Speaker 1: 0:01

Ladies and gentlemen, if you've been wanting to set up your own business, or maybe you're just kind of interested in how I make money and how I go about coaching and all of that kind of stuff, I thought I'd do a little podcast about selling. I heard a really interesting quote from a guy called Alex Hamazi, who's one of the, I guess, entrepreneurs and people that I've learned a lot from. Dan Henry is another one, pat Flynn is another one. There's quite a few people, but Alex Hamazi is one that I've been listening to a little bit recently and he had this great quote where he said you sell because you don't know how to market and you market because you don't have a good product. So what he's talking about there is this sort of three different, I guess, tears or ways that you can make money when you have some sort of business, especially in online business, like what I'm doing, right, you know, if you're not familiar, essentially what I'm doing is I'm selling my knowledge and I'm also selling access to myself, I'm selling my time. So the three tears are, you know, maybe you'd say at the top, having a really good product, which maybe you could call that, look, organic marketing, where, you know, maybe your content really, really, really helps people, or your coaching program is amazing, or you have some book or video course or something that you're selling that just really, really, really Handles a certain niche or gives people a lot of value, or people seem to change their lives from it. So that's having a really good product. That's at the top. That's kind of what you want to aim for. But a lot of people don't have a good product, so what they do is they have an OK product, but then they use a lot of marketing to sell it, and there's nothing wrong with marketing. So marketing could be Facebook ads, you know, you run an ad campaign. You could use YouTube ads, you could Use word of mouth, whatever it might be, but you do a lot of marketing to train, bring a lot of people in, because you know your product isn't amazing, but hopefully, if you can just get enough people in, you make enough money to pay the bills. So that's sort of the second tier. And then, if you don't even have good marketing, you might rely on the third tier, which is like selling. So you would get people on a call and then you would use like sales techniques and I personally don't like sales techniques.

Speaker 1: 2:19

I've tried it for a long time. I didn't really like the way that it felt. I even took a sales job when I was younger and I worked in a call center making like cold. I guess. They were kind of like warm leads. So people, they were like warm, slash, cold leads and we would call people up and try and sell them. We were selling them, basically a subscription service to a charity, but we would make money from that. And so and I also I also did what would you call it like in person sales, where I walked up to people and like said hey, can you please give us some money, would you like to buy this product?

Speaker 1: 2:54

And I did that in a shopping center where I'd walk around trying to sell to people and I didn't really like how that felt. And I think I figured something out in those two jobs. Something clicked in my head and I was like, oh, we have to push these products because they're not very good, like I don't feel passionate about what I'm selling. And the trainers and the bosses would tell us hey, you know, be really passionate about what we're selling here. Like, if you can just get really excited and motivated, you'll make the most amount of money and I tried. But I just, I personally just didn't care about the product and some people did and those people made a ton of money. But I just I didn't really feel like we were changing lives. I felt like we were kind of just manipulating people and trying to just get money. I didn't really feel like we gave a shit about anyone that gave us money. It I didn't like the way it felt.

Speaker 1: 3:42

So those are the kind of three sort of tears at the very top having an amazing product and you don't really need to market it, you don't really need to use any sales techniques because People just through word of mouth talk about it and they come to you and they go please take my fucking money. And then the level below, that is marketing. We run some marketing campaigns. You push your product, you put it out there, you try and bring a lot of people in. You understand you're going to get some refunds because your product isn't amazing. And then the bottom tier is like sales techniques, where it's like you almost have to like Maybe it's a harsh way of phrasing it but like manipulate people or be persuasive. You have to use persuasive techniques. I call it manipulation. I understand that there are a lot of people in sales who don't like that phrasing and that might be a harsh phrasing fair enough. I personally, for my own values, seed as manipulation and so I don't want to do it.

Speaker 1: 4:32

So those are kind of the three tears, and what I have focused on the vast majority of my time is Having a, I guess, good product, if you want to call it that, but I haven't really phrased it like that in my head. What I've always focused on is I just want to help people like genuinely. That's why I started all of this stuff. It's why I started my blog, because I wanted to help people, because a lot of people had helped me and I wanted to give that back. Nobody more than good-looking loser like good-looking loser helped me the absolute most.

Speaker 1: 5:01

A guy called Chris who wrote that website and he even had a couple of articles on how he recommends you run a business or start a business. And this was years before I ever thought of making my own website, but I remember reading it and finding it very fascinating because he basically said it's like that quote from there's a movie called Field of Dreams, where it I think Kevin Costner is the actor and he says if you build it, they will come. In other words, if you make a beautiful, big, amazing product, people will just come like they'll just don't, they'll love that thing and they'll want to be part of it. If you make a good community, people will want to be a part of it. If you build yourself up through self-improvement you know physical and mental and make yourself the best, I guess, product that you could be, people will want to be around you. You know friends, relationship, sex, dating, all of that kind of stuff. Opportunities just come to you. We call this the halo effect in psychology and so I focused on that.

Speaker 1: 5:58

I took a page out of good-looking losers book and I said okay, what if I make as much free Good stuff to help people as much as I possibly can? And I kind of didn't really worry about the money at all. In fact I don't think I made a single dollar for the first like year or two of my website. I wasn't really trying to at the start and so I gave away a ton for free. You know I wrote the tinder guide, which is 130,000 words, and it's also really a self-improvement guide. It's a mindset guide.

Speaker 1: 6:26

I did the depression guide. You know how to, or how I got out of depression? I Did. I've done 500 YouTube videos. I've done like about 500 podcasts over here on Spotify. I've done about 350 to 400 articles. All of that is like completely free, obviously, and, as I said, the goal at the start was just to help people and you know, it evolved into like okay, I want to change some lives as well. But the point is like, if we're talking strictly in terms of business, that's how my Income comes in, that's how my I guess business is set up. It's I change your life with my free content. And If then people want to give me money, awesome.

Speaker 1: 7:09

There's another really good quote from Alex Hamazi, but Pat Flynn and other people like that have said this as well you want to make your bet, or I have chosen to make my free content better than other people's, paid content, and that was kind of an idea I had in in mind early on. And again, that came from good-looking loser. But when I wrote that Tinder guide, I was like I really want to make the most comprehensive Tinder guide on the internet and I can pretty much say it is that again 130,000 words. It walks you through from improving yourself to Messaging women, to going on dates, to having sex, to improving your sex life and then to building a relationship afterwards, like literally everything. I take you from being a complete freakin virgin if that's where you're at all the way to like. Hey, now I have a wife and kids. With this woman, like you can use the whole freaking guide for that, and so I wanted to make that free content better than what other people will charge for, so then someone might read that.

Speaker 1: 8:06

And again, this wasn't the intention at the start. The intention at the start was just to help people. But the effect is, you know, people read that Tinder guide or they read one of the other guides or any of the videos of the articles, of the Podcasts or whatever, and they go man, like, this free content really freaking helped me. Like holy crap, if this is what I get for free, how much would paying this, andy dude, like how much would that help me? And obviously the answer is a hell of a lot more. Because you're paying me to care about you, I then get to actually care about you, especially because you're helping me pay my bills. I have immense gratitude for everyone that's ever paid me money. I pull my heart and soul into helping them. But that's kind of the the nice effect that happens there. It's like wow, and he gave all this content away for free. Man, I kind of want to give him some money.

Speaker 1: 8:51

And so it's meant that I haven't really had to do much in the way of marketing. I've shared articles on Reddit and I've shared on other forums from time to time, though I don't really do that much anymore. But you know, and I guess that's a form of marketing, isn't it Like? Sharing your content is a form of marketing. You're putting the word out there, but I've never had to do any paid marketing. I've never really done any Facebook ads, I've never done YouTube. I've never really paid for any sponsored posts or anything like that. It's all been just I'm going to try and help people as much as I can and then I'll just share the content, which, again, I don't really do that much anymore because I don't need to especially like on YouTube and Spotify. The algorithm does a decent job now. It didn't at the start because I was a small channel, but the algorithm does a decent job of sharing my content now when people find it and they share it with each other, and that's beautiful. I don't really have to worry about marketing and I definitely don't need to do any sales techniques.

Speaker 1: 9:40

You know I've talked about my sales calls, if you want to call them that, but I don't call them sales calls. I don't really like that terminology. I think it intimidates people and it just isn't what the calls are and it doesn't feel good to me to think of them as a sales call. But I do like free calls for people if they're wanting to sign up for the coaching program and we basically sit there and see if we're a good match. And if they want to sign up and you know any questions they might have and if they want a payment plan or they want to pay in full, we basically just discuss the logistics of signing up. Right, and my sales calls if you call them that which again, I don't call them that it's really me just going are you ready to go ahead or is there anything you want to talk about first? Like I don't really need to pitch anything. I don't really need to. Like make them. There's no sales techniques Now.

Speaker 1: 10:24

At the start I was using that for the first year. I tried a lot of sales techniques because I thought I had to. That's what everybody on the internet told me to do. They told me to use all of these tricks and these special techniques and psychology tricks and all of that kind of stuff, and it just made me feel very combative, like I was trying to use people, like I was trying to get something from them. I don't really like that. Another thing that I did that everybody told me to do was like not put. This is a very common thing with coaching programs. I was told by so many experts don't put the price of your coaching anywhere on your website.

Speaker 1: 11:04

What you're supposed to do is like get people really excited about the coaching program or the book or video costs, like whatever it is that you're offering. And then they get on a call with you and then you go hey, you know how shit is your life right now? And they go, oh yeah, my life sucks right now. So you get them all emotional and like sad and you go and how much would it suck if you never fixed it? And they go, oh, yeah, that'd be awful. So you're getting them more and more emotional and sad and fear of missing out. And then you go, yeah, and how amazing would it be if you could achieve your goals. And then they get really excited. And then you go awesome, now that I've essentially I mean, maybe this is a harsh way of phrasing it, but it felt like this to me emotional manipulation, now that I've emotionally manipulated them into feeling sad, and then, like a roller coaster of emotions, now I'm going to tell you the price by the way, the price is $10,000. And then you know they will go oh fuck, I can't afford that. And you go. Can you afford not to? And you have to use all these sales techniques and all of this force.

Speaker 1: 12:03

And I did that for about a year. You know, I probably had I don't know how many people I had signed up in that first year because it was a few years ago, but I don't know. Let's say I had like 20 people signed up. I can't remember. Let's say it was 20 people that signed up, maybe it was like 15 or something. I did that with like 15 people and I felt shit. Actually it would have been way more than that, because not everybody signed up, because that's the point, because I wasn't putting the price on the coaching page. Some of them would come on the call, have no idea how much the price was. And then when I told them the price, they'd be like, oh fuck, I couldn't afford that. I wish you just told me that there's no way I can afford that. And what you're supposed to do there, according to all of the experts, is use the techniques and the tricks and manipulate them. And you know, like I said, can you afford not to? What if you get a bank loan? Like what if you go and borrow money and you kind of like almost forced them into signing up, and I really didn't like that? So I probably did that with like I don't know 30 people, because more than half of them didn't sign up At one point.

Speaker 1: 12:55

It was like 75% of people weren't signing up. So probably got on like 30 calls or so with people I didn't really like myself. I didn't really like who I was, it didn't feel good, and so what I changed it to was I started putting and this was a big leap of faith. This was really terrifying for me to do, by the way, because everybody told me this is what you're not supposed to do I put the price on the coaching page, like the actual price, and I told everybody exactly how much it is. This is exactly how much you're going to pay if you sign up. And that was so terrifying for me. I had all of these fears of like people are going to say it costs too much and I'm going to get all this hate and you know, no one's going to sign up because you're supposed to use these manipulation techniques and sales techniques and all of this.

Speaker 1: 13:36

But once I let go of the entire game of sales and manipulation and I just embraced being honest and upfront, guess what? More people signed up. And the people that signed up were actually a good fit and they wanted to be there because I'd been honest with them and they could be honest with me. And it meant I got to drop all of the sales techniques. I literally, like I said, I stopped, I entirely stopped doing any sales techniques. It's basically just do you wanna go ahead? And I've even had people where and this is a very high level thing that you can start doing I've had people where they go look, I'm just I wanna sign up, but I'm just not sure.

Speaker 1: 14:14

And I will break the fourth wall and be very honest with them and I'll treat them like they're on the same team as me. I'll say do you want me to push you right now. Is that what you want from me? And sometimes they'll say no and I'll say, hey, that's cool, like let's end the call. Then Other times they will say I kinda do want you to push me, yeah. And then I will say how would you like me to push you? What do you want from me? What do you need from me? And then some of them will tell me they'll say, look, I just want you to reassure me that this is a good financial decision and I'm not being silly. And so then we will go through that and I'll say, okay, let's make sure this is a good financial decision. And I'll just talk with them like they're on my team.

Speaker 1: 14:53

Or other times they might say to me look, I think I just need you to push me, like literally, can you just make me do this? And I'll say, okay, if that's what you're asking from me, you want me to make you do this, I will send you the invoice right now. Go and get your credit card. I will sit here with you on this call and I will make you pay for this. And I'm not really making you pay for this because you're asking me to make you. It's more like I'm holding your hand through this and I'm being your wingman and I'm just making sure that we get through this and you pay for it, and then I reassure you afterwards and we can sit on the call for another half an hour or an hour afterwards if you want to, and I can reassure you and promise you that you're making a good decision and help you put in place the things that would help you feel like you've just made a good decision. Like let's hit the ground running.

Speaker 1: 15:39

Okay, day one you've just signed up. How do we start getting you some quick wins so you can start seeing some successes from the coaching from day one, from the moment you sign up? So then you'll feel good about what you're doing. How do we do that? We'll set you up with an accountability partner, which is something we do for everyone in the coaching program. You know we'll get you to start watching some of the videos that we have that walk you through the coaching program and we'll introduce you to everybody else. You make some friends and you'll feel good.

Speaker 1: 16:03

So at this point there are like no sales techniques really needed, which is a really nice place to be in because it means I don't have to manipulate anyone, and this is what I advocate for in dating. Obviously, you know I do the same thing in dating. I just say to people hey, you know, imogen, my girlfriend and I are into threesomes, we like sleeping with women together. We're into BDSM, we like mentoring and coaching and all of that kind of stuff. Do you wanna grab a drink with us or grab a coffee with us and see where things lead?

Speaker 1: 16:32

And on the first day all we talk about is hey, if you like us, you know we can go back to our place and we can teach you some BDSM stuff and we can try whatever it is that you wanna try. How does that sound? And some of them say you know, I'm just a little bit nervous. Can we do it next day? Hey, yeah, that's beautiful. Some of them say, yeah, I'd like to do that, but I'm a little nervous. And we say would you like us to help you? Would you like us to encourage you a little bit and push you a little bit, or would you like us to back off? And so you can kind of just play it by ear with people and be on the same team and there's no techniques fucking needed. What technique would you possibly need when someone wants to do it, and if they ever don't wanna do it, then you just say, hey, that's beautiful.

Speaker 1: 17:09

So the same thing with my coaching. It's like do you want the coaching, yes or no? And I'm not always perfect with this. There are some times, every now and then, usually in my content, where I'll slip back into that old, almost like sales mindset where I'm like I gotta motivate people, I gotta like push them and tell them they have to sign up now and change their life, and so this is something that I'm still actively working on. But I believe in the next year probably, I will be at a point where I'm perfect all the time, or as perfect as you can be, and there's no force, there's no manipulation, there's no pushing. There's very little of it now, to be honest anyway, but it's a really nice place to be in. So my mindset is kind of on those sales calls and with sex and dating as well. It's like if this person wants to go ahead with me, awesome. If they don't, awesome.

Speaker 1: 18:01

My life goes on just the same either way, and often we can get caught up in these stories of like. But I need this person to sign up, I need this money. I need it so bad Like I'll be so screwed if it doesn't happen, and that is a story that can be a lot of stress. Believe me, I've believed that story for a long time, letting go of my money. Stress is something that I've only really gotten decent over the last like maybe six months, maybe, yeah, maybe the last six months. Even then, there's still a little bit of underlying stress there.

Speaker 1: 18:31

So don't feel like you have to be perfect with this stuff. It's a process. You know you give yourself permission to suck. The same with dating. A lot of people don't have that abundance mentality, or I guess you could also call it like outcome independence. Well, you don't care if someone dates you or not. You're just, you're fine, you're like it's okay, I'll go talk to more women or I'll go talk to more guys. You know you might not be there yet, but give yourself permission to suck with it, slowly build it. It's one of those skills. I guess you would say that you just improve with practice. So you know, at the end of the day, we would like people to sign up for our coaching or to give us money. You know we would like people to date us. We would like our bosses to be nice to us and give us a promotion or whatever it is that you might be working on right now. But if it doesn't happen, hey, that's cool, we'll just go and get it somewhere else. That's kind of the mindset to have.

Speaker 1: 19:18

And, yeah, there might be a little bit of frustration there sometimes. You know, there might be a little disappointment, it might be like, oh God, damn it. But like I really liked this person, I really wanted them to sleep with me. That's okay, like you're human, if you feel that frustration. A guy in my coaching program literally this morning was he posted that exact frickin' thing in the group. He was like, damn, there's this hot girl that I was talking to and I was really excited to see her and you know she's just stopped replying and she's ghosted like ugh, you know, it's fine, I'm kind of annoyed. I know there's more women out there, but like ugh, like I'm just kind of disappointed and what I said is like, hey, look, frustration's okay, it's beautiful, if anything. But you will eventually get to a point where you're not frustrated and you don't care anymore. But in the meantime, that's okay. Like you're human, I get frustrated too. Like I, andy, get frustrated too. We can all get frustrated from time to time. That's perfectly okay. So all of that is how I sell without selling, and you can take some of these principles in your own businesses or your own dating life or whatever it is, if you want to. If you don't want to, that's beautiful as well. But this is all just what has worked for me, and all of this has been a journey.

Speaker 1: 20:27

Like I said, it's not like I woke up on day one and I was like, hey, you know, fuck sales, I just want to help people. Obviously I did want to help people at the start, but I was kind of not led astray, but I was. I was convinced by a lot of people on the internet that, like, you have to do sales techniques and you have to do like. You know they don't use the word manipulation, but you have to, like, persuade people, which I see, as you know, almost manipulation is definitely forceful. You're not really asking, you're not giving the other person agency and saying, hey, what do you want to do? Do you want to sign up for my program or would you like to not sign up for my program? Do you want me to give more information or do you want me to just let you go? Like, what do you actually want? So you know I was led down that path. I'm really glad that I figured out that there's another path and there are plenty of people that talk about this other path.

Speaker 1: 21:15

By the way, pretty much every single spiritual guru talks about this kind of mindset red site just have a really good product and you don't need to sell by and Katie talks about this stuff a lot. David Hawkins absolutely talks about this. He literally has a business guide in one of his books. In the book the map of consciousness explained. He literally talks about how to set up a business where you're not needy and you're not pushing people and you're not using force or manipulation. And essentially the point that he makes is just have a ridiculously good product. He doesn't even call it a product, but he says have a higher purpose, like if your mission is to help people, you are absolutely gonna make such a ridiculous amount of money because you won't even care about the money. The money will be a beautiful side effect and I'm not perfect with that mindset yet I still care about money to some extent because I have a big tax debt that I want to pay off, but I'm working on it. I'm getting to the point of like letting go more and more and more and not really caring about the money. My ultimate goal is to be at a point where I actually literally don't care about money and either I will do like free coaching or, I don't know, I'll figure out some way to help people. I'll use all of the money that I make to pour it back into our community. That's a mindset that I've had for a long time.

Speaker 1: 22:28

There are a lot of times when I'm outside and I want to give money to people like homeless people, and I was sitting in a cafe the other day and there was this woman that she looked Homeless, but she also look like she was keeping herself together, if that makes sense, like she was dressed decently well, but I could just sort of tell that something was a little bit like you know that she might have been homeless or something, and she was kind of just standing near a cafe the image in the night was sitting and when nobody, or when she thought nobody was looking, she walked over to one of the tables that had some half eaten food and she pulled out like this old magazine that she had and she opened it up and she put the bread and like there was I think there was some eggs, and she just sort of shoved them in between the middle of the magazine and then sort of rolled it back up and then started walking away and I had this thought in my head where I was like man, I really wish that I had a little more money, because everything inside me was like run after her, run after her, run after her, go and give her like a hundred bucks or something, run after her. But then the thoughts come in my head of like, yeah, but we still got this tax debt to pay off. And Bottom line is, I'm really excited to get to a point where all the tax debt is paid off and all of the money that I make I can just handed out to people without sitting there going. But like, what about my own tax? So that's a mission that I'm on. I'm really fucking excited to get there. You have no idea how excited I am to get there. And, yeah, I hope this podcast was helpful.

Speaker 1: 24:02

If, after hearing all of that, you would like to jump on a call with me and talk about the coaching program, I would absolutely love that. You already kind of know that I'm not going to push you because we've just talked about this for the podcast, but you know I will leave a link in the description below to that. I am also still offering the two hundred dollar coaching calls that I've been offering for a while. So those are like one on one coaching calls with me. We can sit down for a little bit and Talk about anything you might be struggling with. I can answer all of your questions. Literally, just a coaching call for two hundred dollars, that's like my lowest access point. I did those. I offer those because, yeah, the coaching program cost a fair bit of money.

Speaker 1: 24:40

At this point in time as I record this podcast, the coaching program is eleven thousand US dollars. There's also payment plans available, so you don't have to have eleven thousand dollars right on you right at this point in time. But I understand that a lot of people, even with the payment plan, they just like, hey, man, that's a little out of my price point. So those two hundred dollar coaching calls, pretty much everyone can afford one of those, like you can save up money, or you know. And if you can't afford it, hey, that's beautiful too. There's all of the free content on my channels and on my blog. More than enough there to change your life, improve yourself and start taking those baby steps towards the life that you want. As always, ladies and gentlemen, I am super grateful for all of you. Go out there and crush those goals.