581. Jody and Mark Have Very Different Strategies for Getting Clients

In today’s episode of the podcast, you’re going to hear about some pretty direct feedback Mark gets from his wife from time to time. You’re going to hear about my recent real-life run-in with the one and only Justin Bieber. And you’re going to hear about Mark and I’s very different strategies for getting clients. Welcome to Better Than Happy. Let’s do this.

Welcome to Better Than Happy, the podcast where we apply all the tools of psychology, human behavior, and mindfulness to live our best lives, navigate challenges, and achieve our goals. I’m Jody Moore and I’ll be your coach today. Let’s do it.

Hey, everybody. Thanks for joining me today on this podcast. So, I’ve been doing this podcast now for over 11 years. It’s been such a joy for me. It’s been so helpful for me to kind of flesh out my thoughts and ideas, and I’m so appreciative of all of you for listening and saying how it’s helping your life. I’m experimenting a little bit right now with bringing on a regular partner or co-host. And Mark Butler has been a friend of mine for ages. We’ve worked together professionally, and I think he’s so smart, so wise, and just a good guy. And also, Mark and I disagree about a lot of things. And so I asked him to come on and do this little experiment with me. He graciously agreed, and we’re testing this out to see if we like it, but more importantly, if you like it. I want to make sure that these conversations are useful for you, that they’re adding value to your life, to your business, to your relationships, to whatever it is that you’re working on.

So please, please, please do me the favor as we’re in this experimental phase of seeing if this is going to be a more long-term thing, let us know. Let us know if you like these conversations. Let us know if you want to hear solo episodes from me from time to time or all the time. Or maybe you want a solo episode from Mark every now and then. Let me know your preferences. We care most about what adds value to you.

Also, if you have certain topics or questions you want to hear us discuss or disagree on or give our thoughts and opinions on, Mark and I both have lots of thoughts and opinions, and we’re happy to share them. So feel free to send us in that information as well. You can email my team, [email protected], and they will get it to me, or you can call into our podcast hotline, which is 1-888-HI-JODY-M. That’s Jody with a Y, M as in more. We’d love to hear your voice and hear your thoughts and feedback about these episodes Mark and I are doing together.

Now, before we dive into my conversation with Mark Butler, I want to remind you that I’m running a Worry-Free challenge. This is going to be five days where I’m going to teach you how to go the whole week without worrying. I’m going to show you how much power and authority you have over your own emotions, your own life, and why it’s okay to worry at times, when you’re going to want to allow it, but how to stop doing it when it’s not serving you. So, head to JodyMoore.com/worryfree to join me for the challenge. It’s coming up very soon. I won’t be doing this again anytime soon, so don’t miss it. There are limited-time replays when you sign up that you’ll get sent. So if you can’t be there at the exact time, I got you. Again, it’s JodyMoore.com/worryfree to join me for the challenge. All right, thanks for being here today. Without further ado, here’s my conversation with Mark Butler.

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Jody: The people want to know that you’re anxious, Mark. They want to know that. We might lose something good if I don’t start the recording.

Mark: The people want to know that I seem to have some amount of social anxiety that I would never have wanted to cop to until my wife called me on it directly and repeatedly.

Jody: I love that she can say that to you, though.

Mark: Oh. It’s the best.

Jody: I mean, come on.

Mark: Like, we’ve been married 20 something. And you’re like…

Jody: If we can’t say that to each other, this is not going to work.

Mark: What’s that?

Jody: It does get to the point where you’re like, if I can’t be real with you, we talked about this last time about your relationship needs to tolerate honesty.

Mark: Yeah, it has to. Otherwise…

Jody: But also there’s something special about Kate, I think. I mean, that like you know it’s coming from because she loves you. It’s not like some people are saying stuff like that out of their own insecurity and whatever, and it’s not…

Mark: Yeah, that’s true.

Jody: That for Kate.

Mark: That’s true. So before we had record, I was telling Jody that I have a, I have a like a body language quirk where if I’m in a group setting, like if Kate and I are at dinner with one other couple, Kate finally said to me, “You have to stop looking off in the distance when you’re talking to people. It’s so weird.” I was like, “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”

Jody: What do you mean?

Mark: I was like, “First of all, I am always charming, always on, no flaws, no defects.” She’s like…

Jody: “Notes. I have notes.”

Mark: I have notes. And anyway, I was telling Jody that I think it’s some social anxiety. I think I think I get a little anxious in that setting, and I start looking off in the distance.

Jody: Interesting. Hm.

Mark: So, yes, we do have a relationship where she can say that. And yes, I do trust that it’s coming from a good place.

Jody: Yeah. Okay. So speaking of that, a little social anxiety. This past weekend, I went up to Huntington Beach, just an hour north of me, with some girlfriends. We were celebrating somebody’s 50th birthday.

Mark: Wow. Glad I’m not 50.

Jody: I know. How old are you? I was trying to remember today. Are you 45?

Mark: Seven.

Jody: Oh, 47. Okay. Yeah. You’ll be 50 one day and you’ll be glad because life just gets better at 50.

Mark: I actually look forward to it. 50 is awesome.

Jody: It really does get better as you get older in so many ways. And plus, this is the age where you’re like, I’m definitely not young, but I’m also not old.So I’m either like the kind of wise one in the room that the young people look up to, or I’m like the youngest of the olds, and they’re like, you young kids just have so much energy when I’m with a group of older people. And it’s I kind of like both. I get to do both. But anyway…

Mark: That’s the right look at it. Yes.

Jody: Yeah, it’s really great. Okay. But I’m in Huntington Beach, and we go, my girlfriends and I go down to Laguna Beach, a little bit south for a fancy dinner one night, and then we’re walking around this area. This is a Saturday evening, okay? We’re walking around this area where there’s shops and restaurants, and we hear some people talking about that Justin Bieber is there in the area. And we’re like, “What?” And two of my girlfriends are huge Bieber fans. We’ve been listening to him in the car the whole way driving to Laguna, in fact. Bunch of middle-aged moms. If you can picture this.

Mark: I don’t think he wants to know that.

Jody: He doesn’t care.

Mark: I think that’s hard on his self-esteem.

Jody: That’s not what he’s hoping for. But okay, so we very nonchalantly, one of the shop owner in the shop we’re in, she says, “Oh yeah, he’s probably at this, whatever, sushi restaurant. He eats there all the time.” So we just casually walk down to this sushi restaurant. Sure enough, his Jeep is parked outside with all the doors open. His bodyguard’s there waiting. The valet guys kind of say mouth to us like, “That’s his car.” And they’re like, “Just wait right there.” They point to us and show us where to stand if we want to catch a glimpse of Bieber. And we’re like, “Okay.”

So one of my girlfriends gets out her phone and starts filming. And sure enough, we see Hailey Bieber with their son get in the car and then Justin Bieber. And just as he’s about to get in the car, he comes up to us and yells at us and says, “Do not take pictures of my son.” Very angry, very intense. Lots of darkness in his face and eyes is all I can say is that is a heavy person who’s been through a lot, so rightfully so. But anyway, so we’re kind of taken off guard. My friend’s like, “Oh, we didn’t.” And he’s like, “Yeah, you did.” And anyway, he kind of came out almost like dukes up, which who can blame him? Because his whole life is probably like trying to avoid people, whatever, coming at him. Or it was hard to tell like, was he angry coming out? Like, did he and Hailey get in a fight in the restaurant or something? Or is he just like, this is what happens when I walk to my car, is I have to like, you know, watch out for who’s out to get me.

But it was, you know, we get in the car. Most of us are just like, “Oh my gosh, we just talked to Justin Bieber.” And then the one who got yelled at is like in tears, like shattered, feeling so bad. And she texts her husband who immediately says, “Never meet your idols.”

Mark: I mean, kind of true.

Jody: Touche. I mean, that is what they say. And I’m going to say. Anyway, I think he, I think maybe his wife might have notes for him. I don’t know. Maybe or maybe she wants him to be like, hey, you need to fight people off if they’re taking pictures of our kids. I don’t know. Interesting, though.

Mark: I don’t know. When I talk to him soon, I’m sure.

Jody: Yeah. Next time you talk to him…

Mark: Yeah, when I text him later, I’ll be like, “Look, man, I’m so sorry, but this is the deal.”

Jody: I know. Here’s the thing. I don’t think you should be taking your little kid out in the middle of a busy shopping center packed with restaurants and tourists on Saturday night in the middle of August and expect that might not happen. I got to say that. At the same time, we didn’t even realize his son was with him till he said that.

Mark: I want to say, I had no idea Justin Bieber had a kid.

Jody: He does. Jack.

Mark: So now the person because in all seriousness, if there were a list of people for whom I feel the most sorry, Justin Bieber would have been very near the top. But now he has a kid, and his kid goes above him in the list.

Jody: For sure.

Mark: Oh, my goodness. To be Justin Bieber’s kid.

Jody: I don’t know. Yeah, it’s going to be hard in a lot of ways.

Mark: I want to say for the sake of the recording, it’s not because I think Justin Bieber or his wife, what’s her name?

Jody: Hailey.

Mark: Hailey. I’m not saying I think they’re bad people. I’m saying that level of fame…

Jody: Exactly.

Mark: Is horrifying.

Jody: Exactly. I agree. Yeah, I would not want that life.

Mark: No.

Jody: Luckily, I don’t have it. No. So with that little interesting tidbit, I want to talk to you today about, we kind of had to postpone a couple weeks ago and said we were going to talk about organic lead generation, what I’m calling organic lead generation. Okay. Versus paid lead generation. Yeah. And I really just have so many questions for you and kind of anytime I hear you talk about this because I’ve listened, I’ve listened off and on over the years to all your stuff that you teach. And I’m always fighting with, not fighting with you, but like debating with you in my bathroom and you don’t get to hear it. So I’m like, “I need to get on a call with Mark and have this conversation because I also want to understand your side a little better.” I also have lots of questions for you about it.

Mark: I wrote down a list of questions.

Jody: Okay, good. Do you want me to start with the question or do you want to go first?

Mark: You can. It’s your show. It’s your party.

Jody: Okay. Well, why don’t you first tell me why you, and maybe I’ve misunderstood, but I feel like you tend to lean in the camp of like build relationships or maybe post organic if you want to do that, and that’s the best maybe or maybe easiest way to get your coaching business to the level you might want it. But again, I don’t want to put words in your mouth. I want to hear what is your stance on this and why?

Mark: What you just said is fair. I might, I might pick different words, but what you said is fair. So where I would start is the people that I tend to interact with about coaching in particular and kind of the hypothesis I’ve built around this is that what I say about this, I tend to think is the best fit for the type of coaching practice that the people who gravitate to me are typically trying to set up.

Jody: Which is?

Mark: Which is a one-on-one practice that serves something like five to 15 clients, where the person’s goal in setting up that practice is to do one-on-one work and to have the majority of their time be spent in session. As opposed to, if we were looking at an 80/20 of it, we would want the 80/20 to be 80% in session with clients, 20% in marketing and administrative work. For that model, I think that the thing that is probably the best fit is a more organic marketing approach, a more relationship-driven approach.

Jody: Okay. I like it. I guess my question is, how do people succeed at that? Because I was like thinking about it even just this morning on my walk, and I’m like, maybe I’ve just never really learned properly, and obviously, like, just give us the short version. But how that strategy even works? Because to me, and let me present like my counter, like the way I view it is I think that is the hard way to do it because it is so unpredictable, and it feels to me like throwing spaghetti at the wall a little bit or, and I feel a little bit at the mercy of other people or at the mercy of the algorithm, which to me is feels I’ve never been a gambler, but I can only imagine it’s the same feeling as playing the slot machines where you’re like losing, losing, losing, and then you, oh, I won a little. That felt good. Let’s try again.

Except the rules of the slot machine keep changing, and it keeps you hanging on just enough, but the house always wins in the end. And so, I guess what I’m saying is like, and that’s more organic content. Then there’s, there’s networking relationship building. And so I’m just curious, like what is it if somebody’s like, “Well, I’m brand new to this. I don’t know what to do when you were going to teach them a more organic or networking type of strategy?” What would that look like?

Mark: Yeah, by the way, the way you just described the algorithm and sort of the risks associated with it, that’s part of my question because I wouldsay the exact same thing as an outside observer of people who attempt to advertise.

Jody: Mm, yeah. Interesting.

Mark: So I want to hear about that.

Jody: Yeah.

Mark: Another part of what I share with people is that how do I, how do I say this? You know, being succinct is not necessarily my strength.

Jody: That’s all right. Just blabber on, and we’ll edit it down and we’ll AI it down. AI, take Mark’s summary and make it sound brilliant and succinct.

Mark: When you invite me on your show, it is 12,000 jump cuts.

Jody: Okay, all good.

Mark: So I said part the first part of the premise is I want to serve five to 15 clients, and I want to spend the majority of my time in session. Part of wanting to spend the majority of my time in session is I don’t really want to spend any time in what we would typically call sales calls, discovery calls, strategy sessions, any of that. Okay. And I kind of own the absurdity or the perceived absurdity of what I’m about to say, but essentially, the way I want to do sales in my coaching practice is that I want someone to email me and say, “Will you coach me?”

Jody: Mm, I did hear you say that on something recently.

Mark: Okay. Like, I want them to email me and say some version of that. They don’t occasionally they do say, will you coach me? But more often, it’s something like, I’m curious about your availability, or I’m curious about how you work with people one-on-one, that kind of thing.

Jody: Which is how I hired you back in the day.

Mark: It’s for better or for worse, it’s almost the only way I’ve ever been hired for anything. I mean, we met through Brooke Castillo. You know we’re at the point now where I feel like I have to say Castillo because maybe…

Jody: That’s not even our last name anymore.

Mark: Oh.

Jody: She got remarried. She’s Brooke Hicks now.

Mark: I’m never going to get that right.

Jody: Who knew? Who knew?

Mark: Brooke, if you’re out there, I apologize. Probably going to keep calling you Brooke Castillo. It’s not intentional.

Jody: Okay. I think she’s fine with that, too.

Mark: She at the time was Brooke Castillo. She reached out to me in her very Brooke way. She got a hold of my phone number. I still don’t know how.

Jody: I wonder where she first discovered you. Do you know?

Mark: Do you know? She heard me on a podcast. I’ve told this story. I have this story fresh because I’ve told it a million times. She heard me on Claire Pelletreau’s podcast. Oh. Which at the time, Claire only did maybe 10 episodes of it. This is 10 years ago. And on that podcast, Brooke heard me say something like, I’m my client’s CFO or something like that. And then she got a hold of my phone number. She reached out to one of my clients. And then I got an email from one of my clients who said, “You are about to hear from my coaching hero. Brace yourself” kind of was the message.

Jody: Like, don’t ignore this lady kind of.

Mark: Yeah. Yeah, because she probably knew me, and she knew that if someone was reaching out, I would probably ignore. So she got a hold of my phone number. She called me, and I remember so vividly sitting on the front steps of my house, and I’m on the phone. Kate’s like, “Who are you talking to?” And I was mouthing like, “I don’t know, but she’s crazy.”

Jody: Which she would take as the highest compliment, by the way.

Mark: Oh, she would delight in that story. I know she would. Then she talked to me, she asked me about my service. I told her what it was. I told her how much it cost. She told me that was ridiculous. She immediately raised the fee 50%.

Jody: Did you guys hear that? She said that was ridiculous. Like it was too low. Too low. And said, no, we have to charge much more. Yeah.

Mark: I think within two or three or four months, she tripled it again. I don’t know. You know how it is.

Jody: Yeah.

Mark: I at that point was a passenger on the Brooke train. Like, I wasn’t – you know how it is. So anyway, almost all the, all the times I’ve been hired at all over the last 10 years have been somebody reaching out to me and saying, uh, do you have availability? Can I work with you? Now, I’ve shared this with my community. I’ll share it here too. I don’t think it’s the way to maximize income. I don’t think you make the most money possible this way. It’s a way to strike a balance between, I’m doing about the amount of work I want to do, making good money doing it, and spending the vast majority of my time coaching and spending very little of my time thinking about marketing or sales or any of that.

Jody: Which I think is very appealing to most of the coaches that I work with. I don’t, most of them, there are a handful that want to maximize income, but I think that’s actually the minority of the ones I see. They want to have, like you said, a job that they enjoy, doing something that’s fulfilling, that they love, which is coaching and as minimal amount of marketing as possible. My question is, how did you get to the point where you were invited to be on Claire Pell’s podcast? How do people know about you and not only know about you, but they have to be intrigued enough and impressed enough to reach out and say, how do I work with you?

Mark: Yeah, I think you said that really well. So in that specific case, Claire Pelletreau had a some sort of a working relationship, and I don’t remember what it was, with a coach named Racheal Cook. Is that right? I think that’s right. Anyway, it was a relationship. It was a referral. It was a referral to the podcast. How did I get the relationship with Racheal Cook? I’ve actually mapped this all out. So fascinating to me. I was working at YNAB all those years ago. And at YNAB, a coworker at YNAB said, “My wife is a life coach. She works with a sort of business coach named Racheal Cook. She has heard that person mention YNAB before. You should reach out to her.” So I reached out to Racheal. That cold email to Racheal, you could actually trace probably all of my no, that’s not quite right. But I would say you could probably trace something like 90% of my work over the last however many years to that cold outreach.

Jody: So you happened to make the right outreach in the right contacts.

Mark: Yeah. And I want to tell that story in such a way that makes it look like I knew what was going to happen, or and I can’t. I just have to acknowledge, yeah, it kind of all maps back to that connection and then all the connections that sort of cascaded from that one.

Jody: Okay.

Mark: Brooke is in that, she’s in that, as I just told you, she’s in that referral sort of ancestry, then you and so many others.

Jody: Yeah.

Mark: But you made, to me, it’s exactly the right point. Like, people have to hear about you, and then they have to be intrigued enough about you and your work that they are initiating some sort of, “Hey, we should talk.” I think that can take a lot of forms, but the part that I have to acknowledge, I think it’s crucial to the whole thing that I share with people is in every business, what you’re really trying to do is figure out what the hard part is, because every business is hard. There’s no such thing as an easy business. I don’t think. So what you’re really looking for is what’s the thing where I can tolerate the worst part of it best?

And in the way I talk about coaching, I think the worst part of it is all of the patience it requires between inbound requests. Because it’s a lot of, honestly, it’s a lot of just like, I wonder if somebody’s going to email me this week or this month or this quarter. And usually, they don’t. I probably, if I should go look this up. I bet in the last year, I bet I have fewer than five new clients. So if you think about that, it’s like less than one every other month. So there’s a lot of downtime in between people reaching out to say, “Hey, I’m looking for a coach. My friend works with you, or I heard you on a podcast, or I heard you on Jody’s podcast. Do you have availability?” So much downtime for me in between those. And for me and for the people that I’ve, I’ve shared these ideas with, I think, I’ve heard back from them as well that the hardest part is all the quiet space in between yeses.

Jody: But it works for you because, why? You have enough other clients already that are paying you monthly retainer or what have you. So you don’t need more than five to make it the level of business you want to have. Is that what you’re saying?

Mark: Yeah, it all sort of relates to sort of the container and the way that I work where at this point, much more of my coaching income anyway is just renewals. It’s just people who have worked with me however many times because that varies how we structure our packages, right? But it could be, I have clients that have been working with in a coaching capacity for like six years. So and before that, I had clients that I worked with like you in this CFO thing for four and five and six years.

So I’ve tended to be a person who I kind of create a job for myself with a relatively small handful of bosses and those bosses, quote unquote, renew over and over again, and it just kind of goes along serving this relatively small group of clients, and some of them churn out, and maybe they come back occasionally and say, “Oh, we haven’t talked in a while. I want to do a block of sessions with you.” But maybe they don’t. Maybe they refer somebody. Maybe I actually show up and do 10 episodes of my podcast, and maybe that generates another client or two. So that becomes the hard part. Now I didn’t, I’m talking too much, but I didn’t address the thing that you said that I think is so valid about they have to encounter you and they have to decide that you’re interesting enough to want to do something more.

Jody: Well, because correct me if I’m wrong, but I don’t and I might just be missing it, but I don’t recall ever even hearing you hardly ever, if ever say, “Shoot me an email if you want to learn more about working with me.” Like it really is, again, maybe I haven’t heard it. Maybe you do that. I’d love to hear you answer that. But it’s a very like magnetic pull instead of a push, if you will.

Mark: It’s kind of part of the philosophy. Okay. And I share this not because I think it’s right in some capital R kind of way, because again, it doesn’t, not only does it not maximize income, but sometimes I think it actually limits income. And so there’s growth for me here too. This the system has worked really well, but I don’t want to stagnate within my own ideas. But you’re right, I rarely say, and if I can help you, if you want to reach out to me or whatever, I don’t do it that often. And part of the reason is, I want – if a person has to traverse a distance mentally and emotionally from, “I don’t know Mark Butler at all. I’ve never encountered him. I have no idea who he is,” and if they have to go all the way to, I’m paying Mark Butler’s invoice for coaching, I want them to take themselves 99% of that journey before we interact.

And one of the ways you do that is you do not call them to action in any strong way, because if you call them to action in a strong way, you are probably setting up a sales scenario where you have to take them more of that distance than they might take themselves. So if somebody reaches out to me and I didn’t call them to action, they’re already more it’s just a signal that they’re more sold than a person who had to be called to action, right?

Jody: For sure.

Mark: So the upside is, I don’t do sales calls. I mean, to the point where if somebody emails me and they’re like, well, if somebody emails me and says, “Do you have availability?” Unfortunately, it’s a coin toss whether they even hear back from me. That’s not ideal. But if somebody says anything like, “I’m looking at a few different coaches,” if I reply, I’m going to say, “I am sure that one of those coaches is going to be amazing for you.” And I’m not snarky. I’m because for me, it is a strong, strong signal that they have too much of that journey left to make, and I don’t make that journey with them. It’s not built into my model.

Jody: Well, and I know you’re not exactly thinking about it this way, but it makes you the prize, right? The prize never chases, they always say. And so again, I know you’re not trying to play hard to get, is not what you’re saying, but it does set it up that dynamic, right? I’m always so, Dan Sullivan always says, “In any interaction, always be the buyer. Always be the buyer.” Always be the one, so by the time I come to you and email you saying, “Do you have any room to take me on or are you, what is it like to work with you?” You’re deciding whether you want to take me. You’re the buyer here in that, even if I’m gonna pay you, you’re deciding whether you want to let me in the door almost, is what it feels like to the consumer, and it’s kind of ideal. You don’t have to sell someone in that situation.

Mark: I don’t. I don’t have to sell them and it’s kind of one part strategic and one part my own character flaws and quirks where I’m not intentional in, well, maybe I need some coaching. I’m sure I need some coaching on this. But I’m not aware of being intentional about ignoring requests for coaching. But my quirks about email and about dealing with inbound messages, period, contributes to the idea that I’m a little bit hard to get.

But part of the reason I’m hard to get is because I don’t reply to messages at all. It’s not like I’m, I’m not trying to be the prize. In fact, I would probably benefit from viewing myself as more of a prize. That would benefit me and my practice. The reality is it’s more just, yeah, sorry, I don’t reply to messages.

Jody: Yeah, that’s what I mean is I know you’re not trying to play a game in that way, but it does create that dynamic. I’m always so fascinated by that dynamic of who’s selling who in everyday life interactions. I’ll go to a parent teacher conference for one of my kids.

Mark: Oh, so good.

Jody: I can tell right away if the teacher thinks she needs to sell me on the fact that she’s doing a good job.

Mark: Yes.

Jody: Or if he or she is already very confident and I’m or even maybe overly confident and I’m feeling like I need to sell them on the fact that I’m doing everything I can at home to support and help.

Mark: Such a good example, and I bet you have them clocked in three seconds.

Jody: Oh, I can tell right away. And I can tell if they feel like they need to show me that they’re doing their best, I always feel kind of bad for them. I want to be like, “Listen, I think you’re amazing, and the fact that you even do this job, I already applaud you and you’ve gotten…” I don’t say this outright, but that’s the energy I try to come from is, “You got nothing to prove to me. I have nothing but gratitude for you for doing what you do.” But some of them you can tell get obviously all different kinds of parents in there.

Mark: Yeah. Well it’s very generous of you to do that.

Jody: I mean, yeah.

Mark: Because they do get a lot of people who are not bringing that energy to that interaction.

Jody: Of course. Of course, you know, when they’re like, “Your child scored low in this, but that’s only because we haven’t covered it yet and everybody scored low and we’re absolutely going to cover that,” and I’m like, “Dude, you’re doing your job. This is probably either me or my child. Don’t worry.” But yeah, that there’s so many life interactions like that where I’m constantly looking out for who thinks they’re the buyer here and who thinks they have to sell themselves, because it’s just an interesting part of human behavior.

Mark: So I wanna say something and I kind of want to, I want to give it to you to challenge it. I want you to kind of deconstruct this because this is something I’ve said within my own little coaching community, but I hold it loosely because it feels like it might be too much. But because I agree with you, in every situation, human beings are amazing at understanding who’s selling whom.

And I’ve said to coaches, “The death of our approach, of the approach I’m proposing, is the split second your prospective client senses that you are pursuing them. A chased animal always runs, and a curious animal always approaches,” is one of the things I say. But the thing I hold loosely where I really want you to deconstruct or challenge this, is I will tell people, I will tell coaches, “Look, you may find it initially painful but in the long run very comforting to acknowledge that if they’re not reaching out to you, they are right to not reach out to you.”

Jody: What do you mean by that?

Mark: You’re not the coach for them. If you were the coach for them, they would be asking. So it’s like an over, to me it’s an over the top thing to say, and that’s why I do hold it pretty loosely, but I want I want to hear you sort of…

Jody: Yeah, I like how bold it is, and I like what’s behind it. I like that as a, as a coach if you’re, if someone were giving me that advice, it lights me up because it makes me, “Yeah, you’re right. I’m going to do better. I’m going to be, I’m going to serve better. I’m going to be more interesting, more whatever, so that people see that I’m the coach for them.” So it’s kind of empowering.

But this is where when you say to challenge it, this is what comes to my mind first, is it makes the buyer decision be a lot about the coach. And I think that people’s doubt and hesitation in buying is sometimes about the coach or the program. Like, “Is this the coach? Is this the program?” But I think that for 80% of hesitant buyers, their doubt is in themselves. Am I really going to follow through on this? I’m sure that this works. She seems amazing. Her program seems great. He seems smart. But I know myself. I drop the ball. I don’t do things. It probably won’t work for me because I’m some special brand of broken.

And that’s why I actually love sales calls. I love them because that’s where I get to coach. To me, selling is coaching. And if I can keep my head in a clean place, which is tough to do because I do have some, I do have my own agenda in a sales conversation. I’ll tell you how I address that in a minute. But when I keep my head in the game of, let me sell this person on the belief that what they want is possible for them. And it might be my program that helps take them there, that might be the vehicle, or it might be some other program. But if nothing else, I want you leaving this call knowing that you’re not some special brand of broken, that it is possible for you to achieve what you want to. And so when you say, back to your point of, as soon as the dynamic shifts and they get wind that you care whether they buy or not, in my words, what you said.

Mark: That’s, to be clear, pretty fair.

Jody: Yeah, then we lose the dynamic or we lose the edge there. When I’m in a sales call and I’m trying to sell this person on themselves and I say frequently, “My program might be the way to get you there. I think it’s good. It’s helped a lot of people, but it might not be mine. There might be a better option.” So I will frequently say some version of that. But also I will say, “I got to be honest with you, I want you to join my program. I like what I’ve learned about you. I think you could be successful. That’s the type of client I like working with. And I want clients for my business. So let me be real about that. But I don’t want that more than I want you to do what’s right for you. And if that is not this, no problem whatsoever.”

So I always approach sales calls, and even, I don’t do sales calls like that anymore one-on-one, but I did for years. I had that model, that one-on-one coaching client business. And I always just go into it going, if I’m never going to talk to this person again, I want them leaving a little bit better off than they came. And I want them leaving, especially the ones that are a no, because the ones that are a yes, great. They’re going to have a good experience. But the ones that are a no, I want them leaving going, “That wasn’t for me, but I’m so glad I went to that call.”

And so I think even in with the strategy you’re teaching, right? If you feel yourself get hooked in a little bit and your own agenda starts coming online of, “I want this client, I need a client,” I think what we’re suspicious of is not salespeople. I think what we’re suspicious of is dishonesty and lack of integrity. And so if you can be, if you can tell the honest truth, which is, “I do want you to join my program. I want to work with you, and partly because I want your business.” Right? I don’t think it’s wrong, I don’t think any of us have a problem with people making money, right? But I don’t want that more than I want you to do what’s right for you. And if this is not right for you, no problem.

I think as soon as you call out, even with we talked last time about imposter syndrome, as soon as you call it out, I feel nervous right now. I feel a little bit like I shouldn’t even be talking about this, but I want to say this because of XYZ. As soon as you get honest, I think we’re very forgiving of people having an agenda, people being not as informed or all kinds of things. It’s the deception and the pretending I think that we’re suspicious of.

Mark: Yeah, that sounds right. I mean, and everything you just said definitely matches up with who I know you to be. It’s funny you – in the best way. It’s funny that you say, “I think of coaching as selling.” Did you say that? Am I…

Jody: Yeah, selling is coaching, I think.

Mark: Selling is coaching. I don’t know if I’ve heard you say that before, but I have described you outside your presence before as saying, “I view Jody as a brilliant salesperson who brings that to coaching.”

Jody: That’s interesting.

Mark: I guess maybe I got it.

Jody: Yeah. And I did learn sales before I ever became a coach. I was a salesperson in corporate. I’ve had many, multiple sales jobs actually, commission based, like legit sales. And not all of the training and things I’ve done would are things that I still practice today because I don’t agree with all of them.

Mark: They’re not a fit, right?

Jody: Which has helped me because sometimes you learn. I wasn’t doing anything that I would call dishonest or, you know, against my values, but there were things I’m just like, that’s a little creepy now. I’m not doing that.

Mark: No, totally.

Jody: So just a fun story. So I worked for a company and I would get leads in my computer, just name and at the time was a phone number. I did telemarketing. Many years of it. Okay? So I would get a name and number. People would be waiting for me to send them a packet of information. That’s what they clicked on saying, “Yeah, send me a packet.” Okay? So I was supposed to get a hold of them on the phone rather than mail them anything, so that I could start trying to sell them.

So part of how we’re evaluated is just, how many calls did you make today? Like I would make 150 phone calls in a day. Most of them to no answer or voicemail or hanging up or whatever. But then it was, how many live people did you get a hold of? That was part of just how we were assessed. Did you just get a live person on the phone? And so to make that happen, we would start leaving voicemail saying, “Hey Mark, this is Jody from such and such organization and I’m I’ve got your packet of info here. I want to send out to you. Um, I just wanted to make sure I got your address, right?” Then I would read your address. I would purposely mix up a couple numbers in your street address and be like, “So if that’s right, you can watch for this, otherwise give me a call back.” And then you would call me back and say, “No, that’s the wrong address.” And I’d be like, “Just made contact with someone.” So these are the kind of like not dishonest, not harming anybody, but sleazy tactics that I’m like, we’re not doing that anymore.

Mark: You know I spent the first four years of my working life in a very similar job.

Jody: Did you? I didn’t know that.

Mark: Have I not told you that?

Jody: No.

Mark: Very similar. Inside sales, telemarketing.

Jody: I think everyone should do it at some point if you’re going to be an entrepreneur at least.

Mark: I’ve told our fellow coaches that I probably, my rough estimation is during those years, I probably spent 4,000 or 5,000 hours listening. And listening without any body language because it was 2004 and 2005 and we, it was over the phone and…

Jody: Telephones. Yeah.

Mark: So I think I built some listening chops in telemarketing, what was essentially telemarketing, 2004 to 2007.

Jody: Yeah. I everyone should do it. I keep trying to get my older kids to do like summer sales or something.

Mark: Oh, summer sales would be brilliant. I mean, I never had the guts. I never had the guts. I was like…

Jody: Me neither. I never did. Well, and this goes back to what we’re talking about. So the kind of sales I always did was where I already got a lead or a customer or something given to me and I took it from there. So they already had expressed interest in whatever I’m selling. Just cold knocking on doors or cold calling is a whole ‘nother level of sales.

Mark: It’s true.

Jody: And I think that goes back to why I prefer running ads because I don’t have to reach out to, was it Racheal Cook?

Mark: Yep.

Jody: I don’t have to reach out to a Racheal Cook cold and say, “Hey, just wondering if we have any way to benefit each other here.” And I know that’s a skill I could learn, but I never had to do that. When I run paid ads, it goes out there onto the interweb, wherever I put it, and people self-select. They’re still self-selecting into that part of my world, at least. They’re saying, “Yeah, I want to learn more about that thing or I want your free video or whatever it is.” And from there, then I start taking care of them, giving them more value, inviting them to another step.

But without, and you could argue that organic content could be used the same way. I just, I don’t know, in my experience because I’ve got a lot of, you know, newer coaches who don’t have money to invest and I get that. In the beginning, you don’t have money to invest and it feels like a gamble putting money into ads and am I going to get anything out? But I always say it’s an expense in your business, is the way I think of it.

And in the very beginning when I started my coaching practice, which was one-on-one, right? I get now I’m in a different situation with a membership and group coaching, but it was one-on-one private coaching. I took a part time job because my family’s budget was pretty much maxed out. And I didn’t want to stretch that any thinner. So I was like, I will just take this small part-time job so that I can come up with the little bit of fees I needed to host my website or whatever, some small fees in your business. And then $300 a month to put into Facebook ads.

And that’s what I did from the very beginning. And I had no idea what I was doing. I Googled, “How to set up a Facebook ad.” And then, you know who tells you? Facebook. They’re like, “Step one, do this.” So it’s now Meta, but anyway, I just started running ads saying, “I’m a life coach who works with women who are members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. And I get it if you’re frustrated with your kids and you’re living the life that you were told and always wanted, and yet you’re unhappier than you’ve ever been.” And that’s what I help people do. And people went, “What? Wait a second. That’s me. How does she know me?”

And then from there, you know, I invite them to more content. I invite them to what we call sales calls, which I didn’t call them sales calls, but that’s what they were. And that is literally how I built my business. And so for me, the thought of like just hoping somebody emails me would make me, would keep me up all night as opposed to going, “You know what?” And to this day, and not long a couple of years into my business, I could go, we kind of want to paint the house, but that’s going to cost whatever it costs. I was like, I’ll just turn up the ads. I’ll get more leads. I’ll get more people to this. That will be more work for me. I’ll have to do more sales calls. I’ll have more clients, but I can literally turn the volume up and down by lead flow because I know how my ads will convert. And that takes time. You’re right. It is a little bit like gambling in the beginning too.

But I have so much more control over it than this organic game of like the algorithm changed this week. It was carousels. Now it’s reels. Now it’s this song. Now you have to pretend you’re doing a Netflix documentary. And I’m just like, who has time for that game?

Mark: So, okay. We’re probably lowish on time. I’m going to suggest that I want to, I want, can we do the actual, could we do a part two next time?

Jody: For sure. 100%.

Mark: Because I have lots of questions and I want to challenge you on some of that stuff because it would be very helpful to me. I want to say when it comes to like the organic, the approach I’m describing or the philosophy I’m describing, it’s not algorithm dependent because I don’t post anywhere that an algorithm would help or hurt. I don’t really, I don’t post.

Jody: And it might be unfair of me to be lumping organic and networking together.

Mark: I don’t think it’s unfair. They’re just, they fit under the heading of not paid ads and I think that’s, I think that’s fair. The way I encourage people to think about it and again it all flows back to like what size business you want and whether your marketing is a good fit for the type of business you’re trying to create.

So what I encourage people to think about is if you want to run a coaching practice like this one, you, your job is to develop what I call a list of maybes. And it’s a clumsy way of saying, there need to be enough people in this world who would be happy enough to hear from you. Not necessarily with an offer, it’s just enough people who like you and trust you such that, and if and they, and you want them to be aware that you’re a coach and they want you want them to be aware of kind of like how you help. Such that when their pain spikes and they think, I got to figure out this pain, yours is one of the names that comes to their mind. Hopefully the name that comes to their mind and then they send you a message that says, “Do you have availability?” I can’t even pretend to know exactly what number of people need to be on that sort of list of maybes. It’s definitely fewer than 500.

Jody: I would say doesn’t Seth Godin say if you have a thousand followers you can live?

Mark: So he’s quoting someone else. He’s quoting someone else. It’s they call it the a thousand true fans theory.

Jody: Yeah.

Mark: Then somebody else came out they’re like, the a thousand true fans that theory is ridiculous. It doesn’t hold up at all, which I think they might have a point.

Jody: But there is, I love the idea of like, what’s the minimum viable audience I need to support the business that I want to have that makes this worth my while and provides what I’m looking for.

Mark: And the way, I don’t know if I’ve ever shared this with you or if we’ve talked about it, but I think our two approaches could be described as the difference between kind of farming or gardening and mining.

Jody: Agreed.

Mark: I would call you a miner. I would, you’re a person who has a lot of, machinery, and by machinery I mean like skill, like all of the infrastructure that allows you to turn up the ads, as you said. And what that allows you to do is to mine more ore in less time. So like you can churn through all the ore to find diamonds or gold or whatever holds up in the metaphor. zI’m more the farmer or the gardener who’s like, I’m going to create some soil. I’m going to plant some seeds in that soil. I’m going to take care of the soil and I’m going to see what comes up and then whatever comes up, I’m going to harvest that.

So when I talk about this list of people, it might be 100 people, it might be 500 people, that’s kind of the field in which I’m trying to cultivate relationships that can produce client engagements. And it is to your point, it’s not at all something where I can say, “I want to paint the house, and so let me spin up some income real quick.”

Jody: Yeah.

Mark: Can I say I don’t have that ability? I might have that ability.

Jody: You could. You would use different methods.

Mark: It’s a mindset shift for me, right?

Jody: Yeah.

Mark: For me, you knowing me the way you do is like, yeah, he’d have to shift his mindset quite a bit.

Jody: I don’t know that, I mean maybe. My thought isn’t he’d have to shift his mindset. My thought is like he could. He would use you would use different strategies than I use. I would turn up ads. You would you would approach it in a different way, but…

Mark: Yeah, I think that’s fair too. Totally. So if people say, “Yeah, I would like to have a coaching practice of 5 to 15 people and I don’t really want to do, I don’t want to do mining. I’d like to do gardening.” I’d say, “Great, this is the approach.” It just what it requires of you is so much more patience. You got to go live your life and enjoy your life and be in it. And then when you get an email, you’re like, “Oh cool, an email.”

But like my personality permeates every part of this because earlier when you said, “I tell people I want you to become my client. I want my business to grow.” You said all those things and I know you and those are very authentic to you. You know the way I am? When I get a new client, I am, I am 50-50. I’m neutral. There’s a voice in my head that is sure that I’m worse off now that I have a new client. And then there’s a voice in my head that’s like, “Great, a new client.” And they are, that might sound crazy to say that any part of me would be like, I’m worse off now that I have a new client, but it is this neutrality of I’m happy to help if you want my help. If you don’t want my help, I’m happy to do something else.

Jody: And I think that is a real gift though, personally. I can see that it has some downsides too, I’m sure. But I think it keeps you able to maintain what you’re talking about of like, come on, if you want my help, just they’ll reach out. But I think that’s rare. In the coaches I’m working with, they desperately want clients. They want people to coach. They would do it for free even.

Mark: Well, I want to talk to them. If they would do it for free and they are not doing it for free, then there’s a reason.

Jody: Yeah, for sure. Well, many of them are. I have them start out that way, but that’s a whole ‘nother topic, but let me just, I know we have to wrap up here, but I just have to say because this is so ironic. Like I use the same metaphor, like you talked about the gardener and you said a miner. So the way I describe it is, hunting and gathering.

Mark: Yep.

Jody: So I always say – and in my mind, you’re the hunter, even though I know you’re not going out hunting people. But I’ll tell you why I think of it that way. So to me, what I’m doing where I’m running an ad, right? And getting a lead, so I’m getting just somebody who’s potentially interested to know that I exist and maybe start paying attention to content and start and hopefully they’re on my email list because I’m going to put the content in front of them, but in one way or another, they’re kind of in my world now, right?

But I know that I’m not going to probably see that person in any of my paid offers for a while. A few of them will come right along. Most of them are going to listen to my podcast and they’re going to consume my content for years. It’s not uncommon for people to tell me, “I listened for three years.” Then finally decided I would try this thing. And now they’re and then they’ll do a bunch of stuff. But um, so I’m planting a seed with the ad and then I’m watering and nurturing and giving sunlight and everything to that seed. And some of those seeds will never sprout into anything. They’ll just stay there in the ground. And that’s fine. But some of them will come up and be crop that I can harvest. As opposed to, if I’m dependent on like relationship building, let’s say, and again, your approach kills my metaphor because it’s sit back and wait and maybe a deer will wander in your yard. You’ll have dinner.

Mark: No, but what’s not, that’s not it though. That’s not it though.

Jody: That’s what it sounds like to me. As opposed to like most people are like, “Well, I’m going to call this person and say, ‘Hey, I do this thing and maybe I could support you.'” And we talked about this last time where we get pitched by people all the time, doing this kind of relationship building or I get people sometimes who are like, “I want to introduce you to my friend.”

Mark: But that’s not relationship building.

Jody: Don’t you think that’s how most people define relationship building? Is like who do you know and how do you introduce them? Whereas your…

Mark: Relationship building sounds like this: “Hi, how are you?” It’s non-transactional.

Jody: The kind of relationship building that I much prefer is where it would be, how can I help you even? But what most people do is, how can you help me when they reach out?

Mark: So here’s how insane I am. Mine isn’t even, how can I help you?

Jody: I know, yours is just like, “What do you want?”

Mark: Mine is like, “How are you doing?”

Jody: What do you want?

Mark: No, that’s not it.

Jody: I may call you back and I may not.

Mark: Can you not see I’m busy watching YouTube? What? What is this? No, that’s not it. Here’s what it is. Here’s what it is. Literally these episodes of this podcast are the evidence of my approach.

Jody: Yeah.

Mark: Because we have a pre-existing relationship.

Jody: I reached out to you.

Mark: You reached out to me and said, “I want to do a thing. Let’s try it.”

Jody: Yeah.

Mark: And I replied and said, “That sounds great.”

Jody: And half of you probably went, “What am I doing?”

Mark: Half of me absolutely is like, I don’t know. I mean, all right. No, but I like Jody. Yeah, that’s probably a good idea. Let’s, yeah. And it is like…

Jody: So good.

Mark: Yeah. And now we’re doing it. I’m like, this is so fun. I’m so glad we’re doing it. But the our relationship goes back 10 years now. We’ve barely talked in five years.

Jody: Right.

Mark: But the affinity is there.

Jody: Yeah, true.

Mark: So when you had a moment where you’re like, I kind of have a thing like, I’m feeling a little pain, Mark might be part of a solution.

Jody: Yeah.

Mark: These episodes are my philosophy all in one.

Jody: Yeah. It’s true. These episodes and the way I hired you back in the day. I was like…

Mark: And the way you hired me back in the day.

Jody: I need someone to help. I liked what you said at Brooke’s event. I heard you speak. I heard her event.

Mark: In San Diego.

Jody: Was it in San Diego?

Mark: It was in San Diego.

Jody: Yeah.

Mark: And I was like, what is this?

Jody: You walked into a room of LCS coaches and your life has never been the same for better or for worse.

Mark: What am I doing here?

Jody: Okay, we will have a part two of this next time.

Mark: By the way, you give me so much airtime. You’re very generous in how we’re doing this. I’m really grateful. I am very excited actually to ask you all my questions about paid ads because the reality is, what I want paid ads to be is that knob or lever or whatever where a coach can be like, “Okay, I’m just gonna, I’m gonna turn the knob up. I’m gonna turn the client knob, the demand knob up.” The dial up, whatever it is. I want it to be that. I haven’t observed it to be that and I don’t know how to make it that. And so I want to, I want to grill you.

Jody: Yeah, we should dive into that because that’s also probably a gross oversimplification of what I do and I don’t want to mislead people.

Mark: So, well, and in the meantime, I don’t want you to feel any pressure that you have to describe it as something that’s like turnkey. Everything is hard. Like we’re taking that as given. Everything is hard.

Jody: This is all hard. Yeah.

Mark: But I want to dig in on it with you because you do have so many, you have so many reps and so many years of experience with it now that it’s just good for me to get inside your brain.

Jody: Yeah. Okay, we’ll continue this next week.

Mark: Thanks Jody.

Jody: Thanks.

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