Welcome to "The Art of Selling Online Courses!" Our distinguished guest today is Jason Marc Campbell, author of "Selling with Love." As the Host of the Selling with Love Podcast, he's conducted 300+ interviews, inspiring small business owners to view sales as transformative.
Jason, a dynamic public speaker, has shared stages with Gary V, Jason Silva, and more at events by Hubspot, Inc Magazine, and A-Fest. His mission advocates for businesses to prioritize care, fostering positive shifts in sales, marketing, employee treatment, and investments for a better planet.
With 7 years at Mindvalley, Jason orchestrated million-dollar launches, managed PR for a best-selling book, and pioneered membership platforms, impacting thousands. Join us for insights into Jason's transformative approach to selling with love!
Jason's Podcast: https://www.sellingwithlove.com/
Jason's Website: https://www.jasonmarccampbell.com/
If you're interested in growing your online course sales and funnel optimisation contact us at https://datadrivenmarketing.co/
Welcome to "The Art of Selling Online Courses!" Our distinguished guest today is Jason Marc Campbell, author of "Selling with Love." As the Host of the Selling with Love Podcast, he's conducted 300+ interviews, inspiring small business owners to view sales as transformative.
Jason, a dynamic public speaker, has shared stages with Gary V, Jason Silva, and more at events by Hubspot, Inc Magazine, and A-Fest. His mission advocates for businesses to prioritize care, fostering positive shifts in sales, marketing, employee treatment, and investments for a better planet.
With 7 years at Mindvalley, Jason orchestrated million-dollar launches, managed PR for a best-selling book, and pioneered membership platforms, impacting thousands. Join us for insights into Jason's transformative approach to selling with love!
Jason's Podcast: https://www.sellingwithlove.com/
Jason's Website: https://www.jasonmarccampbell.com/
If you're interested in growing your online course sales and funnel optimisation contact us at https://datadrivenmarketing.co/
I paid tens of thousands of dollars. They were like promising how we can make millions. We learned everything that was taught to us was really sketchy.
Speaker 2:We didn't know any better. Hello and welcome to the art of selling online courses. We're here to share winning strategies and secret hacks from top performers in the online course industry. My name is John Ainsworth and today's guest is Jason Mark Campbell. Now, jason's a visionary author of selling with love, earned with integrity and expand your impact. He's got a mission to redefine the art of sales, and one of the things that he's doing is working with online course creators to help them understand how to use sales and not feel uncomfortable about it anymore.
Speaker 2:He's got the widely acclaimed selling with love podcast. He's interviewed over 350 thought leaders, reaching millions of listeners. In the process, he's shared a stage with Titans such as Gary V, jason Silva, vishen Lakiani, lisa Nichols, and his mission overall is to try and teach businesses to lead with compassion and responsibility. He's worked for seven years at Mindvalley, which is one of the top online course creators in the world, and they've sell courses in the personal development space as well as doing a whole lot of other stuff there, and he managed million-dollar product launches, managed PR for a New York Times bestselling book and launched the company's membership platform. So today you're going to be learning why a lot of us have got resistance to selling, and how to remove some of those blocks, how to rank sales from the lens of energy and how you show up and how others try to sell to you, and identify the five loves of selling which, once understood, are going to help you to fundamentally shift how you sell forever.
Speaker 2:So, jason, welcome to the show man. John, it's a pleasure to be here. Thank you for the introduction.
Speaker 2:So why do you care so much about sales?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I guess. I guess I do put a lot of energy into sales in general. I'll tell you what this usually gets explained best with a story. I found myself on the receiving end of a sales pitch in my early 20s where I went to one of those real estate seminars, I think the Trump University type of environments. So I went to a free training three-day boot camp. Then I got into a mentorship program and I paid tens of thousands of dollars for somebody to kind of guide me, mentor me, and what happened is it was a beautiful pitch because they were like promising how we can make millions. I'm young, hungry. I got together with my best friends and we decided let's make this purchase, because everything was stacked to feel like it was so risky to go without it. And so we decided to take action and then we went on that mentorship. It was glorious.
Speaker 1:We went forward and we visited a bunch of properties. We were putting some offers and the person was telling us this is good. They even brought someone along who was driving us in his car and it was apparently his uncle, who had a trucking company and was going to fund all the deals and they were going to put us into this ecosystem where we would have the money, we would flip the deals and we would make a bunch of magic happen. We're like we're livid. This is amazing. This is the best investment we've ever made. So we then walk back to the room. They were about to do a training and they're like, oh, could you guys go into this room and create the testimonials for your experience, because they were about to sell more of these packages. So, hey, we're in that room. We're like this is amazing, the best thing ever.
Speaker 1:And well, I found out shortly after these were used into some infomercials that happened in Canada to promote this program. But here's what happened after that testimony was recorded is we learned everything that was taught to us was really sketchy. We didn't know any better. That dude supposed to fund the deals never returned, a call kind of disappeared and we were kind of left fending for ourselves and we're like what the hell? And this was one of the darkest times for me, because I had to scramble to find the money to close these deals we had put offers on. I had to relearn the entire process that we were taught wrong and, quite frankly, it's just so amazing. It's just one of those places I was like God damn it.
Speaker 1:I really got taken into the experience and I was like why are there so many douchebag salespeople and marketers that can do this so easily? And I'd love to see a world where there's a lot less of that. So you could call this a bit of the origin spark. But I've always loved selling myself, so I didn't want to kind of throw the baby out with a bathwater. I was like that was a really bad experience.
Speaker 1:But I think of my own experience selling things. I've always loved doing so I used to work in retail selling swimming pools and this was so much fun the rush of the sale, getting to talk to people, explaining the benefits, the features. I had fun doing this. I even remember in high school I'd be the kid that'd be excited about the charities, where you'd go and sell some chocolates door to door and I really thought this was awesome. People give you a couple of dollars, they get chocolates. They're happy, I'm happy. Raising for charity. Ok, this is fun.
Speaker 1:And when I got into business after this kind of debacle and I realized that, ok, sales really opened doors for me. It helps me connect with the right people to get the jobs that I want. It helps me move products and services and generate revenue. It allows me to connect with people just in general, whether it's for friendships, for rent, it's used everywhere. It's a form of communication, but I also witnessed there's a lot of people who have complete resistance and hate towards it. So if I can be on this mission where I can have less douchebag marketers and salespeople having an opportunity to market their subpart services, I need to empower the good people with the right ethics to learn the power and the beauty of selling so they can outcompete, outperform and do good to the world.
Speaker 2:So for a lot of people, the thing that they have against sales is the idea of rejection. People don't want to go out and sell because they're going to get personally rejected and I, to a certain extent, with online course creators, that's true, but what I see is like, through online course creators are selling their courses through email or they're selling it online, so they don't have you don't have that personal rejection right. The closest you come to it is someone's gonna send you an email saying, oh, I don't like all these sales emails that you're sending. Like that's kind of the closest you get to it, and yet so many course creators really struggle with actually sending out those email promotions. Like, what do you think is the blockage there? Why do you think this happens?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's in the same line of the rejection fear that you speak about. Like there's almost a feeling that, oh my God, when I hit that send button there's going to be a wave of people that are just gonna be hating me. Maybe I have a relative on that email list and they're gonna come back to me in 20 years and be like oh, remember when you sent that one email 20 years ago.
Speaker 1:I will never forget that and you have brought disgrace to the entire family, and I say that because it's actually one of the exercises I recommend people to do to kind of get over that fear is actually something I borrow from Tim Ferriss. He did a talk which was about fear solving, which is don't go goal setting, do fear setting, I think he calls it, and it's like listing out what do you think are all the fears that you actually have around sending out that email. Is it that you'll look stupid? Okay, write that down. Is it that people will get mad? Okay, write that down. And you usually come up with about like three to five.
Speaker 1:And then the fun exercise I do is I think about well, if this is true, what's the worst case scenario that's gonna happen with that? And then I make a funny story, like I just told you, and it kind of brings a bit of a level of ridiculousness to the fear. But all of those fears are valid and they can actually be used as fuel to make you actually perform better. And so, yeah, you're not gonna get rid of that fear, it's gonna be there. There's also, you know, the fact of being an amateur, and the first time you send out that email, there's a fear of uncertainty, like what really is going on, how are people receiving it. So that comes from just taking some actions as well. So if you can solve some of the fears and then you can start realizing, okay, probably not gonna be as bad as I've imagined it in my head, because the mind, if it's not written down, it's gonna think of a thousand things to be afraid of, but there's probably just five.
Speaker 2:Well, the way that people explain it to me when I'm talking to them about it is I don't want to be salesy and spammy. I really spent a lot of work building up this audience and I don't want them to all unsubscribe. I don't want them to hate me and think that I'm just like selling out. That's the kind of language that I hear from people and I think about it a lot because it's like the main blockage. Like nearly everybody we talk to right Nearly every client we have, or every prospect I talk to, or everybody at a conference, whatever like 95% of them they send out email promotions.
Speaker 2:They just only do it on Black Friday. And then when they launch a course right, because you're allowed to do it on Black Friday, because everybody else is doing it as kind of expected, and when you launch a course, we've got to tell everybody that it's getting stuck, that it exists, so they'll send them out then, but that's the only time they'll normally send it out. So it works out as like, maybe two or three times a year, something like that, and they get this massive spike in sales and then they're like oh yeah, but I'm not gonna do it again because I don't want to be salesy and spammy. So I'm like one side of it, I think, is about the emotional side, and another side, I think is most people are just really bad at writing emails like actually doing sales in a way that's helpful, and you talk about that quite a bit in your book, like how can you reframe sales as being a service to people instead of something that's like you're doing for your benefit and it's against them? Could you talk with everybody through that about?
Speaker 1:I think I define sales as an energy exchange right Between conscious beings, and when you know what you offer is so much more than what you ask in return, then you realize that you have a net positive effect on every transaction and there's different levels of emotions that I see pre-part of that equation, and if people are coming from a place of fear, or even like guilt and shame, being like, oh my God, this is, I really don't want, the responsibility that comes with making the offer and that's something that I really elaborate on is this concept of responsibility that comes with the offer that you make and it's the fact that you think you're doing better than everyone else because you're not one of those sell out. And we have this category of sales right, and this is where I call, like the fear pride paradox. You're talking about the wolf of Wall Street, the scammy, like bad experiences you might have had in the past, of what shitty sales is all about, and we think every time we hit that send button, we're acting in the identity of that person, and so the kind of graduation you could say actually is a regression in results. But is there a graduation called it in consciousness that I say where you go to the level that I call rational sabotage, which is you rationalize why you don't do the things that would identify you as a shitty salesperson, to make yourself be actually someone who's better than those shitty salesperson. And you think that that's the game you have to play. It's like all right. Well, if I get to send those emails, I have to sink down to being like one of those shitty people, but I'm better than that, so I'm only gonna do it on Black Friday.
Speaker 1:And the whole premise of the book is understanding that when you know what you offer is more than what stress can return, love is that emotion that balances the equation and, again, has a net positive impact. So, beyond the rational sabotage, it's actually you avoiding the responsibility of making the sale, because if what you have is so much more valuable, then when you offer it, it's not like being a shitty salesperson, it's about giving your gift to the world. And when you start having a mindset, that's about hey, I care about these people, that's why I'm writing my message to tell them hey, this is available. And we know people don't take action on the first step. Have you ever tried to convince that friend who always wants to lose weight, to go out with a healthy restaurant with you or to go to the gym with you, and they say, no, do you give up on that friend? You don't.
Speaker 1:And that's the kind of energy and mindset that I inspire the people that I talk to to get to, which is like, when you care so much more about the transformation you're gonna cause to that person when they make action of taking a transaction with you, then your fear of rejection or your thoughts of manipulation are nonexistent.
Speaker 1:You're actually being empathetic. And when you have that kind of understanding, you're like, oh my God, if I care about these people, I'll remind them that this is a choice they can make. And now you see that the resistance starts melting away and there's a mutual client that we work with that has a high level of that resistance and, as I've been coming in and helping them understand this concept of like selling is loving, then you start realizing okay, maybe this isn't a bad thing and maybe every time we do it, it's in the service of our clients. And if we remind ourselves that we have to see the evidence, money's coming in. You check the reviews of the course people are loving it. And now your business is thriving, which means you can reinvest better products, better service, more content. You can reach more people. Your business starts thriving a lot more.
Speaker 2:There's a conference I organize every summer and when we're in the buildup to it, I remind everybody. You know what there's going to be, the tickets gonna go on sale and when they go on sale you might decide oh, I'm not quite sure if I'm gonna go. And then what I get every year is so many people messaging me and saying I can't believe I didn't get a ticket when it went on sale. They're all sold out, I'm not gonna be able to come. This is terrible, and I'm like I am saving you from that future situation that you could be in by reminding you right now that this is the chance. And they're like, oh, I can't believe you're using all this phone more and it's like you're going to feel that your future I'm saving you from this future bad emotion by reminding you now that that could happen, cause you're gonna tell me about it and you're gonna complain to me about it.
Speaker 2:And if I don't remind you now, I'm gonna be like oh man, why didn't I tell him about that in advance? I knew that was gonna happen and yeah, I mean it always sells out in like 24 hours because everyone's so excited about coming. But the same thing applies with, like selling these courses. It's like if the person that you're writing to, the person on your email list could benefit massively from this and you could change their life. You could help them to meditate better, have a better you know better trained dog, learn the language and have better experience at work. Whatever the thing is, what you're selling a course about, you know that that could be their future and that they're going to regret not having done something about it in three years' time.
Speaker 2:You need to tell them that, like, if it's not going to help them, if you've got a bad course, or if there's some people this isn't going to work for, then, like, tell them that as well. But, like, you know, if you're like this, this or this, or you're in this situation, then don't get this. This isn't appropriate for you, but if it could change their life, it's like that's a responsibility to let them know, right?
Speaker 1:It's a responsibility to let them know and it's also a risk that it's actually going to work. And what I want people to understand is if you're the type of person that needs to have factual knowledge, 100% guarantee which there is no such thing in life it becomes very resistant to make a sale to a product because you don't know 100%. If the people receiving on the other side are the exact, perfect market fit for getting value, because value is subjective to who's receiving it. Like I can go to a client offer $10,000 of services If they haven't generated a single dollar of revenue, I don't think they're going to get their ROI working with me. But if I'm working with a million dollar company and they hire me for the same price and I get to do some optimizations that increase things by 10%, massive value has been gained on their side.
Speaker 1:So what happens is I teach a lot about how having this understanding and knowledge and I call it the love for the client as one of the five loves but when you start to understand who the client you're serving and what their pain point, what their reality, what does it look like when they actually go through the kind of transformation?
Speaker 1:You have to be willing to take the risk as well. It's like the person who is so afraid of letting down a partner that they never ask somebody out. And then you find yourself forever alone, and it's because you're not willing to say maybe I'm going to show up and do the best that I can and maybe that's enough. And so this insecurity around your own product and being guaranteed that it's going to transform everybody that buys it you'll never have that guarantee and, just like love, the sale demands a risk to be made, but you can minimize that risk by understanding the client more, building the product to the best of your abilities and then using the techniques that communicate at least a perceived value that's going to be close to and slightly below what the real value is. So you're always having somebody that's satisfied with the decision of making the purchase.
Speaker 2:What's the four emotional levels of sales you talk about?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I've kind of alluded to it already, but at the minimum is where I talk about shame and guilt. That's when there's such a fear of that responsibility of a sale that you just don't do it. You don't pick up the phone, you don't send that email because there's almost a level of shame that'll come from you sending it out. So I don't even want to touch it. So I'm going to try to do everything else except send that email when you know that's the one activity that's going to create the most results. The second level, once you've actually gone over that, is what I call the fear pride paradox, which is very interesting. You can actually be very effective when you start just saying you know what? I'm just going to blast emails every day until somebody buys and you're going to see a couple of sales come in and you'll be like this worked, you might be selling them anything, don't care. Results came in and I keep blasting, keep blasting, keep blasting and you're seeing a bit of results and you have. You're like, look, I'm going to be selling them, I'm bringing results. It doesn't matter if they didn't have satisfaction with the product, that's up to them, that's not my problem. And it's very interesting the responsibility element, which is kind of the variable across this different emotions. You don't care about the results that you bring, and you can operate a business If you always have a bunch of leads coming in. You can burn those leads to the ground and squeeze out a couple of bucks, but now you're running a gimmick. You're not really a business. You're not building anything that's going to have sustainable value and as soon as your cost for lead is going to go higher than what is your conversion rates and monetization lifetime value on that, you're just going to burn the business to the ground. So, yeah, a lot of people play that game because there is a lot of leads, but it's not the way to build the business. It just eats away at your soul and then you become one of those real examples of a negative experience in sales. You would fall into the category of douchebags, as I've mentioned.
Speaker 1:What I'm trying to show people is there's ways to do that. You Little promotional email is going to translate into you actually spanning somebody for an entire year, at least emotionally. It feels that way. So you don't promote as much as you should to let people know that you can solve the problem for them. And I go.
Speaker 1:Of course, the top level is selling with love, and that's when, okay, I know what I'm trying to do. I know the impact of every person that that Purchases and the transformation they get. I know who these customers are, the problems they have. I've built a product that truly solves it. So why don't I set up the processes that are the most effective for me to reach the most amount of people so they can benefit from what was created? And when you start doing that again, you're doing it with empathy and it's effective and it's like it's what you would call like the healthy level of leadership. You're not you're not dominating. You're not, you're not being spammy, you're being confident and you're showing to people that I have something that can work for you and I'm worth taking a shot on. Let's send out those reminders. Let's go.
Speaker 2:So let's talk about mind value a little bit. What was it like? What's the kind of process that mind value using in terms of their launches and their email promotions, and does that differ from what you see with anybody else?
Speaker 1:Well, I spent about seven years at mind Valley, and this was back in 2013. Things have changed. Let's let's add that, you know, and what was very fascinating is we had like million plus people on our email list. So you know, it was quite the asset list as well, and it was fascinating because we would send an email every single day and there were there were definitely some resistance to says, like mind Valley has an organization was very, very sales resistant Every time an email goes out. So if you're sitting here thinking like, oh my god, I'm having fear of sending out too many emails, we as an organization had that fear all the time and we were trying to find what's that right balance. But when we started understanding that every email we send is an opportunity to reach somebody and it could be a promotion, it could be a piece of content, but even if it is a promotion, it's actually valuable You're talking about the way that you angle the email can be very, very valuable as it's a promotion. I remember one of the best things we've done is you realize that if we continue blasting emails to our main list and blasting in a healthy term, which just we call it blasting because you're hitting the broadcast button. We we decided to just simplify everything that we do, to be very Systemized and very straight line in the way that we provide value, and we called it the mind Valley master class and, for anybody that wants to use the real term, it was a webinar. So we'd have these webinars and we realized that when we mail people to a webinar, we're not even asking for their money. We're just providing an experience that they can register to. That provides even more value. So a ton of the resistance actually went down.
Speaker 1:When you're mailing to a webinar and for anybody who has a webinar funnel, like, oh my god, there's nothing more brilliant than that, because every single email you have is giving somebody an opportunity to get more value. And there are competing things that take your attention in this world. Some of them are really negative. You can have parties at night where you're drinking and really, just like you know, blacking out like some people make those decisions. What if you have a webinar that teaches people on how to be healthier in their lifestyles? Yeah, I'm gonna remind you. Yeah, I'm gonna invite you. I'm gonna let everybody know. And Guess what, you're not the one email that somebody receives a day. You have to send a couple because you're competing for attention.
Speaker 1:So, nonetheless, at Mindvalley, every single day we'd have an email goes out and typically it goes to content, goes to webinars, and then we'd have some promotions directly once in a while, but once they were in a webinar funnel and then at the end of the webinar there's always an amazing offer. So once you have that, then you get to mail to the sublist and let them be more clear on what's that offer, because they've already shown interest in that specific niche and that engine was the engine that fueled Mindvalley, my god, from the Majority of the period of time that I was there. And they still run master classes today. Mind you, from what I understand because I haven't been with a company for like three, four years now, I Don't know its effectiveness now, but again, I would say getting a chance to do webinars is one of the best ways that you can at least connect with the people You're selling, to understand their pain point, get a feedback loop and then just remind them as much as possible.
Speaker 2:What was the kind of structure that you guys were using? Because so my ex used to run ads for Mindvalley and she over at tier 11 when they would do I don't know, maybe they still are the ads agency for Mindvalley, so they would.
Speaker 2:All of the ads was running to these, to the master classes, was that? Were they all? The ones where I noticed a lot of them were like vision, interviewing the Person who'd put the course together. Was that like the structure for all of them, or were there other kind of structures you guys used as well?
Speaker 1:I I know that like one thing that's very amazing from vision himself. He's a brilliant communicator and he's so passionate about personal growth himself and so I think for a lot of people in this space, they have amazing products, they have amazing courses and especially if they produced it alongside Mindvalley, like there was a lot of energy placed into creating the most amazing transformational courses and even the best authors, the big ones on the platforms, still had a fear of Presenting their offer very effectively. And I think for a lot of the master classes where vision could come in and do a powerful interview and Also be confident enough because he would go through the transformation with the course, he would believe in the product and would communicate it so brilliantly, it definitely increased a lot of the conversions. We've had some of the trainings that were done with the author exclusively, but I know in the era of the Mindvalley masterclass, vision definitely had a high involvement and I think when you have somebody who advocates the product and sells it, it creates a unique framework, especially if there's a.
Speaker 1:You know, if you think about the same method of when you go, you know what is it, the? I'm thinking Trevor Noah, I'm thinking like the Saturday Night Live and all those talk shows, space places, they. That's usually a platform where people promote book. If you go out and I'm like, buy my book, buy my book, it's one format. But when you're on a credible platform and you have this, this kind of host that welcomes you and says to their Trusted audience that's there coming back, having this kind of curated and expectation of service and quality that advocates for your product, there was definitely a winning formula there. I Nice.
Speaker 2:So talk to me more about the work that you're doing now, because you've got this mission you've been talking to us about, about working with spiritual leaders in the kind of online course, online education space. Can you tell us a little bit more about what you're doing?
Speaker 1:Yeah, so I moved away from Mindvalley. I'm currently working and what I love to do is just see all of these amazing authors. As I've mentioned, a lot of them have built a following, have built an audience, and they have big missions of transformation and they want to help a particular part of the world and it usually has to do with lifting consciousness in one form or fashion, one of these clients being Teal Swan that I know. This is where our common link is and you know I get to come into these organizations and it's very interesting For me.
Speaker 1:People come to me usually with sales problems, and the more I look into an organization, I can find that there's other things we can look at when it comes to business, organization or operations, but nobody's like I think I have an operations problem.
Speaker 1:People usually say, well, I want to see how I can get more sales and less stress, and it feels like if you get more sales, there's a lot less stress, but there's a couple other things that can be in place.
Speaker 1:So right now, I feel what I'm very called to do is being a part of these organizations and help them guide.
Speaker 1:Take a lot of the principles that I know around how to align your leadership team, how to set your priorities, how to have the right organizational systems and team management systems, and it also comes with making sure that you have engines that are creating the sales you need to sustain the operations, to scale the impact, because I consider, you know, money is just a form of stored energy and you know we could go into a whole you know episode on what are the kind of blocks people have around money, but money ends up being a very charged subject for a lot of people. For me, I just see money as the stored energy that can be directed in whatever you want to amplify, and so when I see what I'm able to do with at least managing this energy and directing it in ways that are more impactful, I want to align myself with you know personalities, people, particularly in the spiritual space, that are on a mission to direct energy towards, you know, raising consciousness, and this is the role that I get to play the best.
Speaker 2:What is the process that you're kind of helping people through? Because it's really interesting, right? We've been talking to a lot of people recently who are our clients, who we help with email marketing and funnels and making more sales, and nearly all of them have said to us actually we could really do with help with systems and processes as well. Like, they've all heard of traction or they've read traction or scaling up, so people, they don't have that in place and they don't have systems for hiring and they don't have systems for tracking their KPIs and all their OKRs or any of these different kind of things, right? So it's all run a little bit by the seat of their pants. So what's kind of some of the stuff that you're you're seeing that people need around that and what is it that you're helping people try to put into place?
Speaker 1:I'll tell you one of the key things that I do, and it feels very lame and I feel like there may be a couple of like eyes rolling when I share this, because it seems so like bogus and, to be honest, I even have that opinion of it before I started realizing the power that it holds. But one of the key things I really spend time with is the founder, or the creator, to just understand what are the core values. Yeah, core values. It's like. What do you mean? Like? Like we believe in trust, like, and it's like is it that thing you put on the about us page one year and you kind of forget about it? But rather it ends up being something that can help you and liberate you from making a lot of decisions, because when you're managing an organization that's in the seven figure, eight figure and beyond, like, you now have an overwhelming amount of decisions that need to be made and each of those will take a lot of energy unless you have guiding principles that allow you to accelerate the decision making process. And so everything's a yes if there's no values that are defined.
Speaker 1:And the moment I come into an organization, I get a sense of the, the kind of values that the founder has and what is the the why behind the whole business. So in my book I speak about the first love you should have is love, the impact. And so when I go in and I'm like, so why the hell are we building a business? Like what's the point, like what are we even trying to achieve? And when I start having that level of awareness, then I can start making a lot of the decisions that are going to actually align the business towards getting closer to that actual vision. I think if you get caught into the hamster wheel of a business running which is like, oh my God, what's the next thing I need to do to drum the cash flow, and then you're kind of like, oh my God, I'm just going around calming fires, going after one another, is you need to be in a place where you can take a bit of a pause and then set that so you can make some powerful decisions. Who are the key partners you want to work with? How do we want to work with them? Who needs to be on the team? Who needs to get out of the team?
Speaker 1:And you know, I'll tell you, one of the fun things that happened when I particularly working with Teal was one of the core values that came up was excellence, right, and Teal was like every time I go on stage, you know I bring my best energy. I expect excellence out of myself. I mean, she has a background with some sports, athlete and high performance activities, so she's always had excellence in the as one of those core values. So as we bring this into the company and I communicate that with the team, then we look at how things are done and it's like does this, for example, story on Instagram that we just posted, do you think that this was done with a level of excellence that we would expect that respects our value? And people are like, oh no, then it can't go out. We need to have everything used under that filter, and that means sometimes we got to slow down. We can't do knee-jerk reaction, we can't do scammy direct response stuff that might increase your conversion rate if it's not done with a level of excellence. So now we get to have that lens to filter things on, and One that I think was actually even more, you know, impactful is there was this one of the core values being inclusivity and Giving a chance to have it everything be sorry, not inclusivity accessibility, which is, how do I make sure that everything that has been created is accessible to everyone, regardless of their income levels?
Speaker 1:Well, okay, at some point I need to make sure that I have monetization, but at least knowing that value means that I always create a space so that, if somebody's not in a position to afford the products and services, I create a value area that can make it accessible to them as well. And so, for example, we're launching this whole new tech initiative and we decide we have an area that's available for free or not. Well, knowing this value, we're gonna have a free area. Okay, then, how do we build our business model so that we can maybe have an ascension model which brings people into the ecosystem for free, and then we have steps to elevate their experience through the ecosystem. So it started guiding so many decisions, and all of them were made super fast. I mean, I haven't been with the team for that long, but we made so many decisions, set priorities, and all that started with just the values and then having an understanding of what's the impact the founder even wants to make.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I remember the first time that I heard people who are running businesses much bigger than mine Start talking about mission, vision and values and I was like, well, this sounds like a load of hippie nonsense and then. I kept hearing about it again and again. I was like oh, there's something here, isn't there? There clearly is something that I'm not understanding, rather than these people who are doing much better than me are all stupid, it's like that's that that can't, that doesn't fit with reality.
Speaker 2:And so we started spending a lot more time around that and be like, okay, what is it, that is our mission, what is it that's our values. And then we review them on a regular basis to be like, okay, are we hiring in line with this? Are we firing the people who don't align with this? So we making sure the projects that we're taking on we're doing to the. You know, this kind of standard.
Speaker 2:We've got one that we call effortless flow, which is the idea is, it's a level beyond excellence and it's like when things run not only excellently, but it looks like you didn't even have to try because it ran so well, so smoothly, that everyone just goes, oh, that looks like it was just really easy for you guys, and I feel like it's. I wonder sometimes if I've gone too far with that, because it's a bit of an ethereal concept, I think, a lot of people to take on, because it's not supposed to be that you don't try really hard. It's supposed to be that it didn't look like you tried really hard because you did it so well.
Speaker 1:You're like. You're like the duck on the water right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm majestic, but the feet are still going, you know. Going like crazy, yeah yeah, and it's like I don't want any. I think sometimes, like new team members might be like oh, so it's supposed to be that we don't have to try that hard. It's like no, no, it's supposed to be. You're trying like absolutely working like absolute billio, but then it reaches a level where it feel, you know, it looks like that or it feels like that. So that's kind of a defining one for us as well.
Speaker 1:Just to piggyback on what you just said is the fact that you know now, when you have an application that comes in and you explain that for some people they'll be like, oh, they'll be repulsed by that idea, and then you don't even need to filter them, they filter themselves.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it really helps with the hiring process. I found that there are people who apply to work here and they're like, oh my god, I read your job and I'm like that's where I have to work, because everywhere else I work. They just want you to just do your job and just keep your head down and don't make it fast. And here you're talking about doing things for a really high standard and doing them really really well, and like that's an obsession that you guys have got. That's what I want. And so we ended up attracting the people who want that kind of thing in their life or after it, whereas for some people they're like, oh god, sounds exhausting. It probably would be, you know. So they never apply.
Speaker 1:So yeah. So I think for me, like as soon as that gets in place, then it becomes very easy to translate the rest into Strategy, which are priorities and stuff. I do notice, for those who are going to be watching this instead of listening to it, there is a scaling up book behind you. I'm very much inspired by Fern Harness's stuff as well.
Speaker 2:I Went through the book traction a number years ago and took the test. They've got like a test in. This is like out of a hundred. How well, you kind of doing against this.
Speaker 2:It says most people when they first take it, like 20 to 30 out of 100, and I was like Brace, brace, let's go. Okay, and that's where we were. We were at 23 when the first took it and we kind of gradually work Like every single quarter will go through and we'll pick another area that we're like okay, can we get this from a two to a three, from a three to a four, from a four to a five? And it's like we now kind of rank somewhere around like 80 or 90 on it, which is, I think, why a lot of our clients come to us and say, oh, could you help it?
Speaker 2:And we've never done that, you know, we've never taken that on because, like, let's just stay specialized in Email marketing, funnels, sales pages, you know, let's keep on that thing. But I do wonder sometimes, like that's maybe what some of our clients need. Maybe we should be helping with that part side of stuff as well. So we'll see over time. But we want to stay in an area where we can achieve such a level of excellence. So, like, if we spread too wide, maybe we won't do that anymore.
Speaker 1:So well again that that's the reason why the values are so important, because if you didn't have that level of effortless flow, then you can go and try a bunch of stuff and, just you know, do mediocre to start, but now you stay in the lane and you do it that effortless flow and so your decisions get made for you.
Speaker 1:And so I find, particularly in today's age you know you listen to podcasts You'll have people like spitting some ideas. You have to do this or else you're gonna fall behind. And then AI is coming and if you're not catching up to that, you're, you're gonna fall behind and you'll be replaced. And you got to make sure to do this and you need okay, ours, and you need this and you need that. It gets very overwhelming and you know you start just going from creating your own fire and in the lack and trying to react to everything coming. Oh my god, new chatbot came out. We need to do that, we need to do this and you know, I think having that kind of organizational layer, having that strategy, setting up priorities and then just sticking to it quarter by quarter there's those are the habits that really help the company get to the next level. But until you get to the millions is spaghetti on the wall. Test some stuff, get your product market fit, you know, build your funnels makes things happen.
Speaker 1:So, that way you get to a point where now you're having organizational problems.
Speaker 2:Yeah, if you haven't got product market fit, then none of the rest of anything is worth bothering about. Really, is it's like? Because then that you're selling something that nobody wants is like.
Speaker 1:Most organized, you know. But if nobody's buying your stuff, you're still at zero revenue, and if you don't have revenue, you don't have a business.
Speaker 2:So if people have heard your wisdom and they want to learn some more about this, where's, where's the next place for them to go?
Speaker 1:I mean, you know, if you're an avid consumer of podcasts I run the selling with love podcast I bring on a guest as well and then we talk, usually about you know Entrepreneurship and sales philosophy, to get you to understand that sales is not a bad thing. And hopefully my goal with that is to create this kind of inception to realize that sales ain't bad and you can do it too. And I need people that are heroes to start selling more, because people that are heroes are going to be a lot less Restricted on their excitement around selling. And you know we need to outbeat the douchebags, as I've mentioned a few times. And if anybody wants to personally connect, you know LinkedIn this is a place to find. And if you do connect, add a note, tell me you heard of me on this podcast and we'll get the chat, and if there's anything I can help with, I'll be sure to connect back.
Speaker 2:Beautiful Jason, thanks so much for coming on today. I really really appreciate your time.
Speaker 1:Had a great time.
Speaker 2:John, thanks for having me if you found the interview useful. You want to get future episodes, subscribe whatever you listened and, as always, thanks so much for your time and for listening in.