Today on the More Cheese Less Whiskers podcast, we're talking with Mardi Boettcher from California. Mardi is embarking on a new adventure as a coach, and this is a perfect example of how all of the elements of the Before Unit perfectly fit in place.
We went right through from selecting her target audience to getting people to raise their hand so she can build an audience of ideal prospects, and we talked about Profit Activator 3: How to educate, motivate, and engage in a dialogue with them so she can present the offer to join her program.
It was a great conversation because she has a really focused secret target audience, looking to attract ladies who are entering their sixties and who want to amplify and get everything they can out of life.
She has a real passion for this way of living. She loves the idea of working with this audience, and she's well on the way to get there.
Show Links:
ProfitActivatorScore.com
BreakthroughDNA.com
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Transcript - More Cheese Less Whiskers 216
Dean: Mardi.
Mardi: Hey, Dean, I'm so excited to talk to you. Good morning.
Dean: It's very exciting. Reunited after very many years.
Mardi: Yes.
Dean: Yes. I'm excited to hear you got a whole new adventure going on.
Mardi: I do. I do. Yeah. I'm starting a new business. After the real estate market crashed I gave it up, it wasn't me anyway, it was one of those opportunities to do something that I truly love. I was a computer tutor for seniors the last nine years, but I couldn't scale it. It was fun. I still do it till I get my new life coaching business going. But they don't want to take courses. They made it very clear, I did surveys, and they said, "No, I just want you to hold my hand when I'm stuck." They're not that motivated to learn that much about it.
My real love has been personal development, and it's always been something that I did for myself. Back in the day, when I got started, when I first read Wayne Dyer, life coaching wasn't a thing. Then after it started to become the thing, I thought, well, nobody's going to pay me to do that. I decided now's the time. I found a program that I really love, it's called the Dream Builder Program by Mary Morrissey. Are you familiar with Mary Morrissey or do you know-
Dean: Yeah, of course. Yes, of course.
Mardi: I love that she organized all the information that I know in a really... She has it organized so it makes a really nice framework. Because if I were to devise my own course, I wouldn't know where to begin. I decided that's what I was going to do. I also have some other certifications. But this one, I really liked the program, it's a 12 week program.
Their business model, though, is I'm wondering about... Well, let's see, their business model is that you do speaking gigs, and you do workshop, which I don't. You're really doing a lot of cold calling to get workshop speaking gigs. I think the problem from... I don't have a problem speaking, but it's really rough to get the speaking gig, and that's not what you sign up for when you want to become a coach.
I think a lot of the coaches don't succeed because they don't have a marketing program, and I wonder about this suitability for people's personality. Somebody who's a coach isn't going to want to be a speaker, necessarily.
Dean: Right.
Mardi: I always wonder well, when do you push yourself, they'll say, "Well, it's your paradigm, you need to get over it and grow." But on the other hand, I like the elf idea that always have that, if you go with your personality type, it could be much easier and kind of low.
Dean: It could be lucrative and fun, right.
Mardi: Yeah. That's what we look for is things that are... Yeah.
Dean: Right.
Mardi: Yeah, go ahead.
Dean: That's a good distinction. Yeah, because we always talked about the difference you can make things ELF; easy, lucrative and fun or you can have a HALF business; hard, annoying, lame and frustrating.
Mardi: Right.
Dean: We set things up to be ELF right from the beginning. I always look for elegant solutions on things.
Mardi: I know, you're so good at it too.
Dean: Getting in front of an audience, you can see why they recommend that because it's an efficient way or was an efficient way to get your message to a group of people at one time. But now, I think you can do a good job of getting in front of your audience with a book. A book is a... Because now with Facebook ads, it's very easy to target exactly the people that you want-
Mardi: Exactly.
Dean: ... and engage with them. Tell me about what you're-
Mardi: I'm working on a book right now.
Dean: ... your time?
Mardi: I'm working on the book right now. That's what I wanted to say is that I love your business model, because I think I love the idea of a book, and I love the idea of the scorecard, because then the other thing they train... Well, the reason they have you do it that way is it's the low hanging fruit. On the ground, it's the easiest so people don't get overwhelmed by the tech stack and all of that. It makes sense. But it doesn't work for a lot of people.
I love the idea of the book because they get an overview of what you do, and then you can choose... When you do your weekly content, you can choose what fits your personality. If you want to blog, or you want to do a podcast or need to do YouTube or whatever, but you have more control, you can do it at your own time. If you're not good at speaking, you can do a video and edit it.
The reason I'm going into this is because my other goal is to help other dream builder coaches master the marketing and be successful. Because I'm so passionate about the teaching, and the tools that they give people for having amazing lives. It's really the same thing you do, you're helping people to be successful and have great businesses and happy lives, and the two are integrated.
I figure I can reach more people by supporting other coaches to be successful instead of giving up. Besides getting my business launched, I'm looking at the scale ready algorithm, how I could... Once I prove it, and have my numbers and everything, then I can reach out to other coaches and say, Dean helped me figure it out, and here's how we can do it.
Dean: Wow. Yeah, that's great. Part of the thing is to begin with the end in mind. If we put this business here, right now, you look at the model of what you're doing with the computer tutor. You were literally doing one-to-one for a fixed fee, right? They're paying you hourly to do the computer tutor.
Mardi: Yeah, 60 and hour and you can't run around the valley fast enough to make a good living doing that.
Dean: All right. Exactly, and you're limited, because everybody wants you, of course. So, there's that. This next level of coaching here, what do you want your days to look like here? How much of this do you want to do? How do you want to... Do you want to coach for 40 hours a week, do you want to coach for-
Mardi: No, no.
Dean: No.
Mardi: No, I want to do like three hours a week, I've got it figured out I want to do three hours a week. The business model they recommend it really works. You'd make like $100,000 a year. It's not huge money, but you can scale it later. But the basic model would be to have a class of seven people, and that's a 12 week program. So, every month you enroll a new class of seven people. Then you meet with a class an hour or an hour and a half, whatever, for Q&A for less than and Q&A and they have the materials are recorded on audio and they have worksheets and everything. So, you've gone through the 12 week class.
Then you can do one on one if you want. I could do one on one if I wanted to. But my idea was to have them go through it once. The first run, there's a lot to learn. They go through the second round, I call it Dream Builder, 2.0, where we go deeper with some of the supporting materials that it's based on. Then I'd like to have a membership where they can pay a monthly and join a membership where they can get the reinforcement, because you never finish growing and you never stop having things come up that might be challenging. With the membership, they could get ongoing support. So, I would show up for Q&A every week, and just help keep everybody on track. That you would be an additional.
Dean: You would run one group of seven people for 90 days and then start another group, or would you do-
Mardi: Yeah. Well, I'd do three at a time. Every month, start a new one.
Dean: Okay. I had a great model of that-
Mardi: Then have the membership, so that would be four.
Dean: I don't know if you were around when we were doing Project Cyrus with the money making websites. That we had it. It was a 12 week program. I think it was probably after you got out of the business-
Mardi: Yeah, I didn't have that. I know you've mentioned it. I don't think I did that program. But I sure love the-
Dean: Yeah, because you're more the early 2000s, right?
Mardi: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dean: That model was a 90 day program, and we would start one every month. We had cascading groups and three concurrent groups going on at the same time. Logistically getting it set up was something, but we set it up and ran it. It was a great program. I like that model. I think that's great. All it requires is a constant stream of new people that you can introduce to the program, right? Part of this-
Mardi: Right. I was going to use Facebook ads for that-
Dean: Of course, perfect. Yeah. Who is the ideal person for this? By the way, how much is the 12 week program?
Mardi: Well, I'm debating on that.
Dean: Okay.
Mardi: A group program, I'd like to charge like $1,800.
Dean: Okay. Perfect. That's-
Mardi: Then again, the sales... We're trained in doing the strategy based on doing a presentation to strategy sessions. Then there's the sales training, and everybody hates that. So, I'm depending on my scorecard to do it for me.
Dean: Okay, right. But there's all part of it, is when you help people come to their own conclusions about things, that'd be great. Your goal is at the end of that, that out of the seven, would you have a next step for people?
Mardi: Yes, the next step would be to take it again, the 2.0 version, where we go deeper... I would supplement it with my own stuff. Then they-
Dean: That can be another group?
Mardi: Yeah, uh-huh.
Dean: Okay.
Mardi: Then after that, they'd be invited to join the alumni group. To be in the membership, they'd have to be alumni.
Dean: Okay, I got it. All right. Who's the ideal person for this? What's the result they're going to get out of it?
Mardi: Yeah, that's another question. What I had identified is, women over 60, it's hard... Without saying retired, but the idea being women who are coming up on retirement, who are not seeing a good prospect for their later years, either because they're... The four elements of dream building are health, relationships, of location and time and money freedom. They may need to work on their health or they want a relationship, maybe they're widowed and they want a new relationship, or maybe they need to work on the current marriage relationship they have, or many of us need more money. We're not financially prepared for retirement or if we were, they lost it.
They may want to do a passion project, if they may have a passion project they want to develop into a business or they may just need a business to help them find a business that they love so that they can have the extra money to have a worthwhile retirement, do catch up.
Then the other is the time and money freedom. Many of them have okay retirement, but not enough to travel and do the things they really want to do. That's the niche I was going to pick just because that's my experience, and Dream Building helped me with that. But I didn't know if I should... I know you're supposed to solve a pain for a person, so I'm not focusing on just one aspect of it.
Is it too broad to say, don't... My pitch is, you don't have to settle and it's not too late. With these tools, you can have it the way you want it. We'll do your vision, that's the basic sport. You do the vision statement, and then I give you the tools to move forward and accomplish it. Is that general?
Dean: Well, when we go through the 12 week program, you basically cover a little bit of all of those things?
Mardi: Well, their vision includes all those things. They do a vision for what they want to see in their health, what they want to see in relationship, what they want to see in their vocation or contribution. It might be volunteering even, and their time and money freedom. In all those areas, they draw up a vision of their ideal for all those categories. Then the program teaches them the practices of how to keep moving forward with it every day, how to overcome fear, how to do forgiveness work, and all that.
Dean: I like it, okay. So, everybody's working at their own pace, you're teaching them a new technology or a new kind of outward facing process every week. Then they share their progress and ask the questions, and get coaching in your group setting.
Mardi: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dean: Okay, how long are the calls?
Mardi: Well, I would say as long... I have had bad experiences with signing up for programs, I had coaching calls, and you don't get your questions answered. We would shoot for an hour, but I would stay until all the questions were answered.
Dean: Right.
Mardi: Usually, it's designed to be about an hour. I might do an hour and a half just to be sure nobody gets-
Dean: Okay, perfect. Okay, part of the thing is what we need in order to get to that stage, to get the seven people, we need a list of at least seven people that fit the criteria for who you're looking for, that we can invite them to the class. Where are you at in terms of your audience so far, the people... Do you have a list of-
Mardi: Nowhere, no. I tried doing organic, social... I took a very expensive marketing program, and it was way not what I... It was way too complex, way more than I needed. But I did try some organic Facebook stuff, and I have a private group with about 13 people in it. But I'd say there's four of them that are engaged. It was just a time suck, it was not me and not me. There's nothing wrong with doing that if you're a social person.
Anyway, I have an email list of about 13 people, and I'm podcasting to crickets. I'm telling you, I started my podcast, I've done 18 or 19 episodes.
Dean: Wow, okay.
Mardi: Yeah, but nobody's signing up for... I'm inviting people to come get free coaching like you do but nobody's signing up.
Dean: Well, listen, your podcast is a lead conversion tool, it's a lead generation lool. We've talked about-
Mardi: I just meant there's nobody following me.
Dean: Right. That's the thing. That's got to be job one, we've got to get a way to identify who those people are, and get the Facebook ad in front of them to offer them your book.
Mardi: We can identify him by age and also it was suggested in this other course that birthdays, you can target people that have upcoming birthdays. Birthdays after 40 are times where people reevaluate their lives. So, I'm going to try that, maybe doing women, maybe 59 or 60 who have upcoming birthdays.
Dean: Okay. That's great. You can do that. The thing is with, you could do it anything, right? What I would start to give you the most options is, I would concentrate... There's probably enough 60 year old women within 10 miles of where you're sitting right now to focus your attention, first off.
Mardi: Why 10 miles, is that... Because I'm doing the coaching on the phone. I don't need it geographical, but is that better engagement?
Dean: I understand. Yeah, well, part of the thing is that, that gives you options that at some point, you could do a group in person thing with people, or it encourages that. You don't, I suspect, have the budget to target all of the 60 year old women in North America.
Mardi: Right.
Dean: There's no advantage... One of the things that you have to decide is this is an audience that you're going to serve that you've got the opportunity to reach them all, but there's a great saying in radio ads, that the decision that you have to make is, do you want to convince 10% of the people 100% of the way, or 100% of the people 10% of the way? That's really what the thing is, that if you are able to... There's no advantage to show your ad to the millions and millions of women over 60.
Mardi: Oh, right. When I did this course, it was based on funnels, that ClickFunnels type stuff. It's that buckshot thing. I don't care, I want to be location independent, I want to travel.
Dean: Of course, yeah.
Mardi: It's fine, but the other thing was to narrow it down with other interests that they have. If they are interested in personal development, or a particular teacher of personal development, maybe.
Dean: Yeah, you can do all of that. But part of what I was saying to you because I know that your next aspiration is to teach other coaches how to market and do this for themselves, right?
Mardi: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dean: There's nothing... If you can show geographic, that they can do-
Mardi: Oh, I see.
Dean: That's going to help you in a way that if you're teaching everybody how to do the same thing, and everybody's targeting all the women who are all-
Mardi: oh, I see what you mean, yeah.
Dean: ... this, there's no uniqueness to your method, right?
Mardi: Right.
Dean: If you're going to syndicate something, this has been my secret formula for 30 years now, because of what you were involved with, with our money making websites was geographically the same principle. I'm showing people in Poughkeepsie how to use a money making website in Poughkeepsie, right? If you're serving... Where are you now, where do you live now?
Mardi: I'm near Palm Springs in desert hot springs.
Dean: Okay, perfect. If you imagine that, in that Palm Springs area there, that there's lots of 60 year olds... Let's say 60 to 70 year old women who would be thrilled to be a part of something like this. There's probably a nice community of those, and you're talking about, you're looking for 80 people a year, right? It's what the thing is that you're looking for. You'll need millions to get to that level.
Mardi: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Yeah, that's right. Then the other thing they said you can start with seven, but some of them that teach the faculty, their classes are like 25 people. That's how you scale and really make good money. I might want to do 25 later, but they say start out one on one and then when you're comfortable, move up to seven in a group and then you can scale up to 25 later.
Dean: Yeah.
Mardi: I take the total that I want for the year, and then is there somebody that can help me do the ads? Because Betsy said it's not that complicated, but do you recommend somebody that-
Dean: Yeah, we can help you get set up. We can help you get that set up. That's no problem.
Mardi: Okay.
Dean: Tell me about your book now. How far along are you?
Mardi: Okay, I've done the scorecard, and I've had one email contact with a gal that's going to do the interview, but I guess they're a little backed up, they got really busy. I have-
Dean: With Christie? Is that-
Mardi: Was her name Christie? Yeah.
Dean: That's who you're going to do the interview with?
Mardi: She reached out and said, "I'm going to be helping you."
Dean: Perfect.
Mardi: Yeah. I've done the scorecard, and she liked it. I did bring some titles. She liked the title. Oh, I should have that-
Dean: What have you got for your title?
Mardi: Oh, man, I don't have it upfront. Where is it? Oh, my gosh, let me just get Christie's email address, I should have had that -
Dean: Okay. When you start thinking about what the title of your book is, that's going to be your entry into who these ladies are. You may find that one, what's going to start the process for you, what's going to start the process of the conversation, that's really where we are.
Mardi: Yeah.
Dean: I'll give you an example-
Mardi: I put Living Happy, Rich and Free After 60.
Dean: Okay, perfect. That's good.
Mardi: You like it? 10 Steps To a Life You Absolutely Love.
Dean: I like that, yes, that people know exactly what that is, and everything is a test, right? I'm not a 60 year old woman. So, I don't know that that's the most appealing thing. But the answer is going to be that we can test different ad appeals. But it all leads to the same book. I know that the core of what you're saying in the book is going to be the right thing for people, because your intention now would be to introduce people to the ideas, the thought, the images, the imagination of what is possible for them.
You get that the purpose of it is to educate and motivate. We're sharing everything that's going to set up them being emotionally at the point where, oh, this sounds like a good idea. Yeah, I would love to be a part of that course, right?
Mardi: Right. Then the other thing is originally they said, don't do more than 10, but you can do more than eight. Originally, I had the 10 core teachings as the 10 things on the scorecard. But then I looked at your realtor one, it was called the Realtor Lifestyle, and it included some lifestyle-
Dean: Listing Agent Lifestyle.
Mardi: Yeah, Listing Agent Lifestyle, and it included some lifestyle things like time, money, life balance or something. I thought, oh. Then I changed it, and I put the four domains of life so they can rate themselves on where are they on their health score wise? Where are they in their relationship? That took up four of them. Then I combined some things, so the other six are the tools.
The first one is the truth of who you are, your ability to manifest your life. Then your vision. All those things about having their vision and then things like managing fear and practicing forgiveness and being willing to fail. Those are the tools and then there's the results. That's how it's set up.
Dean: Okay. When you look at... The thing that we have, the tool that we use, we've been talking about the Facebook ads is about getting in front of the right people, which we can do, we can find all the ladies who are 60 to 70, or you'll go younger than that, or... What would be the-
Mardi: That was just the branding. I wasn't sure. Yeah, I don't mind going... I think at 50 people... Around 50 that's midlife time, but I was just trying to niche it down. I didn't know. I don't know, but my branding has been for women over 60.
Dean: Okay. Perfect.
Mardi: But it doesn't have to be, I can change it, I can change it.
Dean: No, don't don't change anything. We haven't even gotten started yet, you're talking about-
Mardi: Well, there's another niche of coaches that work with women in midlife and new empty nesters. Minus for people... I was just taking another niche that may not be served, but I don't know if it'll be that productive, but I have one client that's taken the program three times, and she's seeing me privately once a month, so it worked for her.
Dean: Nice, perfect. Let's prototype her. Let's-
Mardi: She was a tutoring client, that's how I got her. I mentioned my -
Dean: That's a good idea is to try and recreate her. There's plenty of 60 year old women. We're going to use the Facebook ad to show them the book, to offer them the book for them to download, and that's going to... Our target would be to get to where you can get those leads for... We're going to determine how much does it cost you to get those leads? I'd love to see a target of under $5 for those leads, that you could generate, start building your list that way.
When you look at it, that for under $500, you can generate a list of 100 of these ladies. That that's your starting point, right?
Mardi: Okay.
Dean: Then the idea, that's your Profit Activator 2, that's what we look for, the metric that we're looking for is your predictable volume knob for your list that we can toggle the ad on and off, to bring in more people. You say, turn it on, and we get 100 people in. Then let's monitor, then we're into Profit Activator 3 now, where we're going to try and engage with those people and look for the five star prospects. We're going to look for ladies who are willing to engage in a dialogue, friendly and cooperative, they know what they want, they'd like to get it now, and they would like you to help them. That's who we're looking for.
We can do that through engagement. You're used to... It's very similar to the process that we use for money making websites, when you were getting the website fixed. We were looking for five star prospects, right? The same thing. We would engage with people and see who's willing to have an email dialogue with you. One of the best ways to do that is to think about what would happen, what would be the conversation that you would have, if this Facebook ad was a magic portal that, as soon as somebody clicked, I want this book, it already leaves their name and email address for you.
But what if that magically transported them right there into your kitchen? You're sitting there, you've got the kettle boiled, and then in comes this lady knocking on the door saying, "Hey, I'm here about the book." How would you have that conversation? That's what we look to replicate now in your lead conversion process.
Mardi: Right. I'm going to take the email mastery course, because you have the template set, right? And get all the details of how to do that. The question would be, if the book is Living Happy, Rich and Free, it would be like, what area of your life are you wanting to improve, right?
Dean: Yes. Right.
Mardi: Then I know whether health is their priority or them finding their relationship or prosperity or whatever it is.
Dean: Right. The book can lead to somebody trying your scorecard.
Mardi: Right. That's what I want to do, yes.
Dean: Then the scorecard will give you the idea of what is important to them. What is their thing? Now you can start a dialogue based on your knowledge about what they're working on.
Mardi: Right. Then are those really answered directly? Or do you just put them in a different funnel?
Dean: You want to answer them directly. I think it's great if you can engage in a real dialogue with people. That way then how do you... Because then in that dialogue, you may say to them... Do you do introductory workshops or do you do-
Mardi: Well, I do the strategy session. The strategy session is awesome, because it's a free... It's like you always say, a strategy session is too big an ask. That's the potato chip that's too close to you for the squirrel, which I love that analogy. But once they get into it, it's really a gift, because I do the visioning process with them.
Even if they decide not to sign up, they lead with a hope, and a vision that they can work on themselves, and then maybe they'll work on it go, "I'm not making progress." They may come back and say, "I really do need coaching, I need mentoring." But you do the visioning process with them. Then you go from there to, okay, is this something that you're excited about this? Would you like to work with me? They say yes, and then you say, "Okay, we're a good match because you know what you want, and you da, da, da." Then you offer them.
This is my other question, the training is they don't know the price until you get through to that. You don't tell them the price until they say they want to work with you.
Dean: Right.
Mardi: Then after you tell them the price, if there's any objections, you go through the objection.
Dean: Okay.
Mardi: That was another one of my questions. But when you ask, you say, well, if you'd like to shoot me an email, and I'll get you the details. Then you reveal what the price is.
Dean: I do, yeah. But I don't use strategy sessions, right?
Mardi: But could I do it your way, instead of doing the strategy sessions?
Dean: You could absolutely do it my way. What you might want to do is reposition your strategy session as a podcast, and you could model what I do with More Cheese Less Whiskers. This could very well be a strategy session, what you and I are doing right here. That's essentially what it is.
Mardi: I'm inviting them, yeah.
Dean: I'm just doing this as a strategy session that is going to have reach. Now, we've done this, and I'm happy to do them, because I know that we're going to help thousands of people with this. It's not just you and I. Even though it feels like and it sounds like and I'm treating this like you're the only person in the world that I'm focused on. I'm not concerned that this is a podcast episode that thousands of people are going to hear, I'm giving you my very best thinking specifically for you right now.
If I were doing that, as a strategy session, that would be lost to the to everybody else. I think that there's a way for you to do that, the same way that I'm doing it here.
Mardi: I'm afraid it's too personal. I'm afraid that I'm not getting people... That even the coaching. See, the coaching shows how I work, it shows who I am as a coach. The strategy session is just a visioning process where you have people meditate and write down what they want, their dreams. But the interesting part would be for me to do the coaching, if they bring me an issue, or a question, and then I coach them like you do, but the people I have asked aren't signing up.
Then I thought, well, maybe it would be better to do inspirational stories, do something inspiring to give them confidence that this is doable. Maybe I would do-
Dean: There's the thing is if you were to highlight fields report, people who have taken your coaching and how to transformation if you were to celebrate that with them, talk about their breakthrough, feature them, that's a great model as well, because that would mean-
Mardi: I changed it in my Facebook group yesterday, I took down the other one and said, "Does anybody have a success story of overcoming and a success story they'd like to share that would inspire other people?" Even if they haven't taken the Dream Builder Program, I can still point out like, you do it, your before and after, your intro, that this is a story, and these are the principles of Dream Building that are illustrated, even though the person didn't know they were using the Dream Builder, but they had determination or they were able to forgive or whatever.
Then if I don't have field studies, I can use other people's stories, like that book by the Holocaust survivor, Dr. Edith's book about surviving the Holocaust. I could take... It'd just be like Chicken Soup for the Soul Podcast, right? It would just be all these stories and people would tune in because people love to hear inspiring stories, and then I would create a lesson from the story of how you can do this. These are the principles, these are the practices and you can accomplish this with that. That might be a better podcast idea.
Dean: That could be, absolutely. Mm-hmm (affirmative). All I look for is a repeatable format that you can structure so that people get to know what this is, and that you've got a stream of new people to put in them. I always say, the power of the context of that 60 Minutes, the TV show, is the longest running news program continuously on the air, over 50 years, and their format is every Sunday night three of the most fascinating stories that are going on in the Zeitgeist right now in long form. Three, 20 minute stories.
That's a repeatable format. You know what you're getting with 60 Minutes. It's really a time capsule. If you look back historically, you want to see what's going on in 1987. You look at what was on 60 Minutes in 1987, and you get a sense of what's really happening there, right?
Mardi: I haven't thought of that.
Dean: Right. That format, something has to be fixed. By fixed, I mean constant. That's my model of the More Cheese Less Whiskers and Listing Agent Lifestyle Podcast are helping one business owner at a time work through applying the eight profit activators to this particular business. In doing that, I can have infinite variety in... I've had book dealers, high end B2B manufacturing things. I had a lactation consultant on, and there are all manner of these things, all applying the eight profit activators to it. It shows the universality of it.
Mardi: Yes. I'm so excited about it too, because I think some of my women will want to start businesses, and I might do another... I might have another business helping people start businesses, these women start businesses, and the other thing-
Dean: It's to be a catalyst for you, to see where these ladies want to go.
Mardi: At one time, I signed up to be an employment counselor, and the guy told me, "I didn't realize it was sales." You know those employment agencies? He said, "Oh, I'd never hire you because you're a teacher." I go, "What?" As it turns out, it's sales. It's like real estate, you have listings and you have buyers and sellers.
Dean: Yes, exactly.
Mardi: I didn't know that. He just thought the personality of a teacher was just so not sales that, "No, I wouldn't even consider you." I thought, "Oh, well, excuse me." But I've always been fascinated, I've always loved that idea because I think everybody should be happy in their work because you spend so much time doing it. The other thing that's always concerned me, is we always talk about scaling. Somebody has to do the low paying job. When I was the director of a daycare center, I lost all my teachers to Head Start, because Head Start could pay benefits. So, they all got out of teaching and went into administration, because of the money and the benefits and the vacations and the retirement.
I thought, if I could have helped those people develop a side gig, or some kind of passive income vehicle, they would have stayed in teaching, because they would have had a supplement. I'd love to be a business coach, I would love to help people set up... When I get mine set up, that's another way I might use it is to help people start side gigs, so they can do what they love, even though it's a low paying job.
Dean: Right.
Mardi: Because somebody's got to do the low paying jobs. But why should they suffer?
Dean: Right. Absolutely. Yeah. I think you're on the right track here, Mardi. Your book will be on board pretty quickly here, sounds like. Then it's just a matter of the equation that we have to figure out-
Mardi: Implementing.
Dean: I know that... If I look at you're firmly focused in the before unit, because you're not running yet. But I know that your during unit is completely set up. If I were to bring you seven people who wanted to start, are you 100% ready to go?
Mardi: Oh, yeah, and get them results? I love that you emphasize can you get them results? I love your integrity, because there's so many people that are trying to get money by an online business, and it's so important to have that be your first concern. Yeah, it works. I'm totally passionate about it as you can tell. But the only thing is the onboarding, I would like to know more about how to create a really stellar onboarding experience, and how to make it a really great experience and orchestrate referral type thing. But I can do that later. You can only focus on so many things that one time.
Dean: That's right, one thing at a time, right. The thing that we need to start with is... I feel good that you're going to be ready if you had people for the course. If you're targeting that... Let's say you're going to start the first one in March, I guess would probably be the right time, if you're given a few weeks to get your book done, get some Facebook ads going, build your audience and invite people to start for March, that'd be a good timeline target, I think for you.
Mardi: Okay, mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dean: Mm-hmm (affirmative). Now, the things that we need to solve are, can we get these ladies to... Can we excite them with your book? If we show them your ad, we show 1000 of these ladies your ad, how many of them will... Can we get 10 or 12 of them to opt in to get the book? That would be getting you those leads for under $5. That's the equation that we're looking for.
If we get that, then we fast forward and you spend, let's say $1,000, and you get 250 of these ladies there, this is where we're going to now focus on your engagement with those. How many of those can we engage in a dialogue with? How many of those will be willing to come, maybe do a strategy session or try your scorecard, or whatever it is, that's what we're looking for.
Then when you invite them to come to your course, how many of them can we get join you? That's the equation we need to figure out, and then just lather, rinse and repeat. All the while, we're building this asset. I look at it that you're making a capital investment in building this list of people.
Mardi: Absolutely.
Dean: If we get to a point where you've got 1000 of these ladies, and you've got a capital investment of $4,000, or $5,000 in this audience that you're building here, what is the value? What is going to be the yield from that over the next 100 weeks? Because once you get those ladies, once you've got them to download the book, you can email them all the time for free. You can email them every week with your podcast, with your... You want to get into a flagship communication that at the bottom of it, you can put your super signature. Whenever you're ready, here's the ways that can help you.
Mardi: I've got that now.
Dean: It's just all the things that you'll learn in-
Mardi: I've done the super signature, what I can, nobody's-
Dean: What do you see that, you need to get the people, yeah.
Mardi: I have to get the guests on the podcast and do a strategy session and be a guest on the podcast. What's the other way? Well, that isn't done yet, but I will.
Dean: Right.
Mardi: Should I start the email mastery course now, if there's stuff I can do now, while I'm waiting for the book to be finished?
Dean: Absolutely. Yes, because as soon as you get the first opt in, that's where we pick up is right there, is how do you prepare so that when those people opt in, what happens in that first 24, 48 hours is crucial.
Mardi: Critical.
Dean: Yeah, and then what happens every week after that? How do you engage? How do you invite people? How do you have those dialogues? That's all that there is.
Mardi: Right. Okay.
Dean: You're inching your way through that through... That's the syntax of everything, is we've got a lock in your ability to get people to opt in. Then we've got your ability to engage with and invite them to collaborate.
Mardi: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dean: Yep.
Mardi: Okay. All right. Then the only way to know about if I've got the right niche is to just go forward and test it. Worst case-
Dean: You've got the right niche. There's no doubt about that. 60... You've proven it right now. There's lots of them, it makes all the sense in the world. We just have to find the right appeal to them. That could be the title of the book, it could be the headline that we use for the ads, whatever... One can have a bigger impact than another.
Mardi: Right. When you test those, and then worst case, you change the title and the cover of the book-
Dean: Exactly.
Mardi: ... if you need to. Okay.
Dean: Right, because you've got so much great content that you just look at what the thing is. I saw this great video with Tyler Perry, where he was taking on a tour of his new studio in Atlanta. Do you know who Tyler Perry is?
Mardi: Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Dean: We have Madea, all the things. He's got this amazing 300 acre studio in Atlanta. On the studio there, they built a 10,000 square foot mansion that has four different elevations to it. You come from the north, and it's a colonial looking house, and you come from the south, and it's a modern home, and you come from the east and it's the front elevation of the White House. All of these things, they can do exterior, establishing shots and all of that stuff.
But inside the mansion, they can then just decorate for whatever they need, whatever show they're shooting. Really, it's adaptable. I look at that same thing. You've got all of your content inside the book, and we just put different facades on it to see which entry is most appealing to your ladies. Are they most interested in the health side of it? In the money side of it? In the time freedom side of it? What is it that is most appealing to them?
Mardi: Right.
Dean: But once you get that, it's evergreen, it will work perpetually, right?
Mardi: Exactly. Then what would it look like to syndicate my book... Would my book be part of the package I would offer to businesses or other Dream Builder coaches? You white label it or something? How does that look?
Dean: Yes, that's exactly right.
Mardi: Okay. Then I think I need to stay with a strategy session, actually, because it's coaching. I probably need to do this strategy sessions so I can see if we're a good match.
Dean: Right, perfect.
Mardi: Also, because of that price point... You have lower price entry level... A lot of it, they recommend have a lower price offer, and then people move up to the higher price offers. If I don't have that... $1,800 isn't that much money. It depends on your perspective.
Dean: Well, that's our little end thing too. So. Yeah.
Mardi: I'm still not sure if I should just put it in the... Do you think for coaching... Well, this is a weekend workshop, right?
Dean: For a course. We go from email mastery at $1,800 to the breakthrough blueprint at $5,000, to working with me one on one. That's our scale.
Mardi: Okay. I could do mine without the strategy session. I would just say if you're ready to get started, reply to this email, and I'll get you the details, right?
Dean: Yes, that's exactly right.
Mardi: Because see, I don't have a problem with the strategy session, really, but it's a big, big barrier for other coaches. It's really hard to do that sales conversation. If I can make that work without it, that would really benefit the other coaches, because I want to keep this is doable for the average person or for all personality types or something.
Dean: Yeah, I think it might be a good idea if you got to look at the to look at, you're doing group strategy sessions like that too, where you could invite people to, I'm getting together with some people on Tuesday evening to talk about this. Would you like to try that?
Mardi: Right. Well, that would be the workshop.
Dean: It's similar. Yeah, your workshop, exactly.
Mardi: Yeah, because the workshop is a three hour workshop that you do once a month.
Dean: You could do that by Zoom. Yeah, you could do it by Zoom, right.
Mardi: That would be the equivalent probably to something similar to what you do. Because yours is a two day or three day implementation workshop. That's different-
Dean: That's right.
Mardi: But the group strategy session, that would be the power of vision, that would be the workshop where you give the foundational principles involved, and then you have them do the dream. Yeah. That's a great idea, too. Now, would that be something that would be on the super signature, or that would be when you respond to this?
Dean: No, that would be in your PS, or in when I do-
Mardi: You offer it once a month.
Dean: ... when I do about email mastery, yeah. Let's say I'm starting a new email mastery group, or I'm doing a book title Brainstorm, would you like to join us?
Mardi: Yeah, okay. You do that once a month and you start a new email one, right. Then you do-
Dean: That's right.
Mardi: You do them all once a month like I do. You're just starting a new group every month, yeah.
Dean: Yeah. Today is our start for email mastery. That's been in the PS of my email the last couple of weeks. We start our... I do 20 of those email mastery calls a year, basically. We do every two or three weeks. Yeah.
Mardi: Okay. How important is it for me to do the other two emails like you do, where you take a piece of content from your podcast and you do it Tuesday, Thursday as well?
Dean: It's great. I think that once you get to-
Mardi: Do you think I should od that too?
Dean: ... once you get to 1000 people, that would be... I want to balance that it's the juice is worth the squeeze kind of thing. It's like you're seeing it right now, you're a little bit ahead, where you've got however many podcast episodes, but nobody listened to them. You're good for that right now, but starting out, the most important thing is going to be to get your first 1000 people on your list and be a good thing. That's a good foundation.
Mardi: Okay, yeah. Great. Well, thank you. This is great. I've got clarity now. I had all the pieces floating around, but now I've got clarity about the sequence.
Dean: I love it.
Mardi: Yeah, I'm excited.
Dean: Yeah. Very cool. Well, you'll love working with Christie. She's great too. That's going to be-
Mardi: I've loved working with Stewart. Stewart did a critique on my... He gave me suggestions on my scorecard, and it was so good. It was so good. He has the nicest way of giving you feedback without being critical.
Dean: He's a very gentlemanly Englishman. Yeah.
Mardi: Yeah. It was really fun.
Dean: That's good.
Mardi: Well, thank you so much, Dean. I'll see you in the email mastery class.
Dean: Okay, perfect. I'll look forward to you.
Mardi: Okay.
Dean: Thanks, Mardi. Bye.
Mardi: Thanks. Bye.
Dean: There we have it, another great episode. Thanks for listening in. If you want to continue the conversation, we'll go deeper in how the eight profit activators can apply to your business. Two things you can do. Right now you can go to morecheeselesswhiskers.com, and you can download a copy of The More Cheese Less Whiskers book, and you can listen to the back episodes, of course, if you're just listening here on iTunes.
Secondly, the thing that we talk about in applying all of the eight profit activators are part of the Breakthrough DNA process. You can download a book and a scorecard and watch a video all about the eight profit activators at breakthroughdna.com. That's a great place to start the journey in applying this scientific approach to growing your business. That's really the way we think about Breakthrough DNA as an operating system that you can overlay on your existing business and immediately look for insights there.
That's it for this week. Have a great week, and we will be back next time with another episode of More Cheese Less Whiskers.