Transform Your Life: Lessons from Robin Waite on Business Success and Productivity
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Introduction
Starting a business can appear to be an elusive challenge for many aspiring entrepreneurs. With inspiration drawn from the legendary Ayrton Senna, who defied expectations to become a champion, we explore how innovative thinking can pave the way for your success. In this insightful conversation, Robin Waite, a seasoned business coach, sheds light on the transformative journey of entrepreneurship and the importance of realizing that if others can reach great heights, so can you.
Empowering Your Entrepreneurial Journey
The Mindset Shift
Entrepreneurship begins not just with an idea, but with the right mindset. Instead of viewing successful figures as unreachable, embrace the belief that their successes are a roadmap for you:
- Believe in Possibilities: Acknowledge that successful entrepreneurs once stood where you are now and leveraged their journeys to achieve greatness.
- Adopt a Growth Mindset: Embrace challenges and view obstacles as opportunities for growth.
Overcoming Fear
Robin emphasizes that fear is a universal barrier that prevents many from achieving their goals. Here are some strategies to manage that fear:
- Acknowledge Your Fears: Understand that fear is a natural part of pursuing new ventures.
- Take Small Steps: Start small; execute programs or ideas you’re passionate about without overcommitting.
Transitioning from Ideas to Action
Finding What Drives You
If you aspire to become an entrepreneur like Lewis Hamilton achieving greatness in racing, it involves:
- Identify Your Passion: What excites you? For some, it could be web design, while for others, helping people with health or relationships may be fulfilling.
- Connect with Your Audience: Knowing your ideal customer profile can guide your marketing efforts.
The Role of Coaching
Sucessful coaches help you clarify your goals, increase accountability, and guide strategies tailored to individual needs. Robin shares his unique methodology:
- Socratic Approach: Drawing out thoughts through well-crafted questions helps you discover your own solutions.
- Accountability: Regular check-ins encourage sustained effort toward your goals.
Crafting Your Offer
Pricing Your Services
When it comes to engaging clients, clear pricing is essential. Entrepreneurs often feel underqualified, and thus hesitate on pricing strategies. Robin dispels myths around hourly rate pricing:
- Shift to Value-based Pricing: Instead of hourly rates, define your pricing by the results you deliver. For instance, offer a six-month coaching package focused on transformative outcomes, which highlights the value of your service rather than just time spent.
- Florish with Results: When clients can see the potential outcomes of working with you, they are more likely to invest.
Building Your Business Framework
Once you've defined your offerings, the next step is structuring your business:
- Create a Compelling Offer: Develop packages with clear benefits that resonate with client needs.
- Determine Delivery Method: Will you provide one-on-one coaching, group sessions, or a mix?
- Build Credibility: Client testimonials and case studies can enhance your trustworthiness and appeal.
Marketing Strategy
Attraction through Value
In today's digital landscape, marketing has become synonymous with being proactive:
- Content Creation: Regularly create and share content that educates and helps your target base, drawing them towards your service.
- Quizzes and Lead Generation: Use engaging tools like quizzes to attract interest while collecting valuable data about prospective clients.
Networking and Outreach
Connect with prospective clients where they naturally congregate (in person or online). Leverage:
- Workshops: Offer free educational sessions with informative content that prospects can find valuable and may later convert into clients.
- Social Media Campaigns: Engage with your audience in their preferred spaces.
Conclusion
Robin Waite espouses an encouraging message that the trials of starting a business illuminate opportunities for personal and professional growth. He reminds us that every successful entrepreneur once stood where you are and that taking a shot, despite fears and uncertainty, can lead to transformative change. So take action, remember your truths, and unlock your potential. Whether you're interested in coaching, web design, or another entrepreneurial endeavor, start applying this guidance and take the first step today!
For those interested, Robin has authored "Take Your Shot," a concise yet impactful guide where he shares his expertise. By filling out the scorecard at Fearless Scorecard, you can receive either a signed copy of the book or a digital copy.
imagine if Lewis Hamilton looked at airton Center 30 years ago when he first got in a car and he thought I'm never
going to be as good as that and Center like we'd never have you know seven time world champion rather than looking at it
and going I can never achieve that look at it and go well they've done it so can I now I know that we have a lot of
people listening to this podcast who potentially want to start their own business someday maybe even today or
tomorrow and so this interview is with Robin Waite Robin is a professional business coach he's also a public
speaker and he's an author he previously built and sold a web design agency and is also building a software company on
the side get out there and sell something for some money and see how you feel about it afterwards it's as simple
as that you'll learn 90 of everything you need to know because within having to do that you had to Market because you
had to make somebody aware that you had a program to sell or that you had a lawnmower to push around somebody's
Garden or whatever it might be this has been one of my favorite episodes of the podcast and Robin's book take your shot
was one of the books I think I read it in like 2020 or 2021 and it featured in my top 10 books that I recommended that
year the reason why I wrote the book is because I know that there's some smart people out there who read the book learn
what they need to do they'll go out there and they'll just execute it and then I went to deliver a talk in front
of about 60 people and somebody asked me what's the thing that stops people from achieving their goals and I said fear
basically business owners need to fear the little things in life business ever so slightly less that stop them
achieving their goals hey friends so before we get into the episode I've got some very exciting news that I'm finally
able to share with you and that is that I have written a book now if you've been following the podcast for a while you'll
probably know from some of my conversations with authors in particular that has been quite the journey over the
last three years this has been the single hardest thing that I've ever done in my life but after three years it's
finally here and I'm delighted to announce that my book feel good productivity is now available for
pre-order it's going to be published later this year and you can find a link down in the video description or if you
website is absolutely sick now the central idea for the book came from a realization that I had while I was
working as a doctor a few years ago and trying to juggle everything with my YouTube channel and my business and I
kind of realized that the secret to productivity isn't discipline it's in fact joy and sure hard work and great
and willpower and determination and all of those things are good in small doses but for most of us they tend not to be
the sustainable route to consistent productivity but I realized through a lot of experimentation and then diving
into a bunch of research that actually the secret to productivity that feels enjoyable and meaningful and sustainable
is to find a way to make your work feel good to find a way to make it feel energizing and enjoyable and if you do
that you'll be more productive in your work but you'll also have way more energy to give to the other things in
your life that matter to you and this isn't just my own personal experience but it's an idea that's been validated
by a bunch of studies in the fields of Psychology and Neuroscience as well and so the writing process of the book over
the last three years has involved reading hundreds of research papers interviewing academics and experts in
the fields of like psychology and procrastination and motivation and spending years trying to condense it
into a format and cut out all the fluff and try to do it in a way that's like engaging and actionable at the same time
so that's what the book is about it is a science about guide on how to do more what matters to you in a way that feels
enjoyable and meaningful and sustainable and if you enjoy this podcast then I can basically guarantee that you will love
the stuff that's in the book there are nine chapters each chapter has six different experiments in it that you can
try out in your own life and so there are 54 different experiments strategies that you can apply to your life starting
from as soon as you read the book and the idea is that you apply these and you see if they work for you and over time
you'll build your own feel-good productivity system now if you do decide to pre-order the book then that would be
awesome because firstly it helps me out and secondly I think the ideas in this book can be genuinely life-changing and
if you pre-order the book it will be delivered straight to you on release date later this year or to your Kindle
or your audible account and I'm narrating the audiobook by the way how or to their hardback hardback version of
the book If you prefer to read physical copies of books and if you do pre-order then please do be sure to save your
receipts because I'm going to be announcing a bunch of really exciting pre-order bonuses exclusively and only
for people who pre-order the book and so final thing before we get into the episode is just want to say a massive
thank you to you guys by watching the videos by subscribing on social media by listening to the podcast you have made
this book possible without you guys supporting the channel and everything that I do there's no way penguin would
have come knocking and been like hey do you want to write a book and so I'm like this has been like such a rewarding
experience and I could not have gonna come to this point without your support so I just wanted to say massive thank
you from the bottom of my heart for that so that's it from me do check out the book If you like at
feelgoodproductivity.com it'll be linked Down Below in the podcast description and the show notes as well but now let's
get into the podcast episode itself alright Robin thank you so much for coming on the podcast
um you're the author of this very good book take your shot which I read a couple years ago and shared the [ __ ] out
of on my email list because I just absolutely loved it um but I thought we'd make this episode
about the business coach stuff so what is a business coach firstly yeah there's a there's a lot of um common sort of
misconceptions about the differences between business coach what's a mentor what's a consultant
um so in my view so a mentor typically has been there and done it got the T-shirt maybe they're 10 years ahead of
where you want to be for example if you if you want to run a business we'll go and find these find someone who's run a
similar business with a mentor and they'll tell you what to do a coach in my view tends to sort of ask well-formed
questions they're not necessarily there to tell you what to do they're kind of more of a guide
um and I suppose like my Approach is a bit of a mixture between sort of business coaching and mentoring so I ran
the agency for 12 years got that t-shirt um and sometimes as much as you can kind of lead a horse to water through
well-formed questions people don't often get it and sometimes they kind of need to just be told or shown what to do and
away they go nice so it's like like then Center and so when you say business coach like let's say someone is like for
example if I want to if I want to learn tennis I might be able to read a book I might be able to watch some online
videos but like if I hired a tennis coach and I was like look I'm a complete beginner and I want to learn how to play
tennis they'd be able to help me figure it out is it the same thing for business it's exactly the same thing for business
but there's a really important piece which you kind of missed out there as well because there's going to be one day
when you kind of a bit lethargic wake up in the morning and you don't really want to play tennis that much and so your
coach would be there and I'll like hopefully not with too much kicking or Screaming drag you out of bed get you
onto the court make sure that you're taking the right sort of nutrition and self-care and things like that and it's
kind of more of a nurturing sort of process than it is you know just um sort of giving people a formula and away they
um again when you're coaching somebody typically what tends to happen is you're inviting them to do something which they
maybe are a little bit too scared to have they know they need to do it but maybe they haven't quite got the
confidence to get out there and do it for whatever reason so it could be well fear is the obvious one like fear of
um you know rejection so sales for example is something we should cover a lot of because you're going to get an
awful lot of rejection in there and obviously as human beings we like to be liked so getting out there and getting
lots of no's doesn't come naturally to a lot of people yeah and as human beings we tend to avoid the things we don't
like the things which kind of offer us discomfort we move towards comfortable things you know nice nice fluffy pillows
and cushions and things like that so coach's job uh is really just to like get people out there slightly outside
their comfort zone I don't really like that term because if you're too far outside your comfort zone for too long
it actually has an opposite effect it's like it's a demotivator at that point so um so you want to push in just a little
bit outside their comfort zone but enough so that they can learn through that experience of doing something new
and then they from there it's it's kind of easy at that point because they start to build muscle memory they start to do
things on autopilot and then you get that really like happy parent sort of moment where you're like ah like really
proud of like watching your um you know clients kind of grow and do stuff that they weren't doing before they met you
nice okay sick so um we have a lot of people in our um who who listen or watch this podcast and in
our deep diver Community who are interested in starting their own business interested in becoming
entrepreneurs they see the benefits of the entrepreneurial lifestyle they might see a business like mine and be like
damn he quit his day job and now it makes millions on the internet making videos that seems pretty freaking cool
and I think especially with the whole cost of living crisis the pandemic people losing their jobs a lot of people
have kind of seen that hang on the default path is no longer working the path where I get a job I go to a decent
unique that lands me a decent job that lands me promotion after promotion and eventually I'm happy that default path
no and and I'll be able to buy a house and stuff no longer really works and so a lot of people are looking to
entrepreneurship to starting a business as a kind of way out of the situation that they're in or a way in to a more
fulfilling life filled with freedom fund flexibility money impact all of all of the good things but the problem people
have is that taking that first step and getting started so I wonder if can we sort of do a bit of a role play
where I'm a total beginner coming to you as a coach and I'll try and play the pot and imagine myself how I was a few years
ago potentially and you kind of coached me through the process is that reasonable yeah we could do that okay
sick so I'm gonna be like right Robin I've heard you know I heard you another's podcast I've heard you're a
business coach I think I want to start my own business but you know it's overwhelming I don't even
know where to begin I've got a day job I don't yeah help help me what do I what do I do cool so my first question is why
why okay um so I am working as a junior doctor at the moment and it's really grueling and
I thought I enjoyed medicine but actually now that I'm actually working in it I'm realizing that spending 40 50
60 hours a week working in the NHS you know I'm not sure if I if I want to leave leave medicine but I watched some
available YouTube videos he talks about the power of having multiple streams of income preferably passive income and so
I was thinking you know if I could make an extra 2K a month 3K a month that would be completely life-changing I'd be
able to go part-time in my in my day job working maybe two or three days a week and I'd be able to actually spend time
with my girlfriend who I want to propose to and we won't have kids but you know I don't want to live a life where I'm sort
of tied to wage slavery for 60 hours a week cool okay so my next question is for you so thank you as well for giving
where you are right now would you say oh okay so I'm like two years into my doctor career
could you do it for another six months a year yeah I've got my you know I'm finishing off my F2 year in about six
months time so at that point there's a very natural break point but I don't have enough money to be able to sort of
not work okay and so I'm planning to do locums and extra shifts and stuff and I can probably do that for a year or two
but if I continue on that point and if I really want to go into medicine then you know the more years you take out of the
you know the last six months if I had to relive those for more than maybe another six I don't know if I can handle it okay
so and we're and did you say it's sort of two to three k a month extra is that what you want to earn or is it two to
about 3K a month okay and I'm thinking if I can get uh you know if I could have a business that even makes me 2K that
would be the absolute the absolute dream it would be so good I'd be able to then go down to three days a week so down
okay so an extra 2K drop you down to two week uh two three days a week okay cool what do you love doing I thought I loved
what do I love doing I don't know really I mean not spend time spending time with family and friends okay I used to play
starting a business you kind of need to um there's three kind of you mentioned lots of F's earlier on but there's three
F's which are really important to me so freedom is the first one so to be able to kind of live life on your own terms
and do what you want to do yeah um the second one is fulfillment so find something which you're deeply passionate
about that you jump out of bed in the morning even if you weren't getting paid for it you would you would do it anyway
because you just love doing it so much it just fills you up and then obviously the third f is finance so we want to
create something for you that gives you the freedom you want fulfills you and also pays the money
finances nice okay so for example and this is where we just throw some ideas out there and see what sticks okay so
would be pretty cool yeah that'd be really cool are there people out there doing it at the moment there are but
they're so like left like trying to be a professional athlete or something like it's such a small percentage of yeah but
they started they did why can't you I think what's stopping me from streaming wow is that
I know that there are about a million people trying to do it on Twitch for example of which like 10 are making
money so that's like one in a hundred thousand chances of actually making any money from it yeah which to me feels
like not great odds okay and ideally I'd like to start some sort of business where I feel the odds are more stacked
in my favor okay what are you good at you know I'm actually I I think I'm reasonable at web
design okay in that I used to do it when I was a kid and then I kind of got out of practice when I when I got to med
school because there wasn't enough time to do anything but I always enjoyed that at school and
that was the thing I'd you know I'd get home from school and I'd be tinkering away back in the day on like my MySpace
graphic Banner thing and then when Myspace died and Facebook became a thing I would design signatures for people's
Forum accounts back on forums or things you still remember my space yeah I know I'm so old yeah you know I I you know
but I used to really enjoy designing websites and I used to really Tinker away at my own personal website and I
doubt and I thought about trying to make money from it but then something always kind of helped me back and so that's
something that I think I actually used to really enjoy back in the day so there's something holding you back
there's there's already a recurring theme or pattern in here and I wonder what that might be
example because I because I know that web designers are a thing and I know that people do make money from it and I
know that web design agencies are a thing because I've come across them on the internet but if I think of it I
think I'm not good enough I think I don't have skills I think why would anyone pay me for anything I think even
and then I think even if I did do that is is it actually something that I would enjoy okay um yeah so all of those
what evidence do you have yeah I don't yeah honestly I don't really have an evidence for it I think it's just the
fear of like I know my skills in web design are kind of old now I know that the Frameworks and stuff have evolved
people are using all this new software which I don't yet know how to use and yeah I guess in my mind I'm thinking
it's going to be a way harder hurdle to cross okay but you thought becoming a doctor might be hard you did that that's
a good point yeah yeah so you can you're perfectly capable yeah I guess the thing with medicine is
that the the path is laid out in front of you yeah you have a very clear next step and you know that okay just need to
do this thing and if I just do the thing and I'm very good at doing the Thing Once I'm told what the thing is but when
it's when it comes to actually figuring out the thing and being a bit of a self-starter that's when I think I I
really struggle so so long as the pathway's there and it's clearly laid out and you can see it you're you're
happy with that okay yeah so it's a little bit like um imagine you're driving a car at night
you can see the headlights are shining up the road but they only shine up the road so far yeah you have faith that the
road is going to keep on appearing in front of you yeah otherwise like you just stop dead wouldn't you you wouldn't
go anywhere yeah so that's kind of like that's the Paradigm that you'll kind of find yourself in at the moment with the
web design side of things it's just that at the moment it's dark and the lights aren't on so we've got to create for you
your equivalent of what that roadmap looks like to get a web design business up and running okay so in your eyes how
would that work what would you do um hang on before we go down the web design route so aren't there other
businesses I could do like I've heard day trading is a thing I've heard people doing paid surveys I've heard yeah
why do you want to do any of that it's because you see people on Tick Tock getting rich quick right yeah like the
0.1 percent of people so do you have any passion for any of those things no no so don't let's not even go there so it's
okay okay that makes sense I should start with something I'm passionate about find something you like enough
that you can get started that when you are challenged by it that you have enough impetus to want to carry on and
work through those challenges like you did with medicine if you get into things purely like you
have to if it's just for finance if it's just one of the apps that's taken care of there'll be a point when it becomes a
bit hard and because you've got no fulfillment from it it's not really giving you the freedom you want because
when things start to go wrong you'll just think you can fix it by putting more time into it right so now your
Freedom's gone as well your fulfillment is just non-existent and you're just doing it for the money like are you
going to carry on for much longer are you just going to stop damn right so you need all three F's
they they need to be there to some degree they might not all be 10 out of 10. right it might be web design there's
a lot of hard work to go into web design you know it's technical it's there's late nights there's things like that but
freedom-wise you can sit down at your computer and build a website whenever you want you know if you've got kids you
can do it once they've gone to bed you know if you're doing if you're studying you can do it around your studies or
just spend a couple of hours a weekend or something like that so maybe Freedom wise is like a seven out of ten it's not
a 10 out of 10 but 7 out of 10 and that's tolerable but fulfillment wise when you actually sit down to do it you
love it and you're like you get this creation at the end of the process the website for a customer and you're like
wow like they're pleased you'll you get some enjoyment from that you're like a nine out of ten on the Fulfillment
factor and finances will you know maybe to begin with you do some websites for not very much money but to get
reviews case studies testimonials so initially the finance might be a six but you can see the potential in it you get
some money on the back end for hosting and supporting care plans and then gradually the money starts to build up
so you can actually influence that from a six out of ten to eventually a 10 out of 10 over the next year or two
but with what you suggested previously like if it's just about the money you can't you can't influence the other two
okay yeah because I guess part of me was was worrying like yeah I think I enjoyed web design but to
be honest I haven't done it in like 10 years at this point and I enjoy other things as well like like we said playing
World of Warcraft watching Netflix you know I enjoy playing badminton but I'm pretty unlikely to be a professional
World of Warcraft player not many people make money for watching Netflix and very few people become professional badminton
players so it's like how how much does like I guess a viable business model imagine if Lewis Hamilton
looked at and Center like 20 plus years or 30 years ago when he you know first got in a cart and he thought I'm never
going to be as good as that and Center like we'd never have you know seven time world champion any any of the amazing
things out there if you look at it rather than looking at it and going oh I can never achieve that look at it and go
well they've done it so can I yeah and then and then it's about thinking so that's the future version of
you way off in the distance but the the future version of Ali in 12 months time or 12 years time needs today's Ally to
do something so what's the first step you're going to take with your web design business
hang on hang on I'm still not sold on whether it's a web design business because let's just go with it we can
always change the product later business is business right but it doesn't matter what the product
is yeah businesses work the same way the world over okay so you have the same function sales marketing Finance the
different functions of a business are the same no matter what business you're in okay they're all the same so the
products can change so long as you understand the concept around how to productize any kind of a service it
doesn't matter whether it's web design or videography or podcasting or whatever you know whatever it might happen to be
so then how important is it because because for example I've got a full-time job I don't have very much time on my
hands and I ideally want to get to this kind of 2K a month dream world in the next say six or 12 months yeah so how
important is it that I get the get the right topic like whether it's web design or tennis coaching or personal trainer
or like I feel like there are all these options of making money and yeah I'm often I think in the past I've been held
back by just seeing all these and you're not doing anything so that's true so at least if we do
five-page brochure style website for somebody for a friend family member doesn't matter
whether you charge them for it or not don't care but just get out there and build build a five-page website in
Squarespace and see if you can do it so if you enjoy it at least if you do it and you don't
really enjoy it that much go and do something else let's have another conversation let's come up with
possibilities in abstract before committing and more about like let's commit to something that ticks the book
that ticks the three boxes of FFF yeah fun free no what is it Freedom fulfillment Freedom fulfillment and
finance Freedom fulfillment and finance yeah yeah okay yeah nice mate I'm glad I had a coach
okay so this is good I would have been like overthinking this [ __ ] for like years most people do and that's why most
people never start um there was uh well Mutual um connection we've got is just set up this
both know him and um the most common question which is appearing on his platform at the moment is is around
funding I need to go I need to get funding before I start anything and it's like the the
um I don't know why it is but there's there's so many people when they haven't run a business they think that again
doesn't matter what the idea is they have to somehow go out and get investment or a loan or something like
that yeah that's what I was thinking because like Dragon's Den and stuff yeah you know it's podcast I saw he was on
Dragon stand and I'm like oh you know he's you've got to get that 100K investment before you start yeah and
it's it's BS it's it's a complete um misconception because there is there is a in any business there is a version
which you can start from the ground up with no Capital you can just do something towards you know anything
doesn't matter you can go you can go and register a domain name you can go and set up a social media
um yet people sit there and go well I can't get a loan you know I've got ccj against me I can't get a loan so
therefore I can't start a business well you're no better off if you take no literally no steps towards whatever you
know your goal is so people just end up procrastinating so the question I always look is you just need to reframe it ever
so slightly you just need to say well if if funding's off the table it's not an option what is the first step you can
take towards the smallest First Step you can take towards getting this business off the ground what could you do today
and it might even just be get out a sheet of A4 paper and write down all of your ideas on it yeah like that's just
doing something at least from that you can start saying well that was a good idea or I could charge this for that or
maybe actually I don't really like that idea maybe I'll do this writing down a list of ideas on a sheet of paper yeah
um and then across the top of it you can then put some criteria against it so this is so again a lot of people get
they like you said you can do trading or you can do websites you do streaming it's all these different amazing things
which which you can do in like 2023 right thanks to the internet okay it's a little thing called the internet but and
again that causes people to procrastinate because they've got too many choices again they don't start they
can't decide which one to do so write them all down and then in the three columns across the top I think again the
link to the three F's so um which uh how much do I love this idea on a scale of one to ten right uh and
the second column is um if I do this if it's like a business idea and I do this for clients and what
results You Know How likely is it that I can get good results for the clients we'll mark that one out of ten and then
the final one is can people afford to pay me for this and we grade that out of ten and you can add in as many criteria
as you want and so each idea then you end up with a score out of 30 and quite often cream Rises to the top you end up
with one or two really solid ideas where they might not all be 10 out of tens but if you can if you can help somebody and
you're passionate about it and you can they can afford to pay you for it that's a solid business idea this episode is
very kindly brought to you by huel I've been a pen customer of huel since my fifth year of medical school since 2017
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episode let's wave a match Pond and pretend that it's no longer a web design business but it's the thing I'm
passionate about is giving relationship advice to my friends and I would love to build a business around that awesome and
I'm Keen you know happy to take the next step in that direction cool are you doing any of that at the moment uh yeah
so my friend I mean I'm not charging anyone for it but my friends like all they all come to me for relationship
advice okay and it's like I love it you know I get home from a day of work and I feel trained but when a friend comes
over I'm making him a cup of tea and we talk about their relationship and I feel so energized by that awesome how are you
thinking about sort of launching that as a business just out of curiosity I know that relationship therapists are
a thing and I even heard I was listening to one of the Stephen Bartlett's podcast he had a relationship coach on there
where you don't need a qualification to be a coach and so that thought I thought that was pretty good yeah um because I
don't have much time to get a qualification or something but if I could build a business around helping
that would be really cool yeah um at the moment I just think I just think it would be cool I don't actually
know how I would find clients and stuff so what do you think is that a viable business we'll come on to that and
you've before we do that you've raised a really valid point there because there is a there's a gray there's a line fine
line between therapy and coaching and I think it's massively important to kind of point that out and a lot of people
start coaching and then just because they're enthusiastic and there's you know they kind of do it for the right
reasons but unfortunately execute it poorly they start to transgress into like my belief is when you you don't
need a coaching qualification for coaching I should say but when it comes to crossing over into the the Mind Body
Spirit type stuff and it becomes therapy related work that I believe you need a certificate for because you're treading
like a very fine line between sort of mental health issues and physical issues and things like that so it's really
worth sort of emphasizing that but um coming back to your idea about um sort of setting up as a relationship
individual through to help them I guess find a partner or have a better relationship which approach would you
take what would the steps be okay so I guess I've helped friends in both in both camps okay so if we say finding a
partner for example um I would take them through oh you know I I've I've I've never
really thought about the steps for this but I guess I would find out a bit about them and find out
about their goals and what they're actually looking for whether they want to go for something casual or something
serious mostly my friends you know we're getting into our late 20s we want to go for something serious
um I would then help them set up a dating app profile because I actually think dating apps are
basically the easiest way to meet someone uh I would help them optimize that profile cool through because I you
know I'm a nerd so I read stuff about that I just love reading stuff about relationships and so you know black and
white photos and like balance between selfies and professionally professional photos and what sort of prompts they
should answer and I'm really good at that like I love going through my friends hinge profiles and just sort of
revamping them and they love it and they get good results um but at the same time I would also get
them to attend meetups or something like that kind of get partake Parts in groups and stuff where they can kind of meet
people in a more casual kind of setting and then once we've done that once they're on a date then I would get them
to go into it into the date with a few different mindsets um and then we'd kind of debrief after
the date and we'd do this a bunch of times and I basically guarantee that if they've gone on updates and follow my
method uh then they'll they'll find someone to be in a relationship with cool so you've got I couldn't I lost
count of the steps there but let's call it Ali 7 step you know relationship method uh sure we could come up with a
better name than that at some point but see your unique seven step process to find your ideal partner yeah
um just out of curiosity how long do you think it might take to and I know it depends it's going to come into this but
we'll tackle that later but on average so remember it's on average how long does it take to go from uh starting the
dating process your seven step process to the end hopefully finding somebody and settling down a little bit
would you say I would say I'd be very surprised if they followed my steps and went on a date once a week
which is what I advocate that they wouldn't find someone within six months six months okay so you have a six month
transformation program where you taken from single to a relationship following your seven step process huh right okay
of meet with them during that six months would it be like a monthly coaching session would it be would you meet with
them weekly what do you think you would how much time would you have to put into it okay probably
that would be great for them okay I feel like would I have time to move yeah I'd have time to time to meet with them once
a week okay but like once they start dating then instead of actually a one-on-one call they could fill out a
thing or well we could do it asynchronously through WhatsApp voice notes or something like that but I think
I think I feel like once a week would be good so it might be an intensive period for I don't know eight to twelve weeks
for example which is weekly then it gradually sort of eats out into more of just a let's catch up yeah so that
I don't know let's say an hourly rate for each session over those 12 weeks what would that how much would you
charge that's where I feel like there's a bit of a a hurdle here in my mind because
like for example I know I could make 40 pounds an hour by taking an extra shift at the hospital and so I feel
stuff like I don't have any qualifications yes I've helped my friends but I feel I'd feel really you
know charting 40 pounds an hour is charging it to the Healthcare System it's not charging it to a person so I'd
feel really weird if someone asked me yeah for my help and I would charge them 40 pounds an hour I'll share a little
story with you so I I met Mrs White Charlotte uh through a website called muddy matches uh 11 years ago money
matches muddy matches muddy matches yes we live out in the Cotswold so it's a bit oh well yeah very country
pay to have had the opportunity to meet my future wife through online dating and I wasn't particularly good at the dating
game let's be fair um you can't put a price on that and so I think where you kind of have looked
inside yourself and kind of looked into your own value system there and that I'm not going to give you a therapy session
now about around that but um it's common what people do is they kind of base their prices based on their
own value system but what you're actually doing there is you're making a decision on behalf of everybody else in
your world all of your clients so when you say well I think I'm only worth 40 pounds an hour you're kind of making a
where maybe if you haven't paid enough for it do you really value it that much whereas actually if you've paid a lot
for something do covet it cherish it look after it take care of it think whether if you're
a capitalistic expensive cars and things like that like you get the slightest thing you're like oh my God just ding my
car sort of thing so you really cover things that you actually investing in so when it comes to coaching especially
it's much better to be at the more expensive end of it because then what you get is clients who are invested in
the process they're more likely to do the things which you're encouraging them to do and as a result of that they're
more likely to get better results right so if you're charging 5 to 10K for this transformation program my goodness we'll
come to that okay okay so just this is part of the coaching process yeah so let's say you're charging five to 10K
for this coaching process you're going to get very committed clients but also you don't need that many clients each to
work with each year in order to build a sustainable profitable coaching practice 10 clients a year 20 clients a year and
actually you've got a six figure income bloody hell right it would take me 10 years of training in medicine to even
approach a six figure income yeah so and this this is where a lot of people get business wrong so
um do I want to focus on let's let's stick with where we're going with your coaching business for the time
but you know coaching practice so six month transformation we've got this intensive 12-week period yeah you
were thinking well 40 pounds an hour I was thinking like I was thinking like 10 quid an hour because I'm like what the
hell do I know about this okay well okay even at 10 pound now so for a weekly session say which is an hour plus all
the different touch points but you're talking there of like charging like I don't know 200 quid for 200 pounds for
like a program six month program right yeah if you think about it yeah that's pretty cheap okay yeah so this is where
we we break into like people see pricing as um binary okay so binary thinking so it's either yes or no a mineral amount
it's too cheap or it's too expensive okay yep right and at 200 pounds I think you probably well your face said that's
too cheap I can't believe I was going to charge that much of my time I'm worth more than that yeah well you know more
than that yeah I could make more I can make that in one shift and then when I said five to 10K your eyes popped out of
your head you know across the table and and so but what we've got now is we've got 4 800 numbers between 200 pounds and
5 000 pounds okay yeah and there's there's a a future version of value that's again selling his coaching
um program for 5K Maybe not today but in the future yeah so we we can do do you wanna we can do you've seen me do this
before I think Ali but the Jedi mind trick do you want to play a Jedi let's play the deadline play the Jedi mind
trick game okay so I'm gonna start 200 pounds and the reason I do this exercise well I'll explain it afterwards okay so
we're going to figure out um what level you need to be selling this at as of today if you're going to
step out and work with your first coaching client okay so 200 pounds five for the six months yeah for the six
months 500 pounds 800 pounds 1200 pounds already crikey 1200 quid yeah so you're so you're you're everybody has a poker
face right for whatever so whenever so initially when you were trying to figure this out how much you should charge in
the structure of your program and what am I worth you're trying to solve it intellectually yeah okay and we all know
you have without going to woo-woo you have more than one brain okay yeah um our subconscious brain is very
intuitive and so um that's why intellectually were like 200 pounds but when we started to look
into your subconscious of where you actually truly value yourself you're like well 1200 well it was between 800
and 1200 pounds where Poker Face came out and yeah you couldn't keep a straight face and I knew that that's
where your subconscious was telling you yeah even though as you say 1200 I'm just like I find myself just not being
what we want to do is we want to we don't want to stay in Comfort Zone because we don't actually learn that
much in there you've got to stretch yourself a little bit so my advice would actually be if you were going to go out
and sell this hypothetical coaching program sure you'd go and Pitch 10 to 20 people at 1200 pounds for that six month
transformation process and I I know because I've done this with 700 over 700 business owners now
um the pricing thing that is get people to elevate their prices I know that a good conversion rate for most service
businesses like coaching is somewhere around about one in five to one and three let's round the numbers
call it 20 to 40 percent really so yeah so if you pitch ten years uh it's it's not actually it's 20 so one
in five is actually quite it's quite low a lot of people think it's quite low but like how if I if I
think of like people that I know at work they they wouldn't pay a thousand pounds 1200 quid
audience oh are we going to come to that but we can do but um yeah uh the other way to look at it as well is
um again people approach us from the wrong way around they go I'm gonna build my product and then hope that people
come and buy it right yeah what we actually want to do is we want to come from the other the
other end of the spectrum okay so if your goal was to um make 100k from your coaching business
starting from scratch you're gonna give this a shot if I can make 2K a month so that's like 22. okay 24K yeah okay so
yeah yeah if I had 20 clients could you service 20 clients do you have the capacity to work with 20 clients over
the course of a year so if it's weekly calls that would be 20 hours a week 20 hours a week that's quite a lot it's a
lot coaching yeah very energetic I don't know if I'd be I'd have the time to do that yeah do you think work with
okay let's think about this so you know I work Monday to Friday and some weekends and night shifts and stuff so
if I had flexibility on one I could book them because my roto is weird foreign I think I could do five five a
week five calls a week probably because that's not like one a day on average yeah so so what we've done is this this
called capacity based pricing right so you work out your your end goal for your business what's what how much money do I
want to make basically it's very simple terms okay and we divide it by the price that we've kind of come to a conclusion
this is roughly what I think we should be charging yeah but now we've got a gap so if you only get five clients
concurrently um which probably means like 10 clients throughout the year because you're going
to get a little bit of overlap a bit of churn some clients leaving they meet their future wife husband whatever and
they don't need your help anymore maybe they come back when they've got relationship problems further down the
we've established is that you're going to fall short of your financial goal because you don't have the capacity to
service 24 000 pounds worth of business okay so good point yeah the real price point yeah so this so this is so
capacity hasn't made a go your goal is important capacity has a major part to play especially if you're setting this
up as like a side hustle yeah alongside a full-time job yeah um so now we've got a difficult decision
here we go well 1200 pounds I know that was going to be a bit of a stretch but if somebody can afford 1200 could they
afford two and a half k probably over six months don't forget if I could get people at two and a half k
that would mean I would only need 10 clients in the whole year yes and you could go down to three days a
week and then yeah I feel emotional just thinking about it and I'm not even like faking here I'm just like they're just
sort of imagining myself in that position yeah if I break the fourth wall a moment I'm just like oh my goodness
that would actually be transformational but I have all these fears coming up around like charging 2500 and even how
do I find these 10 people forget about the money forget about the money can you can you visualize yourself working with
those people and transform their lives yes okay yeah can you do you feel confident enough in your ability to
deliver like such remarkable results for them that you'd have no problem refunding them if they had if they
didn't get if they didn't meet the love of their life and they say they alley this is rubbish you didn't you didn't
find the love of my life I won a refund would you have any problem refunding them if they did the work then no if
they didn't do the work then well they didn't do the work okay well let's let's assume they did the work you threw
everything at it yeah best will in the world didn't get the results no they can have a full refund I don't want the
money if they don't get the result yeah 100 so there's no de-risk it there's no Jeopardy here what do you mean oh okay
like if someone doesn't if someone doesn't get the result yeah I can just give them give them give them their
money back provided they've and this is where the contract comes in okay so the contract
States you've got to show up to all of the calls you've got to do all of the homework you've got to go on the dates
etc etc and if they do that and if they do that I mean they're basically going to find they can find a relationship and
if they don't know how happily refund them sure but I want this I'm kind of Wonder worry won't everyone ask for a
someone actually followed my advice their life would change even if they didn't find a relationship their life
would 100 change yeah but okay nice okay so I could it's like okay that's that's interesting I've I've never thought
about that before I've always been scared of charging for anything even the thought of it but the thought that I can
just always refund their money yeah and and 10 clients over the course of a year that's less than one a month
yeah right that's one quite doing one client a month somebody who's what type of person has
disposable income two and a half K and again don't forget it's going to be spaced over six months okay so they
could pay for it all up front if they want to that's actually okay so that's like 500 quid a month basically for six
well firstly all my friends working in finance yeah all of my friends working in Tech basically none of my friends
working in medicine but you know my mum's a consultant psychiatrist she has colleagues who are trying to get into
dating after divorce after divorce or something they easily have 500 a month to throw out this problem yeah so I
afford 500 questions it's the unique Ali dad program dating after divorce yeah there you go
that's that could be a nice niche to go into you thing is you've got all of those choices you can make all of those
choices and adjustments as you go further down the line okay they don't have to be perfect like right now okay
damn man I feel so I feel so inspired already and I know we haven't done anything but just
program where I'm showing up every single week to help help them through the process and they're going to find
the love of their life fingers crossed or at least someone to be in a long-term relationship with yeah that makes it so
doable now there was something there was something which popped up as well yeah and I I don't know if anybody will have
caught this actually what maybe they'll have to go and watch it back you might have to watch it back but there was a
part of you which was like oh but all of those doctors and nurses that are single at the moment who are struggling to date
which I know is probably close to your heart and like quite rightly so we can help them too okay what we do is we we
build a business with um parameters so it might be and I I call those clients love clients okay and
um again I meet so many business owners that are like oh I want to give back I want to help as many people as I can
especially coaches they want to save the world they want like eight billion people like to work with all of them and
change their lives around you like it's just not practical it's not going to work but what we can do with the love
clients is we can build a business where let's say for example if you accelerated this and maybe you charge even more or
you get a few more clients in on that one-to-one basis now you're working full-time in this business well now
you've got five days to do as you pleased with right yeah um how about if you actually carved one of those days
out for the doctors and nurses it's your you know that's your kind of like hero product right and what if actually we
can't work with them all you know you'd have to charge them a lower rate potentially if they can't afford it and
I'm surprised they can afford to eat you know at the moment the amount doctors and nurses are paid but
um so maybe what you do is you introduce a group program you know a membership or something like
that where they get access to the IP maybe maybe it's a self-paced learning yeah with a weekly q a on a Friday just
for the doctors and nurses yep right and they get a preferential rate for that when they show their their doctoral
yeah 100 my my hesitation with that is would they value it if it was free would they do the work if it was free do they
need to have a little bit of something yeah a little bit of skin in the game yeah doctors are notorious about signing
up to free stuff and then not actually yeah yeah so so it might be that I don't know maybe they get it but a reduced
rate maybe yeah maybe that's the price we started off one thing that I've seen this other this other business do is
that you pay something upfront but if you do the work you get a full refund yeah and that would be sick like if I
could charge them like I don't know even even like 500 credit for the whole six months and they know they're going to
get the refund if they do the work yeah that would really motivate them to do the work and so many more doctors and
nurses would be in relationships then yeah sick but I can't build a business around that
because the economics don't work out as we figured out yeah okay but but I can have that as like my side hustle yeah
once once I've once I'm making my 20 okay full-time coaching program you unique alidad program to you know
transformation and yeah side hustle helping the doctors and nurses meet the love of their life wow that sounds so
good but okay right where do we go from here what's the next step I'm I'm sold I'm
down to to make This brilliant excellent so next step is um you just got to get out there and start pitching so now it's
you know we've agreed the price points two and a half K you've got to go and find 10 people sit down and have a 30
minute conversation with them and then pitch your offer um I can guarantee that if you find 10
people who are pretty much the right sort of client for this um based on that one in five to one and
three conversion rate which I talked about so yeah somewhere between two three or four of those people are going
to say yes to this okay out of those first ten and like if we're working on just like worst case scenario one and
five are going to say yes so you've only got to do five consultations a month with prospective deities yeah
um to get that one client a month that you need to make this work that feels very doable yeah I'm uh I'm a pretty
good I'm I'm pretty sure I can come into people that this is worthwhile I've also got the whole clinical communication
skills going for me my only I'm just like how how the hell am I going to find five of these people each month where do
Google are they in Facebook groups like this is where you've got to start like marketing
101 okay that's that's what you're asking me for basically um yeah marketing 101 is four very
simple steps okay okay so first of all once we figured out who our ideal client is yep so if those are like you said you
kind of listed off a few that yeah the Consultants the bankers the lawyers the people working in finance in the city
that's it yep yep so there's a few different audiences there the um Step number two of marketing 101 is we then
ask the question whether they hang out so probably they're looking through scrolling through Facebook maybe on
psychographics and demographics based on those our ideal clients so demographics is easy because that's like you know age
gender location those sorts of things psychographics though which is where it starts to get interesting with step two
is like what are their behaviors so what magazines do they read what Facebook groups are they in uh what pages who do
they subscribe to you know what podcasts do they listen to all of those sorts of things behaviors
that there's another tier below that which is like um I call it the identity layer so this is like
um and one of it's probably easier if I talk about sort of the types of clients I work with because this is where I sort
of learned about this um um I've noticed that um a lot of my clients have like a slight Edge to them
they're like um uh so for me for example I like to do I like to go surfing and cycling I love going down a hill I think
um locally so it's pretty pretty fast and scary uh I surf 12-foot waves so I I have like this edgy sort of side to me
and it seems like I had that's my identity I like cycling surfing and cycling and I seem to attract clients
who are and have that similar sort of edginess to them they're into their like slight extreme sports or Ultra marathons
or they go out doing you know wild camping on Dartmoor and stuff like that their weekends you know on their own and
and whatnot so they've all got this slight Edge so um finding clients who share similar
values to you have similar sort of identity to you actually makes the process of finding clients that much
I think my identity you know I was very sort of bookish when I was in school and University and still am and wasn't
really want to hang out at parties and things which is why when we thought about the bar thing I was like oh I
don't know I don't really go to bars but I imagine there are a lot of people like me who are kind of a little bit socially
awkward but who still really want to be in a relationship and who could do with a lot of help with their dating yeah
profiles and things like that because those are the people who I was I was like that back in the day and it took me
reading about relationships to really diving diving into it and then applying the insights to my own life yeah for me
to realize oh there's actually a method here and it's not that hard and so if I can find those kind of like nerds rather
there's someone who was maybe top 20 in the year group at school and was then the bottom set of PE that's that's the
person who I think yeah exactly yeah that's the person but is anyone that your friends come see for like
relationship advice yeah but all my friends do you see all of my friends are nerds yeah yeah so the so the identity
layer is actually like massively important it's more important even than the demographics and psychographics yeah
they'll hang out and you can start to then Target your marketing at them so so step one who's your ideal client step
number two where do they hang out step number three we've got to go to them okay and the reason we go to them is
because like people are busy it's 2023 we've all got busy hectic lives you know especially post covered and all that
sort of thing it just seems like it's non-stop go all the time so if we can find creative ways to get in front of
our ideal client without them having to extend any extra effort We Stand more chance of being able to just start to
build rapport and build that relationship with them um so we need to put things in front of
and then step number four and this is the bit that a lot of people especially starting out don't realize you then have
because how many times have you probably seen like ads pop up on as you're scrolling or on telly or something like
that and you see the same ad seven times 11 times 20 times and then you just think I'm gonna buy that thing and you
think you just did it on the spur at the moment but it's actually because you saw the ad like 20 times it's it's sowed the
seed of an ideal that brand becomes familiar with you so for example like the dating side of things and if you
know that people are um book smart well you could set up a Facebook ad for example which gives away your seven
unique seven step process not the whole kit in caboodle but you could give away all of the IP and the value if you
wanted to but run a Facebook ad give away you know uh in exchange for their name email address and telephone number
give away a Google doc which outlines your seven step process and if they're if they're that way
inclined they can follow those steps and go and find the love of their life under their own steam yeah so it's the reason
why I wrote the book is because I know that there's some smart people out there who'll read the book learn what they
need to do like what they need to get from the book they'll go out there and they'll just execute it yeah when
there's a small percentage of people who are able to do that yeah but we also know there's a bigger percentage of
people who get very excited about that seven step process not quite have the confidence to be able to do it
themselves or can't quite see themselves doing it or whatever whatever is stopping them from like getting started
this is going to be a banging Google doc yeah yeah and it's going to have um it's going to have a couple of case studies
in there of like happy you know success stories of clients um clients couples that have got together as a result of
the the work you've done with them um maybe you've built a Facebook community and it's got some you know
clients it's got some wins in there so if people like you have your Friday wins people put you know I went out on a date
last night it was absolutely amazing hoping to go on a second date and that we cut and paste that we pop that into
the Google Doc yeah you know so we're building up a whole sort of um thing around sort of social proof and it's a
Google like it doesn't need to be a fancy website you can build a website if you want to
but it could be for now we want to we want to get something up like uh bootstrap it we can make it better later
we're going to take a very quick break from the podcast to introduce our sponsor brilliant.org I've been using
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podcast the way that I've approached everything at school and University it's like trying to aim for Perfection
because when you hand in the assignment you can't just improve it later you have to work on it so hard and and then but
you have to remember though Ali like when you're in medicine lives depend on it it has to be perfect yeah right and
there's not many things that have that level of Jeopardy in them like what you work through with with medicine and when
it comes to business like you know I think everybody thinks that it's the equivalent of somehow walking across the
plains of Africa and you you know a bit different when you've got to walk 10 miles to the river to get and there's
hippos and lions and things actual things that can eat you whereas like in business you can make mistakes you call
them failures if you want to but you can use them as opportunities to learn and there's only two things that can
possibly go wrong you lose a bit of money or you lose a bit of face it's a little bit stupid or you back to where
you started again before yeah and you go again you come up with another idea another Google doc another Facebook ad
another whatever and the thing is like inside we get we think that everybody's watching us yeah
I'm thinking all my friends all the nurses at work all of my junior doctor colleagues are going to be like huh what
a [ __ ] this early guy thinking he can give relationship advice he doesn't even have a qualification it sounds to me
like they're not true friends your true friends will be like supportive my true friends wouldn't care
they'd be like sick yeah exactly I'm thinking about the colleagues at work yeah well screw them screw them let them
do you know do them yeah and this is about building success for you okay okay so marketing 101
figure out the target audience yep where do they hang out yep go to them and what was the last one be
tenacious you show up regularly and often with the same consistent message do I have to do this via Facebook ads or
uh there's probably like uh dating meetups for example where single people go yeah on like you know I know you said
you don't necessarily like the whole idea of going to Bar could be a bit cringy but there's there's I've been
single for a very long time actually no but I'm kind of making a few assumptions okay no but okay but if I think about it
like my okay my my ideal target market is basically a professional who is a nerd who is making decent amounts of
money probably earning at least I'd say 50k a year that is someone working in Okay cool so
things that I could do to get at that Target Market I could run a Facebook ad or I mean I don't know anything about
that but I'm assuming you can Target it at particular occupations LinkedIn yeah links to these people are on LinkedIn
yeah there you go loads them on LinkedIn see and also like I think one of my friends works at McKinsey and I know
they put on all these like afternoon talks and [ __ ] at lunchtime I could say to the friend hey I'll do a totally free
workshop on helping management Consultants with dating yeah and I could oh they love a good PowerPoint I could
turn it I could put my seven part method into a good PowerPoint there you go and if I can get my foot in the door with
McKinsey those people at that lunchtime talk will be perfectly primed to be young people with loads of money with
shitty dating lives and they could benefit from my model from my model yeah there you go oh okay now that you didn't
and then I've got another friend who works at Bain another friend at BCG another friend of Deloitte another
friend at PWC another friend of Goldman Sachs even if Mackenzie say no I'm sure I could
if I think about it all my friends working at any kind of Finance or Tech thing in any kind of job in London all
of their workplaces with the exception of the NHS do lunchtime teaching type talks yeah so I could just copy paste
message to all of them be like hey I'm doing this thing totally free Workshop what do you think is going to happen as
like yeah what happened how did you meet them yeah like what are they going to say they're going to refer me yeah yeah
um and let's say I don't have any friends working in the sort of places where I could attract my target audience
like I've seen ads on Facebook LinkedIn and stuff but I have no idea how they how they work yeah so but it accelerates
the process I mean if you think about it like I mean people are saying that people are sort of mass migration away
from Facebook and into Tick Tock and other things like that but right now like there's still have many billion
four billion people still registered on Facebook so you only need 10 people surely there's 10 people out there you
know who fit the profile that you've kind of laid out so it's kind of more to amplify I like to think that your first
10 clients probably are already in your network you probably already know them all of those people you just listed off
um so it might be that that works and then uh let's say for example if it's so popular and you're getting loads of
inquiries you might then want to turn this into a group coaching program not a one-to-one coaching program
right so now rather than helping template tape 10 people a year you've got so much demand actually we want to
help 50 or 100 or 200 people could do we can Workshop seminars like exactly just rent a hotel conference room in London
and like totally put on a workshop if I if I had if only people would show up yeah so if you're once like I always
recommend like coaches start one-to-one because that's where you sharpen your swords you you learn you see whether
um but once you've got a proven methodology quite often then you can transfer it across into into a group
setting there'll be a version of it that you can make work um but the challenges a lot of people
don't have demand so they don't have the audit the size of audience to be able to fill it at scale so that's where you
generation yeah that's what I heard in a Dan Priestly interview on a podcast one time yeah New Generation that's what
we're talking about right basically lead generation we're trying to generate leads by identifying a Target Avatar
figuring out where they are going to them and doing it repeating yeah easy yep why do so many people struggle with
this because when you laid out like that well I mean there's technology involved isn't there so that there's
like every five minutes as well so yeah um but I guess you know there's technology involved in every job like I
somebody in the arm I'm sure I can learn how to set up a Facebook ad yeah exactly I'm not going to be but you're a smart
guy Ali there's people who are like technologically averse um now the way I look at that is is that
true or are they using that as a bit of an excuse a crutch to lean on and say oh I'm not very good at this like they fall
back on it a little bit one of the most common things I hear in businesses are not very good with numbers right and
that really angers me I nearly swore then really angers me right the reason for that is because everything about
business involves numbers okay profit and loss turnover gross profit net profit overheads and expenses all
numbers conversion rates number of leads which you need number of website visitors number of likes comments and
shares you get on your Facebook post the number of people who like your Facebook page all they're all numbers you look at
everything within business it all revolves around numbers in some way shape or form so there's I don't
a slight caveat that said you only have to understand enough about numbers to then be able to delegate
responsibility to somebody else because otherwise again I see a lot of people who hand off like oh I'm not very
I don't understand tax so I'll give it to an accountant and then they wonder why they get a surprise at the end of
the year because the accountant says well you've got to pay X number of thousands of pounds of tax oh my God I
wasn't expecting that um well no it's because you kind of just delegated responsibility to somebody
else you didn't delegate responsibly you delegated responsibility and you don't therefore that's always going to come
back as a shock when you've got to pay tax the end of the year so what you want to do is you want to understand numbers
enough so that when you make 10K in a month you know that and this is where you get into like profit first territory
um than I am but not the the relationship the coach version of me so in it he basically talks about like
Starling and Monza so online banking apps now have made this so much easier because I have these little things
but he basically says well you set the sides in the UK your your vat your corporation tax if you've got employees
paye National Insurance contributions uh you have a little I can call it the fun pop so I that normally for me that's
like buying camera gear and then the other one is the rainy day fund so you have a savings Kitty for if we had no
and then and then your main account is then just like a float so just day-to-day expenses money coming in and
out and things like that and the idea is so that if 10K comes in well 2K goes to that 1K goes to you know corporation tax
1K gas National Insurance concert you know so you divvy it up the moment the money comes in so by the end of the year
when you do your returns you've got the money saved up to pay all of your taxes up front hopefully you've
got a bit of extra money because you've put some in your fun part and in your rainy day fund so you could draw some of
that down if you want you know and spend that on just fun stuff or reinvest it into the business and things like that
and like again the amount of times I hear business owners say I've got a cash flow problem
I'm sorry I'm a total geek when it comes to numbers you're going to hear me so cash flow they see it's like the money
just basically flowing in and out of the business right okay so having a cash flow problem is that just a euphemism
for I'm Brooke uh kind of basically because it's not a cash flow problem because if money flows in it flows
straight back out again so there's no cash flow problem there they've got two problems though the actual real problems
are making more money yep so this is where we talk have the pricing conversation and second to that is then
keeping that money yeah right because what I typically tend to see is the um uh I don't know you're going to explain
this to podcast listeners hopefully this will work for the video but people as their turnover starts to increase like
that which is like the dream isn't it straight line upwards um the overheads start to track up with
it because we're like right we've got money to reinvest whether that's in staff or
um Machinery kit whatever it might be what you know marketing starts to track up now we have the bad month and now our
expenses are up here and our revenues down here so we're now in this position of loss and that's where the fear really
kicks in for a lot of people now normally you can see it because it doesn't just all of a sudden go like
that it starts to sort of tail off so I'm I'm a big fan of like bootstrapping businesses especially
because Japan keep your expenses as low as you possibly can do be really conscientious about where where and who
you're spending your money with um you know especially on things like marketing there's like a thousand and
one shiny marketing things you could could spend your money on we talked about some of them websites marketing
branding you know lead generation you'll you know you'll get sold those like every day of the week by lots of
sorts of things on the hope that they will work so they don't really tend to do their due diligence somebody will say
I'll do this and you'll get 10 to 15 leads a week and all that sort of stuff invariably from my experience those two
those you know it sounds too good to be true invariably it is but they do tend to cost quite a lot of money
so be very you know it's just a cautious cautionary tale about just be careful about letting your expenses track up too
um people believe the goal in business is to get as many clients as they possibly can do for their business
think based on the capacity pricing conversation that we had my goal is not actually to get 100
clients because I don't think I can service 100 clients because I just don't physically have the time I'd rather get
10 clients who pay me more yeah then have 100 clients who pay me less so you've got 10 clients to pay
you more what does that mean for the business that means I have more time to give to them yep so better better
quality results yeah yeah it means I'm less stressed because I only have 10 people to deal with rather than 50. and
it means that through the revenue generated through those 10 people I can then do my pro bono service to my
doctors and nurses friends for free so it's profit to reinvest back into the business yeah so imagine now
like imagine if you went from 10 clients to 100 clients what have you got to do you've got to spend loads of money on
marketing so all of a sudden the Investments like go up tenfold and I'd probably have to hire people as well to
deal with 100 clients because it wouldn't just be able to be me yeah so collecting clients like yeah I've got no
um you know out of I liken it to um I call it it's the marketing mix basically you find
two three or four things which work really really well for your business marketing wise and then you rinse and
repeat those and they might have a half-life they may only last for so long especially if they involve technology
um probably wouldn't surprise you I've used Facebook ads for my business in the past and
um and the reason for that is because I um it was it was working to a certain point and I but I I did made a kind of
like Cardinal error um in your audiences you'll have people who are just like ready to buy
already in in your circle of influence okay okay so we we reached a point whereby we all of those people who are
in our Circle my circle of influence who'd they bought from us yeah and then all of a sudden our conversions dropped
off a cliff so we weren't signing up as many clients yep my ads are still running and I'm spending three grand a
month yeah and it took me three months to figure out what had gone wrong with the audience again numbers I I'd try to
analyze the numbers but I couldn't figure out what the problem was with it and eventually I figured it out but in
the meantime I've spent three months spending three grand so it's a costly mistake right so we we kind of gotten
this when you said that you don't like it when people say I'm not good with numbers yeah
like half the people I know even the doctors would say that they're not good with numbers so does that mean worrying
well exactly yeah so does that mean that people who are not good with numbers can't run a business not not necessarily
um in many many respects like if you're numerically dyslexic for example then like I see the books over your shoulder
there it's an unfair Advantage because it it forces you to be creative in other ways so you make up for it in other
aspects of the business it might be that you've got to find the support of somebody who does get numbers
within the business so have have a mentor or a coach or an accountant some kind of an advisor who can help you out
in that respect and just say oh you're overspending a bit here or you could be making a bit more profit yeah I think if
I'm if I'm being honest most people I know who say they're not good enough with numbers they're not actually
numerically dyslexia like one in 30 of them if I think of people that I know they managed to do drug dosing
completely fine they managed to do like kind of weight and Drug calculations it's but maybe because they didn't do a
level maths or a level further math they think oh I'm not good I'm not I'm not good with numbers and it's like a story
dealing with tax or hearing number hearing fancy words like operating profit and you know margin and all that
[ __ ] give the real kind of emotional like sense of overwhelm yeah I think it's a sense of stepping outside the
comfort zone rather than really being a case of being numerically dyslexic the motivators though to understand like
profitable sustainable business um and that is ultimately the thing that everybody wants yeah if you said to
those people that you could be making 3K months doing your business will that prompt you to learn about the numbers
they'd be like well yes obviously but it's yeah I think I think it's one of those like excuses just like I'm not
good with technology yeah but like like come on let's be fair like tax is boring I'm not gonna lie sorry if there's any
accounts like listening to this but it is dull but but again just you don't need to understand tax and things like
that leave that to an accountant but as long as you understand turnover and net profit just those two numbers yeah how
much money is coming in and how much you have left yeah yeah then that's a good start right so at this point in our
relationship coaching practice by the way do I need a name do I need a business card do I need a website like
what's the deal with all this stuff not yet those can all come later but to launch business you just need to get out
there and start talking to people should I register the business should I make a business bank account should I deal with
no none of that so okay um and the reason for that is so um uh now I have to know my numbers here
to be able to give advice but so take in the UK for example you can actually there's a certain amount of money which
you can earn on a reg on an annual basis as a side hustle without having to register it as a business or something
900 pounds and stay within that threshold just to try it out just to see whether it works for example um
uh you can go self-employed to start off with and then obviously as part of a you just have to do a tax return at the end
of the financial year declare any income pay the tax keep it nice and simple you don't need a business bank account or a
limited company or anything like that you know some sometimes when you're starting out simple is better
it as well so for example when I shifted from my agency um uh practice which I was running into
the coaching practice I there were certain things that I wanted to set out intentionally to do
the right way do things the right way with so for example um I knew that I wanted to earn 100K in
my coaching practice I set that as like my big hairy audacious goal from year one like that's what I wanted to achieve
and so 100K business has to be that registered so from day one I went limited I went vat registered and I set
out with that intention and part of that was like just future pacing myself yeah because that's the business I wanted to
people vary so if you're if you're slightly risk-averse you're not sure whether this has got legs or not yeah
let's just dip our toe in and try it on for size and see whether see whether the shirt fits or if you're like no I'm
going to make this a thing I'm going for it I'm gonna do it properly let's set up a limited company go about Richard nice
go for it okay I've just asked child GPT give me name ideas for a relationship coaching business where I do six month
Transformations for people to help them find a life partner and I've got a bunch of names I like uh option number nine is
connection Catalyst nice and I've just searched for that on Google and there there is in fact a connection Catalyst
limited but it was dissolved in 2018 so that's probably good cool connection Catalyst that's the name of the name of
this boom okay job done so the stuff that we've gone through so far kind of figuring out the business model
identifying the talking blah blah blah blah would that happen in like one coaching session with you or like what
what's the process for like uh an ordinary person starting completely from scratch and how how long does it take to
get them to a idea that they then take action on yeah I mean it's like anything some sometimes people get it in one
session and away they go sometimes people everybody operates at different speeds so sometimes it might be a three
or a six or a 12 month Journey which they've got to go through and especially like one of the things we were talking
about was running running this as a side hustle yeah so if you've got a full-time job and you have less resources
available at your time obviously it's going to take a bit little bit longer potentially to achieve those goals but
um I I did work with one client um who uh so they joined Fearless on the Tuesday we did a coaching call on the
Wednesday they had two sales calls on the Thursday and Friday yeah um and they doubled their their
investment that they paid me in that so in four days they'd made double the money back that they'd invested with me
so it can happen super fast on the flip side of that I worked with a communications consultant and she was
very she was very honest up front she was like I've got some money to save I'm not desperate for clients I've got one
specific client I want to work with um so she was in the educational space uh she wanted to work with ucas and
um that that was like her dream client and so she did some other bits on the side as and when they came in but it was
um in her words it was worth the wait yeah you know and that was when she'd been doing sort of previously sort of
day rate at like 200 pounds 250 pounds a day to then get 180 Grand contract it was life-changing you know that's the
Catalyst for her um Community you know her Communications consultancy then to go on and get bigger
let's say we're taking the conversation towards the relationship thingy um we went down this route of like
what's the what's the transformation you can get them in what amount of time yeah and I just kind of went with that
because you pushed me in kind of in that direction but now I think about it what is wrong with discharging hourly
I mean I I did a video about this that I I'd actually truly believe that irony rate charging is unethical right and the
reasons for this is so imagine if you did want to go and get a website done for example uh well maybe maybe you're
you're doing a beauty parade and there's three web designers okay so web designer number one comes along alley and he says
to you right I can build your website I'll do everything you want to do um it's going to take me 10 hours
um uh and I'll charge you 100 pounds an hour for it so about a thousand pounds and you think okay cool uh so he goes
away what he forgot to tell you though was he's not been doing it for very long uh he's not particularly good at it uh
because he's not charging enough he's taken on too many clients so he comes back eventually about five months later
um with a bit of a hack together sort of website it doesn't have the blog or the shopping cart on there that he promised
you and what do you say where's my blogger my shopping cart yeah and he and can you add them on and he
and you're like well okay but I thought you told it me is going to take 10 and and so he reluctantly agrees he says
okay well I'll just build it now you're annoyed that he's this you know at one end of the spectrum as a customer uh
he's now a bit like you know reticent because like he's not getting paid what he thinks he's worth because now he's
doing work for free effectively yeah um most people are like ethically morally upstanding human beings and they
wouldn't just tag on the extra money but the mere fact that you could tells me that hourly rate charging is a broken
business model okay so there's our first clue that hourly rates don't work right web designer number two comes along
right so he says to you he's more experienced he says ali uh could build your website in in 30 days
um I'm gonna charge you 100 pounds an hour for it um but because I'm better than the other
guy I can do it faster so it'll take me five hours to do it I'm thinking well you're getting a good
deal as the customer but surely the guy who can do it better and faster and deliver better results why does he get
paid less than the guy who's less experienced and is still learning and doing making a bit of a hash of it
so again tells you that there's nothing unethical going on there but it tells you that Ali rates is a broken business
model yeah the incentives are wrong here yeah so now we get web designer number three comes along absolute like website
ninja he says Ali I'm gonna build you the website in seven days have a shopping cart uh it'll have the blog on
there that you wanted to be able to edit all the content yourself we'll get it connected up to Google Store so your
products will be listed in there within about 14 days um and we'll be selling your products
and uh by the way if we can't get you a 10x Roi on the investment you make with us within the first 12 months we'll give
you your money back for that plus we'll also pay you a thousand pounds of wasting your time which you can spend on
the other two people who are kind of playing at it yeah that's someone I'd be like wow this
is like some some good energy cool ask me how much how much is it 10K 10K yeah let's go cool so but it's 10 times the
price of the other two if you think about it yet because he's got a clear idea about he's got he's got his process
processes down it's all systemized he knows that he only works with you know YouTube influencers for example so he he
um that they can deliver remarkable results and they can do it predictably um and therefore they can put that
guarantee in there they're going to deliver you those results damn so the value proposition is that much stronger
hourly rates don't exist in that transaction even if it only takes that person an hour to build it yeah nice so
if I would start starting a relationship coaching business I shouldn't think hourly pricing is my definitely go too
definitely not um it's got to be based on the results which you deliver for clients pure and simple is there any
coach Consulting equals and oh I don't have to think too hard about it they can just book via calendly link or something
but listen to the do you notice the language you used in that oh I could just do this it kind of feels a bit like
you're just playing at it I'm just halfing it yeah yeah so are you serving the client when you're running your
business like that no I am essentially serving myself because I don't want to work too hard
instance the client is the most important person in the relationship so it's the same reason why people get
um and they get onto sales calls the next thing you know their palms are going sweaty their heart starts racing
it gets to that really pointy end of the conversation where the person says how much and then they kind of retreat like
nice it's the same reason why um people and like when they're selling they have this massive fear of no
fear of rejection they I mean it's a human instinct we we're we're heard animals at the end of
the day pack animals we like to be accepted so if we hear the word no we take it as a massive rejection right but
what what are they actually saying no to they're saying no to the offer yeah say no to the offer which is attached to is
it attached to the person of the business attach the business attach the business yeah right
when things aren't going to plan in your business normally it's because things aren't going to plan with you hmm that's
the Royal you not just you Ali but the Royal you so imagine we've got Ali over here and we've got Ali's business over
here if Ali's value systems are all over the place this relationship is up or down he's just having a bad day and he
walks into the office and those two things are attached yep what's going on yeah the business is having a wobble as
um solid foundations so all the things which you've been through with your coaches and mentors
um having a team in who understand what their roles and responsibilities are systems and processes like Sops standard
income to provide security that's like the the walls if you like and the roof going on the top to protect it
for your business and then you switch off your iPad or your laptop or whatever at the end of the day at five o'clock
and then you can carry on having your wobbles over here like the business so when somebody says no they just don't
get the value that your business offers it's it's not personal yeah it's not an insult it's not anything it's the
Catalyst and I've managed to land one free workshop at like a consulting firm of of some description and because I
listened to the Daniel Priestley interview on Oliver's deep Life podcast I chose not to charge for that Workshop
so because I wanted to get in my foot in the doors because everything is Downstream of lead generation and I've
got like 15 people in a room they've showed up they've their arms are folded they're a bit skeptical they're like you
know what is this really connection Catalyst BS and because I know my [ __ ] I prepared my talk I've prepared my
PowerPoint on my slides I take them through the seven part method I may have read Russell Broad and Bronson's book
expert Secrets which talked about how exactly how to do this and then what do I do at the end of it
when it comes to like telling people about my thing uh well first mistake is you wait until
the end of your presentation to tell them about what you your next the next step is okay interesting so like
do you not get the ick whenever we've all sat in these presentations right workshops conferences where
the speakers like building up to this Crescendo this offer yeah and and they get to the end of it and then they start
talking about their value ladder oh we we normally sell it for this but we're gonna today it's we're gonna knock down
the price we're gonna sell and we all get that we don't like that bit right so put the offer at the start of the
presentation okay it's a bit like um because then they've got something that they can measure the value against okay
so at the start of the presentation you're going to do your hey that's great thank you so much all for showing up
today massively appreciate it we're gonna make this a really fun and interactive Workshop I've got seven
really cool steps which I'm gonna um take you through and by the end of it you'll know everything you need to go to
get your dream partner but just before we go into that I just want to tell you a little bit more about me and what I do
so then we pivot into the pitch where you can tell people about your credibility your Authority like why
you all of those sorts of things and it's okay at that point say actually we have a coaching program which takes
people on this journey so if you want if you go through the seven steps you can take it pla you know away you
know execute it if you think you can but if you feel you want a bit of help like get in touch with us
but one of the things I'm interested to learn about is how ready you all are in terms of like getting yourself out there
in the dating game so um we've created a very short 15 question questionnaire I think you know
where I might be going with this uh um uh on score app here's the QR code scan the QR code and
just quickly take the quiz yeah and then you sit back two or three minutes everybody scans it they go through yeah
people love taking quizzes yeah so and what it tells them is you could you could make it about well what type of
data am I so like a profile type quiz um uh it could be a um which area of the dating game do you
feel is the worst that you might need to work on you know or where do you feel you could get the best results you know
if you did X Y and Z so you can give them some kind of a specific outcome for it now we've got the you've got the
leads which is great name email address telephone number hopefully and a bit of data about them through your score app
I'm going to start doing that at start at the start of my Keynotes and stuff because people love a quiz it's so much
nicer to have at the start than at the end yeah it's like a little Icebreaker yeah and they get a bit of information
we get the salesy thing just out the way and done and everybody can relax yeah do you think you're gonna get better or
that's way more chill yeah and then like them doing the quiz as well like like the thing with a lot
of these quizzes is that it makes you realize all the holes in your knowledge this is what like one of the things in
learning design as well you give them you give the class a quiz up front before you teach them the stuff so they
see how bad they are and they're like oh crap okay I don't know this I'm therefore gonna pay attention whereas if
they don't know what they don't know yeah it's it's less powerful well and what's interesting as well is like if
you do it at the start and nobody really knows what to expect you whatever you kind of throw at them they're more
um getting people to take action so um I think it was um Simon sinek talks about the the laws
of diffusion about um how uh so you have like the early adopters and then you know as people
like as you implement change um at what point do people kind of um adopt that change and then start to kind
of get engaged with it and then you get the laggards of people who just like they just won't do anything that you
um and what kind of backs us up there's a another great internet marketer a guy called Frank Kern who's like brilliant
in like the copywriting sort of um space and internet marketing space and he did a talk in front of several thousand
people and he said I'm gonna um I'm gonna give you the secret so that you can all be millionaires but you need
to follow these very simple steps and um he listed off the the steps which was basically go and buy this book make
sure you follow the steps in the book uh read the book ten times and follow all the steps and then you will get all the
riches that you want the book was called the richest man in Babylon oh no and as he's kind of telling like walking people
through these steps the camera panned around to the audience and he's like right I want you to go to Amazon or
Barnes Noble I want you to um search for this book so get your phones out and search for this book I
want you to buy the book like now and it pans to the audience and there's like several thousand people there and
you could count the number of people who had their phones out buying this book on like your hands and your toes
to my book and yet they can't even find the energy to take the first step to buy the book yeah
let alone then actually follow the steps in it and execute it yeah it's probably like one person out of that entire
audience who did it so this is like the um I don't know what you'd call it the resistance you're up against
not not just um when you're trying to sell something in marketing there's this natural sort of resistance which you're
fighting against there's a twitch streamer called uh Ludwig who's also a YouTuber who's absolutely huge um and he
10 steps and it's like a sort of hour-long video and he's like starts off by being like okay I'm going to teach
you the 10 step process of how to be a successful streamer why should you listen to me well because I've blown up
and I've done this and I've done this and I've done this so you really should listen to me and I'm going to tell you
the steps let's go for it step number one pause this video right now and just answer these three questions what's your
goal how much time are you willing to put in blah blah and then he's like no I'm serious I know you know I'm sure you
guys are going to keep watching but like genuinely pause the video right now I've seriously pause the video and write down
these things he says that like five or ten times and so I you know I was like okay you know what I'm gonna pause the
video I wrote down those things and then and then I press play and he's like right I estimate less than 10 of you
actually stop actually pause the video if that's you then quit right now because there's no way you're ever going
to make in the streaming world the streaming World requires so much Bliss this this and this I am the biggest
streamer in the world and the fact you have literally not followed me to saying to you 10 times pause the [ __ ] video
and write the and and then write these three things down means there's just no way in hell you're gonna make it so
switch this video off right now and just and the comments in the video are like oh my God he called me out he called me
out he called me out so much and I felt good because I was like I actually paused the video and take action but I
could I could have imagined the time in my life where I was like oh you know it's fine it's not gonna work anyway but
yeah I was like this guy knows his stuff if I follow the steps of a guy who's done the thing then it's like it's
obviously going to get results it's natural selection basically that's what's going on in that in that moment
and then people are sat there at home and words why him why not me and it's like well you didn't do something simple
didn't take the simple first step to start to move towards your goals you made up any excuse or put up any brick
wall for yourself that you can possibly find to not make it work I think there's oh there's almost a
I think I think especially in the UK I feel like Americans have less of this defense at least from what I've seen at
conferences any sort of a natural defense to anything that seems even remotely like oh this person's trying to
tell me what to do or they're trying to promise something that's too big and this sort of natural or this skepticism
that we have towards following the advice of someone who's been there and done that and we don't
have that skepticism when it comes to a tennis lesson or a guitar teacher but we have that skepticism when it comes to a
sales coach or marketing coach or a business coach or anything remotely in the make money realm why any any
thoughts on that um I think it's down to just um what are preconceived ideas are about that thing
like you kind of know a little bit about like if you're going to show up to a tennis lesson you know that you're
probably gonna have to run about a bit and swing your Racket and hit a few balls right so that you've kind of got a
preconceived idea about it I think to a lot of people there is a certain element of mystery around what business is yeah
The Branding and the domain names and the all of all of the things like the goal setting the business planning all
that sort of stuff but ninety percent of everything you need to learn about business you will get from just getting
out there and selling something and it doesn't matter whether it's 20 pounds to mow somebody's lawn if it's a uh you
know a six month transformational dating program um it doesn't matter what it is get out
there and sell something for some money and see how you feel about it afterwards it's as simple as that you'll learn 90
of everything you need to know because within having to do that you had to Market because you had to make somebody
somebody's Garden or whatever it might be yeah um you had to sell something because you
had to have that awkward conversation okay yeah I'm interested in you mowing my lawn about how much you're gonna cost
well I'll do it for 20 quid well gosh well my my Gardener charges 15 pounds now why are you so much better so you in
that sales process you learn something about yourself and about your processes and your business and all those sorts of
things uh then you move into you know onboarding client onboarding what you know giving somebody the next steps you
know what's their first session what does that look like um uh what time am I going to show up
with my lawnmower um then it moves into client fulfillment you know actually doing the work
um uh at the end of it that the doing the work is tricky because if unless you're getting feedback throughout it if
somebody's watching over you whilst they mow the lawn and they have a go at you because your stripes aren't quite right
on the lawn or whatever or maybe in the coaching program somebody sat there a bit confused and saying well I don't
think that's going to work for me because I don't want to use that app for my dating because
um for whatever reason um so you might get some feedback within the Fulfillment but then at the end of
it you can then see what does a client pay you and are they happy or do they not pay you are they unhappy
step-by-step process yeah basically but along the way for some reason in people's head there's
Backtrack on the agreement what if I try and start doing the thing and find that I'm not very good at it uh what if I
when I've done it and I'm not very good at it I get a negative review so this peril you know think about Harry Potter
and the journeys that he goes through those Adventures there's parallel along the way in there but again it comes back
to what's the two things that could go wrong in business you look a bit stupid or you end up losing a bit of money and
actually neither of them are that bad in the grand scheme of things love it yeah I think one of the things
that really helped simplify the whole business stuff for me is just appreciating that there are only a
there's like the service based business model where you are selling a service and you do something and someone finds
the thing valuable or you help them with something they find anything valuable and they pay you for it cool or you make
some kind of product whether it's a physical product or a like online product or whatever the
thing is and someone finds a thing they pay you for the thing and that's all well and good and then maybe on the side
you have like a Content business model which is like you make the content the platforms pay you for it and then
you sell something either a good or a service to someone further down the line and essentially outside those three
then you start getting into complicated territory like for example you know day trading and sort of trying to use money
to make money type stuff but and and it starts to get complicated yeah and I think when most people think of oh I
want to make money on the internet I want to start a business they don't think oh I'll just sell a service or
sell a product they think oh my God there's all these different options out there there's like the day trading the
paid surveys that this that that start a YouTube channel become a tick tocker I guess I could I don't know start a web
design agency it feels like one option out of many but whenever I speak to actual entrepreneurs it's like they've
built a service business or they've built a product business and that's kind of all there is to it are there are
there any other models that are missing like how do you think about this like simplifying this no I mean I I suppose
that you've got the passive income model I think that's kind of what you're alluding to and again there's a lot of
people who have sold the dream by influencers out there about you know building passive income but passive
income is based on it on active income yeah where does active income come from products and services
basically so always you know all the roads lead back to that basically so I I don't I don't believe
simplifies things okay so I've been working with you and we've said and I've said to you Robin right you know the
these are my slides for my talk at McKinsey and you're like hang on I think you should put you put your picture at
the start you're telling me about this thing called score app link down below uh where I can build a scorecard or a
quiz or something and I'm like oh cool and then we're like practicing the presentation and stuff and then I go to
the session and I'm like you know we we check in afterwards I message you on WhatsApp or something and I'm like Robin
the session went great I've already got three people at the end of it who came up to me and who said that they wanted
my coaching Services yeah and at that point I felt scared and I was like um so I said I'll get back to them so
I've got their numbers yeah what what happens next uh well there's nothing to be um so again if that if if there's a
Fear Factor around that transaction having to happen well let's see if we can eliminate that from the process a
little bit so what what might be a bit of a compromise there that you might feel more comfortable with could it be
something like well maybe let's just do a 30 minute chat see if it's a good fit no that sounds good so like that phrase
let's see if we gel together let's see if we can work together yeah you've got a bit of data about them already and
that's a free chat it's a free chat some some people you could pay some you could charge for it if you wanted to a small
amount if you wanted to get commitment but yeah given they've sat through like a 40 minute presentation with you filled
out your scorecard you've already built up a bit of trust they know you from your YouTube channel for example they're
more than likely going to show up so free chat takes all of the the risk out of it yeah for both of you
of structure for that so you take the person on a bit of a journey but ultimately what you're looking for is
like that chat is a it's a qualification process think of it as like an interview they're interviewing you to see whether
they can work with you but you're also interviewing them to see whether it's a good fit okay and I I have a rule of
three for those those chats um three red flags if I spot three things during that conversation where I think Hmm not sure
about that um and I'll try I'm gonna have to think of some examples now just so you've got
I don't know maybe they worked with three dating coaches before and it didn't work out oh okay that's
interesting Why didn't it work out is it the day three it'd be unusual for them to have found three of the worst dating
coaches and then not work out or is it just a coincidence or is it them that could be the problem and a lot of people
don't like making it about the client necessarily but we want we want to focus on them and have their best interests at
heart we don't want to take their money if there's going to be no chance of them meeting the love of their life at the
end of it right yeah uh that's the right thing to do what other red flags could there be it could be if like all the way
through that chat like how much they cost how much does it cost how much does it cost how much they cost how much they
cost and you and and you want to Pace them you could either be transparent and just give them the price and say
but how I would position that is I'm going to give you the price but we're still going to go through a
process on this course you get value from it and at the end of it I want you to tell me yes or no whether you feel
that that's a fair exchange whether that you think that's good value for money and whether we're going to work together
in front yeah and you need to give them the price okay um so we can't again there's Rules of
Engagement there but I'd kind of be thinking okay why are they so desperate because it might be that maybe they're
they're speaking to three dating coaches yeah and I'd be like okay well can I be the last one you speak to yeah uh and
the reason for I'd want to be the last one is because that now they've got all of the information from the other two
and they're going to get some more information from me they have everything they need to know now to make a decision
of my competitors because they're going to get better results with Steve who works with people just like you yep like
this isn't a good fit yeah that's okay that's a good result Steve is a joke you're a jock yeah
identity layer we're back to Identity layer we just don't think it's a good fit yeah cool okay
um but that could be a red flag um and that there's others as well it could be they want to rush the process
maybe they're like I have to meet somebody next week because I'm going to a wedding like this cannot fail right
um that's not how we work this is a six month process we're going to take you through yes we have had some people
who've done it quickly so all the way through the process you're kind of managing expectations you're also
they'll be raising concerns you're addressing their concerns um some people call those objections I
don't objections a bit harsh like hard yeah uh normally it's like people if it's genuine people are just raising
their concerns how do you address concerns you have a conversation about it yeah just chat yeah nice okay so I do
these calls um I do my 30 minute session and of this like of the three two of them are like
at the end of it what do I say at the end of it I'm like you know we've gone through this process
and presumably I so if I was working with you one-on-one we'd figure out the process together but
like if someone's listening to this and it's not working with you on one uh are there any books that will teach me about
this process how does it work is this like a is it technically like a sales call so like books about sales
would be the thing yeah so um uh just trying to now I'm trying to think of some sales good sales good qualities or
like people who do sales training yeah there's a guy called um Benjamin dahaney um he's a he's an
Aussie guy he he's got a big beard and it wears a bright red baseball cap nice um uh so he's worth checking out so he
he does a lot of like Telly sales type training and um just how he sort of introduces the conversation but B also
um I mean a lot of it's like Hamming it up for you know social media and things like that but actually there's a lot of
Truth in in the way that he positions the conversations um so he's excellent there's another guy
um uh he's a bit more hard-nosed sometimes but what he one of the nice things is and I don't know how ethical
this is but he does record his um like live record his sales conversations he has with prospects his own prospects for
his business yeah so he's actually having real life conversations with people and again how he sort of um
thing it's brilliant yeah I mean if selling is a brilliant book and even if people just like search I'm just search
sales training on YouTube and there's just loads of stuff yeah Chris Chris doe also talks about an amazing um book
called Socratic selling um which is again very conversational you imagine like Socrates it's a
philosophical approach to asking good questions basically that was a really old school book yeah you can't get it as
I don't think it's not an audio book for sure I think it's only a hardback which is perfect the alpha is in the books
that are not available on Kindle these days yeah this is great okay we'll put links to in
and then I guess the client starts with me and I've got my day job on the side I'm hopping on
the zoom calls with them and I'm sort of making it up as I go along presumably well you've got your
coaching has a bit of flow to it so sometimes the client might show up with a bit of a curveball you know something
which has happened from one week to the next which you have to address yeah you know and work through with them so it
might be that but you know over the course of the the six months you're going to make sure that Loosely you
stick to the plan and get them to work through each of those steps in your seven step process nice
I remember I I launched um so I I I've been coaching for seven years I cut my cloth doing one to one
for three of those first the first three years and then I I got busy just too much demand so I was like right I've got
so I think it was 2018 I did my launch uh in I started the launch in October by end of November I had 24 people
signed up my goal was to get the first cohort of 30 people into the group and um so I got 24 people signed up and then
I had to take um break over Christmas and then I was like damn I'm starting this thing on the
1st of January and I haven't built anything yet sorry because I had this idea in my head of I wanted I didn't
want it to just be me talking because you know you when you when people learn you have to get the different modalities
down so audio visual kinesthetic so if it's just me talking it's it's just audio visual it hasn't got any of the
kinesthetic stuff in there so I wanted to have a portal I wanted to have a really a decent workbook and various
things like that so I literally had to lock myself in a room for five days between Christmas and a year my wife
um and I think again this is where a lot of people get tripped up they're like I I've got to build the perfect product
before I launch anything like I can't possibly I've got to cover everything off and I was like well so I locked
myself in the room for for five days did the shot all of the videos I built the workbook I got quite ill in the process
as well because I've pushed myself like way way too hard but I got the job done um and sure enough I started delivering
the thing and then there was two or three modules where people just like no this doesn't work Robin because I asked
for honest feedback and they're like these videos just don't work this worksheet doesn't work so I was like
cool okay we'll change them we'll drop them out there was two or three things that were just neglected we just haven't
um so structuring in a way that was adaptable that we could just add bits in tape bits out you know and make it work
spend months and months and months designing the ultimate like program or course or product or whatever it is and
then look they launched the thing and then there's crickets and I get like it's quite disappointing
creating a minimum viable version of it so if you could create 80 of the end products but in the shortest possible
if you'd spent 12 months designing it well if we could build that first MVP in a month and then launch it and get a few
early adopters onto it going back to Simon's the next thing um and we get some feedback and we
improve it and then we a month later we get some feedback and Improvement we get a few more people so we're we're
building our audience as we grow yeah we're improving the product as we go so that rather than
you know getting to like this point you know start here get to here so we've had a little bit of an improvement on our
audience as you go when the products reached its like beta level and we're ready to launch you've got a pre-built
audience to go right here's my thing and I see so many business owners who yeah the product's great like don't get
me wrong products brilliant but they've put no time into building an audience and sometimes it's like chicken and egg
which do you do first yeah I'm very much in the build the audience um whatever that looks like if you could
I don't know get a Facebook group to like 500 to 1000 people then do a product launch yep and you've
got that pre-built warm audience to then launch something into yep I found a couple things I want to talk
about uh what are the the biggest mistakes you see people make on like in the early stages of the entrepreneurial
um you things start to creep in like imposter syndrome you start to self-doubt you start to
um one of the things you mentioned oh you know there's people out there and they're doing it they're absolutely
killing it off so why me um but that's actually going to stop you from starting anything like you if if
you don't even uh what was the famous quote you miss 100 of the shots you don't take it was I can't remember who
something unique to offer um like think about it you know there's hundreds of thousands of business books
out there so why should I write another business book well it's because it's it's me it's Unique you're writing a
book you know there's going to be something unique in that that book you know that only you're able to kind of
of most entrepreneurs um and it's I get it it's it's quite hard you know to face up to the fact
that there's going to be challenges and potential failures knockbacks it's going to be hard work and things like that but
um less less not like stop before we've even got started basically one thing that people struggle with is
yeah just to this point you know oh you know why would anyone sign up to my relationship coaching business there are
other relationship coaches out there with more experience who are charging less or maybe charging more but whatever
would be feeling a lot of imposter syndrome because I'd be like yeah I don't have all the clients that
these people have so how might I approach that if I were thinking about it how much do you want it to work
a lot a lot like 100 I'm all in like let's I'm just gonna go for it anyway I know that I know that these things are
there these challenges these worries are there and they're real but can I see myself just working
through that I guess the fear that would hold me back is this thing of what if it doesn't work okay imagine in 12 months
time it's worked well yeah then my life would have changed okay and what book in 12 months
time what does that business look like what's giving you the confidence to for it to have worked
if I can land even five clients Five Points okay so there we go so five clients well what's what's the root five
clients just our first client okay so there's these little um they're they're called okrs
objectives and key results right um amazing book so I'm it's like a library recommendation measure what
matters absolutely um objectives and key results that's what okr stands for and the idea is that
you have one overarching objective and then there's a series of key results which kind of lead you they give you
little signals that we know we're on track to achieve achieve our objective so if you if your goal is to have a
got 10 clients in it well step number one is a client step number 0.5 is to go and have one of
those first five conversations chats that we talked about I should have started with step three
step number naught Point naught one is like to go and pick yourself forward to go and do one of the talks so it's like
there's these little steps you know that you're kind of on track so reminding yourself
um about the the smallest First Step uh the second thing is also it's I call it the truths exercises reminding yourself
what you know to be true about you so Ali and this is this is really hard as an exercise but
um list off 10 things that you know are true about you I know yeah right now okay 10 Things I know are true about me
yeah are we talking I mean like anything like business mail yeah I'm five foot eleven and a half but I go by six foot
went to medical school I vaguely enjoyed working as a doctor I uh used to play chess and would like
to get more into it I like playing the guitar I love musical theater and Ed Sheeran and Taylor Swift
um I'd like to release an album of songs one day cool I think that's about 10. yeah at
least uh and you could probably come up with 100 different things a thousand different things which you know to be
true about you and the thing is nobody can take those away you own those things they are like truths about you right
um in 12 months time what do you want to be true about you I'd like to be a published author
um I'd like to have written a book I'm proud of I'd like to have shored up the foundations of the business I'd like to
have lived in Austin for a bit you know a few things like that okay so one one little tweak to that is the language
which you used so you said I'm going to I'm going to So when you say I'm going to it kind of gives you permission to
kind of put it off that's the feature okay so when you're creating future truths you have to treat them like
they've already happened to call so you just change the language that I have I am cool yeah I'm a published author
um I have lived in Austin for a few months um I've written a book I'm proud of I am
I am currently working on my second book uh I have built my business in uh sort of central operationally effective way
Etc yeah there you go so that that's Ali's identity in 12 months time that's that's who you are okay
um I encourage everybody to I call it my morning formula although ironically I only ever read it in the afternoon when
I have a break my afternoon break um but literally I have a list of like 100 truths all those things both future
ones and except pre-existing ones I know are true about me whenever I have the element that moment of self-doubt I go
back to that and I look at the Legacy which I built up and I look at who I am as in my makeup my identity everything
um and it makes me feel good am I more or less likely to do stuff when I feel good more likely to do more
likely yeah yeah you're going to see those challenges that you might see as challenges they're going to be just
you're just going to have taken the edge off it by just giving yourself a little boost of self-confidence and self-worth
because these things are true can't be taken away from you um and that often just helps to people
just to get started with doing something the other thing as well is even if you have a go at those things nobody can
ever take those trees away from you because you've already got them they can't go anywhere right
uh the future version of Ali is thanking today's Ali for doing something to create these Future Truth what is
president daily for going to the gym more regularly yeah in fact every day because I've realized that if I do it
um future early 12 months from now I was definitely thinking present daily for for doing daily daily writing as like a
a habit and sticking with it because everything is Downstream of writing when it comes to the business yeah yeah yeah
it's a good exercise it's a really powerful exercise yeah um whenever whenever my clients experience those
little bits of self-doubt we just write truth exercise so let's get into it nice I love it
um why is your business called Fearless like what does that mean there's a there's a backstory uh it was a bit of a
happy accident so I was I started off life as uh well Robin white and then Robin went the business coach
um what's the thing that stops people from achieving their goals and I said well fear basically business owners need
to fear the little things in life business ever so slightly less that stop them achieve achieving their goals and
one of my one of my best mates in business is is listening in the audience and he literally stood up in the middle
of my talk he pointed at me and he went The Fearless business coach and so that's where Fearless came from it's
about fearing those little things in life ever so slightly less that stop us from stepping out and achieving
something so it's you know a 60 second Pitch again there's like the worst case scenario you fluff it up and
you walk out the room nobody cares right it's just like you can't let those little tiny little
things stop you nice what's your biggest challenge right now when it comes to the business oh great
my biggest challenge is time and this is a bit of um I didn't realize when I had kids how
much of an impact it would have on my life yeah and not not I don't mean that in terms of like they take up loads of
um and so I kind of with my businesses I played all out as doing all lighters I was all sorts of things just um crazy
immediately it's like life gets turned upside down and you realize kind of really what the important things in life
about and I know that's like totally cliched but equally what what that means is that um there has to be compromise
along the way and I've chosen to have a slower pace of life with my business in order to be able to make sure that I'm
not compromising on the time that I get to spend with my girls and that does mean a little bit my personal goals get
they're not they're not eradicated I think a lot of people make the mistake you have kids and things to stop like
personally wise they're by no means gone but the process of writing a book becomes that just a little bit harder
do this hopefully but my kids for example from knowing you wake up in the morning it's all about school runs you
know it's um I get probably six hours during the day when they're at school if I'm lucky pick them up tea time bedtime
everything else and right now they're not going to bed till 10 o'clock at night so it's not like I can hustle
harder and go out to my office at 10 o'clock and write a thousand words it's like I'm beat at that point yeah and I
think it's that fighting against the I mean this is right I mean I'm only 41 I'm a long way from being over the hill
yet but this is why footballers retire at 41 I've got that whole male body sort of slowing down thing at sort of 41 not
feeling like I'm I have to push myself harder to be at my optimal so going to the gym cycling stuff that I have to
work a little bit harder just to keep fit uh I'm feeling quite tired and I've got the precious of kids there's just
this stuff that's just going on that you know that there's times when I look back on
sort of my 20s when I was growing my business pre-kids and I had all the time in the world I don't think I optimized
my time enough in my 20s yeah to be set up right to have kids or 30s okay what advice would you give me um I've
God that's it's it's so personal I think um I think I I I I mean it's hypothetical
because it is what it is my my truths are I have I have kids right and the business is set the way that it is but
um I think I probably would have built um a business that had more sustainable recurring Revenue coming in Faster I
left it probably not not long but I left it probably three or four years too late so in the agency we we did web design we
did hosting and actually my business's valuation was based on the hosting and I wish I got to work building that Revenue
just too good okay interesting and that and that I but I certainly don't regret it as a massive lesson which I've
learned and and I bring a great amount of that learning into well one into my current business now or two businesses
which I run um but also now I'm able to help my clients not make that it's a mistake
like you know I'm like cool accelerate accelerate your recurring Revenue and do it fast nice
that's that's a good tip yeah that's a good tip uh anything else while we're on the topic
um well you're kind of you're kind of doing it already like going to the gym like every day again I wish I'd focused
on my fitness and health so that when I had kids and I knew that my time was going to be slightly less yeah
um uh I wouldn't have to fight so hard when I got to the gym because like you go into an optimal sort of Fitness yeah
you have less Fitness to lose if that makes it you know it's hot it's harder to keep maintain that Fitness whereas at
the moment I kind of feel again like I'm playing catch up um well they granted I had an operation
on my ankle like in October so yeah got excuses for not getting on the bike but they are excuses I'm back on the bike
now but it's it's just that recovery time again it's just that much so if you start
in an optimal Place yeah pre-kids it's easier to maintain I believe so you're an Entre like you know there's
a question I've been asking people recently um you know you're an entrepreneur you like the freedom fun
flexibility that the entrepreneur life gives you otherwise you probably wouldn't have started a business
how does that how does that desire for optionality and Freedom Square with having a wife and kids
to this it's quite a deep question Ali I mean how how far do you want to go in the podcast yeah
incredibly hard everything was all about you've got to work hard to earn your money to put a roof over your head to
pay the mortgage put food on every you know the story all of the arguments they're about money like there was there
pattern I go back to is it's I have to work hard that's what gets the results and I've probably spent the last 20
years or 19 years running my businesses unpacking all of that and creating a new story and the type the times in my life
but it goes against my better nature because it's always included work so when I'm not working I'm constantly like
I get the work guilt still like certainly nowhere near where I was like five ten plus years ago yeah
and you don't need to at the start of this year I made a very firm commitment to myself that
everything would be easy and effortless less is more I would make very conscious decisions about what projects I would
undertake what Partnerships I would form I was very intentional about who I would work choose to work with this year
client wise marketing wise everything and not work very hard I'm the happiest I've been in a
told you to go deep yeah how was the balance between like work and life I guess before this year like
makes it really hard because I know that like right now for example I know that my wife is still still working so damn
hard and I wanted to see this opportunity this life which I'm kind of starting to peek and see inside of
um she's a lawyer basically she just works incredibly long hours she's recently kind of got a sideways
promotion but just so much more pressure and um I don't know you realize that there's
just more to life I think than work and money and stuff like that um the biggest challenge though and this
I think this is where sort of a lot of the emotion comes from is that because my childhood has always been about work
it's hard not to fall into that with the relationship between my my girls I don't know because I because I
say my relationship between mum and dad was all about work yeah it's the Apple Falls from not far from
the tree it's I play and play that out sometimes I get caught up in the work story and I have to be very very
conscious about not getting caught up in that story and creating a new story for my children hmm it's hard it takes
probably out of everything that's what requires the most amount of work what does that look like like what's a
what does that look like when we're playing playing out that story well work is serious isn't it it's like very
can imagine all the fun stuff the stuff that went through our minds when we were kids that we've forgotten about there
are kids my kids are now you know want to enjoy in life and it's it's being able to get involved
in that yeah without being drawn into the work serious thing just stay in the fun playful space for them yeah
so is the guilt around it from like uh if I'm if I work harder then I'll make more money and therefore be able to give
the kids a better life is that is that the pattern or is that the script like what's what's the script that's like my
challenge Alice I love what I do I love my work yeah it's a different kind of love though obviously to family and kids
and all that sort of stuff but it's it's I'm so passionate about helping the business owners but but you but then am
I just using that as an excuse to get more tied up in work and ignore what I need the work I need to be doing over
here with my family right it's it's a it's it's such a complicated battle um which you know it's it's a lifetime's
worth of like stuff that's got me caught up in that which I'm now probably spending the next part of my lifetime
unpacking yeah when I when I project my life out into the future I can very much see a world in which my default is work
I think yeah yeah where are you talking about like how for most people who are sort of I mean
he I think is like a Harvard Business School Professor or something and so people in that sort of camp
uh Harvard MBA students but also like entrepreneurs and stuff you know when you look back on your life
a couple of decades from now the thing that they all basically do is over invest in their work and under invest in
their health and relationships yeah and it's just such a common pattern and I'm like I need to fight fight really hard
against that inertia it's PR it's provider traits I think we've done it since we were cavemen yeah you know that
that's it's it's a it's a natural instinct but we don't have to do that in 2023 hmm
um I there's there's a whole other episode and probably people who are better educated to speak about this than
me but the whole sort of equality male female equality and and this you know everything which goes along with that
in men because quite often men absorb themselves in their work I've done this I've been totally guilty of this I don't
but um sometimes I've used workers as a reason to hide from problems challenges in my life whatever shape or form those
going off in a proper tangent now right if if men become more aware of the reasons why they're turning to
work yeah uh and they're they're able to face that reality that maybe they might be hiding away from something with their
they can start to understand that damn as you're saying that I'm thinking like [ __ ] what am I hiding from
yeah because I think especially as an entrepreneur it's easy to sell yourself the story of like I enjoy the I enjoy my
last week he's said this like ridiculously wealthy hedge fund manager in in Texas he's written a book called a
and I asked him you know one thing he said was that most rich people don't understand money
because they keep on working for it even though it comes at the expense of they're like family or the friends their
their hobbies and things like that and I'm like okay come on but like what about the people who say they enjoy
their work and he was like well you know a crackhead would say they enjoy crack addict enjoys heroin it's the same kind
balance right because if you do genuinely enjoy your work but you also want to spend time with the family and
stuff then there's that natural tension that's there again I'm I talked about binary thinking so there's this thing
about uh work not work yeah but within work if we can see that there's different degrees of it so uh coach like
you you've seen me work coach right 10 out of 10 for me I'm I'm all in like I just didn't I love it so much and I
because I know one that the impact that it's creating for clients but it's my flow space that's when I get into my
my natural that's my happy Lego Space if you like um uh there's other bits of the business
that I can leave it or take it sales I enjoy because it's still coaching um marketing when I'm doing stuff like
this like I'm in Flow State again to it um speaking on stage things like that so if if you can fill your work life up
with all of those things that are 10 out of 10 and then anything which falls short of that which you can compromise
and give to somebody else yeah obviously bearing in mind what we've talked about numbers and things like that but the
doing that amazing awesome stuff that really fills you up gives Great Value to the people around you and the other 36
hours of the week that you would ordinarily use to hide yep yep give that to somebody else you've got 36
it sounds like I mean both you and I are quite bullish on entrepreneurship as a career because of the F that it unlocks
the freedom fun flexibility fulfillment etc etc Finance but those benefits you know any any vote you take into excess
can become a vice yes a given like given your experience in entrepreneurship now for the last like
I I'd probably be like don't don't mistake entrepreneurship for work or vice versa okay what do you mean uh so
mince it basically it should be easy and effortless and do something you love doing and it should provide a life for
you that and not just money but a life for you that you want to it's like icky guy you know like the Japanese sort of
um framework isn't it the four pillars of Vicky guy um what's it Mission passion vocation
those four pillars right you can have a great life help amazing people earn some good money you know it it all you
so that would be the route which I would take with them if I saw them working too hard yep I'd probably step in and say
you're working too hard you don't need to work so hard let's try and find a more easy and effortless way for you to
do this so easy and effortless goes against the grain of most the hustle and grind culture is [ __ ] I'm sorry to
swear but it's it's all complete BS there's times when you've got it you have gotta work hard yeah but it does
not all if you're doing that too much it's toxic it's the it falls into that um
what you're saying about sort of alcoholism and stuff like that um and I think that's touted about too
much way too much hmm that's what it's what basically everyone everyone who interview on this podcast says they're
they're all like oh yeah you know it's all about work-life balance I wish I hadn't worked so hard
but that's easy enough to say when you've already got a successful business and I often I like to ask like
do you think you could have built the business that you've had like the agency and the coaching business and and the
journey along the way and like being chill about it and stuff I'm it's gonna sound awful mentors mentors coaches
books podcasts YouTube videos like lifelong learning the again mistake I made I finished uni
and I've been doing little businesses and things along the way yeah I finished uni and I thought that's it I don't need
to read books anymore and I didn't read books for six or seven years in the first few years of my business and I
bitterly regret that I think what I what I've learned from the connections I've made and the books I've read and things
like that I I actually wish I hadn't gone to UNI in the first place and I'm not suggest
that's not a suggestion for anybody to skip uni right there's there's some value in that it's one of my truths I
have a business management degree hey that's that's got some value to it um but that said I think if I'd started
a business at 18 if I'd had a good idea I don't I think I lacked the idea then that's why I didn't go for it and I
didn't have parents who were in The entrepreneurial space to push me the internet was very young so we didn't
have all these influences out there that are out there but like people in 2023 don't have any excuses you can you can
listen to any amount of podcasts get as much business information as you want for free or inexpensively you can get
any amount of mentoring and advice you want for free or inexpensively didn't have I know my thing is pricing and
let's raise the bar a little bit but the entry point is low yeah you know get on that train and start learning um
yeah that's so true it has only about six or seven months ago that I read my first ever book on
sales marketing I read.com Secrets by Russell Brunson and I've been in Russell's email list since the age of 13
but always thought it was a bit of a camera so I just ignored all his emails and then I read the book and I was like
oh my freaking God why didn't I read this like freaking five six seven years ago as soon as I started selling stuff
I've been selling stuff on the internet for 10 years and making it up as I went along for the last nine and a half and
um but I love that thing it's like what Alex formosi says that you know you're you're paying off ignorance debt yeah
fairly early on and one way to pay off ignorance debt is to do the thing but another way is to learn from people who
have made mistakes doing the thing yeah while doing the thing and you just accelerate your learning so so much
quicker and I think that that yeah speaking to the the value of having a coach having a mentor you know for me
business coaches CEO coaches have been probably the single most Roi positive expense yeah like throughout my entire
life because one of the things you know the guy I work with these days Eric who's going to feature on this podcast
partly about the business partly about leadership but also partly about um health of the health of the person
um and so one of the okrs that we set is me going to the gym next number of times a week and that kind of stuff yeah
um because the health and relationship stuff is so tied up with what makes a good CEO and what makes a good leader
that I think we ignore that stuff at our peril well I think Health full stop is the most important I mean this isn't my
domain by the way yeah it's it's uh I lead to help relatively Health I'll eat while I go and exercise but surfing well
exactly um but but like think about it if you're if you're if you're unhealthy or you're
ill you're no use to anybody you can't run a business you can't be a good husband father to your kids can't look
after your parents when they're sick you can't you can't do anything so health is like Paramount it's the most important
thing to like focus on that's the one so I'm gonna be heading to the gym straight after this um can we talk a
little bit about the book and the kind offer that you're you're extending our listeners
uh what do you want to know um so what is the book about uh so you know this is this is your book take a shot this is uh
you know we we got to know each other through a Zuma Mastermind and lockdown yeah and then I heard you have this book
so I got the book and Kindle and I read the book and I was like oh this is giving me a firmware update about how to
think about business um so what is the book about and what's the deal with all these free copies we
have available yeah so uh look the books actually so it's told us a parable and it's only 100 pages so it's a nice short
sort of pithy tale about um it's actually about a golf professional but it could be about any
service business owner um and actually how it came about so it's based on the true story I I tell I
actually tell the story of my journey working with this client and um when I sold my agency I did did a
webinar which was designed for the web design businesses basically to learn how to build and sell their their businesses
and about 40 people on it and afterwards I got the phone call from this very excitable guy named Russ it's amazing
his best webinar I've ever been on I've got so many questions or something else oh cool so what do you do he's like I'm
a golf pro it's like my marketing clearly failed but anyway so um you know uh uh so we got chatting and
then actually he ultimately ended up becoming one of my first clients um and so I kind of tell his story about in in
he has the struggles you go through and I I won't give too much of a spoiler alert on it but he meets a coach the
coach then helps him to restructure his his program his golf you know lessons and uh start to play out his dreams and
Ambitions that he had for himself his life and for his family and things like that so I'll I'll leave it so if anybody
reads it I'll leave it for you to figure out who each of the characters are based on within that story because there's
obviously various different characters that play Parts you know in the story I've kind of come into my life as well
um but in terms of the the offer um so Ali and I are both going to sign uh 15 copies of the book
uh before I leave and so the first 15 people who apply so um go and fill out the scorecard so I've
got a um a scorecard which I've created to see how Fearless you are in business uh which is just fearless.biz uh sorry
fearless.scoreapp.com yeah we'll put a link in the show notes in the video description perfect and then so the
first 15 people who um fill out the scorecard and apply for a copy of the book they'll get a signed copy of it
basically nice wherever they are in the world except for South Africa everything I've sent there has either been nicked
or it's been reviewed okay so any any country in the world except South Africa you will post them free copy of the book
yeah any strings attached to that nope so you're just going to take the hidden postage yep nice yeah absolutely they
can donate some beer money if they want to to cover postage that's fine you know um but if I just my my thing is all
thing that I want to give away like 50 to 100 copies of my book a month and I don't care it's if that's a major part
of it yeah it's a bit in marketing but also I know that those books help people so it's my one of my little ways of of
help out they can leave a review if they like it yeah hopefully a positive review nice uh if there are more than 15 people
would you be open to giving the PDF to the giveaway PDFs yeah oh nice because I guess that that doesn't require the cost
the end of the episode so if you if you currently are listening or watching to this then you are the you know very few
people who've gotten to the end of the episode so um have a link have a look in the show
notes or in the video description and we'll find we'll put a link to that scorecard and then you'll either get a
free physical copy from Robin or you'll get a PDF copy that's it yep love it beautiful those are great thank you so
much my pleasure any any parting words of wisdom for people who have gone this far in the podcast well I I there's
probably quite a few people watching this who maybe have started to think about oh I've got an idea
um my advice is just don't overthink it just get out there and just start it take your shot love it thank you Robin
my pleasure all right so that's it for this week's episode of Deep dive thank you so much for watching or listening
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