want, what their challenges are. Because that’s how it starts. That’s good.

Per Bristow:                        Yeah. And even though we think we know, there’s more we can know. So I was using surveys a lot in the beginning. Before I had a product, I knew I was going to have a product but I started building my list and I started publishing a newsletter before I had a product, and that was with the intent of getting to know the audience and also for them to get to know me, of course, so that they understand the mindset, where I’m coming from, and how I think, how I coach. But also using surveys, then, to try and understand them even better.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Sure. So walk us through that. So you started building a list using I guess a free newsletter. What did you do to build the list?

Per Bristow:                        So I was running ads from the day one, and I know we all want organic traffic, and that sounds wonderful, but I really believe this: that if you have a valuable product, and if you have something of value, you should run ads. Number one, when you run an ad, and in this case it’s Google Ad Words, and these days we have Facebook and other ways to do it, first of all you get results quickly.

So even if you’re just testing headlines, testing the message, you get results quickly. You get data quickly, so trying to build SEO and stuff like that, we think that’s free? I don’t think that’s free at all, because time is very, very valuable.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Oh, it’s huge. It’s a huge investment, for sure.

Per Bristow:                        Yeah. So I was running ads from the get-go, and then I got the opportunity, then, to test ads. I got the opportunity to test landing pages, to test what is it that I’m giving them that it has value? Is it a video? Is it a report? What is that that actually has value? And then the surveys then that I’m running. So I learned so much in this investment in the beginning, even though I don’t have a product.

But of course my intent is always to have a product. I always know that I have the product within, but I’m not launching it first.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Smart. So you’re essentially willing to invest in some ads up front, almost like paying tuition to go to school I guess, get market intel, learn what you need to learn, figure out what the challenges are in the marketplace, and then develop the product after all that.

Per Bristow:                        Yes. Although, here’s what I really did. After I had my list, a little bit of a list, I launched a six week coaching program. But what a lot of people do, and this actually kind of troubles me sometimes, is that they try to make it super, super, super expensive, because it’s this idea of, “If I have really, really expensive I come across as some hotshot.”

And sure, we all want that, and then the promotion becomes, the authority becomes, “It’s because I’m expensive.” So I’m not so sure about that, because that’s not what I did anyway. I don’t charge too little, either, of course, because we want the customer to also feel that they are investing, and we all know that if we give stuff for free all the time the risk is that people don’t invest in themselves and they become, then, complacent, and they become, then … they feel that they are entitled to everything that’s free.

So we want, of course, everyone to invest just as we do as entrepreneurs, as learners, as skill developers, we invest in ourselves, right? And we of course want our customers to have that mindset also, because that will give them the results. But even so, I created a six week course, and that was again to test. I wanted to make sure that they got the absolute best value, best results. I was serving them, trying to figure out how that I could help them the best way, and again, so that is not the one and all product that I create there.

That’s just a rehearsal, if you will. But of course for them it becomes very beneficial because they get it for cheap and … I should never use that word cheap, right?

Yuri Elkaim:                         Less expensive.

Per Bristow:                        Yes, it’s a very high return on their investment.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Sure. So it was almost kind of like a Jeff Walker seed launch where you did the program along with them through the whole course of the six weeks?

Per Bristow:                        Yes.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Okay, cool.

Per Bristow:                        Mm-hmm (affirmative), right. And then again, getting the data and also for me it was about testing the technology. How can I get videos to actually show up in different parts of the world? And that was actually challenging back then. Now, it’s a different ballgame.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Sure. That’s awesome. So, now walk us through what’s working today. I mean, you’ve built an amazing business, huge lists, you’re doing really, really well. A lot of obviously your focus has been on Google AdWords. So now what is a typical funnel look like for you nowadays?

Authenticity, ethics, and Per’s client pipeline

Per Bristow:                        Quite similar, actually. They come to the page and I have something that entices them. Some reason for them to share their email address, and what that reason is, we know, can be many many things.  I try to really be authentic, ethical. That’s my whole business, it’s my reputation, and I really want to give them something of value. On the other hand, I don’t want to train them to feel that they’re entitled to everything or to feel that they’re getting quick fixes.

I really want to help them understand that in order to develop the skill that they want to develop, there is a process. I do have that process available for them, that is not free, but I’m giving them insights into it that I hope is going to be helpful. So I try to have a balance there as far as what I’m giving and what I shouldn’t be giving. I don’t believe in giving alcohol to an alcoholic, so … right?

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s a good motto to have.

Per Bristow:                        Yeah, so it’s a tricky … it’s a fine balance, what do we give away?

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah.

Per Bristow:                        And sometimes people feel maybe that I … well, I don’t know what people feel in that sense. But once the customers do engage in the training they all love it, and that’s really what’s built my business is that I have so may testimonials, and by the way, we could talk about that also if you’re interested, but I’ve never, ever asked for a testimonial.

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s awesome. Just unsolicited, “We love you Per.” Well, on that note, I mean you did the live event in Toronto almost a year ago now and you had, what, 200-some-odd people show up and then you did another one in Miami and a bunch of other places, you went to Australia, and you’ve got hundreds of people coming to see you and I think that’s just a testament to how much your audience really loves you, which is amazing.

Connecting and engaging with clients online and at live events

Per Bristow:                        It’s so much fun. It really is so much fun to connect with people, and again, I’ve always tried to make a personal connection. I know that they are not getting personal coaching from me, but every single email, I write myself. I do all the communications and once in a while I do teleseminars when they can call up and ask questions. It’s not part of the program, it’s more of a surprise thing. I try to do stuff so that they feel engaged, and that’s always the challenge, of course, with the online programs, because we always know that people buy and then not become engaged.

So how can we make them do what they need to do to get the results they want? That’s the challenge of any coach. So yeah, so I’ve built a big list and I have a lot of customers in 132 countries that are part of The Singing Zone membership and my background is as a performer, so my desire these days now is how can I actually meet people in person? I’ve been doing this online stuff for a while so I’m so happy, I’m so excited to do these live events now.

Yeah, Toronto we had 270. We did it in Miami. We’re sold out now for Seattle, and in January we’re doing Las Vegas, and then we’re doing Australia, and then we’re doing London. I’m so excited to meet people, and obviously as I noticed that people were actually excited to meet too. So we had an after party afterwards and I was in line for three hours to take photos and talk with people, but see, I love that. I love that. See, I might have been introverted in the past, but we all love that connection and that’s what they want, also.

And that’s why people sing, that’s why people speak, that’s why people communicate. We need that bond so that’s sort of the evolution of what I’m doing, is sort of my next step, and that also gives me the opportunity to talk about things that I think are so important. How do we actually develop skills? That doesn’t only apply to developing the voice. Whatever it might be, how do we … the mental aspect of performance, which is a big part of what I coach; how do we perform well under pressure? Which is crucial for performing, getting up on stage, it’s crucial for an athlete and many things I draw from my sports background, but it is also crucial for building a business or being an entrepreneur because we have to be able to have that skill of being able to perform well when things aren’t going right.

Things are always gonna go wrong and most people give up when the shit hits the fan, right?

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah, so I was gonna ask you, in your mind, what is the number one skill that really determines lasting success? Would you say that that’s it, is being able to perform even when it’s a rainy day as opposed to sunshine all the time?

Being aware of fear and why knowing how to perform is important

Per Bristow:                        I think the most powerful trait, if you will, is the awareness of fear. I think this thing about fear, we cover it up in so many words. “I don’t want to do that. I’m uncomfortable.” Or we get angry, we get violent. All these kind of things that we do to ourselves, and often we don’t start a business in the first place out of fear, or we stop it, we change course. Everything is happening. All resistance, all restrictions that we have in our lives is due to fear.

And when we become aware of that it’s not about overcoming fear, it’s about using it to our benefit, and that’s actually how we become high level performers because we use the fears, we recognize the fears that we all have and that’s how we become great performers. Whether it’s in sports or on stage, or in business. As business owners we know that testing is crucial, we know that we’re gonna fail, we know that it’s gonna go wrong, and that is the awesome learning experience and most people, I think, honestly, are not trained to take that as good information.

We have all heard that we learn from our mistakes but the truth is that most people don’t. Most people associate fear with all the failures and mistakes and then just avoid it, and try to do something else instead.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah, that’s great. Well, I remember you had a good amount of time speaking about that in Toronto at your event, and it definitely resonated with myself and pretty much everybody in the audience so that was awesome. So Per, this has been terrific. I know we can talk about this stuff all day. What is the best place for our listeners to stay in touch with what you’re up to, and maybe follow some of your work online?

Per Bristow:                        So thesingingzone.com is the main site for the singing program, and there is that free video that I offer, and the articles and some case study … well, some video interviews with people. So you can see a little bit what I do there, and if you just wanna see what I do as far as the marketing aspect you can just opt in and see what I do. I also have sing with … well, speakwithfreedom.com is my speaking program, and then I have perbristow.com which is my blog that I just recently revamped where I’m gonna publish more stuff that’s not necessarily about singing or speaking but also the mindset, the mental aspects of achievement and the peak performance aspect.

And I have some really interesting interviews there, also.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Awesome. And we’ll be sure to have all the links to those websites on the show’s notes on the blog at smartermarketerproject.com so be sure to check that out. Awesome, Per.

Per Bristow:                        Terrific.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Any last … in the last 30 seconds, any final words of wisdom?

Per Bristow:                        Well, I think that every time I meet these high level entrepreneurs such as yourself, other people who accomplish amazing things in the world, they always have a love for learning, and I think that is so important. If we have that, that’s when we’re gonna be able to learn from every challenge, every roadblock that we hit, and that’s really what makes life enjoyable.

That’s what makes it exciting to wake up Monday morning and explore what we’re capable of, and that’s what I love to do. That’s what I decided I was gonna do. I was gonna design a life where I love to wake up Monday morning to explore what’s possible.

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s awesome. Thank goodness … what was it? TGIF? Thank God it’s Friday? Thank God it’s Monday, right?

Per Bristow:                        There you go.

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s awesome. That’s beautiful, man. You’ve got a great mindset and that’s the foundation for a lot of your success.

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Yuri’s Take

So I hope you enjoyed that interview and got some great nuggets out of that, even though that interview is literally from like, I think two years ago. Still, lots of value, because these things are timeless. Like these messages, these insights, they are timeless, and I’m gonna be bringing to you, actually, over the next couple weeks some of the best interviews from previous years.

We’ve got some great stuff coming with Phil Caravaggio who is the co-founder of Precision Nutrition. We’ve got Emily Rosen who’s another good friend who is the co-founder of the Institute for the Psychology of Eating. That’s just a few. I’ve got many, many more amazing guests that I’m pulling out of the archives and I’m gonna be bringing your way in the coming weeks.

So if you have not yet subscribed to the Healthpreneur podcast, be sure you do so today. You don’t wanna miss a thing, and for now continue to get out there, be great, do great, and I’ll see you in the next episode.

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Follow Per Bristow at:

https://www.perbristow.com/

https://www.thesingingzone.com/

https://www.speakwithfreedom.com/

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What people are really buying

Want to know what your clients are really buying? Well, that’s what we’re going to talk about in this episode. You see, a lot of people think that they’re selling a product, they’re selling a service, but ultimately what people care about is their problem, right? They have a problem they want solved or they have a desire that they want to make a reality. So when we’re selling stuff, when we’re selling we’re offering your service, your product.

It’s not about the thing. It’s not about what it is you’re selling. It’s the outcome that you’re selling, so that’s an important fundamental understanding to have, that you are selling an outcome, not your product. Nobody cares about your stuff. Nobody cares about my stuff. We only care about ourselves and our own issues. If you understand that and make that part of your mantra, you’ll be a lot better off in business.

Now with that said, once you’ve got that foundation settled understanding that people are buying an outcome, the reality is when you’re, and I’m going to talk about from a coaching perspective for a second because this is kind of our world that we live in, and a lot of our clients follow the perfect client pipeline that we helped them build out. So one of the things that I continue to remind them is when yo get people on the phone, right, because that’s the fourth step in our perfect client pipeline. We’re going to have a conversation with someone to figure out if and how you can help them, have an honest conversation that gets to the truth and then if all is good and you guys are a mutual fit, you’re going to make them an offer to join your program.

Why certainty is key – especially when charging premium prices

The biggest reason though why some people struggle on the phone is the same reason that some people don’t buy it. That is because what people are really buying when they’re paying higher amounts of money, so if they’re investing with you as a coach and you’re asking them to spend three, five, 10, $20,000 with you, what they’re buying is certainty. Let me repeat that. What your prospective clients are buying is certainty.

So when you’re on the phone with them it’s extremely important that what you’re presenting is something you get behind and believe in with every single chromosome in your body because we can pick up on nonverbal communication really, really well as a species, right? We know that nonverbal communication is like the biggest piece of the pie when it comes to communication and when we’re approaching a topic or approaching, “Okay, well here’s how it can help you. It’s this program, it’s $3,500 and together we’re …” You can feel the trepidation. You can hear the trepidation.

What I want to encourage you in this episode is to do whatever you’ve got to do, right? Go back to the drawing board, make your program better. Or drink your Kool-aid, jump up and down on a trampoline before you get people on the phone, listen to music, dance around, whatever you have to do to get to the point where when you’re on the phone with someone and you’re about to introduce your solution to them, you have to have that certainty so that when they’re on the other end they’re like, “Okay. Yeah, that sounds good. Let’s do it.”

But as soon as you waver, as soon as you have that dip in confidence and that uncertainty creeps in, it’s the same reason, actually I shot a video on this a little while ago for YouTube, and it’s the same reason that dogs attack certain people. Dogs can sense energy and they can sense, and if you’ve got dogs or if you’ve ever been in a situation like this I’m sure you can relate to this, is they can sense when somebody doesn’t feel easy. They feel uneasy around the dog, right?

So they approach. They’re walking down the sidewalk and they’re like, “Oh my God, there’s a dog. Please don’t attack me.” The dog can feel that energy. It picks up on the energy and that’s why some people are just prone to having dogs attack them, which is obviously not a good thing, but it’s that energy. It’s the same energy that we pick up on when we’re having a conversation with someone and we’re thinking to ourselves, this guy is full of shit or no, this really feels good to me. This person, I feel that working together, this is the person, this is the program that’s really going to help me.

Excitement and fear when investing

So remember that what you’re selling is first and foremost an outcome to a problem. That’s the most important thing, right? You can’t sell ice to an Eskimo. I mean, you could try but it’s going to be tough. So you understand that we’re selling an outcome, and the second thing, the underlying foundation is that people are buying certainty. The reason that we strongly recommend increasing prices, premium prices for your stuff is that when somebody invests $10 or $20 to buy a book, there’s really very little skin in the game and so for them it’s like well, if it happens, it happens. If not, no big deal. The book, maybe I’ll pick up one idea from it and that’s it.

So when you buy a book for $20, there’s not a lot of certainty that comes with that in the sense of okay, I’m 100% certain that this is the thing that’s going to solve all my problems. I think we know like honestly that we’re not going to get the whole shebang in a book. When you’re investing $5,000 or someone’s investing $5,000 with you, there’s a level of commitment there on their parts. There’s a level of trust that they have that what it is you’re doing, what it is you’re offering can really be the thing that’s been missing for them.

It’s really important not to abuse that and I don’t think you would. Obviously we’re very confident with other clients that we work with and really suggesting them to increase their prices because you attract clients who are more committed to the outcome that they want so they’re going to invest three, four, five, $10,000 to get the result that they want. There’s a very different level of commitment than if they’re paying $20 to get a book, right?

You can see the difference there, right? I’m sure you’ve invested in your own life. Think of a time when you have invested a large sum of money. Let’s just call it anywhere from five to $10,000. I just want you to think about a time where you’ve done that. Maybe it was a car. Maybe it was a vacation. Maybe it was for school. Maybe it was for a coaching program. I don’t know. Think about that. Now I want you to think about your level, I want you to go back to that moment when you gave the credit card and you gave them permission to charge the credit card.

There was probably that moment or you know, maybe a few hours or a few days of fear, trepidation, that butterfly feeling in your stomach of excitement and fear, and that’s totally normal, right? That’s actually a good thing to experience because it means you’re out of your comfort zone. You’re going to get uncomfortable. You’re going to grow as a result. You’re going to show up and do the work. You’re not just going to throw $10,000 on your credit card and then nothing happens.

So why did you invest that money? Why did you do that during that time? Was there a level of experience or a level of service you wanted? Was there an experience that you wanted to enjoy? Maybe you stayed at a higher end resort and it was maybe double what you would normally pay for a vacation, but you’re like, “You know what? I feel that this is going to be a better decision for what I want to do,” right?

Yes, it’s twice the price, but it’s the experience I’m looking for. I’m looking for better food, better drinks, better view, better ambience, whatever it is. So we’re buying certainty. We’re buying certainty for a better outcome, better experience, faster results, more access to somebody that we might be working with. If you’re working with a coach ultimately the more closely you want to work with a coach, the more money you’re going to pay because you’re paying for access.

You’re paying for access and with that access comes wisdom and with that wisdom comes to you speed of results the sooner you take action on what is talked about and shared with you. So as we wrap up here, a reminder, people are buying certainty. If you’re having a tough time enrolling coaching clients at a higher level, then I want you to really listen to your calls. Like I would really recommend you record your calls and listen to them.

What’s holding you back and what to do about it

If there’s any amounts of wavering or trepidation, I guarantee that’s what’s holding you back. If you don’t feel comfortable and confident at your price, I’m going to make a suggestion that I don’t like making. I’m going to say lower your price a little bit to a point where you feel 100% confident and comfortable at that price. So if you’re charging let’s say $3,000 and all of a sudden I’m recommending you go to five and you’re like, “Man Yuri, that’s a real stretch. I don’t know if I can do that. I don’t know if people will pay that. I don’t feel comfortable there,” that’s fine.

Start at three. Then bump it up to 35. Build the confidence, build the momentum. Get that kind of the reps under the belt if you will and over time you can build up the confidence to higher and higher levels, but the key thing is you have to be at a level where what you are pricing you are 100% certain and confident with and you can back with every bone in your body. But do not use this as a cop out to be charging low prices. Do think oh, people are only going to pay like $150 a month and therefore I only feel comfortable there.

No, no, no, no. No. You need to get out of your comfort zone. You need to get out of playing it safe and get out of the thinking that there’s only certain people in your country who speak a certain language who would invest in only these types of things, who don’t have the money, all that is, I’m going to just say it, is BS. In any market, I don’t care where you live, I don’t care if you live in a Third World country where the average income is $1,000 a year. I don’t care.

There’s always a segment of the population that will always be paying more for better all the time, no matter what, until the end of time. If you don’t believe that then just go for a drive, right? Just go for a drive through the city and notice how much abundance there is. If you live in a, like a Third World country, you’re going to see a lot of poverty. You’re going to see a lot of stuff, right? But there are going to be areas where there is a lot of riches.

If you live in any city in North America just go for a drive. Go for a drive through the nicest neighborhoods. I guarantee you’ll see some big houses. I guarantee you’ll see some nice cars. Do these people not have money? Yes, they do. There’s always, there’s always,  an abundance of money. There’s an abundance of money on this planet, but there’s a shortage of people who believe they can get that and I want to challenge you to understand that you can be one of those people who gets what she wants.

Getting what you want by believing in yourself

You can get the prices you want to command. You can attract the wealth that you want to build, but you have to believe in yourself and you have to be certain that what you’re offering other people is the real deal. Like again, I’m going to go back to this phrase delusional optimism. Like you have to be delusional in believing that what it is you have and who you are, you’re the best. You are the best, that’s it.

Don’t compare yourself to anyone else. You have your thing, your program, your product. It’s the best, end of story. Get behind that, firmly believe it and that’s where everything starts. So if that makes sense to you then great. If you want a little bit more help with this and a bit more context, here’s what I would suggest. Watch our Seven Figure Health Business Blueprint Training. I’m going to walk you through our four step business model that we run our business on and what we help our clients deploy, but a big part of that presentation is in premium pricing.

You’re going to get some really interesting distinctions of pricing, and I think it will really help you build up and muster the courage to start looking at your prices and how you can command what it is you’re worth. So go through that training if you enjoy what it’s all about and what it’s all about is really helping you attract in a very predictable and profitable manner your best clients. So instead of knocking on doors and hoping for are referrals we’re going to show you a system that you can press a button essentially and clients just come knocking on your door.

Now, I make it sound pretty simplistic, right? I make it sound pretty easy. It’s not that easy. It’s simple but it’s not easy, like with anything that’s worthwhile, but I think after you watch this and you get a really good sense of what we’re talking about, it will make a lot more sense to you. So again, you can check out the training. It’s 100% free over at HealthpreneurGroup.com/training. If you enjoy what you see then hey, and you want to help take things to the next level, then by all means book a call with us and it all starts by watching the training to make sure that you’re a good fit for what we’re talking about, you resonate with our whole approach, and if so, we’d love to chat with you.

So that’s what I recommend you do right now. Thank you so much for joining me once again and I look forward to speaking with you a little bit later this week. We’ve got a really good episode. A really good episode with a gentleman who is going to help you unleash your inner voice. I’ll leave it at that. I’ll see you on Friday. For now, HealthpreneurGroup.com/training. Continue to get out there. Be great, do great, and I’ll see you in our next episode.

Transcription

Hey, friends. How’s it going? Yuri back with you. Today, we are going to look at how to create a breakthrough in your business because if you’re listening to this you’re probably here because you have a health or fitness business. And if you’re an entrepreneur we all want breakthroughs in our business. We all want to go to the next level. We all want to make more money, enjoy more freedom, impact more people. And that’s what I’m here to help you do.

In this episode I want to share seven little strategies you can use to help you do just that. And I think what you’re going to find is that they’re actually not what you’re thinking. They’re kind of counterintuitive. They’re not the specific post to social media five times a day type of stuff.

But I really believe that these are seven fundamental things that will propel you forward that are much more powerful and important than the tactical type of stuff.

So if you’re okay with it, let’s just jump right in.

What we want and how to get there

So the number one thing we can do, I believe, is to meditate every single day. Now if you listen to this podcast for any amount of time, a lot of the guests have talked about their morning routine and one of the first things they do in the morning is meditate.

Now, I’ve gone through peaks and troughs over the last couple years with respect to mediation. And I’ve gone through periods where I meditated every single day first thing in the morning. And for me personally what I recognized is I can’t do that. I can’t get out of bed and then kind of go back to bed, if you will, for 20 minutes.

Meditating

So for me, my meditation’s a little bit different. And for you, you want to figure out what your meditation is. And depending on who you speak to … some people are real purists when it comes to mediation. Like no guidance, nothing, clear your mind. Others are a bit more liberal in the sense of you can get out in nature or work out or do something that’s going to clear your mind and just allow you to stay more aware of your mind as opposed to being in it all the time.

So, you really want to figure out what is going to be your version of that. And I highly recommend meditation. Obviously we know the health benefits of it. But I also think it’s a really good practice to build willpower and concentration. And I think those will transfer … well, I don’t think, I know … those will transfer over to every area of your life.

We know that a lot of people have an issue with task switching. So they go from one thing they’re working on to another thing. And they’re checking their phone. And they go check their email. And then back and forth. And they’re always changing tasks, they’re multitasking. And we know that this kills productivity and as a result of that it actually makes us less happy.

So these are far reaching benefits that can all be calmed and better controlled by meditation. At the end of the day, meditation allows us to control our awareness. And when we control our awareness we have the power to choose what we focus on. And since our life is a byproduct of our focus, it’s extremely important to train this aspect of what we have in our minds.

So I believe meditation is a terrific thing for any of us to do. Now, again, whether that’s first thing in the morning for you or later in the day, it doesn’t really matter, you want to figure out a schedule that’s going to work for you. So right now as I’m recording this, my ideal schedule is I get up in the morning, I work for 90 minutes on my most important stuff, then I’m with the kids, then I drop them off at school. And then the next hour and a half is for really working my body and mind.

So I’m usually working out seven days a week in some way, shape or form. It doesn’t mean I’m training all the time. It might mean that I’m working on supplements and flexibility. Other days I’m training more intensely. But within that I usually have a meditative component. Whether it’s after the workout or during the workout really challenging myself to focus on either clearing my mind, focusing on those bigger goals that I want to achieve and really, really just training my mind to stay focused on the task at hand or on that visualization that is meaningful to me.

So that’s my form of meditation. I also love walking my dogs, taking them out in nature. We’ve got some really nice paths around our house. So for me, that is a really nice way of doing that. So for you whatever that is that’s most important.

Write Down Ideas

Second thing is actually something I’ll be very honest with you, I’m kind of a hypocrite mentioning this because I actually don’t do this that much anymore. But it’s extremely powerful: Is writing down 10 new ideas first thing each morning.

I had a practice of doing this for quite some time and I’m not too sure why I stopped. Perhaps I just thought other things were a bit more important. Again, this comes back down to discipline, willpower, concentration. These are habits or muscles that we can strengthen.

When you write down 10 new ideas each morning what it does is it trains your mind to look for solutions. So for instance, I would write down as an example I believe if I can remember, how can I make a million dollars without relying on affiliates, advertising or creating new products? That was a question that I would put in my journal and then I’d have to come up with 10 ideas to make that a possible reality.

Why I love this exercise is because when you ask the right question … and you’ll notice that I put a couple parameters or restrictions on that question. I said without joint ventures, without advertising, without creating new products. What I did is I challenged myself to become more creative by putting constraints on the question.

So if you ask a question like, “How can I make a million dollars?” That’s fine. You can come up with ideas on how to do that. But you’ll find that when you put constraints on those questions and then you write down 10 ideas to figure out that problem, you’ll find the quality of those ideas is far greater.

So whatever challenge you’re dealing with on a daily basis or a weekly basis or whatever the goal is you want to work towards, challenge yourself to write down 10 ideas each morning in relation to a question that has some really interesting limitations on it. So I’ll leave that with you to ponder but it’s very powerful.

Even though I don’t do this every morning, it’s something I do do when I am looking to figure out how … that how question, which I’m not a huge fan of spending a lot of time to be honest with you. But sometimes it’s important to figure out the strategy especially if no one else has really done it before.

The easier way to do things is just ask somebody who’s paved the path already. To be like, “Okay, cool. You’ve done this. How do I do this? Can you just give me the blueprint?” But I really do think fostering creativity and innovation is important. So asking yourself a constraining question, jotting down 10 ideas is really, really powerful. And you’ll find that the first five or so ideas are mediocre. The next five, when you’re really challenged to come up with some ideas, that’s when the creativity kicks in.

Scheduling thinking time

Okay. Number three is schedule at least half a day each week to think with no electronics. So I used to have this ritual called Thinking Thursday’s, which has now morphed. Again, for me, the thinking really happens during my workouts. So even though I don’t really dedicate a full half day anymore to doing this, largely in part because my kids are finished school at 3:00 o’clock and I only have so many hours in a day where I really need to get my most important work done. So what I’ve done is I’ve really embedded my thinking into my workout time. And very much the same with my meditation.

So I might do some form of meditation during my workout or afterwards. But during the other part of my workout I’m really thinking of ideas where I’m listening to something that is going to foster some degree of breakthrough. But again, it’s important to balance input with nothing.

So you’re listening to a podcast right now where I’m giving you ideas and suggestions. And this is great. I’m all about this concept I call grow giving. The more you grow, the more you can give. But there needs to be a balance between consuming and you creating.

So one of the challenges I see a lot of people fall into is that they go from one podcast to the next. One audio book to the next. One whatever to the next. And I think it’s important to give yourself a bit of time to consolidate and allow things to just brew in your mind because you ultimately want to be coming up with your own thoughts. Because I believe that you’re listening to this because you’re a leader of some kind. And I believe it’s all of our duties to become a thought leader in some way, shape or form.

So you can be a thought repeater or you can be a thought leader. And a thought repeater is somebody who listens to a bunch of other people’s stuff and then just regurgitates it all over social media. A thought leader is somebody who goes through their own journey, develops their own wisdom and insights and is able to extract ideas and thoughts that can then be shared with the people that follow them.

Now obviously you can listen to ideas and kind of morph them and kind of work with those to come up with your own uniqueness. But the key is you need time away from inputs to just think and allow your brain to just do what it will do.

So this goes back to the meditate daily. Is a lot of your breakthroughs are going to happen when you actually are not listening to anything. When you go for a walk in the forest with no headphones on and you’re just in the moment. And having that space is really powerful. So I really want to challenge you to spend half a day of thinking where you can go for a walk, sit in a chair with no inputs. No phone, no audios, nothing. Just sit there. You can have a journal if you want. Just write down your thoughts and just do some thinking. It’s very, very powerful.

Hang Out With Inspiring People

Number four is hang out with inspiring people. This shouldn’t be any surprise. This is the reason why I love coaching is because when you coach clients, especially in a group setting, they’re forced to be in a group with other great people and collectively they raise each other up.

So if you’re a specific spot in your life in your business and you want to go to the next level, the easiest way to get there is find other people who are already there and naturally because we are very tribal people as humans, you’re going to be forced to raise your game so you can fit in, if you will, to that group.

So hanging out with inspiring people. Borrowing other people’s courage. Borrowing their beliefs of what’s possible is going to really help you accelerate your progress moving forward. And it’s exactly why we have our Luminaries mastermind where I work with clients over 12 months. And not only do they get a lot more access to me one-on-one but we come together three times a year to really collectively inspire each other and show each other what’s possible and really help us create breakthroughs in our respective businesses.

So it’s one of the most important things that I’ve ever done in my business was, again, as I mentioned before 2010 getting into my first live event. And before that trying to do things on my own just doesn’t happen. So if you think you’re a rugged individualist and you can figure things out on your own, two things are going to happen.

First is you’re not going to do that. Or second, if you’re like the smartest person on the planet maybe you’ll figure it out but it’s going to take you a very, very long time. The easiest way is just to get around other humans. Get around other people who are going to lift you up, inspire you. And that’s why it’s so important to be going to events, to be part of masterminds. And it’s really the fastest way to move forward.

Spend more time in nature and less time in front of the computer

Number five is spend more time in nature. Now, I’ve already alluded to this twice in respect to meditation and scheduling time to think. So I’m not going to spend too much time here. But I think we know that we as human beings feel best when we are outside. We don’t really feel great when we’re cooped up inside all the time. And that’s why in the winter … especially if you live up here in Canada … it can get pretty downright depressing. You’ve got the dark days … or the less sunlight or the darker days in general … and then you’ve got cold weather which forces most people to stay inside a lot of times, much more so than the spring and summer.

So we know that we’re not going to feel the best when we’re stuck in front of a computer or cooped up inside. So we need to find ways to get outdoors and connect to nature because there’s a grounding effect. Like these negative ions from nature, the magnetic force of earth. These are things that we feel not necessarily tangibly but at a deep level our body resonates with.

So whatever you can do to get out in nature is going to be massively powerful for helping you feel energized, fulfilled, happy, give you more clarity, reconnected. And these are all things that are extremely important.

And especially as entrepreneurs. We talk with a lot of people and we ask them, “What do you do for fun?” And the vast majority of times it’s things like hiking, playing outside, golfing, tennis. Like it’s all outdoor stuff. So get outside, spend more time outside.

Now, it follows that number six is spend less time in front of your computer. The breakthroughs are not happening when you’re hitting the keys. If you’re working on a presentation, if you’re working on a talk, if you’re working on a webinar for instance, the most important stuff is not the typing of the keys, it’s the ideas that you’re sharing. And the ideas that you’re sharing go back to your sitting on a chair with a journal or some type of worksheet to work through.

So a computer is nice to get the message to the masses. So right now this podcast I need the computer because I’m recording what I’m saying. But what I’m saying was preemptively thought away from the computer. Does that make sense?

So you have to understand that your most valuable asset is your mind. And your mind does not require being in front of a computer to work at its best. It actually works at its best when it’s in nature, when it’s meditating, when it’s thinking clearly. So as I say quite often, the best way to build your online business is to spend more time offline. So that’s a big one.

Ask better questions

And finally, number seven is to ask better questions. Now, we’ll got back to what I mentioned with writing down the top ideas or 10 new ideas every day. When you ask better questions you force yourself to come up with better answers. Or you get people to give you better answers. One of the most important things that we do as coaches is we should be doing is we should be asking questions of our clients not just dumping the answers on them.

But part of that is really asking them better questions so that they’re challenged to come up with better answers. So this goes both ways. It goes from you asking your clients questions. But it also works internally for yourself.

So if we look at how we talk to ourselves, a lot of times the self-talk is not ideal. And I can share this with my own experience from tennis. Tennis is a sport that I’m absolutely fascinated and obsessed with. And I play in the summertime, even actually in the winter when we travel as much as I possibly can. As much as my shoulder allows me to. I love it. I can’t get enough of it. It’s very frustrating though sometimes.

And what I’ve recognized is as good as I am, which is still not whatever, it’s good enough for now. But the biggest area of improvement for me is my self-talk. And really catching myself looking … Okay, when I’m behind in a game or in a match or if I’ve lost the set six-one and I’m getting blown out, what’s going on in my head? Am I telling myself, “Well there’s no way you’re coming back from this. What’s the point? Let’s just throw the game.” Am I coming up with all sorts of excuses? And I asking myself limiting questions like, “Hey, what’s the point?” Or, “I suck.” Whatever it is we have to be aware of the questions we’re asking ourselves. Not just in sports but in life in general. Because a lot of times if we spoke to other people the way that we spoke to ourselves we really wouldn’t have many friends.

So we want to be kinder to ourselves in the way that we speak to ourselves. But we also want to be asking better, more empowering questions. So if you’re in a bind … If I’m in a tennis match for instances … and this applies as easily to tennis or sports as it does to business. So let’s say I’m in a match and I’m losing and I can’t really see may way out of this. I need to really take a step back and ask myself, “Okay, what can I focus on to improve my performance?” That’s a better question  because now it puts me in a more resourceful state to now figure out a solution.

So in business if you’re in a tough bind, you want to be asking yourself a very similar question. “What can I do right now to put me in a better position tomorrow? What’s the one most important activity I can be doing or the next most important action for me to take that’s going to move me forward in a positive direction?” So we want to be asking better questions because the questions we ask are going to determine the answers. Does that make sense?

So those are seven ways we can create a breakthrough in our business. And again, they’re not strategic or tactical. They’re a little bit more meta. But as a result of doing these seven things you will come up with a strategies and you will come up with the tactics and the better mindset to help you move forward to really achieve whatever it is that you want.

Lean on others and ask for support

Now as I said earlier, it’s important to not always try to figure out the how all by yourself. And it’s important to really lean on others who’ve come before you to speed your journey instead of you trying to figure everything out and spin your wheels and waste your time and money. And that’s exactly why we do what we do. That’s why we’re the leading company in the world for helping health experts build successful coaching programs. Because we’ve kind of figured this out and we help a lot of people in our space really accelerate their progress even if they’re starting from scratch to go where they want to get to.

So if you are in that position where you want to stop trying to figure out how to figure this thing out called business. And if you want a proven process, a proven framework, a proven blueprint along with the support to help you deploy it all and help you through those challenges to really help you fortify that mindset that is going to help you get where you want to get to with a lot more ease and less frustration, then I invite you first and foremost to go through our free training called the Seven Figure Health Business Blueprint.

If you haven’t watched it already, highly recommend you do so right now. Now, if you’re driving obviously don’t do it right now. You can pull over and watch on the side of the highway if you want. Or write this down or if you’re at your browser type this right into your browser right now. HealthpreneurGroup.com/training.

It’s a 70 minute presentation. I’m going to walk you through the old way of building a business, why it doesn’t work anymore. The new way of building a business that is a lot more predictable, enjoyable and profitable. And exactly the four step what we call Perfect Client Pipeline that we deploy in our business and we held our clients build out of their business so they can start attracting their ideal clients, charge premium prices, live a better quality of life. But most importantly is deliver an even better result for the clients they work with. So if that sounds good to you then again, go to HealthpreneurGroup.com/training.

All right. So thank you so much for joining me today. Hope you’ve enjoyed this one. Continue to get out there, be great, do great and I’ll see you in our next episode.

Transcription

Hey, hey, how’s it going? Hope you’re doing great. So as you’re listening to this episode, I am probably sailing somewhere around Mykonos, I think. I’ve recorded this ahead of time as you can probably tell.

I’m on a two-week cruise with the family. We started at Barcelona, and we’re on a two-week cruise to the Greek islands, and that’s probably where I’m at right now. So I am not going to let that stop me from bringing you the goods. I’m actually heading back home in a couple of days. I’m actually bummed because check this out. As you know, I love soccer. I played professionally. The big classical Barcelona-Real Madrid is happening in two days in Barcelona. But we get back to Barcelona in three days, so I’m going to miss the match, and that would have been amazing to take the kids to.

If you’ve got no idea what I’m talking about, then just ignore what I just talked about, and let’s just move on to today’s episode where I’m going to be bringing you a good buddy of mine. Someone you probably know. His name is James Swanwick. Now if that name sounds familiar, it’s probably because you’ve seen his glasses, the Swannies, those blue blocker glasses that look awesome. You’ve probably seen them all over the place. Everyone’s wearing them. I’ve got a pair. My kids have them. They’re amazing, but he’s more than just the Swannies. He’s more than just the glasses, and this is a true, amazing human being.

He was at Healthpreneur live with us this past year. He’s actually joining us again next year, and it was great to just catch up and see where he’s at with business and what he’s working on. Lots of great stuff coming on the pipeline from James Swanwick. If you want to learn more about what they’re up to you. The website is swanicksleep.com. S-W-A-N-W-I-C-K sleep.com. Lots of great stuff. In this interview, we’re actually going to be talking … This is going back to the archives about two years, and this was such a great interview because … In case you don’t know, what James Actually started out doing was he was an anchor for ESPN. He was one of those guys that you see on TV on ESPN.

In this interview we’re going to talk about his five steps to achieving anything because he came here from Australia. Pretty much like most people come to LA, Hollywood, broke, waiting tables, all that stuff. That was a situation, but he uses these five steps to interview and befriend people like Angelina Jolie, Jennifer Aniston, the usual suspects. You know, Kiefer Sutherland. So how did he do all that? And then how did he go from doing all that in ESPN to building Swanwick Sleep and really just rocking the world with all these amazing products?

Well, that’s what he’s going to talk about in this interview. I figured, what? Even though we did the interview two years ago in a separate context, this is so valuable that I’m going to bring it forward and help my Healthpreneur listeners with this awesomeness. So we’re going to bring James onto the show. I’m going to let you enjoy this. I’m going to head back to the crews and do my thing. Hope you enjoy this interview with James Swanwick, and without any further ado, let’s bring him onto the show.

James Swanwick:             I’m doing great. Thank you so much for having me, Yuri. Awesome to be here.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah, I’m very excited because you have a very interesting story, and I want you to share that with our listeners as it pertains to following your dreams, overcoming the fear of failure, and for all of you guys listening, this is actually very, very cool. So maybe in the next couple minutes if you can share what that journey was, then we can tie it into some interesting lessons for our listeners.

His journey and how he surpassed a fear of failure and success

James Swanwick:             Sure, so I’m Australian. I was born in Brisbane, Australia, and I started off as a newspaper reporter. Then I moved over to London, and I was a sports journalist, and then I moved over to Los Angeles in about 2003, and I started interviewing movie stars, like Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Tom Cruise, and I would write these interviews for magazines and newspapers around the world. But I always had this dream of being on TV and hosting a TV show, and I’d never really been able to accomplish it in 20 years of in my career. But it was like this lifelong dream here. Have you ever had a dream like that where you’re like, “One day I want to do this”?

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah, for me, it was playing pro soccer, which I ended up doing in my early 20s and then realized, “I don’t know if I want to do this anymore.”

James Swanwick:             Right. Well, for me, it was like I want to be on a TV show. I want to host my own TV show, and there’s actually a video of me when I was 14, 15 years old. A home video of me pretending to be a news anchor, which my brother was filming with his old VHS camera back in 1990. You can see the video on my website, JamesSwanwick.com. But back in about 2010, all of a sudden an opportunity came up for me to audition to be a SportsCenter anchor on ESPN, and I had no TV experience. I’d never been in front of a camera.

But this friend of mine said, “Oh, I know this ESPN producer. Do you want me to introduce you to him?” From there it was really like, “This is an opportunity that I’d been waiting for 20 years,” and even though I have no experience, I’m going to go for it. So I did everything I could to get that job. I flew out to see the producer. I took him to lunch. I charmed him. I convinced him to give me an audition. I flew over to Bristol, Connecticut where ESPN is based. I walked in, sat down in the studio behind the desk.

They put makeup on me. They put that little earpiece in my ear, the director counted down and said, “Read this in the camera. Three, two, one,” And I had a panic attack. I absolutely freaked out because I was thinking of this moment for 20 years, and I was fearing that not only would I fail it. But what happens if I actually get this job? I had a fear of failure and a fear of success because I thought my life is going to change if I get this. It was a terrible audition, Yuri, terrible, and the producer even said so.

He looked at the tape later and said, “Yeah, it doesn’t look good. You’re too wooden. What’s with the beard? You look like Don Johnson from Miami Vice,” because I hadn’t shaved. So anyway, I said to him … He said, “Thanks for coming in, but no, it’s not going to work.” In that moment, I had a choice, and that was I’m going to go home with my tail between my legs, or I’m going to push through anyway. I said, “Can I come back tomorrow and do a second audition?” He said, “Yeah, come back tomorrow.” I came back the next day. I nailed it.

Well, I didn’t nail it, but I did a lot better job, and then two weeks later he put me on the air, and I became a SportsCenter anchor on ESPN.

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s huge. I mean, just that what you just said in the last 30 seconds, like the first take was a miserable failure. Then instead of just folding up shop, you came back the next day and gave it another crack. I think that’s such a valuable lesson for pretty much any human being, not just entrepreneurs. But I mean there’s so many … It’s a great story of triumph because, like you mentioned, the fear of failure, the fear of success. I think everybody listening can relate to that in some way, shape or form.

Was there a little voice inside of you after that first audition? Was there a moment in time where you said, “I don’t think I want to do this,” or you had that belief or something inside of you that kept you moving forward?

James Swanwick:             The very second that my first audition ended, and I had to walk from one part of the studio up to the producer’s office in the other part of the studio, which was about a five-minute walk where you go through a couple of different buildings, and that walk was like going to the guillotine. It was like I was ready to go and face my fate where the producer was going to tell me exactly what he taught me, which is, “That wasn’t any good. Thanks for coming. See you later.” So for those five minutes, I was thinking, “You know what?” I’m not that good.

For 20 years, I’ve been overthinking this and thinking that I can do this, but I can’t. So after five minutes, I was like, “That’s it, I’m done.” But when I got into the office, and he showed me the tape, this thing inside me was like, “You know what James? You’ve been waiting 20 years to do this. Just Push, just push,” I was nervous asking him to come back a second time. I was really nervous. But in that moment, I just stepped up and said … You know what? The worst thing that can happen here is that he says, “No,” and I fail again, and that’s okay. It’s been 20 years. So let’s just do it anyway.

I said, “Listen, I know it was a mess. I know it wasn’t good, but can I come back tomorrow and go a second time?” I just steeled myself, and he said, “Yes,” and then I got to host that show for two years. I got on TV. It was a wonderful experience and amazing experience. I met Magic Johnson, David Beckham, Tom Brady. I got to interview all these amazing people. I went to the ESPY Awards and walked the red carpet, and it was all because in that moment, even though I was fearful and even though I didn’t know what was going to happen, I just pushed just a little bit, just a millimeter more.

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s awesome. So before the auditions, did you feel confidence in your ability to be on camera? Or was this something you just said, “I’m going to just figure this out as I go”?

James Swanwick:             It was a little combination of both. I think I had an overblown sense of how good I was based on being in front of the camera with my brother back in 1990 as a 14 or 15-year-old kid. But for me, it was like, because I’d been thinking about it and dreaming about it every day for 20 years, I just decided that, “You know what? Even though I don’t have the experience, I will just figure it out. I’m just going to dive right in and see what happens.” And look, I’ll be honest with you. My first night on camera, two weeks after that audition and when I made my debut, I wasn’t that good.

If you actually just Google James Swanwick, How I Bluffed ESPN, you can actually see a photo of me doing the audition. You can also see a video of when I made my debut, and if you watch it, I’m really wooden. I’m pretty terrible. I’m like, “Hello, I’m James Swanwick. Welcome to SportsCenter. Tonight, we’re going to be … ” That’s pretty bad. But even though I knew I was pretty … I didn’t have that experience, I just say to myself, “I’ll figure it out as I go along,” and you know what? I did.

Fast-forward a couple weeks, two months after, I made my audition. I was so good. I was like, “Good evening, everyone. Welcome to SportsCenter. James Swanwick here alongside Anthony Howard, here to take you into the weekend with a smorgasbord of sports. Let’s start with the NFL.”

Yuri Elkaim:                         Nice. Yeah, I saw the videos. It’s really good. I mean, you would never … It’s funny because looking at the video, you would never even assume that you had gone through these trials and tribulations.

James Swanwick:             Well, everyone sees the polished version. But no one sees the blood sweat and tears behind it. It’s like … I’m sure we … I mean, I look at you, Yuri, from afar, and I admire everything that you’ve done, and you look like a very polished man and polished businessman, and you got your stuff together. But I’m sure that there are times when you feel like you don’t have it all together, and that there’s things going on behind the scenes, and I don’t know the blood, sweat, and tears that you’ve put into getting into this position. But I’m sure you’ve got them, right?

Yuri Elkaim:                         Oh yeah, absolutely, totally. I mean, every single day there is … And I think there’s a common misconception that the more successful you get, and whatever that means for you or anyone listening, or the more money you make, things get easier. What I’ve noticed is that you just deal with bigger problems, and it’s just about becoming a bigger person to be able to deal with those, and I think … I mean, I don’t know. I mean, for you, what are some of the lessons that you’ve learned personally or just even through business, like as you’ve gone through this process of growth of going through ESPN and then afterwards and everything you’ve done since then?

Writing down your goals, plan of action, and asking the right questions

James Swanwick:             Well, I’ll give you five lessons, okay?

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah.

James Swanwick:             There’s five lessons I figured out, which is how I became a SportsCenter anchor on ESPN and how I’ve done anything whether it’s … I got a new product now called 30-day No Alcohol Challenge where I convince people to quit alcohol for 30 days. Just figuring that out and creating that business, I used the same five lessons. So here it is. Number one is, put simply, write down your goal and why you want to achieve it. So actually write it down. What is it? I don’t mean just have it in your head. I mean, write it down because there’s power that comes from the hand holding a pen, putting it on paper.

Why do you want it? And the more specific, the better. For me, it was become a SportsCenter anchor on ESPN and achieve my childhood dream of hosting a TV show. So that’s very-

Yuri Elkaim:                         Let me ask you, like what was the motivation? What was your why?

James Swanwick:             My why was because that I had been dreaming of it for 20 years. It was a 20-year goal because it really invigorated me when I was a teenager thinking about it, and it just stuck with me. I just liked the idea of being in front of a camera and being able to talk to an audience. It just gave me energy. So that was my Y, plus the fact that I wanted to do this for 20 years.

Yuri Elkaim:                         I ask because this is something I realized about playing soccer a lot later than I thought I would is that it wasn’t so much about the soccer that I wanted to play pro soccer for. It was really about performing, and I realize that I love to perform, and it just so happen that soccer on a pitch in front of thousands of people was my stage. Now, it’s a camera or on stage or whatever else. When I realized that, it gave me a huge amount of clarity. So anyways, I was just interested to see what your motivation was for that.

James Swanwick:             That’s great. I mean, performing was part of … I mean, performing gives me energy. I like being in front of a stage. I like being able to be in front of people. That gives me energy. So, yeah, write down your goal. It might be, “Lose 10 pounds so I can wear a size 12 bikini at the beach this summer.” That’s a lot clearer than, “I want to lose 10 pounds.”

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah, and it’s more honest too, right? It’s like no one wants to lose weight for losing weight. There’s usually a deeper motivation.

James Swanwick:             Another example might be, “I want to study Spanish so I can confidently order a meal in a Spanish-speaking restaurant.” So be very, very specific. Number one is write down your goal and be specific. Number two is ask yourself how and why questions or … Sorry. How and what questions. Todd Herman taught me this. Todd Herman’s a mutual friend of ours, and he teaches Become a Master Questioner. When you become a master questioner, you can create the plan to achieve your goal. For example, what can I do to make this goal happen? What can I be doing differently? How would I approach this if I knew I would not fail? How will I make this happen?

James Swanwick:             So for me it was when this producer introduction came up, it was, “How am I going to meet that producer in person? How am I going to convince this producer to give me an audition? What am I going to say to him?” So I asked those questions, the right questions and then the plan of action, which is step number three, the third lesson, which is write down your plan of action, started to emerge.

Yuri Elkaim:                         I want to jump in there for a second because what you just said, step two with those questions? For everyone listening, just take a pause for a second because that just that alone will transform your life, because what I’ve noticed, and I’m sure … I mean, Todd is obviously a very, very smart dude is when you ask a question, you start searching for answers versus just stating something, right?

James Swanwick:             Right.

Yuri Elkaim:                         So a lot of the things that I’m … One of the exercises that I do on a regular basis now is I’ll just spend 10 minutes in the morning, and I’ll just put a question at the top of the page like, “How can I do X? Or how can I become more whatever?” Just that thought process of asking questions and seeking those answers is … You can’t even compare it to any other exercise because your brain is seeking out answers all the time. That’s awesome, and I’m so happy you brought that up. That’s great. So step three, your plan of action.

Taking action as the most important step

James Swanwick:             Yeah, step three is write down your plan of action. For example, for me, it was I will fly from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, which was where the producer was when I eventually met him to convince him to give me an audition. So that was the simple plan of action. The plan of action wasn’t, “I will become a SportsCenter anchor on ESPN.” That was the goal. But the plan of action was I will fly … I will get on a JetBlue flight from Burbank Airport to Las Vegas Airport. Then I will get a taxi to the Hard Rock Cafe where I will meet this producer, and I will buy him lunch, and I will convince him to give me an audition in ESPN. That was the plan.

Then the plan changed from there. Afterwards it was, “I will fly to Bristol Connecticut, and I will do this audition.” Now, just know that your plan of action may change, and that’s okay. It doesn’t have to be set in stone. You’ve got to be fluid. You’ve got to be moving, but you have to write down a plan of action, so that’s the third lesson, okay? The fourth lesson, Yuri, is take action, begin. Take that first step because you can have it all written down perfectly and look at it but then never take action.

Have you ever done that, Yuri, where you’ve written down the action and then you’ve looked at it and then for whatever reason fears overtaken you and you haven’t moved forward?

Yuri Elkaim:                         I almost failed graduating university because of that. I actually decided not to go to swimming classes in the morning because I didn’t want to get out of bed-

James Swanwick:             Wow.

Yuri Elkaim:                         … and I ended up having to make up 20 hours of swimming in one week and write a 20-page essay on procrastination. So, yeah, I’m pretty well experienced with that.

James Swanwick:             Okay, so when the fear overcomes, you just take action, begin, take the first step. I know it’s a cliché, but I think the Chinese say this that a journey of a thousand miles or a thousand years starts with a single step. So just that momentum, you take the first step. It’s the hardest one, right? It’s the hardest one to take. But when you take it, the momentum starts to build.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Absolutely.

James Swanwick:             So then all of a sudden, you move from there.

Yuri Elkaim:                         So-

James Swanwick:             And then-

Yuri Elkaim:                         Sorry. For those of us who procrastinate, is it as simple as just saying, “Hey listen. Just take the damn first step. That’s pretty much what you have to do”?

James Swanwick:             Well, here’s the thing. The reason that people don’t take the first step is because their goal seems overwhelming, and it seems so far to take. So what happens is that you don’t even take the first step. I know. It’s like even this morning I had to really use all the glucose in my brain to take the first step. I mean, I have my Instagram account, @JamesSwanwick. Basically, today, I said, “I’m going to do 20 Instagram posts right now this morning and write them out ahead of time, and then that way it’s easier for me to post them over the next couple of weeks.” I knew it was like 60 minutes of me really focusing on a computer that I didn’t want to do. I just didn’t want to do it.

I woke up, and I wanted to like just laze about and do nothing. But I just said, “You know what? Just do one. Just walk over to the computer and just write one. That’s the goal. That’s it. Just one.” Then guess what happened? I went and I hit the first one, and then I did the second, and then I did the third, and then I did the fourth, and I ended up doing the 20th. Yesterday, I said, “You know what? I’m just going to take a … I wanted to go for a run, but I didn’t have much energy. I didn’t really want to do the run. I said, “You know what? Just put your gym clothes on.”

So I just put my shorts and my shirt and my shoes on and guess what happened? I walked out the door, and I went for a run. I ended up running for an hour. I went up to run in Canyon here in Los Angeles where I lived, and it was about 30 minutes longer than I was planning on running. So all you do is just take the first step. What’s the first piece of action? And then finally, Yuri, the fifth step is when the obstacles come, and they will, just keep moving forward. Don’t take no for an answer. Be willing to change course. Accept the fear will come. Move through the fear anyway.

The producer said to me, “You know what? That doesn’t work. Sorry, this is not going to work.” So what did I do? That was an obstacle. I said, “You know what? I’m just going to keep moving forward.” I asked for a second audition. He gave it to me. Michael Jordan, the famous basketball …

Yuri Elkaim:                         Mm-hmm (affirmative).

James Swanwick:             Says, “Accept failure. If you want to double your rate of failure, double your rate … ” Sorry. “If you want to double your rate of success, double your rate of failure.” He also said, “I’ve missed … ” There’s that famous Nike TV commercial, Yuri, where he says, “I’ve missed 20,000 shots. I’ve been entrusted to take the game-winning shot 26 times, and I missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life, and that is why I succeed.”

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah, I love that. That’s so good.

James Swanwick:             So yeah, there you go. There’s five lessons. So I mean that’s a pretty tried and trued formula that works.

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s amazing. So to recap, we’re looking at setting a goal with obviously the reason why, asking what and how questions. Creating a plan of action, taking action, and then just continue taking action even when those obstacles appear.

James Swanwick:             Absolutely, and I’m sure that you’ve done that repeatedly yourself without maybe knowing that it was that five-step formula. I’m sure you’ve done that yourself, Yuri, right?

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah, for sure. Yeah, I mean, in some way, shape or form. What’s beautiful about what you’ve done is you’ve put it out into a five-step process. So for anyone listening, if you’re at any points of gold achievements, then just go through these five steps that James has mentioned. I mean, it’s so good, so good, so valuable. If you guys want a rundown of these again, go over to the blog at smartermarketerproject.com. We’ll make sure that we have these listed out along with the link to James’s blog post where he’s talking about this stuff in more detail where he’s also posting the video from one of his ESPN SportsCenter episodes, along with some other cool stuff. We’ll be sure to have that on the blog, but this is this has really been valuable, James. So thank you.

James Swanwick:             Thank you for having me, Yuri. I appreciate it.

Periscope and podcasting

Yuri Elkaim:                         Well, before I let you go, I want to … You mentioned Instagram and how you’re spending a bit of time there. For you, like what’s an area of focus or what’s one tactical or strategic thing that our listeners can put into place now to start moving their business forward?

James Swanwick:             Well, I’ve only just really discovering Periscope which I think is going to be the next big tool from for marketers to use. It’s only been around about three or four months, and I’ve just been experimenting it at these last few weeks, but the engagement that you get with customers is crazy. I mean, for the uninitiated, you turn on Periscope, and basically you’re doing a live stream from your cell phone. You hit record, you say, “Start a broadcast,” and then automatically people all over the world are finding you, and you start talking into the camera.

Now, this may seem like a vanity project. You know, “Why do people want to see me talk all day and et cetera, et cetera?” But it gives you a way to really connect with your customers and your followers and to show them visually how you live your life and to visually teach them certain things if you’re a marketer obviously. So for example, last night I went to dinner at Soho House in Beverly Hills, and I decided to walk home because I live about a mile and a half up the road, and it was 11:30 at night, and I just turned on Periscope. I typed in the caption, “Walking home on Sunset Boulevard.”

I think it was 85 people joined me on this live stream as I walked home at 11:30, and during that 20 minute walk I talked about my 30-day No Alcohol Challenge. I talked about how I’m walking home sober I’m not drinking. People were asking me questions about how I quit alcohol for 30 days, and then I mentioned my Instagram account. Then I woke up this morning, and I’d made three extra sales of my 30-Day No Alcohol Challenge from people who were on that Periscope livestream last night just as I was walking home on Sunset Boulevard.

So that I think is going to be the next big thing for engagement if you’re confident in front of camera and you don’t mind doing that, get onto Periscope and start engaging with your audience and showing them who you really are and talking about your life. When you do that, I think you’re able to engage in a way that maybe the written word or a blog post you’re not able to do as effectively. So I would say get onto Periscope and anything visual, Yuri.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah, that’s very cool. I mean, it’s something that I’ve heard about, and I actually had one or two people ask me about it. I was like, “What the heck is Periscope?” But yeah, I mean, that … I think what’s intelligent about what you’re doing is you’re jumping into it before it’s becoming the big thing. So you’re ahead of the curve, which is always great as opposed to you catching up. So that’s awesome. Guys, check it out, Periscope. I believe it’s an app. You can just download into your phone and just go at it from there.

James Swanwick:             Yeah, absolutely. Anything visual I think is really going to take over it. I think in a year we’re going to be looking back and going, “Wow, I should have got on Periscope a year ago,” because everyone’s going to be doing it. But I’m having a lot of success with YouTube as well. I just started to build my YouTube channel at James Swanwick and Instagram at James Swanwick as well. The visual component I think is really where I’m having the most success in terms of my marketing more so than just written blog posts these days.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Well, it makes sense because obviously you were a sportscaster for a number of years, and you’ve always wanted to be on TV. So I think it’s a good fit for your personality and your skill set.

James Swanwick:             Right, which do you prefer Yuri? What are you most comfortable doing? Audio, video, writing? What’s your-

Yuri Elkaim:                         Video and audio for sure. I mean, I’ve actually built my business. We’ve actually had to bring in three people into our company just because I don’t want to write as much. So they take my audio or visual stuff, and we transcribe and just clean it up. In some of their businesses, those three people would not exist because the person actually wants to do the writing. In my case, I’d rather just spend, like I mean, time on video or doing these kind of podcasts because it’s much more natural for me, but yeah.

James Swanwick:             Yeah, well, it’s much more natural to me, So you speak on a podcast. You’ll have someone transcribe it. Then you’ll turn that into a blog post. Is that right?

Yuri Elkaim:                         Yeah, exactly, so I have an editor that I work with. In some cases, like on my health stuff, we’ll take the word-for-word transcript and clean it up on the Smarter Marketer Project blog. He’ll listen to the episode, take the meat and potatoes out of it, and actually write a couple paragraphs of the nuts and bolts instead of just getting it transcribed in general. I mean, I think it’s such a great platform to leverage as well because if you’re doing writing, if you’re writing, you can’t turn writing into video.

James Swanwick:             Right.

Yuri Elkaim:                         I mean, you can, but it ends up becoming about Power Points. With video, you have video, but then you can transcribe it and leverage that and repurpose it into audio and all sorts of different things. So I think it is a smart play.

James Swanwick:             I’ve just hired someone actually to do that for my podcast. I have a podcast in iTunes called the James Swanwick show. I’ve had it for about 15 months now, and I never did the show notes, but I’ve just hired someone to listen into my podcast and do show notes, and then I’m going to start putting them out just like you are. Here’s the other thing, Yuri, what I do. I record video now and then I put the video on my podcast, so not just the audio.

One day I woke up, and I said, “Why do I only have to put audio on a podcast? Why make a video as well?” So if you look on all of my episodes at the James Swanwick show, you’ll see that a lot of the audios also have a video component to it as well. When I look at my statistics and see who’s downloading what, a lot of times I get just as many people watching the video version as the audio version, which can actually significantly increase the number of downloads that you have and when you have more downloads, obviously, you move up the rankings on iTunes.

Then when you do that, more people are exposed to your show, and it just has this cumulative effect. So you might want to try that, Yuri. Try putting some video up on your podcast as well.

Yuri Elkaim:                         I actually had this debate. I was like, “Do I want to start another video components to … ” At least the Smarter Marketer stuff. I was like, “Do I want to start another YouTube channel? Do I want to do a video podcast or an audio podcast?” Because I was thinking of the logistics on the video side, and I just decided to go with the audio for this. What I am doing the video for more is for our inner circle, which is more of the … like a dance training that I do. But I’m just like … because there’s just so many things that I’m doing. I’m going to just keep it simple for now, but I do agree with you that it’s a smarter course of action to definitely do the video as well as the audio. So that’s great.

James Swanwick:             Well, quickly, just before we go, here’s one thing. You and I could have done this interview as a video one, right? We could have done on the video Skype. You could have recorded it and saved it. Then therefore, you would have not only audio to upload to the podcast, but then you would have had video to upload to the YouTube channel. Then you would have had video to upload to the podcast. So plus, you could have had Periscope recording it, and you could have had it going out live to all of your audience watching. In fact, you could have recorded it with Periscope because they let you save the recordings.

James Swanwick:             So it’s not extra work. It’s actually you do it one time, but you get a video, an audio, and you get a video for YouTube and video for Periscope and audio for podcast.

Yuri Elkaim:                         That’s good.

James Swanwick:             So you’re getting three for the price of one.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Totally. No, no, makes sense, totally. So is Periscope … Again, I’m speaking like a complete newbie here. Does Periscope has a desktop app as well? Or is it simply on your smartphone?

James Swanwick:             No, it’s only on your smartphone.

Yuri Elkaim:                         Okay.

James Swanwick:             Yeah, it’s only smartphone. So it uses your cell phone carrier to be able to … or WiFi of course to be able to connect and live stream from your phone.

Yuri Elkaim:                       Awesome. Well, this has been really good. I mean, there’s been a lot of golden nuggets whether it’s your story or the five-step plan, or even just this advice on video and Periscope. So James, thank you so much for taking the time, and there we go. You heard it from the man himself, James Swanwick.

If you’ve enjoyed this episode, remember to subscribe to the Healthpreneur Podcast on iTunes. Lots of amazing interviews and solo rounds and between-the-ears sessions with my result coaches. Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, that is the schedule for this podcast.

If you’ve enjoyed this, not only subscribe to the show, but follow me on Instagram. I’m @healthpreneur1. Take screenshots of when you’re listening to this. Share with some friends. Let’s spread the word because we got lots of great nuggets that have been shared over the past 100 and some odd episodes. We have many, many more guests and many more insights to come in the coming weeks, months, and years because I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to be here till I die, 144 years. That’s my expiry date, if you will. 144. But by the time I get there who knows? Maybe it’ll be longer.

Anyways, enough about longevity and my life plan. I hope you have an amazing day. Keep on rocking, continue to go out there, be great, do great, and I’ll see you in the next episode.

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Transcription

Hey guys, what’s up? Yuri here. Welcome to another solo round. Today it’s a little bit of a different setup because normally we have our results coaches sessions between the ears on Wednesdays, but as you’re listening to this, I’m traveling through the Mediterranean on a Greek island cruise, and so we were not able to get our result coaches session in. But nonetheless I wanted to record this ahead of time and get this to you, because we’re going to be talking about the number one thing killing your business.

 

The number one thing that’s killing your business and getting your message out

Do you want to know what that is? It might be helpful to know, right? Well, one of the big things killing most businesses is not having a predictable sales process, and that’s exactly what we help you fix in our health business accelerator workshop.

But let’s just kind of put that aside for a second, because aside from that, the one thing killing your business is one word that starts with “obscurity.” You see, if nobody knows about you, how can they even do business with you?

Now, I do need to mention though that this does not mean you can’t build a successful, very profitable business even if you don’t have a huge following. That’s one of the biggest objections that people come to us with is, “Okay, Yuri. Well, no one knows who I am. I don’t have a big following. I don’t have a big email list. I’m not this huge influencer.”

That doesn’t matter. I mean, it definitely helps if you have that and you should look at building that over time, but you can still help people and really make a great income, even if you’re starting from scratch or even if you’ve been around for a while and people don’t really know who you are.

 

How to make Facebook work for you

Let me talk about that for a second. What we help you do in our health business accelerator workshop is, as I’ve mentioned before, we help you build out what we call our perfect client pipeline. And the first part of this perfect client pipeline is using Facebook ads.

If no one knows who you are, how do you get your message in front of them? Are you going to write a lot of blog posts and hopefully will land on your site? No, no, no. Remember, we’ve talked about this before. The field of dreams does not exist online. “Build it and they will come” doesn’t exist in the online world, so you have to go out and put messages in front of people, and the only way to do that in any kind of scalable fashion is through advertising.

It just so happens that Facebook advertising is probably the simplest for most people to understand and deploy, and there’s like a billion people on Facebook so there’s no shortage of your perfect clients. If you’re thinking, “Well, I don’t want to narrow myself too niche. I have a lot of people I could serve.” You can. That’s great, but we’re going to narrow things down and only focus on a segment of people that you can really make a big difference for.

And even if you boiled it down to, “I’m going to help men between the ages of 40 and 60 who are losing their hair,” if that was your target demographic, there are millions of those people on Facebook. So don’t worry about that.

But here’s the thing, is that when somebody sees an ad of yours on Facebook … and by all means, an ad the way we teach it doesn’t look like an ad. It’s a really native story-like message that is put in front of the right people, that resonates with them because you understand them, and in them reading it, they’re like, “Wow. This makes a lot of sense. What’s the next step?”

And we’re just putting money behind that to be in front of more people. That’s all a Facebook ad is, because the reality is Facebook organic reach is dead. It’s 2%, which means if you have 1000 followers on your Facebook fan page, if you post something on your wall, 20 people or less will see that.

 

Getting out of obscurity with a plan

Now, that doesn’t really excite me. Does it excite you? No. That’s because Facebook knows and they want us to pay to play. So you have to know what you’re doing. So we’re putting money behind a really great message that’s going to get in front of the exact people we want, and they don’t know that you’re not some celebrity.

I mean, maybe they do a little bit of research on Google afterwards and whatever, but for the most part, all that matters is that you can help them. And if you they consistently see your message over and over and over and over again through your Facebook ad, then in their mind, you’re all over the place.

What makes more sense to you? Does it make sense to spend months or years creating endless amounts of blog content … and believe me, I’ve done this. We get a million unique visitors on our website a month, okay? So I’ve gone down that rabbit hole. Does it make sense to do that and spend the next ten years and a lot of money, a ton of SEO work, a lot of all that kind of stuff to maybe get some search in Google? Or could you take 1/100th of that content production, and the content you’re sharing on your blog, just put it up on Facebook and put some money behind it?

The way I look at Facebook is, Facebook is my blog. If I have a video that I want to put up, if I’ve got a post that I want to share, I’m going to put it on Facebook. I’ll put some money behind it. Facebook is my blog. I would rather put some money behind the message, build up a following of people who are viewing my stuff on Facebook, and now I can get a message back in front of them in a much more targeted fashion.

So you have to look at this in a different way. It doesn’t matter if no one knows who you are. You can get to know them very, very quickly. The more money you spend on Facebook, the more people are going to see your stuff and the faster they’re going to see it, so you go from ground zero to hero in no time.

Now, you don’t have to spend a million dollars a day. You could spend five, twenty, fifty. It’s really up to you, but you gotta put it out there because that’s the only way in 2018 to quickly get out of obscurity. Okay? So that’s the first thing that you have to understand, is you have to have a pipeline that financially makes sense, that allows you to do this, because the alternative is what? Please tell me the alternative.

You’re going to blog? Great, I’ll talk to you in five years. You’re going to start a podcast? Hey, by all means, go for it. I’ve had this podcast for more than a year, and it’s not breaking the bank, okay? And that’s the way you have to approach this. If you’re going to use the content platforms, use one, but understand you’re not going to see much from that for a long period of time.

Or, you could start a YouTube channel. Again, good luck. Or you could be posting on Instagram every single day, do the Instagram stories thing, take pictures of every single thing in your life, and be glued to your phone and maybe some people will find you, right? Maybe a few hundred followers, or a few thousand.

But you could do all that, or you could spend a bit of money, have a lot more certainty about getting a message in front of the exact people you want to serve, predictably, whenever you want, as much as you want, and that is what I’d prefer to do. Do you agree? And that’s what we help our clients do.

So that’s the first way we can get out of obscurity is you take a message, you take content, you put money behind it and you put it in front of your exact target audience. So that’s the first thing to do.

 

Penetrating the noise to go from obscurity to celebrity

Now, the other thing to do is once you have a predictable sales process built out … and this is the most important thing, is you have to play the long game, but you have to build a predictable sales process from day one. That’s why, when we work with our clients, the first we have them do is build out their perfect client pipeline, because nothing else you do in your business matters if you don’t have a predictable, mostly-automated and profitable sales process.

Because even if you had all this content everywhere else, where are you driving them? To an ebook or a lead magnet? Come on. It’s not working, right? So that’s the first thing, is you build out this predictable sales process.

Now, once you have that foundation and as you’re starting to scale this business, this is where true brand building and empire creation, world domination can come into effect. You can go from obscure, from let’s say an organic perspective, let’s say you’ve got like 1000 people on Instagram that follow you. You can go from that to 100,000, a million, whatever it is.

Because at the end of the day, you have to understand that the best product doesn’t win. The best program doesn’t win. The best coach doesn’t win. What wins is the best-known product, the best-known program, the best-known coach or business. That’s really important for you to get.

Think about all the examples in your life. I mean, is Apple the best product? The iPhone isn’t the best product. I mean, I have one. People say the Samsung Galaxy’s better, but everyone knows about the iPhone. I mean, everyone knows about Samsung Galaxy as well, but in every aspect of our life, the best-known product wins.

McDonald’s is a multiple billion dollar company, not because they have the best burgers, but because they’re the best-known. They’re everywhere. Starbucks. Do they make the best coffee? Probably not, but they’re not hurting for business. So as you have your foundation built, this predictable sales process, your perfect client pipeline, now you need to think about, “Okay, am I going to commit to either spending a lot more money to build that up, and/or am I going to start playing the platform-building game? Am I going to start playing the content generation game? Am I going to put a lot of stuff out there?”

And if you’re going to put a lot of stuff out there, this is a commitment you have to make because you can’t just post once a day. You can’t just send one email a week to your list. There’s so much noise. The only way to penetrate the noise is to penetrate the noise, and the only way to penetrate the noise is through sheer volume. Not shouting louder, but volume in terms of quantity of your message.

So if you’re posting once a day on Instagram, post ten times. If you’re sending one email a week, send seven. This is going to challenge you. This is going to make you feel uncomfortable, perhaps, but you have to understand that most people don’t read your emails. Most people don’t see your posts. Post more often. Post more frequently.

You don’t have to have the best production quality videos.  You’re just getting your stuff in front of people. Put more stuff out there. I think the only reason that I was able to amass 250,000 subscribers on YouTube is because I created over 1400 videos. Were they all great? No. I mean, some of them, I had fake eyebrows on, right? If you know my story.

 

How this’ll take your business to the next level

So you just have to put yourself out there in a very, very big way and understand that doing so is going to require time. It’s going to require effort, and it’s probably going to require other people, not just yourself. Right? That’s why it’s so important to focus on your income first. That’s why you have to have that predictable sales process where you’re generating clients and income. That’s the most important thing in your business.

As you start to generate a lot more revenue in your company, now you can start looking at hiring people on, and as you do that, you’ve got more time to step away from some of the doingness and start looking, “Okay, if I’m going to build a platform, if I really want to build this bad boy out and go from obscurity to celebrity …” because that’s ultimately the goal, is moving up this pyramid that I call the pyramid of influence, which is you start as no one knows you, then you become a generalist, then a specialist, then an authority, then a celebrity.

So the goal is to move up that pyramid, but that’s going to take time. That’s going to take effort. It’s going to take money in some cases, so look at, “Who do I have to have around me in terms of my team? Who can help me with this prolific type of approach?” And if that scares you, that’s okay.

You don’t have to do this. I’m just offering you an option, because the first option which is just to spend more money on your ads makes a lot more sense to be very honest with you. If you have a funnel, like in our case, we have a ten-to-one ROI. So we spend $1000, we make $10,000. Why would I waste all of my time doing something else, when I could just put more money into my ads?

So if I wanted to go from zero to a million, I could do so in a couple of weeks. I could do so in a couple of months. That makes the most sense. That simplifies your business in a very big way. But as you grow in size, if you want to … Again, this is not for everyone. If you really want to create a brand, a real dominating presence in your niche, in this space, I think the combination of that higher ad spend with a predictable and profitable sales funnel, in addition to creating a lot of content in a very prolific manner, those two combined and time are going to help you create something that is absolutely dominant.

You don’t have to worry about competing. You don’t have to worry about standing out, because you’ll be the only option. You’ll be what people see all the time. They’re going to continually see your ads. They’re going to continually see your stuff. At Healthpreneur Live, one of our speakers, David Bayer, who’s very, very well-known in his own regards with respect to mind and mindset and moving through all that kind off stuff. He’s like, “Dude, I don’t know what you’re doing but I see your frigging YouTube ads all the time. Every time I play a video on YouTube, there you are, talking about your glacier helicopter ride or whatever other stuff.”

I’m like, “Great! That’s exactly what I want. I want to be in your face all the time.” And you should want to be in your prospective clients’ faces all the time. Obscurity will kill your business, but what is familiar to us gives us more certainty. You have to stick around. You have to play the long game. You have to continually put yourself in front of your ideal people, and that will make you into something absolutely great. I mean, you’re already, but it’ll take your business to the next level.

So I hope you’ve enjoyed this episode and it’s got you thinking, it’s got the wheels turning. And again, as I’ve mentioned, I’ve talked about the importance of building out a very predictable sales process and if you don’t have this in your business, that’s okay. Almost everyone we speak to doesn’t.

No matter if you’re just starting or further along in business, if you want a very predictable way where you know exactly if you spent X number of dollars, you will have X number of clients and this amount of profit, if that’s of interest to you and you want to automate more of your marketing and you want a very simple business, then I invite you to attend our free online training. It’s called the seven-figure health business blueprint, and you can attend it for free over at healthpreneurgroup.com/training.

Go through the presentation. If you jive, if you resonate with what I talk about, then book a call to speak with us, because we can walk you through exactly how you can go from where you are to where you want to be. We’ll figure out where you are, where you want to go, what’s standing in your way, and then we’ll really walk you through a plan that can work for you in your business. Okay, does that sound good? If it does, again, healthpreneurgroup.com/training. Go there now.

Watch it today, and I look forward to seeing you in our next episode.