Hello. Welcome. Glad so many of you are here. Hello to those who are watching the replay.

This is my last training session for this month. I was just before this getting things ready for February and March. March is gonna be something called chaos month, which I’m quite excited about. More on that, with some cool guest speakers coming in. Abby is is not here yet, and she is in next Monday to talk about Evergreen webinars.

Evergreen webinar funnels, really.

So that should be very, very interesting. Who got to attend oh, there’s Abby. Who got to attend, Andy’s session on Thursday?

Yeah. Some good stuff there. Hey. Very practical. Very practical. Awesome.

Okay. So today, it is last week, we got into some stuff.

Last Wednesday or Wednesday, Monday.

And this week is gonna be a lot chiller.

I we sometimes need lots of ideas, and sometimes we just need to hear and talk about things that work.

And those things are always changing. So we are in the freelancing and agency owner, workbook.

We are on pages thirty eight and thirty nine.

And we’re just gonna talk about the three things that have worked best for us over time.

And, then I’d like to open it up to a discussion about what’s working and particularly what’s not working for you in your business to get people to opt in for a thing.

If you have anything that’s working particularly well, then it’d be great to come off mute at that time and just share that with others. Or if you’re frustrated, with things that you’ve tried that are supposed to work but just aren’t, then we can talk about that too. I know that over the years, I have been very frustrated by those things. I’ve happily bought into someone in a workshop saying this works so well for me, and then you try it in many different forms, and it just does not work.

And you’re like, wow. Everybody is just going around lying. Okay. Interesting.

So we don’t wanna do that. We want good info here, and that’s what I’m sharing with you now here, as you can see on my screen, is our best performing lead gen over the years.

The number one thing that worked I think one of the bigger takeaways, is that what works changes changes a lot, and we just have to be okay with that. It just it’s it’s the nature of it. It’s part of the game that we’re playing here. It just changes. Some moves just get overplayed, and they just don’t work anymore.

Pop ups. We at CopyHackers were one of the first groups out there, in in our space, not in ecommerce. Ecommerce was kind of already doing it, but we were one of the first to put a a pop up that everybody hated. Everybody talked about hating, but so many people opted in, that had two opt out buttons on it or one opt in and then one opt out.

So that was back when Bounce Exchange was still a thing, and they came on to our site. Bounce Exchange was the platform that you used, and it was all service based. Like, you couldn’t do anything. They had a team that ran it, software plus service.

But it had opt in and opt out and lots and lots of testing on those pop ups. And our list went from, like, twelve thousand to forty thousand or something bananas in the span of, like, six months, and we’d already been at this for a couple years. So it worked really, really, really well until it stopped. And until marketers love to talk about how much they hated these things, and so we got a kind of this this opt out pop up got a bit of a bad reputation for a while there, and so people stopped using them. But that was the number one thing more than anything else.

Secondly, that’s not showing here because it’s a little bit trickier, and I wanted to talk about it in our fireside chat is borrowing other people’s lists. So I’ve mentioned before in, like, freelancing school, I’ve mentioned there that, ConvertKit posted a webinar for us. Like, we were in front of their audience, and we had the registrant sign up on our, landing page, which is important if you’re gonna borrow someone’s list and which usually means you’re going to have a lead magnet of some kind that is promoted to another audience.

They have to sign up on your domain. So it comes into your CRM, not I’ve had I’ve done other ones, with, like, HubSpot, for example, where we had thousands of people sign up for this workbook that we put together with HubSpot, which was a great partner to work with, by the way.

But they didn’t sign up for the lead magnet on our landing page. They signed up on the HubSpot landing page. And so HubSpot gave us a CSV every month of these email addresses, but it’s like, what are you gonna do with the thirty day old email?

Even the newer ones, fine. But now you have to go through the whole double opt in process and try to get them on board with you, and they’re like, who are you again? And it was a lot. So a good thing if you are going to partner up with others to borrow their list is, to make sure that they opt in on your landing page and go into your CRMs that you can email them from there. And that’s actually really desirable for a lot of the brands that you might partner with. So those are some things that we have done, but we don’t do them that much right now.

Some of the other ones I wanted to talk about here are welcome mats, ads that drive to ebooks. That’s a paid lead.

In both ways, you pay to acquire them, and they pay to acquire the ebook that you’ve written and evergreen webinars, which although we haven’t fully prepped that, we’ve seen with webinars that we get really good leads in. We often have to drive, from various places, lots of different places, Instagram, the whole ManyChat, DM workshop, or comment workshop to get this or whatever the hell it is. I don’t do it. I just approve it when it happens.

But that’s one way in. Anyway, point is Evergreen webinars are a good way for us to get lots of leads coming in regularly.

I will not say that we’re good on the other side of it, which is once they come in, are they going into a good workshop funnel?

I would not say at this point that many of them are. But we’re getting lots of leads in through them. We continue to just running on auto. So welcome mats are just the thing where you arrive on a page and the whole page has taken over. You’ll see this on lots of different websites.

If you’re not doing it, just give it a shot. You can set it up in Leadpages, OptinMonster, even Hello Bar. When I was looking into this because we’ve used Leadpages and OptinMonster primarily for these, I didn’t even know Hello Bar was still around, and they are. So So I was really happy for them.

So Hello Bar, I decided to throw in here as well as a tool that you can use. A welcome ad is just really good. Not all the time. I don’t know how it affects SEO.

So a welcome ad takes over your home page, let’s say. So they land on your blog, then they click your logo to go see more about you, and then there’s a home page takeover, and that’s where they enter their email address. We don’t do this on an ongoing basis. We only do it when we’re trying to collect leads for, like, a launch or promotion or something.

Because I don’t know if Google’s happy about it or mad about it. You never know. They’re so finicky, so I just do it for a small amount of time. Ads to ebooks is when we’re getting ready to promote something like our Black Friday offers that we had this year, we first, at beginning of November, just ran a bunch of ads to ebooks.

So we had our, rich writer series, three ebooks. We put them on for seven bucks. I think we paid about five bucks a lead. Then they paid us seven bucks, so we basically broke even, but we had all of these great leads in who had told us, yes.

I wanna be a rich writer, and we could then promote freelancing school and copy school to them over the Black Friday period. And that is great performing lead gen, not because we got lots of leads in, but rather and that’s there’s a lot to do with our ad buying there, but rather because, the ones that we got in were really qualified. They showed in a lot of ways that they were qualified, and all we had to do was do a good job of selling more of what they wanted to them over Black Friday. And then as I already said, Evergreen Webinars.

Okay. So those are the bigger ones that have worked. Our latest guess on getting more qualified leads in the door, getting people to sign up for our list, understanding, what they’re getting into and why they should be here is conditional menus. Has anybody tried conditional menus?

No. I didn’t even know they were a thing until I was over on Gong, which has great resources on gong dot I o. If you’re not over there, go watch their webinars. They’re good. They’re very informative.

So I went over there to find a webinar on some sales topic, and, I realized as is showing here that when I clicked resources in the global nav, on the primary global nav, then the whole menu, which I didn’t notice notice until I started going through and looking at these. So instead of having a drop down only, which can be kind of hard to navigate, there’s a lot of things about that that about a drop down versus a conditional menu that, yeah, I don’t love a drop down. I find that especially on copy hackers dot com, actually, our menus are built in a weird way that can’t seem to be fixed, where when you hover over a certain part, sometimes the menu just vanishes, and I’m like, this can’t be.

It’s twenty twenty five. What’s happening here? But it happens. And so we’re experimenting. By today, I had planned on us having these conditional menus up, but all the pages were not ready.

So we don’t have conditional menus live yet, but that is our new hypothesis that we have a lot of resources on our website that people are not seeing.

We can’t expect them to see it. We used to expect Google would serve them up well. Google does not serve them up as well as we wish that they would. So we have just thirteen, almost fourteen years worth of resources we’ve created over all of that time, and we were really heavy in content creation for the first ten years.

So there’s a lot there that’s just buried on our site just like dying on the vine. So by changing our global nav to have conditional menus, that means that when someone clicks blog, they then don’t just go to the blog, but they can go to broken out views of the blog. So blogs for freelancers, video tutorials, they think they want a blog. They might actually want a video tutorial, things like that.

So the menu replaces.

When we can get more people to see more of the resources on our site, we have better reason to believe that they’ll dig deeper people who spend time or people who spend money. If they like what they’re seeing and what they’re learning, they’re likely to become leads. It’s still passive.

It’s more passive than, let’s say, ads to ebooks, but it is what inbound is all about. So that’s what I wanted to share with you about our lead gen activities. There are a lot of things that don’t work, and that’s why they’re not on here. And even some of these don’t work all the time.

Like I said, Evergreen webinars, we can get leads out of it, but we might not be closing them. Welcome mats, we only do sometimes because it’s kind of a scary thing. And we’ll see about conditional menus. Alright.

Anybody have anything they want to add around how you are successfully or unsuccessfully trying to get people to become leads?

I know y’all are doing things.

Yeah. Claire.

I’ve got so many questions. Okay.

The first is, does this has this ever worked the same way for a site that’s not focused on freelances and training? A site that’s focused on, like, an agency, for example, like, BoxCut.

Yeah. By this, you mean the things that I was showing?

Yeah. Sorry. You’re a lead gen for yeah.

Yeah. So for Boxcar, it’s really tough to say because, Boxcar depended heavily on leads coming in via copy hackers. So we just needed to expose them.

It also helped that Rand kept posting about the boxcar website, so that got us far. So if you can get an influencer to post about your website, then that helps too.

But, no. This is largely just for copy hackers dot com, which over the years has not targeted freelancers. It’s only in the last, like, six years that seven maybe, that freelancers have kind of become a bigger thing there. So this was targeting, startups and people working as start startup founders and the people who work there. Yeah.

Yeah. I love it.

Okay. Cool.

Awesome. And, sorry. I just have one more Yeah. Thing to add. I’ve read a lot that there’s a focus on shifting from getting traffic in so that you can convert them to your newsletter versus, like, just pushing out a ton of educational content that’s really super helpful and then people are more, I don’t know, obsessed with you, I guess, is, like, kind of a feeling you’ve been getting.

Because you hope. Right? It’s just so much work.

Yeah.

So, yeah, I know that, like, I’ve seen people I guess I just look at it and go, like, okay. For us, what is the stuff that works? We’ve been we planted our tree fourteen years ago. So, yeah, it’s grown. It’s good. But if you’re starting out today, it will be small, and there’s no two ways around that unless you buy someone else’s business. So you’re buying a tree that’s already growing, which is rarely possible for people who are not already who haven’t exited a business already.

So yes to putting a lot of good stuff out there, but how much time do you have? Right? Like, how who else can do it unless you can get people in your network and community to start pushing content out on your behalf?

Yeah. It’s just it’s a hard thing to do.

Yeah.

It’s a hard thing just to post to LinkedIn consistently. So Yeah.

Exactly. Like, it’d be great to be able to do that, but, I mean, you look at the brands that have done that because that was, like, inbound at its height.

Envision was pushing cash at creating resources.

Envision’s not a business. Like, there’s there’s a lot, and that’s because they had money invested in them up front. And then a good product that was making money. Sure.

But you can look back at this history of brands that have invested heavily in creating content and just hoping that someone shows up and does something with it, and they lose out to the people who run sales organizations that do not use the word hope ever. We’re gonna call these people, and we’re gonna call them again, and then we’re gonna email them again and email all the decision makers and that yeah. That’s all that to say, like, I know we’re not talking today about sales. We’re talking about generating leads, but it’s tricky to put so much work into content.

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Unless you can charge for it, which you probably can.

Well, everyone seems to be selling courses that say the same thing, which is I’ve been in all of this work. It took me years and years to figure out how to figure it out. And now I figured it out, and I’m teaching it, and people can do it instantly. I’m like, then why do all of the courses say it took you years?

Well, that’s fair.

Yeah. No. I think that course is our whole other conversation.

Man, there’s a lot of garbage out there. Like, a lot a lot. A lot. Yeah. Awesome. Joe, you got a contribution.

Hey. So something that I I I used to do a few years ago, and I was not really consistent with it. I also didn’t have a good sense of my ICP or persona at the time. So it’s kinda scattered, but I would do, I would do, like, little copy tear downs.

I I would record a Loom video of someone’s ad, and then just talk about, like, what were what strengths, weaknesses, whatever. That got me a couple clients at that time. And recently, I thought, like, okay. Maybe I’ll try doing that again.

I tend to use LinkedIn a lot, and and so I thought I would try that again. And, I noticed that the last couple times I did this, it was really interesting. I got, like and it so I would tag the company that I was talking about, and I make sure to do the content so it’s not it’s not, like, overly critical. It’s also talking about what they’re doing really well.

And then it offers, like, a couple, like, hey. These are, like, a couple of missed opportunities that they could, you know, work on or whatever. On the last couple times I did that, I noticed that, like, several members of the company, because I tagged the company LinkedIn, would view the content, comment on it, engage with it, and whatever. And so I would have, like like, heads of marketing and salespeople and, like, all these people, like, engaging with that that content.

So it hasn’t gotten me leads yet for this year, and I’ve only done it, like, I think, two, like, three or four times now. But it’s it’s, definitely got me some, like, engagement from people that maybe otherwise would not have I don’t know if I would’ve gotten or engaged otherwise, and it’s helped me start a few conversations.

So now, I mean, it kinda this kinda gets a lot where you’re just talking about, like, you know, how do I do that without spending so much time and, you know, it’s not, like, super scalable.

One way I’m trying to, like, sort of scale it is, like, that’s gonna be the content, basically, that I use for that week. So I just record a tear down, turn that into a carousel and, like, you know, post. And, like, I just kind of use that as content as well in addition to almost like an account based marketing piece.

But I would love to hear any, like, feedback or criticism or whatever of that plan. And if you have any suggestions as far as how to follow-up Yeah. With these people because that’s the that’s the part where I’m like, alright. Cool. So getting their eyeballs, getting their engagement, now how do I actually, like Yeah. You know, get that follow-up.

But Yeah.

You definitely that’s the one thing that stands out to me, is they connected, they commented, they engaged.

Talk to them. Like, get them on a call now. Like, what it like Yeah. What stopped you from pinging them? Or, like second one, what stopped you from directly connecting with them and talking with them about having a conversation?

Yeah. Well, so I did directly like, as soon as I see people with relevant roles engage on it engage on the post, then I immediately send them a connection request. And, I guess maybe the tricky thing for me is, like, I’m still in the process of working on my standardized offer.

And so maybe that’s, like, making the conversation like, how do I begin that conversation? Maybe that’s why I’ve been, like, a little reluctant to just be like, hey. Let’s hop on a call. You know, I can help you do whatever.

They’ve already seen what you can help them with. Right?

It might just be kinda hard to see them.

I wouldn’t let that get way. And, also, what better forcing function than, I had a call with this brand that I’ve engaged in account based marketing to, like, attract.

They’re gonna talk to me. I’m going to figure out my standardized offer before I go to bed tonight.

Like, that’s a good Fair.

Yeah.

Move you. Right?

That’s my take on it.

So yeah. But you need to be following up. Otherwise, you’re gonna keep doing these great things. But if you don’t have a follow-up process, what what what comes of it other than you feel good that your content’s being seen as we know?

Yes. With the book bills with feelings. So I like to think of it, like, for the work that you’re doing, if you were a larger company, someone else would be doing that work. And if they came to you in a meeting and said, we had all these people commenting and engaging from this brand, you would look at them and ask, what did you so cool.

When are you meeting with them? What are we doing? If they’re like, oh, no. No.

We’re not. You’d be like, what what are you what do you what do you honestly think you’re here for? Like, I love you. You’re doing great work up until we have to actually start closing.

So, and you would encourage them. Right? And you would put together SOPs. You would say, no.

No. No. We don’t we don’t spend time and resources just to get a high five from somebody. We spend time and resources to book a call, and then the people who run the call have to take over from there.

So that’s the key thing. I wouldn’t keep doing more of these, honestly, Joe, until you figure out how you’re going to start getting them on a call. And that could be quite technical because they’re pinging you.

They’re commenting individually.

But unless there’s a way to do it in LinkedIn, can you DM multiple people people in LinkedIn?

No. It’s just one to one, isn’t it?

No. You can, actually. You can you can add multiple recipients to a message. So yeah.

Start there. Hey, y’all.

Yeah. Good idea.

Engagement. I’d love to chat with you. This is I actually work on exactly this thing, and I’d love to work with you. As you can see, I’m very passionate about your brand.

Mhmm. Is that right? Like, let’s hop on a call. If they don’t, they don’t want to. But they’re gonna be talking about you in a meeting, and that’s good.

Yes. Right. Right. Yeah. That’s awesome, Joe. Thank you.

Sorry. Go ahead. Sorry, Joe.

I said that’s awesome. Thank you. Yeah. Yeah.

Go do it. Do it. It’s exciting. You’ve got them to engage. It’s great. Awesome. Yeah.

Abby, how about you?

Hey. Sorry for being off camera today. Mhmm.

I so I received a cold email today. I’ve never sent a cold email in my life. I’ve never responded to one, but this cold email was so good that not only do I wanna reply, but I’m actually thinking of, like, swiping his strategy.

And I kinda wanted to just, like, share it with the group Love it.

Whatever one thinks. I I can’t send a screenshot, because of permissions, but it’s quite short. I could read it.

Okay.

Okay. Yeah. So it says, hey, Abby. I saw your Evergreen course master class and loved it.

I’m curious. Can people find it outside of Facebook? The reason I’ve asked, we’re we’ve been able to help Danny Brown add three hundred and six thousand dollars a month to our business using YouTube ads. We’ve also reproduced these results for Breathless Expeditions, a million a year to three million a year, and Dealer Givers Institute, a million to two million a year.

If I could guarantee to add an extra one hundred thousand a month to your offer within ninety days using YouTube ads, would you take me up on that? Otherwise, you don’t pay, and we’ll pay you five thousand for wasting your time. If so, here’s a quick video on how it works. Take a look and then schedule a demo using the link below, and I can show you how this would work for your business specifically.

Here’s here’s a small handful of the clients we’ve worked with and then a list.

Okay. What do you love about it?

Well, I mean, like, there’s this there’s an element of, like, is it too good to be true? But, like, the Hermozy style offer, like, that’s such a good guarantee, like, that they they’re so confident they would pay Yeah. Five thousand dollars.

I don’t know. I don’t is is anyone else thinking, like, oh, it’s way too good to be throw throw a mold in their eyes, or is it like because I don’t know.

I thought it was really I was very curious, and I’ll probably schedule a call.

Yeah. Johnson just chatted out. I got an identical structure email.

Oh.

I didn’t.

Three days ago.

Okay. Did you like it?

Different offer.

Oh, so they’re probably taking I was I just didn’t wanna interrupt.

Yeah. It was a totally different, offer. Did you say Brene Brown in your savvy?

No. I didn’t.

Who who was the first person you you referenced?

Donnie Brown.

Oh, Donnie Brown. Alright. Let me I’m gonna pull up the email and just and check.

K. So, yeah, I’m curious to hear more reactions because something that comes to mind for me having coached many freelancers is all the reasons that that wouldn’t be possible for you, including I can’t afford, to guarantee a hundred thousand dollars or five thousand dollars back. I don’t have case studies like that. I don’t have brands to list off like that. Is this resonating?

So go ahead. No.

I was gonna say, like because I’m thinking I do I do have the case studies and the brands, and I could have, like, an application process. So it’s like, okay.

I can only guarantee, like, hundred k a month with your ever in funnel if you were if, like, x, y, and zed is true.

And, like, part of that would be guaranteeing, like, that they would have to send a certain amount of traffic into the funnel. But I just like, I think if I was sending in cold emails like that, like, I would get responses maybe.

Yeah.

I mean, I, obvious I think it’s it’s totally verbosey ish. Right? You you’d have to have a problem in your mind.

Things aren’t clicking somehow if they’re gonna guarantee they add a hundred thousand dollars. They said add a hundred thousand or you get a hundred thousand sales?

Add add a hundred thousand.

Add a hundred thousand or five thousand dollars cash paid to you.

It’s only if I mean, then you’d start looking into other ways to not trust them.

So what would other ways be to not like, what what came to mind for you, Abby? Like, you’re gonna swipe the email, but are you gonna hire them?

I’m gonna definitely book a call, but I was that was actually gonna be one of my question.

In the ask me anything, I was gonna say, like, what other trust factors you should look for. Because, obviously, they’ve got testimonials and the social proof and stuff, but, you know, they could just be testimonials from someone other people in their mastermind.

Yeah.

So Totally.

Or not real testimonials at all.

Yeah. And so and if to get that hundred k, like, I’d have to presumably put a lot into the YouTube ads. So, like, if I spent, like, eighty grand on YouTube ads, I only got, like, thirty back. And then they’re like, here’s five thousand dollars. I’m gonna wave it like, well, that doesn’t really wake up the thirty five that I’ve lost.

Yeah. Totally. Yeah. Johnson?

I, I yeah. I found it.

Mine’s from Jennifer. It’s a really similar structure. It’s a different offer.

But she, suggest she says, hi, Johnson. What if I told you we could use LinkedIn voice notes and ID verified profiles to help you sign fifteen new clients that pay you your full retainer in six months or you don’t pay and get a thousand euros, like we did for a hundred and fifty agency owners such as Flax Labs Social.

And, he made an exclusive video.

The partners made a a tear down, I guess, on the website, of my website. And then it ends with a quote from Richard Branson.

Do not be embarrassed by your failures. Learn from them and start again. I didn’t respond to this person because I thought it was, I think I didn’t like the quote.

And No.

Agreed.

Yeah. Like, it was kinda I just felt like it was kinda cringe.

And after, it just seemed a little unbelievable.

So I didn’t Hi.

Did you reply?

What?

I’ll ask if you’d like Joe, would you reply since you’re my ICP?

I mean, I’m gonna reply now because now that we’ve talked about it, I I want I’ve thought about it for longer, and I’m curious. I didn’t even watch the video.

But, yeah, I’ll I’ll, I’ll I’ll reply to them and see see what’s, what the offer actually is.

Yeah.

I mean, yeah. It’s interesting. It also brings up the idea of no brainer offers versus unbelievable offers. Like yeah.

Mhmm.

Right? What is the threshold at which a no brainer offer turns into, oh, this is bullshit?

But presumably, that’s a lot of times conditions and part of the application process. Right? That’s, like, probably, like, you have to be willing to spend, like, x on the ads and da da da, in which case you’re gonna get a hundred k back, but it might be that you spent two hundred k.

Yeah. Also, I think if you if you offer when I was before the thing that I was working on recently was like a wasn’t the right thing to work on, but it was a cold outreach, service, on LinkedIn, and we were gonna do it for on a a point percentage.

So the only thing that we would need was an upfront fee, and, and and then we would guarantee them leads. But I felt like in our when we sent out when we started doing our copy, I was like, this seems feels fair. She if I’m receiving this, I would be like, this seems fake. So we put, a small, small, small bit of copy in just to explain the system a little bit to make it seem reasonable, sensible, or clever, rather than, like, a scam.

Do you think adding in some form of mechanism system, something like that makes it feel less BS?

Yeah. Like, if if in this email, Jennifer, it explained some part of the mechanism that felt believable, I it would become like a fascination almost. Right? Like, I’d be intrigued. I’d probably wanna know more.

Interesting. Yeah. Curious. So, Abby, you are going to reply to them?

Or I’m gonna reply to them. I’m just like, mostly just out of curiosity, to be honest. And then I might just try Cody mailing out of curiosity.

Yeah. That’s kind of it really. Just an experiment.

No. I’m I’m interested in YouTube ads. I mean, what’s been working for me is workshops, podcasts, and my book.

If I could drive YouTube ads to my works for my book, that would be cool. So yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And then, of course, if you do take them up on this, I mean, that’s really good content. Look at how many people in the room just said, oh, I get emails like that all the time, and I don’t reply to them because then if you were to say, hey. I got the same email you get, but I actually took them up on it. Here’s what happened. That could be, like, really interesting.

And it might not be directly tied to what you do, but kind of.

So I’ll be for the high five.

Yeah. Very cool. Yeah. Can you guys share those in the Slack channel just like screenshots of the cold emails?

I know that, Claire, I think you pasted yours here, which it would just be awesome just to have those. Next month, we’re getting into cold emails, for larger accounts. So, yeah, it’s good to have this conversation going. Love it.

K. How did we get here? What else were we talking about?

Does somebody else Cody, did you have your hand up?

I didn’t, but I have a few things that have worked and things that haven’t that I’ll share. Yeah. So things that didn’t work well, growing trying to, like, grow my own following from just my home like, my profile pages on social media, just posting educational content doesn’t seem to work very well. I’ve tested that on many different platforms.

I think it’s because leveraging other people’s audiences is, a quicker way to grow your audience rather than just trying to start from scratch.

And then yeah. So things that have worked are are like networking.

That has worked for me well, you know, people sending referrals or that kind of thing.

And then I know that so and I guess that’s, like, indirectly leveraging other people’s, audiences in a way because what I’m referring to was getting in front of copy that. Like, I got in front of copy that, and they bought my copy live. And since I was able to prove that I was good at what I did, they sent me clients. Right?

So I’m, like, leveraging, I guess, their network, not really their audience. But, from that, you know, talking with Abby and stuff, I think what’s going to what I’m gonna try is just leveraging other people’s audiences, like doing podcasts, and then writing a book so that and everything isn’t just so scattered with social media, you know, like, those videos only last, like, forty eight hours and then they’re gone.

I know in the past, I have done YouTube. And while it is like a slow burn, I know that it ages well because, like, after I switch niches and stuff, I would have people reaching out to me. Hey. From YouTube, you know, do you still do this?

Can you help me with this thing? And I and that was, like, three years ago, you know, from when they reached out to me. Yeah. So that’s that’s my plan.

Cool. I love it.

Podcasts are somewhat tricky thing. Have others been successful with guesting on podcast, being interviewed on them, or getting leads not just for someone saying, hey. Saw you on that podcast or heard you on it.

Yeah. I got a fifty six thousand dollar client last month from a podcast.

From a podcast?

I think it was from they were like, I had you on a podcast, and then I was googling Evergreen Funnels. And then I saw you on another podcast, and I was they were like, oh, this person is everywhere.

So then yeah. They they were quite happy.

Effect. Yeah.

Yeah.

Okay.

I’m curious why you said podcast, guessing is tricky.

I wanna know what you mean by that.

Oh, so for me, over the years, it just feels like of all the things you could do, podcasts, yeah, are not I just don’t I don’t get the appeal, but then others have been successful with them. And I think it depends on what you’re trying to get out of it. So I’ve never gone on a podcast to get clients.

Never been my thing.

And if it were, then I think that it would be different.

But, no. I just I look at it and think, fine. But it does take up your time, your energy, so I don’t understand the appeal. I think if you’re gonna go on podcasts, well, you might as well just have your own podcast.

Still guest then, but then I don’t know. To me no. I don’t that’s me. Right?

And so I know that, like, other people remember years ago, Tarzan sent out an email that was like, my mentor said don’t go on podcast, but I didn’t. I made all this money. And I was like, I was the mentor. Okay.

Got it. That’s fine.

But, yeah, I’ve always been confused about why people are in a rush to get on podcasts.

Unless it’s a big name that is influential to your ICP and you are trying to get clients out of it or get invited onto more podcast because you wanna grow your authority that way.

Interesting. So you haven’t and, this might be an assumption, but so you haven’t, like, pitched a podcast to be on there, typically. Yeah. So I guess it kinda might go back to the strategy then. So if you’re targeting specific podcast because you know your audience listens to that podcast Yeah. Then that might make a difference. Right?

Yeah. Like, if you right. Like, I know I think Tarzan was talking about being on Amy Porterfield’s podcast where yes. When she’s serving course creators, Amy Porterfield has a giant following of course creators, and she says, I’m Amy Porterfield’s copywriter, and she wants to get clients, things will go well.

So there it has to be on, like, strategy, though. Right? And, like, really particular, not just everybody who says, oh, I’ve got a podcast and invites you to it, you say yes to. That’s not it will get shut down.

It will be like nothing ever happened, but you spent your time on that. And, usually, you also co promote it too. When it comes out, you, like, at the time, tweet about it, stuff like that. Right?

So Yeah.

Yeah, exactly, Joe. Totally.

So, yeah, that’s but I I I look at it like a similar, you know, similar to cold outreach when you’re trying to get acquire a client, except for now you are cold outreaching, to somebody that has tons of potential clients for you.

So yeah. I don’t know. Hopefully, it works.

Totally. That’s so fair. Totally. Yeah. Awesome. Caitlin, were you gonna add something?

Yeah.

Something I’m so mom and pop about it, I feel, because my main source of clients my first few years came because I was best friends with a business coach, and she was great at promoting herself and selling stuff and earning trust. So the moment they needed copy, she sold me.

They, like, hired me before even speaking to me because she was just that type of person. And then my other referrer was, a Facebook ads agency owner, And I also worked in that agency as creative director for a while, so all of our clients like, they knew I was in in charge of copy, and and I was very close to them, in terms of, like, saying, hey. Here’s your script. Here’s how to, like, shoot it and stuff. So when they they also knew I did emails, and the Facebook ad agency owner was, like, very cool with, like, allowing me to also take them on as email clients. So just having those strategic relationships were super helpful for me.

And then in term, I’ll try to keep this one short because it’s not as applicable to clients. But in terms of my online course, I have a like hate relationship with my lead generation method because I have a Facebook group that’s, like, seventy thousand people, and it builds my list every day. And it’s low lift, but, obviously, the quality is shit.

But, you know, when I’m I was busy with client work, a slow trickle of course, sales would come through, you know, like, I don’t know. Maybe I’m at, like, forty thousand over two years because I’m, like, focusing on client work and stuff. But it’s something, and I do believe, like, alright. It’s something to work with. And, yeah, I’m really I I make sure I scrub the list like crazy. Everyone’s tagged. I know they came from Facebook.

And I know there’s more I could do to probably leverage it a bit more, but, yeah, not like that second Caitlin? Sorry. I I I’m drinking caffeine, and I used to I I put it down for a while, and I picked it back up. So I’m like, but yeah.

So but I don’t know. It’s something. And I do feel like and some sometimes if there’s a will, there’s a way. So I think there’s more I could be doing with my crappy lead generation method.

That’s not always so crappy.

No. That’s amazing. Thank you for sharing that. I know, I mean, places that’s sometimes they just have to be on autopilot.

Right? So great. You got this Facebook group. It’s sending leads. Forty thousand dollars in two years is nothing to sneeze at.

That’s great. You didn’t have to do anything outside of Yeah.

It’s sold.

So no. That’s awesome.

The question really is around, like, leads versus list. So how do we look at it when we’re list building and generating leads?

Everybody who gets on your list is not a lead.

But but so often we see, like, these tactics that are kind of overlaid on each like, oh, list building and lead and lead nurturing or lead acquisition are similar. They are.

But it really does depend on what you’re trying to accomplish as well. Like, what are you going to do? Are you trying to sell courses? If you were just trying to sell courses, you would know that you could maybe push the gas a bit on your Facebook group, advertise to get people in it or something knowing that they’re going to end up buying courses from you.

And then you would be like, well, it’s also not that great. So I’d look for other ways to get them in versus getting in a lead who will pay you twenty thousand up front and ten thousand a month, which is very different. Yeah. So, Johnson, you’ve had your hand up and then down.

Is it supposed to be up?

I was just gonna ask you a question, about, ManyChat because you said that, they rarely buy the, buy from the evergreen version of the webinar. And I just wanted to ask, do you think that that’s because, of the passive CTAs or something else?

Oh, that’s because we just don’t have a funnel in place there. So, they sign up on ManyChat.

They we get all the notifications in Slack with all these people signing up for this thing, and then they go into a webinar replay that currently has no offer on the end of it. So it’s really just like, go ahead and watch.

Nice, Abby. Well done.

So that’s that’s really it. Right? So it’s it’s not most things fall apart, not because they’re bad, but because they’re incomplete or they’re outdated. So it is incomplete, our funnel.

Side note, Abby is actually working on it, so, like, it’ll be under control at some point. Exactly.

But that’s that’s so many of us. Right? Like, even with people helping you, even with teams, it’s you’ve gotta prioritize things.

So if I was to say, okay. This month, we are focusing on getting our ManyChat automations to drive to completed funnels, then we would do it. It’s just not a priority for me for countless reasons. One being an energy thing.

Uh-huh, Abby. Yeah.

So, yeah, that’s but it there’s still potential there. There’s loads of potential. It’s just gotta gotta choose what you’re gonna work on, and that’s not interesting to me right now.

There’s other stuff that Sure.

Yeah. So do you still think many chats, are useful for, Emma. Right. Okay. Cool.

In, like, you know, when things are useful, but, like, they bore you a lot, that’s ManyChat for me. I’m like, I don’t care.

Someone else has to come in and care because I don’t. So Sarah’s listening going, But I just don’t care. Email, I will always care about. It’s fascinating. It’s amazing.

ManyChat feels like a a knockoff, but oh, we all need to fix our segmenting. That’s an active campaign thing as well, Stacy.

I know, Jessica. Totally. Claire?

I wanted to ask about video because I know your Instagram, like, didn’t exist when I first learned about you, which was, by the way, when you first started doing freelancer stuff stuff apparently.

I didn’t know you didn’t do that before. I just assumed.

Yeah.

But I’ve been making videos for a while now. I’m getting better at them. I’m still not amazing at them, but better. And it’s kind of I’m starting to enjoy it, which is great because I really hated it at first. But I do feel like I’m banging my head against the wall because I’m post I’m I tried to cross post to LinkedIn, Instagram, TikTok. I was like, why not? CMOs are probably kinda like, what is this platform that my kids are on?

And Twitter as well to very moderate effect.

Yeah. How did you do it?

Just keep doing it, and then I stopped doing it, and then I start doing it again and stick with it. So we haven’t posted to Instagram properly a video in months.

But last Thursday, I forced myself to go to get videos done.

So force yourself to just keep doing it.

It’s not sexy. It’s especially if you don’t like doing it or you feel like, I don’t know if this will work, which is so often the thing. Right? Like, but just, like, just force yourself to. And it sucks. Just post another video.

And, like, that’s I don’t know. That’s kind of my take. Like, there’s so many things that we have to do that you don’t have the energy for. You don’t wanna do.

It doesn’t motivate you. You’re not inspired by it. It’s not sometimes it’s just like churning things out, and that feels, like, gross, but everybody’s just churning the it’s it’s you’re not alone in that. Right?

So okay. If we just force ourselves to keep doing the thing like Andy does. Right? Andy was in on Thursday, and he just keeps Yeah.

Doing the thing, and it keeps paying off, not with big wins immediately, but great wins along the way. His agency has incredible clients, and he’s as you can see, he’s invited to speak everywhere. He knows every everybody knows Andy. Andy just keeps showing up.

So if we can get past the part where we’re waiting for it to pay off, if we get past the part where we’re waiting for it to be fun, just like do the job. Just do the fucking job. That’s what it is. Just keep showing up.

Do the thing. Get on the video. Batch record ten videos. Get it over with.

You won’t want to when you have to show up.

I I did not want to. My husband dragged me to get these videos recorded on Thursday. I was like, I didn’t sleep well. I’m just gonna cancel.

And he was like, stop it. Get up and go. And I did, and I felt better for doing it. And now they’re almost produced.

Now when I go away for a week, I can schedule them all up, and we can get back going on social media, which does not inspire me. Does that help at all, Claire, knowing you’re not alone? You just have to, like, keep fucking doing the thing.

Yeah. It does. I’ve been trying my best to, like, plot away, but I feel like I’ve been spinning my wheels for a while now.

And because I’m trying to spin them on, like, on every front, I’ve actually I’ve pretty much stopped focusing on copy almost entirely Yeah.

And started focusing on, like, lead generation. I haven’t even gotten to sales because I haven’t cracked lead generation. Like Yeah. And I’ve started speaking to CMOs, kind of, what I’ve started.

And I’ve got a meeting with Tara booked.

But what I’ve learned so far is that they don’t do cold anything. Like, they have to have some kind of relationship with you. That’s how they hire because it’s high risk.

Would you say that, like, tracks and content is a great way to build that trust?

Yes. Okay. The content for as much as it’s and that’s why you have to keep doing it. Keep showing up.

Keep doing it. Every I can’t think of there’s an I’ve never reached out for a lead. I’ve never said, hey. Can I work for you?

Outside of pitching blog posts to, like, Kissmetrics back in the day. That was it. I’ve only ever pitched to get my content in front of the right audience for me, but clients have always reached out directly. And it’s almost without fail, the CEO or the CMO.

When it’s somebody lower, it typically doesn’t turn into anything because we’re too expensive.

And so it has to be a CEO or a CMO, someone that’s really passionate about what they saw you do, and they think you can solve this problem that they have. And CMOs think about copy a lot.

They just everybody’s responsible for it. It’s such a big pain that you’re like, in my experience talking with them at least. So it doesn’t mean every single one does. They’re worried about big data.

They’ve got other bigger things, but coffee always comes up. So if you can get in front of them with thought leadership, they’re so influential that all they have to do is say, like, hey, Jessica. Reach out to this person. I want you to book a call with us.

We wanna talk about what she said about emails.

But you show up there, right, just like you’ve been doing. So that video, I only saw the one over in Slack that you reposted, but it was fantastic. And I know it takes a lot of time. It takes a lot of work, but if you can keep doing it, be Andy about it. Just put it in your calendar, do it, and repeat no matter what. Andy has such small rewards. I thought he would have, like, a big reward for himself for doing that, like a vacation or something, and it’s like, I’ll pat myself on the back.

Like, his three days. I know. And he has Saturday morning. Oh my gosh.

Like, there’s all sorts of, like no. What? Anyway, keep doing that thing. The CMOs will show up, and they will pay you money for it is my experience with it across the board repeatedly.

Alright. I’m gonna keep going.

Keep going. Keep going.

Or we need another pep talk in two weeks, but, like, that’s what we’re doing now.

Yeah. Cody says, CMOs and CEOs despise cold pitches. Of course, we need to fit x y z, but, obviously, freelance just don’t understand.

Interesting.

Yeah.

Makes sense.

Finished with that, but the thread that I ran across yeah. I pushed enter.

And I was like, dang it. Okay.

Anyway, I ran across this on LinkedIn, and there’s just this whole thread of, like, people complaining that they hate cold pitches. The freelancers don’t understand how it the how they operate, because, you know, it’s not as easy as just saying, yeah. We can fix this thing. We have all these people that have to approve it, and they’re just frustrated with people that reach out saying, hey.

This thing that you’re doing isn’t working because and they’re like, well, yeah. We know that. You know? And so I’m like, okay.

Well, that’s interesting. I wonder how you can get your your, you know, position it so that you understand that, while still getting the ball rolling.

You know? Agreed.

And that’s where I think I think that’s having more conversations as well as you reach out and talk to people or as they reach out to you and you learn the mechanics of working in these large organizations.

They everybody I know I know that we’re not even big, and I know that our segmentation sucks.

I’ve I’ve tried. I’ve tried hiring freelancers. I’ve tried bringing people in. I’ve tried hiring full time people to take over this only to hear say what guys said.

I hired him in, like, eight months in. He was like, you know, I think I wanna make email. I wanna, like, be really good at email. He was my email specialist, and I’m like, you want to?

What what are we missing here? You’re you are. That’s your job. So all that to say people don’t understand, there’s a lot to understand, and CEOs are at the top seeing everything and wishing that they could motivate that team member to do the thing.

But no matter what great c a freelancer comes in, they still can’t get analytics hooked up because marketing engineers don’t talk to product engineers and etcetera etcetera. So we’re like, we’ll save the day, and that’s where those those emails or those tear downs can be difficult if it’s getting into things beyond words on the page. If it’s like, look. Your segmentation isn’t working.

Here’s what’s up. Then we there’s all sorts of barriers there. But if it’s like, look. Your buttons are universally shit.

If we can just fix your buttons, just the button copy, that’s it. Then this can happen. That a CMO can book off some time for it. Now you probably gave them the answer.

But nonetheless. Right? Like, we have to, in our marketing, make it sound like we’ve got a feasible solution, not a dream state.

Yeah. Mhmm. Yeah. And even even if they think that, you know, you just might work or maybe they have objections that it won’t work.

I don’t know. I reached out to somebody who had this, like, CBD, infusion company, and she was I was like, you know, you could really benefit for or your clients could. I did it indirectly, so she didn’t feel like, you know, you’re just trying to pitch me something. But, your clients would maybe benefit from running advertorials because, I didn’t even know what this is.

So, likely, other people don’t even know that this exists either, and so we can educate them on that.

And she was like, yeah. That would be great. But, like, how much do you know about compliance when it comes to CBD? And I was like, well, moderate, you know, like, not I don’t know every all the ins and outs, but I do understand you can’t say certain words, and I do know that we can use code language around things, whatever.

Right? And I was like, but that’s exactly what an advertorial is for, is to bridge so you don’t say that, you know, in the ad. But the advertorial can, create enough curiosity that gets them to the next page where you can use that language. You know?

And she just wasn’t understanding what I was saying. And, but yeah. Anyway Yeah. It, you know, it just depends, I guess, on everyone.

And they all have well, how they’re gonna respond to your pitch and how you should go in and, you know, try to get them on board with the thing that you’re trying to sell because it can be really hard.

There’s just oh, yeah.

How much of that conversation was by email versus on a call?

That it it was actually not email. It was on LinkedIn DMs, but, yeah, all of it. Yeah.

Yeah.

It’d be nice to just quickly get people on a call so that you I know.

I know.

And a lot of people have objections to calls for some reason.

Not that you can’t get them on there, but it’s just like just like that one CMO I reached out to. I was, like, asking her, hey. Could you, help me understand how how the operations work in your company? And we could hop on a call and, you know, I have a few questions. She just, like, started answering my questions or asking me things in the DMs trying to, like, totally avoid the call. You know? Yeah.

So there’s that too. Yeah.

Yeah.

And that’s where I think this is where sell by chat and all DMing is tricky if you’re not if you are reciprocal.

So what I what I have heard and seen ish is you just have to take absolute control of that conversation. Just say, like, I love what you’re saying here.

Let’s hop on a call to talk about this, And then, like, really understanding their objections to doing that.

Right? Like, it’s not a sales call. I just wanna hear what you’re saying. I’ll incent you this way, whatever that thing might be.

But, yeah, if we let people if we let leads and people that we want something from, we’ll exchange value. We’ll give them value. Nobody here is a snake oil salesperson. But if we want that, then we have to, like, push harder.

Like, those salespeople that you don’t like, very wealthy because they’re, like, doing the job, the painful, shitty part of, okay. I have to, today, put on this persona of being, like, someone who gets calls booked. That is what I do. That’s my job.

I’m doing it. What does that person have around them? Do they drink a lot of Red Bull? I’m gonna drink Red Bull today and see what that that’s like.

And the because this is the persona that I’m in. This is the character that I’m going to be if we can’t just, like, naturally close.

Caitlyn’s don’t do it. I, I have only ever sit a Red Bull once, and I was like, this is putrid. This is absolutely horrible. So I don’t know what any of those other things are. They’re all awful.

But, yeah, I know. Nobody wants to get on a call until it’s, like, time to get on the call, so we just have to make them wanna get on that call. How about us? We’re gonna talk about that also next month too. Cool. Liezl?

Awesome. Okay. Sorry if you hear my kids. It’s day off school. But I have a question. I am working on my website, and I know my people like, you gave me amazing information last time. I know my people are, you know, the CMOs, CEOs, etcetera.

How much of the pain of getting their team like, my job is to give them the stuff to help their team be more productive or presenting to a boardroom, like, the numbers they wanna see. Like, how much of the pain or the solution that, I’m solving for them ties into, I don’t know, ties into my like, what I put on my website, I guess, is what I’m saying. Like, should I just put things related to life cycle emails, or should I tie that in as well?

It’s hard to say because I haven’t seen a freelancer put on their website things that make the CMO, feel good about integrating them into their team.

Solving like, getting in there and actually being able to get stuff done. Is that what you’re saying, Liezl? Like, I don’t just do life cycle, but I also work well in your team?

Not necessarily. Kind of like I take this off your plate so that you can focus on getting the other things that you need done. Because they’re passing it off. They they don’t wanna learn it.

Like, it’s not something that they are planning on learning, or doing in house. So there’s a reason they wanna pass it off. And if they’re newer to life cycle and or newer to the department in general, they want to look good to their higher ups, right? They want to, when they’re presenting these numbers, say like, what I’m doing is working.

The person I hired was a good choice. So how much of that is more than just, like, look at the credentials they have, look what they’ve done for me. But in the initial, like, search for this person, are they thinking, like, this is exactly what I need. This is what I’m looking for, someone who can take this off my plate completely and make me look good to the board and help me get all of the other things done on my plate because they’ve taken that completely off.

Has anybody experienced this to kind of chip in on the conversation? I have thoughts, but I’d love to hear from anybody in the room who’s doing this or done this. Claire?

Yeah.

I’ve heard so this is the truth. I work with Forget the Funnel, which is, an agency that works with start ups. I did some snooping. They’re usually around the two to ten million zone in terms of revenue.

But it’s definitely a pain point that teams don’t work together and that people get siloed.

I don’t know if founders and CEOs care that much. I haven’t heard it from them.

But some of the other team members get really frustrated. So if they’re on the page, that messaging might go well.

I know that when we worked with Bitly, that was like a corporate as a whole wow. There’s so many people and meetings, and there’s, like, piles of crap. So if you’re the kind of person who can say that you’re, like, great at communicating, you’re clear cut, you stick to deadlines, and you’re easy to work with.

I mean, that’s just been repeated to me so many times.

So I’m like, that’s an actual selling point. I’ve never successfully used it to sell low.

No one buys someone easy to work with. They’re kind of pleasantly surprised in my experience, at least. I don’t know. I might be wrong.

It does depend on the ICP. Right? Like so a scrappy startup doesn’t care that you’re easy to work with. They’ll hire a diva all day long if it’s good, because they’re also going to ignore you a lot and not show up for anything versus a Bitly or teamwork or something that’s larger.

And still not huge.

But larger.

And everything’s a conversation, and it takes a lot of time to get things done. And so if you are targeting that ICP knowing that that is a consideration for them, they already have a team, they have people in place who are supposed to do the job they’re bringing you in for.

How are you gonna, like, navigate that weirdness? Right? Like, that feels weird. Someone else already works there who can and should be doing your job usually, not always.

But if you’re somebody who can be diplomatic, all of that kind of stuff, I wouldn’t put it on the page as, like, copy, but I would get testimonials that say, like, not only was Leisel’s work great, but, man, my team loved working with her. It’s like she’s always been here. She understands systems and processes. Like, as soon as like, she just picks up on whatever those things are so they don’t have to worry that they’ll hire you, and their team will resist you.

Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Awesome.

Love you.

I’m at the part where I’m, like, trying to get this website written so then I can do, like, more of the stuff that sends people to my website. But I feel like I’m getting, like, stuck in the cyclone of, like, I don’t know if I’m if this is right to put out yet. So until I get like, my brain is like, okay. I’m so ready to get the clients now, and I’ve been on several calls with people. They keep pushing calls back. Like, I just want to get at least this off my plate so I can start pushing stuff out there. I just wanna win sometime in the near future.

Call it done.

Yeah.

Whatever you have now is done. It’s done.

Okay.

It’s done. You have to go now get clients.

Yes.

You’re not even allowed to change your site. New rule. You can’t. Two weeks, don’t touch it.

Just leave it.

Yes. And what’s this thing where they’re bumping calls up? What’s happening there?

Yeah. So first of the year, they’re like, let’s talk at the first of the year. Yeah. And so I’m like, cool.

It’s because they needed to get their teams on board. So one of them was hiring a new salesperson who wasn’t supposed to onboard until the fifteenth of January or the sixteenth or something.

K.

And then another one was like, no. I need to talk to this person. And then it’s, Bruce from Bruce McCarthy from, like, Aligned or something like that. Anyway, when we got, or when I went to go follow-up, he’s like, actually, I don’t think I need you yet.

Right? Because I have, like, these landing pages I have to test first. And I was like, no. Remember on our call, like, we were gonna have a call about like, we have to do a bunch of research before we can even do that.

Like, that’s just part of the process. And he’s like, oh, yeah. That’s what I want. Like, I’ll schedule a call with I’ll make my assistant schedule a call.

So it’s just like these trains of people that they’re waiting on and waiting for, and they say that they’ll schedule one then.

Gotta take control of that.

Hands down. No questions. So the rule is book a meeting from a meeting. We do this here as well.

Bam fam. If you’re not Bam fam ing, you did it wrong. You have got the book a meeting from a meeting two days, two business days from the time that you had that call. So if it’s like, hey.

Let’s talk again about this. Cool. How are you how’s your tomorrow afternoon? Tomorrow afternoon is no good.

How’s Wednesday morning for you? But, like, you are directing that, and they can’t no talking to the assistant. If the assistant’s not on the call, you have to take that as an that’s like a no. You’re already hearing no.

Get that thing booked. That’s your job. That’s the job. Yeah. Get the thing booked. Bam, fam, two days.

No exceptions. They’re going on vacation. What?

You have to you have to find a way, like, okay. Well, when you’re at the airport, do you have a layover that I can call you? Like, really push it. And most of the people that you’re that you’re targeting because they’re in growth are pretty happy that you’re somebody who pushes it.

Right? So it’s there’s a little bit of respect for that hustle. You’re going to book this call. You are not getting off this call until the next call is booked.

Awkward as it is, you push yourself through those awkward moments until you get good at handling them. Yep. Yeah. Book a call.

Great. And, like, do you have your calendar in front of you? I’ve got mine in front of me. Looks like, wow.

I’ve got time this afternoon. Do you think you’d be ready this afternoon?

That sort of thing. Yeah.

Yeah.

I did that with two of them, but they canceled day of, like, an hour before.

K. Why do you why did they say they canceled?

One was said that they had a client meeting that got pushed, so it was a money making opportunity. The other one said that their, person was the other person who’s supposed to be on the call that we scheduled the call for, it wasn’t gonna be there. So they just were out. So I messaged them, like, immediately, like, as soon as I got it. And I it was like crickets for, like, a week.

I and I think that’s like Mhmm.

So one, you need a show up sequence there. Show up being, like, buy me a cup of coffee to get me to show up for the thing, basic reciprocity, pinged on LinkedIn, texted, hey. I’m expecting you on this call. You still gonna be there?

Can Jessica attend two? Are we still good? Three hours earlier. This always happens an hour before.

Get ahead of it. Three hours earlier, the day before, again and again and again and again and again. Any when I talk about going to Gong for the resources, it’s because, like, all of the resources are, like, you have to get way more aggressive than you think you do. You you need to be emailing, texting, LinkedIn DMing, Instagram.

Wherever you can DM this person and get in front of them, you do. And it it is going to hurt your soul a little bit in the beginning until it starts paying off. And in that moment when they’re canceling, you need to have a a clear understanding with them.

Canceling is no good unless they really should cancel. So you tell them, hey. If this isn’t gonna work, though, like, if you if you’re talking to me and you’re like, I’m not sure, I need you at ninety five percent at least. Most of the people that I work with are at a hundred and ten percent.

They’re dying for what I can do for them. If you’re at ninety five, you may wanna think about, like, just cancel this. I’ve got other calls. I’d love to work with you, but I only wanna work with people people who are really excited about this.

So that if they do cancel, then they already understand.

That’s it. It’s over. Liezl is no longer going to be communicating with us. We cannot access what Liezl has.

Like Okay.

Really, really hard to get.

Really, like, in control of that to the point where you may not even recognize yourself, but, like, it’s part of getting there because you can’t have people taking up time on your calendar and then not showing up. What does that do to you? You feel gross about it. Right?

Yes. Oh, absolutely. And then I follow-up, and I’m like, I don’t wanna bother you, but and I don’t say that in the email, obviously.

Of course.

I say, can you meet, like, tomorrow, or is a Thursday a better day for you? Here are the times I have available. Yeah.

You know, but yeah. No. That’s a good idea to get more on top of it and have, like, a show up sequence. I need to get their phone numbers too because I haven’t been getting their phone numbers.

Get their phone number. Get their phone number. Yeah. Texting, calling.

Yes. Yes. Absolutely. Yeah. Okay.

You got this. I don’t want people canceling on you. That’s not good. We don’t want that.

There.

No.

Okay. Anybody else?

Are we good?

Then I’ll see y’all on Slack. Have a good week.

Bye.

Thank you. Bye. Bye.

Amazing. Amazing. Alright. Oh, Stacy’s here, so we’ll just let folks file in. Claire, are you done with your goals?

Yeah. Yeah. I’m done.

I’m up to the, like, actual planning what I’m gonna do stage.

I I was further along, but I am alright.

How are you feeling about them?

Good. I definitely have a lot under mindset.

I am getting more into what you said, like, on Tuesday, which was authority equals money. I was like, r.

R. Yeah. I need to put more effort into this because his I’m very good at learning, but not so great at the doing part.

Yeah. That’s fair. That’s fair.

Yeah. Yeah.

I feel like all I ever do is talk about authority.

And so then when people are like, really authority? I’m like, really? So I can talk about it more? Yeah. Great.

I think it’s because, like, you end up putting one thing out there, and then you get, like, a nonresponse because you’ve only ever put one thing out there.

And you’re like, it doesn’t work. No one’s listening. Yeah. How is he?

Totally.

Yes. Katie, you’re nodding. Does that track for you? Yeah. Yep. I get that. But, eventually, those things do pay off, but, I get it.

Yeah. I also have please in the background. My apologies.

It’s a different time for meetings for us. So, we have some cleaning, some vacuuming happening in here.

Alright. So for those of us who are here, thank you for coming today to this very optional session, but it is a good chance to, like, break your goals, or see where they’re broken and then try to fix them, realign them with what you really want, stuff like that. So this can go for an hour or it can just be like a quick check-in, whatever feels right to you. So you’re here. Does anybody have anything they particularly want to work through in their goals?

Can I just say, like, in solidarity, what I came into Claire’s thing is, like, I found myself lately because I was, like, pretty consistently talking about my workshop or my offer from, like, September to now?

Mhmm. I really am fighting the itch to just, like, be like, this is when I would normally do something else.

Oh, okay.

So the lesson is to, like, continue sticking with it so that that author I can get, like, compound interest on that authority and, like, you know, that those podcasts, like, can still be relevant in six months when I’m still talking about the same thing. So, yeah, I’m just definitely, like, feeling that itch, but tuning into the fact that this time, what is different is the fact that I’m gonna keep doing it instead of taking that as the sign to to move on. Okay?

So say more about that because people go through it.

Right? I know for myself, focus and, like, sticking with the one thing, has been a challenge. So so do you want to share more on that or where you’re at? Like, how are you going to convince your brain that wants to do something else to stay the course?

Well, definitely, like, being very like, because before it was always my personal brand that was just dabbling in different things, the rebrand, I think, is a pretty untakebackable step that I’ve that I’ve gone on, like, to having the domain.

And, like, one of my kind of dopamine hits for myself for this fall was, like, on Black Friday, I bought a really pretty website template. And so I’m only giving myself until the end of the Christmas holidays to fiddle with that. And then I put on my not to do list, like, no website updates after January sixth. So Right. I’m, like, taking two weeks off, but I’m gonna be working on the website.

And then then it’s like, you’re cut off, no more procrastiabranding, like but but I will have a pretty new site and pretty new pages Mhmm. To send. So I feel like that’s a little bit of the the hack with, like, getting doing something that I knew that I would, like, get a buzz from to get out of that dip.

That lands in dopamine totally.

That new new brand colors is really, like, titillating.

So That’s fun.

Okay. Cool. So that’s great. That will get you through December.

And then just continue.

Very much leaning on like, really interested in Shane’s date to do list AI to do list because I’ve gone through the whole document. I’ve got the goals. They feel pretty they feel pretty audacious, and part of me is, like, well, if you couldn’t book any calls for the last three months, like, what planet are you from if you think you’re gonna be able to book eight calls a month, like, going forward. Yeah. But I do feel like I just just stick to the plan. That’s the the plan is stick to the plan.

If plan isn’t working after three months, we can revise the plan, but to the goal is to just stick to the plan.

Yep. Three months of your life.

Then comes, like, April, and you can revisit in time for that. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Jess, how about you?

Where are your goals at?

So I’ve pretty much been gone the last two weeks.

So I haven’t done, I think, since Perna’s session.

I was in Vancouver for Taylor Swift, and then I was on a client treat retreat in Mexico.

Yeah. So I’m just kind of, like, getting back.

Get excuse.

I was like, oh, I shouldn’t go because I don’t have my workbook done. And I was like, just go. Thank you.

What did you do? Already. In the airport, on the plane, what was happening?

Were you sick?

I was doing some client work. I did not sleep, hardly at all. I can’t really sleep on planes. But, yeah, I was doing client work, to try and get things wrapped up, and I got a call booked with some I have, like, I looked at my calendar and I was like, I have a call booked today at two, and I was like, I don’t know what to do because my brain was definitely not in the, like, we’re gonna be having client calls before Christmas.

So, yeah.

Where did this where did this lead come from? Do you know?

I have no idea. So I’m gonna have to ask her.

Have you installed our b two b on your site yet? No. Yeah. Yeah. Anybody who hasn’t, you could.

Our b two b.

Yeah. It’s it’s, just like r? Yeah. R. That’s four letters, four characters.

R b two b is only with American companies because it, like, violates GDPR.

So you it doesn’t do anything for any country other than America, but it tells you who’s on your site.

And not only that, it gives you a download of their LinkedIn, the company they’re at, their title there, their email address, where they’re located. So you get this at the end of the day. And what’s really good about that, it also says, the referral source, where they came from. And a lot of times, it is just Google. So it’s like, okay. Didn’t say what keyword or anything like that, but it’s still there are going to be people coming to your site who don’t opt in for things, who aren’t ready for things.

And so we’ve started now emailing them at the end of every day, and that’s really no one’s coming to our sites for shits and giggles, y’all. Like, they’re there for something.

So catch them and don’t wait passively for them to reach out to you or email or opt in for your thing, when it might just be as simple as you saying, hey. You were on my site today. I didn’t hear from you, though. What were you looking for?

How can I help you? Mhmm. Everything else are being watched. Right? And if they’re in America, they know that GDPR doesn’t apply in the same ways at least.

So, yeah, do that, and then you can at least see where they came from. So you know, like, if it was a direct type in versus Google or Instagram and other things. There’s a free version as well, so you don’t need the paid version if your traffic is, like, low enough. You’ve just got, like, a credit system.

But, yeah, everybody should be installing that on their website, especially you, Katie, as you’re putting this new site up.

And then get that expert at the end of the day and fire off spend a half hour firing off emails to these people. I woke up morning with let’s talk emails in my inbox for Coffee School Pro for Teams.

So it’s a doable thing.

Doable thing.

I love that. And I, I don’t know if you were what if what call I mentioned on, but I, got access to this software. It’s, it’s called Sassy DB.

And you basically you buy credits, and you can download all this information about all these, like, CMOs from all these different companies. So I met my assistant today.

He downloaded a bunch of info, and she’s gonna go through and, like, look for companies for me to, like, sign up for their free trials and kind of start to get their emails. And she’s gonna, like, sort through them and do all this stuff, and then I’ll, you know, use that as my approach to, like, cold pitch them, by being, like, here’s what I experienced as, like, somebody who signed up for your free trial, etcetera, etcetera. So, that was kind of our planning session today.

Why would you cold pitch with that content?

It’s a real question. Like, why cold when you could if you’re creating this content? Why put it into a tiny little one person box versus exposing it to a lot of people?

That’s a good question. I never really thought about using it because, like, I’ll do reviews of things from, like, PayPal and and Stripe and, like, their kind of emails, and I’ll, you know, review those on my Instagram.

But in terms of this, I thought it would be just, like, a little bit more of a personal touch to say, like, hey. I signed up for your software. Here are some things that I found specifically that aren’t just general to software, but, like, you specifically some things that we could improve on. And if you wanna have a deeper conversation about, like, how my team can help you, I think I got that idea from Sam in the intensive where he, like, FedExed a QR code doing something like this.

That’s that’s different. FedExing a QR code to somebody is a very different experience than ending up in their inbox uninvited.

So I would say be very strategic about how that’s delivered. Okay. FedEx gets their attention. You have to have one hell of a subject line to get a few followers’ attention.

Also, if it’s just you sending me something, that can actually feel like a nuisance. It can feel like, oh, great. Someone else is assigning me work today. Like, this isn’t even my fucking job.

And, like, if someone’s in a bad mood that day, you’re now associated with a bad mood. So you have to depend on them being in a fantastic mood.

Not common. So, I would say that. And then there’s the other side. What I wouldn’t do is reach out and say, like, hey.

I looked at this. I would like to share this. Just fucking do it. Just I’m swearing a lot today.

Just put the thing on LinkedIn.

Here’s what I would do differently on this. Make your little carousel. Do a video. Video’s performing much better on LinkedIn today than anything else, evidently, according to data.

But, yeah, it’s content.

It’s your thoughts that turns into content, and it’s a public facing thing. These are emails. It’s not like you’re digging into their personal files and bringing them out and publishing them. It’s public. Someone does a tear down of copy, hackers’ stuff, I have to just live with that, and chances are gonna be like, get on a fucking call right now. Can you take that down while we’re on the subject, please?

Or something. Right? And let’s, like, hire you to fix this, or leave it up because I’ll honestly, it’s all good. It all drives clicks back to my site.

So who cares? Yeah.

Don’t take that as, oh, now everybody’s going off and tearing.

I know.

I’m like, what coffee schools can we all go in on it?

No.

But yeah. Anyway, all that to say, if you’re going to do this work, which is great to do it, be very deliberate and strategic in how you are getting eyes on that thing. Yeah. I wouldn’t send an email unless it’s a, hey. I just published this. You should take a look at it. That kind of thing.

Cool. Alright. I like that. Thank you.

Alright. Sure. Claire, what’s up?

Okay. My question is sort of a continuation of the cold email CMO conversation because Jess and I are the same kind of avatar.

And that is, like, how CMOs have so much more to do than email. I mean, email is kinda low down. I feel like product marketers care more about the onboarding process and performance.

Our CMO is the right people to to talk to. So what is the size of the business? What’s the ICP that you’re targeting? Basic size. How many people does the CMO oversee?

Probably, like, three.

Oh, three people, then they definitely care about email. If it’s a hundred, it might be lower down. But Yeah. So it it’s a CMO has to go sit in front of other people and share results.

That’s their job. They there if there’s a board involved, which anybody who has a CMO and is a tech company probably has a board because the CMO would have been, like, one of the last c level hires, and the board would have said you need somebody to do marketing already, and that’s why they hired someone. So they have to go sit in front of a board every quarter and share their results.

There is never good news when it comes to email ever, ever, ever. And so in my experience, we get CMOs, I think, very commonly, do you know Tara Robertson from Bitly?

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. I worked with her.

Yeah. Exact because she’s worked with Jia. I know Jackie worked with her as well.

She was also at Teamwork as their CRM. After that, she was at Sprout Social as their VP of marketing, I think, or something like that. Nonetheless, Haya. In every single role, she has reached out to me and sent Joe our freaking emails.

That’s just because we have a personal relationship.

This happens all over the place, everywhere. It might feel low down, but Yeah. If you think about what’s really important to them, they have to look good to the board. They have to. Otherwise, they get replaced. A CMO is not a desirable thing in a software company in the first place, and it’s a replaceable thing.

So, no, I would continue to target CMOs. It might just mean targeting them with a different message, different, quality of content.

Just be really thoughtful about who they are. So side note, but still related, we see people reaching out who when they reach out and they’re in a higher position, consistently, they have just inherited a new team.

Consistently. So I we’re already on track to put together a ebook in q one on what to do if you’ve just inherited a team and they’re supposed to write copy.

So we know that a key trigger for a CMO seeking out help is my team that I inherited. I can’t fire them. I might fire one or two, but I can’t fire all of them. I have to get them up to speed.

They have to get better. So they can either try to train them, long game, or they can say we’re just gonna bring somebody smart in to support them. And that’s why I say go into LinkedIn sales navigator, spend the ninety nine bucks a month, use sales navigator to tell you when somebody changes roles, and then do outreach there. If you’re gonna do cold at any point, it should be when there’s a key trigger moment, not just, oh, hey.

Congrats on the acquisitions that got published somewhere in a Google alert. But, like, you just got a new you probably inherited a team. You’re probably thinking about getting in front of your board with really good results as soon as your end of first quarter. Did you know that email could be directly tied to having good numbers on that?

Like, there. Now get into the room with that conversation. So I do think as CMOs, especially if there’s only three or four people reporting into them, yeah, they’re not even a CMO. They’re also a cheap garbage taker router.

They’re all the things. Yeah.

Got it. Yeah.

I think it’s pretty clear that I need to get on a call with a CMR, but they’re busy. I mean, that’s part of my part of my, hospitalist is to email people just to be like, hey.

Chat to me.

Yeah. Well, you know Tara Robertson.

She will call with you.

She will Will she? Oh, she’s so generous. She will hundred percent get on the call with you just like ping her. Yeah.

Alright. I walked in. Yeah. Yeah.

Cool. Okay. Thank you. Sure.

Okay. Anybody else?

How are goals going, Liza?

What’s up with your goals? What’s broken? What are you unsure about?

So I’m in ten x or reading the ten x is easier than two x. Almost done with it. And it has, like you know, you’re not mastering it until you have, like, your own unique perspective on it. And if I’m writing a book, I wanna be able to have something interesting to say. Yeah. So what I’m stuck on right now is trying to figure out how what I used to be really good at in the old market I served applies to the new one and how I can make it my unique thing if it is. Right.

And how I used to do it really well would be, overall strategy and its, you know, psychological triggers.

Very similar.

Well, kind of similar to what Talia Wolf does, but I use them at different points to segment the list and then to, you know, bring them in to different emails as a result. So I’m just trying to think of, like, is that different enough?

And trying to plan my year around this core thing of the authority that I can help. Does that make sense?

Yeah. It does. I mean, psychological triggers is a really big broad topic.

Right? And so, so what is it that you bring that your new market doesn’t already have in three words? What is it?

Email, psychological strategy, or the price could be mixed up. But, you know, that’s the word.

They’re they’re saying, like, back in the wrong order. Oh, that’s terrible. No.

Okay.

That’s what stands out to people so far that I’ve noticed.

Okay. So so strategy email strategy based on psychological triggers.

Yep.

At crucial moments, especially in, like, the trial to paid, you know, onboarding section. And then, also, the upgrading you know, anytime that there’s a transaction, obviously, people want more of the strategy that I’m providing.

Okay. So why aren’t they already using it?

They just don’t really know about it. They have the team who, you know, they have a copywriter maybe who can write really good copy that they like in the way that they like. They have, I don’t know, people to implement it. They have people who do content, but they don’t have anybody who looks at the over overall strategy, and combines it with the goals of the company and then follows the line through.

Okay. So why don’t they have that person?

They don’t think that they I don’t know if they don’t think that they exist, but there isn’t really a specific role for that, and they’ve been getting by as it is so far. You know? It’s not great, but it’s not something that they can identify as a major problem yet.

Okay. So when we think about it as not a major is it a major problem, though?

Oh, yeah. It totally is.

Okay.

If they’re not I mean, yeah, if they’re not meeting, you know, the activation rates that they want to, if they’re not you know, if people are quiet quitting and not using the software anymore and they don’t know why, like, they don’t realize that this is something that could be implemented in the beginning and, you know, reduce those rates, etcetera.

I think that they have a different problem. A maybe we need to email more, or maybe we need to email different content or maybe there’s a new strategy out there that we haven’t thought of yet, and we have to do that. But they’re afraid of doing the wrong thing. So they don’t implement, you know, as many new strategies that require more email.

Okay. So you you’re you were saying, and I don’t know if it changed at the end, but you were saying basically you don’t need to email more. Stop emailing more. It’s not about more. Is that right? Right. Okay.

Right. Because of segment, they see the number as more emails. Does that make sense?

Yep. For sure. So you’re saying but are they currently trying to fix this problem by emailing more?

No. They’re not. K.

They’re kind of are they trying to fix whatever it solves?

By showcasing features and saying, you know, if you want to do x thing, then come on back or try this because we have this new feature. Okay.

So picking a fight with showcasing features is revolutionary, but it is one of the things that they need to hear a lot.

So to me, it sounds like if you’re going to build authority here, one of the best things that I have found, like, when I’m thinking about this stuff, it have you seen Steel Magnolias?

Yes. Okay. So the Crotch, the old lady, one of them, and she’s like, if you don’t have anything nice to say, sit next to me. Yeah.

That’s the kind of thing that I like to think about with this. Like, okay. Don’t have anything nice to say about showcasing features. Like Right.

To dig in there. Like, really be opinionated about that. I would start digging in there. Doesn’t mean that’s the answer.

But it might be because it’s true. They are leading with features. They don’t know what to put in email. If you say, hey.

You need psychological triggers, a lot of people will tune out.

Oh, hundred percent.

Right? So Yes.

For for a lot of emotion.

Like, if I mention emotion, because a lot of them are logic brained, they don’t care.

They don’t Well, that’s also a big topic.

Emotion. If you say be happy, that would sell way better than be emotional in your cup. It’s like always be happy in your coffee. People get that, which is something that I’ve been trying to talk Natalia about for a very long time. Yeah. But I would I would pick a fight with showcasing features and, like but, like, not a not pleasant fight.

Yes.

Fight. Like, fight it.

And it won’t come off because you’re not, like, an angry person. And even if you were, it might actually work.

But you have to to be able to do that. Right? So Yeah. Anyway, I would zoom in around that and get, like Okay.

Get a chip on your shoulder about it. People will tune in for that and, like, understand what you’re saying. And then eventually, they get that the answer is thinking about how they think and make decisions. Yeah. Does that help?

Yeah. I mean, I get chips on my shoulders every time I Yeah. Use something and send it to my friends so I can just send it.

There you go. There you go. But, like, really Yes. Make twenty twenty five the year you get, like, obnoxiously irritated by people leading with features.

Like, every time you see a feature email come in, you, like, screenshot it, post it to LinkedIn, say, what the fuck, world? Stop doing this. Yeah.

No. I love it.

Yes. Yes.

Well, a video, actually. Right? Like, those are performing Yeah.

Exactly. Yeah. Whatever it is, do it. Yeah. Cool. Awesome. Thanks, Dave. Awesome. Sure. Claire, what’s up?

I just wanna add to the video thing on LinkedIn. I watched this I went down a rabbit hole of videos today.

I found out that if you post a portrait video on LinkedIn, it’ll automatically add it to LinkedIn’s new shorts feature, which is only in beta access, which means lots of people are using it. They don’t have much content, and they’ll automatically push it through. Like, you might have access to it.

So Early adoption win.

Alright. Portrait mode. Portrait. Right?

You said yeah. Portrait. Yeah.

And then if you the key was to treat it like Instagram with, like, captions, etcetera, and then have your actual LinkedIn post be the usual normal, like, value LinkedIn.

Oh. Oh, hey.

That sounds awesome. Cool. McG, what’s going on with your goals?

Well, they’re all over the place? No. Okay.

No. Why? What’s going on there?

Oh god. Life is getting in the way.

I’ve actually narrowed it down as, like, authority authority authority. It’s like I’ve got first three months so I can start getting clients.

Okay. So what does authority mean?

When you’re posting on LinkedIn, Instagram, my Facebook business page.

I’m glad you said, Claire, about this. And I didn’t know about that. I just thought that’s good info.

But, yeah, that’s just instead of actually really looking at getting clients and focusing on that, it’s like focusing on building my authority.

Doing a new I’ve was it Tuesday, I think? Somebody said something about a newsletter. They were asking about the newsletter.

Yeah. Really good idea, monthly newsletter, and then I can take that content, turn it into a book q one of twenty twenty six.

Cool.

Newsletter, Andy Crestedina has three hundred thousand followers on his LinkedIn or subscribers to his LinkedIn newsletter.

He’s gonna be in in a couple of Thursdays from now. So don’t nail down your strategy until he’s in, and make sure you attend that. It’s gonna be baller, this session. So that’s coming up in January.

Yeah. I keep hearing about everybody writing a book, and it’s like, I can’t even yeah.

Newsletters turn into books all the time. Blobs used to turn into books all the time. Yeah. So you’re basically writing small sections of chapters of every newsletter that you put out.

Oh, Shane’s training on writing a book.

I have not.

So is that in, It’d be a recording.

Okay. Oh, nice, Jess. Good job.

Cool. If you’re watching the replay, Jess outlined her book on the train home from Ottawa to Toronto.

Nice. Good. So what’s travel’s good for? Right. Meeting with yourself time. Just get the thing done when no one’s gonna be interrupting you.

Nice. Where are those line of books? Dig it. Love Okay.

Anybody else wanna share what they’re working on? If you’re off camera, I’m not calling on you because you probably do something. Stacy came on camera.

I’m just saying hi and trying to participate because, you know, you like people to do that.

I do. I do like it.

Thank you.

I and and this is not I don’t have this specifically dialed into the exact goal yet, but it’s just a new thing that I’m working on. And I think I would like some, some feedback on it if that’s okay.

Sure. Yeah.

I mean, it’s a it’s it’s a goal, but it’s not a well formed goal yet. So my my main offer has been, a subscription for independent marketing professionals and small agencies.

And biggest value being, you know, somebody can double their client capacity by using SaaSy.

So, there there are a lot of other things too, but that’s probably the biggest one. So to to date, I have only sold to people who do marketing for clients.

Reason being, they have an ongoing need. So there’s a there’s a need for the monthly recurring subscription, whereas, you know, DIY people wanna use it per month, get their stuff done, and and leave. So I I do not want that. But I do have a new, a new offer to go to, in house marketing teams.

So because what it can do is increase the capacity of the employee. In other words, make making them well, the corollary to doubling your client capacity, making the employee, much more productive with a minimal monthly, you know, fee. So what I’m trying to get at is I know the independent, you know, and small agency group very well because I have a lot of experience in that area. I’d love to get your insights on what might be a sweet spot for the the type and size of teams to go for, initially for this. So I’ll I’ll pause for a second, and if you have any questions, ask me. Otherwise, I’ll I’d love to get your feedback on that.

I don’t have questions, yet. Mostly because for me, I love this idea.

So if I was agencies are lots of reasons. But in house, has unfortunately had this horrible two years of cutting staff, particularly people who are specialists. So more generalists have been left behind to take on all of these jobs.

That’s what we’re seeing at least sizes of businesses usually ranging from fifty million a year. Like, I don’t know what Calendly does, but I know that there were some big cutbacks there, which are public.

And so there’s been a need there, get to increase capacity for the existing team members that are left behind all the way up to multibillion dollar businesses. So it’s really a question of, the question that would follow is, like, what kinds of businesses do you want to work with? Because I think you’d have early adopters early adopters for that group across a huge range. Right?

Well, you know, my my intention with my product has always been to to go enterprise because that’s where, you know, that’s how I can scale it.

And I have a background in creating enterprise software. So, you know, the the capacity and technical stability of it, I have that covered.

It’s just a matter of where to you know, what’s what is the beachhead into internal teams?

I’ve used the independent marketers to perfect the product.

So I’ve been, you know, I’ve been, I would say, for the the amount of time I’m putting in, it’s an it’s a a net loss in terms of my investment. I probably invested about two million of my time so far in developing my product and not gotten that much back in subscription. But knowing that in the long term, I was creating a valuable asset that I’ll be able to get more people subscribing to.

So that’s Hundred percent.

Yeah. You you know what I’m saying.

So yeah. So, you know, I I don’t I’m not, I guess I would say, well, I’m not well versed in, like, what company size has how many people and that kind of thing. So that I know you know a lot about that, and that would be really helpful for, you know, me to kind of understand. I think probably to start, I wanna go with, you know I I mean, I don’t wanna bring on a a hundred person team right away, obviously, because I need to to have some kind of a an initial, testing period, some some a good you know, what’s a good sweet spot for early adopters, and who should I go for in that respect?

Yeah. It’s it’s such a good question.

We are just so you know, February, the theme of the month in Coffee School Pro is how to catch a whale. So it’s all about going upmarket and, like Mhmm. What that way into the conversation is, who you’re gonna talk to first, etcetera.

So it’s based on what I know about this, have you what is a group that you would say I want to target if you’re putting together, like, enterprise marketing plan and you had target accounts, what who would be a target account for you?

Brand name.

Who would I mean, I I haven’t even made a list of target accounts yet.

Yeah.

I haven’t.

Anybody come to mind where you’re like, oh, that’d be so cool if they reached out to me?

I mean, any of the, you know, any cool company.

I’ve always everything I’ve ever done, I’ve always had, like, the best companies for clients and stuff. So I I just you know? Yeah. I mean, I I personally have worked for you know, done stuff for Fortune ten companies. And so I’ve I mean, I’ve done stuff for everybody from McDonald’s to AT and T to websites for X Men movies and all the things. So I’ve done a lot of, you know, big name stuff and enterprise stuff.

So So but the people you were working with there were more in, like, tech.

Is that right?

Versus I’ve done tech, strategy.

I’ve done all kinds of things. I mean, you know, I’ve you know me. I do all the things. So Yeah. I Over the years, that’s been a variety.

For sure.

I’m wondering about the weigh in because the person that you would talk to if you were talking into the tech group, like, where there’s a CTO or CIO Well, this would be I think the weigh in here is gonna be more of a c m, yeah, through the c demo.

Yeah.

It’s gonna be c c level and which I’m, you know, very comfortable dealing with c level folks Sure.

In general.

Yeah. And they might not be c level, though. Right?

It’s just a question If it’s a big, big company, they might be director level or something like that.

Yes.

And that’s the thing. So if they’re at Google, they’re called head out back. We’ve talked about. Right?

Right. Right.

If they’re at Shopify, they’re not gonna be VP ever.

That kind of thing. Whereas at other companies, they give away VP titles. That’s just the way it is. IBM.

So that’s it’s hard to say. It’s a big question. I love it. We will answer it or get closer to it in February.

Okay. Okay. I can tell you is if you are looking to go in two groups where the capacity for each person has been dramatically reduced because of layoffs, the person you’re gonna talk to, that could in the door, like, immediately and just, like, start getting users of it because your users are not here. Right?

It’s like the execution level people and some, like, maybe a tier above, creative directors for coffee as well.

So, yeah, you need to go down to, like, senior marketing manager of growth or creative director who has, like do you have a ZoomInfo account, Stacy, or a follow-up?

Have a I don’t have a ZoomInfo account. You know, what I I did, I recently, I got a year of do you know the service growth mentor?

Yeah. Yeah.

So I signed up for growth mentor because I thought I could go talk to some people in there and kind of get some inside scoop you having direct conversations with people that were in working in marketing teams.

Yeah.

So, that’s one thing that I’ve done. But, I mean, but, you know, bottom line, big picture thing, I just want my I want SaaS to be, like, the go to for professional marketers so that anybody just you know, that’s just like, well, of course, you have to have SaaSy because it’s the best. You know? Yeah. So that’s that’s my intention.

And, but but so never DIY for, you know, for clients, only for professionals.

Love it. Yeah. Great. So, yeah, we’ll get more into that, but I would start with, like, just start I assume you’ve got good connections on LinkedIn. So you can start, like, expanding those so that any c levels you know, if you start connecting more with senior marketing manager growth, just search it on LinkedIn and then just start connecting.

You’ll already have good connections that are I don’t do any kind of outreach or anything like that on LinkedIn.

Doesn’t have to be outreach.

It’s just connections.

It’s just connections that if they connect back, then you’re going to see they’re gonna see your content. However Mhmm. Wherever that gets out there, even just mentions of the software.

Right.

Yeah.

So I’d start Okay.

Okay. Thank you.

Welcome.

Fun. I’m excited for you. Good.

Also, I stumbled upon this. I haven’t tried it yet for anybody who’s curious. There’s this offering. It’s free, which I think they were hoping none of us would find out about it.

It’s called, like, talk to a creative director dot com or something. It’s a really long list of not really long. It’s, like, fifty people long of art and copy directors.

You just book time with them. They’re just being generous with their time. I’m like, woah. You better be careful that this doesn’t get out.

I think it’s called talk to a creative director. I would Google that if it doesn’t come up as a dot com.

And that can also be a good way to say, like, okay. Good. Thanks, Rachel. Like, how how do I start getting into I know you’re already in agencies, but but some of these creative directors are no longer at agencies, and they’ve gone in house. So it can be good to book a call with them as well, just, like, pick their brain. I know it’s mostly as a service there to, like, help you if you’re new in your copywriting or, like, illustrating job or whatever it might be, and how to get ahead. But I think still worth checking out for everybody who wants to know how to talk to how to get into these organizations that hire creative directors and as such as such would also be interested in most the services that we’re here offering.

Okay.

Anybody else have anything else?

Your goals feel good? We’ve got little over we’ve got, like, eleven days until Shane does his to do list. Katie?

Yeah. I would love to talk about because I know the newsletter thing is coming, but I was looking at my to do versus not to do list.

And I’m I don’t know. I spent a lot of time tied up with ChatGPT yesterday trying to figure out, like, a strategic way to be talking to different levels of awareness in my content.

I just find it really hard to I can’t get behind anything unless I’m behind the strategy of why. And, like, I I believe on a deep level that it is the logical and best way to do it. So I have already, like, one blog post per week, two reels per week reaching a more, like, unaware, pain aware person. Feed post is more for, like, solution product aware, and then stories is more, like, my solution most aware. That’s just on Instagram.

My blog post also being more of, like, unaware, pain aware, and my emails being more of that, like, later stages.

But I feel like I’m not that’s it just feels like it’s a lot of work for little payoff in terms of getting in front of new people because Instagram just goes away.

So, I mean, I’m also doing, like, podcast pitching, direct pitching.

I have my four categories that I’m pitching in. So directs, outreach, products, podcasts, and programs to guest teaching.

That’s direct, but it’s not thought leader. Like, that’s just pitching. That’s not creating content for for a wider audience. So I guess, like, what is the I feel like it still needs to I need to prune it so it feels more manageable.

And then, like, what is the biggest lever I can pull to be, like, growing my audience Mhmm.

Without not having any time left to actually, like, do client work or have a life? Yeah.

Okay. Are all of those things in q one or that’s across twenty twenty five?

That is my q one consistent content creation pillar.

I’d say it’s too big.

I would prune it back to blog post, and I would change blog post into newsletter.

So I would scrap the plan is what I’m saying. I’m not saying that. I’m saying it sounds to me like, attraction of new leads getting into their mind is critical at this point for you. You need them to start hearing from you and thinking about you.

So a blog post is depending on Google to get anybody to you, whereas a newsletter has built in ways of getting shared that aren’t dependent on one evil giant deciding if they want to help you out or fuck your whole business over with a single change. So, I would do a newsletter.

Be consistent. I know when Andy comes in, on that Thursday, he will be saying, this is your life from now on. Like, you’re consistently publishing every Thursday, and that’s just the way it is. And he is so good at this.

It’s baffling how he has the discipline to keep showing up and posting every single week.

Yes, Claire, a little.

Yeah. So I would say that, and then you can every quarter, I wouldn’t do more than one new or better content thing.

So choose one.

You’ve got I think you said four things you had, like, podcast outreach, email I mean, those are all like, the Instagram routine is the same as I was aiming for last quarter.

I didn’t I would say I was at, like, seven percent of that. Okay.

So I feel like that’s still a good goal.

So my idea is Instagram is still underway for you. It’s just like you’re of the same. Stay the course.

Yeah. And then I was also I mean, I had added, like, add a second email to my list there, but, I mean, that’s, like, very low priority. I’m already, like, consistently emailing once a week. It’s just growth that is what’s missing.

Yeah.

And we’ll talk more about that. January is list building and lead nurturing month.

However, it will all come down to some things that you’ve already heard before, where I think, okay. If you’re gonna do social media, choose one.

You’ve already chosen Instagram. Cool. It makes sense for your audience as well.

When it comes to the other thing that you do, if it’s are you already writing blog posts every Yeah.

Normally, I write a blog post and then I either send that to my list, like, with a, you know, with a different intro as the email or I write an email and I point them to the blog post.

Doing a lot of repurposing.

Fitting. Yeah. Okay. Good. We’re gonna have Ross Simmons coming in to talk about repurposing. That’s good.

Okay.

Good. So I to me, it just sounds like, yeah, you have a lot. I have a team, and I wouldn’t put that much on the list. It’s just not gonna get done.

If how long have you been writing your blog posts for and then emailing them out?

Well, like, since I since twenty eighteen, but it’s out.

So Yeah.

But, I mean, like, they’re all on all kinds of different topics. So on on my most relevant like, the recent ones start August.

Okay.

Okay.

Yeah. So, obviously, it’s like stay the course with that if you’re already doing it. It’s just now it’s gonna be on a different topic.

But so the newsletter, is that that replaces on my own site or that is the idea with the newsletter, what makes it interesting, a couple of things.

But one of the bigger things is, that there’s just a baked in way to get your newsletter surfaced in front of other people so the list grows itself more easily than you having to actively market to get every single person on your list.

It just kinda runs by itself.

So I guess my question for you is, are you seeing good enough results with your blog post that you then email out that you believe you should keep doing it that way instead of switching to a newsletter?

I think that the blog posts are working for me because there’s not nobody else writing about what I’m writing about is a service provider who’s gonna offer to do it for you. Like, there’s so I was, like, doing the competitor’s content audit yesterday. There’s a lot of one page websites for, like, agencies with no faces.

Mhmm.

And then there’s a lot of, like, coaches that will teach you some of these strategies in their program, but there’s not really anybody else who’s like, us come to me and I will give you the strategy and I will write it and I will get it up and running.

And so I do think that, like, establishing expertise on that and then also, like, if somebody searches client retention strategies for coaches that they come across my blog post, like, I I I see benefit in that. Mhmm.

Also, I don’t know I mean, I don’t know if this is the same thing, but the creator network on ConvertKit, I’ve gotten got, like, fifty subscribers from them this year.

And then I was looking through it, who those subscribers were, and, like, half of them have never opened a single email.

Oh.

So because I was like, this is one of the ways that I’m growing.

And then when I looked into it, I was like, I’m growing with useless, cold subscribers. Half, half.

Well, yeah. The of the, like, ten most recent ones that I looked at, like, a few had. Yeah.

But so It’s not always gonna be a home run there.

So it’s like okay. Fine. If you’re getting fifty people in, you didn’t have to work for it, it just happened. That’s nice. If they’re all crap, then that’s bad. But if some of them are, then that’s normal.

So I’d be I don’t know. Maybe it’s working enough what kit has built in there, which is, of course, based on what Substack did, which when you’re the first person to think of it and what you usually do a really solid job instead of being a product manager who is like, oh, shit. You should add this in now.

Doesn’t mean that’s not gonna get better, but whatever.

So I don’t know. Katie, for me, when I think about if you’re trying to book more calls, you need to get your voice out there with my consistent message to you as always, please dumb it down for the rest of us.

I really I would love you to spend q one oversimplifying to the point that your brain was like, this is too simple, and it’s like almost there.

Because I think that you’ve got this offer. And the solution, that’s like a real solution to a real problem, but there’s there’s a wall still that you have to crack, in twenty twenty five. And I think that you can. I think that you will.

I don’t know that.

For me, hearing it, if I were you and if I was allowed to control your business for, like, a quarter, I’d only keep doing the content creation that I’ve already been doing, stay the course with that.

Spend the rest of my time figuring out how. How do I make this sound as desirable as it actually is. And that’s like hire yourself for a quarter, hold the luxury of three months to figure this thing out because when you do it’ll be a massive unlock and suddenly the things that you say in different spaces will click for people because most of us want money, don’t know anything else about anything else that you’re saying. So if you can figure that out, the unlock will be massive because now people will also know how to talk about you, etcetera.

I don’t know if that’s helpful to you, Katie, but I would love to see you really crack that message.

Yeah. There. Yeah.

Okay. Dumb it down until Never it.

Helpful. The message the stuff I say to you is never helpful to you, but I do hope I do hope that it gets there.

Yeah. Because we want I don’t even know how I wanna find it. Problem.

I was hearing you say you have a whole team and you wouldn’t put this much on them because that takes some of the pressure that I was putting on myself to do this much off.

Yeah. Yeah. Totally. I would expect to hire contractors to do that work. Yep.

Yeah. If I if I thought it wasn’t enough, it’s a whole other body required to do that kind of work. So yeah.

Alright.

Anybody else? Or anybody have anything for you’ve heard each other talk.

I’ll be quiet.

You can just talk to each other for the next I give you the luxury of six minutes of talking time.

Anybody wanna share anything with each other?

I totally wanna share that I absolutely aligned with the dumb and down thing is I just stop talking and then I can hear myself, like, on this ramble of, like, why it’s so complicated, and it is complicated if it’s a real solution.

But no one else wants to know about the how. Yeah.

And I struggle because all I can think about is the how.

So, yeah, I had that pain of dumbing it down.

I still haven’t, like, landed on an offer and, like, a proper, like, oh, kind of that like, that’s what Claire does kind of offer.

Yeah. That’s tough.

It is it partially because all of the simple promises sound like things that people I don’t trust say?

And so it’s like, I don’t wanna sound like that because I don’t believe them, and I want people to believe me.

Yeah. I feel I don’t know if that resonates for you. Yeah.

So you know Simon Sinek. This is my big goal. Right? Get up on a stage and deliver a TEDx talk that lives forever.

But if you actually think about it, it’s too simple. There’s not a real solution. He’s going like, come up with a reason why you exist. It’s so freaking vague. That’s why people have to hire him.

But it’s catchy, but I don’t trust it anyway. Yeah.

So I agree.

I think it’s marketing speak is inherently, like, abhorrent copywriters because all we do is write words that convince people to do things.

And then if it’s, like, sales y, it feels gross, I feel.

Well, I wonder if that’s part of the problem too, though. If because we’re copywriters and because we’re in it all the time, it’s gross to us. But if we have, like, the audacity to say the things that people are out there saying like, not to shit on Russell Brunson, but I hate him. And he talks about the same thing all the all the time. All the time.

I I hate him because he’s Mormon, and I see the cult in his work, and it drives me insane.

But people resonate with it. People like he has a cult following for a reason, and it’s because he is very confident in the fact that despite the salesy language, his thing is going to work. And it does for enough of the important people that it keeps the system going. If we just have the audacity of a middle aged white man, I feel like we a lot of problems would be solved.

That’s brilliant. I totally I totally agree with that. Russell Brunson is the best freaking example. I literally built my entire first year and a half of business off of him because he was so good at convincing people.

They needed a funnel. They needed to specifically use ClickFunnels. All you had to do was buy, like, something that you, like, repurposed and put up a page, and then they would get in and they’d spend all this money and they’d be like, I can’t do the tech. And I’m like, I can do the tech for you, and that’s, like, how I started working online.

And so I think that’s, like, just something good to consider is, like, knowing where your line is. And I try to think about that a lot of, like like, who have I, like, watched and admired but then felt bamboozled by? But then who have I watched and admired and not felt bamboozled by? And really taking from those people.

So when you’re, like, speaking up about things and like you’re saying, Claire, it’s so damn simple. Like, literally with Simon’s next book, you could read the cover and you’re done. You know? And so I think that’s like but then you’re also like but then he sold millions and millions of copies. I kinda felt the same way about The Mountain is You.

Like, has anybody read that book?

It’s still in plastic wrap for me. I haven’t read it yet.

Don’t read it. Like, don’t. It’s everybody was like, this is life changing. And then if you have, like if you’ve taken one therapy session, you’re like, I this isn’t you know? And so it’s just like I think it also makes me feel confident that, like, anything you put out is, like, people are gonna love it.

You know? And if you’re coming from a place of feeling like I’m doing this from a place of helping and not trying to bamboozle people, I think you’re you’re going off on the right foot.

Do Do you believe in yourself like those women who, like, message you from high school?

Like, hey. Like, hey, girl. Do you want this new product that I have? It really, really works. And to them, like, they are sold on it. Like, this is the best thing ever.

They believe in it.

And some people feel bamboozled, but a lot of them don’t. I don’t know.

I guess it just depends on how you portray yourself to the public and how you feel. It’s your integrity level, I guess, that you’re pushed for. Mhmm.

So how Yeah. Are you willing to be with the public?

I mean, down and dirty, honest about what your job entails and what it’s you know? No. It’s not going to cure cancer overnight, but over the long haul.

You know, is that a way to market yourself?

Uh-oh.

You mean being honest about the work, Michelle?

The answer is no.

Okay. Joe says no. Okay.

Because nobody wants to we can’t even put the word learn in copy because they’re me like, oh, no. Never mind. I don’t wanna learn. Just do it for me. So I know that this is always a thing. I’m just I’m only actually jumping in because we have to wrap up.

But start with why and the mountain is you are huge.

It’s worth considering that we are all copywriters.

We execute.

That’s our that’s the actual bad thing that we have holding us back as entrepreneurs.

We’re down here and people buy in up here, so you have to find a way up to the Simon Sinek really high level thing that people latch on to. I would I read start with why I would enroll people in his course if someone on my team was like, hey. Can I they’re gonna be like, hell, yeah? Take it.

Sometimes people just need that. You know?

Anyway I’ve just had an moment that’s so funny because it is like people who subscribe to to SaaSy, they always are like they’re wanting to, like, do workflows and processes and things.

And then I’m like, no. You write three sentences and you click a button.

Like, that’s literally really all you have to do.

Yep. Amazing.

Amazing. People wanna do that. So perfect.

Alright. Donna, I know you just showed up. I think that you are here for a meeting that happens in an hour. I’m off to our freelancing school welcome session, and then I’ll be back in an hour. Have a good one. Thanks, everyone. Bye.

Alright. Welcome all. This is we’re at the end of the workbook.

If you haven’t been completing it, you don’t get to clap. But if you have, well done.

Awesome. Nice. Excellent. Okay. And you do even if you haven’t, but I’m not here to stop you from celebrating things. That’s cool.

Okay. So today we’re working on the end of it. Thursday, we have a session where we’re just gonna get together and make kind of like troubleshoot your goals.

What might be too small? What might be too big? What might not be measurable? What might be, like, way off track, etcetera. So we’ll talk about that all on Thursday. So be sure to bring your, your goals themselves And, like, the really targeted ones for q one, it may also require that we think about your bigger goals. It depends on what’s going on with your q one goals.

So that’ll be this Thursday. Then next week is off, and that then leaves us with the following week, which is back on.

And that is on Monday, Shane will be showing everyone how to turn if you’re not already doing it, maybe you already are, how to turn your q one goals, how to get chat g p chat ChatGPT to say, here’s what your to do list should be every single day to help you get there. And I know some people in this room are already, like, kind of ahead of that. Like, I asked chat GPT to tell me everything to get me to this point.

So cool.

Alright. Before we dive in, any questions on any of the goals and stuff so far? Anywhere you are lost, struggling, anything like that that you wanna bring up right now?

No?

Okay. Oh, yeah. Claire, go for it.

Sorry. I’m struggling to figure out how to set goals that are I I’m trying to figure out what to set as the goal because I keep coming back to, like, okay. Well, I know how many clients I need and how much money I wanna make this year and etcetera. So it’s always like, get three clients by q one.

That’s, like, the goal.

Yeah.

Is The good like, is that a good way to frame it, or should I be looking at other things?

I mean and we can talk a bit more about, like, getting into the tactics. I think it’s a great goal. And then the question is just now how to get there. So it’s I mean, I say it’s a great goal, but it does depend on your bigger vision as well.

Does it ladder up? Does it get you closer to a bigger goal that might be more motivating? Whereas, like, getting clients isn’t a motivating kinda goal. Because it actually outside of the money, the money behind it can be motivating.

The social proof that comes out of it can be motivating.

The work can be demotivating.

So, like, we just have to make sure that there’s enough baked into the goals overall that you feel excited to come to work, you know? Yeah.

That sounds good. Thank you.

Okay. Cool. Cool. Cool. Anybody else before we dive in?

I thought I saw a hand. Okay cool then I’m gonna share my screen and we will start talking through what we are working on today. This is the printer friendly version of the workbook, it’s page twenty in that workbook. If you wanna go there, you’re not there already.

So so far you’ve done a lot. We’re not gonna revisit everything, but you should have your plan on a page that you did last week, and that has your q one goal, your q two, three, and four, as well as your overall goal for the year. Then this breaks down into skills, authority, money, leverage, mindset.

That should all be done so that we are now at a place and maybe you’re already done this part too, which is cool because we can spend more time talking about everything that you’re working on and answering questions, of course.

Sorry. I should close down Slack there.

Okay. So today, we’re going to say what your biggest target is for q one. Now it sounds like, Claire, you just said what your biggest target is for q one. Great.

And then what needs to happen to get there? Okay. So what skills do you need in addition to what you already have? What do you need to in?

Skills also includes proof of skills, so you’re like, I got it. I know how to do it. I’m I’m great at the thing, but I don’t, I don’t have a case study, and I know that the accounts that I’m targeting are going to wanna see a case study.

Also under skills, we have skills I sell. That’s the copywriting stuff, messaging stuff, all that kind of stuff that clients come to you for. Then there’s the skills that you use, which is a really big category, but it’s a lot to do with like okay. If you’re looking at twenty twenty five as the year like, for example, we are looking at it as a year of really figuring out account based marketing finally. So, for us, that means that I need to one of the skills I use that I need to develop is the full strategy around account based marketing and then the tactics so that I can then figure out how to allocate resources.

So there’s a lot there under skills I use. So for me, I would write account based marketing under here as one. And I don’t need to go into great detail about that because I can look at this sheet afterwards and go, oh, yeah. I really need to be working on account based marketing.

And when we get to the end of, q one twenty twenty five, if I haven’t done anything with account based marketing, it’s time for me to become more accountable to my goals. What will I do? Because if I don’t hit if I don’t do the things under these sections, then how am I ever gonna reach my biggest goal? It doesn’t just naturally happen.

Some we can’t depend on hope, on luck. We have to do the work. Right? And then luck tends to follow when you do the work.

So that’s what we wanna fill in today, any authority stuff. I would need to say, okay. I won’t be able to write a whole book necessarily by the end of March, but to build my authority for certain accounts, I will need to have a book written and out there by the end of twenty twenty five. So what needs to happen by the end of q one for that to be possible?

Probably need to have an outline in place. Probably more than that, though. And so that’s what we’re writing down today. Those exact sorts of things I may need to have under leverage that includes tools.

I would be like, okay.

If it’s my year of account based marketing, then what tools do I need to get that job done? Is ActiveCampaign gonna be the right email marketing platform, especially since our actual sales team is there to use account sorry, ActiveCampaign and they don’t like it.

So is there a different tool that I may need to use? And certainly, people don’t recommend ActiveCampaign for account based marketing. Does that mean I need to change CRMs?

That’s something I should figure out at least by the end of q one.

So that’s where we’re going. Does this all make sense with the sort of stuff that you’ll be filling in here?

Has anybody already done this page?

Yeah? Cody, you have, Katie has, Don has, a few people have.

Does anybody want to share so that others can get a sense for it? What’s your biggest target is and then what’s going on for you under these sections?

Just to help others see what it looks like, what it sounds like, even to, like, maybe get inspired by what you’re looking to do.

Cody, Don, Andrew, Katie?

Okay. Cody, you can look into it. Yeah. Sure. Great.

Okay. So, for my biggest target for q one, that is close at least two to five standardized offers, through my prospecting efforts. And then continue to post daily on LinkedIn because that’s for my authority.

Use LinkedIn’s build navigator to add at least thirty new people, per per week that match my ICP, and then pitch fifteen to twenty podcasts.

One that I did not put on, I think I should, is my book that I’m gonna be working on.

So moving on. What needs to happen to get there by March thirty first twenty twenty five? So for my skills, so far I have get better at outreach, you know, just kinda building up that process so that it’s smoother instead of so bumpy.

And then the process of asking the right questions, in the PMs to get people to get on a call with me.

For authority, I have continue being consistent on LinkedIn. Guest post our podcast on one to, I already I guess I already said that, but I said one to two because I was thinking of, like, just January.

So, anyway, outline for my book, I did add that as you were talking about that. And I know I need to work on a case study.

So when I get that first standardized offer rolling, I’m really gonna pay attention to the data and the transformation and try to get a case study out of that.

And then for money, it’s just to close two to five standardized offers and possibly one retainer.

Right.

And then leverage. I have use AI to help me find prospects on LinkedIn.

I actually found, a tool for that. I don’t know. I don’t think many people know what it’s called, but it’s called happenstance.

And you can take your, you could you can, like, link your followers or your connections from LinkedIn.

Download the CSV and put it into that AI, and then you can search, like, help me find the CMOs in my connections. Right? So and it’ll show you who those people are, and you can actually just click their LinkedIn right from that.

So it’s a really, really great tool.

If anyone wants to use that, I can Yeah. Figure that out.

And then for mindset, I need to make myself take breaks to avoid burnout because I just go. And I need to spend more time, like, you know, focus work and then getting myself the time to rejuvenate.

Yeah. So that’s what I have. I like that. I can’t wait. Have have you of the way, Cody, have you put together have you used ChatGPT, like like, fed that in, into any AI even, but ChatGPT is a good example, to generate what your daily to do list should look like with those goals?

Yeah. I did. Yeah. It’s it’s actually on my Notion. But Okay. Yeah. You just I just, downloaded the PDF, and then put it in there.

And then I was like, well, based on all of this information, can you help me create a daily plan that’s actually attainable? Right? Like, because I’m one person. And give a little background about, like, where I’m at now.

Like, I want it to be accurate. So I’m like, starting from the point where I’m at to where I wanna be, create, like, a daily plan for this. And it did. It was like, okay.

For like and I have theme days. So I told it my theme days, and it put, like, the right things under the theme days and for, like even down to, like, the time. So it was, like, for the first one to two hours of your day, you’ll be cold calling. Right?

Every single day. Wednesdays are your full blown prospect days, though, or prospecting days where you’ll, just spend all that whole day, like, you know, really hitting it on LinkedIn sales navigator, making sure that my list is constantly billing being built up, and just, like, making sure that everything is gonna be able to run smoothly. So Love it. Amazing.

Very cool. Thanks for sharing, Cody.

Yep. Excellent.

Good. So let’s then take with I think a pretty clear understanding of what the objective here is. Please keep it short. This is for you. Right? You look at this. You know what you’re looking at.

So we’re gonna take seven minutes to knock through this. You should really quickly know what the answers are to all of these by this point in, the process. So seven minutes, and then we’ll come back and move along to this very important to do and will not do list.

Two more minutes.

Alright.

How’d we do?

Good?

Okay. Nice. Excellent. Then let’s move on here, to the final the final part that I wanna work on because Shane will be doing page twenty two in the printer friendly version. That’s just the last page in every version.

The last page with with stuff on it. But this is what we’re gonna do here, is we don’t even have to spend time doing it. What I do want you to do is walk away, with a to do list, like, just a clear this is the single shot of what you’re going to do in q one. These are the ten things I’m going to do. More importantly is the will not do list, and that is good ideas that you will not do no matter what happens.

A good idea you might hear somebody else say is, oh, I’m doing this. I’m doing a webinar that I’m going to promote across everywhere in addition to a workshop or something like that. And you’re like, oh, I love it. And then we come up with, like, a really compelling reason to do it, and you’re like, maybe I should do that too.

No. Put it on your will not to do list. It’s a good idea. You don’t put bad ideas on a will not do list.

You put good ideas on there. These are things that are very interesting. That’s your, like, squirrelly brain, talking to myself and my own brain. They’re like, oh, that sounds like it’d be really cool and the creator in you wants to do it.

No. So we have a will not do list and we follow that as well. And there are usually at least as many ideas on that list as on the will do list or the to do list.

Has anybody done this already?

Yeah? Who would like to share what’s on their will not do list?

Cody?

Sure. Okay.

K. So it’s not very long because I haven’t thought through it too much. But, so I will not yet hire a copywriter because I need to obviously build up money for that by selling my standardized offers.

Hopefully, that’s q two.

I will not be providing training inside of Masterminds because I’m focusing more on podcast right now. Great.

I will not be starting my well, not really start I guess it is kind of starting because my email list doesn’t have the right people on there right now. So I won’t start it in q one because I don’t really I mean, I have to push traffic to my workshop, which I’m trying to do, but I feel like that’s, like, a whole thing. You know? Yep.

And right now, I’m more focused on acquiring a a client. So that’s gonna hold off for now. I obviously will not write my entire book, but I will have an outline by everyone. I will not write website copy.

People ask me, will you write this? I won’t do that.

And I won’t do anything outside of my to do list.

Amazing.

That’s there are definitely ideas on there that I could see being really interesting at, like, January seventeenth hits February twelfth. Like, there’s just these dates that will come along. You’ll be like, oh, I should do that. Yeah. And the will not do list as well I mean, the to do list, you should try to keep it where it is. Your will not do list is probably going to grow throughout the quarter as new ideas come up, and you just have to say no to them. Saying no to a good idea allows you to say yes to a planned good idea.

And then you’ll revisit at the end of the quarter, and that’s it, and see what happens. So thanks, Cody.

Don, do you wanna share any of your will not dos?

Sure. So the first one I won’t do is launch a comprehensive social media strategy outside of Instagram or LinkedIn.

Okay.

I’m not gonna spread myself too thin over social media. I’m not gonna invest in paid advertising.

Okay.

I’m not gonna create a new service, offering.

K.

I’m not gonna attend non health care related networking events or conferences.

Nice.

I’m not gonna overcommit to free workshops or webinars without, an ROI attached to it. And then I’m not gonna spend excessive time tweaking or fooling around with design elements. I’m gonna fully commit to client acquisition.

Okay. Cool.

I would only offer on the words like excessive and overcommit.

It’s hard to know if you’ve over committed until it’s done, and it’s hard to know if it’s excessive until it’s done. So I would hope that on the to do list side of things, if you’ve got anything listed there around, for example, the excess one. Well, how what’s the max that you’ll allow yourself to do, so that you know if you’re like, I’m only going to send ten emails ten cold emails a day. And on the will not do list would be, like, sending eleven or more, which is not probably a strategy that would come up.

But I would just ask you to get crisp with those so that you prevent yourself from Yeah.

So on the to do side, I have specific numbers so that I don’t go out of bounds with that stuff.

Cool. Awesome. Love it. Okay. Thanks, Don.

Alright, y’all.

So that brings us to the end of the formal work in this book. If there are things that you have not done, please go back and do them. The financial stuff is important, reflecting, listening to what others have done, what you did in twenty twenty four, filling all of that stuff in. I know it can feel like a lot, but this is your business, so, it’s worth it. It’s time well spent. Okay.

We are now ready for any questions. First, do you have any questions about anything in the goal setting workbook?

Katie? Yeah? Okay. Katie, go for it.

Okay. So just listening to Cody and Dawn, I get the sense that I am taking on too much. Okay. Good.

Hold on. My thumb’s up. Okay. Yeah.

So I had like, my goal for q one is to be closing one signature offer per month and I think similar to a lot of people.

Right? Closing one per month and keeping at least fifty percent on retainer.

My sub goal for that is to be booking at least eight calls a month and closing one of those. I thought that was Yeah. Like, gives me room to to wiggle.

And so I’m bumping up my quantities in terms of pitches per day.

Not reading where I’m showing up, but just, like, the quantity of pitches that I’m making.

Yeah.

But I so when it comes to the webinar for past clients, I have this dead Facebook group that I started in twenty twenty two, that was specifically for past client. Like, anybody who’d bought one of my offers or worked with me in the past was invited, but I, like, I started it I started it when my baby was three months old, and then he started, like, moving a lot more.

And, like, my ability to do this, additional channel of marketing, I was like, if I have to put if I have to get rid of one thing, like, it just I killed it I killed it, like, one weekend.

So I was thinking maybe I would revive that at the place where I do this webinar, just because it’s all it’s already got about a hundred and forty people in there. I thought, like, that would it’s kind of a low friction way.

Nice.

But then then I was thinking, okay.

Well, for nurturing people, like, would it be a good idea to do a podcast? Like, I find it really easy to talk through ideas, and it felt like a low lift way to repurpose some content.

Mhmm. But I’m like, but I’m already talking about pitching more. I’m already doing my weekly blog posts. Like, this just feels spread very thin Yeah. In comparison to, like, choosing one channel and really getting effective there.

Yeah. I’ll just offer that podcast is on my, will not do list. It’s a good idea. Should’ve started a long time ago.

It’s never fit in, though. So, it’s on my not will not do list. Yeah. Yeah.

I’d, I’d put that one on there quickly because you already know that you’re bread too thin with this. So reviving this Facebook group is already gonna take resources.

Do you have enough? And maybe when you look at your maybe when you take this and put patch EPT, with Shane, you’ll determine that you do have time, and something that’s on your will not do list can come off and be something you can do.

But I’d agree with you. If you are if you think it’s too much, it probably is. Yeah. So cut it.

So would you like, the strategy of hosting the monthly webinar for past clients and, students or whatever, would you prioritize that above outward mark like, something like a podcast, which could potentially be attracting a new audience versus nurturing my existing clients.

When my existing clients are, like, kind of a so so match for what I wanna offer now. I wonder if maybe that’s the thing to cut and something that’s more gonna attract, like, the people I wanna work with would be a better priority.

I mean, that’s fair. I would say figure that out in q one and do it in q two because there’s infrastructure there. Right? The Facebook group, you already have it. It already exists. It’s a thing. All you have to do is post to it again, and then you just have to have it in your calendar and then obey your calendar.

When it comes to a podcast, as you know, that’s a whole there’s a whole bunch of stuff that has to be set up, if you want it to be good. And podcasts are in a little silo. Right? You have to push people into like a walled garden instead of Facebook which is like open, which is fine but it does require a marketing strategy.

How are you going to promote that? I know I know people who have podcasts that are successful, and they’re still like, yeah. But it’s like a slog. And a lot of times, I do not wanna do it.

And they have, like, top ranked podcasts.

So there’s, like, external motivation that should be, like, making up the slog of it seven, eight, twelve episodes in, and they’re like, oh, what have I signed up for here? So I hear what you’re saying. What I what it sounds like you’re really saying is, look, I need to attract customers. I need to get new clients in the door. Fair enough. Absolutely.

And I’m looking at a thought leadership way to do that. Smart.

Wonderful. The reason that I say you should have this this thing that you serve to past clients is that they’re often a really good opportunity for an upsell or because they’ve worked with you, they like you. Nobody joins a Facebook group for shits and giggles anymore at least. Right? So they’re there because they wanna know more from you. They’re great referral sources.

So if that’s the case and you can go back in and, like, revive their love for you by putting up your thought leadership, they could refer. Now we don’t wanna live in a world of hope and possibility. Maybe they’ll do that. We wanna plan that.

Right? So if this exists in order to get existing or past clients to refer new business to you, then I will do x in order to ensure that they refer past business to me. So it can’t be passive. We gotta be active with our goals.

So I would say it doesn’t have to be only talk to your past audience, but what’s really valuable is that you it’s a good value prop. There’s a nice thing to say there, and you know who you’re talking to. They already get you. They already love you.

And if you put in the ask that they refer people to you, sometimes people just need to be reminded to refer people to you. Nobody knows what your pipeline looks like if there’s a wait list. If I refer somebody to you and you have a wait list, then they’re like, cool. Thanks, Jo, but I couldn’t work with her because she had a wait list.

So these are the kinds of things that a lot of freelancers don’t tap into, and that’s why I say you should do it.

However, you don’t have to only share your thought leadership in this Facebook group. It would just be the way that you would promote one version of that thought leadership since you’re already putting the work in to, like, do the reading, do the studying, come up with ways of sharing that with an audience, Share maybe one version of it in that Facebook group and then share a different version of it on LinkedIn or wherever else you might be posting. Does that make sense? I hear you, Katie.

I get what you’re saying.

Yeah. There’s just so much opportunity in existing audiences, like people who already know and love you, and they don’t need fifteen touch points in order to say yes to you. They’re, like, one point one touch point away from from saying yes to you.

Okay.

So Alright. The both I’m putting on my key one not to do list to be revisited, pending, all of these other, like, testing.

Love it. Also note that, we’ll be focusing in February. The Coffee School Pro theme is basically account based marketing, more of the kinds of things that everybody needs to be doing here anyway, multichannel account based marketing. So I think that’ll help a lot with at least that will mean in q two, you’ll be really well informed on the things that you might like, you have a stronger strategy for how to get the right accounts to say, hey, Katie. What’s up?

Okay. Awesome. Abby, you have a question about goals stuff?

No? Something else? Yeah.

Okay. Yeah. What’s your win?

I shared my win in the slot, but I placed a hundred k for q one.

And, yeah, the guy was just like, oh, you’re just on, like, every podcast I listen to. So that was nice. I felt like, oh, it’s working.

Yeah. So my question is about eight months ago because it’s about my standardized offer.

But I so as part of I basically, I’m going through my standardized offer, and I’m like, what what can I cut out? And one of the things is, I I do a sequence to reinvite our webinar subscribers back into the funnel, like, a hundred days later. Yeah.

There are two ways I can do it.

One, unsegmented and one segmented, which gives more work. I’m I don’t think the segmented is necessary, but it’s it’s nice it’s more than nice to have because it could make them more money. So I’m wondering even though you say don’t kind of do new work in the optimization retainer because I have kind of a high ticket. It’s a ten thousand dollar optimization retainer.

Could I put that in there? So it’s like we we do the unsegmented and then, like, down the line, it’s like, okay. This is the thing we’re gonna optimize. I’m gonna be writing new emails.

Yep. I love that.

I would do that.

That’s okay? Okay. Alright.

You might find that it’s not even gonna be the win that you think it is upfront. So Exactly.

Like, it’s a task, but it’s just because it was a new app I wanted to.

Yeah. Okay. Okay.

Thank you.

Take it. Thanks, Abby. Liesl, what’s your win?

My win is that I have gone through the entire intensive to week eight.

I’m going back through now to optimize different things, but I’ve got it, like, pretty solid in, whichever I have.

Nice. Excellent.

But my question is, so in the workshop where I have last week, the goal that she guided me to come up with as well is to do like, build my authority for this year. And I also sent Slack as well.

But because I’m starting from zero, I don’t have like, I have prospects in the funnel. I’m talking to somebody tomorrow. Like, I have all these people that I’m talking to.

And I can post on, like, LinkedIn and stuff, and I’m going to.

Like, I have the plan and stuff all written out. My question is, should I focus on building authority? Because that doesn’t seem very measurable to me to reach my, like, monetary goals for the year.

Does that make sense? Yeah. Okay. But I wonder okay.

Let’s start with the end statement you made there that you can’t connect authority with revenue generating with with revenue.

Yeah. Tell me what you’re thinking there. Why do you say that?

Well, so I know I can’t. I don’t know how I can yet because I haven’t done it yet. Right? So I don’t know what to measure.

I don’t know how much of this to, like, plan on for q two. I don’t know anything about that yet. So connecting the two is trickier than saying, okay. I’m gonna pitch this number of people or, you know, I’m gonna do this other thing that directly ties to revenue.

Yeah.

Okay. So this is hard for my brain because my brain is so forty equals money, that it’s what I would what I would start with is Abby just gave an example there of, like, I’m seeing you everywhere. You’re everywhere, and how that’s making it easier for her to close bigger projects. I know for myself, my whole business, it only is authority.

I’m like, there’s not a strong paid strategy there. A lot of the paid advertising we do freaking tanks. Like, it doesn’t feel like money well spent and I Yeah. There’s attribution stuff, etcetera.

But again and again and again and again and endlessly again, it comes down to authority led to this. April Dunford Yeah. Wrote a book, made a multimillion dollar business out of that one piece of thought leadership. She gives the same talks on stages everywhere.

Those are the two things she does. Book stages. She’s one of the people I don’t think she’d mind me saying with the podcast where she’s like, oh god. I don’t wanna keep doing it.

She’s great at it, but it is work. That maybe doesn’t pay off the same way. So and that is also thought leadership. So it really is find the thing that allows you to express a really interesting take that the world will respond, I would say well, but, like, don’t worry about, like, liking you, but they’ll respond to it.

Is that a book? You can start with, like, one big thing, or you can start with a big concept and little things that get you there. A book is a is made up of little chapters. A podcast is made up of little episodes. All of these things are made up of little things. Right? But you have to choose which one of those bigger things you wanna do.

Yeah. How to attribute how do they, like, tie thought leadership to money? It’s not gonna be there’s not, like, a necessarily a graph. It’s it’s the thing. You are selling your brain. Have you read, David c Baker’s, The Business of Expertise?

Uh-uh. Yeah. Worth it.

Also a quick read. Andrew, you’ve read it? Yeah. Good read? Yeah. Andrew Andrew gives two thumbs up. Awesome.

So that’s worth reading. The this is all this is all that we do. And they just want to raise your rates. Like you are just selling your brain. That’s it. Nobody like the everything else is just the output of your brain.

So in order for people to want to pay for your brain, they have to value your brain.

The more you put your thought leadership out there, the the bigger your brain is. So I would I I know that’s not a good answer. It’s a soft answer, but it’s it’s all there’s also passion behind it. It is how I’ve built my business and how it’s going to keep growing.

Right. I don’t do enough thought leadership. That’s huge on my list for twenty twenty five and twenty two and Right. Forever.

Does anybody else want to, like, chime in with how thought leadership has been useful for them so that Liesl sees that it’s, like, maybe not demonstrable, but ultimately core to growth?

No? Everyone’s like, that’s a good question. It’s not working for me either. Wait. What? Okay. Yeah.

I know. Go ahead. I yeah.

I haven’t done any, like, cold emails or posted on barely posted on social media, but I’ve still had, like, three to five leads a week, this year. And I think it’s because of the book and the podcast, basically. Like, I’m not doing anything else. So yeah.

And I I it doesn’t take much time. Like, doing a podcast takes an hour versus posting on Instagram every day takes ages. So if you’re gonna do one thing, I’d say do that. But I mean, they would have it.

But if you are gonna do one thing, do that. Yeah.

You can only do really one thing to start. Right? So one big thing and then reporting things. Done?

So I was going through the freelancing course yesterday, and then you said when you’re a thought leader, people pay you accordingly.

Yeah.

And that was like, boom. Right?

And it what I do to be a thought leader is I provide an executive brief so that when I call someone, I’ll say, I’ll share this executive brief with you to tell you why health care email marketing is changing, the key trends, what you can do to succeed, and why this matters.

And I’ll leave it with you so that you can share with your marketing teams if you even if you don’t work with me. That’s thought leadership, and that’s value that I’m providing for them, and it’s intriguing enough for them to wanna have a conversation with me.

Okay. Liezl, what are you thinking right now?

Well, I mean, lots of thoughts. Right?

So then the question would be because I have a finite amount of time. Right? And I am working on getting clients in the door.

What would be then the thing in your brain that I should focus on on the to do list versus the not to do list? Because I’ve thought about pitching podcast.

Also, I know that you said in one of the trainings that it’s, like, one of the eighty percent things to twenty percent things. So I am waffling a little bit. But what are your thoughts on that? Like, I’m down for it.

I wanna speak on stages. I haven’t thought about writing a book, but that could be the big thing. I don’t know. What’s the big thing that you would recommend?

I would recommend that you do a thing that leads you to be able to write a book out of that thing. So if the thing is a newsletter, that’s like a really thoughtful newsletter, Cool. As long as you’re like, okay. I’m gonna write a weekly newsletter that gives me fifty two weeks of newsletter at the end of it, and that could turn into a book. I could then repurpose that as a book, and then publish that at the end of the year, and that’s that. So, I think you need a book ultimately.

Everybody here needs a book. We started Copy School Pro last year last November with, like, write you down book.

And so some people did, and some people didn’t and hopefully still will, myself included.

Yeah. So I would do a thing that leads to a book. I wouldn’t I know that for Abbey, podcasts have recently paid off. I know that for Tarzan, they paid off.

I have never recommended pitching really anybody, mostly because I want them to to pitch me. It feels better. You can charge more. You can be different about it.

And not just for ego, but, like, it’s it’s a better dynamic than if you go out and ask. Yeah.

So I would do if I were you, do you wanna do you what’s easier content creation for you? Writing, being on camera, or being on voice over?

Writing is faster one.

Okay.

Videos.

I would do a newsletter.

I would, like, get on Substack or LinkedIn. Andy Prestadina has three hundred thousand people on his LinkedIn newsletter. He’s gonna be in in January to talk to teach in Coffee School Pro about how he got there and what you need to do. He is the man of start something and just keep fucking doing it. Like, where I’m like, you still send one email a week and you’ve been doing it for fifteen years.

So, yeah, that’ll be I would say if writing comes easiest to you, newsletter. Find the right platform and maybe that’s like q one. You figure out the right platform. You figure out what the newsletter is gonna be about.

You start to get the pieces together, like going on deep dive and putting the right folders in place. You start to familiarize yourself with the right tools to help you get that, like, your thoughts in place. Right. And then so you too, you’re in good shape to actually do the writing.

That’s what I would do if I were you. Then have the end of the year, simultaneously, you need to have everything you’ve written over the year ready to go in book format.

K. Yeah.

You can do that.

Awesome. Cool. Thank you. Awesome. Thanks, Liesl. Caitlin, what’s your win?

Hello.

Hello. So when I bought the Challenger sale book and started that, and talked to my second existing copywriting client about, the retainer offer and got a very positive response and a very nonchalant response where and this is where my question is.

Also for context, I am not charging five k for them because that would more than double our current retainer, which is, like, forty one hundred.

So I’m charging them thirty five hundred. I don’t have the yes just yet. We’re working through it. So that was what I got the positive response from, and it kinda launched them into oh, yeah. And we also, like, want to be optimizing, like, our opt in pages and the tripwire that you wrote and, like, all this stuff.

And the way so, okay, Caitlin. I’m trying to get this. I could collab forever. What’s your question?

That’s okay. Yeah. Of course.

Okay.

So they essentially just casually, like and with the rest of our retainer, which is, like, the copy deliverables, which is usually, like, one small project, one large project, and they know what that actually means.

That’s where they started throwing around these, like, optimizations. And they’re like, I don’t know if we, like, you know, do one every three months, just kinda look at different things. And it was just not what I want to do and not what is effective.

So they also kinda threw out there. She was like, name of clients been asking, like, I wish I had Caitlin’s brain for one hour every other week just to look at things. She could, you know, give us some ideas for tweaks on, like, these five things.

Then we could run those tweaks for a month then reassess. And this is before I told her about the standardized offer. So I think my question is, do I just ignore that part of the conversation, or do I have a plan b? Because I figured out the options I want to send to both of my clients based on how the first round of conversation went. Yeah. And I feel good about it. Should your client a, who’s the one talking about, I wish I had Caitlin every other week or month or whatever, is it worth, like, thinking about, like, a back pocket, like, insulting offer that is around that?

Mhmm.

And if so, what would you recommend for, like, setup and pricing of something like that?

Yeah.

So for client a, I’d recommend advisory. I would call it advisory. I’m in an advisory role here, and that is typically actually more expensive than you doing the work, yourself, and that’s because they could have access to all sorts of incredible ideas that come out of your brain. So I’d say you can be in an advisory capacity with them for five thousand dollars on retainer, minimum of six months.

And I would even go further and say minimum of twelve months. The more you make it sound, like, the more you think in your head, fuck, I hope I don’t have to do this, the more that like, people typically want it. So if you’re like, okay. Fine. I can do the advisory thing, five thousand dollars a month, minimum twelve months. Here’s how it works.

Meet with you once every two weeks. You bring your questions. We talk through them. There’s no limit on how long we spend in this call. It usually is gonna last about ninety minutes. Sometimes it goes three hours.

So for you and then ultimately, it will usually go for, like, sixty minutes, and they’ve got so many ideas downloaded from your brain, but it feels like you’re an adviser at that point. So I would do I would do that. I would also say if the other client, the one that is looking like thirty five hundred dollars, for retainer, it sounded like they were running the call from what you said. Like, they started taking off with what they want you to do.

Challenger said Oh, it’s because it it was asynchronous conversation.

Oh. Because yeah. And also both clients are thirty five hundred.

Okay. Cool.

Cool. But yes. So that was that was after I talked about it. Because one of them is, out of office.

So we’re just kinda doing looms, and then I’ll we’re gonna talk after. Okay. Sure. Yep.

But I don’t get them on a call. Be finished with challenger sale by then, and you’ll have a much better sense, I I would say, for how to run that call.

Yeah. Where you’re not saying it just now that I know that, like, looms, I get why it feels like they’re driving sometimes.

But definitely when you get on that call, it’s you’ll wanna be in the driver’s seat. Challenger will go a long way there.

So I don’t know if that’s helpful to you. I would do advisory, five thousand dollars a month. They get two days, and but that’s really that should be, like, blocked in such a way that you don’t have them saying, okay. We’ll take you all day those days.

No. No. No. That’s not how it works. I’m an adviser. Like, don’t be silly. So it could be an afternoon thing where you’re like, every second two Tuesdays a month, we’re gonna meet from two o’clock eastern until we’re done with that meeting.

And the goal is to get it done in ninety minutes, and they bring questions. They bring questions. You don’t say, hey. I’ve looked at all of this stuff, and here’s what I’m recommending.

They bring their questions. They bring their challenges.

The other way, the retainer, is you look at the stuff that you have done, and you say, here’s how we can make this work even better. Does that make sense? Does that make sense, Caitlin?

Yes.

And I’m back pocketing this for future Good.

People who want something like this.

Because, yeah, I’ve just made mistakes in the past with this client where I’ve just been so generous, and I’m just so in hands on with everything. So this would be a drastic whiplashy shift. But I love this for my back pocket for future. I think all the best revenue is gonna come from the new people that I get into my circle.

Okay. Cool.

Thank you.

Awesome. Thanks, Caitlin. Yeah. Andrew, what’s your win?

Can you hear me? It’s the first question. Okay. You can. My win is that as of this month, I’m now back to my pre twenty twenty three revenue. So twenty twenty three was a huge down year for me, largely for health reasons. And so now I’m back to where I was, at least in terms of revenue.

Profits down, quite back to where it was because I spent a lot of money this year, trying things out with a new digital business manager or trying things out with the VA. The DBM, the business manager is working very well. VA wasn’t working super well. Mhmm. So learned a lot there.

But, yeah, happy to have that revenue back up.

Thank you. My question or sort of topic, I guess, is kind of along the same lines to what we’re just talking about.

So with the idea of kind of moving into more, like, consulting advisory role. So, I’m I’m partnering right now with another copywriter to work on a new client that just needed a lot of, like, messaging work done before any of the kind of stuff that I would be done, works. It makes sense. And the person I brought in is, like, really, really good at running projects and, like, handling all of the kind of execution work and stuff like that.

And I think that sort of solidified for me how much I am, like, not into that. Like, I’m just not like, I I hate projects. I hate project management software. That’s why I figured out, like like, we have ClickUp right now and it, and it’s just, like, I spend more time just, like, annoyed about it than I do using it.

And I really don’t like, like, really getting in the weeds with all of the clients’ stuff. And then, like, I don’t really like being in this position of, like, then I present my work, and then they, like, even with all the guidelines, like, they tear it down. So so all of this to say that, like, there are a lot of things motivating me to move into more of, like, a consulting advisory role. I love the idea of being, like, a, you know, miniature April Dunford kind of thing where, like, things become up where my focus and my time becomes more about, like, building my stuff.

Like, these are my frameworks, and this is my book, and this is my thing. And then we come in, and we use we use those things to, like, help solve problems. But I’m not I’m not in ClickUp getting assigned, like, all of these little tasks that are, like, follow-up with so and so to make sure that they gave you feedback on that page, or, you know, did they check with that other stake you know? Hate it.

So, yeah, I guess, I I don’t necessarily have, like, a specific question as much as I’m, I guess, one, putting in a vote for maybe that there’s a month in twenty twenty five that’s devoted to, selling your your thinking.

But then also, if there any if there’s anything, like, given what you know about what I’m trying to do, if there are any pointers in how in helping me make that shift because I’m so you everything has been about selling deliverables that it’s it seems like a big shift for me to both mentally and logistically to start saying, like, no. You’re gonna pay me, and I’m just gonna help you with your problems.

So where does writing a book sit on your vision board? If not in twenty twenty five, when are you gonna write a book?

It’s very much in a just someday, but it’s not I did not put it on this year kind of thing. I have an idea for a book, but I don’t know if it’s, like, big picture enough for it to to stick specifically to what I’m trying to do.

Okay. So you think it has to be big picture? That’s something to unpack entirely. That’s cool.

I would say if you want the April done for business, follow what she’s done. Mhmm. So that means write a book and then get on stage. The book has to have a process, so read, really useful books, I think it’s called.

Have you read that?

No. But I saw Jane’s training about it.

It’s great. I would go read that, and I would put in q one strongly outlining that book.

And I wouldn’t also put too much pressure on yourself for it to be the perfect book.

Yeah.

I know that that’s, something everybody really wants, but there’s gonna be a second book, gonna be a third book probably as well. So not that you need them. It might be the perfect book and all you need. But you have to start writing it to find that out.

And if getting in the way of writing it is it needs to be x, y, or z, just put that thought aside and just start just start writing it. Just start out. See what see what a chapter feels like. Write it on your phone.

Whatever. Like, just when you’re sitting there, it’s okay. You don’t have to have it. It doesn’t have to be a big process.

But I would put that on there, Andrew, if that’s what you want. That’ll be the easiest. That’s the fastest. I know it seems like a long path, but it’s like the straightest path as the crow flies to getting you what you want.

It’s just yeah. It takes some time.

Yeah. Exactly. Write useful books. Exactly, Katie. Yep.

So, yeah, that’s what I would that’s that’s where I would go. And then we actually have April coming in in q one to do some talking. Yeah. Bob as well. So we’re gonna have a couple people in on how to sell your brain.

If it’s, you know, you need more tactics, need more, but, I mean, I think what you’ll find is write a book, get on stage, and talk about it again and again and again and again and again and again. And I know that that can be, like, freaky with your health. April has had lots of things she’s worked through as well.

So it doesn’t mean you have to get on a million stages. You can get on four really good fit stages a year and clean up.

You’ll also learn, I’m sure, that there are going to be quarters of absolute intense, panic from clients where I’m gonna hire you, I need you right now, and then there are other ones that are not.

April does workshops in real life. She doesn’t do advisory. She doesn’t actually stick around and implement or help you implement. So I think you’ll like a lot of it, then you’ll hear a lot of the downside as well. So all that to say, I’m that book ready to go. I know that it will be critical.

Awesome. Sounds good.

Cool.

I have that one, Stacy.

I do have that one.

Million Dollar Consulting. Yeah. I have it. I haven’t read that one.

But I have it. Yay. Yeah. That’s half the battle. No. It’s a very small part of the battle.

Okay. Don, what is your win?

Real quick. By the way, Dan Kennedy said when you write a book, only concentrate on the first twenty five pages because no one read most people don’t read beyond that anyway.

Yep. That’s why April’s book is thirty thousand words because her persona at her ICP reads books on flights, and that’s how long it takes. So thirty thousand words, you don’t need eighty thousand words. Right.

On my consent, I got my Clavico Clavio, certification. Nice. They’re right in my backyard.

Nice.

Yeah. They’re in Boston. And, they just came out with a new, predictive analytics certification that I’m diving into right now. So those are my wins.

Good. That’ll be a good certification.

Yeah. Okay.

Any questions, or we’re just with wins for Don today? Nothing.

Love it. Amazing. Okay. Well, that is a nice way to end today’s session.

Make sure you finish your goals, please, so that we can discuss them and really dig into what doesn’t feel right yet, in our Thursday session so that you can then enjoy the following week.

We’re entrepreneurs. It’s never really off, but a little bit off, at least off this.

Alright. So thanks again, y’all. We’ll see you on Slack. Have a good one. Bye.

Awesome.

Okay. Happy Monday. Happy continued goal setting. So how’s everybody doing with goal setting so far?

I’d love an update if you just wanna share anything that’s maybe getting in your way, if you haven’t had a chance, if it’s not working at all for you. I know I’ve struggled a lot in my time with, setting goals, or I’m like, I don’t know. I don’t know what the future holds. So, any thoughts or how any reactions?

Nobody?

You’re good? Hard to make choices, Andrew says. Okay.

K. Is anybody else feeling that?

Something like that. Caitlin says yes.

Alright. No one wants to come off mute today. Alright. Everyone’s just just being quiet.

I do a a goal workshop at the end of every year, so this is all sort of, like, I’m getting, like, an extra head start on the shop that I usually already do by doing this and making me think in in different angles too, so it’s really good.

I think that’s really interesting.

Does anybody else regularly do goal setting at this time of year? Dawn does. Katie does.

Others, not as much.

Yeah. I think that’s what’s interesting to me is people who do goal setting tend to be likely to hit goals, because there was a goal and they keep looking at their goals, the tricky thing is if you’re just doing goal setting as, like, just like procedural, we could just have to do the thing, so I will do the thing.

And then you never look at your goals again. You don’t think about what your goals really are, and that’s not great. So, one of my coaches, former coaches, said you should look at your goals three times a day.

Every single day you should be reviewing your goals not just once, but three times.

And I don’t. I don’t. I love the idea, but I I don’t. And, I think that that speaks a lot to yeah.

There’s a lot that that says, and I wish that I did. But I think I, like a lot of people, just kind of perform goal setting or have in the past. Now past few years, I’ve been taking it a lot more seriously, instead of just kind of falling in and, you know, doing the work and seeing what happens, that sort of thing. So, Claire, do you wanna add something?

Oh, yeah. I wanna say, like, I’m a real professional goal setter when it comes to, like, life and personal fitness and health and friendships and stuff, but I have never, like, dared to dream for the business side.

Okay.

Is the daring to dream part of goal setting? How’s that working for you? How are you negotiating that, Claire?

Oh, sorry. I didn’t hear your last word.

Oh, I was wondering how your like, the dare to dream part is interesting language to hear from you. Is it getting in the way? Is the dream good or bad when it comes to goal setting?

Oh, Claire’s gone.

Is anybody else here?

No?

Yeah. I’m sorry.

I just turned off my video because it’s my Internet seems to be Alright.

How about you?

Okay. Cool.

I’ll go well. Claire is sorting out everything. Yeah. Yeah. I guess I this might be, you know, specific to my psychology, but, I think that I don’t have a problem with the sort of dreaming big part of it. I really enjoy that part.

A problem is once the the half like, I’m reading vivid vision now. So, like, once the how voice kind of gets into it, I find that, so much of my indecision seems to be driven by, like, avoidance where it’s like, okay. I could go in this I could go in this direction, but then I’d have to, like, have full time employees, and I don’t wanna do that. Or, oh, I could go in this direction, but, you know, I don’t know. That’s not like I don’t know. There there’s always just the other voice kind of comes in.

And so I think that’s a lot of what’s holding me back is this idea of, like, maybe it’s a form of perfectionism, but there’s some sort of ideal that I could just someday oh, you know, I wake up in the morning and I do oh, I sit down and I do this for an hour and then I go back a day, and then the money just pours in and all that. You know? So I think that there is, yeah, I think I think that the, yeah, without full no. Agreed, Stacy.

But I think sometimes, yeah, it’s it’s that I don’t want to accept that there are trade offs with different decisions.

So, yeah, good at the dream big part, not as good at the part that goes after that where it’s like, okay. How does this happen?

Okay. Okay. We’ll come back to that. It’s interesting. Caitlin?

Yeah. I am the type where goal setting has just been difficult for me when it’s, like, far off, but this three year thing works a little bit better for me because I’m the type of person when people are like, what do you want? Even if it was like, what do you want in a man? Write it down.

Like, I’m like, I don’t know. World show me, and then I’ll see. Like so I’m kinda like that a little bit with my business too. So what was helpful for me with Viv Vivint Vision is he said, like, you create this, and first of all, it’s only three years out.

And then also, it can change. So, like, if it changes for good reason, not just because I’m a flake, that flexibility helps me. The other thing that has helped me is, like, this workbook, like, making it so tangible Mhmm.

Has has helped. But, yeah, that’s the only thing that’s kind of been in my way in the past is, like, out in the the future. Like, I don’t know. Like, you know, I tell you I wanna live in a tiny house, but I refuse to leave my apartment in New York City.

So, so yeah.

So there’s just a little bit of that in my personality, but this short term with the flexibility of things changing is kinda helpful.

Yeah. Okay. That’s that’s interesting too.

Jessica, you say you’re the opposite of Andrew. You can’t figure out what you want. Is anybody else in the same boat?

Yeah. Claire is yeah. Yeah. I think that that’s one of the things that so when I was in Rise session last Monday, I struggled many many, many ways in that session. There’s a lot of quiet there.

But other than the quiet, which I get is his coaching style. But the thing that made me struggle was was when it came to unhinged ideas, I didn’t get a lot of unhinged ideas in the room. And I was like, okay. So I was talking to my husband that night on our, like, dog walk. Like, am I wrong?

Want people to have big visions?

Is it something that comes naturally to people, or is it scary?

I know that some people think down here and some people think up here, and then there’s all the ranges in between. So I’m I’m I’m just letting you know going into today’s session when we’re talking about Vivint Vision for three years out, I am aware that it’s not easy for everybody to go, here’s the big thing that I want, and then here’s how I’m gonna get it. Oh, that’s great, Cody. Yeah.

So if it’s hard for you, I think you know that’s okay. And if it’s easy for you, I think you know that’s also okay.

Both are I want you to know that I think both are valid, and I understand if I am going to push you as much as I can today to get bigger picture with your twenty twenty seven goal, what that really looks like, and I’ll do my best not to force my own ideas for what I want for you onto the conversation.

It’ll probably happen, though. So, with everything understood, I do wanna jump in. Did anybody work ahead on pages twenty onward? Has anybody done these pages already? Little Andrew did. Don, of course, did.

Cody did. So some people did. Okay. What I want to do then I do wanna take some time to fill this this being page twenty one and page twenty two before we kind of break for a few minutes just to start filling it in and then, like, reflect on what that feels like, does anybody who has worked ahead want to even just read out from page twenty one, which is it’s the headline is it’s December thirty first twenty twenty seven. And then there’s the table there. It says, what do you see when you encounter your brand from a distance?

Does anybody who has completed that? Could someone please read theirs out so others can hear it?

Don? Cool. Thanks, Don.

Uh-huh. So I see the brand represented across multiple channels, LinkedIn, YouTube, and industry events.

K.

I noticed ads highlighting successful health care email campaigns I’ve created for leading organizations. And my website and testimonials are regularly cited as resources for improving patient engagement.

Cool. Okay. Thank you, Dawn.

In hearing that, hopefully, it’s starting to get you thinking about what yours might be if you haven’t written it in. Does anybody else want to share?

Like, Liezl. Yeah.

Are you talking about it’s December thirty first twenty twenty seven?

Yeah. Yeah. Just the first block that you can fill in there.

Okay. So the first block I filled in was, it says, do you see when you encounter your brand from a distance? Fresh clean branding with being strong, energetic women behind us, empowering women in tech, cultivating communities and brands. And then I talk more about, like, the branding as a whole. So I have, like, what it looks like, what the feel is, and stuff like that. And then I get deeper into the, like, specific of the vision as you can know.

Yeah. Okay. Cool.

Okay. Thanks, Liesl. Thanks, Dawn.

Who hasn’t just to be honest. It’s okay. Who hasn’t finished vivid vision?

Couple people.

Okay. One of the things that he says to do in vivid vision is when you write your vision out, put it on your website, put it in your marketing materials, and then share that around with people, which I think is really, like, brave. It’s quite a thing to put yourself out there that way. I don’t think a lot of us are that comfortable with it, because of risk of failure and public failure. I said I was gonna build this big thing, and then life happens, or I decided I didn’t want it, and I have to talk to people about that.

But still so keep I want you to, like, be thinking that I should make this public because when I make it public, I am more likely to hold myself up to doing the thing versus keeping it quiet.

What part of it to put out there on your site? I mean, yeah, according to the book, like, all of it. Like, he writes a full manifesto and, like, publishers, you can find his PDF that he puts together, when you just Google his name.

So the author that is, who’s Coleman Karma, something like that. I the digital version, I don’t have it in front of me.

So okay. Now I know people haven’t all read this, but the idea with vivid vision is really bringing it to life. Like, go from high level to eye level where you have people to see it. So what I wanna do is take five minutes.

It’s not a lot of time. It’s not enough time. We’re not gonna get through everything here. But I want you to take five minutes to imagine it is three years from today.

Let’s pretend whatever. December ninth twenty twenty seven.

If you haven’t already completed this, I want you to fill in the first two or three blocks on, sorry, on the page that begins at December thirty first twenty twenty seven, which is technically page twenty one, which I know that there’s no page numbers in here, and I’m sorry about that.

But, fill those in for the next five and a half minutes.

Really, really working to to make it clear. So you’re a copywriter, this is easier for you. You get to not summarize.

You you map you show it, like, really visualize it.

And ideally, think bigger. Allow yourself to. You’ve got your whole life to think small. Just take this moment to think as big as you can about what that thing could be and what you want it to be as well. It might there might be some ideal state, but you don’t want that ideal state. What is the ideal state that you want in three years?

K. We’re gonna take five minutes. Fill in as many as you can on that page, as many sections as you can. Don’t rush yourself, but you will wanna finish this before the end of the year. And then we’re gonna move two pages down. Okay?

Good? Alright.

Okeydoke. Hopefully, that was enough time. It wasn’t, but it’s something.

Okay. So let’s oh, I’m just gonna resume. There we go.

Now what you need to do is finish filling that in, and I found it really satisfying. Go through the book. This is like a high like a like, excerpts, not the complete process that he walks you through, but it it helps. So go through finish the book, but finish these sheets as well, in order to have goals that actually align with what you wanna do and that are doable, and you know what they look like and you’re not busy guessing.

And you want to do this all. Finish all of the workbook. We’re we’re chipping away at it over the rest of the month because on the last Monday of the month, Shane is going to help you create q one daily to do list, which is, like, massive game changer. If you’re doing them, well done you.

But this will help you understand how you how you should be spending your time in q one in order to get to these goals. And then then you’ll repeat the process in q two, q three, q four in order to reach your twenty twenty five goals and realign reset expectations. Okay. So I’m not gonna ask anybody to read any of those out.

What I wanna do is move on to a couple pages down, which looks like this. You should be seeing. I know that you are. What do I need to do to live that vision in twenty twenty seven?

If you have not arrived at a vision yet, hop to it. It’s December ninth.

We’ve been at this for ten days already.

So let’s imagine what I want you to do is work backwards here. So on this page, you wanna write out what your twenty twenty seven vivid vision basically is, and this isn’t all the stuff because it can get enormous. But it’s really like, okay. What do I see for my business? Basically summarized. It’s not as vivid as it was before, but here’s what it’s gonna look like. You start with that final state for three years out and then you’re gonna work back from there.

So let’s do this together to kind of get, not for yourself, for the one that’s showing showing here, just to get like the juices flowing, get people throwing ideas out.

So if my goal was this, by the end of twenty twenty seven, I will have a five million dollar a year agency with ten full time employees who run everything for me. I show up on sales calls to close and on monthly account calls to keep clients happy, but I spend no more than fourteen hours a week on the business. The rest of the time, I’m writing books, at least one a year, and running our podcast while guesting on other podcasts.

I speak on fifteen stages a year, none of them overseas as I don’t want to live with jet lag. Okay. I like to kinda know what twenty twenty seven looks like, what it would mean three years from now. What would need to be true for me in twenty twenty six, generally, in order for twenty twenty seven to happen?

There’s not really a wrong answer. It’s just like brainstorming. There’s a wrong answer if you’re like, buy candy canes now. It’s like, obviously, that’s unrelated entirely. So what’s a related thing that you would want to do in twenty twenty six?

Yeah. Fire away, Britney.

I guess just the way that I would approach something like this is I take my end goal and I sort of reverse engineer. Right? So it’s sort of like I would be like, what services am I offering? How much am I charging?

Any would I need in order to hit my goals? So it was sort of like I would like, okay. Like, I need a hundred clients doing ten k each with a five k retainer. Whatever that is. K. Then I would just step it through twenty twenty six to the twenty twenty seven goal, I guess.

Yeah.

So okay. If we were to start with I’m gonna have a five million dollar agency.

Okay.

How what will we probably need to be at in twenty twenty six to get to five million the following year? Just guessing.

So money wise, we’d probably need to be at two point five if we’re doubling revenue new every year.

So then in twenty twenty five, I would need to be at one point three if we’re doubling every year, let’s imagine.

And then no. Go ahead.

I was gonna say too, and I guess sometimes I think of it, like, they talk about how the body heals. Right? And it it’ll say, like, the body is going along like this, and you feel like you’re not making progress out of surgery, and then it kind of just shoots up and the healing curve is very fast. And I feel like the twenty twenty five goals, it’s like that’s when you’re really refining your standardized offer. You’re really figuring out who you are, what you offer, getting those systems in place because then you can spend twenty twenty six, like, executing the systems for lack of a better word. That’s how I would approach it. Totally.

Okay. So that’s fantastic. So then what would you do to change those numbers around? Let’s say we’re just playing with numbers at this point.

What would you say in twenty twenty five you would allow yourself to only bring in I mean, am I crazy to say, like, I would be comfortable lowering that to, like, almost three hundred if in two thousand twenty seven I was gonna hit get five million as long as I was putting the systems in place for growth? So, like, maybe I’m unrealistic there.

What does what do I what does that what do others think?

Three hundred thousand this year in order to put the systems in place. Okay. How will you know the systems are going to be systems that get you to five million in twenty twenty seven?

And that’s, like, not to challenge. It’s like a real that’s what I would be asking myself. Okay. If I’m only gonna get and, honestly, if I want in two years from this date Mhmm.

To be at five million, what what what needs to happen? So if I’m like, okay. I’m gonna get three hundred thousand, but then here is what would need to be true for me. So what would you need to have in place by the end of twenty twenty five?

Well, like, first go ahead.

Like, I guess, for me, getting very clear on the culture that my business, as it grows, is going to maintain my hiring practices, what kind of because, right, like, you can’t grow unless you have the right scope of work, I guess.

Like, for me, just kind of, you know, scope of work, I guess. Like, for me, just kind of nailing down the criteria of all of those things. Yeah. And it’s so intensive to do that.

Yeah.

Okay. So for me, I hear that and go like, okay. That’s wonderful.

Does that take a whole year?

Does it honestly, does it?

Maybe.

But if you’re gonna allow yourself like, when you think of the luxury of time as you’re an entrepreneur, right, it’s it’s more valuable than money is. So if you are effectively hiring yourself at a valuation, like, next year, the following year, or two years after this, you’re doing five million a year, then really basic English major math is like, okay. You’re you’re spending a lot of money by taking that year to figure out that criteria. Do you need the whole year?

What do what do people think?

I would say no.

Go ahead. Sorry.

I was gonna say, it’d probably take you about a good solid three months two to three months.

Yeah. But it’s not a concentrated period of time.

No. Right?

It’s like you don’t sit down for two months and come out the other side with this factory line produced systems, culture figured out. Right? Like, this is stuff that you also figure out as you go.

I guess for me feel like I put the lower number because I myself am not doing one point two this year. And so it’s like, well, I wanna kind of be closer to where I’m at. I can still hit my five in twenty twenty seven. Right? Like, just like blow if we’re blowing the doors off of vision, but I also don’t wanna be unrealistic.

I and I hear that, and I agree with you that it’s a hockey stick. Right? It’s typically not this line. It’s the hockey stick. So I feel that you could you could in twenty twenty five make three hundred thousand and then two years later be at five million.

However, that’s also like, that’s a really good clickbait headline and it makes you wonder is it realistic? Is it or will you find yourself making a million two years later?

Because that’s still, like, solid two point five x, three x ish number off of this year.

I don’t want what I what I what I wanna encourage here is whatever this number is that you wanna get to, we’re still just talking money. We’re not even getting into, like, any of the other stuff that happens along the way to get there. If you wanna make five million three years out, twenty twenty five, yes to the planting season. Yes. Like, we have to plant in order to harvest later.

How long is that planting season?

Is it maybe the first six months of twenty twenty five? Then you see how it goes, and you spend the second six months of it trying to harvest or, like, get it to the right place that you can harvest later.

How’s everybody else feeling right now? What are you thinking when you look at those numbers?

Not for your own goals even, but just as an as an exercise in goal setting and coming up with what to do with the vision. Stacy?

Well, my first, my first thought is I wanna know in that five million dollars scenario what that looks like. How many so why I wanna know the why behind that five million dollar agency goal because well, what is it that you want personally?

You know? That may sound good, but but what’s underneath that? Because there may be other ways to to get that thing.

Right? And then if if if this looks like, you know, if five million a year looks like how many clients? Let’s just say how how let’s just pick a pick a number. How many clients?

Is that ten huge clients? Is it a hundred smaller clients? You know, I try to play with orders of magnitude of of ten and see what that looks like. In in which case, if it’s gonna be getting to a hundred clients at x volume, then what I wanna do is get to one of those clients in year one and figure out how to do that, because then I’m sure that somebody can pay me, and I improve that thing, and then I can multiply it out and scale it up.

But I’m I think a little maybe a little differently because I’m, you know, very entrepreneurial about this and consulting about things like this is is what I do.

So No.

There and everybody will think differently about it.

And I think that it’s wonderful to have a full conversation about this. The things that you and Britney both quickly said, like, we need to know how many clients that how many clients is that, and that’s like digging into spreadsheet kind of stuff. Right? Like, you could open up a spreadsheet and figure that out immediately. You could ask AI, tell me what I need to do to get to this number, which could be a great a very valid contribution to figuring this out.

Okay. Who else? Jessica, you wanted to pop in with something?

Is that okay? Can you hear me alright?

Yeah.

Perfect. No. I was I’m so glad you did this example and that we’re having this discussion because this was my twenty I I think I’m in a rebellious phase right now. I was sitting here going, I’m not showing up to these anymore. Next year, the word of the year is fundamentals.

So this was gonna be my plan for next year is just figure out the systems, figure out whatever. But I’m so glad I’m talking about it because my rebellion’s kicking in going, wait a second. Vivint Vision said that he they gave the Elon Musk example. And if he had thought about the whys and the hows and blah blah blah, that’s not really the point.

So I think this is where I struggle when setting goals and visions, especially, because I have that well, is that realistic? But that wasn’t really what the book was about. So I’m struggling internally with the, well, one,

want. And then, two, do I I’m trying to shut off even if I did figure out what I wanted, shut off the realistic because that’s not what the challenge was with vision in my opinion.

Am I misreading the book?

Or Oh, I don’t I am yeah.

I think that’s great and also awesome to contribute here.

Realistic is good because otherwise, like, we’re just building unicorns that aren’t actual. Like like, unicorns and billion dollar companies. We’re just building something that’s not gonna ever exist.

So I think it’s great. I think others would agree that it’s great to get realistic about it.

What what this does, an exercise like this works both ways. Right? You reverse engineer only to find out, okay. My twenty twenty five goal is too low potentially, or I really need to refine this more in order to make twenty twenty six possible, in order to make twenty twenty seven possible. Like, it’s it’s both ways. So it’s not like I wanna get to five million in three years, so that means I have to do one point five in twenty twenty five.

Maybe.

But if you’re like, I don’t have what it takes to do one point five in twenty twenty five, then it could be, okay.

Do four hundred thousand this year.

Make sure you get as much figured out as you can. Build in forgiveness if you don’t get that all figured out because you’re gonna realize that the systems that get you to three million are not the systems that get you to five, and so on and so forth. The clients that you need are going to change over time. What they expect will change over this very short period of time.

Okay? So if I’m gonna do four hundred thousand in twenty twenty five, I might be able to double that or at least get to six hundred thousand the following year. But if that’s true, when am I hiring people? Because profitability is is baked into having the right people in the room.

And if I’m only doing six hundred thousand, I don’t have enough money to hire the right people. So it works all these different ways. Right? It’s an important conversation to keep to be having right now instead of sitting by yourself trying to build this thing in alone.

Liesl?

Yeah. I just wanted to say, when I started my business, I hired a business coach who, had me set, like, these big things up front.

But I didn’t have a business before, so I didn’t know what I was gonna build. I just knew that I had to build something because we needed the money.

And they now exit couldn’t work. So she I mean, like, get a big vision of, like, okay. What let’s keep the lights on. And then once we did that, what I noticed pretty quickly was that planning became a spiral for me.

Like, it’s just like, okay. But what about this? What about this? What about this? And so I would just sit at my desk, like, spiraling over, like, okay.

What’s first? And I would start something, but I wouldn’t quite finish it. And so what she told me to do like, she just broke it down into stuff. She’s like, this is what like, this is what we need to get off the ground.

You need a website, and you need an offer, and you need to go she chose, Facebook groups. So I went to Facebook groups, lined up calls.

And that helped me is being able to say, okay. This is my goal. I’ve broken it down. I’m not even gonna look at everything I have to do at that time.

I’m going to just focus on this line item right here that I have to do for this quarter because I trust that if I continue doing this thing, I’m going to hit that. And I ended up hitting it really well. But, my d h Deepgram just is overwhelmed when I see everything all at once and then try and say, like, oh, yeah. This is totally attainable because realistically, it may not be totally attainable where at.

Yeah. Fair. Totally. Great example. Britney?

Let me ask you a question. So sometimes when I’m brainstorming vision with my husband, I’ll, like I’m essentially, like, in brainstorm phase. I’m, like, the vision, and I’m like and he immediately comes in. What about this?

What about this? And I’m like, okay. That almost has to be, like, a separate meeting. Like, right now, we’re not gonna worry about what can’t happen or the roadblocks to it.

We’re only looking for what do we want. And like Stacy said, it’s not just the five million dollar agency. It’s the lifestyle. It’s like, here’s how many hours I wanna work a day.

Here’s the flexibility that I need with my family. Here’s the kind of food I wanna eat. Here’s how I’m gonna outsource some responsibilities I don’t care about at home so that I can spend that time on the business or whatever the whole vision is. But I’m I guess I’m just asking, is that kind of what we’re doing here?

It’s like protecting the dream space, and then we kind of get to the alright. Now let’s go through this and see how we can like Liesl was saying, like, when you’re overwhelmed, it’s, like, either increase support or decrease the step, you know, so that we can start moving forward, I guess.

Yeah. I think so what I know after years and years of going through goal setting sessions with people is everybody is so different. Some are very tactical.

Some move quickly into, a part of the conversation that feels like it’s for me, I don’t want it yet. Like, let’s look at the problems with that. Let’s look at how hard it would be to get there.

Like, what’s the point? We don’t need this that goal, then all we’re gonna think about is how hard it is to get there. Like, let’s just call it you know, throw in the towel and sit back and read books all day then and hope someone feeds us.

So I yeah. The my hope for everybody here in going through this exercise is we have these conversations. You go to these additional brainstorming sessions that are set up here that are completely optional, of course, and you come up with the right kind of plan for you. So for you, Britney, when you’re saying, okay. I want a thing to also, like, I have a vision of the kind of food that I’ll be able to provide to my family and other things that to me wouldn’t make their way on here because I’d be like, well, yeah, because I have so much extra money that, like, I don’t have to tell myself what I’m gonna prioritize.

The thing I have to tell myself is I need to get to five million dollars. I need to get to fifty million dollars in twenty twenty seven in order to buy that giant piece of land outright, buy a tractor for it, hire a farming consultant, figure out irrigation.

Like, those are real things I’d have to have in my mind in or because they’re not natural. They’re not gonna come naturally to me. There’s so much that’s gonna come naturally to you. That’s why it’s like this is a small piece of paper.

There’s not enough room for all the things that you have to figure out. It’s really just what are the things that I need to, for me, I think, force myself to do in order to get here. So if I look at this and go, alright. I can’t reach five million dollars in twenty twenty seven realistically unless some miracle happens.

I can’t plan on miracles. They may happen, but I can’t put them in a plan. So to get there, I need to have, let’s say, two million in twenty twenty six.

And if I’m getting that two million because I’ve got so many great systems in place and I get those systems in place in the first two two quarters of twenty twenty five, then I can probably get to a million by the second half of twenty twenty five if I figured everything out. I don’t know if that answers your question, Britney. Does it? Does it come in the vicinity of it?

Yes.

And I guess could could you give us maybe a real life example of yourself where you set kind of a big goal?

Sort of just how it played out for you?

Yeah. I mean, my, set big goals, they don’t work, and then you backtrack to the one that was most likely to work anyway. So when so okay. So an example for me gosh. I’d have to think of something.

The AC side of my business has always been the easy side.

It just comes easily. So I’ve never really had to plan for that outside of just keep hiring people. Just keep hiring people. Keep your foot on the gap.

Keep hiring. Clients come in. The team does the work. You live life.

Copy copy school, copy school professional, the product side of the business is the more challenging one. And so for me, I have goals galore around that. But then I do I’m currently actually working towards the goal I just set. I need to have a lot of money to buy that eleven acres that I looked at yesterday, in order to have some sort of flower farm type thing that I can enjoy after hours when I’m not doing this awesome work once I have figured this out.

But as for an actual goal, I don’t know. I don’t know. It’s mostly just like stay the course, try not to get in your way, and keep hiring and training. And then when it’s not working, fire people quickly and make sure you have money there to pay out severance so that they don’t sue you.

It’s not a it’s not a sexy thing at all.

Stay the course is a hard thing for me. Stay focused is a hard thing for me because there’s so much opportunity. So it’s not a good answer, but that’s my ongoing challenge. I’ve set the money challenges, and I don’t give a shit about money when it comes down to it. I like the things you can do with money, but then I need a plan for what to do with the money.

And I don’t really have that side of buying a farm.

Make myself happy, Stacy?

I just wanted to add that, you know, I like I like to allow for exponential things, and I have had that happen many, many times because, really, everything can change in a day. Everything can change in one conversation.

And examples of that, even, you know, years ago when I I I had a line of, of jewelry that started from scratch, a fashion line. And I went from, you know, starting that business with fifteen dollars to being in six hundred stores all around the world within a couple of years.

Right. And that was before the Internet existed. So that was and, you know, it it things happen. You know, I met someone at a coffee shop one day, and they introduced me to a company that ended up buying hundred thousands of units, and it snowballed from there.

So I think that for me, I’ve always been you know, I do the mechanical nuts and bolts, and I show up every day and do the work, but I also make space for the the exponential, surprising, synchronistic things to happen. And I’ll do things like use a mantra, you know, even though I don’t know how, I’m so grateful that I have my billion dollar company. You know? And and I do that, and I try to be available to that.

And, you know, even just with with my software company right now, my twenty thousand MRR is equivalent to most SaaS companies’ two hundred thousand MRR because they’re paying a team of ten people, and I’m a one person. So it’s it’s all profit almost.

Yeah.

And, so I have the equivalent of a two point five million dollar annual company just with twenty thousand MRR.

Yeah. And the other thing is, I mean, I can I can have a partnership situation come up that could enable me to get a thousand clients from through one partnership overnight? So it can if I lay the groundwork, things can exponentially increase. So that’s what I just wanted to add is to make yourself be available to possibility.

That’s all.

Love that. I love that, and I love the reminders of key things. Right? Like partnerships.

If we we don’t have mantras in here. We don’t have this is my statement for the year, but maybe maybe you should have your statement for the year. It might be more around saying, yes. It might be get out of my house.

It might be travel and meet with people when wherever I go in order to say I am opening myself up to the possibilities that I don’t know what I have to do in twenty twenty five. I know I have to get to a billion dollars in revenue. I know that that will take doing things that I’m not currently doing or else I would probably already be there or close to it. So I have to say yes to things.

I can’t I can’t say no as a default. I have to do things that are uncomfortable.

I leave this part open in order to get to the more vivid twenty twenty seven I have. Close-up, it’s all blurry.

Here, it’s a little better.

What so what that’s really coming down to for me is maybe you leave twenty twenty five open outside of really high level stuff. Like, alright. Well, I have to get to a million dollars. There’s no two ways around that.

I will figure out how. I will probably do that by no longer saying yes to low value work. So if it’s under ten thousand, then I say no to it.

What else has to be true for me to get to a place where in twenty twenty six, I am halfway to my goal? And keeping in mind that it’s, like, not what I want to do. What do I need to do? You won’t wanna do most of the stuff that it takes to get to where you really wanna go or you probably would already be there and you wouldn’t be in any sort of coaching program to get there.

This is the thing. I know we’re low on time.

There are constraints that you’ll need to remove, and this is where I want you to start with in twenty twenty five and then go forward. So going back and doing this work, we work back from twenty twenty seven on this one. Then on the constraints, we work in twenty twenty five onward. Those constraints could be around okay.

I look at what I need to get to that. I don’t have the systems. Britney, as you were saying, I don’t have the systems. I definitely don’t have the team.

I don’t have the right mindset on team maybe, or I have the right mindset. I want it, but I haven’t figured out managing people. Okay. That’s a constraint.

You can work on that in twenty twenty five, and maybe twenty twenty five isn’t the year to work on. Maybe it’s like, okay. No. I can put that off in twenty twenty five while I figure out systems.

But at some point before the end of twenty twenty six, I need to have removed the crap in my head and the actual processes around people. So that’s what you’re gonna do next. I’m just, like, getting us through the final parts, and then we work through basically the sunshine growth model. So you have to have the other sorted out in order to begin moving toward better understanding, like, the detail.

Course, it’s vision. We’re starting high and then we’re narrowing down.

So in time for your Thursday session, I know that it’s like I’ve got other things to do. This is critical for your business. You want to get to a place where you have these parts sorted out around changes that you’ll need to make in your skills in order to get their skills being, of course, the copywriting skills that you sell, the list building skills and other skills you have to run your business itself, your authority. What are you going to do in twenty twenty five in order to build your authority, and how will you know you’ve done it? Basic OKRs, which most people are familiar with.

Leverage, what can you do around, systems, processes, tools, people.

And again, in twenty twenty five because you’ve already done the thinking, and importantly, you have to tell yourself what you won’t do yet.

And later on, we have a to do list and a not to do list coming up that’s really, really tactical.

But with ten minutes left in this, I want to leave you, challenge you to fill in the rest of this, block out a couple hours. This is time well spent on your business, on what you’re going to do in order to be ready for your Thursday session, which is all about the actual plan to start getting there. So you have to know where you’re trying to get. K? Claire?

Sorry. In the middle of taking notes. I just to go back to our our previous conversation, I have a question. I think in everything that we’ve done this session, I feel like we’ve kind of consolidated what one of the, like, things that aren’t really matching up in terms of vision, goals, etcetera.

Everything that I’m writing is, like, entrenched in having a personal brand.

Okay. But everything that I’m doing, I’m trying to build, like, an agency.

Does that make sense?

Yeah.

So I feel like I should probably be trying to build Claire’s authority rather than, like, agency. Does that does that yeah.

I’m not really sure how to finish the No.

Agree. Exactly. It’s twenty twenty five is the Claire brand, the personal brand, setting you up for twenty twenty six to start putting together the way to monetize that brand, which is typically going to be some form of agency or professional services, whether that’s consulting or whatever that might may be. And then what does that look like in twenty twenty seven?

So it’s again, this works both ways. If you start with twenty twenty seven and then you get to twenty twenty five and go, I don’t like any of the things that I have to do to make that work. What I really feel like I’m missing here is, like, the personal brand stuff that I want to be working on, then start there. Then in twenty twenty five, I’m gonna work on my personal brand and know that the trickier thing is to say, here’s my starting point.

I’ll figure out the goal later. That’s like you don’t know what you’re aiming for. So as long as you’re, like, deliberately putting something together, that’s all we’re trying to do with this exercise.

Be deliberate, not accidental. You can grow accidentally, but you can grow better deliberately.

Actually focusing, knowing what your eight to ten hours a day are going cater to. So you don’t sit there on Thursday going, I don’t have client work today. What should I be working on? Like, you know I should be working on this.

Good. It’s Thursday. It’s my book day or whatever that you have in mind for your first friend, Claire. Yeah.

That that makes total sense. Okay.

And in terms of I feel like I just need a reminder.

Building a, like, million dollar agency is totally possible. Right? It’s, honestly, it’s so possible.

I I’m annoyed with myself because I know that I come off weird when I, like, say it’s so easy.

But the money is right there. Brands have so much money and are so struggling. If you can just get in front of these people already, they have money for what you do. Your job is to get in front of them and most freelancers put their toe in, take their toe out, put their toe in, take the toe.

Just get in the fucking water and now we can build something. Right? We can grow because money is out there, but you have to commit to it. That’s my that’s my f bomb for the day.

Yes. I love it. Thank you. Caitlin says exactly.

Jump in. Cody?

Yeah.

I just have a question on one of the questions in the workbook because I’ve been filling in the stuff out.

And I got to the, question where it says, what do you do in a week? And I I feel like that’s a little ambiguous, and I’m not sure what what that means.

Like, what it it’s on page twenty eight, in Canva.

Yes. In the printed version, what do you do in a week? One sec. I just don’t wanna scroll through it while everybody’s watching it go by. It’s nauseating.

So that’s still a little bit out.

Oh, it was part of it’s December thirty first twenty seven and Oh, it’s down there.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Sorry about that. Absolutely.

The what do you do in a week? Yeah. And then how to yeah. I know it it’s it’s lower level, but, yeah, it’s really a question of, like okay.

So we’re a vivid. We’re looking around. You can look all around and see the whole three-dimensional version of your business. You can hear people.

There’s, like, a tactile, like, here’s what my business is.

And that just includes what do you do in a week, and that could be three years out in a week where I had on that block that I shared, I spend fourteen hours a week on the business itself. The rest of the time I spend on podcast and on writing books and on guesting and possibly on traveling.

So that would be a thing that you would do. In a week, you would spend block out two days of the week. You’re very intentional. Two days of the week is there for business itself, for operations, meetings with your team.

That’s Monday, Tuesday. This is getting very vivid. Right? So Monday, Tuesday, I give myself to my team.

Thursday, Friday are writing days for me. Wednesday is podcasting day. Saturday, I do x, y, or z if Saturday factors in because it’s three years out and life looks different. Maybe your kids are boarding school.

Not that I’m saying they should you know what I mean?

Yeah.

So that’s what I would say.

Just just search for the c so that you know in three years, you’re not spending forty hours a week on the business. Clients barely see you. And when they do, they’re so happy to see you, because you’re not easy to access anymore.

Yeah.

So at that point, now I’m thinking, like because right now, I’m obviously gonna be the one to, like, present the retainer and be like, this is what we so in three years from now, I guess, would that also look like that?

Like, that’s what you’re showing up for is just those things?

Or That’s all your financial goals are, I would say. Like, do you want to have a salesperson at that point? Do you wanna have and if you if if you don’t wanna be running those calls, you want to have someone closing for you, then you need a salesperson. Okay. So what needs to happen in order for you to get there?

Oh, I mean, like, you know, like, presenting the project. Like, okay. This is what we did for you this month. Well, that part. Yes.

Yes. Manager.

You probably unless like, depends how much time you wanna spend on the business in that year. If you’re if you’re like, I’m all in. I don’t wanna write a book. I will have written the book in twenty twenty six.

So twenty twenty seven, I’m back all in on this business, and we’re just exploding it. Then maybe you are on those on all on a lot more calls than you’d expect because you’re really white gloving everything in order to get that feedback in. It’s a learning year for you. You wanna make sure clients are so happy and all they’re doing is talking about you.

Okay. Cool. Then you’re on those calls.

But that depends on what your overall goal is in order to know what that day of today looks like.

Mhmm. Yeah. Okay. Cool. Thank you. Awesome. Thanks, Cody. Britney?

This would be helpful for me. I don’t know about anyone else, but I would love, like, five to ten examples of what a retainer standardized offer looks like. What are people offering for the five grand retainer? Like I just want examples so that because I’m finding myself, like, going kind of more than I need to above and beyond, and I really need to pull that back. And so Most most and you’re not alone there, Britney.

A lot of people jump too. I should shove more stuff in here.

What which the more you get to have these conversations with the right ICP, the right business that forwards you and wants this stuff, they don’t actually want more from you. Like, they’re not nobody is sitting around tallying up how much did Britney give us this week. They’re really just like, what are the results? Like, what happened?

What’s my problem? Exactly. Okay. So cool. So I I know there are people in here.

I’m looking at Andrew. Andrew’s running retainer projects that are optimization. That’s exactly the idea.

What I what what a lot of creams gloss over is that we were guessing. We were guessing. It’s a really strong educated guess, but the first thing we put out there is just a guess. Good guess. Might be wrong though.

And I know that might sound like, well, who would sell that as a service to fix the mistakes that I might have just made back here? But it’s, it’s not a mistake. It’s part of the process, and the right ICP absolutely knows that. They know that you don’t hand over perfect work that converts at a hundred percent. It might convert at two percent. It might convert less they had before. That’s normal.

But if you abandon it, if you walk away, then no one on their team no one set it up. So how are they going to be able to optimize it? They weren’t even available to set the thing up. So you come in and say, okay.

I can set this up, but let’s work on this as a full project. That means I’m gonna set this up for you and then I’m gonna spend six months making it better. Okay? So if that’s the fundamental idea behind the retainer, then it’s only what you you break off pieces of the thing that you set up upfront while measuring it.

So, Andrew, maybe you can chime in with what you’re doing. This is like for Boxcar, our email agency that was all about set up do an audit upfront, then you create a road map out of that. That includes you do setup for a thing, then you do maximization, and then you do optimization. And this was all only for email.

So we do an email program audit. This worked really well for ecommerce in particular, but SaaS as well. But ecommerce, yes, because they do have a lot of automations that are running outside of campaigns.

So you set the you do the audit of everything going on that was fifty k or whatever the price was, something like that, and then there’s the road map that comes off of that that says okay now we’re going to go fix the automation that you already have, then we enter into a three ish maximization program.

Maximization is where you’re like anything could be changed here. We’re going to possibly rewrite entire emails. We might tear that one down that we just put up because we put it out there in like crickets and start all over again, or we might not. But during maximization mode, we’re like pushing resources in to getting lift.

Optimization mode is like, cool, we spent three months maxing, now we’re gonna spend three months making that the product of maximization better. But what you’re getting month after month is, like, an army of people thinking like a small army. It’s a dedicated little, like, four person pod thinking about what how to make your stuff better.

So I don’t know if that’s that’s the example. The core example is email.

Always email. But you can take that and do the same thing with ads, with full funnels, with evergreen webinar campaigns, or evergreen webinar funnels. Andrew, do you wanna share what your retainer is for Britney?

Yeah. I’m happy to share. It’s definitely not, it’s far from perfect. This is the first time I was able to really sell kind of an optimization retainer, so I was sorts of things that need to be figured out.

Right now, it’s basically set up that I am there to support them with one test on their website per month, and that includes going back to pages that we did once and maybe, you know, okay. We have reached statistical significance, and we got, you know, more people clicking the CTA button, which is a good indication, but, you know, the test didn’t work. The test itself didn’t work. Let’s try it again.

So we do move around from page to page. It’s not the same thing over, which would be nice, but it didn’t work out, with this client. But, it is nice, being able to kind of keep going back to the same thing. It’s a little bit of a loose scope right now. I have a good amount of trust with the client that I work with, so I’m able to kind of tell him what’s realistic to get done in the month, what might take longer, that kind of thing.

But, yeah, have him chat more about it.

So I have to put this on for Does Anybody else have any that they’re working if they wanna share?

Yeah. It’s I recognize that for a lot of people, it is a tough nut to crack, but that is mostly due to the fact that you’re not talking about optimization when you’re talking about your work, and that’s true across creatives. Right? Like, nobody talks about nobody wants to admit the first effort was just a start.

But if you can start saying that, and that’s, like, refreshing for people to hear and other creatives to hear that as well, like, it’s so true. It’s so true. Like, it was a good guess. It was super solid guess, but now we have to optimize it, make it better.

Andrew says, the first client I pitched it to worked. Yeah. Yeah. Have you pitched it yet, Britney, or are you still just busy working through the idea?

Yeah. I haven’t pitched the but I’m getting close with a client where, like, they need to put me on retainer, but I just wanna make sure I’m not overriding and that I have space to do other work so that I can keep growing. You know?

So yeah, because that’s like profits die when you do new work the whole way through a retainer.

Like, no.

So that’s fair. And we can talk more about this as well, and that’s what we do talk about all the time, the retainers and standardized offers and stacking multiple ones together.

Okay. So, Jessica says they’re ICP.

Hold on. Oh, she’s talking to somebody else. Okay. Cool.

Awesome. And or nice. Okay. So that wraps up today’s session. Thank you for staying late, everybody. I know that we’re spending more time on the work than on taking questions right now, but, really, this, I’m very, very hopeful that you can wrap this up.

Not I don’t I don’t fantasize that everybody’s going to have a perfect plan in place, and it’ll be unchanging.

But if we can get closer closer to that, then you can actually know what you’re working on. And and next year, as you continue working through Coffee School Pro and other training and coaching, whatever things that you have added in, you know what to work on and what not to work on. So it’s not just like shiny objects syndrome, which can be very distracting to entrepreneurs galore. You, like, choose the things based on where your constraints are, what your goals are, and how you’re gonna get there.

That’s awesome. Okay. Cool. Wonderful. Alright. We’ll see you all in Slack and in our Thursday session.

Have a good day, y’all. Bye.