Take Your Shot: Entrepreneurial Success and Sales Mastery with Robin Waite

0:00 This podcast is a proud member of the Teach Better podcast network, Better Today, Better Tomorrow, and the podcast to get you there. You can find out. More at teefbetter dot com slash podcast. You end up giving up a forty hour a week job to end up doing a sixty hour week job when you first start your business, and that shocks a lot of people. But let's face it, if it was easy, then there wouldn't be an unfair advantage. The good news is if you build it the right way, that sort of pain and discomfort that you go through and you're starting out in a business or any new venture for that matter, it's always going to be the short term pain in order to hopefully give you that long term benefit if you build it the right way. Do you want to be a leader in a constantly changing world? Our emerging leaders look different, come from various backgrounds and from all different age groups. Leadership is changing and it's hard to keep up. But the good news you can be a leader too. You can be an e merging leader. Welcome to the Limitless Leadership launch a try generational conversation for it. E merging leaders. Come spend some time with us to discuss Leadership from Three Angles, the coach Jim Johnson, the professor doctor Renuma Kareem, the host John Gering, a monthly guest, and you get in on the conversation on Facebook and Instagram, and be sure to follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify and Speaker. So come on in and make yourself comfortable.

1:24 Another week inside the Limitless Leadership Lounge. And if you're an entrepreneur especially, you're going to want to stick around for this episode. Really exciting conversation up ahead with Robin Waite, who we have had. On thanks to our friend Ben Albert. So we'll get to that in just a moment. But I do want to remind you that if you're enjoying the show so far and you really like the content we're putting out there. A review is really easy to leave and it makes a huge difference to us. So if you could leave that review up on wherever you're listening to, maybe it's Apple Podcasts, maybe it's Spotify, maybe just subscribing to our YouTube channel, we appreciate all that so much. I am John Garry Hose that your host is always joined by coach Jim Johnson and doctor Numa Kareem. And today we're also joined by Robin Waite, who's a business coach, he's a speaker, and he's a best selling author of this great book that I got the chance to read called Take Your Shot. Highly recommend it, and we'll dive into that a little bit more as a show goes on. He's a founder of Fearless Business.

2:22 He helps coaches, consultants and freelancers double their income while working with fewer, higher quality clients. It's all about quality over quantity for Robin, and the impact is real. You can see his very satisfied clients. He's all about working smarter, not harder. And today he's going to join us. He's going to help us rethink how we grow our business without burning out, which so many of. Us are very close to. Robin, thank you so much for your time today. Welcome to the Limitless Leadership Lounge. Oh thank you for the introduction. John God. That's something to live up to, isn't it. I know you're going to do it because I really enjoy your content. Obviously, we talked about your book. It's called Take Your Shot, is a great fable about a young business owner who meets a mentor and his whole business is transformed through the lessons that he learns.

3:11 But I know you also have so. Much other great content, including your YouTube channel and the articles that you write. I've run across some of those on LinkedIn. One recent piece of content that I think could really resonate with our young and emerging leader audience is this content that you put out a video about some tips that you have, ten tips for those young and emerging leaders, those twenties and thirties in that age range, what they can do to avoid some of the mistakes that you made and also just live a more content fulfilled and successful life. Could you just share one or two of those to start us off. Yeah, of course, yeah, And it's a pleasure to be here. By the way, I'm very grateful for you inviting me onto the show. So one of the big things which I've learned. So I'm forty three now, and as you do, you reflect on your life and your journey and from where you came from to the point where you're going to.

3:58 And I realized that my twenties, I think there are certainly some things which I would have changed. I certainly don't regret any of it, but there's definitely some things in amongst that that I would do slightly differently, taking for example, like just the mere fact that kind of I went through university. And then I thought, that's unly done. I don't need to read any more books anymore. Learning is done for me because I've been doing it for twenty odd years. And then started out on my business journey and realized that actually it's harder than everybody puts out says that it should be, or you think it should be, and maybe just out of stubborness, didn't pick up books still for a little while. But then when I started to listen to audio books and go on a bit of a journey of self development in my mid twenties, had that proper oh no moment where I was thinking, damn, I wish I hadn't have missed out in those few years when I didn't read. My biggest tip is, like to anybody who's in their twenties and thirties, don't ever stop learning. Doesn't matter whether it's for hobbies or for a business, or for your work or to be a better parent or financial wellbeing, like whatever it is, just pick up books, listen to podcasts, go to events, and listen to some of the amazingly entertaining and the educational speakers that are out there, because there's always things that you can learn. It doesn't matter what sphear you're in.

5:08 And actually, since I've gone on my own sort of journey of self development and getting into coaching, I've lean into it even more. And it's every time you get a major breakthrough. And I think with people, especially if you're a business owner, you go through these sort of cycles every two to three years as your business kind of consolidates and then grows again and consolidates and grows. I've been through that several times, and it coincides with having a big breakthrough meeting another mentor or reading another book or something like that, which then takes you up to the next level. And then along with that as well. This one's a bit boring, actually, but I wish that I had taken some financial advice in my twenties. I've done. I've been incredibly successful in a multitude of different areas, and my businesses in particular have done quite well. But as you do in your twenties, you don't really didn't.

5:52 I wasn't fortunate enough to come from parents who were particularly financially savvy, so they worked incredibly hard and work ethic wise. They set a great example, but when it came to the financial side of things, it was very much easy come, easy go. They made the money and spent the money, and it was all invested in the right places the house and schooling for me and my brother, in various things like that. But we missed out on the fun parts of life. It felt like they worked really hard, but we never really had any holidays, or they worked really hard, but they hadn't didn't have much for retirement and had to fall back on. When my grandparents finally passed away, they got some inheritance and that ended up being their financial sort of plan, basically their fallback, which wasn't I didn't think particularly wise, So I'd definitely go back to my younger, twenty year old self and say, look, just put a little bit of it aside, don't spend it all, And also you don't have to work quite as hard as you're working for this money. But hey, these are just things, aren't they that you pick up as you get older and hopefully a bit more wiser and end up with a few more gray hairs in your beard and then you're able to pass these messages down.

6:54 And actually, just to wrap this up, my eldest daughter is now eleven. She's big into her swimming, So I'm Paul's side quite often most weekends now and all over the sort of the southwest of the UK where her competitions are. And the last one we had now and a quarter drive, so I thought, great opportunity to impart some wisdom on my eleven year old daughter around wealth creation. Actually we had a conversation about compounding interest and pensions and how could she like arbitrage between selling some time to somebody but then paying somebody less than the cost that so you can make a profit and things like that. And it was a really fascinating conversation. Yeah, Robin, I think this is so valuable because sooner we understand the financial management different topics around those area, we could make better decisions in life. I wish I had these kind of conversation, but I came also from the family where the paycheck will be all used up.

7:51 My parents worked hard, but we did not save enough. But one thing is discipline is discipline. We need to learn of disciplines in life. My question to you is, although we have the disciplines and everything, but nowadays we also have dreams ideas. I had an idea seven years ago and then I woke up at two am in the morning and I had to buy the domain with that name to lock in the idea. So unless or until I have any momentum, I feel unrested. But I also have to think about the money. Do I have enough money to start a business? So when do we make that decision? So I jumped into starting my own nonprofit taking money out of my retirement fund, and everybody told me how stupid I am because I took the money from my retirement fund. But now after eight years, I feel that it is giving me back. I am happy, but I had to struggle. So the struggle period is there.

8:47 So how would you advise a person who have the idea but also does not have that means, but he or she has to sacrifice some optimization of financial search certainty to start a business. What advice would you give that person? One thing which I always find amusing is that kind of when we start businesses, we assume that you're going to have more abundance, more money, We're going to have more time and all these sorts of things, and actually you end up giving up a forty hour a week job to end up doing a sixty hour week job when you first start your business, and that shocks a lot of people. But let's face it, if it was easy, then there wouldn't be an unfair advantage. As a small business owner an entrepreneur, you do need a certain level of tenacity, endurance, patience and everything and tolerance as well risk to pain and things like that in order to build a successful business. But the good news is if you build it the right way, that sort of pain and discomfort that you go through and you're starting out in a business or any new venture for that matter, it's always going to be the short term pain in order to hopefully give you that long term benefit if you build it the right way. So I look at it in terms of a lot of things. So everybody's different.

9:58 Everybody has a different level of risk aversion. So some people are very risk averse. Some people have a very low tolerance to risk, and so starting out of business has to be done in a very safe way. They can't spend too much or risk too much. Some people are just they'll take all of their life savings and put it into their business and willing to risk it all. So you've got to weigh that up. You will at some point, like most people start a business and they see that it's going to be a nice straight line like that, but inevitably it's this squiggly line where there's lots of steps backwards and forwards and ups and downs along the way, and you have to, like so part of it is going accepting that we are going to hit a dip at some point. It is inevitable in business life generally. If you prepare yourself mentally for those dips to happen, the game becomes, well, how can we make it more fun when they do happen, And there is a way to make that happen, but also how can we get through those dips as quickly as humanly possible?

10:52 Because if we know they're going to come along, we can. It starts to become a bit more predictable. People think I'm absolutely mad so when I talk about going like forcing your business to go into a dip, but actually it makes sense because imagine you've been going on this nice plain sailing of consolidation and things have been going well, your team are behaving well, your clients are not throwing up too many problems or challenges to you. You designed a business that was going to make a certain amount of money, and it did imagine that that it actually worked and played out. And then if you stay there for too long, you start to hit the impostor zone where you start to imagine that things when this has been too good for too long, when the thing's going to start going wrong, and it's a bit like what you focus on you get more of. So inevitably you end up going into the dip because you making it happen.

11:39 You're spotting all of the problems. What I tend to do, though, is because the first time it happened to me, and I've been through this five times, so three times in my agency days in the twelve years that I ran it, but also now twice as a coach in the last nine years, I've hit this sort of dip and had to get through it. First time really scary. It's like international sign of stress. What that's going wrong? I didn't mean, I didn't want this to happen and everything else. Second time went into the dip, I was like, hang on a minute, it feels familiar. And then third time it happened in my agency, I was like, here we go again, and then I'm prepared for it. You build up resilience to it, and I think that's what mak. The makeup of a successful business owner is about having a certain level of resilience, tolerance to pain, bit of tolerance to risk, you know, and being able to get through the tough times a little bit faster. And actually, in my coaching practice, the last time this happened, we were talking off air about the interview which I had with Ali Abduhll and all of those inquiries which came in. Now, that'd be a dream for most business owners to have sort of three thousand leads come into your business pretty much overnight.

12:45 But about three weeks into this journey, I'm like breaking at the seams because there's just all this in band noise coming in. We've got all these books that were sending out as well, But the biggest challenge for me was I was getting lots of unqualified calls book into my diary. Scratch my head, going I'm smarter than this. I've been at this business game for twenty years. Why am I getting all these calls. I don't mind doing them because it's giving great value to these people, but they're never going to become clients. And so at some point how I qualified people and my booking diary got shmushed together and I didn't design it that way originally, but somehow they ended up that way. So all I did three weeks into this amazing campaign going on where everybody's, my god, it's so good for you, Robin's so successful this stuff, and I'm there, I don't know, it's stressed and tired. I just switched everything off. So this was me realizing the dip was coming, both mentally and like within the business, and I was like, I'm just going to dive into this head first, switch everything off. And then what happens when you go into a dip You are forced to creatively solve that problem because your back's against the wall and you've either got to make You've got to make a decision. Am I gonna fold and just that's it? Or am I going to push through this.

13:55 If I'm going to push through it, I'm going to solve this in a bigger, better, faster way than how I did it before. And so then I turning it off made me realize that, oh, my application process wasn't in the right order with the call, so we separated it. We had an application process which better filtered people before they came onto a call with me, made sure that they were right for the program, or if they weren't, at least they would still be able to get some value without it taking up too much of my time. And then they could book the call and then away we go, and all of a sudden, the stress when everything's working properly. And actually it ended up doubling the size of my coaching practice just through that one innovation. And I think this is a thing. If I hadn't had that twenty odd year's worth of business experience and the various dips, I probably wouldn't have the resilience to have dealt with that in the way that I did.

14:45 I think a lot of smaller, newer businesses might have broken at that point and not wanted to go back to it again. Good point, hey, raviin my friend Jen shared your book with me and I read it and I really enjoyed it. And it's the story of a god prole that gets a mentor and for younger emerging leaders. You hear that all the time. What's your advice and getting the right mentor for you as a leader, because I think it's really important. But I think a lot of people are confused, how do I get a man or how do I pick the right mannor can you share some advice on that? Yeah, absolutely, I'm I'm first of all, It's also important to differentiate between what is a coach what is a mentor, because they hold two different roles. I'm probably fifty to fifty between the two actually, So coach, in my view with somebody who asks you those well formed questions and draws you have the answers in yourself, and the coach draws those answers out of you and then helps you with the accountability and the momentum to push you forward.

15:39 A mentor, in my eyes, though, has typically has been in the game for longer than you have. So they they've got all of the T shirts and the medals from their time in service and all of those things. But they can see the shortcuts is the wrong word, but they can see what the path looks like, and they're able to guide you in a way from their through away and their experience, they've been there and done it before. For me, for example, I flip flop between the two. I've got a couple of traditional coaching certifications, so I can dive into the mindset side of things ask those questions. But also when somebody just wants to be told and shown what the path is, I can say, actually, just try this and see if that works. I liken it too. Imagine if you went to see your doctor and the doctor just asks you lots of questions, but they don't end up telling you what's wrong with you and a where you go because you should know what the answers are. But then you go down the pub with your mates and you tell them that you've got this problem and they just unsolicited volunteer a load of advice all over you. When they're not experts in it, they just tell you what their opinion is. And I believe, actually, especially in the context of business in the corporate world, sometimes you just need somebody to say, nope, just do this, this will stand you and the best chances of it working.

16:47 But I think whether it's a coach or a mentor, I think the mental client relationship is also so important. You've got to really get on with one another, and not to a point of being friends, but to a point whereby the trust between the mentor and mentee is such that the mentor can push you and challenge you and ask you questions in a way that you're not going to take offense to basically, but it's going to create the shift which you need to take. I think sometimes people take on mentors and they're a bit overly sensitive and then the relationship starts to break down. So that sort of mental menty relationship has got to be it's really based on a deep level of trust, I believe.

17:29 Now one of my big takeaways from the book again, take your shot. It's you got Russ, who's the golf pro right the coach talked about, and he's looking for that mentor and he's obviously the main character. He's a protagonist of this. The mentor comes in his client you got him. But then the other character in this book who makes an appearance a lot and has a significant impact on the story is his wife. And this is interesting to me because they're not in business together. This isn't about the business, but you get a peek into Russ's personal side of things too. Now, we've talked with previous guests about work life balance, and a lot of times we prefer the term work life integration because it really isn't a balance right, there is this integration. How would you advise a young leader who's maybe starting a business or looking to level up their business to make sure that they're family members, those closest to them, like, for example, their spouse is on board. And how do we make sure that we continue to keep things in perspective spending that amount of time with our family and kids that we need to while still putting together our best selves and putting that towards our business.

18:42 Great question. What's interesting for me is that I've come to realize that entrepreneurship is addictive if you're not careful, and sometimes it's hard as an entrepreneur to get that to the check and the balance right between work life. And one of the things which I've come to realize is that it's not really about work life. If you're an entrepreneur and you absolutely love what you do and you could do it twenty four to seven, it's actually about getting the most out of it. So it's just balance, if that makes any kind of sense. So for me personally, when there's lots of events which I speak at, there's lots of things which tend to draw me away. I've got my some weeks, I'm just hearing my sleepy little studio out in the cots World southwest of the UK, and I might not see somebody from one week to the next. But there's also times when it's a bit like an accordion. The accordion gets the pressure turns on and then all of a sudden, there's lots of events coming up like this last month, for example, I've had a couple of events where I've had to stay away.

19:39 I've had multiple trips down to London to go and record podcasts and things like that in person. But one of the things is if I've not I used to get very burnt out towards the So this is the first sign that I get towards Friday afternoon. I got pick my girls up from school and I'm just yawning all the drive home and just I can already see that the weekend is going to be a bit of a drag, just because I overdone it during the week. So I made a decision three years ago now that I wouldn't work Fridays anymore, for example, because that means that I can have the thing is my Fridays. Now, I can choose to come into the office and do a bit of work and catch up if I want to, But primarily it's for things like writing. I might go and get my hair cut, I might go down to the local hotel spa and have a massage or something like that. But the idea is that it's my day for me. That's always there in the diary each and every week. But it doesn't compromise home life because I don't have to take time out to go to the spa and have a massage during the weekend. And I also it doesn't compromise my work because my job is to get my work done between Monday and Thursday. I used to really struggle with it because I felt I was being selfish. I felt that I felt very guilty about going off and doing stuff at the week on the Friday and stuff like that that wasn't work and wasn't home stuff. But I've come to realize that I call it guilt free time off. Now my Friday's is guilt free time off. That it's a muscle that you have to exercise and you have to learn how to look after yourself first, so that for me, I can be a better coach during the week and I can also be a better parent at the weekends and obviously

21:11 during in the evenings and things like that when the girls are around. But I see a lot of entrepreneurs who are just constantly that on all of the time. They're like The analogy I like to use is a bit like, I don't know how familiar are with surfing and how to catch a wave right when you're surfing, So the conditions have to be right. There has to be a swell coming through because that's where the energy is in the water. It has to be the right sort of the beach or point break so the water the swell hits that point at the right time, and the wind has to be coming offshore so that it meets the front of the wave and holds the wave up so you get a nice clean wave that you can then surf along. But you've also, as a surfer, got to be in the right spot out the back in the lineup to make sure that you're catching the wave, not before it's before it's broken or after it's passed over you, but at just the right spot, and you've got to be paddling at just the right speed in order to be able to catch the wave, and then most likely you stand up and fall off, like I do.

22:01 That's generally what tends to happen, but it's fun. What I see a lot of business owners doing is that they are there's no swell, or the wind's blowing in the wrong direction, or they've got the wrong board so they don't have the right equipment, and they're frantically just paddling all of the time, when if there's no swells, there's no chance you're ever going to be able to catch a wave, right, So I think that the balance is right to take. Take this month, for example, there's been tons of momentum. Imagine as like perfect ten foot swells coming through and the winds offshore, and it's perfect, and I don't have to paddle too much, like stuff's just happening, and I catch all of those waves. But next month it might be completely the opposite and there is no point in me paddling furiously. I might as well just lean into that quiet time. And I think it's and this comes back to something renewing, which you're alluding to that work hard to get the results mindset mentality that most entrepreneurs take because that's what their parents did.

22:52 We feel if we just paddle frantically, it's going to create results. Inevitably it doesn't. So I'm very pro like, when momentum's there, paddle catch the wave. Great. When it's not there, that's a great opportunity no matter how difficult it might be. Bank balance might be a bit low, you might not have as many clients coming through as you want, or projects to work on, but that's a great opportunity to actually lean into family time or guilt free time off and just regather your energy so that when the circumstances and conditions are right, you can catch all of the waves that you want to. Yeah, you made it a great point in your recent video when you said that the success isn't necessarily all about working hard. While it's certainly important, but you may have a point that if it was all about working hard, then nurses and police officers and teachers would have all the money in the world. Right, So success isn't always about just working harder than everyone else.

23:44 That's it absolutely. And different people have those different goals and mission in life, and entrepreneurs might be a little bit like a different type of breed. I have observed like they're more like they are into risk, they can take challenges. And while going through your website, I found out know your numbers, understand what the numbers mean. I am a bad person with numbers, So when it comes to number I just hate it when my accountant gives me numbers. I just don't want to look at it. But I know how crucial it is. So when we are in starting something new, how important, Like you have the idea, how do you know that this idea will work? And could you give us some idea on what do you mean by the numbers?

24:33 Know your numbers? Doctor Crane. We're gonna have to have words after this recording's up, because for sure, no jokes aside. Again, I think people massively overcomplicate numbers, especially in business. I think it's a human natural human tendency. Is it Parkinson's law where and I may probably massively misquote this, so do correct me. But Parkinson's law states that if you give a two hour task eight hours, you'll make it four times more complex to fill up the time rights of very good at making things more complicated. So really, in just the basic numbers of business, you can do like a business plan on a page and have have a that's enough to create a roadmap for to build a profitable, sustainable business. Take something like pricing, for example, most people will go and have a look at what their competitors are doing in order to set their prices, or maybe they think they've got to be the cheapest in the market to attract people in. But the last thing they typically think of is how much do I have to charge in order for my business to stand up economically and to be sustainable and profitable. So I go the other way. I'm like, how much revenue would you like to make in your business? And now I'll run the numbers just because it's easy. And they might say, I'd like to make are six figure business one hundred thousand dollars next year, so that's our first number. That's that's really simple. Can't get more simple than that. And also it's like there'll be a lot of people would be like, oh, one hundred. They'll say a number and then they'll immediately talk themselves out of it. Oh, I couldn't posibly do one hundred thousand dollars next year, and it'll make all sorts of noises. And I'm like, this is just to dare to dream, like exercise. Let's just design the business and see if we can make it. Like write the

26:03 numbers down and see if we can design the business to get you there. So one hundred K. Next question I ask is what are you thinking about or how much an average to clients pay for your services at the moment or products? And they might say one thousand dollars. Great, So we've already got two answers there without digging too deeply into it. Where it gets interesting, though, is where we start to get mixed. The numbers up a little bit. So we take the big number one hundred K, divide it by one thousand dollars, and what do we get? One hundred products, services, or widgets that we've got to sell in the next twelve months. And this is normally the point where most people's eyes pop out of their head or through their glasses because they're like, oh my god, I couldn't possibly work with one hundred clients next year. I don't have the capacity to do that, and I've got family this, and I've got responsibilities that and just don't have the time. Straight away, with only three questions, we've established that maybe the business model you've designed doesn't quite stack up, maybe the price you've chosen isn't it enough, or something like that. So then we can look at the true capacity of your business if you don't if you can't deliver one hundred units of capacity. And again, human beings are very good at massively misquoting or misguessing like the numbers. Quite often people will be like, they'll have as low as a third to a fifth of the capacity is what they give in that first question.

27:12 Now we've got twenty units of capacity, but we want to get to one hundred k. And then all of a sudden, your eyes pop out of your head again because you realize now you've got to sell your product or service for five K, five times the value of what it was before. Now, I'm not the biggest fan of just raising your price is five x and not stacking any extra value in. That's how you should not do it. The idea is that if you need to get five K clients on board, what value do you need to deliver to them that's worth five K to them that is then going to deliver them remarkable results or outcomes for their business or whatever it is. So we charge more money, which then gets us more time to deliver a better quality product or service to the end user, which gets the better outcomes and results, which means makes you more affect r because they go and tell all of their friends and colleagues about you as well, which generates more money on the back end of it.

28:05 So actually, like just knowing the basic numbers, charging a little bit more, for example, understanding what your capacity is, that's only three or four numbers there, which kind of then becomes the blueprint for your business from a delivery perspective. But we also got to balance in doctor Kream that we've got two sides of the business. So we've got supply and demand. So we've been talking about the supply side of it. Now let's focus on the demand. So imagine next year you need twenty clients to hit your one hundred K target, and actually your conversion rate is typically about I don't know, maybe one in three, so you're a good salesperson fairly strong on that. Now it means you've got to get six sixty consultations booked every year to get the twenty clients at five k, they get you the one hundred k. That's just over one a week. And then this is where most people go, oh, it can breathe, well, one to two sales consultations a week, that's not too bad. I can manage that. And then you can go, how many leads do you need to get in order to fill up those constantly? So you can if we reverse engineer it from the end goal in mind, we end up with a really simple business model that literally you can write it out on a single page of paper.

29:14 Yeah. Well, I mean, I'm curious to Rabbing, I'm building a business. Social proof is that they've had a lot of studies and are how powerful there is. I'm curious if you can help our audience with how you found to get success with clients that are hip you Entry calls it the raving fans. How do you get them to be raving fans? Write testimonials, maybe post about how good it is we're working with Rabbin because certainly that enhances your business when you have those raving fans. What's your suggestions on that? The main one is to ask remind I know that sounds really obvious, but it's remarkable how many business owners are so busy doing the client fulfilm and cell deliver, cell Deliver, Cell Deliver, cell deliver, and then they forget about the piece at the end of it where you've got happy client who would be like shouting about you, but it's just you forgot to ask because you were so busy focused on the next client. Making sure that you have a system or process at the end of the client fulfillment to get that feedback in. But also a little tip as well, like sometimes your best clients, your biggest raving fans, can be ones that have never spent a penny with you. Because so I have lots of people who've read the book, for example, or subscribe to the YouTube channel, or have been to one of my events, and there's a small subset of people who are just brilliant. They just need the idea fed to them and they can just run with it and get great results. So a lot of my best clients are the ones who literally never paid me a penny. They're my biggest advocates because they've got value out of some of the free content and they've just been able to run with it, but you need to have a couple of automations in place to make sure that happens. So little things like if you run an event, whether it's

30:45 online or offline doesn't matter, set up an email automation to go out twenty four hours later, which just ask them to go and leave a Google review for example. There's lots of tools these days where you can gather video testimonials from people, but again, the best way I've found to do that is to have a calendar slot available for clients to leave video testimonial, so it just pings off an email automatically after the engagement, which says, hey, I just love fifteen minutes for us to do an exit interview so to hear about your experience of working with Feelers Business for example. And again most people are really happy to do that. They prefer the interview format because you can obviously ask questions and tweak the sort of structure of their testimonial based on what they're saying. And then it's a really simple formula that I always look at. So like the snapshot case study is where were you before you wanted to before you picked up an engagement with us? What was it that made you choose us as your service provider to become a client?

31:40 What was it like to work with us when you came on board? And then finally, what was the end result that you got from it? Thinking about your business and the results you're getting. And again, just those four questions is enough quite often to glean like this wonderful little snapshot case study. And if you can get it in a capture in a video, you know even better. That's a really good point too, those video reviews and that client testimonials. Going back to the book, it's called Take Your Shot, Russ. The main character meets David serendipitously, right, and one of the things that David does is writes him a check for the amount of money that he thinks for us should be charging, right, and that amount of money is, as the reader will notice, significantly higher than what he is charging.

32:26 Are you communicating through this? And you got to read the book, okay to understand totally what's going on here, But is this communicating to that oftentimes entrepreneurs are way undercharging their services, and how do we get over that mental block of believing in the value that we provide enough to assign the price tag that is worth it for potential clients. Yeah, So I play all out there and just say that pretty much ninety nine percent of all business owners massively under charge. So you take any market or industry that's out there, and typically the top ten percent of people in that industry managed to extract sixty percent of the value out of that market. And this is common across pretty much every small business service sector. So whether you're an accountant, a coach, a graphic designer, do you name it, and then what that means is that you've got ninety percent of the people who are left scrapping over forty percent of what's left in the market. So, at the very least, if you want to put yourself give yourself the best opportunity, you want to be in the top You don't have to be the most expensive necessarily, but you want to be in the top ten percent pricing wise. But what a lot of people don't realize is that there's two sides to how people typically tend to go about figuring out what their prices are. The most obvious one is intellectually. So we sit down with a piece of paper and we do some sums, or maybe we look at some of our competitors or peers and see how much they're charging. But all of this is about going about solving this problem intellectually. However, when

33:56 you buy something, what are most buying decisions based on based on what's in here right our heart? So we either have a desire to buy a product, whether we need it or not. It's based on that desire, that emotion, emotional drive to buy the products. And when we're choosing between maybe different suppliers, part of our decision is based on how much do we trust a specific supplier. Do we trust that they're going to show up on time? Do we trust that they are good as good as what they say they are. Do we trust that they're going to do as good a job as they say they're going to do. So a lot of that is based on our gut, instinct, our trust. So we have this difference between the head and the heart. So I go through an exercise with people where I'll ask them what the intellectual price? What price have they set their product or service at? So I don't know. If you want to, feel free to throw me an example of a product or service and then walk you through the steps which I would roleplay it a little bit, So.

34:49 I will give you an idea, like I have an idea of app that will encourage our local community small and business entrepreneurs to sell their businesses. So it's like an app that will help the small businesses and also community individual to come up with ideas. So it's like a hub. So if I have this can tech based idea, what to do with it? How to run? Okay? So tell me about what the outcomes or benefits of it are going to be first and foremost to SI unclear. So first benefit would be like because it's in our country, we don't have those kind of hub where local plumbers, local electricians, local cater they have a channel to market themselves, so it could be and also when it's in a community, your trust gets higher. This person is in the community, I can get him and even in the weekends, so it's easier. So it will add some value, enhance the trust and also the businesses of those all those local plumber service holders. And not only that, I want to like help the local small business owners sell their new stuff, even the renters who want to rent their housing and they can put those mess It's like a next door neighbor app through the community in our country in Bangladesh.

36:11 So this idea has not been explored, but now I'm like playing around. With it, okay, So I'm already imagining that there might be actually two sides to this. One is just a basic app where you get your business listing on it and you can network with other business owners, right, But also there's a skill shortage that the business that you know, Whilst you might be able to get them leads, they might not be very good at converting it and turning it into higher paying clients. Okay, So I'd like to focus on the higher end one, if that's okay. So imagine you had a business mentoring coaching program that's the platinum version of this app, where they could come in and learn how to grow their business better and faster, and I don't know a more productive sort of way. So if we focus on that, what price we would you think would be appropriate to charge for that?

36:53 So initially I'm always a low like I'm always trying to charge, So it's like the lowers, and I want to promote the service first because the first year I cannot charge high if they don't know what written or what value they are going to get. Okay, So that's a misconception because it sounds like it could be a great service. But now you've made an assumption and kind of projected onto your products of what it's actual worth is. Okay. What happens is if you go into cheap you end up anchoring people to cheap prices. Just another thing as well, and just as a reflection, quite often are how we Our ability to sell things is a direct reflection on how we choose to buy things. Okay, So what you said was I prefer to sell low.

37:37 Does that also mean you normally buy a lower price as you can possibly get as well? No, not all these not always. That's quite interesting because what quite cheap? So I sell cheap. If the quality is high, then I will go for a higher price. But I will always go because the quality matters. Okay, So here's the thought and a question and we'll get onto the pricing side of things. You're not going to launch something here which is rubbish. You're going to launch something which is excellent, aren't you. Yeah, so based on what you've just based on what you just said, we should think about raising the price, raising the value of it. Yeah, My thought was like, because people doesn't know how this service would work, if they don't try it or anything like that, why will they be willing to pay that high price? So that was my that was my thought, Like initially, do you like when we start to launch a business to enter the market, do we should we lower the price or it should be like that price where we can cover.

38:41 All Let me ask you this, how what degree of confidence and do you have and your ability with this to deliver like great results for your clients. I have high confidence because I did a data research and everybody said that they want this service. Right, So you got confidence in your ability to deliver great results. So you need to back that up with your value proposition when you sell it. I'm confident enough that you will get your money back within the first X number of months or I'll refund you the investment. Let's get specific now, So how much were you thinking of launching? Imagine we're launching that sort of the more expensive one where there's a bit of mentoring coaching that goes with it. Okay, how much would you charge for that? Do you think I would charge like five hundred dollars per hour or something like that?

39:31 Okay, why per hour? It's if it's like what two hours are a three hours session like hand on hand, face to phase in person person and with all the handbooks and stuff like that, materials and everything, So it could be five hundred. I was going much lower like I was going hundred, So after talking to you, I increased it. Oh. Perfect, So that's part of the heart has taken over there and you're like, actually, yeah, I'm good at what I do, and actually I'm going to get great results and I can see myself. Okay, So what we also want to do. Remember we started the conversation talking about work life balance, So we don't want you delivering loads of hours of coaching to people one to one because good money, but eventually you'll get burnt out. I did just a little clue when I first started my coaching practice doing mostly one to one. So you might want to consider doing a group version of this program. So maybe because in cohorts of I don't know, twenty thirty people once a quarter or once every four months or something like that, I wonder if so five hundred pounds I think would probably be cheap for that three months or six month accelerator. Oh, okay, So is there a world in your future maybe a year, two years, three year is where you could see yourself maybe charging I don't know, three K for this program.

40:48 Yeah, definitely, this would be like the initial first year. I might go a little bit low and then it would take a good reason. Did you notice that, Jim John, she didn't even has take like when I asked that question. Okay, but we're going to come back to like present day, which is great because I can feel your value already. It's just wonderful. So we're going to come back to present day. So what a lot of people see pricing as is like what I call binary, So it's either yes or no, I'm in or am out. It's too cheap or too expensive. What we've just established there that actually there's this bandwidth for dr Kreame that you're working with, so between five hundred dollars and three thousand dollars, and you can see the possibility is two and a half thousand numbers in between. Okay, but here's the interesting thing, so we try to figure a bit of it out intellectually. Confidence is starting to grow around your value. But let's say imagine today you had to launch this thing. I don't know. So you're saying five hundred, Well, what if it was eight hundred dollars or twelve hundred dollars or fifteen hundred dollars, eighteen hundred dollars.

41:46 Eighty for the first year? Yeah, that's what about twenty twenty two hundred dollars? Yeah, I could push myself to eighteen hundred. Okay, good, So what I'm all I was testing for? Then it's a bit Darren Brown when you see these people the mentalist their work. So I was trying to just look at your body language, your tonality, you're pacing, any little ticks or quirks or anything like that as we were going through those numbers, and so eighteen hundred was just outside your comfort zone. Yeah, so we've already raised you from intellectually up here five hundred dollars to now in here eighteen hundred dollars because that's what your heart has just told us you're worth, or told you that you're worth. Okay. So for those who are maybe listening to the audio there didn't quite catch that. There was just that momentary pause with Dr Cream when we got to that sort of fifteen hundred eighteen hundred dollars sort of mark where her body language shifted and energy shifted, and you could then we could see that she was starting to question her value at that point. So my advice would be launch this thing. Would you like, do you prefer to play just inside or just outside your comfort zone?

42:54 I could go outside my comfort zone. So I would look at launching this thing at eighteen hundred dollars, position it with some kind of a money back guarantee. It doesn't have to be like one hundred percent money back guarantee. I'll get you this result of your money back. It can be a perceived what we call a perceived value guarantee. If we get to the end of this and you genuinely feel you haven't received value for money, we'll just discuss ratcheting back. I'll refund you some money or potentially all of it, so that kind of takes de risks it for the other person, and then I would just look to launch it. And this is John going back to your original question now which prompted this. There's the thing in a book where essentially why David decided the coach decided to just write the check and pay for that money. I have an equivalent of this, which I do in real life. So the book Take Your Shot is actually based on a true story. So it's based on Russ, who was one of my first coaching clients. And what I do with clients is what I'm going to do with Dr Crem.

43:43 At this point, we're going to I'm going to make a bet. I don't know if you're a betting lady or not. Okay, So here's a thought, because it sounds like it's a really great program, Okay, and I can near as damn it guarantee that if you pitch this offer to ten people, at least probably two, three or four are going to say yes. Let's say you're just starting out. You've got to build your confidence up around sales. Worst case, one person books it. Okay, get to ten pitches and you can document this for me somehow, and you don't sell a single person onto it. I will become your first client. In fact, what I'll do is I'll sponsor it for somebody you've got in your mind who could really benefit from I'll pay for it. I'll pay eighteen hundred dollars to become that first client. We've got witnesses genuinely. My only caveat to this is that if you get five and oh so you've done five pictures and no sales, that you give me a shout you.

44:36 If you've documented it and recorded some of your conversations, I'll see my Bangladesh is not particularly good, so if you can, they might need to be in English or translated, but at least if I can see your approach to sales and how you position your offer and things like that, I'll give you a free sales training and with a view that we'll actually improve those last five pitches. And obviously I want to swing it. Swing the odds in your favor, so you get a client genuinely off your own terms. Case it will be me sponsoring one of your first clients. Great. This is so helpful, Robin, because one thing I did launch like, I tried to experiment with another or platform to see my credibility. So there is this lead academy which asked me to start a course, a nonprofit management course using their platform, and within the first month they had two hundred person registered for my course. And I'm getting like twenty percent of what they're registering. So now my confidence level is high. Because everybody's giving me excellent review that we love doctor Kareem's class, but I'm not using it through my channels, my LinkedIn or anything like that what lead Academy participants are saying. So I tested myself and I'm doing a lot of talks back in different industries with the lowest price. The others are charging high, but I'm charging very low and they calling me again and again. So I'm now thinking like, how can I increase my price? So I have this hesitation, But today

46:07 after talking to you, I'm getting a little bit confidence too. Virtual But. See that's great, that's a great scenario. I just have one last question. I know about a time, but I know, going back to early in the interview, you talked about one of the things you would recommend to young people is to do more study and whether it be audio books, are reading hard copy. What would be two or three recommendations that you've would recommended people to help them with business ideas. Yeah, one of my favorite books of all time is a book called Built to Sell by John Warrelow. So it's this notion that you can again it was as similar as a fable, basically similar to take a shot, actually, but and it has a very hallowed place on a special shelf over there with my Guinness World Record, pictures of my family's and a few awards because it was one of the first books I picked up when I went back to reading again. But Built to Sell is just a fantastic book about learning how to do one thing really well for one specific type of client, and then nailing the whole sort of system and process that drives it, and ideally build a business that would be fit to sell, even if you don't ultimately end up sell it selling it. The other author which I'm a huge fan of is a guy called Daniel Priestley's. He's written four amazing books, and the first one I read of his was called Entrepreneur Revolution. He's updated it since because this was a while ago, but there's an updated version.

47:30 But one of my favorite books of his is actually called Key Person of Influence. So I realized there's some people here who may still be in leaders working within larger organizations, but there will also be people who are trying to grow their own thing. But so Key Personal Influence actually would work well for both of those audiences. If people are looking level up within a large corporation, and really it's about just how do you make yourself stand out, build a personal brand through things like books, through improving your pitch, through partnerships, and various other things like that to be able to level up. So, yeah, there are two books which I would definitely recommend. Thank You, It's awesome, Thank you, Thank you, Robin, and I would certainly recommend Take Your Shot. You can learn more about that on Robin's website.

48:11 And also, Robin, how would someone get in touch with you, potentially take advantage of some of your other free content and potentially work with you if they find value. Yeah. Absolutely, it would be really unfair of me to talk about how many books I gave away on another podcast and then not give away some sign copies here. I've got a small stack of signed copies ready to go out at Fearless dot biz forward slash tys for Take your Shot, So hopefully we'll share a link somewhere as well. Doesn't matter where you are in the world. Postage just entirely voluntary. If you want to contribute a bit or not, just put your address and I'll send it out and then my YouTube channel as well. I'm trying to just This is more for my own accountability, but the more subscribers I have, the more likely I am to show up regular and post videos and good quality content on there. Jump onto the YouTube channel, drop me a subscribe on there, and then I'll keep on putting videos out at the moment about two or three times a month.

48:59 Very good. All those links down in the show notes both where you can grab that book. That's an incredibly generous offer from Robin, because this is really going to level up your business development game. And on top of that, that YouTube channel obviously totally free, so definitely worth checking out, totally risk free, and you can check out that down in the. Show notes below. That's where we got a link to Robin's YouTube channel. Robin, we went a little bit everywhere today. We talked about pricing, we talked about business work life balance, even did some live coaching here on the podcast. We can't thank you enough for your time today. We appreciate you coming on the Limitless Leadership Lounge. It's an absolute pleasure. Thank you for inviting me, Thank you for joining us this week at the Limitless Leadership Lounge. To listen to this episode again and to find previous episodes check us out on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, and Spreaker. You can also get in on the conversation find us on Facebook and Instagram, then tell three of your friends to join it as well.

49:54 Coach Branuma and John. We'll be back again next week for another try generational leadership to discus. We'll talk to you then on the Limitless Leadership Lounge