582. Taylor Swift Predictions + Why Jody Loves Paid Ads When Mark Doesn’t

Hey everyone. Before we dive into today’s podcast episode, I want to remind you that coming up very soon is the Worry Free Challenge. Did you know that it’s possible to get rid of worry altogether? To not be worried, to instead be confident and at peace, which not only is going to feel better for you right now, but it’s going to help you show up more how you want to, for anybody else in your life or any other problem or challenge that’s going on for you. So, come and check out Worry Free by going to JodyMoore.com/worryfree and I’d love to see you there.

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.

Now, today’s episode is a good one. So I’ve been meeting with my colleague and friend Mark Butler, who is a brilliant guy. He has just a great way of articulating his thoughts, and we have these discussions sometimes about topics that get really interesting. And we decided we should be recording those and sharing them with others. We want you to be part of that discussion with us.

And today is an extension of the episode we published last week where Mark and I kind of talked about our different strategies for getting clients. Last week was more about Mark’s strategy. This week I’m asking him a few more questions because I left with some unanswered questions, maybe you did too. And I’m also going to dive into my strategy. So if you have a business that’s a coaching business or something similar, and you’re looking for what is going to be my way of getting clients? What is the way that feels most genuine to me so that I get to enjoy the marketing process? And also what is the way that serves my people and my business to get the results I want to? If you feel like you’re kind of all over the place right now or you are not sure you’re doing it right, or you’re putting an effort but it’s not yielding the results that you want, this episode is going to be for you. So, without further ado, here’s my conversation with Mark Butler.

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Mark: Hi.

Jody: Hi.

Mark: How are you?

Jody: Great. How are you doing?

Mark: Pretty good.

Jody: Good. Good. Busy weekend? Like you always have a busy/boring weekend, you said.

Mark: Oh, do I? Did I say that?

Jody: That was my summary of what you said. You’re like, I mean, it’s pretty much always the same. Same routine, same schedule.

Mark: That’s true. It’s pretty routine. It’s pretty routine. Lots of, yeah, horse stuff on Saturday and church stuff on Sunday. It’s pretty much…

Jody: Pretty much the way it goes?

Mark: Pretty much the routine. And horse stuff on Sunday, too. Turns out horses, they don’t really do days off.

Jody: They don’t do days off. They don’t do a Sabbath day?

Mark:They do not observe a Sabbath.

Jody: Okay, but did you hear that Taylor Swift got a haircut? I figured you didn’t, and that’s what I’m here for, to keep… like Justin Bieber has a kid, Taylor Swift got a haircut.

Mark: Honestly, I had no idea that “got a haircut” was going to be the last half of that sentence. And that made my day.

Jody: This matters to some of us, Mark.

Mark: I am fighting the urge to Google it right now. I have to see this.

Jody: I’m going to send you a picture later so you don’t have to Google it. Do you have any Swifties at your house?

Mark: No.

Jody: No. Okay.

Mark: No. I think maybe we all were for a season.

Jody: Really?

Mark: I was into it, sure.

Jody: Like during the Eras Tour? Or before that?

Mark: I don’t know what that is. Oh, maybe…

Jody: He’s like, I don’t know what that is.

Mark: No, I think I do. That was the huge one that made a bajillion dollars, right? Okay.

Jody: Yeah.

Mark: I think probably our fandom ended in and around that.

Jody: Okay. All right. I mean, I’m just… it’s part of my job to keep you up on celebrity gossip, I feel like, because I don’t know that you have the time. Probably don’t have the interest, but that’s okay. I’m going to bring it anyway.

Mark: I have time.

Jody: You do?

Mark: Yeah. No. Sometimes people will say to me, “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m sure you’re so busy.” And I’m like…

Jody: I hate when people say that to me, actually. I mean, I shouldn’t say I hate when they say that to me. I just… I think we say that to each other as like… we mean it as a compliment. Don’t you think? Like, you’re important, and you probably put your time into important things, and you have a full life. And so you must be very busy. I think I mean it as a compliment when I say it to people. But when people say it to me, I always… I have the same reaction you do, actually. I always say, “No, I’m not busy.”

Mark: I’m not busy.

Jody: I don’t want to live a life that’s busy.

Mark: Right. I’m not busy, but that doesn’t mean I want to do whatever you’re about to propose.

Jody: That doesn’t mean I’m not going to say no to you.

Mark: Because I am going to say no to you. That okay, let’s just get that out up front. Like, I don’t want to do whatever you’re about to ask me to do.

Jody: Okay, I feel like we need to do a whole episode on saying no. Because I think you’re good at saying no, right?

Mark: I think I’m pretty good at it.

Jody: I’m pretty good at it, too. Most people are not. Or at least a lot of women are not.

Mark: Oh, yeah, fair.

Jody: Okay, I’m going to make a note that we’ll circle back to that.

Mark: But there’s some things that I will say yes to. Yeah, we do, we’ll talk about it. But I can waste – so the other day, this is going to sound like almost like a brag. It’s not a brag. It’s like a pathology. So my friend’s water line broke, and so his basement was flooding just a little bit, like slowly. I could not pull myself away from the project of digging up that water line with him. I couldn’t.

Jody: Why?

Mark: I had work to do. He did not ask. It was not an emergency.

Jody: Okay.

Mark: I was there till like 1:30.

Jody: Why couldn’t you pull yourself away?

Mark: I was having the time of my life.

Jody: Oh.

Mark: There was a hole to be dug in the ground.

Jody: I cannot relate to this at all, but okay.

Mark: There was a hole to be dug in the ground, and at the bottom of that hole, there was a water pipe with a hole in it. I could have stayed there. It was…

Jody: This is lucky for Kate, your wife, that you feel that way because sometimes there are things that need to get fixed, and not everyone’s wired that way to, you know, to like, I’m going to get to the bottom of this. We’re going to find this hole.

Mark: It’s a little bit… you shouldn’t say this, should you? But I’m going to say it anyway, acknowledging that it’s definitely the wrong way to phrase this, but it feels a little bit autistic, the way I can get obsessed over this kind of minutia. I’m like, I can’t not dig that hole. What if they dig the hole without me? You get the side benefit of like, “Oh, it’s nice to help a friend,” but let’s not kid ourselves about…

Jody: That wasn’t your main motivation.

Mark: No, no. There was a hole to be dug. Anyway.

Jody: I love it. Well, good on you. Okay. I have to say one other Taylor Swift thing for the record before we move on because…

Mark: Please.

Jody: I’ve been feeling like I need to put this out there so that if I’m right, I can say, “I told you guys this.” But this is another thing you probably don’t know, is that we haven’t seen any photos from Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce’s wedding yet, which happened on July 3rd, day before the 4th of July. And it’s now August 17th as of the day we’re recording this. And it’s just a little surprising that she hasn’t shared a single photo. Mark’s cracking up if you guys aren’t watching this on video. He’s dying.

Mark: If you’re not watching us on video, I need you to understand what a concerned expression Jody has on her face right now.

Jody: Because this is very serious. It’s just odd that she hasn’t shared anything. But I’m actually… the longer it goes on, the more I think she is creating like a movie or a documentary or some kind of something where she’s going to invite us all to her wedding, and she’s going to show it… She likes to do these like three days in a theater thing, and then they’ll throw it up on Disney Plus or something. And she’s probably going to tie it to like her next album release or something like that, because she orchestrates these things like years in advance.

And everyone that got invited to the wedding signed a very strict NDA. They weren’t allowed to share any photos or anything. And so I’m just excited for what’s going to come out about it. And I honestly think her haircut and all of it is all part of like… she does this big setup and this big lead in, which, by the way, is how you properly do a launch. Like she gets us all on the edge of our seats going, “What is coming?” And then when she sells something, we can’t wait to buy it because of all the intrigue and mystery and build up. And I didn’t mean to connect this back to what we were going to talk about with marketing and sales, but she really is like the master at launch, at marketing and selling. She doesn’t have to sell her stuff, right? Like she’s the actual example of what you’re talking about of like people going, “When can I buy whatever you’re selling?”

Mark: Yeah. Yeah.

Jody: Just saying.Okay, so anyway, if that happens, then we have it on record now that I predicted it, right?

Mark: You just sounded… when you said, “And she’ll invite all of us to her wedding,” it was so hopeful the way you said it. There was a longing.

Jody: I know. I know. I desperately do want – we need things to look forward to in our world that are kind of light that we don’t… I realize there’s a lot of people that hate Taylor Swift or whatever, but it’s not like a main political topic that we all fight about, you know?

Mark: No. Thank goodness.

Jody: And I feel like we need more like Barbie movie, Eras Tour, World Cup soccer, what was the… what was the space shuttle trip around the moon that just… Artemis.

Mark: Artemis.

Jody: Like things like that we can all just kind of feel inspired by, get excited about, that aren’t so divisive. I’m always looking out for stuff like that. And she sometimes is that for us. So, anyway, that’s not what we’re talking about today, though. Because we had a really good conversation last week, and then I had so many questions after, and I know you had some questions for me that we didn’t get to. So I want to talk a little bit more, if you’re okay with it, about getting clients.

Mark: Yeah.

Jody: This is kind of, I know, a marketing and business heavy topic that not everybody’s interested in, but a lot of our listeners are. So where do you want to start? Do you want to ask me questions first, or do you want me to ask you?

Mark: I mean, it is…

Jody: Last time you said it was my show, but…

Mark: It’s your show. It is your show, and I want to…

Jody: Well, I think you should let me ask you first because I think we talked a little bit about your strategy, then maybe we talk about mine. Because I want to kind of finish that off. So, I want to understand what relationship building looks like for you. Like you mentioned reaching out at one point to a coach that was really kind of critical and a lot of your other clients came from that. Was it Rachael Cook? Is that the name?

Mark: It was Rachael Cook. Yeah.

Jody: Okay. What do you say to her when you reach out to her?

Mark: Oh, that’s a good question. I actually don’t, I don’t have any idea what I said to her. I probably dropped the name of the person we had in common.

Jody: Okay.

Mark: I doubt she knew who that was because it was probably an anonymous member of her audience.

Jody: Okay.

Mark: I probably made the YNAB connection because that was the person who told me about her said she’s into YNAB and I worked at YNAB at the time.

Jody: Okay. But I mean, wait, I want to interrupt you. Answer this as though somebody were asking themselves, how do I, if they were like, I like Mark’s style, that feels more like me.

Mark: Yeah.

Jody: How would you advise that they think about whoever they’re going to reach out to? Like, similarly, think about who you know in common.

Mark: So this is, I think it’s such a good question. And if – to sort of skip ahead for a second, I’ve probably sent fewer than 10 of those messages since I sent that one in 2014.

Jody: Yeah.

Mark: So outreach, you could say outreach is one of the things I think about, but I don’t know that would, I don’t think that would be quite honest or not dishonest, but representative. So here’s an example I’ve given a lot over the years. I don’t know if I’ve ever told you about this example, but I use you as an example. And this is the way I talk to people about it because they’ll say something like, I want to do a podcast guesting campaign. I’m going to go on a bunch of podcasts.

And I’ll say, okay, how do you propose to go about that? And I think there was even a season where I would tell people, okay, here’s how you’re going to do that. I have some regret about that because I don’t think I was speaking from a place of experience. I don’t know why I felt compelled to pretend that I knew exactly how that would work.

When I finally admitted to myself I didn’t know how a mass podcast guesting campaign would work, what I could say authentically was there was a time that I reached out to Jody and I said, Jody, I have something I want to share with your community. I called you. I texted you and then I called you.

Jody: Was this after we were already working together though?

Mark: This was after we, I think it might have been after, yes, it was after we worked together, but I think it might have even been after we stopped working together.

Jody: Okay.

Mark: I’d have to check the timeline, but it was somewhere in that in that range.

Jody: But this wasn’t your first, this wasn’t like our first introduction because that

Mark: No, and that’s the point I make to people I’m sharing this with.

Jody: Okay.

Mark: Because they’ll say something like, I’ve had plenty of people over the years say, how do I get on Jody Moore’s podcast? And I’ve said, A, I don’t know, and B, I think it’s the wrong question. I don’t think Jody Moore wants you on her podcast. Why would she? Now you may have your own reasons for wanting them, but I couldn’t project myself onto you and have any reason for inviting that person onto the podcast.

So what I said was, by the time I texted and then called Jody and said, I’ve got some things I’d love to share with your community. We had a relationship that was at least four or five years old. I had been working for you for most of those four or five years. So we had that whole history. We had a lot of rapport. I knew that you liked my way of thinking. I knew that you trusted me to add value. I knew that if I called you and said, could I share this with your community? You would actually be glad that podcast episode would exist because it’s one you wouldn’t have to worry about, but you knew it would be good. I knew all of that before I sent the text.

And then you were very generous, of course, and you said, yeah, let’s do it. And we did a podcast and it was about money. And then you said something like, what do you want people to do now? And I said, well, I’m going to host a series of webinars or classes. I can’t remember what I called them. And have I ever told you that I had 800 people show up to the first one, live?

Jody: No, but that’s awesome.

Mark: Is that not awesome?

Jody: Yeah.

Mark: 800 people. And then as these things do, the number fell off over the course of the series.

Jody: Yeah.

Mark: But I would say six weeks later, I probably had 200 or 250 show up to the sixth one, which is…

Jody: Still great.

Mark: Great. And for me, unprecedented. I did not have that kind of reach on my own by any stretch of the imagination. So if we talk about like an outreach or like an audience borrowing strategy, that was the most success I’d ever had with it. And it may be the most success I ever have with it, but it was built on a five-year relationship. And I have told people since then, I would not suggest that you try to go get on a hundred podcasts, especially these days where the amount of we’ve, we already joked about it, but the amount of like podcast pitch spam, AI generated podcast pitch spam that I get is, and I’m nobody. I have no audience. I mean, I have an audience. Thank you whoever. I have no audience, he said to the people who might be in his audience.

Jody: He said to his audience. You guys are nobody. No.

Mark: I have a relatively small reach, and I get so much podcast guesting spam.

Jody: Yeah.

Mark: So, I don’t think that’s a great strategy. I’ve told people if you really want to contribute to a community, I would encourage you to get into that community, serve that community, and be willing to spend months or maybe even years in service to that community before you ever ask anything directly of the person who built and who runs that community.

Jody: Yeah, that’s right. So, that’s right. I mean, that’s the thing about pitching is and I know you read, Dan Sullivan’s book, right, “Who Not How”? I think you might have been the one that recommended that to me actually.

Mark: Benjamin Hardy.

Jody: Benjamin Hardy and Dan Sullivan together.

Mark: Yeah, yeah. Oh, because did Dan Sullivan write like a short one first and then Hardy expanded it or something?

Jody: I think that’s how it worked, basically. It’s like Dan Sullivan’s idea, but Ben Hardy flushes out the book. So, you know, that’s kind of the idea is that you build relationships and there’s a who out there that maybe has leverage, but the two of you help each other. And that’s what you’re talking about is like, you put in so much time and value to for me personally in that example, right? That I definitely want to, even just support you, but I know it’s a value add to my business too. I don’t have any concerns about like, is this going to be any good? Am I going to have to edit it out or whatever?And so it helps me have one less episode to have to think of what value to add.

And also, I want to support you because I believe in you. Um, so that strategy can take a long time, like you said, right? Or I think it could also be, correct me if I’m wrong, but it could be like adding tremendous value doesn’t necessarily have to take five years, but how are you going to add value? I even had people like when my business was newer, I had this awesome girl, Allison Lukengay reach out to me and she said, I’m a graphic designer. You know Allison, yeah? She said, I’m a graphic designer. I just love what you’re doing. I love the coaching that you do and everything. And I kind of want something to do on the side of she’s raising a bunch of kids and everything, but she wanted a little something that she could use her skills. She was like, I don’t want you to pay me. I’d love to just do some graphic design work for you. Like she had no other ask other than I want to be able to use my skills and I want to support what you’re doing. And I still kind of can’t believe that I said yes to that only because today I would never not pay someone, right?

Mark: Oh, interesting. Okay. See, I was just going to ask you, did you say yes? And did you have any existing relationship with Allison at that time?

Jody: I didn’t have a relationship with her, but her sister-in-law was my college roommate, dear friend of mine to this day. And so, you know, it wasn’t, she wasn’t a complete random stranger. If I was suspicious, I could have called up her sister-in-law and said, what is this girl about? So I – and she had been a client of mine too, I should say. So I had met her briefly at and at some events. So she had been a client in group coaching. She wasn’t a one-on-one client, so I didn’t know her that well, but I had met her at some things. She’d been a client. I knew some of her family. There was enough, I knew enough about her to think like, this girl is serious about what she’s saying. Today I’m like, I can’t believe I was just like, yeah, come and work for me and I won’t pay you anything. That sounds great.

But I did. I didn’t have the money to pay her at the at that time or I didn’t think I had the money to pay her. And she did, you know, she would design worksheets and things. It was pretty basic design work, but it still was very valuable for me and we did it for a while until she said, you know, I kind of don’t have the time for this anymore. And I said, yeah, I probably need to hire someone now. And then we transitioned away from it. And we’re still friends to this day. But if she were to ask me for something, to your point, even like three months in to working together, I like she showed me that she follows up, she follows through, she gets stuff done on time, she does great work, she’s very generous, and she literally just wanted to serve me in that way.

And she could have asked me to come on my podcast and I would have let her, you know? Like there is this law of reciprocity that we have, but you do have to go into it with a generous attitude, and I kind of like the idea of like, I feel like I want to be part of this mission or this community or whatever. And so I’m going to go in and add value and then there will be probably something I’ll get out of it. I don’t think you even need to know what that is. And I think it’s better if you don’t know what it is, because if you go into it with an agenda, like then eventually I’m going to get A, B, C, it’s hard for people not to feel that agenda. Don’t you think?

Mark: Okay, I’m just going to, first of all, thank you. That story is phenomenal. Secondly, if you have any questions about my whole philosophy and my approach, you just answered all of them with that story. Every element that I think matters a lot is in the story you just shared, including her sister was my college roommate and is a dear friend of mine. I have so many stories from our fellow coaches where they say, my first client was my college roommate, or my first client was my college roommate’s niece, or there’s this little web of relationships, and there will be one of those relationships where there’s a connection, even if it’s been kind of a dormant connection, the connection is still present, it’s strong enough that when we want it to be something, it’s still there for us.

So to me, what Allison did is brilliant. I completely agree with you about the fact that you didn’t seem to track any agenda or any sort of a grab or an ask in her. I think I’ve struggled a little bit over the years to tell my fellow coaches or to encourage my fellow coaches, you have to drop all the transactional, grabby energy. You have to find a way to get it out because people feel it. We track that in each other so easily and it’s so repellent.

So the way she did that, brilliant. It’s not surprising because I know you, but when you’re like, I can’t believe I let her work for free. You didn’t let her work for free. She was compensated. Not all compensation is financial compensation, and very often the best compensation is not financial compensation. If you had paid her, for example, if you had paid her a reasonable rate for her work at the time, she would be much, much worse off.

Jody: Why do you say that?

Mark: Because some part of you would have felt like the reciprocity had been satisfied. Now, this isn’t quite true because you’re you and you would have wanted to pay her and then also give her other support and help because that’s who you are. You’ve done it with me and others.

But sometimes a person in your position who’s who’s in that position to say like, yeah, I can, you can work for me and I can sort of help people get to know you and I can give you a platform and that sort of thing. If they pay for the work, they will then feel more guarded or less excited or enthusiastic to reciprocate in other ways. But to me, it’s the other reciprocation that matters so much more. I have pleaded with like, I’ve had, you know, a good handful, let’s say 10 clients over the years that were kind of operating similar to your level. And back when I was doing budgeting stuff, like CFOing, bookkeeping, that kind of stuff for folks like you, they would say, how much should I pay my coaches? And I would say every single time, you should pay your coaches nothing at all. Do not pay your coaches. And people get weird about that because they’re like, no, that’s predatory or that’s taking advantage. No, it’s not. I can bring you at least five coaches who have built six-figure coaching practices off the back of the visibility that they gain by being a coach in a community like Jody Moore’s community. They are being enormously compensated way beyond whatever per session fee they’d be paid. The trade is still so far in their favor, our favor, because I’ve been this person.

This is why I never, ever let anyone pay me for guest appearances of any kind. Like, and there are so many. I’m just so famous, you know? No, there’s like three per year. But when people are like, well, we’ll pay you to, you know, come in and teach a class. I’m like, I will not take your money. You are more than compensating for me by putting me in front of the people you worked so hard to get into the room. I will not take payment.

Jody: Yeah, it’s true. I mean, when I go speak somewhere where they’re paying me, usually there is, you go and do it and you don’t even have any kind of call to action. You’re not like, here’s a freebie to get you on my email list or any of that. I know you don’t do that.

But I’m not opposed to doing that in the right way. I don’t feel good about doing it and oftentimes it’s not even allowed, right? They’ll have policies against it when I speak at an event where they’re paying me. And I’ve been, we would consider well compensated for doing something that I love that doesn’t take me very much prep, you know? And still, it’s not a very good use of my time, even if we look at the finances of it all, because for me to go, usually have to travel there. So that’s a couple days of my life and just some brainpower, even if the talk’s already done.

Like, what am I going to pack? What am I going to wear? Who’s going to take care of, pick up my kids from school while I’m gone? Like, just the drag on my life and my business even, because I have to kind of plan around it, costs me more than even the, you know, I’m not a super high paid speaker, but I’ve been paid between five and 10 grand for speaking gigs and still go, that actually wasn’t a wise decision on my part, even just financially.

Mark: I love the contrast you’re sharing because it’s so real. You’re what you’re doing is you’re highlighting the opportunity cost that you face versus the opportunity cost that I face. And the opportunity cost that I face is so much lower than yours that if someone says, oh, we teach classes, you know, we have a class on the third Thursday of the month at noon, would you come and do that class? Absolutely. We’ll pay you. No, you don’t need to. You’re at the other end of the spectrum where they’re where they say, we’re having this conference, can you come speak at our conference? There will be 3,000 people there. You’re going to keynote. Your opportunity cost is so different that you’re kind of like, I don’t know, because 3,000 people, it’s an amazing number of people, doesn’t really move the needle in your audience size. You’re not allowed to pitch them and like you said, you don’t even want to anyway. And even if you could pitch them, that number of people is not going to create a super exciting business result for you where you are.

And so the keynote amounts, every once in a while you’ll hear people talk about, oh keynote fees, 50, 100 thousand dollars. That’s crazy, that’s absurd. No, it’s not. It’s a function of the cost to that person of stepping out of their normal functioning, their normal operations to fly over and stand on that stage. It

Jody: That’s right.

Mark: Five or 10 grand is not, I mean, I don’t know, I haven’t been your bookkeeper for a long time, but if the fee were anything under like 25 plus, I’d be like, I don’t know, that sounds like a lot of work.

Jody: Yeah. Well, here’s something else that I really appreciate you kind of pointed this out to me years ago. I don’t know if you remember this, but it is also okay to do things just because you want to, just for fun. It doesn’t have to be a financial gain as long as I think it’s important to tell yourself the truth about it. Right?

So I remember like wanting to hire one of my best friends and I asked you about this because I’m like, I know they say you’re not supposed to hire your best friend, but I really want to hire this person or it was something along those lines. I have several friends that work in my business now. I don’t know if it was one of them or a different situation, but I was like, kind of trying to get your opinion on it. And you said, you can absolutely hire your friend. Just tell yourself the truth. If you don’t really think she’s the best one for the job, but you just want to because you want to. I was like, I want to be around, I want to work with people I like, so I want to hang out with people I like, and I want to help my friend out. She kind of is looking for something and I think she would do a decent job. Is she the best one? Maybe not, but I have all these other reasons. And you’re like, of course you can do that. Just tell yourself the truth about it, which is, I’m doing this because I want to help my friend and because I want to hang out with my friend and not because this is the best person for the job. And I was like, you’re right. I can do whatever I want. I just want to tell myself the truth about it.

And that’s how I think about these speaking opportunities or things like this, right? Is back to your point, it can be, I try to remember like, who knows? Maybe one day down the road, this is going to be a relationship that is going to serve me in some way. So I always try to like show up in as my most generous self, whatever that looks like. I have certain things like I hate when I go to live conferences and some of the speakers like show up for their part and then leave and I just feel like if you’re going to be here, don’t you want to support the people here? Don’t you want to hear like what other people are teaching and don’t you want to, I feel like it’s a level of respect to listen to at least some of the other speakers if you can versus just, anyway, those are just weird things I do where I’m like, if I’m going to say yes to this, I’m going to be all in on this event for this day at least. And I want to support the other, again back to Taylor Swift, she always will stand up and cheer for other artists. And everybody else sits there like, I’m just like, why do you not want to support people who are doing what you’re trying to do?

Anyway, I do always tell myself the truth now, which is like, financially this doesn’t make sense and this isn’t going to move the needle on my business most likely unless something crazy happens that I never anticipated. But it’s also okay to just do it because I enjoy speaking and I enjoy meeting people and I enjoy seeing sometimes the way other people run live events or other communities and there are lots of reasons to do things, but I do have a lot of clients who don’t tell themselves the truth about it and they put all their eggs on like, I got on to this podcast and I just think that’s going to be the thing. And I’m like, that’s great that you’re going on a podcast, but you have to own your own success.

Mark: Yeah.

Jody: In the end. You have to own it. It’s not probably, and again, back to Dan Sullivan’s who not how, I do believe in that model and that theory, but I think to your point, you put four or five years into our relationship and before you had that one series of money classes, that’s nothing compared to everything you’ve done in your business. Like you do so many things. You build so many relationships and you, it’s not like my platform contributed, equals your success. Maybe in that series of classes it helped, but you’re doing so many things. You’re not sitting there waiting for the one person that’s going to tip the scale for you. Or am I wrong about that?

Mark: No, I think that’s well said. I think that’s right. I mean, we did that together in, I think it was 2020. Which part of, that might have been why the high attendance, by the way.

Jody: Because people were home bored.

Mark: I think it was 2020, but you’re right, if I had taken the attitude into that podcast episode, like Jody Moore’s going to save me. And at the time I didn’t need saving, so, I mean, I still don’t need saving, but you made me think of it when your clients say, I got on that podcast and the attitude is a little bit like, and they’re going to save me. They’re going to save me from all the pain of not having clients or from having the business not get traction. If I could just, it’ll be the breakthrough if I can get on that podcast and your podcast was amazing, is amazing. I did have a huge uptake on the classes I was teaching and it was a boon to my business, but by itself, it was just one of the things and…

Jody: Yeah. That’s what I mean is you’re…

Mark: It wasn’t a make or break.

Jody: Yeah. And I think that’s important for people to hear because there’s not a shortcut. I wish there was a shortcut but there’s different strategies.

Mark: Oh, sorry, you said I wanted to, I wanted to highlight something you said because when you say I have clients who are like, oh, I’m going to go on that podcast. If they pressure that podcast too much, then they will bring that grabby, needy energy to that thing and it will be repellent. I’m not going to say the name because it’s people you, somebody you and I know, it’s people your audience would know.

But Kate and I were listening to a podcast of a practitioner like us that we respect, and she did a collaboration with a coach and that coach could not get two sentences out without a sort of like, well, yeah, in my class, what I teach is or, well, I have a course. It was so grabby. You could tell, you couldn’t tell. My judgment is, let’s be more precise. My judgment is that she saw this as her big break and she wasn’t going to let it pass without putting 9200 calls to action in a 45 minute like masterclass or whatever.

Jody: Yeah.

Mark: And I did not last five minutes into that thing. And it was a topic that would have been very relevant to me and I could have gotten a lot out of it. I couldn’t take it. But I remember coming on your show and I was like, I like Jody, Jody likes me, this is interesting, this is going to be fun, the end.

Jody: Yeah. And you’re right. And most of us cannot fake that. I couldn’t fake that.

Mark: Yeah.

Jody: I couldn’t go into a podcast with the thought, okay, this is going to be the thing and they sound like, often they sound like reasonable thoughts. Like, I just don’t want to mess this up. I just want to do a good job. I don’t want to waste this opportunity.

Mark: Waste this opportunity.

Jody: This is just such a big opportunity. I don’t want to get it wrong. I’m like, whoa, that is not going to work.

Mark: No.

Jody: You have to go like, I don’t know, maybe this will turn into something, maybe it won’t. Either way, I just want to go add value, let’s just have fun with this, let’s just try to serve this audience on this podcast on this day. Not that you can’t have an idea where you’re going to invite them next, but all those heavy thoughts are going to show up absolutely, 100%. I couldn’t agree with you more in that conversation.

And this is reminding me of something, you know, when you shared the story earlier just about like how long it was before you even asked me, can I come on your podcast? I just want to acknowledge that it’s a little bit of a luxurious situation to be in. I even think starting your own business is, I don’t know if we want to call it privileged or luxurious, like it’s the same way I feel about these women who tell me they’re homeschooling their kids and they are so strapped for money that they’re stressed about how to pay the bills and I say, I’m not telling you should get a job, but I’m curious why you don’t, why you aren’t getting a job. And they’ll say, well because I homeschool my kids and I want to say, it doesn’t sound like you can afford to homeschool your kids right now. Like that’s a luxury, right? And I feel the same way about starting a business.

Like maybe you can’t afford and I’m not saying again that I know what people should do, but yeah, you have to be able to put in some time, some money or time or effort to get there. And because I can just hear some of our listeners going, okay, that sounds nice, but I need to make money today. I don’t have four or five years to wait to see the payoff.

Mark: Oh, I tell people – you can disagree with this and I’ll be happy to hear it. But I tell people all the time, a coaching business is a terrible thing to do if you need money fast. If I talk to people and like, I’m passionate about coaching and I really need to make some money or I really want to leave my job or my spouse partner really wants to leave their job. So I’ve got to get this going as fast as possible. The most honest thing I can say is my personal opinion is that’s not a winning strategy and I don’t know how to do it. Now, what I do know how to do is get a job, let the job purchase ease and freedom and confidence and a relaxed like state of mind or more relaxed state of mind so that as I go build this thing, I can do it from the right energy.

Jody: 100% agree with you. Yeah.

Mark: People have said to me over the years, they for sure have referenced you, but they’ve referenced others as well. They’ll say things like, oh, you know, it’s easy for her or her being any number of a hundred different coaches, you know, she had a husband who would pay the bills while she built the thing. And I say, yeah, and I said, I’ve interacted with people who are in that position and they’re all quite grateful by the way. They’re not, they’re grateful for that reality. But all you’re saying, all you’re doing is describing a winning strategy. It just might be that you’re the person with the job and then you have to think a little harder about how you spend your time. I know you in the early days, you would get up at four in the morning, you were driving to different places to use wifi, you were having a part-time job to pay for ads, etc. You weren’t exactly coasting the way some people would like to say you were. But the principle holds, if you want to feel ease in building the coaching thing, whatever form that takes for you, find something else to pay for it so you don’t have to stress as much.

Jody: I absolutely agree. And it’s kind of the opposite of the whole burn the boats strategy, like if you have to make the money, then you’re going to, then you’re going to be forced to focus and get it done. And I’m like, okay, if that works for you, I’m in. That does not work for me. I, to your point, I’m going to sound desperate on podcast interviews. I’m going to overly invite. I’m going to do all the wrong things. I absolutely agree with you. Whether it’s you need to get a job or you have a spouse with a job. For me, the situation, I just want to clarify, I don’t know if I’ve ever gotten up at four in the morning. But…

Mark: No, you have told stories where you were like, there were little kids.

Jody: Okay, what’s true is I had little kids, I had a tiny little house. My husband was able to support us, but we had no extra whatsoever. And his job was very stressful and everything. So I absolutely did make sacrifices. I took a part-time job because I didn’t feel that I could skim any off the family budget. So I took a part-time job to cover ads and, you know, email hosting fees and whatever little fees were required for the business. And I would drive to the mall and sit outside the Apple Store because they had the best Wi-Fi. I, one of my first investments was childcare.

I recorded my podcast in my car. Like I would sit in my car in the parking garage at the mall, and this was Northern California where it gets pretty hot. So I’d try to roll the windows down to get a little air in because the air conditioning was too loud for recording my podcast. So I’d roll the windows down, but then cars would go by. So I would literally have to like hold my breath, roll the windows up, record a podcast as fast as I could and I’d be just like sweating by the end. But that was the only way I could figure out to get it done. And I’m so glad that I did that all that in the past. Thank you, past me.

But you’re right. Like there’s still sacrifice and today I ask myself that question all the time. Like, okay, if I was back in that situation and you got to pay your bills, you got to put food on the table and pay the mortgage or whatever. That’s going to be first priority. But if I really wanted to build a business, what would I do? You know, I still do have a husband. Well, he works in my business now. So we would have a whole ‘nother problem, but I would probably see if he could get some kind of a job.

I would be willing to wait tables on the weekends. I don’t know if I could tolerate that anymore. I’m 51 years old. That’s hard labor, but I used to wait tables. And so I know I could make three hundred bucks in tips every weekend. That’s twelve hundred dollars a month. I could put that towards ads or childcare or whatever. And that’s what I would do to get my business up and running, I think. Because those jobs I think are easy to get. I don’t know. But so many people are just like, I don’t have any money for whatever it is. And I think, well, then we’re going to have to figure that out, right? How are we going to get some money? And I know they want to get it through clients. I’m not saying it has to take, I don’t think it has to take years, but I don’t think putting the pressure on yourself to do it this month works in the end.

Mark: Yeah, that’s well said. It doesn’t have to take years, but.

Jody: So anyway, we agree on that point. Let’s talk just a little bit about my strategy then because I know you said you had a bunch of questions for me.

Mark: I do, but do we have…

Jody: Yeah, we’re just going to make it work because…

Mark: I’m happy to make it work.

Jody: If you have the time.

Mark: Oh yeah, absolutely. I’m not busy, as I’ve told you in the past.

Jody: Okay. Yeah, me neither.

Mark: So I’m trying to think what question, I did write down several questions. I’m trying to think which one is kind of the highest leverage that makes the best use of your time. Okay, so I’ve been thinking about a paid ad strategy for a one-on-one coaching practice. And so the idea that I have, the one that I’ll share with you and I want to beat up on is, paid ads requires too many skills, like too quickly, and is too low control or low, there’s so many elements that you can’t control.

So that it feels like the likelihood of it going well in a reasonable time frame feels really hard to me. So that’s one piece. Is that it asks high-level skills of a person who might just be getting started in any kind of entrepreneurial venture. It brings in algorithm risk because who knows what Meta is going to do. And the competition, my perception of the competition is that you have me, the new coach, competing against not just Jody Moore, but people who have entire product ladders that are designed to absorb the cost of those ads and still be enormously profitable through the second, third, and nth sale. Meanwhile, if I the new coach am saying, I’m going to set up a campaign, drive traffic to a consultation, convert some percentage of those consults to clients, it’s just hard for me to wrap my head around that working. Is that enough to get you going?

Jody: Yeah, for sure. And they’re fair concerns. First of all, I just look at social media, which has so many problems, I want to acknowledge first of all. I don’t love everything about social media by any means. But as a marketer, as somebody who’s trying to get a message out to people and build a business, it’s like the most ideal situation I could imagine. Because I think back to what the options were before this. And I remember thinking even when I went through coach training, I went through coach training just for my own development. I was a little bit lost and just really drawn to Brooke’s work. And I thought, I don’t know, I’m just going to go take this very expensive class and I don’t know that I’ll ever do anything with it because I don’t like marketing. Because in my mind, I had no idea how I would ever get clients.

The only thing I could think of was I would be one of those people at church that you’d start avoiding in the halls because you know when they’re going to subtly try to bring in their opportunity, quote unquote. I was like, not going to do that. Or I could put up a flyer like in Albertson’s where you walk in on the bulletin board with your phone number cut into little pieces and maybe somebody likes what they see and they take your phone number or put flyers on cars. Like in my mind, unless you had money to run a TV ad or a radio ad, I don’t even know what that would cost, but in my mind that was like way outside of my would be outside of my reach. So I was like, all the things I can think to do, I’m not willing to do, or they don’t seem like they would pay off.

So I guess I’m really not going to do anything with this. And that used to kind of be our options because other than like you said, network building and taking a long time, right? With these relationships and things, which also I don’t love, to be honest. Like you say networking and I’m like, ooh. Like you want to go to this event and do some, oh, no. I don’t. Like put me on a stage and I will talk to thousands of people, but put me in front of one person that I don’t know, I’ll do it, but it’s just not my forte. It’s much more uncomfortable for me.

So anyway, then I learned about social media, right? Which is wait a second, this is a totally different investment than putting up a billboard or a TV commercial or even in a magazine or a newspaper because with all those you’re crossing your fingers, you try to get the right magazine, the right billboard in the right place and all of that, but you don’t have much control over who’s going to see that or if they’re going to be paying attention. Whereas social media, this is what people hate about it, but they know who is going to look at my stuff. They know better than any other platform ever has. Not only who’s going to look at it, but I can say I want someone that clicks, or I want someone that purchases, or I want someone that signs up. And they know who sign-uppers are and they know who purchasers are, right? And they know who my people are. So social media to me is the best bet of giving my money to. Now, there is a learning curve. I will acknowledge that.

Mark: Okay, one clarification. When you say social media though in this context, you’re saying a paid ad strategy on social media.

Jody: Yes.

Mark: As opposed to a content publishing organic. Thank you. Go on. Okay.

Jody: A paid ad strategy. That’s where you have the most control is when you go through the backend, through the ads manager, and this is Meta. I’m most familiar with Meta, but I know it’s similar on any platform. But you go through the backend, you upload an ad, you get, you can give it lots of information about who you want to see this ad. And ideally you put the right things in your ad copy that will attract the right person. That’s how the algorithm finds them.

And we used to be able to tell it a lot more. I used to be able to say, find people that follow YNAB, if I was talking finance. We don’t get to do it to that level anymore. But thank goodness we don’t because the algorithm just does it instead. It’s partly why they took all that away. They’re like, you know who’s better at finding your people? Our robots than you guys guessing like maybe they’re the people that follow BYU Cougars. And so the algorithm’s way better at it than I am. So I don’t view that as a downside that they’ve taken away all those clarifiers. At any rate, there is a learning curve. I want to acknowledge that. It’s not, it’s not super simple, but it’s not very difficult either. And when I first started, what was it, 12, over 12 years ago, I set up my own ads. I did take a class from somebody, Claire Pelletreau, who I think we’ve talked about before, is a mutual, someone we respect.

Mark: Are we both giving Claire credit for our for our big breaks?

Jody: Claire is amazing. I love her. I love Claire. So I took a class from her. I watched her videos. I followed along. She was like, click here, I recommend this, think about this. Like, yeah, there was a learning curve, but it wasn’t rocket science. I’m not a super techie person. And today I have, I’m putting a lot of money into ads and so I hire, I have a team that manages those ads that knows ads better than me. But because I’m helping other coaches, I’ve gone back to examine it. I’ll also check with my team and be like, is this right if I’m advising this the way? And you know what’s changed? Very little.

Mark: Really?

Jody: Very little in the ad setup from when I first did it has changed. Now, stuff’s changing on the backend, right? As Meta tries to navigate the balance of keeping the user engaged and not feeling like they’re just being bombarded with ads and that they want to come back in the platform and keeping the marketer making money, therefore they make money. Like they’re constantly trying to navigate that balance. And so backend stuff has changed, but as far as the user experience, what the skills I need, it’s only become easier as they’ve gone, you know what, people can’t figure this out. Can we automate it for them?

And I guess the way I think about it, I will say this. So people say to me all the time, well my ads aren’t converting. Okay, I’m running ads and they’re not converting. And I say, I have no idea what you mean by that. What does that mean? Because are you saying that you ran an ad and you wanted someone to sign up and be a paying client for you and no one has signed up and to be a paying client? Well, guess what? I’ve never run an ad like that, ever. I don’t expect the ads to get me clients. So, okay, maybe we could figure out how to do that, but that’s a whole ‘nother, like the more the payoff of the ad, the higher the risk.

So if I want to get a, let’s say $900 client, it’s going to cost me more and it’s going to be harder to get to convert. But if I want to get someone to sign up for my free thing that gets them on my email list, that will cost me less and will be easier for me to figure out. So if they say it’s not converting, I’m like, what are we even trying to do with this ad? Are we trying to get a client? Are we trying to get a name on your email list? Are we trying to get someone to sign up for your challenge or your course or your webinar? Is it paid? Is it free? Like, what are we trying to do? And then in the end, what is it costing you to get someone to do that thing? Maybe you want them to sign up for your $19 course and it’s costing you $29 to get them to sign up for your $19 course. But you’re saying to me, my ad’s not converting. Like, well it is converting. It’s just converting at $29 and you made $19, which means it’s costing you $10 to get someone to come to your course. It’s never not converting in the end.

Mark: Okay. I actually like how you’re saying that because I always tell people, I’ll say all marketing works. It’s just a question of how efficiently it works.

Jody: Yes.

Mark: Which is, I feel like you’re saying a maybe even a better version of that, but okay. So can I describe a scenario to you not because you need to speak to it in any hyper specific way or solve it, but I’m hoping it’ll kind of prompt you and you’ll speak around ideas and principles and I think it’ll be really useful and interesting to me. So imagine I’m a one-on-one coach and my goal is one-on-one clients. And so what I do is I set up ad campaigns to drive people to, let’s say an email opt-in, and then the emails that I send following their opt-in invite them to whatever we call a sales call, consultation, discovery call, whatever it is. And then my goal is to convert them on that sales call to a one-on-one client. I know that’s super simple, but just when you hear me say that, speak to it. What comes to mind for you as you hear that?

Jody: Well that’s exactly what I did the first three, two and a half, three years of my business. So I ran an ad. So when Mark says email, you call it an opt-in or something. You got to offer something valuable enough that people will stop for a moment and sign up for it. Lead magnet, freebie opt-in. So these are often like things that will save you money, save you time, save you effort. I think today what converts the best are things that save time and effort for at least in the realm of what I do mostly, probably what you do. So things even like top three podcasts episodes of podcasts that talk about this topic. It doesn’t even have to be your own podcast. It’s like here’s an episode of this podcast I love. Here’s an episode of this, here’s an episode go listen to these three because think about we’re inundated with information.

So I think the more you curate information for people, you condense it down, you point them into like if like let’s say I’m a coach who works with parents of kids with ADHD. Here’s three podcast episodes from different experts talking about that topic that I recommend you begin with. Okay? Something like this is what we’re talking about that gets them onto your email list. I would run paid ads to that thing. Like, hey, I’m a coach who’s an expert in this, but there’s lots of people talking about it, so much good information and lots of noise. I’m going to cut through the noise for you. Here’s three. Go ahead and take a listen. Just sign up below. I’ll send you the three with links. If you have questions on them, you can let me know.

So the goal of the ad for me almost always, I’d say 90% of the time, is get them on my email list because once they’re on my email list, I can keep serving them. I can say, hey, I did a podcast this week on this thing or I found this other great resource and the more I serve, that’s how I’m building the relationship with my client. And it takes many of my clients years before they take any action after that. I just want to be clear.

Mark: Yeah, you’ve said that before and I believe you and agree with you. So if we stay in this model of, I’m a one-on-one coach, so I’ve got them on my email list. Now I’m inviting them to a consultation.

Jody: But I’m also serving them.

Mark: Sure, okay.

Jody: So 80% of it is just, here’s something I just learned, here’s something that happened with one of my clients, here’s a story. It’s a lot of service, like 80% service, 20% is, by the way, if you want more help with this or if you want to know how this applies exactly to your child or whatever, come sign up for this free one-on-one call where I will help you more personally. So we’re doing the ask but with lots of service and value too.

Mark: So I’m going to put words in your mouth and then correct me. So it sounds like one thing you might be saying is if somebody knows that their goal is a consultation, well their ultimate goal is a client, but they want to have a consultation from the people who have opted in. If that’s not happening at the rate that they would be excited about or that they the rate they need it to happen, one of the things you might diagnose would be that they’re under serving.

Jody: Yeah.

Mark: But that 80-20 is not there.

Jody: That could be something, but it’s not usually the problem. Most coaches are serving well. So I think the hardest step to get someone to take is to sign up for that one-on-one call. So I always say, tell me how you sell me on coming to that one-on-one call. They’re not selling the call. If you casually drop it like a PS, it will take a lot longer. And my definition of sales is inspiring someone to take action that will make their life better. So not that will make my life better, not that will get me a client, but I want to inspire someone to come to this one-on-one call. If they leave that call, they should be like, that was a good use of my time, whether they buy my program or not.

So how do I inspire someone to come to that call? I have to speak to all their possible objections. I have to say things like, you’re probably wondering why is this free. You might be thinking she’s just going to sell me something. And you know what? If I think you’re a good fit and I could help you and you’re interested in hearing about it, we can absolutely talk about that. But if you don’t want that or I don’t think I could help you, no worries. Come to this call. Here’s what you will get out of just coming to this call. So the call itself needs to be valuable. And we have to be speaking to that over and over again. We have to create urgency for it because everyone’s going to go, yeah, that sounds good. I’m just too busy right now. So we have to give them a reason to do it now. All the things that we do that I teach in a regular sales call have to happen. And people get in their heads because they’re like, I can’t get people to come to the free call. How am I ever going to get them to pay? And I say, no, getting them to the free call is way harder than getting them to pay.

Because they’re not going to come to that call. That call is where we step from being a passive consumer of value to vulnerably taking action. I’m going to actually show up and talk to you and I’m going to have to share my real problems and you’re going to, you might ask me questions and I have to put it on my calendar. I can’t just, oh yeah, I forgot I was going to go listen to that podcast episode. So there’s so many things that shift from being more passive to more active in my own solution finding that’s why I think that’s the hardest step to get people to take. Once they move into that active, I’m going to actually maybe do something about this. I call it like, there’s things that we’re interested in and then there’s things we’re committed to. And it’s okay to just be interested and not committed, but the difference is what are you doing about it? So anyway, I digress.

Mark: Oh, that, well, it was very helpful. It was a very, it was a, I feel like you just gave me a really good window into your mindset and how you think about the process because you’re inspiring action at every step. So, and I want to say selling at every step, but I’m afraid that has a negative connotation, but I don’t have a negative connotation with that.

Jody: I don’t either. You can say selling. Yeah.

Mark: It’s like I’m selling everything, everything is sales. Which is completely authentic to you, including, I love what you’re saying about the free call, the discovery call, whatever the thing is. You remind me that I’ve told our fellow coaches over the years when they’re like, I want to do a retreat or I want to do a live event or whatever. I’ll say, yeah, if you can get people to get in their car and drive somewhere, you like 98% of the conversion has already happened because it’s, especially post-COVID, it’s just not something we do. So people will be like, well, how could I ever convert people from a live event to becoming a client? I’m like, if you can get them to a live event, they’re most of the way to becoming a client because they’ve already incurred such a, they’ve signaled so much commitment to whatever it is you’re doing.

Jody: Yeah, that’s right.

Mark: A lot of it’s already done. But I’ve never thought about that as it relates to showing up to a sales call and I think it holds. It’s super interesting.

Jody: Yeah, it’s just like taking action. Are they going to show up? Are they going to put in any sort of effort at all? Like think about it. I don’t know about you, but I am not signing up for something that is at a certain time that I have to be at unless I’m very interested. Like I might sign up for something that has replays that I’m going to be one of hundreds and no one’s going to know if I’m there or not. But if you’re telling me this is one on one, like because I’m also not someone that likes to stand people up, so out of respect, I’m not going to do that unless I’m very interested in solving my problem or whatever, right? Like that’s a, that’s a big ask.

Mark: It is, it is such a strong signal when people will do that. Okay, I wanted to ask you another question. It’s going to come back to my head right now. I think it was, there’s not like a right answer to this. It’s broad on purpose. If somebody comes to you and they say, I’m doing the stuff, but as I go on, I’m still spending more on ads than I’m generating in coaching fees. Yes, some clients are coming. So it is kind of working. But when all is said and done, I’m still spending more on ads than I’m generating in fees. And there’s kind of a lot of activity around the whole thing. Sales calls and follow-ups and no shows and things like that. Whatever pops into your head that you might want to ask that person or tell that person, I’m just curious to hear you freestyle about it.

Jody: I do recommend, and this goes back to what we were saying earlier, of if you need money today, don’t start a coaching business and think that’s going to be the way you’re going to make money today. Get a job first. And I don’t know if this is the right timeline, but I like to give people something so that they don’t go, wait, is this working? Is I say be willing to have your first year be a break-even year.

So that would include ad spend, but also there’s other fees involved in your business. Pay attention to what you’re spending, but it might be having a coach yourself or things like that. If you could, I think if you can break even your first year and start getting clients and momentum, then there’s so much we can do. And break even is even being very conservative. I think I see a lot of people do still have profit.

But plan on there is going to be a time at which, like my one-on-one coaching program was $624. And I think I picked that amount because I wanted people to be able to make it in two payments and you can split it nicely into $312. I don’t know what I was thinking, but it was the most random amount. But whatever, that’s how much it costs. This was 12 years ago, okay? And so I was putting $300 a month into ads, $10 a day. That’s all I could scrape up through my little part-time job and feel comfortable putting in.

So as soon as I got a client for $624, then I would take at least half of that and dump it back into ads. So that month, I actually was able to put in $20 a day because I still had my $10 a day coming from my little part-time thing. I had now another client. I’d take half of that revenue. The rest I was mainly investing in childcare because I needed a couple days a week, a few hours each day without babies around me. And then there were some fees in my business. That’s mainly what I was investing in the beginning. But bumping it up from $10 a day to $20 a day, even just for that one month, would help, right?

So back to your question, if I’m putting in a lot of money and I’m not making that money back, then definitely I’m like, okay, let’s look at what you’re doing and see if we can get your ads converting at a better rate. But this is why I say this is like gardening, because you’re planting a bunch of seeds, right? To me, my email list is my garden. And the more seeds I plant, the better. Now, some of those seeds are going to die and never sprout. And that might be like people that have been on your list for five years, they’re not opening anything, they’re not going to become a client. Okay. But I can’t even tell you, every time I do live events, there are so many people that raise their hand and go, I listened to you, I listened to your podcast for three years before I ever took another step. I’ve been following you for five years. Or it was a full year and then you finally said this thing and I decided to try the next thing.

Like, and that’s not all of them. There will be a handful of fast action takers, but the majority, and there will be a handful that are just the wrong fit. But the majority of them are in this middle bucket. They’re the maybes, they’re, they’re interested but not committed, they’re not paying attention really, they’re dragging their feet. So, on the one hand, you are investing. Every time I get leads onto my email list, that is a good use of my money to me. Some of them, I’m not going to see the payoff for years later. But that said, I’m also again, not a burn the boats person. I’m not a, like let’s double mortgage your house to make this work. I am like, let’s be conservative. But even today, I tell my coaches, if you can put $300 in a month, we can get you some traction and get you some clients. So if it’s costing more than ultimately you’re making, it might be that you’re not charging enough.

Maybe it costs more for your one-on-one coaching. Like today I wouldn’t do it for $624, even if I were brand new starting out. I still think, I understand the value of coaching so much more. I think I understand how to craft a better offer. And all those things go into how much you charge. But I’m like, maybe what you’re offering, you can’t afford to offer it at that rate. You know what I mean? Like it costs more than that to work with you because it costs more than that for you to cover the ad spend.

And maybe you need childcare too. So you know what it costs to work with you? More than what you’re charging. So let’s get your head around that. Let’s charge more. Or maybe we do need to look at your ads and tweak something. And it because ads are something you have to experiment with. But I find that when I get it converting at a rate I’m willing to pay, okay, the rate will go up and down a little bit. It’s never a flat line because it depends like you said on who else is trying to run ads and what’s happening at Meta or whatever, but it’ll kind of, I’ll get it around a certain amount and it’ll just go up and down along this line. And that will last for usually a year to two years before I have to do anything different.

Mark: Okay, clarifying. Do you mean like a campaign, a specific ad?

Jody: A campaign. A campaign.

Mark: A campaign. A year to two.

Jody: Easily, sometimes more.

Mark: Okay.

Jody: And so once I figure that out, I just let it run. And it’s I think of it like turning on the faucet on the hose. I’m like, now I got water coming through that hose. And now I just have to take care of it and I’m watering the garden, but as soon as you turn off the hose, they’re like, well, the ads weren’t converting so I turned them off. Okay, so now we have no water coming through. Unless you’re doing something else, unless you’re out there serving people and you’re going to do a relationship kind of thing or you’re going to do organic and post lots of content, three to five videos a day and encourage people to go sign up for an opt-in or something. Like if you’re not doing anything else, you’re looking at your hose going, there’s no water coming out. And I’m like, yeah, because you turned the faucet off.

That’s just how I think about ads. But once I get it converting, I’ve been running the same campaigns for years. And every now and then I’ll go, hmm, maybe we want to experiment with something else or my ads team will say, like we run a book funnel right now to my book, which is, we’ll send you my book for free, you just pay the shipping. So we just charge a minimal amount to cover basically the shipping and the cost of the book printing so that we don’t lose money on it. They get the book, but they’re on my email list now.

We’ve been running that for like – my book came out in 2019. So at least three or four years we’ve been running that same campaign. But I would say once a year or so, like they just came to me the other day and said, can you make some new videos for the book funnel? And I was like, yeah, I watched the video. I’m like, why didn’t you ask me for this earlier? Because it’s again one of those videos from years ago where I don’t even look like myself. I don’t think I sound very intelligent. I did all new videos, but it’s the same offer, same campaign and they all are now converting at a better rate again. But it took years before we even had to do any of that. So I just don’t think it’s as difficult as people think.

And again, I just want to be clear that I don’t love everything Meta does by any means. But they want me to make money on their platform because that’s how they make money. And so they’re constantly like there’s so many tools and resources out there that they give on how to set up your ad, how to look at your ad, how to – not all of their resources are good. Like I find the people that call up and offer help know less than I do usually, which isn’t saying a lot. I don’t know that much, but the online tools that they have and whenever they change something, they’ll put it out there and they’ll tell you. They want me to make money because that’s how they make money.

And so I find it’s a win when I stop fighting. People love to fight with the algorithm like if we could just figure out the algorithm. I’m like, why do you want to figure out the algorithm? I just want the algorithm to do what it does. So I can just do what I do.

Mark: And when you say and I’m ignorant of this. So the algorithm to do what it does, you mean it’s picking who sees your ads? Is that the main thing it does?

Jody: Yeah. That’s right. It’s finding the people I tell it to find. Now, this is the other thing I love about the algorithm, is it rewards quality. So there are people who will tell you how to trick the algorithm, like, but I would much rather like get better at making good videos or writing good copy or creating opt-ins that people really want because that’s what converts in the end. Instead of like, I figured out if I just, you know, there’s stuff people will do like make a really short video that loops. And then people don’t realize they just watched it five times. And so the algorithm thinks people are watching this video a lot, but really it’s just a loop.

Okay? So these are like loopholes that people will do, back to me like at University of Phoenix, getting your address wrong on the voicemail to get you to call me back. But wouldn’t it be better if I left a voicemail that intrigued you enough that you actually maybe became a student, is what I’m saying. Like, yes, it rewards quality and it might take you time to get good at it. But if I create good content that is compelling to people and I do it consistently, my ads do better. And I feel like that’s a game I’m willing to play.

And you know, you said it feels like low control. I feel the opposite. I feel like I have much more control because if I want to go on the back end and look at the all the metrics, I don’t because you know me, I’m like, not a numbers person. Like, did we make more than we spent? Okay, then let’s just go again. That’s how I am with numbers.

So I don’t look at, but I could and I have a team now that does so I don’t have to. You can dial it in and see like, oh, what’s the problem here? It looks like people are clicking but they’re not signing up. Or they’re getting or the ad is showing up in front of people too many times. So now maybe we need to make a new ad. Like you can see whatever level you want to see. Some people love to geek out on that stuff. I don’t. But I feel like I have more control than any other method I can think of where I’m just like hoping, I don’t know. Any anything you do there’s control and there’s not control to a certain extent, I guess, but.

Mark: What you’re saying makes sense. It makes sense to me why you’re saying you do feel some control in this strategy. You feel like there are knobs you can turn and levers you can pull. It’s not a pure black box.

Jody: That’s right. And even to the extent that, you know, um, I will just add one other thing. One of the changes that has occurred in the last few years is, Meta anyway has become like, they’re often thinking of e-commerce when they go to tweak their marketing tools. They’re thinking of the person that’s selling clothes or shoes or jewelry or golf clubs or whatever, right?

And so you could technically, you can run an ad on Meta, right, to the shoes you sell and have people buy the shoes. And that’s the simplest, easiest way. So for people like myself that have a service that we offer, it’s not e-commerce, right? We have found that having some kind of a little, well, we call it a trip wire is helpful both in training Meta to find you buyers, not just clickers. That’s how well Meta knows our behaviors now. It knows if you tend to be on social media someone who will buy things or if you’re just a clicker.

Mark: And a trip wire is a is a low price product that signals buyer behavior as opposed to clicker behavior.

Jody: Yeah. So often what we’ll do is something like, hey, like that’s why the book funnel’s so great, because there is actually a buying component because they’re paying the shipping. So I’m now finding someone who is a buyer, even though all they did was cover the cost for me, I didn’t make money off that, it still gets me buyers onto my email list versus freeple people, we like to call them, right? But you don’t have to have a book to do that. You can say, like for years I ran this family home, remember family home evening when that was a thing?

Mark: Yes.

Jody: And it just it went away.

Mark: I’m a child of the 80s, yes.

Jody: It just went away. I guess come follow me away.

Mark: It still comes up. It still comes up.

Jody: Does it?

Mark: Yeah, you’ll hear it mentioned.

Jody: I wish it did because I had a really successful funnel built around it. I’m not ashamed. I’m not ashamed to say that either because Deseret Book is a for-profit organization.

Mark: That’s a full sentence. You could have stopped there because Deseret Book.

Jody: Yeah, okay, period. I don’t need to say more. Anyway, okay, but I’m just giving this as an example, okay? So I put out a family home evening lesson all about how the brain works.So it was like for parents, right, that’s for those of you not members of the LDS church, that’s like a thing we used to talk about at church. Have family home evening.

So as a parent, you were having these activities or bonding experiences and also maybe teaching your kids some useful things about life and God and whatever else. So anyway, it was a family home meeting lesson all about how the human brain works. And my good friend Allison Lukengay designed it. It looked really pretty. It had little worksheets, coloring page for little kids, questions for teenagers, all about how your brain works, right? So they could get it for free. So they click, download it for free. Then on the thank you page, which is just the page you land on after you sign up for the free lesson, then it says, I actually have five other lessons that go with this one. One’s on emotions, one’s on whatever else, right? That falls in the world of what I teach. And you can get them on my website for $20 or you can get them right now for $7.

So if you would like them, just click here and purchase them and we’ll send them right to you. So anybody who paid the $7, I now have buyers ending up on but Meta doesn’t know if that happens by the way because we’re off Facebook at that point. They’re on my list. But it helps me recoup the ad cost is what that $7 does. And so that can be helpful in the short term before I have enough clients coming in. And today, they’re kind of recommending you do that within Meta’s platform because it teaches Meta how to find you buyers. Or that you just run an ad right to something that costs $7 or $9.

Mark: Can you complete transactions through Meta?

Jody: That’s a good question.

Mark: Well, I asked because they you said they want you to keep that inside Meta.

Jody: What I mean is like you tell Meta when you set up the ad, when they land on this page, then we have a win. It worked, basically. So I originally would make like with the family home evening lesson, that page was the thank you page after they signed up for the first lesson. You would tell Meta instead, no, no, we don’t have a win until they land on the thank you page after they purchase the full package. So it’s just a matter of what you say, this page equals it worked.

Mark: Purchase, yep.

Jody: And that’s how it knows, okay, that was a purchase versus that was a sign up. So anyway, I might be getting some of that wrong, but I think that’s right.

Mark: It sounded right to me.

Jody: Anyway, I know we’re kind of out of time here, and we can revisit this, but I think that I want to give some final thoughts. I want to hear your final thoughts for people. There’s so many different ways to get clients in your business. And I do think what matters the most is that it’s a way that you can find enjoyable enough that you’re willing to learn and try it out and gain the skills necessary because there’s a learning curve in anything you’re going to do.

But we do have different personality types, different strengths. I mean, it’s back to you saying like my friend’s pipe was leaking and I just couldn’t wait to keep digging that hole. I’m like, good on you because that is not fun for me. But there is going to be a way, not all of it’s going to be fun. Some of it’s going to be hard and some of it isn’t going to work. It’s going to take 10 tries, but for me, like figuring out how to create valuable things. I enjoy even playing in graphic design a little bit or like when I do send it off to my designer, it comes back pretty. I’m like, oh, that was so fun.

So like there’s little moments of joy along the way that are fun for me. And then figuring out an ad and when people say to me, I remember this in the very beginning of my business, you know, I would run videos. They’re terrible they were terrible videos by the way, but they were good enough because I said, I’m an LDS mom and I get frustrated at these things and I have the life I wanted. Why am I unhappy? If you can relate to this, listen up. And I would have women reach out to me going, oh my gosh, how did you know? It’s like you were talking right to me. I remember one of my first clients saying, I showed your video to my husband and he said, how can you not call her? She just described your exact life.

So that to me is like, oh, that’s cool. That’s what I want to do. I want to help people in that way, and that’s fun for me, and that’s why I like this way. If you don’t like that way, find another way. There are many other ways, but it’s going to be some work. I don’t know, that’s kind of my final thoughts. What are yours?

Mark: I honestly don’t think I have a lot to add. I really agree with what you just said. I have more I want to talk about as it relates to this topic. I have more skepticism. Let me rephrase. I don’t have now increased skepticism. I mean, there are other skepticisms that I am still kind of wrestling with. But you’ve been super helpful to me today because you just said it in your summary. You’re describing an advertising driven strategy as one that can work if you can embrace its hard part.

Jody: Yeah.

Mark: So, and in that way, I think it, as you said, it’s like every other thing. Whether or not we succeed with a thing is mostly a function of how much we’re able and willing to embrace its worst part. Because its best part is not hard to embrace. That’s always that’s always going to be easy. So what we end up doing and succeeding with in the long run will be the thing where we will tolerate the worst part better than the next person will tolerate the worst part. Is that too cynical or does that feel does that sound fair?

Jody: No, I think that’s true. It’s like Seth Godin talking about the dip.

Mark: Yeah. Yep.

Jody: He’s like the people that succeed just stick it out through the dip, basically. He says it a lot better than that.

Mark: Well, you said it pretty well.

Jody: That’s basically the message, right?

Mark: So the question becomes, what do I want my job to be? It’s funny because just before this call, I’m working on a, like a class presentation, a webinar presentation about my philosophy or approach of growing a coaching practice. And the scenario I described to you earlier that I asked you to speak to, I’m using it in my presentation, not as a negative example, but as an alternate view.

And even in the webinar presentation, I said, let me describe her, whoever she is, she’s an abstraction. Let me describe her business. I want to be clear, it’s not that I think she’s failing. She’s not doing anything wrong. The question is whether this is the business she wants to build and this is the whether this is the job she wants to have Monday through Friday or whatever. And I feel even better about that framing now that you talked through that because this imaginary she is not failing. It’s just a question of whether she wants to embrace the worst part of that strategy or come over and embrace the worst part of my strategy. That’s right. Like, that’s it.

Jody: That’s right.

Mark: It’s really so helpful the way you walked through that.

Jody: Yeah, and likewise. I’m sure this will come up again in the future.

Mark: Oh, no doubt. Because I do still have plenty of things, like angles I want to poke at and questions I want to ask you and scenarios I want to give you. And a big part of what drives this for me is that paid ads have always hung out there for me as a thing where I think, oh man, if I had that, if I had that and if it didn’t become – I was going to say if it didn’t become a negative thing. And I guess what I would to be more precise, if I were doing that and it didn’t become too expensive in time, money, or energy, it could really be helpful to me. But I don’t have enough examples, easy examples that I’ve ever said to myself, I want to do ads. In fact, working for all the clients I’ve worked for over the years, I have not had an increased desire to do ads. I’ve had a decreased desire.

Jody: Hmm, that’s interesting.

Mark: It is interesting, which I think there’s more threads to tug on and follow here, but what you just did was just super helpful to me.

Jody: Well, I will say this too. I have days where I’m like, could I get out of doing ads at some point?

Mark: Oh, you could. We could do an episode. See, here’s the fascinating thing, and I’ll shut up because I know we’re long, but you are a person that because of the price you’ve paid up to this point, you could stop advertising. And I’m not pretending to know whether you could make the same amount of money. I’m not making that claim at all. But in terms of making an amazing living, making what most of us would consider a bunch of money, you absolutely could and you would never have to pay Meta another penny in your life if you chose not to. But it’s a game you like playing and it’s a game you’re good at. So I don’t see a great reason for you to stop unless you’re just like, I don’t like this anymore. I don’t want to play this game anymore.

Jody: Yeah. Interesting. Okay. We’ll come back to this topic again, but I think we got to I think we got to call it a day. Thanks, Mark.

Mark: Pretty fun. Appreciate the talks.

Jody: Good times.

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